“And Madigan?” I asked, nodding to the room where I had last seen her, up to her ankles in a wading pool. “Was she a distraction, too?”
Janus chortled. “Well, let us put it this way…it would seem that you and your fellows have a taste for herring—in red, at least.”
“Wild goose chases?” I asked. “You’ve been sending me to…what, Iowa? To Bloomington to fight your people? Why? Because they needed their asses kicked and you’re too old to do it yourself?”
“Certainly a little humility is good for the soul,” he said, with a smile, “but no, I wasn’t trying to keep you off balance for that reason. It’s a much simpler one. While you were chasing the three metas I dangled in front of your nose to keep you busy, you weren’t noticing the fifty I snuck into the country through alternative means.” He waved a hand around him. “And now they are all here.”
The chill covered me from his words. Fifty metas could level the Directorate campus to the ground. What little army the Directorate had left had zero chance against fifty metas, even if their only power was their super strength, speed, reflexes…“And what are you going to do with your fifty metas?”
Janus smiled again, this one less patronizing, and it faded just as quickly as it came. “I’m going to do exactly what you think I’m going to do with them.
“I’m going to destroy the Directorate. Permanently.”
24.
“You said you weren’t going to kill anyone.” I felt a quiver run through me and down the gunbarrel. I looked over it at Janus, calm, cool, composed, and watched him smile again.
“I’m not going to kill anyone, nor allow anyone to intentionally come to harm, not today,” Janus said, cupping his hands one over the other. “I don’t need to. Destroying the Directorate isn’t a matter of killing someone, or everyone. I’m going to destroy your campus—just as I’m destroying every other Directorate campus in North America, even as we speak—and I’m going to leave your people with a warning that the next time you cross Omega, then,” he said, and the smile vanished, leaving me cold, “then I will begin the killing.”
“And you made such a point of differentiating yourself from the people who sent Wolfe, and Henderschott, and Fries,” I looked at him with a kind of feigned disappointment. “You’re not any different.”
“Oh, but I am,” he said, and the smile returned. “I don’t like killing. But that doesn’t mean I hesitate to employ it when necessary. The company you keep has thwarted us on several occasions—our Primus would, of course, like you to come with me, but he’s been convinced now of the importance of gaining your cooperation, making you understand your importance, your place in things to come. I’m not threatening you. I come to you openhanded—delivering a message by destroying your organization, true, but not out of malice for you, rather for what your organization has done.” His face darkened. “You have no idea what damage you’ve allowed by letting Andromeda escape, by getting her killed. The new guard was content to give your Directorate a slap on the wrist by wiping your agents out until you did that. Once Andromeda went loose,” he said with a quiet shake of his head, “it was…how do you say it? All bets were off.”
“What is it about that girl?” I asked. “What is it about her that has you so…has everybody so…edgy?”
“Andromeda was the future,” Janus said. “That project was our hope, our weapon, our chance to defeat an enemy monstrous in their application of force. I know you’ve heard it said that there is a storm coming, that you’ve heard others tell you of the threat to us, to all of us, and I am here to tell you that it’s only partially true. Humans are safe; they have little to fear from what comes. For now, at least. The Directorate is not our enemy, you see, they were but a buzzing fly. And you know what you do to a fly, yes?”
“Please say catch them with honey,” I said. “Because I’m getting tired of this manure.”
“This is more like vinegar,” he said. “The truth always is. I laid the trail for you myself, so you could see I went to Shenzen after the murder of the Chinese metas. They were wiped out, to the last. The government soldiers guarding them were all killed, or rendered so useless of mind and body as to be unwhole human beings for the rest of their lives. India was no different, and even now, across Africa, and the rest of Asia, it continues, the extermination, the destruction of our race—on a smaller scale, one at a time, because there are no cloisters there.” He looked grim now, deadly serious, “and it will spread, and grow, across all the continents, until the last of us are dead and in our graves. They who perpetrate this? They…are our enemy. Your Directorate is nothing more than a fly that I have had to take a month out of my schedule to swat. After tomorrow, I won’t think of your Directorate again. I will only think of you, and I will be waiting for the day when you join us, as surely you must.”
