Tormented

by Robert J. Crane

  “Well,” I said, bowing my head, “I defer to your experience as the number one person on the scene in the area of Gavrikov-types. You think this guy is one, and he triggered due to anger?”

  “I do,” Li said. “And also, I think I shouldn’t be the damned expert on-site when it comes to Gavrikov-type metas, not when you’ve got someone on your staff who actually has the original Gavrikov in her head.” He looked straight through me. “Where is she?”

  “Unavailable,” I said, suddenly a little uncomfortable.

  Li smiled snottily. “Unavailable. Of course. She would take a vacation right now.”

  “Vacation?” Augustus asked. “Is that the polite, government way to say it? Because I heard ‘suspension.’”

  Li’s smiled vanished. “She’s suspended? What did she do now?” His eyes dulled. “Oh. That.”

  “Yeah, that,” I said. “But honestly, does it matter?” I stared at the static-laden screen as my stomach dropped. “She’s not here. She can’t be here. Not for two weeks, so …” I smiled, swallowing back all those fears I had about being in over my head and channeled it into a spiteful swipe instead. “Buck up, Buttercup. The pros are on the case.”

  3.

  Cassidy

  Cassidy Ellis watched the exploding footage on a loop, over and over again. She’d hacked the Minneapolis airport security system in about thirty seconds—yawn—and was already through the FBI firewall via a backdoor she’d installed months ago. She had three displays going at the moment in her sensory deprivation tank, and more thoughts in her head than could be controlled at any given time.

  Benjamin Cunningham, age 27, of Roseville, Minnesota. No signs of being a meta at any prior point in his history. Did that mean he hadn’t manifested yet? Or had he just kept it under wraps? It was possible, though unlikely given the reams of anecdotal evidence Cassidy had read on meta manifestation.

  Or it could have been Edward Cavanagh’s breakthrough, the one that unleashed meta powers. Cassidy hadn’t been able to get her hands on the formula, though she’d tried. The Atlanta P.D. had locked down Cavanagh’s testing site pretty quickly after the incident, boxing up the computers and shipping them off to a black site she hadn’t been able to track them to. That was unusual, but not totally unexpected. She’d read the internet’s version of tea leaves and knew that someone pretty powerful had played around with that data, deleting it off at the source. It took a lot to completely destroy a digital trail, and if Cassidy couldn’t dig it out—

  The rapping at the side of her tank threw her out of her blur of thoughts. That was Cassidy’s gift—and her curse; she could think faster than anyone else. Her meta gift was cognition. The problem with it, of course, was that it overwhelmed, overloaded her in some cases, and she couldn’t fully use it unless she eliminated the distractions of her other senses. Lying here in the warm salt water of the tank, listening to no sound but her own breathing, allowed her to get her thoughts out uninterrupted.

  The thumping against the side came again, and she recognized who among her companions was knocking just by the tempo. Quick, impatient, repetitive, almost unhinged. Just like the person doing it.

  Anselmo Serafini.

  Cassidy turned her face to the side and burbled into the water, let her lips make a sputtering sound and the salty liquid get a few drops between them before blowing them out. It was a rich, echoing noise in the privacy of the tank, interrupted by another fevered thumping from Anselmo. Patience was not the man’s strong suit.

  Then again, very few things were.

  Cassidy gingerly moved the specially-made waterproof screens and keyboards out of their positions and let the darkness envelope her. She took another breath, a slow one, steeling herself, and then fished her stiff, rubberized dressing gown out of the water where she always left it while floating in the tank, slipping into it with practiced ease. She fumbled with grasping fingers for her inhaler and took a hit. It was almost unheard of, as near as she could tell, for a meta to have asthma. Still, she had it, though she was fortunate in that it didn’t affect her life much.

  Cassidy closed her eyes and unlocked the tank. There was a keypad on the outside with a combination code that Eric could use to unlock it if need be, but Eric was gone at the moment, out of town. He left a lot lately, trying to spend as little time in Omaha as possible while they were bunkered here at the Clary house. He’d seemed willing to stay at first, and he certainly hadn’t lost faith in her plans, but just dealing with the people they were living with on a daily basis was a challenge of its own sort, one that made Cassidy thankful that she could spend almost all her time locked away in here.

