I paused, listening. “Veronika?”
“Yeah, boss,” Veronika said, the tension ratcheted up in her voice. It was obvious as the nose on my face when I actually concentrated on it.
“How are you doing out there?” I asked, experimentally.
“Oh, we’re doing just fine,” she said stiffly, and I almost swore. Instead, I motioned to Jamal, trying to get his attention. I caught it, and he looked at me quizzically as I pointed to his tablet, then brought my finger around to encompass the world around us, forcefully.
He got it, and touched the base of the tablet. The screen flickered, and then switched to something else.
A view of a plane on a tarmac.
Surrounded by men with guns, creeping closer and closer to the Gulfstream with the open door sitting in the middle of the runway.
Our plane.
We were surrounded.
35.
Sienna
“This is a safe house,” Wexford said as he bolted the door behind us. He’d led me into a nearby hotel just a couple hundred feet from the train station, a pretty swank-looking place that had looked like it might be one of those rare European hotels that had so much lux going for it I’d want to stay there rather than the cookie-cutter American chains I preferred while abroad.
“Oh, good,” I said. He’d led me up through the servants’ entrance and stairwells to this room, on the third floor, and we’d seen not a soul along the way. “Because I’ve been staying in unsafe ones these last few days and it hasn’t been working out so well for me.”
Wexford smiled thinly, leaning against the door. “I sense you’ve had a rough go of it.”
“Can you read my mind again?” I asked, making my way over to the bed. My clothes were still shredded, I was soaked in blood—including, still, my face despite my best attempts to use spit to rub it off. I couldn’t clean what I couldn’t see, after all.
“Indeed,” he said, a little wearily.
“Then you know what’s happened,” I said. There was a certain comfort that came from arriving here. Even seeing Wexford standing there at the train station had been a relief of sorts. With the exception of the cop I’d brainwashed to forget I was a criminal, I hadn’t exactly been sunning in a sea of friendly faces these last few days, and they’d been a little stressful.
He seemed to think for a minute, then nodded. “Yes, now I see. Rose, her name is?”
“Rose, her name is, but by any other name she’d be thorny as hell,” I agreed, stepping through into the bathroom before I could see his reaction to my witticism. I turned on the cold tap and looked in the mirror. My face was bloody, all right. I got to work on it. “I went into this thinking the perp was an incubus. I guess that shows me not to assume. And as you’ve no doubt ascertained from poking around in my skull, she’s royally pissed at me and I have only suspicions as to why. All I know for sure is that she’s gone to some rather extreme ends in the name of vengeance for…whatever the hell got her panties in a twist.”
“Perhaps I might shed some light on that,” Wexford said, and I caught sight of him standing behind me in the mirror. He moved, and on the bed behind him was a manila file. “For your suspicions do seem to be correct.”
I turned off the tap and almost lunged for it. When I opened it up, I found surveillance photos of Rose, all from a distance, all from cameras she didn’t know were there. Digging a little deeper, I found candids of the sort families took of their kids—her with other people, smiling. A mother, a really old dad or maybe grandfather. I looked up at Wexford. “You know her?”
“She’s known to us, yes,” Wexford said with a nod. “Rose Steward. She lived in the metahuman cloister in Scotland…at least until—”
“The war,” I said, my legs delivering me onto the bed with a gentle thump. “That cloister—”
“Was wiped out by your old friend Weissman—”
“That shitbird was no friend of mine.”
“—and your Great Uncle Raymond,” he said, looking over my shoulder at the file.
I processed that. “Look…that sucks for her and all, but…why is she so pissed at me? I didn’t kill her family, and I didn’t really like the people who did.”
“It would be difficult for me to speak to her motivations without seeing inside her mind,” Wexford said, pacing back and forth in front of the bed crisply, with lordly precision. “All we can say for sure is that she is indeed, for some reason, quite obsessed with you, and has…done a number, I think you call it, on your abilities and your…person.” He seemed to wince at the sight of me. Having now seen myself in the mirror, I couldn’t blame him.