I laughed, at his face, from fifteen feet away. “You think I’ll join you? You’re talking about destroying my home, threatening my friends with death if we don’t disband, and you think I’ll…what? Come find you in six months asking if I can join your special club?”
He gave me a noncommittal shrug. “I’d be surprised if it’s more than a month. But then, I know things that you don’t.”
“I.Will. Never. Join. You.” I let each word come out with emphasis, and I re-centered my pistol on him, cocking it. “But I’m going to put you in a cell now, then I’m going to get to work checking out how many metas you actually brought with you—”
“Check your phone,” he said, with that little bit of a smile, and I forgot I was still holding it. “No tricks, I’m not compelling you to do anything, just suggesting that there might be information that you don’t yet have.” He smiled enigmatically.
I pulled the phone up after a moment of wrestling with my mind over whether I should. I thumbed the messages and the next came up, this one from J.J.:
Over fifty, REPEAT, over fifty enemy metas presently in continental United States based on analysis of passport batches.
I looked up and saw that smile, and I didn’t know whether to scream or put a bullet in him. “The case for letting you live while I’ve got fifty other metas to deal with is not one based on logic.” I faltered. “How did you know about the message?”
“Mmm,” Janus said, cringing, “now, you see, this is where the truth is really going to hurt.” He held up a hand and slowly put it in his pocket, bringing it out with a cell phone identical to mine.
“Looks like a Directorate phone,” I said. “What, did you hack it? Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head in amusement. “I’m nowhere near clever enough to manage that. No, it was given to me by one of your own.” He flipped it over, and the sight of the pink otter box case gave me a shudder. “Come out,” he called, “she knows it’s you, now.”
The door to his left slid open, the one to the room we had all stood in while watching Clary and Old Man Winter interrogate Madigan. Other doors slid open, too, the one to Bjorn’s cell, and Madigan’s, and behind Janus, so did Fries’. My eyes weren’t on any of them.
My eyes were on Kat Forrest, who strode out of the watchroom in a dark blue jumpsuit, her hair pulled back, and wearing an impish smile that didn’t fit the demure, quiet girl I had known for almost the entire time I’d been at the Directorate. “You?” I asked. “You betrayed us, Kat?”
“I’m not Kat,” she said with a sour smile, one that truly reminded me of a cheerleader, all sneer and no sweetness. “I’m Klementina—or as near to it as you’ll get.”
I felt the stir of Aleksandr Gavrikov in the back of my head and ignored him. “You still had a human personality when I saw you a couple days ago,” I said, drawing a bead on her as she took position at Janus’s side.
“Oh, Sienna,” she said with a slight laugh, “don’t act so wounded. I don’t remember you coming to visit me in the medical unit after you brought me in; unless I missed it, being absent as I was the last day or so. I still remember the things Kat r
emembered, the things that weren’t lost while I was trying to save your life, Reed’s life…” she let her voice drop precipitously, “…Scott’s life.”
I felt a sour taste in my mouth, a bitterness. “We were friends.”
“Don’t friggin’ kid yourself,” she said, and there was none of Kat’s sweetness there. “We were never friends.”
“Klementina, dear,” Janus said as she rubbed up against him in a manner that 1) I was sure was meant to make me vomit and 2) would have been really appropriate for ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE, EVER, “would you kindly let James, Bjorn and Eleanor out of their cages?”
“Leave them right where they are, Kat,” I said, pulling tighter on the trigger, “or I will spread your treacherous, forgetting brain all over the wall behind you.”
“Mmm,” Janus said, pondering me. “I think not. You have a gentle heart, and are as yet unsullied by the cruelties of the world. I don’t think you’ll be killing anyone. We haven’t threatened you, we mean you no harm, nor any of your fellows.”
“You’re destroying the Directorate,” I said, “and you’ve been planning to kill Old Man Winter.”
