06 - Vengeful

by Robert J. Crane

  Ma ignored her. “Have you seen what happens when Sienna Nealon gets mad? When she goes whole hog on someone she’s pissed off at?”

  “She doesn’t have a clue who we are,” Cassidy said, blushing a little. She looked at Ma for almost a second before she blinked away, but Ma could see her digging in again. “She doesn’t know where we are—”

  “You think that’ll stop her?” Ma asked, folding her big forearms one over the other. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news for you, but that girl ain’t got an ounce of quit, and when her back’s up, she ain’t gonna stop ’til she’s done.” She glanced at Junior and Denise. “We know that by hard experience.”

  Cassidy blinked, processing it all. “Because of your son, you mean.”

  Ma didn’t look away from her. She knew full well that the girl didn’t mean anything by it; she just didn’t feel on the same level as a normal human being. It was all detached to her, like a garage way far from the house, maybe on an adjacent plot of land. “Because of that, yeah. She killed him, him and the others that she thought wronged her—”

  “She stalked ’em like a deer in gun season,” Junior threw in, looking a little pissy.

  “Drowned him,” Denise said, wearing a little fury of her own on her sleeve. “Cold-hearted bitch.”

  “This was supposed to be a quiet thing,” Ma said. “We weren’t supposed to drag family into it because that’s the fastest way to a feud. It was supposed to be silent—poisoning, a bullet in the night, something fast, over. Now you got us in on bombs and explosions—the law’s gonna get involved, no way around that now, and who knows where it’s going to lead? Well, if it comes to our door, I can tell you right now, I—ain’t—gonna—be—happy.” She said the last with the hardest edge of all, and she knew how to do it. She’d raised Claude, after all, and then Junior and Denise after, and they may have been a rowdy, mischievous bunch, but they knew not to raise her hackles.

  Cassidy looked appropriately cowed. “I’m sorry,” she said, muffled. Her neckline was all red like someone had slapped the skin there hard.

  “Well, what are we gonna do now?” Ma asked, ready to move on. She didn’t forgive and forget, she just forgave. Didn’t do any good to keep turning it over again and again when it was plain the girl just didn’t know squat about people. Brilliant mind, probably could get a PhD in nuclear physics in a couple of months, but she just lacked where it counted. She’d probably starve to death in the middle of a Wal-Mart.

  “I can work our press contacts,” Cassidy said, raising her eyes again. “Raise the heat level, get them fishing on this story, make it … uncomfortable for her to go back to work.”

  “She’s still suspended, ain’t she?” Junior asked, looking around. “Because of that last paparazzi we put on her?”

  “I think it’s coming time to cut the ties,” Ma said. “I’m getting worried enough that her dying painfully ain’t as important to me as her just being dead at this point.” She worked at a piece of corn stuck in her teeth. “How about we get on that?”

  “How do you want to do it?” Denise asked, and she sounded almost hungry.

  “Like putting an animal out of its misery,” Ma said, and she caught a flash of surprise from Simmons. He was such a weak-titted little princess. “No warning, no time to scream or even realize what’s coming … just done.” She worked that kernel loose and spit it out. She’d vacuum it up later. “Let’s just be done with her already before this gets any more out of hand.”

  4.

  Sienna

  I woke up screaming, my back wet from sweat or something else, my hand finding cold steel on either side of me in the form of bed railings. I sat up, a thin white sheet tangled around me as I stared into the dim light of the infirmary. A light clicked on and I had to shut my eyes quickly in order to keep it from overwhelming me.

  “Whoa, there,” came the calm voice of Dr. Quinton Zollers. I opened my eyes to see him staring down at me, warm eyes and mocha skin, and for once it did little to soothe me. He brushed my arm with a careful hand, and even the flesh-to-flesh contact did nothing to calm me down.

  “Chill, Sienna,” Scott Byerly said, appearing opposite Zollers. His face was redder than usual, cheeks all flushed like he’d been on a long run, or just gotten back from the gym. His normally curly hair hung sweaty, clumped, like he’d just stepped out of the shower.