  She didn’t even get to push open the top herself; Anselmo seized it and pulled the tank open, bathing her in bright light from outside. She kept the screens in the tank at low levels, and the blinding light of the world outside streaming in was enough to force her to close her eyes.

  “Get out here,” Anselmo said, his voice as scratchy as ever. She’d heard the interrogation tapes of him before Sienna Nealon had burned his skin beyond its ability to heal; he sounded much different now.

  “Give me a minute,” Cassidy said, opening her eyes slowly to squint. The light was so bright.

  “I said now, girl.”

  “Anselmo,” a voice from behind him said, “be a gentleman and give her a moment, would you, please?”

  Cassidy didn’t need to open her eyes to recognize the speaker. The voice was thick and husky, the voice of woman who’d lived a hell of a life. It had taken some searching to find her, but she’d been quite the find once Cassidy had located her. Her name was Claudette Clary, but everyone just called her “Ma.”

  Ma’s words landed on Anselmo like a perfectly aimed sedation dart. Before, Anselmo’s heart had been hammering so loud that Cassidy could hear it. Ma’s gently phrased request hit the Italian in just the right place, his ego, softening him up. Anselmo thought of himself as a gentleman first, a manly sort of man who, while always in charge, had manners. It didn’t quite match up with Cassidy’s vision of him, but she knew it was how he defined himself. Ma Clary wasn’t exactly book smart, but she could read a person like Cassidy could read binary.

  “But of course,” Anselmo said with a magnanimous nod, taking a few steps back from the tank. Cassidy slowly sat up, leaning against the metal backing, letting the water slosh as she did so. The tank needed to be drained anyway, so she started the automated sequence for cleaning and refilling it. She’d need someone else to add salt later, which was a task of its own. She had a design to automate it for the most part, but she lacked the fabrication facilities here to carry it beyond the design phase.

  For now, though, she had other things to worry about. “What seems to be the problem, Anselmo?” She looked over at him, finally, her eyes open enough to admit light—and a full image of the scarred man in front of her.

  Anselmo Serafini had been handsome once, a bronzed sculpture of a human being impeccably dressed in every photo Cassidy had ever seen of him, his dark, wavy hair sculpted with gel. Now he had no hair, and his once-smooth complexion was nothing but scar lines, a hideous cross-hatching of swirls and redness, unnatural bumps dotting the surface. “Have you seen what is happening on television?” Anselmo asked, voice low and raspy.

  Cassidy did a little rasp of her own inadvertently, a small gulp as she waited for the inhaler to work. “You talking about the airport thing? I’ve seen it. Why?”

  Anselmo’s eyes were dark, devious. Cassidy didn’t like the man, didn’t like anything about him. She’d read about what he’d done, the original complaints in Italy that had been all but ignored by the local police. She’d idly followed the trail of bribery, seen how much work Anselmo had done to buy himself out of trouble. He was probably the single biggest piece of pond scum she’d ever personally met, and every day that Eric was gone, she rued the fact that he’d brought Anselmo here on a whim. She was supposed to do the planning for them, and Anselmo …

  Well, the man wa
s just too unreliable to make plans around.

  “This … man … this Benjamin Cunningham … could be of aid to us,” Anselmo said, raising his hands to gesture with. Her eyes followed his exposed forearm with a fascination bordering on horror. Nasty red swirls grew redder as he talked, as he moved. “Imagine someone capable of destroying—”

  “We don’t need him,” Cassidy said, cutting him off. She’d been pursuing the information on Cunningham as more of an intellectual exercise, something fun to do while she waited for other plans to bear fruit, other wheels in motion to finish their spin.

  “You are telling me that you cannot find something creative and fun to do with an exploding man?” Anselmo asked, cold menace in his voice. He didn’t like to be interrupted, but it especially seemed to annoy him when a woman did it. Needless to say, Cassidy did it as often as she could.