“Nice way of saying she’s ripped me eight new ones,” I said, falling back on the bed. Here with Wexford, I felt oddly safe again. Maybe it was his mind control working, but I didn’t think so. There was something about human conversation that was a pleasant lubricant to the spirit after a hard series of mental hurdles. I’d been on the run for months, but Rose had upped the game on me, and damn if it wasn’t taking a toll. I wanted to sleep again, but I fought off that instinct easily, sitting back up. “And you had no idea what she was doing up in Edinburgh before I went up there?”
“Indeed not,” Wexford said, turning to look at me. “If it’s as you see it in your mind—that she has ‘taken the city,’ nearly—then this comes as quite the surprise to Her Majesty’s government. I am the only telepath that I know of in the government, and while we always have a decent traffic of officials coming back and forth from Edinburgh, they would hardly notice…whatever it is you’ve noticed.”
“I’ve noticed mobs chasing my ass through the streets,” I said. “Fearless, angry, seemingly controlled by other sources. Meta sources, presumably. Rose, if she’s behind all the stuff I’ve seen…” I shook my head. “Your country lost a pretty decent amount of citizens to her.”
Wexford’s face fell, and I could tell he was feeling it. “Indeed…” he said softly. “It seems we’ve missed one of the tragedies of our time as it happened upon our very soil.”
“You really did,” I said, let my head sag as I stared at the patterned carpet, which had an older look to it. “How did you find me, by the by?”
Wexford almost smiled. “For one with direct access to most levels of government, it isn’t terribly hard. This whole island brims with security cameras, after all.”
“Mm,” I said, then frowned. “Hey, how high a level would you have to be to see—”
The door to the room blew open, shattering as it flew out of the frame. I ducked my head instinctively, rolling off the bed as a spray of wooden shrapnel blew overhead and the door shot into the room, launched like it had been blown out of a cannon. I didn’t see Wexford, since I was trying as hard as I could to mush my face to the carpeting, but as soon as I was down I immediately sprang up again, pushing to my feet in time to see—
Wexford had taken the door head-on as it had flown into the room. It had split him almost in two, and his eyes stared dully at the ceiling, the wreckage of his body leaving me in no doubt…
He was dead.
“Ye did miss one of the greatest tragedies of our time,” Rose spat as she hovered her way into the room, hair floating and her face blazing red, “you great ruddy idiot. You and the whole government missed it, with your heads up your arses in London. You missed the slaughter of a whole people, nearly, your own people—you didn’t give a fig, hiding in your country estates—” She practically spat at Wexford’s corpse, which lay still and silent on the ground beneath her as she hovered in.
I was frozen in place, Rose looking darkly at him, and then she swiveled to look at me. “And you,” she said, bleeding that malevolent loathing out in my direction now, “you…you were as responsible as they were for it, you and your high and mighty self…”
Without a thought, I turned and sprinted for the window, hurling myself through the glass at high speed, thinking only one thing—
Run.
36.
Reed
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“Oh, hell,” I muttered as I mentally assessed the situation.
Veronika and Chase were captured.
Colin was out in York.
A plethora of gunmen were creeping up to our airplane.
And Sienna, who we’d come here to rescue, was nowhere in sight.
“Uhh, Reed?” Scott asked, nudging me out of my short mental break from reality. I wasn’t quite screaming in my own head, but close. This was a real damnation of a situation.
“Augustus,” I said, “blow up the tarmac at their feet. Non-lethally. They look like cops to me.”
“I can do that,” Augustus said, stirring out of his own open-mouthed surprise at our situation, “but then we’re not going to be able to roll to the runway.”
“One massive problem at a time, okay?” I turned my attention to Jamal. “I need eyes on Veronika and Chase.”
“Got ‘em,” Jamal said, and his screen flipped to an interior view of an office. There was a firing squad vibe to what we were seeing, Veronika and Chase standing there with their hands over their heads, guys with lots of guns pointing at the two of them. The only other things in frame were a desk next to the window and a potted plant.
