Tormented

by Robert J. Crane

  “You’re allowed to do that,” I said a little dryly, “we’re the government.”

  “Well,” J.J. said and tapped on his keyboard to bring up something in his browser. “I’ll spare you reading all these emails in the ‘Sent’ box, because I’ve already parsed them and basically they’re variations on a theme—this so-called ‘Brain’, as we’ve gotten to know her, has been feeding every major news network and gossip rag in the U.S. stories about Sienna that are … well, they’re pretty much calculated to make her look like crap.”

  “She doesn’t need help,” I said. I started to fumble for my phone. “Which reminds me, I need you to find Sienna for me.”

  “That’s easy,” J.J. said. “But seriously?” He clicked on one of those emails on his screen. “This is a smear campaign. Some of this stuff is taken out of context just to make her look bad, some of it’s demonstrably false, and the rest is just … well …”

  “True?” I asked, letting out a sigh. I felt suddenly like J.J. had drained the energy out of me.

  “You could be a little more supportive of your sister,” Augustus said.

  “Some of it’s true,” J.J. said, “but it’s slanted like an old church roof.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and stood up, rubbing at my eyes. “Okay. Can you give me a location on Sienna’s cell phone?”

  “Hmm,” J.J. said and messed around with his computer for a minute, opening up a program. “Looks like it’s offline at the moment.”

  “Figures,” I said, sighing. “She’s gone off the grid.”

  “Well, wouldn’t you?” J.J. asked, spinning his chair around to face me. “After what happened?”

  “No,” I snapped. “I wouldn’t.” I ignored the gnawing sense of doubt I felt in the pit of my stomach. She was fine. She’d just turned her cell phone off because she didn’t want to even deal with the remote possibility that Andrew Phillips might call her back to work for an emergency. Not that he would. The suspension was pretty damned set in stone.

  “I would,” J.J. said. “I wouldn’t answer anyone’s phone calls, not even yours, bro.”

  “Hell no,” Augustus agreed, “I’d thunder my ass out of here like a herd of buffalo.”

  I shot him a look that said he was not helping.

  “All right, well,” I said. “Would you mind tracking her down by her hotel reservations and giving her a call?”

  J.J. shrugged, spun back, and fiddled for a minute. “She’s staying at a cabin place on Bayscape Island. I’ve got the phone number here, but it says the office is closed outside of certain hours.”

  “Did you pull that out of her email?” Augustus asked, looking alarmed. “I am not using the company email to make my plans, that is for sure.”

  J.J. clicked his mouse, and the sound of a phone ringing filled the cubicle. It rang four times before a female voice answered with a recorded message. “You have reached Bayscape Cabin Rentals. Our office is currently closed …”

  “No love there,” J.J. said, and clicked to an alternate screen. He shrugged. “I got nothing. How urgent is this? You want me to leave a message?”

  “Yeah, tell them to tell her to call us,” I said, and started away. “Maybe inform local law enforcement she might be in danger, too? Tell them we’ve had a credible threat against her. Nothing too urgent, just … let her know to be on the lookout because Anselmo Serafini threatened her.”

  “You think the man’s bitter because she ruined his rugged good looks?” J.J. asked. His eyes flitted about as he considered that. “Of course he is. Never mind. Rescinding the question.”

  “Just make sure you get the message sent,” I said, and started to leave J.J.’s cubicle behind. I checked my phone as I walked to the elevators, listening to the ding as I pressed the button to find the one I’d ridden up was still here, waiting for me.

  “Where are you going?” Augustus asked. He was walking a little slower, his fatigue showing. I understood that; it had been kind of a long day.

  “There’s a place in Eden Prairie I go to sometimes,” I said. “It’ll put us closer to the cities in case something breaks with either Cunningham or Serafini, and the bartender there is a friend of mine.”