  “We’re here,” Ariadne Fraser said from the end of the bed, stepping into view as I sat there, bolt upright, every muscle tense enough to jump out of my own skin. The air carried a scorched smell mixed with wetness, and I realized that the mattress upon which I was laying had a more than small moisture problem.

  “Well, not all of us are,” Augustus Coleman said from somewhere over Ariadne’s shoulder. I angled to try and see him, his face obscured by Dr. Zoller’s body, and the doc moved aside to oblige me, giving a glimpse of a dark-skinned young man flat on his back in a cervical collar, IV resting at his side. His eyes blinked slowly, exaggerated, and I knew he was still drugged from the night before. Everyone turned their head to look at him, and I caught the accusation from Scott and Ariadne. “What? We gonna to lie to her now?”

  “Don’t lie,” I said, voice low and throaty, yet not remotely sexy. More like I was out of breath, which I was. I coughed and tasted the acrid aroma of the smoke I’d inhaled while breathing in the fire. “Not now.” I turned my head to look at Dr. Zollers. “Where’s Reed?”

  I saw the hesitation before he answered. “He’s in Methodist Hospital.”

  I pulled my arm away from him. “I need to go.”

  “Sienna,” Scott said, leaning over me, “you were just in a car that was blown up underneath you—”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said, looking to see if there were any IVs I needed to rip out before I got up. There weren’t, not a hint of them, and I realized the other presence that was missing from the room—Dr. Isabella Perugini. There was no sign of her dark hair and even darker countenance, of her white lab coat trolling its way through the wrecked and sodden infirmary with a black cloud over her head. I knew in an instant where she was, where she had to be given the circumstances.

  “Sienna—” Ariadne started.

  “Not now,” I said and slid down the wet mattress. I heard water rushing out of it under my weight as I moved, a reminder of what had happened in this infirmary only hours earlier. I skirted the edge of the bed railing and Zollers did not move to stop me. He wouldn’t have been quick enough to in any case, but from the way I saw him standing there, silent, reserved, I knew he’d opted to pick his battles and that this wasn’t one he was prepared to fight.

  “You can’t just run off—” Ariadne said.

  “I won’t.” I slid out of bed, looking down at the hospital gown that was draped over me in lieu of my burned clothes. I didn’t even care at this point, not even a little.

  “Bad wording, Ariadne,” Augustus said, continuing his role as drug-addled comic relief. “Now watch her fl—”

  Gavrikov, I thought, projecting the words deep inside. It was second nature by now, and Aleksandr Gavrikov, probably sensing that I was in NO MOOD, meekly complied. Gravity cut out beneath me and my feet lifted off the ground. I floated a foot in the air for a moment and then took control, leaving all their protestations behind as I flew out of the infirmary, my hospital gown flapping behind me, threatening to rip off from the wind shear as I blew out of the doors of headquarters and past the scorched wreckage of the Dodge Challenger parked just outside.

  5.

  I pushed into my brother’s hospital room past the three security guards and eight of our own agents posted in the hall, ignoring their doubtful expressions. No one said anything, presumably because the look on my face and my attire told them everything they needed to know about how I’d take any attempt to slow me down. After all, it wasn’t much of a secret among our own people that only a few hours ago I’d been a human bomb about to go off.

  The hospital room was small, with dull beige
walls and aged tile floors like every other hospital I’d ever been in. The smell was antiseptic, and the sound of a respirator hissed in the quiet night under the sound of the beeping heartbeat monitor.

  Dr. Isabella Perugini looked over her shoulder at me, her long, black hair pulled back in a ponytail that made her look somehow more severe. She wore no makeup, not that she needed much of it to begin with, but the lack of it left her looking a little faded—unless it was the stress that had done that. Her eyes didn’t look puffy at all, just tired, thinly lidded, and she only looked at me for a second before she turned back to the bed, one hand resting at the base of her neck and the other folded around her midsection.