Veronika was staring right at the camera, probably because she could hear me and knew we were watching. “Anytime, boss.” She didn’t even say “boss” sarcastically.
“Let me—” I started to say.
“I got this,” a soft voice said from behind me, and I glanced back to see Kat, her sleep mask up on her forehead.
“You—how?” Augustus asked.
Kat just pointed at the plant.
“That’s like a baby ficus,” Augustus said.
“You worry about your concrete and let me deal with this, okay?” Kat said, patting him on the shoulder. Then she closed her eyes.
There was no sound on the camera, but I could hear a loud CRACK! in my earpiece, corresponding to what was going on in the room where Veronika and Chase were being held. On the screen, we had a grainy view of the potted plant just shattering as every gunman in the room turned to look.
“Did you just—” Augustus said.
“Tarmac,” Kat said, concentrating. “Also—I ammmm GROOOOOT!”
The damned plant leapt out of the wreckage of the pot and attacked the nearest black-garbed tactical guy. It caught him full in the face and he ripped off a few rounds in the air out of sheer surprise. The plant seemed to stretch, limbs reaching out and grabbing the next nearest team member, dragging the two of them closer and smashing their heads together with a THUNK! so loud I heard it over the headset.
Veronika and Chase sprang into action on the screen, and I buried my instinct to say, “NON-LETHAL!” because what the hell was the point? Chase shot her lightsaber power out of her sleeve and cut the guns out of three of the twelve SWAT guys’ hands while Veronika fired plasma bursts at three more, rendering their weapons inoperable.
That still left four more, counting the two that Kat had, uh…treed? Bushed? I wasn’t sure what to call it.
Two of the remaining team members were all over the shrub-related incident that was afflicting their team members. The damned plant grabbed the guns out of their hands with vine extensions, and then whipped at them with the gun butts. Here they were, SWAT-looking guys in full black tactical gear, and a potted plant was strangling two of their number, had disarmed two more and was now smacking them in the helmets with their own weapons.
I could hear the chaos in the office. It was a hell of a thing.
“Augustus, you standing by?” I asked, trying to make sure the next thing I needed done was going to get done in time.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Augustus said, eyes closed. I guessed he was gripping at the tiny pieces of stone and rock in the tarmac, which—I was just guessing based on how my control of the winds went—was not the easiest of things.
“Colin,” I said, “I need you to find Sienna and get her the hell back here.” I waited a second. “Colin.” Scott looked right at me, concern rolling down his face like a falling curtain. “Fannon, report in.”
“That’s worrying,” Scott said.
“J.J.—” I started.
“Way ahead of you,” J.J. said, clipped. “I’m tapping into Jamal’s feed and putting it on my screen. I have nothing on Fannon, though.” He looked up at me. “He’s gone dark on comms. Signal lost.”
I swore under my breath, then looked back at Jamal’s screen. “Find him.” The gunmen were edging closer to the plane. Another few seconds and they’d be close enough that any attempt to blow up the tarmac under their feet might cause damage to the plane. “Augustus, take these guys now.”
“Yep,” Augustus said, and there was a moment of quiet.
Then it sounded a little like an earthquake outside. The plane shook lightly—and only lightly, thankfully—and then a whole lot of screams started flooding in through the hatchway.
“Tangos down,” Jamal said. He wasn’t exaggerating. The camera view of the tarmac had shown what looked like a swarm of mosquitoes launching out of the ground for a second, then every single guy with a gun hit the dirt. The tarmac seemed to be alive, ripping their weapons out of their hands and swallowing them. I even saw the asphalt reach into their holsters and take their sidearms, the weapons disappearing into the black tar and gravel like they’d been eaten whole.
He flipped the screen back to Chase and Veronika, who were just wrapping up with the last couple of guys. Veronika had guns in hand and was slinging a couple more over her shoulders. “You bringing us presents?” Augustus asked.