  “Nice,” Augustus said. “Fifty people die at the airport this afternoon, your personal nemesis comes to town vowing revenge, your sister is one of his targets and she ain’t answering her phone, but you want to go to the bar.” His hand came up and he smacked himself in the forehead. He was probably going for a theatrical thing, but my guess was he’d forgotten he had meta strength, because he looked like he’d over done it by the way he blinked his eyes. “Well … I was going to say your actions didn’t seem all that bright, but since I just humiliated myself that way, I guess I’ll reserve judgment.”

  I chuckled. “You’ll get used to the powers. Come on,” I put a hand on his shoulder and steered him into the elevator, “there’s nothing else we need to be doing at the moment. Let’s blow off a little steam while we wait for something to happen.”

  19.

  I strolled into my favorite bar like I owned the place, Augustus following a little more cautiously behind. He looked like a good stiff drink would put him out, so I vowed to make sure he took it easy tonight, because who knew if Benjamin Cunningham was going to make an ass of himself in the middle of the night? I might end up needing Augustus’s help, and him being tanked wasn’t going to be of much help, that was for sure.

  I bellied up to the bar, dodging around the wooden tables and ignoring the bright pink and blue neon that gave the place one of the strangest color palettes I’d ever seen in a bar. It wasn’t exactly a working man’s joint, that was for sure. Being in Eden Prairie, it tended to cater mostly to the yuppie crowd, young singles and marrieds that were looking for a little action in their evening but didn’t want to brave the drive to join the downtown scene in Minneapolis.

  I understood that desire. Downtown was a zoo. This was more like a petting zoo. But, uh, with a lot less petting. Then again, I thought as I looked at a young couple lip-locked a few tables away from the bar, maybe not.

  “Charles, my good man,” I said as I plopped down on a stool directly in front of the big, shiny, oaken bar, “a round for me and my friend.”

  The bartender, Charles, had a dark beard and dark, long hair wrapped in a ponytail behind his head. He was wearing all black, as was appropriate for a bartender in this place, and he nodded to me with a friendly smile. “Coming right up. What do you want, Reed’s friend?” he asked Augustus.

  Augustus got up on his stool a little more cautiously. “Diet Coke,” he said, and then looked at me. “Reed’s friend isn’t twenty-one yet.”

  Charles grimaced. “Got it. No liquor for this man.” He looked to me. “Whiskey and Coke for you, and a Coke and Diet for your friend, coming up.”

  “Gracias, Charles,” I said and spun my stool in a slow roll so I could see the rest of the bar real fast. Place was mostly empty, as it tended to be in the evenings on weeknights. Weekends it got a little nuts, but during the week I had a feeling they broke even at best on their burgers and beers. “So … what you think?” I asked Augustus.

  “I think it’s been a long day,” Augustus said, not spinning to join me. I leaned against the bar while he sat hunched over it like an old-timer protecting his booze. Which he did not have any of. “And I think this is a peculiar way to end it, given we’ve got two threats rolling around that we haven’t tracked down and we still haven’t been able to get ahold of your sister.”

  “Sienna’s going to be fine,” I said, more sure of it by the minute. “We’re talking about a woman who killed like fifty armed mercenaries and several metas when she had no powers at all. I know for a fact she has her gun with her, and she’s got all her powers, so I seriously doubt that Anselmo has done anything to her. If he had, he would have been a lot more vocal and obvious about it.” I felt my expression turn more serious. “That’s not the sort of gloat that Anselmo would pass up on.”

  “
I guess you’d know your arch-nemesis best,” Augustus said as Charles came by with his Diet Coke and set it in front of him.

  “Anselmo’s not my …” I paused. “Huh. I guess maybe he is my arch nemesis.”

  “Good to know someone’s still got an arch nemesis around here,” Augustus said, a little glumly.

  “Yours got killed, right?” I asked as Charles put a cool tumbler of Jack and Coke in my waiting hand. I didn’t even turn back to the bar to look, just felt it slide right into the open hand I had waiting for it. It looked cool, like it was something that happened all the time. Which it did. Charles and I had a rhythm, we were simpatico.

