Badder (Out of the Box Book 16)

by Robert J. Crane

  I lay on the roof of that train, flat as I could, for nine of the longest minutes of my life.

  Little breaks of conversation reached me, stuff about how there’d been a fight on the other platform, probably a gang or something, but they’d cleared out as soon as they heard the boys and girls in blue coming. Boys and girls in yellow vests, I reckoned, given what I’d seen of Police Scotland. It was a fun little bit of gossip, but fortunately I didn’t hear the name “Sienna Nealon” mentioned, so that was a plus.

  The station announcement started to warn me that the train for York was departing. I leaned over; the platform next to me had more or less cleared, so I rolled off and landed lightly on the concrete, looking around as surreptitiously as one can look when you’re trying to figure out if a mob of angry, mind-controlled people is lurking somewhere, waiting to tear you apart.

  I made my way slowly toward the train to York, trying to act casual and probably failing because I was all bloody and my sleeve was dangling on my right side where Mr. Blonde had torn it to pieces with his metal powers. Lucky for me he was pretty weak, comparatively, or he might have just hurled a few trains onto me and called it a day.

  The York-bound train started to pull out of the station just as I was moseying up. There was no sign of security personnel, and no one was waiting here now, so I started to slowly walk the length of the platform as the train started to chug out. I looked away from the windows, where the passengers were sitting, some of them staring out but most of them looking at books or their phones.

  I waited again until the last car, and then, with a look back to make sure no one was watching—they weren’t, the platform was clear—I took a running start and leapt onto the top of the train to York, going flat as quickly as possible.

  With any luck, that mob had run back to Rose and told her I was headed west while now I was going east. Of course, that girl—the one who waved at me—she was an odd addition to this formula. It had almost been like she’d pulled them off of me, but…if she had, it was probably only to keep them from murdering me into tiny pieces before Rose got her chance.

  No, everybody still hated me and either wanted me dead or wished me serious ill, that I was pretty sure of, this blond girl notwithstanding.

  The train rattled and rolled over the Scottish countryside, and I watched it go by for a while before I closed my eyes, and let the rough ride and the sound of the rails sing me off to sleep.

  33.

  The ride to York was long and breezy, the train rolling along under a grey sky. No chance of a sunburn for my pale skin here; I was going to bask in the lack of warmth atop the rattling carriage as I waited for it to get to its destination.

  We passed through Berwick-upon-Tweed, I presumed, then Newcastle upon Tyne, the cities rolling by like a slightly older version of what you’d find in the heartland of America, but with an old-country kind of feel to them. The stylistic differences were striking, and it drove the point in like a stake to my heart that I was far from home and my return was still uncertain.

  Rose was out there, somewhere. It was surprising I hadn’t seen her show up in Edinburgh, sending that metal-shooting guy in her stead. Of course, Mr. Blonde could have been a meta hired gun, along with the blonde lady, maybe financed by the US government since they were after me. I’d tossed the shattered cell phone I’d stolen just in case, sinking it in a river as we’d rolled past.

  My geography of the UK was a little hazy, but I was pretty sure that once we’d passed Berwick we were back in England. I would have let out a little sigh of relief—hell, I might have; I was still breathing heavily—but I wouldn’t have been able to hear it over the rattle of the tracks.

  York station was a long, barracks-like half-tube, with arching apertures for trains to roll in and roll out. I saw it from a ways off, smaller than Waverly and fairly obvious even before I heard the announcements rolling over the speakers inside the train car declaring we’d reached our destination. The train shuddered to a stop and the doors opened to disgorge the passenger cargo.

  I waited, the hum of people moving about a pleasant background noise. No chance of falling asleep now, I thought, my pulse quickening. Some passengers were getting off, others were getting on, and I decided that the time had come for me to make my escape.

  Rolling off the back of the train, I once again avoided contacting any of the metal on the tracks, even though I was fairly certain that the power was supplied by an apparatus up top. That done, I jumped casually up onto the platform, drawing only one set of eyes, a frown and a shrug from a woman passing by who didn’t look too closely at my face, instead turning her roller suitcase and heading off toward the exit.

