“What the hell is this?” Andrew Phillips asked as he strolled into the lobby. Cassidy had stopped with her fit and was now playing dead.
“I found your brain,” I said to Phillips as I noticed a man in a tactical black ops type uniform, complete with ski mask, trailing a few feet behind him. “I mean, not yours, obviously, since I’m still fuzzy on whether you even have one, but the Brain—the one behind the prison break your first week.”
Phillips kept his distance and his lurking shadow did the same. Phillips eyed Cassidy like she was a puddle of manure that was slowly seeping in under his door. “How do you know?”
“Magic,” I snarked. Phillips looked at me with those dull eyes. “I backtraced her to a safe house outside Omaha where I caught her with Eric Simmons and some … old friends.”
“What kind of old friends?” Phillips asked, almost sounding like he was interested.
“A family by the name of Clary,” I said, a little grudgingly. Phillips was a hell of a poker player; his eyes moved only slightly at the mention of the name.
“Huh,” he said. “So … are they the ones responsible for your little acid trip?”
“Seems so,” I said. “But more important to our current discussion, she masterminded that incident that made you look like an ass on week one, so …”
He gave me a hard look as I watched him think it through. “You’re still suspended,” he said, then jerked his head toward the door to the prison. “Let her in.”
“Thanks,” I said and started dragging Cassidy again as Thorsen the guard opened the door for me. A less gracious person might have pointed out that lately I’d been doing my best work while suspended, i.e. Chicago, but whatevs, man. He was unlikely to listen in any case.
“You should take that vacation you planned,” Phillips called after me.
“I keep trying,” I said as Cassidy launched into full tantrum again, hammering the floor as I dragged her bodily to jail, “but these assholes just won’t give it a rest.” The door closed behind us, and Cassidy’s wails of infantile stupidity echoed in the small room as I waited to put her in a cell again, but this time for good.
30.
I checked J.J.’s cubicle on the fourth floor and found it empty, with no hint when he’d be back. I opened the doors to every conference room and the supply closet where he’d once hidden during an attack without any luck before conceding he was probably done for the evening. I thought about calling him, but had to face facts—he was no Jamal, and by this point his brain had to be exhausted to the point of near uselessness. That didn’t meant I couldn’t drag some use out of it, but I’d just forced the Clary family to destroy their own house in order to save themselves from me. I didn’t perceive them to be an immediate threat. I mean, even if they were going to drive from Omaha to here, it was going to take a few hours.
And I didn’t feel like they were in that position when I’d parted ways with them. They were running away for a reason, after all. Running scared, running blind, trying to get away from me and—I suspected—trying to avoid the grid, which they knew was like a net that would entrap them.
They weren’t stupid. Coming straight at me, barreling up the highway in a van that had registered license plates, that’d be running right into the net. I went to J.J.’s cubicle and did a little of the type of computer work that it always surprised people I knew how to do. Everyone thinks of me as a world-class ass-kicker, forgetting that I’ve got other skills. I was co-head of the damned agency for years, and I didn’t just sit in an office that whole time.
I issued a BOLO—“Be on the lookout for”—warnings with state and federal law enforcement agencies, flagged Claudette “Ma” Clary, Clyde “Junior” Clary, and Denise Clary, and updated Eric Simmons’s information to reflect his new “Known Associates.” Ma Clary was clean as a whistle, but Junior had a record and so did Denise, though hers was for petty beefs like shoplifting. One of the police reports attached to her name had a store employee swearing she lifted items using her hair, which told me a little more about her.
Medusa-types could use their hair like a weapon, exerting control over it the way others could use elements. It was a weird power to watch in use, and one I’d only run across a couple times.
So, I had an earthquake maker, two stoneskins and a Medusa after me. If it came down to it, I could kill them all, of that I was fairly confident.
Still, I felt a nervous ripple through my stomach, one that wasn’t helped by the sound of a familiar voice coming through my office door. “Aren’t you still suspended?”
