Cold

by Robert J. Crane

  At the next intersection I cut the corner hard, almost running over a pedestrian who’d stopped to gawk at the ice queen flying by overhead. “Move, move, move!” I shouted, hitting him in the kneecap with a pedal as I passed. His cry was pure, mewling pain, and I knew I’d shinned him good by the way he clutched himself as he fell. “Sorry!” I tossed back, then turned my attention back to my escaping shooter. “Also, I’m sorry to you for that terrible ice pun.” If she heard me, she gave no sign. Not that I could see her on top of her ice slide.

  Burkitt’s voice cut in on the radio. “Where are you now?”

  “On Convention Center Drive,” I said. “Crossing Girod Street now.” The street sign blurred by. I was now three quarters of a block behind the ice queen, and closing fast on the straightaway. She cut across Lafayette, still heading north.

  “You’re a block from the river,” Burkitt said, tension infusing his words. “Sienna, you’re going to need to get her pretty fast.”

  “Working on it,” I said. “You’re more than welcome to take over pedaling this bike if you think you can go any faster.”

  “Did you say ‘bike’?” Holloway cut in. “You mean ‘motorcycle,’ right?”

  “My legs wouldn’t be this tired if I’d stolen a motorcycle,” I said. “Thanks, Dick Dixson.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to us?” Burkitt asked.

  “No,” I said, and cut the next corner tight. I was getting close now, half a block behind the ice queen. I caught her throwing a nervous look behind at me.

  “The Riverwalk is ahead of you,” Burkitt said. “It’s a busy place, Sienna. Quite a distance to any of the nearby bridges across the Mississippi—”

  “I’m well aware of the stakes, Burkitt,” I said, bouncing the bike sideways and riding horizontally on the wall for a few seconds to cut the next corner even harder. It probably looked pretty cool, and I was definitely at eighty, ninety miles an hour now. The bricks blurred past as I streaked down the sidewalk, letting out random, siren-like shouts to clear the path ahead of me when I saw a pedestrian coming up.

  The immense rear entrance of Harrah’s loomed ahead, the triangular roof with its strange, lighted design and columnar entry, the colonial dome architecture like a beacon in the middle of the damned street. The sign ahead read Poydras St., and a hotel tower lay just beyond.

  The ice queen cut an abrupt angle right onto Poydras, gliding along a chain-link fence surrounding the tower, which kind of gave me the feel it was abandoned. An archway waited ahead composed of what looked like wooden slats, square and boxy, the words OUTLET COLLECTION written over RIVERWALK.

  The shooter slid low under the arch, directing her ice down, and darted over the heads of pedestrians heading toward the river on this path.

  “Beep beep!” I bellowed at the top of my lungs, searching the handlebars in vain for a bell. No dice. I hit a staircase just beyond the Riverwalk arch, bouncing up a few steps and nearly wrecking. Now we were both under a portico walkway, the shooter just fifty feet ahead, both of us zipping along in this confined space. She shot over the heads of the few pedestrians, and I wondered why she hadn’t chosen to go higher, like over the building next door, where there was no way I could have followed her. She kept casting self-conscious looks over her shoulder every few seconds as I closed the distance.

  Ahead, the portico opened up to a flat concrete Riverwalk, an old-fashioned steamboat waiting at the docks with red, white and blue circular bunting hung at the railings.

  I poured on the speed, now only twenty feet behind her. She was forced to duck lower in order to escape the confined, decorative archway at the end of the portico, and I saw my chance.

  And I took it.

  I stood, then bounced the bike, turning it sideways and skipping it up a few feet and off the wall to my right. On the rebound I controlled it perfectly, really tapping into my metahuman dexterity, and came down on the ice slide behind her.

  It took every bit of strength and agility I had to keep from wiping out as I went from normal ground to the wall to the ice slide, which had approximately zero friction with which I could ground the bike.

  But it didn’t matter, because I only needed the bike for another second.

  I was now only ten feet from the shooter, and she was half-turned, trying to see where I’d gone, but looking down, at the ground—in the way wrong place.

