“You’re not mad at him?” Zack looked inquiring.
“Oh, I’m super pissed,” I said. “I’m thinking about killing him, actually, and I don’t tend to think about that, ever.” Zack raised an eyebrow. “Not seriously,” I added. “But it would be satisfying to smack him around for a while.” I nodded. “And I did, actually. I think we understand each other now.”
Zack looked at me, wide eyed. “You…smacked Clary around? Like, really did?”
“Yeah. Like, I really did. And we’re good now.”
“And he didn’t…splatter you all over a wall?”
I slapped his shoulder lightly. “He’s scared of me. We’re good.”
Zack thought about it for a moment and gave a slight shrug. “I don’t blame him.”
“Would you two please take your pitiful necking activities out of my medical unit?” Dr. Perugini bustled over. “There are sick people here, and if I have to listen to any more of your banter, I will be one of them.”
“You’ve got a great bedside manner, Doc,” I said with a smile. “Did you learn that when you worked for La Cosa Nostra?”
“Oh, you are thinking you are funny!” She jabbed a finger at me as she prodded at Scott with her stethoscope. “But let me tell you something, the disasters you bring me are not funny, they are sad.”
“Will everyone be all right?” I asked.
“Does it look like I have examined everyone yet?” She wagged her finger at me again. “Your brother is fine. Cosmetic damage will heal in the next day or so, but he doesn’t look so pretty until then.” She looked down at Scott. “What happened to this one?”
“Internal and external bleeding,” I said. “Will he be all right?”
“Away from me,” she said, waving me off. “Go to the corner, neck for a few minutes, then come back when I am done.”
“How about your office?” I asked. “We could—”
“Away!” She flailed an arm at me.
“She seems more uptight than usual,” Zack said as we made our way over to Reed’s bed. “Seriously, though, physical stuff aside, how are you holding up?”
“I’ll be all right once I get a shower and…” I let my voice trail off as I pulled my jacket off. It was ruined, the black leather torn in several places. “Bleh. I should have known better than to wear something I actually liked on a mission.”
“Your gun,” Zack said and pointed.
I looked down to where he had pointed, to the holster under my arm, and I pulled out my pistol. The barrel was bent at a ten-degree angle, either from one of the times I was hit or one of my landings. “Damn. I liked this one, too.”
“You didn’t use it?” Zack asked.
I looked at the black finish. “No. I didn’t even draw it. Guess I was too focused on subduing the prisoner.”
Zack raised an eyebrow. “People tend to get pretty subdued when you put a few bullets in them, especially if they’re a meta and can heal from that sort of thing.”
I slid the wrecked gun back in the holster. “They also tend to die sometimes, in case you don’t remember that certain girl—”
“Andromeda?” Zack’s mood shifted. “Kinda hard to forget.”
“Yeah.” I tried to think of something happier. “Oh. I saw Dr. Sessions earlier today. He’s discovered something…interesting.”
“Oh?” Zack’s face locked into a grimace. “What’s that? A new way for you to kill people?”
“Ah, no. The opposite, actually.” I smiled at him. “He can manufacture a suit for you that will allow you to touch my skin.”
“A suit?” A raised eyebrow again. “Like with a tie?” He tugged at the bottom edge of his coat.
“No, like…” I eased closer to him, and stopped when I realized I was covered in dust. “Like a plastic one that adheres to your body. Like…skintight.”
He frowned, his brow crumpling. “Like spandex? So I can dress like a superhero?”
“No,” I said. “Like…skintight thin latex. So you can…touch me.”
There was a moment’s quite pause, the only sound coming from the beeping of Reed’s pulse-oxygen monitor. “I can already do that,” Zack said, breaking into a smile. “In dreams.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but this way you could touch me in real life. And in every way .” I raised my eyebrows at him, trying to be suggestive.
“You mean like…” He froze, as if it was almost computing, then his eyes got wide. “Oh. Skin tight, totally skin tight, and form fitting.” He looked pensive. “How do I get into something like that?”
I thought about it for a beat. “I don’t know, maybe it comes in pieces? Or maybe it’s like a jumpsuit with a zipper on the back. I don’t really know and I don’t care that much, either, as long as it works. It means we could actually…” I awkwardly started to place a dirty glove on his shoulder and then stopped myself. “Sleep together.”
“We’ve slept together before,” he said, keeping his voice low and looking over toward Dr. Perugini, who was still working on Kat. “And I kinda like what we’re doing now, with the dreams. It’s a pretty amazing feeling. I think it may be better than the real thing and I never thought I’d say that about…uh…that.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s good for you,” I said, trying to stay on the side of the line of sheer irritation I was feeling, “but it’s not really all that…for me, if you know what I mean. And I’m a little worried about that power of mine. We don’t know how it’s supposed to work. I doubt the main application is getting my boyfriend off without touching him.”
“Why not?” he asked. “Maybe it’s an adaptation to allow a succubus to keep a mate without being able to touch them.”
“I kinda doubt that,” I said. “In my experience, my powers are seldom that innocuous.”
“If you’re done with your little make out session,” Dr. Perugini said from beside Kat’s bed, “I can talk to you now.”
“Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.” Zack placed both his hands on my arms and kissed my forehead. “If you tell me to get the suit, I’ll get it and we can—”
“Well, since you’re so excited about it,” I said, almost snapping. “Forget it, we’ll talk about it later.”
“I’m sorry,” Zack said, and I saw the genuine contrition in his eyes. “I guess I just thought we had a good thing going on with the dreams—”
“ You had a good thing going with the dreams,” I said, and my voice rose higher than I intended it to before I lowered it. “Personally, I’d still like to be able to touch my boyfriend, to feel him against me, really against me, without having to dream it.”
He nodded and I saw a little retreat from him. “Okay. I’ll talk to Sessions.”
“Try and muster some enthusiasm about it or let’s not even bother.”
“No, really,” he said. “I just felt…intimate with you already. I’m sorry.”
“Let’s talk about it later.” I started toward Dr. Perugini.
“Oh, good,” Dr. Perugini said, looking up at us, her olive skin flushed as I arrived at Kat’s bedside, a snarl posed on her lips. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your personal conversation with my tedious medical report about the people who were injured on your mission.” She smiled, her every word a dagger. “Scott will be fine. Katrina appears to be fine, physically. They’ll both awaken in the next few hours, I expect. Katrina did some preliminary healing at the scene, yes?”
“Yes,” I answered, looking down at Kat’s face, which was drawn, almost as platinum as her hair.
“That saved us from serious problems, especially with Scott,” Perugini said, a clipboard positioned in front of her. “I can tell from the damage that his injuries were much more severe, that they have been healed considerably. Without that, he would likely have died.”
“He saved my life,” I said, looking back to where Scott lay on the bed. “Saved me from getting hit, pushed me down and blocked me with his body.” I shook my head. “That was a complete cluster—”
“And you were in charge?” Perugini eyed me accusingly.
“In charge, yes,” I said. “In control of the situation—sadly, not.”
“And whose fault is that?” she asked with more than a little accusation.
“What happened?” I heard a faint, groggy voice. I looked down to see Kat staring up at us, her curled blond hair lank and hanging loose around her face. Her eyes were open but only barely, the green of her irises peeking out at us from behind heavy lids. “Sienna?” She said my name as if trying to drag it out of herself.
“I’m here,” I said, and started to reach for her hand, but hesitated when I remembered how dirty my glove was. I only froze for a second and then I took hold of her hand and picked it up. “You’re gonna be fine, Kat. We’re back at the Directorate. What do you remember?”
“Directorate?” Kat asked, blinking at me. “What happened?”
“We were on a mission,” I said. “In Des Moines. We were supposed to keep an eye on an Omega safe house, and things went wrong. You saved us, Kat—you healed Scott and the others, kept them from dying.”
“Scott?” She scrunched her eyes at me. “I saved him?”
“You did,” I said. “He’s going to be just fine.”
“Oh.” She seemed to nod, but her eyes were distant, far away, glazed over. They came sharply back into focus, and found mine, and she squinted as she concentrated, trying to speak again. “Who is Scott?”
9.
Interlude
Des Moines, Iowa
Red and blue lights flashed in the Iowa night, casting their colors over the street. The streetlamps were out, and he was left to wonder if they had functioned in the first place. The house in front of him was blocked off by a line of police cars and officers, all of them out of their vehicles— and buzzing around like little bees , he thought. The news vans were out as well, and they were worse than bees—they were like flies that gathered around manure in a pasture, always gravitating toward the largest pile.
Residents were out, the damp street showing the reflected red and blue, the same refracting off the faces of the men, women and children who were on the scene with him, the crowd that had gathered in their heavy coats, trying to put anything between them and the cold autumn night. The wind picked up but didn’t blow the leaves the way it had in Minnesota only a few days earlier; here, everything was damp, weighed down by the wetness of a rain that must have passed in the morning but failed to dry under the cold grey sky. The smell of it was still in the air.
He pulled his own coat tight against the chill, not quite to the point of having to stamp his feet to keep warm, but only because of the crowd gathered around. He watched one of the news anchors, a pretty blond woman, delivering her palaver to the camera, after which she pulled some poor resident of the neighborhood over to answer her questions. “What did you see?” the reporter asked the woman.
“It was like there was a bulldozer coming through here or something, like I think maybe the gas line exploded?” The woman shook her head at the reporter. “I saw a car hit another car at one point, and there were people moving around, and lots of dust because the house came down…it was crazy. I think some of them were fighting.”
“The police are calling this a building collapse,” the reporter said, turning to face the camera, “that came in the wake of a gang battle. At least one vehicle fled the scene shortly after the collapse, and vandalism by the rival gang is strongly suspected as the motive for this bizarre activity. Whatever the case, this Des Moines neighborhood is still reeling from the destruction.” She stopped and seemed to relax. “That was good, right?” The producer next to her nodded. “Perfect.”