I looked up, ready to give whoever had said it a big, fat piece of my mind with some cherry syrup on top (I make it sound way better than it would actually be). And then I forgot all about it in an instant, because the person who was standing at my door …
… was Reed.
31.
He looked like hell and I told him so. His beard and long hair were gone, burned away in the fire and leaving behind red, angry skin in their place.
“Thanks,” he said, sliding into my office a little gingerly, like he still hurt, though likely not from my friendly jab. He hesitated before speaking again, and I suspected it was not from pain. “I heard you haven’t killed anyone yet.”
I froze, looking at him like I’d got caught doing something bad instead of something … uh … good, right? “Who told you?”
“Ariadne,” he said, clutching at his side like he had a broken rib. He could have. “Why do you look like I just accused you of murder?”
“Because I haven’t killed anyone,” I said, back a little stiff. “I haven’t killed anyone for you, specifically. I mean, I should have been murderously angry, throwing vengeance and blood left and right, but instead—”
“Oh, you don’t have to go wiping out the plagues of humanity on my account,” he said, slipping down into one of the chairs in front of my desk. He looked deeply uncomfortable as he did it, and it didn’t subside once he got settled, a grimace plastered across his lips. “Far be it from me to suggest you should go massacre people just because I got my car blown up.” His discomfort turned to pursed lips of anger. “Though I am more than a little pissed about Baby. Not sure car bombings are covered under my insurance.”
“I think people are surprised I haven’t left a trail of carnage,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “Maybe I am, too. But the question I keep asking myself is … am I holding off on killing them because it’s the right thing to do? Or because I’m afraid of what happens when it comes out?”
“You never worried about it before,” Reed said breezily.
“I’ve never been this deep in the shit before,” I said. “That reporter that ambushed me? The one I decked?” He nodded, and I went on. “He quoted me my unfavorables, like I was a political candidate. Asked me why President Harmon hasn’t fired me.”
“Ouch,” Reed said, looking like he meant it all the way down to the bottom of him. “Why do you think you haven’t been fired?”
I shook my head. “Like I told you in that conversation before we were so rudely interrupted by a car bomb … I think it’s coming. It’s in the wind, this idea that I can’t keep running things the way I have and expect to keep a job. And up ’til now, Cassidy’s been gunning for me, so I haven’t gotten a fair shake—”
He frowned. “Who’s Cassidy?”
“The Brain,” I said. “You, uh, mighta missed a couple things while you were sleeping.”
“You caught the Brain?” Reed sat up, then blanched in pain. “Owww. But good. But also … owww.”
“I missed Simmons and company,” I said. “Found out their accomplices, though.”
He held very still. “Who?”
“The Clary family,” I said, and watched his lack-of-eyebrows surge north. “Of Omaha, Nebraska.”
“Uff-dah,” he said, very Minnesota. “So that’s why the Brain hasn’t exposed your past misdeeds to the public.”
I froze. I hadn’t even considered that. “They never leake
d the murders of M-Squad because—”
“It’d tie the Clary family to you in a public way,” Reed said, smirking a little. “Not the sort of thing you want to publicize if you want to get revenge on someone.”
I slumped forward, putting my forehead on my hands. “I didn’t even see it. It’s like the dog that didn’t bark.”
“Yeah,” Reed said. He held his silence for a minute before approaching a subject he clearly wasn’t comfortable with, based on his tone. “You made them, you know.” I tasted bitterness on the back of my tongue, and I didn’t want to look at him. He went on anyway. “The way you went about things. You made more enemies for yourself.”
“Ariadne beat you to this punch, and if you quote Tony Stark and say I created my own demons, I will hit you right in your Marvel fanboy broken ribs—”
“Yeouch,” he said preemptively.
“Fine,” I said, still looking down at the blotter on my desk. “I started it. But I’m gonna end it, too.”
“How?” I could hear the genuine curiosity trickle through.
KILL THEM ALL, Wolfe shouted in my head.