  While she was looking, I leapt over the handlebars, ditching the bike as I flung myself across the gap between us.

  It was a gamble, trying this. As soon as I’d gotten to the slide, my tires had started slipping, unable to grip on the ice. But I still had momentum, and I was banking on that.

  It seemed like a bad bet for a few seconds, like I was going to come up a few feet short. I was headlong flying toward her, seemingly running out of speed, my hands extended. I could feel her pulling away, or at least it seemed like it.

  “No no no no—” I muttered. If I could just grab her, grab that rifle, maybe—

  I was five feet from her and coming down fast, then four feet, then three, the ice slide rushing up to greet my face—

  Suddenly it felt like she slowed, because I was there, and the stock of her gun was right in my grip, and then we were both tumbling, crashing off the end of the ice slide and into the open courtyard, bones rattling as we hit the concrete, a tangle of limbs. Pain surged through my body as we crashed back to the earth, rolling until we came to a stop. I lay there on the Riverwalk, stinging agony running through my shoulder and side, the sky shining above me, stunned.

  But I got her.

  51.

  The flash when I’d gone from over 60 miles an hour to zero in roughly a hundred feet, rolling along the concrete, that had been…how to put it? Bad. That was bad.

  Worse were the aftershocks, the little nerves firing all up and down my back as I felt the full effect of my hard landing, the stinging, the ringing in my ears, all of the agony just dripping through into me as I stared up into an incomparably blue sky. How could things be so pretty when I hurt so, so much?

  “Awright,” I muttered, rolling over onto my face and lifting it. My foe was right there, five feet away, bleeding out of her forehead, blond hair marred by the dark crimson leaking from the road rash she’d developed just below the hairline. “Let’s just…call a truce for a second…” I tried to push to my feet, but the world around me spun. I’d rolled quite a few times before we’d come to rest, and my inner ear was still trying to sort out which way was up and which was down. For some reason, I had the strangest notion the sky was down.

  “I don’t think that’s how this works,” she said, trying to get a breath. She sounded winded, like she’d belly-flopped onto the concrete. She was sucking in breaths and talking fast between the gasps. “But it’s my first time…fighting someone like you.”

  “Let’s make it your last,” I said, finally figuring out that no, the sky was up, not down. I bobbled, getting to one knee, planting four bloody knuckles onto the pavement to steady myself. “Come on. Just give up.”

  The cloudiness in her eyes faded immediately. She shook her head, stray blond hairs loosed out of her tight ponytail. I’m sure that was helpful for sniping, keeping the hair out of her face. “No,” she said. “Can’t.”

  “Sure you can,” I said, finally getting to my feet but not really in any condition to fight. “You just hang here with me, we shoot the breeze until the cops show up, you go with them. No one gets iced, no one gets shot, no one gets pummeled to death by my angry, Slay Queen fists. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Not for me.”

  “It’s not all about you, okay? What are you, a politician?” I looked for something to lean on, but there was nothing nearby. Even the minimal crowd had fled at our crashing arrival. Now there was nothing but us, the Riverwalk, and the mighty Mississippi about thirty feet away. Wide open spaces for a little ways all around us; no easy cover. On the plus side, her rifle barrel was bent severe
ly, and I didn’t see a pistol on her.

  Downside: she had ice powers, and I’d lost an arm to those before. They were not fun, not in the infliction stage, nor in the growing-back-a-hand stage.

  “You know,” I said, eyeing the river to our left, “the Mississippi starts up where I’m from. Itasca State Park. But it’s small there. You could jump across it. By the time it gets to Minneapolis…not so much. Maybe I could, on a bet. But not in October. Probably mid-summer I’d be willing to try—”

  “You’re not going to get me to surrender by talking me to death,” she said, her gasps much more under control now. She no longer sounded like a fish out of water. More like a runner who’d just finished a marathon.

  “So, you’re not afraid of me?” I asked, trying to put a little humor into it. “You might be one of the only people who isn’t these days.”

  “You’re scary,” she said, measuring her response, eyes carefully watching me. “But I can’t be stopped. Not by you. Not by anyone.”