  “Edward Cavanagh?” Augustus asked. “Died in jail. Coroner ruled it a stroke.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  Augustus took a sip from his drink out of a straw. “Man was healthy as a horse, worked out, just got his meta powers. You’re telling me he strokes out at the age of forty-five on the day he goes down for a crime? And just leaves ten thousand questions unanswered?” He shook his head. “Smells wrong.”

  “Hm,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “Still. You had your nemesis, and you didn’t kill him. Points to you for that.” I took a swig. “Unlike others ’round here.”

  “You keep talking that passive-aggressive crap,” Augustus said, suddenly heated. “Why don’t you just give voice to your sister issues instead of just making snippy little comments all the time?”

  “Okay, fine,” I said, setting my drink on the bar. The place smelled of booze, and the scent of the musky drink combined with the sweet Coke was a wonderful tonic that oozed into my nasal passages but didn’t quite erase the smell of burned flesh that still hung on me from the airport earlier. “At least you didn’t kill your villain, unlike my sister, who has killed more people than George R.R. Martin and Joss Whedon combined.”

  “You’re still aching over the death of Wash, huh?” Augustus deadpanned, taking a drink from the straw.

  “Always,” I said, letting the bitterness fly. “And I’m still bitter over the fact that I’ve been supporting someone over the last few years that I thought was just trying to do the right thing. She wasn’t. She was … enjoying herself the whole time, I think. On some level, she gets off on killing people. It satisfies her soul, if you can call what she has one.” I shook my head. “And that’s not even the worst of what she’s done. Do you know what she did to her last boyfriend?”

  Augustus sat his drink on the bar coolly and then turned his barstool around to physically face me, leaning one elbow on the white oak bar top, his whole manner reflecting his utter lack of energy. “How do you envision this playing out?”

  “This what?” I asked, suddenly confused. “This manhunt?”

  “This conversation,” he said. “You brought me here to your little hidey hole, and before that we went out to your restaurant. Did you play it out in your head beforehand? Like we’d just sit here like bros, talking about women and life and eventually get on the topic of your sister, our boss, and you’d just … what?”

  My face burned. “You asked, okay? You’ve been asking all day, in one form or another. Well, here we are, and now I’m spilling. You wanted to know my problems with Sienna? Here they are, simple as can be. Heart of the matter. Now you don’t want to hear? Methinks you doth protest too much.”

  “Fancy way of saying I’m calling it out that I don’t want to hear it while I lean in to catch a little more, right?” His face was set in stiff lines like a statue. “Let me help you with this: My name is not Elroy Patashnik, and my hobby is not encouraging white people. That’d be a full-time job around here, and I’ve got one of those already, plus school. You’ve got family drama problems that I don’t want any part of, something bordering on the level of Hamlet.” He gave me a knowing look. “So let’s roll with this and stick with the example you’ve pulled out in your attempt to throw Shakespeare at my unknowing and youthful ass. ‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’ You remember that line?”

  “Vaguely,” I said, face still burning but now for maybe different reasons related to me feeling like I’d gotten called on being a smug, superior-ish ass.

  “Hamlet tries to draw out his uncle’s guilt,” Augustus said, “by staging a play that mirrors the death of his father. Problem is, if your sister’s like you say she is, she’s got no conscience. Somewhere in your mind, you’ve equated her with a monster. She doesn’t think, she doesn’t feel like a normal person, she just killsssssss …” He made it sound overly evil and dramatic. “Doesn’t feel bad about it, doesn’t worry that it makes her a more callous or hard person, doesn’t worry about it at all, just … murders away. That about cover your thesis?”

  I let my mouth gape open while I tried to produce an answer. It took a few seconds. “Basically, yes.”

  “Okay, so,” Augustus said, leaning toward me now, “here’s how I see it. Girl saved the world. We all agree on that, right? In spite of what they say on TV, and although you could maybe argue she killed some folks that could have been dealt with slower and less ‘expeditiously,’ she saved the world, right?”

  “Right,” I said, tense. I got a hint of where this was going and I didn’t love it. “I’ll grant her that.”