Make it bloody, Bjorn offered helpfully.
Like a vengeful goddess, striking down all who oppose you, Eve Kappler added. I was only, like, 80% sure she wasn’t being ironic.
“Death ends things pretty definitively,” I said without much feeling.
“Yeah,” Reed said, and the leather squeaked as he leaned forward. His words became a little more strained. “It’s how you started it, too, though, with Clyde.”
“Clyde started it,” I said, and now the feeling crept in, dangerous, that fury that had been all the way in the back of my mind, not up front and exposed like a nerve. “He—”
“I know what he did,” Reed said gently. “All I’m saying is, you do what you just suggested, and where does it end? What if more come? The Clary family—I dunno, cousins or something? The Brain’s mother? Will you kill them, too?”
“Maybe,” I said, still defiant but not half as angry as I’d been a moment before.
“And the ones that follow, until there’s no one left?” he asked. “Because you can do that. You certainly have the power.” He paused, let it sink in. “You can kill them or take their memories and leave them vegetables, maybe even keep that going until the whole world is nothing, but—”
“I’d be Sovereign if I did,” I cut him off, finally looking up. “That’s what you’re saying.”
He smiled, and he looked so different without the beard or the hair, almost not even like my brother—except for the smile. That was the anchor that reminded me who he was. “You’re twenty-three years old and you’ve got power like a goddess, like no one outside of a comic book writer or CGI guru could have imagined just a few years ago. I’m just saying … look at what you’ve wrought, and if you don’t like it … change.” He straightened up in his seat, and this time he looked pained for a different reason than physical pain. “Do things differently this time you’ve been wronged. Because you can choose to. That’s your real power.”
I smiled, faintly. “I don’t have to be death anymore?” I was joking, but only very thinly, and I did it in a way that still hurt me inside all the while.
“Nah,” he said, smiling. “I mean, you could just start with crippling the bastards and work up to it if they keep resisting.”
I laughed, but it was almost like there was a sob hidden beneath it. “Wouldn’t hurt to try, I guess.” Unless it did. Unless not wiping them out resulted in another Scott, another Jamal, people who got hurt because I didn’t have the guts to just drop in the middle of the Clary house and go off like a nuclear bomb.
Nuke ’em from orbit, Bastian said, and now he was kidding.
It’s the only way to be sure, Gavrikov said, finishing the quote and surprising us all in the process.
You can do it, Zack said. Uh, not the nuking thing. The other. The different approach and all that.
“Okay,” I said, strangely reassured. “This time … we do things differently.” And I looked my brother in the eye and took heart in his smile, hoping that maybe this time we’d get it right, and banished the rest of the arguments in my head for another time.
32.
Ma
“You sure this is gonna work?” Simmons asked nervously as they drove up Interstate 35. The boy looked skittish, there wasn’t any doubt about that, like he’d shake in his seat, like she’d have to clean up the cloth once he got out.
Ma looked at him as best as she could, with his head and body part of the way twisted around in the van, his little beanie cap pulled down around his ears, because he was cold, bless his little heart, and she didn’t let on any hint of the doubt she felt. “It’ll be fine, darlin’,” she said. “You’re gonna get your moment to shine, don’t you worry about it.”
“I just want to go,” Simmons said plaintively, and she knew he was speaking the truth.
“You think she’s just gonna let you walk away from this?” Denise asked, slapping him on the shoulder from her place next to Ma in the back. Simmons flinched at the strength of her blow, and Denise leaned back, looking satisfied. “Long as she’s breathing, sweetcheeks, you are always gonna be looking over your shoulder.”
“She’s right,” Ma said, piling on, but gently. “Sienna Nealon is a dog with a mean streak. She gets a taste of your flank steak, she ain’t gonna quit until she gets the filet mignon, either kills you or serves you up to that prison.” Ma smacked her lips. “You want to go back to that jail? Sit in a cell next to your girlfriend?”
“No,” Simmons said, blanching at the mere mention.
