“It’s relevant to me; he’s really annoying sometimes—”
Janus’s expression darkened. “I meant to our discussion.”
I rolled my eyes. “Try living with three former employees of Omega in your head. I swear, the only thing I have more of than former Omega employees is former Directorate ones.” I went on, feeling a little like a gossip. “And Gavrikov! Do you know he never shuts up about your stupid girlfriend?”
“You want Winter,” Janus said, his voice straining to get us back on topic even as he seemed to be trying to keep emotion off his face, “I can give you assistance in killing him. But there will be a price.”
“Why don’t you just tell me where he is and call it a … present.” I smiled. “Like a goodwill present to make up for all the shit you’ve put me through.”
His expression turned to pitying. “Let us call him what he really is—leverage. A motivator for you to begin going through the actions it will take to convince you that Omega is the sole force fighting to preserve meta-humans from the impending calamity that Century is bringing.”
I felt a tug at his words. “I don’t care about Century. About any of that.” Liar, liar, Zack said quietly in my head.
“No?” He stared coolly back at me, and let a hand go to one of his pockets, smoothing it shut. “I find it hard to believe that somewhere, beneath that … hard-edged exterior you carry around you, that there is not a care present at all for your fellow man—and woman, I suppose they would say nowadays.”
“I care about paying back Winter.” I let the knife edge in my voice reflect the emotions I had beneath the surface. “I want him to die for what he did to me. You give me him, and I’ll help fight your little war.”
He hesitated, thinking over his next line, and I caught a hint of pity. “It is a war that belongs to all of us, I think. I hope in time you will see the truth of that.”
“So long as I see Erich Winter’s head on a pike first.”
Janus gave me a low nod, but his shoulders seemed a little more slumped than when he had come in. “Very well. I will set our intelligence gathering in motion to track him down. But,” he said wagging a finger at me, “it will be some time before we venture off to get him, even if we were to locate him tomorrow. That is the bargain—you will come with me, see our efforts. I tell you this so there is no misunderstanding. You see our work, what we do, and in three months, I will give you Erich Winter. Can you agree to that?”
“Will I find him without you?” I asked sarcastically.
He shook his head. “I think not. He has not survived for thousands of years through countless feuds among our fickle and murderous people by stupidly walking into danger.” He waited in silence for a moment before speaking again, as though hoping I would leap into the conversation to answer before he had to ask the question. “Will you come with me to London?”
“Please do,” Fries said with a low moan.
I gave it a long thought; there was a strong disagreement in my head. I don’t just mean that I was internally at war; I mean that Wolfe, Gavrikov and Bjorn were enthusiastically supportive of the idea of me going to London—to meet with Omega, to pursue revenge—while the other voices, Kappler, Bastian and Zack, were somewhat more reluctant. It was like being in the middle of a shouting match, and I could barely make out all the different arguments being made in my head, just the general tone.
“Will you come with me?” Janus asked again, and the cacophony died down.
I stared at him for a long moment as I went through all the options. “Yes,” I said, and there was a chorus of disharmony in my head at the decision. “I don’t see any other way to get what I want, so yes.” I listened in particular to one voice, one that I almost had to strain to hear behind the other, louder ones, but it was there. Zack. My love.
Watch your back.
Chapter 3
The flight was crowded, full to the brimming, actually, but it was direct from Minneapolis to London, and so I couldn’t complain about that. The sterile air in the plane was dry, and I felt it cause my nose to dry out with it, as if I had inhaled a desert into my nostrils. The guy next to me was on the wrong side of thirty with earrings in both ears and sandals—sandals! In Minnesota. In winter. Try to figure that one out. He was dressed like the kind of guy who would go around calling everyone “bro” but probably let it slide into “brah.” He also rudely hogged the entire armrest on that side in spite of my efforts to find a place to rest my elbow, thus pushing me into the overlarge woman in a black suit who sat to my right. She wore a sleeping mask, had five different pillows stationed about her body for comfort, and had been lightly snoring since takeoff.
It was my first flight, and I didn’t know anything about flight etiquette, but as the person in the middle with no armrest and her hand (and stump) folded across her chest, I was about ready to unleash some of my fury by throwing my elbows outward. Unfortunately, that would kill my seatmates which, I sensed, would please no one but Wolfe. Perhaps it would please me. The pain that my hand was causing as it grew back was staggering, and a few times I bit back the urge to beat someone to death from both that as well as garden-variety annoyance with the whole situation.