  “So she saves the world,” Augustus said, “then she gets dragged through the mud by the media, has that shit interview with Gail Roth, and people start leaving.”

  “Are you approaching a point or just listing out the chronology of her life?” I asked. “Because I was there for all this. I know what happened.”

  “I don’t think you do,” he said. “Because everyone left, didn’t they? Except you and Ariadne? Everyone close to her? They either left or died?”

  I thought about it. Zack, Breandan and her mother died. Kat, Dr. Zollers, and even Scott left—though there was more to that story, something horrifying that I was almost eager to share. “Yeah, okay. Almost everybody left. Sienna took it all right.”

  “Oh, no,” Augustus said, “you think she did. And maybe she did for a while. But see, then, after all that, the one person she thought was always in her corner—well, he turned on her.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” I said, rolling my eyes. I grabbed my glass off the bar and took a deep drink, downing the rest of it. “My sister’s a rock, okay? She shows no signs of cracking. This violence she unleashes? That’s who she is, at the core. She’s a machine.”

  “It’s like you don’t know her at all,” Augustus said. “Look, I’m not saying she hasn’t killed people—”

  “Good, because you’d lose that argument in about two seconds flat—”

  “—I’m just saying she feels,” Augustus said. “She feels it like a human being. She doesn’t enjoy it like you think she would, like a psychopath would. She’s taken this rift with you hard, harder than she lets on. She’s taking this shit with Kat and with the press hard, too. She may not be the most social creature, but—”

  “She was raised a hermit,” I said, shaking my head. “This isolation is her preferred state of being.”

  “She didn’t have a choice how she was raised,” he said. “You think she would have chosen that? To be cut off from everybody?”

  “Maybe not,” I said with a shrug, “but she’s choosing it now. She’s comfortable with it.”

  “Girl’s got the voice of multiple psychopaths and her first love stuck in her brain,” he said, turning back to the bar. “She’s never alone. And she’s not with good company when she is by herself, you see what I’m saying?” He paused, thinking. “I try not to dwell on this too much, but I thought about something a few weeks ago, when I was home for Taneshia’s birthday. When did you and Sienna fall out?”

  “January,” I said, spinning back around to the bar and huddling over.

  “When’s her birthday?”

  “March,” I said, picking up the glass. The perspiration from the melting ice cubes fell over my fingers. “Why?”

  “What’d she do f
or her birthday?” he asked.

  “How the hell should I know?” I asked and then felt like some strongman had brought down a sledgehammer in one of those contests of strength. He landed it right on the inside of my belly, and my ill feelings shot straight up my esophagus so hard I had to swallow immediately before they overwhelmed me and choked me up on the spot. When I spoke again, I couldn’t quite eliminate the huskiness from my voice. “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I don’t know either, but I’m guessing it was … quiet.”

  Those feelings that threatened to overwhelm me, this sick sense of guilt, spread over me. “You’re not arguing against her being a monster.”

  “She’s twenty-three years old, man,” Augustus said quietly. “She’s got a weight like Atlas on her shoulders. She got confined and abused by her mother, she’s been pummeled for years by strangers, had to kill people even when she didn’t want to, been abandoned by friends, had everyone else she cared about ripped away one by one, and had her last living family member turn his back on her.” He blew air out the side of his mouth as he shook his head. “You try making it out of that without letting the darkness touch you all over the place.”

  “Hey, guys,” Charles said, stopping back by. “Get you some refills?”

  “Not right now,” I said, looking at my nearly-empty glass.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Charles asked, peppy, and leaned in. “Your sister being a bitch again?”

  I caught the look from Augustus and felt guiltier than ever. Shit. “Not right now, man,” I said to Charles. “Can you just give us a few minutes?”

  “Sure thing,” he said, like it was no big deal. “I’ll check back on you in a few minutes.” He turned and went off down the bar to his next customers.

  “Dude,” Augustus said, more disappointed than angry, “you talk smack about your sister to a bartender? That’s low.”

  I felt my cheeks burn scarlet again. “I vented to him, okay? He’s my bartender.”