  I tried to keep my right arm—scene of the worst of the shrapnel injuries, though there were a few good bloodstains on my belly too, coupled with some cuts to my shirt and hoodie—huddled away, as though someone might come by and give it a good slap on the wound. The injuries themselves were just about faded away now, but the blood remained because I lacked a facility to clean myself up.

  York Station had already grown quiet, the passengers having filed off quietly, and the ones going to this train already mostly onboard. I walked past people that were largely focused on their smartphones, and was thankful for the lack of scrutiny. I needed a break.

  I was still thinking that when I made it to the exit and found someone standing there, waiting for me with a stern look upon his face. Grey hair, a silver mustache, and leaning on a cane like an old British lord or something.

  Wexford.

  “Hello, Sienna,” he said quietly, standing like an oak planted right in my path. He wore a tired smile, and one that I found—for the moment—incredibly reassuring. “I hear you’ve run into a spot of difficulty.”

  34.

  Reed

  The plane touched down on the tarmac in York with a little bump. I tried to smooth things as much as I could, canceling out the crosswinds that had threatened to buffet the plane on the approach, but our pilot apparently lacked the expert-level skill most of the private plane pilots tended to have, and he bounced us good one time, eliciting not a sound from his meta passengers, who were used to their fair share of bumps in the course of our duties.

  Sliding across the tarmac, the Gulfstream hit another bump, this one in the pavement. I cringed, and glanced at Augustus, who shrugged. “Didn’t know I was supposed to smooth everything out too,” he said. He closed his eyes and concentrated. “There,” he said when they opened again, “pavement fixed. That ought to make it a little easier on us the rest of the way.”

  “Where are we going?” Jamal asked. “Up to a jetway?”

  “You know that’s not how this private service thing works,” Veronika said with a smirk, a whiskey she’d poured during the flight still in hand. “They roll you up to a hangar and bring your car right up to you.” She threw a glance at me. “Limo, I hope?”

  “We’re not staying,” I said tightly, because now we were in the dicey part of this op. We’d had no contact with Sienna since the last time I’d slept, which was almost twenty-four hours ago. Or something. The change in time zones and all the waiting we’d done between Texas and Minneapolis and here was throwing me off. “Most of us will stay on the plane.”

  “I like the way you say ‘us,’” Scott said, leaning forward in his seat, “like you’re going to be one of the ones who stays.”

  I swallowed heavily, because he’d heard me right, and I hated that I’d even said it. “I am staying on the plane,” I said quietly. “I’m known here. If I go outside and get seen, hell is gonna be descending on us from the UK authorities about ten seconds later. We need to send out people who aren’t known here, who aren’t known associates of Sienna Nealon.” I glanced around the cabin. “Veronika, Colin, Chase…you’re up.”

  “Lucky us,” Veronika said, draining the last of her whiskey and getting to her feet. “I’ll lead this soiree, ladies.” She looked at Colin, who had cocked an eyebrow at her. “You’re an honorary la
dy, Colin. Take that as the compliment it is.” She waved them forward and ducked the bulkhead as she headed down the aisle toward the door. “Come on.”

  “And we just sit here?” Augustus asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

  “Not all of us are just sitting,” Jamal said, head down on his tablet.

  “Copy that,” Abby said, her laptop on, well, her lap. “Some of us are working.”

  “I’ve got the traffic cams around York and I’m scanning facial recognition,” Jamal said. “No sign of Sienna yet.”

  “He’s so good at this,” J.J. whispered to Abby. “Why do we even bother to show up?”

  “So we can keep tech geeking when he switches from a support class to a mage,” Abby said.

  “Right,” J.J. said. “You’re smart and beautiful, did you know that?”

  “I’m really more of a druid than a mage, which covers both,” Jamal mumbled, but they didn’t hear him. I did, and am embarrassed to say that I thought he was pretty dead on with that assessment.