“Fools,” the old man whispered under his breath, but it was lost to the wind. He backed through the crowd, then turned from the scene of the chaos, and began a slow stride back down the street to where he had parked his car. His grey hair was cropped short, and he bore not even a limp from his seemingly advanced age. Eat, sleep, drink, and know nothing about your world. Deny all you see, and don’t bother to try to explain it outside the framework of your silly beliefs, he thought . His car was ahead, the old Cadillac he had picked up at a used car lot only a few days earlier—steel gray, this one, perfectly suited to his needs. He’d driven it down in the morning, when he’d heard the report that the safe house had gone offline. The drive was terrible, as all drives were, but it was necessary. As I knew it would be when I originated Operation Stanchion .
He felt for the key in his pocket, felt the loose jangle of the change, and suddenly he knew he was not alone. There were presences all around him, familiar in their intent. The police were just around the corner— but far enough away that it won’t matter . He felt himself tense slightly, and smiled. What a fine opportunity , he thought. He let his fingers go slack around the keys and turned, leaning his back against the car. “Hello,” he said, his voice sounding normal to himself, but probably drawing the same confusion from the youths that surrounded him as his accent seemed to with everyone else that he encountered on his trip. “It’s a fine night for a walk, isn’t it?”
“I was just thinking that,” said the young man in front of him who wore a chain from his nose to his ear. His head was shaven clean, his skin a pale sort of cream, along with the two boys who flanked him on either side. “I was thinking that if you gave me your car keys and your wallet, you could just keep walking.” Tattoos on their necks caught the old man’s interest and he cocked his head at an angle to look closer.
“You are bold,” the old man said, keeping his hands folded one over the other in front of him, “with the police in force just around the corner.”
“They’ll never get here in time.” There was almost a sneer in the young man’s face. “Even if they heard you.” Behind the bravado, the sneer, the old man could sense the faintest hesitation. A broken nose, then .
The young fellow at the front turned to say something to his comrades. The old man smiled, and was already moving as the head began to swivel back at the sight of motion. The impact sent the young tough to the ground, hands slapping the pavement, catching him. His mouth was open, a thick stream of blood already coating his upper lip, dribbling down his face as he looked up at his attacker. “As you said,” the old man repeated, “they’ll never get here in time.”
The two youths that were still standing began to move, but they were too slow; the older man’s methodical motions were gone now, replaced with a fluid grace as he spun into a low kick that swept the legs of the thug on the right, sending his head cracking against the asphalt and followed that with a punch that fractured the skull of the one on the left. The older man returned to his position, leaning against the car, taking a deep breath of the night air, feeling the vigor return to his joints in a way that the walk hadn’t been able to restore.
“Let me tell you something,” the old man said to the young leader, the only one of the three still conscious, “because I like to aid people in their transitions. Your life, short and pitiful as it is, will be even shorter and more pitiful should you keep walking the route you are. It’s a path fraught with peril, not to be trod lightly upon, and even less so by one as mortal as you.” The old man looked down, and saw a quivering lip, the young man watching him frozen, as though the cold had claimed him. “If I were you—which I am not, and never would wish to be—I would go a different way, because a short life is much less preferable to a long one, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Y-yes.” The reply was mumbled and stuttered, some rare combination of nerves and pain.
“Good, I’m glad we sorted that out.” The old man leaned down. “I look at you and I see someone who could still live long, at least for your people, should you cease this pointless, circuitous route of jail and robberies and beatings and eventually murder. That would be a shame, even for one with as little potential as you.” The old man stood, and felt for his keys again, his hand sliding against the fleece of his old coat, the skin feeling thin as paper agains
t the wind. “Good luck in your transition, should you choose to make it. I can show you the door, but you must walk through it yourself.”
With that, the older man unlocked the car and eased in, shutting the door behind him. He looked out the window, saw the little cloud of fog gather on the glass from his breath, and saw the face beyond it, a scared young man, his nose broken, humiliated by a man who looked at least four times his age. An easy mark . The old man smiled. Not so easy. Not such a mark. Never have been . He started the car, fumbling the key slightly in the ignition, and reached into the old, faux leather armrest. He pulled out a new cell phone, a disposable one that he’d bought in a chain store only a few days earlier, then pulled a small 3 x 5 index card out along with it, and dialed a number. This time, I remember .
The female voice answered at the other end of the line, peppy for it being so early in the morning there. “This is Portal, extension 4736, please.” He waited a moment before the connection was made, and the voice on the other end of the line sounded groggy. “Bjorn has been taken. Stanchion moves to phase two.” He paused, waiting for a response. “No, I was supposed to get extension 4763…well, just forget what I said, will you? Connect me to the operator.”
He sighed as he heard the familiar ring again, of the call being connected. “Let’s try this again,” he said as the female voice picked up. “Message for extension 4763…Stanchion proceeds to phase two. Will advise. Janus out.”
He pressed the end key and replayed his words again. “Dammit! I meant Portal. Portal out.” He shook his head, teeth clenched. “Shit.”
10.
Sienna
“Her memory seems to be…selectively gone,” I told Old Man Winter and Ariadne, standing in his office before the massive stone desk. The smell of the plaster and dust that coated me was still there, now evident to my nose because of the thoughts my brain was fixed on, of what had happened in Iowa, of how we had failed. Of how I had failed. “You told me once before that when she heals someone too much, she loses memory…”
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