Tormented

by Robert J. Crane

  “She brings it on herself,” I said, putting aside that little revelation that J.J. had brought to my attention earlier regarding the origin of the press heat coming her way. I’d read some of the worst stuff about her, and I couldn’t disagree with the assertions they made about how quick she was on the trigger.

  “Look,” Scott said, like he was giving up the fight, “I don’t know your sister like you do—”

  Nor half as well as you used to, I wanted to tell him.

  “—but it seems to me, as an observer from way back, that you’ve gotten the front row seat to the next level of her personality getting hardened,” he said. “Because I saw her after the whole Zack thing, when she was going after M-Squad with a holy hell vengeance, and it was … intense. I don’t see that here, that desire to do cold-blooded murder and unleash havoc.”

  “Which is what worries me,” I said. “And is entirely the point. She agonized over Wolfe when she killed him. Wolfe. A serial killer. And when she had to kill Gavrikov to keep him from turning Minneapolis into a smoking crater like he did to Glencoe, she lost sleep over that, too. She wouldn’t kill after that, remember? She wouldn’t. Flatly refused when Old Man Winter kept pushing her and pushing her, until finally, the old bastard did—well, what he did. And after that, the kid gloves were off. It was a carnival of bloodletting. Which, in time of war, I turned a blind eye to. But now the war’s over, and she’s still killing like it’s on.”

  “War isn’t quite like it used to be,” Scott said. “I mean, I was reading a thing a while back talking about how war is not a thing of nations anymore, it’s a thing that one person can bring to the table. Think about it; this Cunningham? He’s got more power than any pre-World War One army at his disposal if he’s anything like Gavrikov. He could stand in the middle of a battlefield and kill thousands of people—or millions, if he decided to unleash in a city.”

  “So, we’re always at war?” I asked. It was not an answer that satisfied me.

  “You don’t just kill at war,” Scott said. “I mean, I killed a Century meta in Vegas because he was trying to kill me. By your logic, maybe I should have just hit him with ever escalating force until he stopped, maybe starting with a flick on the arm, I dunno—”

  I thumped my head against the back of my headrest. “Why does no one get where I’m coming from on this?”

  “Because I think you’re torturing the hell out of your logic to get here,” Scott said, rapping his knuckles against the window. “And if you’re that worried about Sienna’s soul, or human decency, or whatever, why haven’t you talked to her about it instead of … whatever you’re doing?”

  “I tried,” I said. “I tried on the night of the attack in January.”

  “And?”

  “She made excuses,” I said. “Blew off my concerns like they were nothing to her. Said she was … I dunno, that she did what she had to do.”

  “And you don’t think she had to kill those people, on that night?”

  “I don’t think she needed to kill all of them, no—”

  “Dude,” Scott said. “I have to ask you—are you under the impression we live in a world without violence or something? Because we don’t. There are mean people out there. You’ve met some of them. Feels like your friend Anselmo is one of them.”

  “And he deserves to be tried,” I said, exasperated, “and locked up for a very long time, maybe the rest of his life—”

  “You think he’s going to go for that?” Scott asked. He blinked. “Man. I can’t believe I’m the one making this argument. What the hell happened to me?”

  “I honestly can’t fully explain it,” I said truthfully, “but it sounds like you pretty much crawled into my sister’s head and live there.”

  “Because your sister knows bad people,” Scott said, “and she damned well should. Wolfe and Bjorn are among the worst on the planet, and they’re in her head.”

  “And I think they’re making their influence felt,” I said, as the cold snap of revelation hit me in the back of the head like a rubber band. I paused and let it sink in. “She didn’t used to be like this.”

  “She made some hard—some terrible choices,” Scott said quietly. “But she also saved the world. I don’t work with her every day, but I don’t think the news gets it right at all. And I doubt she’s just going out and killing indiscriminately.”

  “Not—I didn’t mean—ugh …” I let my head sink. “I’m not saying she’s a psycho killer that’s about to start cooking her enemies and serving them like—”

  “Wolfe?”