The dull blue pleather seatback was stretched in front of me after I lowered the grey tray table to let my hand and half-hand rest on it for a change. I inhaled the dry air, taking a sip of the cup of water the flight attendant had brought me a few minutes earlier, trying to contain my annoyance at being mushed by the guy I called Brah and the Sleeper. Janus had wisely booked himself into first class using his corporate advantages. I hadn’t complained at the time, but I certainly was prepared to give him an earful upon landing. I let the low thrum of the engines carry me off to sleep.
I stepped off the plane some nine hours after takeoff at Heathrow airport. In truth, it didn’t look dramatically different from what I had left behind, save for the boring, by-the-numbers hallways that took me to customs with Janus trailing somewhere behind.
I had gone home before meeting Janus at the airport and packed clothes. I had a spare passport under the name Sienna Clarke that I flashed at the area of customs where there were signs referring to it as the UK Border. I wondered at that, since it seemed to me I was well within the country at this point, but it wasn’t really my place to argue the semantics of national borders.
The clerk stared blandly at me for a few moments. “Purpose of visit?” he asked.
“Tourism,” I answered, and he gave a sort of half-shrug and waved me on after handing back my passport.
I met Janus in the terminal near the baggage claim area. I had nothing to pick up, but he stood there in his tweed suit coat, waiting expectantly around a silver steel merry-go-round composed of segmented belts. He flashed me a sideways look. “This is where we part ways for a bit.”
I looked back at him in disbelief. “Huh, what? I just got here.”
“Indeed you did,” Janus said. “And you are most welcome to go to our headquarters, if you’d like—”
I changed to a glare of annoyance. “I’d very much NOT like.”
He gave a simple nod. “As I suspected. I am not presently going to our headquarters; I am going to take a taxi and visit Klementina before I return to working on Omega business tomorrow morning.” He ignored my look of distaste. “Therefore, we part ways here. We have booked a hotel for you in the city, and I have a bit of pocket money for you to spend.” He handed me a wad of twenty-pound notes. “I will meet you tomorrow morning for breakfast in your hotel lobby. Ah.” He reached down and swept a small suitcase off the luggage conveyor in front of him.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I asked. “It’s—” I looked at the clock hanging high above us from a wall, “—it’s not even noon here yet.”
He looked unworried as he began to roll his bag away, toward a sign that indicated taxi service. “Take the London Underground to the Russell Station stop.” He indicated the wad of bills he’d handed me. “There are directions to your
hotel on a paper note with the bills. Go on a sightseeing tour, see a film at the cinema, whatever you want.” He shrugged. “You are here visiting, and thus in charge of your own time. Enjoy it.” With that, he turned and began to walk away again.
I watched him go, feeling only the slightest edge, some irritation, but beneath it was the real driver of my present emotion. I looked to either side of me. There were crowds of people jockeying along the baggage carousels, while others breezed past me, bringing their own intoxicating mixture of smells and sight, their clothing ranging from the bright to the dim. The sound was loud, the chatter of a thousand voices. I watched Janus leave and felt the little tether between us that I hadn’t even been aware of dissolve.
I was alone again—but this time in a land I knew nearly nothing about.
Chapter 4
I found the entrance to the London Underground without much difficulty. Signs were clearly posted, and helpful employees seemed to be stationed at the sticky points to help me through. I managed to procure a ticket for Russell Square’s tube station from a finicky machine that didn’t immediately want to accept the first note I fed into it. After it finally acceded and spat out a ticket, I made my way through the gates and waited in a big, open, tiled space that was like a cylinder laid on its side. Within the cylinder was another, this one cut into the ground in front of me and stretching off to my right and left, tracks running down the bottom of the channel. As I was looking from the edge of the platform, I felt a stir of air begin to blow from my right, out of the blackness that I knew would eventually spit out the train I was waiting for. I caught a whiff of that same filtered air that was so prevalent on the plane, but this was cooler somehow, less dry. It sent a tingle over my flesh as I took a step back from the edge of the platform.
A few seconds later, lights appeared in the dark and a train of red and silver burst forth, sliding at high speed along the tracks to come to rest in front of us. I lost count of how many cars were hooked end to end on it. A few people came out when the doors opened, more entering with me as I hesitantly walked inside. I carried my small duffel bag over my shoulder, my right hand clamped tightly on the strap.
It was hard not to feel out of place as I sat down on one of the vacant, padded, dark blue cloth-covered seats. The air was a little musty, and I heard a high-pitched whine as the train began to move. I looked around the car and saw that it was mostly couples traveling together on the train with me. A few serious looking passengers in business attire were sprinkled in as well, suitcases on rollers trailing behind them. I reached into my bag and popped a piece of mint chewing gum into my mouth to counteract the taste of bad breath I’d acquired after a nine-hour flight that included two in-flight meals.