  I eased up to the edge of the bed and got a good first look at my brother. His skin was still charred and broiled, blistered in some places and peeling in others. There were a few spots where angry red skin hinted at only first-degree burns. They were few and far between, however. “Hey,” I mumbled as I stood there at her side.

  She didn’t look at me. “You are all right, then.” She said it, didn’t ask, because after being my doctor for oh-so-many years, she just knew.

  “I am,” I said, regardless of the fact that we were both fully aware of my near-invincibility. I moved on from the comfortable to the question neither of us wanted to ask. “How’s he doing?”

  “Burns over ninety-nine percent of his body,” she said, as tonelessly as if she were delivering news about a patient she barely knew, not a man she’d been sleeping with for over three years.

  “But he’ll heal,” I said, taking a breath of relief.

  “Possibly,” she said, and here I caught the first hint of something wrong. “These were not third-degree burns … they stretched deep beneath the epidermis into the subcutaneous layer.” She swallowed visibly, and her hand clutched tighter at her throat, as though she were choking on the words she was trying to get out. “There are … complications. Inhalation—”

  “Is he going to live?” I asked, cutting right to the quick.

  She turned her head to look at me, and I saw a woman who didn’t honestly know the answer to the question. “I am not sure.”

  That one hit me right where it hurt. My stomach dropped like someone had just hit it and used a sledgehammer to do the job. I leaned against the bottom edge of his bed, felt the pressed wood crumple under my unexpected strength. I sucked in a deep breath like I had to fight to get it back, which I did. It felt a little like I’d been hit in the gut, hard, like I’d dropped out of the sky and landed belly button first on a flagpole. Which I had done, once, when I was still learning to fly. It hurts about as much as you’d expect.

  “The next twenty-four hours will be the most crucial,” she said, back to playing the role of the cool doctor and shutting off the fiery Italian lover like she was twisting a valve.

  “Okay,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.

  We stood in silence for a while, maybe minutes, maybe hours, it was tough for me to tell. I got lost in a memory, the reminder of how Reed had approached me the first time I’d visited Zack’s grave, after—

  Well, after.

  “Do you know who did this?” Dr. Perugini asked, still fixed on Reed, standing in the middle of her damned domain, the medical world, and looking as helpless as I was.

  “No,” I said, “but I can guess. Eric Simmons. His little friend the Brain. They’re the ones with the grudge—”

  “What are you going to do about it?” she asked, and her hand moved like she wanted to touch him, but she held back.

  “I think you can guess.”

  Her fingers returned uselessly to the base of her throat. “He wouldn’t want that.”

  “He wouldn’t want me to catch who’s responsible?” I gave her one of those sidelong glances that they make internet memes out of, my best, Oh, you’re just an idiot look.

  “He wouldn’t want you to go after them furious,” she said.

  I listened to her words, read her movement. “You don’t mind, though, do you?” She tensed only slightly, and I asked a really stupid question that I was sure I already knew the answer to. “This is my fault, isn’t it?”

  She tilted her head to look at me as she answered, and she looked … thoughtful. “I don’t think so.”

  I blinked in utter surprise. “No?” I’d been ready for her to whirl on me, to start hurling insults and accusations right in my face, to let loose that full head of Dr. Perugini steam that she’d unleashed on more occasions than I could count. I wanted her to do it, to have my brother’s lover fuel my internal fury. I could feel it boiling inside, the guilt and the rage, looking for an outlet, already on the stove. I wanted someone else to stoke the flames, the give me that last push by making me complicit.

  “I don’t blame you,” she said finally.

  “Why the hell not?” I smacked dry lips together after forcing the question out of my mouth.

  “You want to feel bad,” she said, nodding without looking at me. “Wronged. I don’t have it in me to do this thing for you, and he wouldn’t want me to anyway.” Now she looked at me and quivered. “I’m not angry at you. I don’t blame you … I’m too busy being scared for him.”

  I staggered back, taking it harder than if she’d struck me, than if she’d grabbed the IV tree and impaled me on the end. I felt so weak, so tired, so out of sorts that the world around me was starting to feel surreal in its wrongness. She watched me stumble back with something akin to concern, maybe the closest to it I’d ever seen from her when aimed at me. “Are you—?”