  “Hannibal,” I said. “Wolfe ate his prey raw, by all accounts.”

  “Ew.”

  “I’m saying that she’s lost sight of what’s okay in a fight,” I said. “That she’s too quick on the trigger. That she’d just as soon put down a Benjamin Cunningham as try to save him. And that’s not right.”

  “Huh,” Scott said, pulling his lips together. “I guess you and I learned a different lesson when fighting for your life. Because I always figured if someone was trying to kill me—and I think that’s what Sienna is dealing with most of the time—it’s perfectly acceptable to kill them right back. No pulled punches. No—aim for the leg or whatever, which is a stupid idea that can kill them anyway. Just … getting the job done.”

  “But is it right?” I asked, letting the doubt show through as I asked. “She’s the most powerful person in the world, deigning to stoop low among us fleas. She could stomp us all flat, like Sovereign wanted to. You’re telling me she doesn’t have the obligation to be different, to do things different?”

  “She’s not invincible, Reed,” Scott said, looking at me with … pity? “One good shot, she’s as dead as any of the rest of us. I think that’s something that people forget. Humans are frail creatures, and it doesn’t take all that much to kill any of us, meta or otherwise. I knew a guy … he got an argument with a teenager over something stupid, and the guy just slugged him in the back of the head when his back was turned. Caused a brain hemorrhage that killed him.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. And that could have been Sienna, honestly. Just the right timing, the right punch, the right place, and his life was over.” He looked over at me, and I tried not to look back, tried to concentrate on the road, on the freeway in front of me. It was clear, but I still needed to concentrate. “Reed, people are trying to kill her, and she could die any time. What would you have her do?”

  I stared straight ahead, but I felt that burning in my throat again. “I don’t know,” I finally said. It wasn’t something Augustus could have ever even forced me to admit, but Scott had ripped it out of me, damn him. I took a deep breath and sighed it all out. “I honestly have no idea.”

  39.

  Benjamin

  They entered the building through the back entry, without regard for whether anyone saw them. Benjamin found it thrilling and frightening all in one, his heart pounding in his chest and blood rushing through his veins in a way he couldn’t recall feeling before he’d come back to Minneapolis changed. He realized that before he’d met Anselmo, before the airport, before the monster, his whole life had been some bloodless exercise in survival, and that only now—now that he was being guided by someone as powerful as Anselmo—was he finally living, taking the deep breaths of life.

  Also, he had to pee and wondered when he’d get the chance to go.

  “This is the way,” Anselmo said under his breath, steering Benjamin down a stark hallway, bereft of color. “This is the way that Cassidy suggested.”

  They paused before the obvious double doors, glass with the cross insignia upon them. They whooshed open as Anselmo stepped in range of them, and Benjamin followed, his shadow, trying to learn everything that Anselmo had to teach him, even down to trying to walk taller and prouder, like his mentor did. It was not effortless; that much was certain. He sucked in a breath and followed into the medical unit to see two people talking in the middle of the room to his left. One was the African-American meta co
p that he’d seen Anselmo hit earlier, at his work.

  The other was a woman. Tall, voluptuous, with a white lab coat and dark hair that was mussed in all the right ways. Benjamin found himself licking his lips nervously merely at the sight of her. He watched the two of them for only a stark moment and he already felt like he was invading someone’s privacy, like he ought to be elsewhere, not watching this, watching her, unasked.

  Before he could fold back into himself, Anselmo spoke, captivating his attention once more. “Doctor,” he said, bold and loud, “I find I have gone without worthwhile female company for entirely too long. Perhaps you might find it in your tender mercy to aid my plight?”

  There was no mistaking the woman’s response. Her face went from somewhat neutral to surprise to sheerest loathing in the space of seconds. The tautness of her jawline, the puckering of her lips in disgust, the jerk of her head in revulsion at the sight of Anselmo—they would have been obvious to anyone. Once more, Benjamin felt the shame he had cradled to his bosom in secret blossoming out, threatening to steal all his courage and make him run from the room in tears.