  “Anything we need to know before we make like a fetus and head out?” Veronika asked, opening a luggage compartment and pulling out a bag. She knew what she was after, and she’d slid a case out of it seconds later, popping an earphone into her ear and then handing one each to Chase and Colin. When she looked at Colin she said, “Might want to hold that in if you go for a run.”

  “This is not my first time using one of these,” Colin said, getting a little irritable at her constant condescension.

  Veronika just smiled back and beckoned him forward as she waited for the flight attendant to open the door now that we were at a stop. “You get off first, before anyone sees you, okay? You’re recon. Chase and I are going to hit the ladies’ room.”

  “That’s good cover,” J.J. said. “Very realistic.”

  Veronika just smirked. “Of course it is, genius. I actually have to go. You?” She looked at Chase and got a nod. “Yeah, I figured.”

  “You know we have a bathroom on the plane?” I asked.

  Veronika just shrugged. “I got a thing about preferring to have my feet on solid ground if I can. It’s a thing.” The flight attendant lowered the ramp, and Veronika headed off, a second after Colin whooshed out past them all.

  “What…what was that?” the co-pilot asked, his hair blowing over his forehead. Apparently he hadn’t been paying attention to our entire conversation, which I realized a little belatedly had been held entirely in the open.

  “A strong wind,” Veronika deadpanned, and headed out. “We’ll be back in a little bit, once the plane’s refueled.” I’d already talked with the pilot about this, and he was clear on how we were working this: we were parked here until I said otherwise.

  “Hm. I’m getting something,” Jamal said, staring intently at his screen.

  “The mage is a power player,” J.J. said. “He has a serious INT bonus, and that gives him a minus five to all hacking attempts.”

  “I think it’s more like minus twenty, honestly,” Abby said.

  Kat snorted, sighed, and rolled over in her sleep a couple rows back. I had kinda forgotten she was even on the plane, honestly, because she was apparently still on California time.

  “What have you got?” I asked, taking up the mantle of the leader by asking the question that Jamal had just begged. I stood up and moved to look at his screen, laying hands on the stitched leather seats as I levered my way over.

  “I’ve got Sienna at the train station,” Jamal said, and he blew up the screen to show me footage of Sienna with another guy—a little older chap, very British-looking—walking side by side out the front doors. “Who’s that?”

  “Don’t know,” I said, staring intently at him. “She had some contacts over here. Maybe he’s one of them.”

  “Who’s the threat?” Scott asked, leaning over the seat to peek at Jamal’s screen. “We should probably be on the lookout for trouble since I’m guessing we can see farther than her right now.”

  “All I know is that it’s a succubus named Rose,” I said, staring at my sister’s digitized face on the display. She was severely pixilated, the camera not doing the best job of rendering her. She was still recognizable, but it wasn’t exactly HD.

  “So it’s a she named Rose and that’s all we know,” Augustus said. “Scottish, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “We’re looking for a white girl with fair skin in a country largely of white people with fair skin,” Augustus deadpanned. “That’ll be easy to find.”

  “From what little Sienna told me, I get the feeling she’ll find us before we find her,” I said quietly. “She’s drained countless metas. We have no idea what her power profile is, but I think we can safely assume it’s obscenely strong.” I heard the murmur of discontent. “Hopefully we won’t run across her at all; we can just extract and bail before she even knows we’re in country, since no one likes to go into a fight overmatched.”

  “I love it when I’m facing enemies that can totally annihilate me without much thought,” Augustus said. “I mean, I look back on how we fought Sienna in South Dakota last year, and I think—why don’t I go courting more ass-whoopings like that? Because now we’ve got a succubus with all those powers she used to lay the beatdown on us, plus more still. Good times.” His face was pure snarky amusement.

  “I get the feeling we’re going to be using those beefed-up abilities of ours if we cross this Rose’s path,” Scott said, a little ominously for him. He was usually sunnier than that these days.