  I didn’t even give her time to finish the question. I took a last look at my brother, burned almost beyond recognition, breathing with the aid of a machine, and I ran from the room. I ignored the agents who asked me if I was all right, paid no attention to security, and stumbled straight to the window at the end of the hall, breaking through the glass and leaping out into the night with my hospital gown flapping behind me, possibly more wounded than if Isabella Perugini had attacked me with everything she had.

  6.

  By the time I got back to the agency, I was calm enough to stop off at my quarters to change into some clothes, to dump some kibble in a dish for the dog, then fly to the roof of HQ, calm enough not to Kool-Aid-Man my way through the fourth-floor windows. I descended the stairs like a human being, resolving to hold together even though I really didn’t want to adult right now. I wanted to scream like a toddler who just lost a juice box, wanted to go to sleep and wake up a year from now. Or a year before now.

  I had many powers, but those weren’t in my set, unfortunately, so instead I went to go see a man about people I could vent my rage on.

  The fourth-floor lights were on in a few places, but I could tell pretty much no one was home. It was somewhere near five in the morning, I reckoned, and the entire agency had been in manhunt mode the last few days. Since the manhunt had been resolved hours ago, that meant everyone was crashed out at their homes, probably.

  Probably.

  I checked his cubicle first, and when I didn’t find him there but saw the computer was still running a compiling program, I knew he was nearby. I floated into the air and did a three-sixty of the entire floor until I found a conference room with its door shut. I shot across the massive open space, blasting about ten thousand pieces of paper into a storm behind me and putting the lie to Director Andrew Phillips’s ‘paperless office’ policy.

  I similarly managed not to burst through the door of the conference room, or the wall, but only by using some of that vanishingly small amount of restraint I carried with me almost nowhere. I opened the door without concern for its occupant, and I was standing over him before he had a chance to realize there was a presence in the room and that it was a human being inches from his nose. He’d set his thick-framed glasses on the table. I snatched them up and jammed them onto his face so I wouldn’t have to wait through that step.

  His eyelids fluttered, slightly exaggerated by the thickness of his lenses, the fluorescent ligh
ts from outside spilling into the conference room. His dark hair was flattened in the back from leaning against the chair he was sleeping in. When J.J. did finally open his eyes—and keep them open this time—it didn’t take more than a couple flutters for him to realize that shit just got real.

  “Oh, f—” he said as he tried to sit up abruptly. It was a doomed maneuver, and he started to topple back in his chair. I, however, was prepared for this and lifted him by his lapels into the air with me as the chair came crashing down on the conference room floor. It had a five-point base, supposedly making it harder to overturn in the name of idiot-proofing. Clearly, the designers had never met idiots of the sort I had to deal with.

  I carried him by his lapels through the air as he struggled instinctively against my mother-bird grip on him. “What are you doing?” he managed to cry out by the time I was halfway back to his cubicle.

  “I need you to work,” I said, drifting down and dropping him into his own chair.

  He hit gracelessly, spinning it halfway around thanks to his flailing limbs, nearly overturning this one as well. You had one job, J.J. “Have you thought about just asking—like a normal person would?!”

  “Do I strike you as a normal person?” I let gravity reassert its dominion over me and thumped to the ground feet-first, landing like a badass.

  “I hope you’re not going to hit me at all,” he said, fiddling with his glasses.

  I looked him straight in the eye. “Let’s skip the threats. The explosion.”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking sort of like he was returning to business mode, though giving me a wary look. “Figured you’d be in about that. Let me tell you, that going off outside the window was actually a little more gentle than what you just did. Just for future reference.”

  “Information,” I said.

  “Manners,” he replied, and I got right up in his face, causing him to squirm. “I can see you’re … uh … strained at the moment, and not of the ‘re’ variety, so why don’t I just …” He tapped on his keyboard while turning to give me a close-up view of his cheek. I just kept right there, like I was going to Hannibal Lecter him and take a bite if he pissed me off. “Here we go.”