  “Anselmo,” the doctor said, clearly clamping down on all those emotions she’d let play across her face moments before. “It is such a strange thing to see you here, so far from Firenze or Roma. You seem … different, since last we met. Perhaps a touch out of place.”

  “I belong everywhere I go,” Anselmo said, striding deeper into the room as though he owned it.

  “Especially that jail cell you were in for a couple years,” the black man said from his place on the gurney. “That was a real good fit for you.”

  Anselmo chuckled softly, but his laugh sounded rough and raspy, much like every noise he made. “I find it appalling that Mr. Treston did not find time to make the introductions between us. You are Augustus, yes?”

  “He knows my name,” Augustus said, “I think I’m flattered. Especially since you decided to break my back without even saying hello this morning.”

  “My quarrel is not with you,” Anselmo said, waving a hand at the man on the bed. “It is with Treston. We have a long history, he and I, one that needs to come to an end. Soon.”

  “He is not here, Anselmo,” the doctor said.

  “Oh, I know this,” Anselmo said. “He has gone to visit the childhood home of my new friend here.” He waved broadly to encompass Benjamin, who suddenly founding himself wishing he could simply melt away. “Have you met Benjamin Cunningham?”

  “Only a couple seconds before your fist made my acquaintance,” Augustus said. He was lying still on the bed, as though he couldn’t move, covered to his armpits by a sheet, and with a cervical collar on his neck. Good grief, was he actually paralyzed? Benjamin saw his fingers twitch, answering that question: apparently not.

  “Regrettable,” Anselmo said, “but necessary. I needed to have a conversation—and a confrontation—with Treston. Those who get between us will inevitably be harmed.”

  “Am I between the two of you?” the doctor asked coldly.

  “My dear,” Anselmo said, and his blackened lips parted to show his teeth, “you and I should be alone, always, with no other man anywhere near us whilst we—”

  The doors behind Benjamin whooshed open and before he could turn to see what they brought, a shadow flew over his head and dropped squarely on Anselmo, like a pillar of darkness ripped straight from a storm cloud. It took a moment for Benjamin to realize by the flashes of green here and there that it was dirt, pure and black, ripped from the earth with its roots and in sufficient volume to fill a dump truck.

  The dirt moved as though it had a life of its own, descending on Anselmo in a great flow. Benjamin watched, shocked, seeing the darkness turned brown and black by the overhead lighting as it swallowed Anselmo whole. It moved like a worm, undulating, a six-foot tall worm that stood on its ends and—

  A hand punched out the side of the dirt as Benjamin cried out in shock and took a step back. Another hand came out the other side with a hard punch that sent specks of detritus and wet earth across the clean, blue floor of the medical unit. It took Anselmo almost a full minute of warring with the black soil before he finally broke free with a flexing of his muscles in pure strength, shattering the last of it across the floor as though it were shards of glass.

  He stood there, adjusting himself, brushing his suit off, dusting the remainder from the folds of his scarred skin, and then, finally, he looked up to Benjamin and tossed him something approaching a wink.

  Cool. Calm. Uncaring.

  What a man.

  “Now,” Anselmo said, “where were we?”

  40.

  Sienna

  Colin Hay’s “Waiting For My Real Life To Begin” was playing softly in the background when I awoke to bars in front of my face, and the smug, handsome face of Zebulon Darwin was right there in front of me, squatting so he could look me in the eye as I stirred back to wakefulness.

  “Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he said.

  “I’ll say this for you sucker-punching islander hillbillies,” I said, pushing up to all fours. Apparently he’d deposited me unceremoniously on my face in the cell, “at least you’ve got good taste in music. I’ve got this one on my own playlist.” I got up and stretched, listening to my back pop softly as I realigned my spine. “Also, even though you just called me a beauty, you’re still an ass.”