“I didn’t have time to stop off at Harrods,” she quipped, “and I’m guessing after this trip, I won’t be welcome there anymore. Thanks for that, by the way,” she said acidly. “This is all the tourist memorabilia you get from this trip.”
“We visited York, UK, and all I got was this lousy submachine gun,” Scott said.
Veronika popped out of the office, Chase hot on her tail, and a few seconds later they appeared in frame on the airstrip. “I appreciate the chaos you’ve created here,” Chase said, tightly, as they emerged, heading back for us, “but I gotta believe this is going to attract the wrong kind of attention.”
“They were here waiting for us,” I said. “We’ve already attracted the wrong kind of attention.”
“You think this was a setup?” Veronika asked, huffing as she ran. She and Chase were picking their way over the fallen, writhing SWAT guys.
“How else did they know we were coming?” I asked.
“If this is a trap, you’d think they’d have laid it better,” Augustus said.
“Yeah, like with coverage from snip—” Kat started to say.
A booming crack echoed outside so loudly that it seemed enter the plane like a man kicking a door down. Veronika staggered in her run, and Chase caught her right before she stumbled. A hazy energy field appeared on Chase’s right-hand side, like a shield between her and Veronika and the harm that was coming their way from the sniper. She picked up Veronika with her left arm and flat-out ran for the plane. Another crack echoed, and Chase faltered. She tossed Veronika unceremoniously up the ramp, and then backed up it double-time herself, another boom lashing our ears as she came inside and hit the button to raise the stairs and door.
“You okay?” I asked, rushing to pull down the shades on the plane. J.J. and Abby were doing the same on the opposite side, and Kat and Scott joined in, trying to hide our bodies from clear view while doing so. It went quickly thanks to meta speed, but I didn’t draw a breath until it was over.
“Fine-ish,” Chase said, breathing heavily when she saw I was done. A bloody streak was cut down the side of her head, a slice that looked like someone had knifed her. She saw me looking and said, “One of the sniper rounds. My refraction shield isn’t strong enough to stop something like that. It just pushed it a little off course.”
“If it hadn’t, your brains would be all over the pavement right now,” I said, and then turned my attent
ion to Veronika, who was clutching her side and bleeding all over the carpet.
“Yeah, no, it’s cool,” she said, wincing, as we stood there. “You worry about Chase and her little cut to the head. I’m fine.” She pulled her hand back from clutching at the wound, which was squarely in the middle of her chest. “Looks like they missed the heart by maybe a quarter inch, based on the bleed pattern.” She grimaced. “A little to the left and this would be a lot worse.”
“Kat,” I said, but she was already there, hands on Veronika and working to heal her. A muffled shot rang out from outside, and there was a crack in the cockpit.
“The pilot,” Veronika said, pain turning to panic. “Reed, our escape—”
I was on it. I vaulted forward, lurching toward the front of the plane. I opened the door and—
The pilot was dead, his brains sprayed all over the place, a spiderweb of cracks in the center of the windshield. The co-pilot was just sitting there, mouth agape, like he might die of shock—
His head exploded a second later, spraying me with red and opening another massive hole in the cockpit window.
I slammed the cockpit door and hit the deck, barely breathing.
“What’s the word from the front of the plane?” Abby called. She had a strain to her voice.
I swallowed heavily. “The pilot and co-pilot are dead,” I said, the realization I’d just led two innocent men into their deaths not quite hitting me fully yet. Colin was missing. Veronika and Chase had been shot.
And we were trapped on a runway, still surrounded by enemies…with no sign of Sienna.
37.
Sienna
I burst out of the safe house window pissed off, heart beating a mile a minute, reflecting on a few hard realities. First, it really wasn’t a safe house at all, was it, in either sense of the word? Like, it was a hotel, not a house, and it ended up being not safe at all, dammit.
Second…Rose was on my ass like white on Conan O’Brien, and that was, to understate things massively, not good.
Badder (Out of the Box Book 16) Page 24