“I could not care less about Erich,” Janus said with a wave. “I’m sure he’ll continue to live a long and bitter life even after you’ve joined us.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said, as Kat started to move. “Don’t push me, Klementina. It’s been kind of a rough day.”
“It’s been a succession of rough days,” Janus said, gesturing for her to move on, “but let us not cloud the issue. You are not going to kill anyone.”
“I killed Wolfe,” I said, almost snarling, trying to reassure myself. “I killed her brother. And your pet vampires.”
“Yes, but you didn’t know what you were doing when you killed Wolfe,” Janus said, “and you killed Aleksandr to save a city. Laudable, I would say. Noble, even. And let us not fool ourselves…those vampires were nothing approaching human, not really, and had not been human for a thousand years or more. You are not a murderer, Sienna.” I saw the tilt of his eyes to something approaching sadness. “When it comes down to it…we are not threatening you. We mean you no harm. And you are not willing to do what would be necessary to keep us all here.”
“And that is?” I said, my voice cracking as Kat emerged from the cell behind Janus, Fries in tow, his hands freed.
“Kill us all,” Janus said as Bjorn emerged from the cell to his left and Kat unlocked the handcuffs that bound his wrists. Then she disappeared into Madigan’s cell.
“Nice to see you again, Sienna,” Fries said, still a little bruised from his encounter with Eve. “I’m sure we’ll meet again.”
I felt a cold anger cut through me as Madigan emerged from the cell, freed, leaving wet footprints on the tile with every step she took. I waved the gun at them impotently as Janus took the first steps toward me. “Excuse us,” he said gently brushing past me. Bjorn went by next, a glare from on high, his flat face contorted with anger. His arm had returned, though it looked a little smaller than the other. Madigan came next, then Kat, giving me a cool look as she passed, and I knew by looking in her eyes that Kat was gone, that Klementina was all that was left. No , a voice whispered deep inside me, that is not Klementina, either .
“You know,” Fries said, passing by me last, “I always knew you didn’t have it in you to hurt me.” My gun rested at my side, but I felt it twitch in my hand. “It’s the chemistry, you know, between us, the magnetism. You can feel it, can’t you? The irresistible pull—”
I raised the gun and fired, the flash lighting the entire hallway, blinding me for a beat as Fries screamed and fell to the ground. “Sorry, gun just went off. Must have been your magnetism that drew the bullet irresistibly to you.”
His face was contorted with pain. “You shot me…in the ass!”
“It was tough not to. You’re all ass.”
He made another little screech and grunt of pain as Janus and the others peered at me from down the hall. “Sienna,” Janus said, “that was unnecessary.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, and stepped back from Fries as Bjorn took a few steps toward the incubus, “it was fun.”
Janus gave a half-hearted shake of the head, then motioned for Bjorn to pick up Fries, which he did. “This isn’t the end, Sienna,” Fries said.
“Well, it was your end,” I said. “Next time I see you, though, I think I’ll aim for the crotch.”
“You bitch,” he breathed as Bjorn carried him into the stairwell, “I won’t forget this!”
“Neither will I,” I promised, “because seeing you writhe in pain has been just about the highlight of my week.”
Janus remained as the last of them disappeared up the staircase. “Do not forget—we will be destroying your dormitory in only a few minutes. Do get all your people out in time, all right?” He took a few steps closer to me, but paused, just out of arm’s reach. “I know you don’t care for what I’m telling you, for what I’ve done to you, but you’ll see in time that you and I have the same goals. I want to protect and save the metas of this world from what comes for them. The only difference between Omega and you is that we are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve our aims.” He smiled simply. “And you are not—yet.”
“I will never be like you,” I said, feeling it all come out at once. “Great intentions, huh? Yeah, I’ve heard that before. Doing it all for a greater good, for your own good? Heard that before, too. Sounds a lot like my mother…just before she’d slam the door and lock me in a metal sarcophagus.”