  “What’d you have in mind?” Ma Clary asked, reminding the Italian that she was there. Cassidy could see in the surprised way that he turned his head that he’d already forgotten about her. He forgot about any woman that didn’t catch his eye, which suited Cassidy just fine. She ran a hand down her gown, wiping the excess water off her thin arms and into the draining tank.

  “If I could get to him before they do,” Anselmo said, now speaking to both of them, “I could persuade him to join us. They will hunt him, attempt to put him into confinement, or simply kill him for being too dangerous—”

  “He’s not just a danger to them—” Cassidy started.

  “That seems like a good idea you’ve got there, Anselmo,” Ma said, talking right over her. Ma’s broad face was staring right at Anselmo, deep in thought. “Could always use a few more hands around here, after all.”

  “Exactly,” Anselmo said, pointing a finger at her and smiling, his burned and cracked lips peeling back to expose perfect teeth and blackened gums. Cassidy suppressed a shudder. “I realize that part of our revenge is already well in motion, but … we are not all done yet, no? Reed Treston still requires dealing with. He will be in the thick of this … manhunt.” Anselmo’s face went darker. His facial expressions had been blunted by the burns. He was scowling, that much was obvious, but anything more subtle was beyond him.

  “Well, you ought to get out there and start tracking this fire-man down, then,” Ma said, nodding her head slowly.

  Anselmo raised what was once his eyebrow up slightly. “Me?”

  “With Denise, Eric and Junior off on their own tasks right now,” Ma said, “that just leaves you, me and Cassidy.” She nodded at Cassidy, caught her eye, and Cassidy saw something there that prompted her to keep quiet about her feelings on this. “We can’t send her; she can’t leave her tank.”

  “Ah, yes,” Anselmo said, nodding sagely, “she possesses a great weakness. Perhaps the time has come for the bird to leave the nest—”

  “Anselmo,” Ma said, chiding, “you wouldn’t send a sickly girl to do a man’s job, would you?” Cassidy blinked. Anselmo was a prideful sort of prick, but surely he wasn’t that—

  “Of course not,” Anselmo said, shaking his head furiously. “And this is a man’s job. This burning fellow must be talked to, man-to-man, so an understanding can be reached.” Cassidy kept her lips zipped, even though practically every word that fell out of Anselmo’s mouth offended her in some way. “I will leave immediately.”

  “You can take the car out in the shed,” Ma said, nodding toward the back of the house. “It ain’t got air conditioning, but you won’t need that this time of year.” She turned her head to Cassidy. “You mind getting him some directions to Minnesota?”

  Cassidy stared at her for a quarter second, which was practically an eternity for her, pondering all the while. “Sure—”

  “I do not require directions,” Anselmo said, like some beautiful example pulled right out of a book of common stereotypes. “I can find my way.”

  Ma was a hell of a tough read some times, but there was no mistaking the amusement buried under a layer of apparent sincerity. “Of course you can. Spare keys are on the ring by the door. Burner cell phone on the counter, so you can keep in touch.” She nodded toward the front of the house. “You need anything else? Cash for the road?”

  “I have money,” Anselmo said, and he started to back up toward the kitchen. Cassidy felt like she was watching the retreat of a wounded animal and couldn’t take her eyes off of him. “I will go and find this man, this Benjamin Cunningham, and bring him into our fold. But first, I will take my revenge on Reed Treston.” Anselmo took a breath, loud, satisfying, and smiled his hideous smile. “If there are no objections?”

  “We have a plan—” Cassidy started.

  “Oh, you go right ahead, darlin’,” Ma said. She had a dish towel in her hand that was still damp. Cassidy could sense the wetness of it from across the room, could smell the scent of mildew within it, overwhelming her delicate senses. “He wronged you more than the rest of us, anyway. We’ll get our revenge on the girl here in the next few days, you go ahead and take care of the brother, and then maybe we’ll meet up in the middle on taking care of that gall-damned agency of theirs.”