“Course you don’t,” Ma said. “You want to breathe the free air, go and find you some girls, not have to worry about getting chased down and beat up in a subway tunnel. Denise is right; only one way out now.”
Simmons fell into silence, which was fine. They were a little caravan right now, her van followed by Blimpy’s pickup truck. They had the ideas all right, were clear on the plan. They’d let Buck steal a fresh license plate in Council Bluffs to smoke Nealon’s electronic-watching friends off the trail. Blimpy even had a little surprise in mind for the big moment itself. Ma hadn’t ever been much for battles, but she knew picking the right ground to fight on was a big part of winning, and she’d picked the ground herself. Well, with some unwitting help from Cassidy, anyway.
“We’re going right into it, aren’t we?” Junior said from his place behind the wheel. The boy was having trouble keeping from twitching, he was so excited. “Gonna hit her right where it hurts.”
“Doubt she’ll see it coming if we can pull it off right,” Ma agreed. She didn’t feel a need to smile, though. This thing they were going to do … there’d be plenty of time for celebrating afterward.
33.
Sienna
The door to my quarters was still busted up. I thought about co-opting Augustus’s quarters, but didn’t. He was on his way back in any case, along with Scott and Zollers. Jamal was safely ensconced in a hospital in Omaha for another day with a concussion, under an assumed name. Not that it mattered. With Cassidy gone, I suspected their ability to get any sort of information was restricted to that which they could successfully punch out of someone.
No, I had other suspicions about what that crew was up to. Probably no good ones, but I was preparing like mad. I had my AA-12 shotgun loaded, my backup pistols close at hand, and an old favorite ready by my bed.
Not like you, Little Doll, Wolfe said of my last item. I could tell he was being condescending because he called me “Little Doll.”
“When all else fails, try something new,” I said, not letting him sway me.
When they come after you like this, go after them twice as hard, Wolfe said, grumbling softly. It’s the only way.
“Not the only way,” I said, but I could feel the seeds of doubt. It certainly wasn’t the way I’d done it so far. It all felt so … uncomfortable, really. I mean, once upon a time, I’d taken that auto shotgun into
a safe house full of Century operatives and not spared the shells. In war, I was a warrior, and I’d done what I’d had to do to beat a world-ending threat.
Now the stakes were a bunch of people who’d completely ruined my reputation in public (with a little help from me, I’d admit), had poisoned me with intent to kill, and tried to blow up my brother/maybe tried to kill me as well. Was I not taking this seriously enough? Part of me wondered if Wolfe was right, if I was being weak.
Augustus had chided me before against battering the crap out of my enemies because he called it “punching down.” But I’d been punched up by stoneskins before, and let me tell you, it wasn’t like they posed zero threat. They could survive explosions, my succubus touch—hell, I could pound on them until the cows came home (more of a thing that happened in Omaha, I suspect), and they wouldn’t even feel it. I’d had to trap Clyde Clary under a cargo container and drown him in order to win that fight. They were no joke, and here I was, trying to figure out ways to take it easy on them. I might have been stronger now, but I was under no illusions that I was actually invincible, in spite of what anyone else might say or think.
They meant to kill me, to bury me, to hurt me any way they could—and on two of those counts, they’d done a fair job.
Was I an idiot to think that trying to be non-lethal in my response was … naive? Or was it a measured reply to the shitstorms that they’d sent my way?
I didn’t even know anymore.
Vengeance, Little Doll, Wolfe chided. Make them pay.
“Where does it end, Wolfe?” I asked as Dog perked up from his place on the heating vent.
When they’re dead.
“That’s what I thought about Clyde,” I said. “It doesn’t seem to have helped.”
This is different, he said. They can’t keep coming forever.
“I don’t want to be the Clary family,” I said numbly as Dog got up, watching me. He had to be used to me talking to myself by now. “Always looking to settle the score. I already have to look over my shoulder every day of my life. I don’t need more people gunning for me.”
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