  “And you are awfully big for your britches,” he said, rising to his feet and towering over me, the sturdy metal bars between us. The sound of the wind came howling from somewhere outside the stone walls of the jail. I was in a room that was all cells, about six of them, with the only visible exit behind Mr. Z, who was clearly the sheriff from Wayward Pines. The book, not the show. I haven’t seen the show.

  “Is that a remark on the shape of my ass?” I asked, ready to rip the bars off the cage I was in so I could stuff them up his nose. “Because you don’t have to be a hater just because you’re not all about that bass—”

  “Just stop,” he said, looking suddenly disgusted. “How did I know you were going to be one of those people that just goes on and on, energized by the sound of her own voice and infinitely amused by her own self-indulgent quips?”

  “Because you’ve seen me on TV …?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’m charging you with disturbing the peace—”

  “Yeah, well I’d charge you with being a total prick—”

  “—and assaulting an officer of the law—”

  “—which I also am, and you punched me first, knuckle-dragger—”

  “WILL YOU JUST QUIT IT?!” He waved his arms in the air like he’d lost his shit, teeth bared and gritted.

  “Probably not,” I muttered under my breath. “I never did know when to quit.”

  “You’re in jail, idiot,” he said, “quit now. It’s a dignified time to do so. It’s actually past it, but you’re only damaging your case by continuing to be so damned insolent.”

  “Is insolence a crime now?” I asked. “Is that something I’m going to get charged with, too?”

  “I’m not going to sit here and listen to this,” he said, turning away from me and heading for the door.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “I get funnier with time. Or maybe people just lose the will to fight my particular brand of humor and give up all hope of—” He slammed the door behind him. “Finally. Thought he’d never leave.”

  I put my hands on the bars and started to pull. As far as idiots went, I had the lawman pegged for a big one. He’d stuck a meta in what was pretty clearly a human jail, which—since I presumed he was a meta himself—was something he damned well should have known better than to do.

  Then I tugged on the bars for five minutes without any success and started to wonder if maybe the idiot in our relationship was the person standing inside my cell, breathing hard from the exertion of trying to bend bars that had zero give.

  “Sonofa,” I muttered. “FML.”

  “Doesn’t that mean—” A voice came fr
om behind me, causing me to jump into the air a good foot or three.

  “Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” I shouted, shaking my hands in front of me out of sheer surprise. I came down and whirled so fast I slammed my back into the bars. There was nothing but shadows behind me, and I blinked, wondering what the hell was going on. Was this the voice? The ghost? Had they been warning me all along to “Get out!” because, in fact, this place was an evil trap put together by my enemies—

  Before I could follow that thought to its crazy paranoid conclusion, my eyes locked on the windowsill about seven feet up the wall to my left. It was open a little, and the voice was coming from there. I stepped closer, tentative, and spoke toward it. “Who is that?”

  A hand snaked into the cell, but all I could see was a watch on the wrist. It looked familiar. “Jake,” I said.

  “None other,” he said from outside. “I, uh … heard you had a rough time tonight?”

  “Did you?” I asked snottily. “Did your wife tell you that she knocked me out with a cheap shot?”

  “She did mention that,” Jake said, and he almost sounded sorry. “Said you looked like you were about to kill Z.”

  “I wasn’t going to kill him,” I said, sullen. “I wasn’t even going to beat him stupid. Because he already is stupid.”

  “You got into a bar fight,” Jake said, surprisingly free of judgment.

  “Something weird is going on in this town,” I said. “And Z? He’s no ordinary guy.” I cracked my jaw and massaged the side of it. “Also, your wife? Hits like … harder than most of the villains I’ve tangled with. Yeeouch.”

  “There’s a reason I don’t cross her,” Jake said, withdrawing his hand. I could still hear the howling of the wind outside the window, and the draft coming from that inch or two of opening was wicked cold.

  “Are you standing out in a mini-blizzard?” I asked, easing closer to the window.

  “It’s a little snowy still, yeah,” Jake said. “Hasn’t really let up. The good news is that I was able to pack some of the snow together to stand on. It’s really accumulating out here.”