  “Yes,” Anselmo said, “there are good days ahead.” He nodded, like what he was saying made any kind of sense at all. “I will be back before you know it,” he said, “a victorious man,” and then disappeared through into the kitchen. Cassidy heard him take the cell phone from the counter and the keys from the ring near the front door, and then listened to the screen door slam shut as he left. She sat in silence with Ma Clary, both listening until they heard a car start out back, roughly, on the third try. It ran for a couple minutes and then drove off, receding into the distance. Cassidy waited a minute more before she felt comfortable speaking.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Cassidy asked, focusing wholly on Ma Clary. “You just sent that idiot—that maniac—out there on a mission to recover the exploding man?” She shut her eyes tight, shaking her head. “How does that—in any way—get us closer to our goals?”

  “I don’t really care whether this Reed Treston lives or dies,” Ma said casually, sauntering over to her. “We’ve got the missile locked on target with Sienna, and that’s all that matters to me; that she dies suffering and screaming.”

  Cassidy flushed. “But what about what I want? Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to derive some serious satisfaction out of Sienna Nealon’s painful death, especially after what she did to Eric—” Sometimes Cassidy watched the YouTube video of that bitch manhandling her man, “—but there are other things in mind here. All we need is meathead wandering around out there, screwing things up for the rest of us—”

  Ma Clary took the last few slow, measured steps over to Cassidy’s tank and dabbed at it with her damp towel. Cassidy blanched at the smell as she ran it along the wet, spotted edge of the tank opening. “Darlin’, let me tell you something about Anselmo Serafini that you already know … he’s a dog.” She pursed her lips and dabbed at the tank again.

  Cassidy waited for more, but Ma seemed to lose herself in mopping up the water on the edge of the tank. “… And?”

  Ma took a long, lazy breath and let it out without a care in the world. “When my boy Clyde first had his babies, I had a dog. Old thing, contentious little bastard. Just a mutt with a bad attitude. But I liked him all right, see, so I kept him around. He’d drive off the damned stray cats, and that was useful, so he earned his keep.

  “But one day,” Ma said brightly, looking at Cassidy again, “that old dog took a snap at little Denise. She couldn’t have been more than four at the time, and the dog just …” She clapped her hands together, dragging the rag along and spattering Cassidy with some of the moldy, stinky water. “Just took a snap at her. Didn’t even get a tooth on her, but that was enough, you see?

  “I dragged that dog out back,” Ma said, eyes far off, like she was remembering it all right now. Her lip curled at the side. “Right out to the wood pile. I grabbed that axe up from where Clyde had been splitting wood, and I—”
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  She clapped her hands together again, and this time water from the rag hit Cassidy right in the face. It was foul, the stench of it, and she fought the urge to gag. “Wha … why?”

  “Because don’t nobody mess with my family,” Ma said, her brown eyes alive, mouth flat as if she’d just told a story about a loaf of bread she’d once baked. “Anselmo? He’s a dog. Nothing but. Sooner or later, like any dog that’s got it in his mind to do something, he’s gonna snap at someone he shouldn’t. I’ve already seen him eyeing you and Denise, and I don’t care for it.” Ma shrugged expansively. “If he drags back this fire-man, well, good for him. It’ll get him out of the house for a spell, maybe allow him to express some of that tension he keeps throwing our way.”

  Ma put a hand on Cassidy’s shoulder, strong, knotted, leathery fingers squeezing her bare skin. It was sensory overload, too much sensation by half. “And if he get hisself killed? Well …” She clapped her hands together again, but this time the rag had already lost most of its liquid. “I ain’t going to shed any tears about it. Are you?” And Ma Clary smiled, a deeply unsettling look that showed off her teeth, which looked to Cassidy a hell of a lot sharper and more predatory than any dog she could imagine.

  4.

  Sienna

  I cut my hand on a piece of exposed metal on the ferry’s railing, and it hurt. I didn’t even see it coming, just a rough section of the rail that I was running my hand along idly as I made my way back to my rental car. It did a number on my palm, too, opening a six-inch gash that started bleeding immediately, made all the worse by my failure to pull my hand away in time. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

  As far as pain went, it was minor, but I started dripping right away. Bright scarlet drops came running down my forearm in a stream, falling off my elbow in crimson raindrops. “Son of a …” I muttered.

  “Whoa,” Jake Terrance’s voice came from behind me. I looked back to see him there, eyebrows elevated, staring at my injury. “You gonna heal that?”