  “I’m not sure, factually speaking, that’s true, since I just, in fact, stopped you.” I was keeping my hand over my Glock, ready to pull it at the least sign of trouble. This was the complicated thing about metas; technically they were never unarmed, so I’d be sensibly in my rights to pull the pistol and put her down if she so much as waved a hand at me.

  But that was very “old Sienna,” and I was trying not to do that Wild West thing anymore. Which was a real pain in the ass.

  “I can’t be stopped in the sense that…I can’t let you stop me,” she said, shaking her head. “I have to keep going. I have to do this.” Her eyes were hard like a block of ice. I felt like I could argue with her all day and make not an inch of headway.

  “Look, I’ve met Warrington, and he’s a grade-A assclown, no argument,” I said. “But…” I shook my head. “Look, I want to help you here. What’s the connective tissue between your sister and Warrington?”

  She stiffened, eyes getting big. “How did you know about my sister?”

  “It’s a whole thing, a long story,” I said, waving a hand. “Doesn’t matter.” I figured mentioning that I’d dug her up was not going to be the sort of news that would soothe the savage ice queen, so I kept it to myself. “Point is—I’m trying to figure this out, really I am. I’ve got you on a killing quest and a dead sister. Connect the dots for me.” I listened for police sirens, but heard none. Probably because they were over at the library dealing with the aftermath of an assassination attempt.

  She looked down, at the ground, for a long moment, and when she spoke again, it was so quiet I strained to hear her. “Do you know what it’s like to hate someone so much that you’d give your life if it meant you could destroy them?”

  That one hit like a sack of bricks. “Uhm, yes,” I said. “Maybe just a tiny little bit…dozens of times over—okay, yes. Of course I do. I didn’t get this nickname because I let people cross me without consequence.” I realized I was probably sending a terrible message and cleared my throat. “But that is very bad. For…reasons. Obvious reasons.”

  Her blue eyes looked jaded staring back at me, and I could see she wasn’t buying it. “‘Reasons.’ Sure.”

  “Okay, cards on the table,” I said, keeping my distance from her. “I don’t know what Warrington did to you, or to your sister, although I’m kind of getting a flavor for it, given how she ended up.” And here I stepped a little closer to her, though there were still ten feet or better between us. “Warrington is going to be pond scum for the rest of his life, no matter how short it is. But you…you don’t have to be a murderer for the rest of yours.”

  “So, you’re telling me to let it go?” She took a step back from me.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Absolutely not. If Warrington did something to your sister, tell me about it. Help me.” I thumped a finger into the center of my chest. “I’ve got a badge and a gun, and the ability to investigate wrongdoing. If he did your sister wrong, help me sniff it out and I promise you—I’ll go after his ass. Because that’s what I do.” My hand fell back to my hip. “I’ve kinda made a career of going after the powerful. And I don’t care how powerful they are—if they’ve done wrong, I’m all over them like the stink of reefer on a Bob Marley concert.”

  “What he did was so long ago,” she said, shaking her head. “And he owns Louisiana. You’ll never get him here.”

  “I don’t work for Louisiana,” I said. “Tell me, and we can go from there.” I threw up that hand. “Hell, just give me her name. Your name. Give me something to work with.”

  Her blue eyes sparkled, a little moisture in the corners. “Her name…was Emily Glover.”

  “And are you from here?” I asked. “New Orleans?”

  She shook her head slowly, never taking her eyes off me. “Baton Rouge.”

  “Okay, we’re getting somewhere,” I said. In the distance I could hear a faint siren. “What did he do?”

  She just stared right at me. “Now that you know who she is, you’ll find how she crossed paths with him.” Her gaze flitted lower, to the concrete walk. She shook her head, as though breaking out of a dreamlike state. She started to turn.

  “Wait,” I said, and pulled my pistol, leveling it at her. “Don’t do this. Stay.” The siren was joined by another, and they were getting closer. The NOPD was responding to the 911 calls of the pedestrians around here, at last.

  She stared dully at the gun in my hands. “You going to shoot me?”