  “Seems likely,” I said, stepping up and grabbing the box of earphones that Veronika had left behind. I snugged one in my ear and held it out, offering them to the rest. Augustus took one immediately, and so did Jamal and Scott. J.J. and Abby followed, while Kat let out a gentle snore and turned over in her seat. She was wearing a black sleep mask and I wondered if she even knew where she was right now. I doubted it. “This is Reed,” I announced, “online.”

  “Geez, champ, you coulda waited to say anything until I was done emptying my bladder,” Veronika said. “I think you just settled the issue for me, thanks. That was some splashing.”

  “Uhm, how do I mute this thing?” Chase asked, her voice echoey.

  “Let’s focus on something other than the ladies in the bathroom,” Augustus said, voice a little thick with embarrassment. “Yo, Colin, how’s the view from York?”

  “I’m a little out of town,” Colin said, and I could hear the wind rushing past him. “Nice scenery. You know, I always figured I should try running across the ocean, but I can never quite get manage to get across Puget Sound without eventually falling in, so…probably not a great idea, huh?”

  “You can still swim fast though, right?” Augustus asked.

  “Pretty well, yeah,” Colin said. “Water offers a lot of resistance. Hey, I’m in York proper now.”

  “Where were you before?” I asked, sliding open a window shade. This wasn’t a proper airport. Not that it mattered. Sienna would figure out what was going on and find her way to us.

  I hoped.

  “It’s kind of a run,” Colin said. “We’re a ways outside of town. Where did you say Sienna was?”

  “She was at the train station,” Jamal said, and I could hear his frown without even looking at him. “She’s not there anymore, and I’m hard pressed to figure out why.”

  “Hey guys,” Colin said, and he sounded a little breathless. “Did we ever figure out what this enemy of Sienna’s looks like?”

  “We don’t have a description, no,” I said, a frown of my own puckering my brow. “Why? You see something?”

  “I’m not slowing down enough to see much,” Colin said. “I’m running around this wall that circles the old city. Kinda cool.”

  “Are you…doing touristy stuff?” Scott asked. “While the rest of us are stuck on the plane?”

  “Why, do you need me to get you a York hat? Coffee mug? Tea mug?” Colin cracked. “Commemorative panties that say, ‘Mind the Gap’?”
<
br />   “Ooh, I want some of those,” Veronika chimed in.

  “Done,” Colin said. “Knew you would.”

  “Colin, she’s somewhere near the train station,” Jamal said, still intent on his screen. “She ducked into a blind spot of the cameras or something, I don’t know—this is weird.”

  “On my way—I think,” Colin said.

  I settled my hand on the back of Jamal’s seat and gave it a squeeze. “How would Sienna have known where the blind spots are in the camera system?”

  “She shouldn’t have,” Jamal said, still focused on his screen. “I mean, some cameras are obvious, but others are really well hidden, and sometimes you can get a look from blocks away. I don’t see how she did it, because the coverage here is pretty good, but…she damned sure found the blind spot. Almost like she—or that guy she’s with, more likely—knew exactly they were doing.”

  “Lends credence to the idea it’s one of her UK sources,” I said, coming up again and nearly braining myself on the low-hanging bulkhead. “Colin, if you find her, can you extract her here?”

  “In less than two minutes,” Colin said cheerily. “You find her, I’ll…uh…unwind her?”

  “Unbind her,” Abby said. “It almost fits.”

  “Lined her,” J.J. said, thinking out loud, “kind her, mind her, pined her—”

  “Rind her,” Scott said with a smirk. “Like a watermelon.”

  “Tined her?” Jamal asked. “Tinder. No! Wait, definitely not Tinder.”

  “If you find her, get her the hell out so we can pop smoke, okay?” I offered, trying to steer past the rhyming police.

  “Rogerwilco,” Colin said.

  “Veronika?” I asked. “I know there’s not much going on here since Sienna’s in town, but do you see any activity?”

  I waited a moment, got distracted staring at Jamal’s screen. He was still playing with the cameras around the train station, zooming out and trying to catch Sienna. His face was all screwed up in concentration, but he had a whole lot of nothing going on, that I could see, in the results department.