Janus gave a slight shrug of the shoulders. “Perhaps she did. Perhaps she was protecting you all along from the things that would hunt you, the things that would hurt you, the things that would use you.”
“I think she was protecting me from you,” I said coldly.
He gave a nod of acknowledgment. “There are worse things than us, though I’m sure you don’t see it that way. Again, yet. I wish you well, Sienna Nealon. When next we meet is entirely in your hands.”
“How about never?” I asked as he turned to walk away. “Never works well for me.”
“Never say never,” Janus said, taking hold of the railing of the staircase as he took his first step. He walked up them one by one, taking his time, not looking back. “Never is a very, very long time, and frankly…you don’t know what will happen tomorrow that might change your mind.”
25.
I ran down the hall, to the other staircase on the opposite side of the building, the darkness at the end of the hallway enveloping me. The thought that Omega wasn’t here to kill anyone overwhelmed me, and I shuddered to think under what circumstances he might have convinced me to join him, now or in the future. He seemed so sure, and with every word he had said, my certainty grew less and less, until I was left to defend by anger that which I wasn’t sure I even had a defensible position for. I could feel the fury burning inside me, an almost physical reaction, as though I were having heartburn. The still air in the headquarters drove me mad as I dashed up the lighted staircase.
An emergency exit waited on the landing and I pushed through it, felt the resistance against my arms as I opened it and stepped out into the cold. At least five buildings were burning in my field of vision as my feet stepped off the concrete path. The night air was frigid, and I felt it seep through the cracks of my clothing, through the bottom of my jacket to where my shirt had come untucked in all the running, biting at the skin around my belly as I ran off toward the darkened dormitory, the glass and concrete reflecting the fires of the buildings burning all around like some sort of window into hell.
I didn’t see Janus or his party, even though they had (I assumed) exited out the front of the building. Perhaps they were lingering in the lobby, perhaps they had other plans. Either way, I ran for the dormitory. I threw open the glass door when I got there, and saw shadowed faces huddled in the entry; Kurt was up front, his electric-shock cannon in his hands. “Time to leave,” I said, winded from my run.
“What the hell is happening here?” he asked.
“Omega is destroying the campus,” I said, hands on my knees. “You need to get the students out of here. Head for the woods, and don’t get near any of the buildings that are still standing.” I felt a certain grimness as I said it. “They won’t be for long.”
Kurt looked around, his fat face turning on his wad of a bullfrog-like chin. He just looked stunned, unbelieving. “Where am I supposed to go after that?”
“Clear the damned campus,” I said, “worry about the rest later.”
He seemed to freeze like that, and then, haltingly, came back to motion. “All right, everyone,” he shouted, turning back to the few metas behind him, “we’re getting the hell outta here. Follow me, we’re heading to the fence at the edge of campus.”
I saw a flash of movement behind me, and heard a shout of warning from a face in the crowd before I saw what was coming. The glass shattered, exploding in a hail, little shards dragging across my cheek and forehead as I hurried to cover my face with my hands. I tried to look out but something dark and shadowed hit me, knocking me through the freestanding directory posted in the middle of the lobby. I burst through it, feeling the plastic break on both sides as I crashed into the cafeteria wall. My arm hurt to even move, though I fought through the pain, trying to get to my feet.
An enormous shadow stepped through the Sienna-sized hole in the sign, breaking it apart and sending it clattering to the ground. “Hello, Cookie,” came the voice from the hulking mass of Bjorn, “I was talking to Fries and we don’t really like the fact that you’re just gonna walk away from this after humiliating both of us the way you did.”
I pushed off the wall and tottered on my feet, feeling my balance return, my equilibrium coming back after a world-ending sucker punch. “Oh?” I knew I was dazed, needed to buy a moment of time. A repartee such as “Oh?” was not going to do it. “Well, I don’t think your boss is going to be terribly happy with your line of thinking here.” I blinked, trying to figure out what to say. “If he ever is. I’m guessing you’re not the kind of guy who gets paid to think.”
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