  “I’d really rather not,” I said, keeping it level, pointed at her side. “Not for Warrington. But you keep trying to kill him, and even though I can smell the stink on him, I don’t have anything yet. Give me a reason. Give me something, so I can change the direction of this.”

  She laughed under her breath. “What? So I can just…walk free? When it’s over?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “You’ve tried to kill a man. Trust me, there are consequences for that. But it doesn’t have to be your life or his.” I raised the Glock. “Please. Help me do the right thing by your sister.”

  Her eyes flashed colder, and I knew I’d lost her. “I’m already doing the right thing by my sister.”

  She sprinted off, and I didn’t shoot her in the back. She leaped over the railing, and I thought for a second she’d plunge into the Mississippi, but she didn’t.

  I followed her to the edge of the Riverwalk, and there I saw her means of escape.

  She’d constructed a miniature paddle wheel, just like the steamboat sitting next to the Riverwalk, and she was spinning along at meta speed, just like I’d done with the bicycle. It only took her a couple minutes to cross the Mississippi, and then she was gone.

  52.

  Olivia

  Staring across the breakfast table at Veronika was a nerve-racking process for some reason. We were at a diner a stone’s throw from my motel, a shabby place that was about on par with the lodging I was currently enjoying. She stared at me over her coffee cup, steam wafting over her dark eyes. She seemed to be trying to decide something, and when she finally settled on it, she put the coffee cup down, leaned in and whispered, meta-low, “Can we talk?”

  “Haven’t we been doing that all along?” I asked, dragging the words out slowly because I was pretty sure Veronika had been non-stop in her verbalizations from the moment we’d met up at the baggage claim.

  “Real talk, kiddo,” she said.

  “Oh.” I nodded, eyes flitting down to the stained, vinyl yellow tabletop. “This is about my confidence again, isn’t it?”

  “No,” she said. “Well, yes, but not just that.”

  “Ohhhh…kay?” Now I was confused.

  “You do need confidence,” Veronika said, putting her palms flat on the table. Her suit was the nicest and probably most expensive thing in the entire place, and the dark green blouse she wore under it really worked. “But it’s more than that. What’s with the clumsy thing?”

  “I…sometimes fumble,” I said, trying to avoid stammering.


  “You’re a meta.” Veronika stared at me, and I felt compelled to look away, then caught myself looking away and forced myself to look back at her eyes. It was not easy. “You have strength, dexterity and agility beyond that of a normal human.”

  “I don’t know, I just lack grace,” I said, trying as hard as I could not to look away from her eyes. It felt almost painful, like I was challenging her. I finally let out a breath and looked away, unable to take it any longer. “I get nervous. I trip. I—”

  “Okay, look,” Veronika said, and now her voice was straining. “You are stronger and more capable than you know.” She slid a hand across the table at me, slowly, and took mine, lifting it up. I wasn’t sure how to take that, but I didn’t detect anything amiss in her manner. She gave my hand a squeeze. “I’m not sure how much time I have to make this point, given I was tossed through a building last night, so let me just say it—your problems are all entirely in your head.”

  “I…well, duh,” I said. “That’s what I go to Doctor Zollers for. To get the, uhm…twitchy stuff…under control.”

  “Oh, no.” Veronika let go of my hand and buried her face in her own. “You’ve been seeing the doc? For how long?”

  “Months,” I said, again unable to look her in the eye but deeming her reaction to be a) not good and b) not favorable to my feelings.

  She slumped into her hands, as though she could just drop right into them and disappear as easily as if they held a pensieve. “The foremost psychiatrist in the meta world—and a mind reader—and he can’t stop you tripping over yourself and blowing things out of your path?” She pulled her face out of her hands and leaned back against the booth. “Okay. Maybe this isn’t a therapy session issue.” She nodded, and it felt like she was changing emotional states manually right in front of me, her eyes getting an enthused glaze. “Maybe it’s a field issue. How many criminals have you caught?”

  “Since I started?” I blinked, trying to think. “I mean, I’ve been on the job less than a year. So, I’ve done some training and—”