Brightly colored ads were crammed above the windows, fighting for my attention with the flickering blackness outside that was broken whenever we passed a light. Part of me wanted to count the stops; another didn’t care. I looked at the map across from me; I didn’t even know how many stops on this line there were between me and Russell Square, but I knew it was a lot.
After just one more stop, the world opened up outside the windows as we came out into the light and the train began to run along a surface track. It was a sunny day in London. I recalled reading as a child that sunshine wasn’t the most common state of weather in London, especially not in November. I knew from the weather warning upon landing that it wasn’t terribly cold, either; in fact, it was somewhat unseasonably warm. I looked out the window and saw a sky tinged with scattered clouds, but a gorgeous blue was visible beyond them with the sun shining overhead.
After another stop, I stood, leaving my comfy padded blue seat behind and taking up position next to one of the overhead hanging rails near a door. I couldn’t stand sitting anymore, not after the long flight, and based on the slow progress through the first few stations, I estimated it would take over an hour to get me to my station. When we reached the next stop, the doors opened and the stale train air was replaced with a smooth breeze from outside, with just a hint of warmth from the sun under the bite of the wind.
I looked out over the suburban cityscape. Houses with red-tiled roofs covered the land as far as I could see, broken only by the trees and occasional commercial buildings that filled these towns. I wondered how far off London itself was, how long it would be before the London Underground truly took me back under the ground, into the dark, and far away from the beauty of this moment that seemed frozen in time.
“You should have been here with me for this,” I whispered as the train doors shut with a squeak and a hiss. “It should have been on our list.”
Sorry, babe, Zack said. I wish I was there, too. But I’m with you in … His voice in my head hesitated before finishing with enough amusement to cut through the graveness of the thought, … spirit.
“Not funny,” I muttered. There was a weight on my heart as I stared out the window, the houses just past the station blurring as we began to move. Soon we were back underground again, the darkness around the train swallowing me up, the flickering of the lights overhead causing the whole compartment to go dark for a moment.
I felt a tug of something before the lights went back on, a person behind me, a hand in my bag, another in my back pocket. It was the lightest sort of touch, something expert, something I shouldn’t have felt. But I did, as if a tingling feeling was coursing over my body in the places where I felt the abnormal pull on my jeans and the tightness of the bag’s strap on my shoulder as it moved ever so slightly.
I whirled without thinking and slapped my newly regrown hand down on the one in my pocket, then put my other on the one that was in my bag. The lights came back on and I stared into wide eyes; a guy, a little older than me, a little taller, dark hair, and a mustache that was waxed at the ends. He was not terribly bad looking in a way that made me want to only drain him to within an inch of his life instead of taking it entirely. Looks used to count more for me, but my prior experience in relationships was going to cause me to cut him a lot less slack than he might have gotten a year earlier.
“Damn,” he said mildly in a deep Irish lilt, an easy grin breaking across his face, though he still looked a little flummoxed, “never had that happen before.” I maintained my firm grip on his wrists, and he didn’t struggle. He gave me a wink. “Can’t blame a lad for trying, though, can you?”
“I can not only blame you for trying,” I said, clutching onto him, “I can make you suffer for it.”
He cringed. “Ah, lass, not the forgiving type, are you?” The last word came out sounding like “ye” when he said it. “That’s all right.” His eyes flicked to his right. “This is my stop anyway.”
The train began to slow and he snapped my grip around his wrists, much faster than a human could have done it. He reeled his arms back toward him and backed to the door a step. He looked at me a little warily and I saw him blink away a little lightheadedness as he looked at me, perplexed. His little move would have sent a human flying across the compartment. I didn’t break eye contact with him, didn’t take a step back; my balance and strength kept me in place, feet spread in a ready stance.
Adrenaline coursed through my veins and there was a little thrill of excitement within—whether from one of my ghostly accomplices or myself, I couldn’t say—at the prospect of a fight. I tightened my hands into fists and watched the Irishman catch his balance, his pale skin, mustache, and two days of beard growth giving him a shadowed look as he snapped into a fighting stance of his own. It was looser, less martial arts, more boxing, and he gave me a little juke as though the mere threat of it could get me to back away. I caught a hint of sadness in his eyes and a dullness that told me he was still feeling the effects of my prolonged touch from holding his wrists only a moment earlier. I knew that he was a meta; I wondered if he had figured the same out about me.
“I don’t think you know what you’re getting into, little lady.” He raised his hands in front of his face like a boxer, as though he were going to throw a jab. His
eyes flicked right again. The train was slowing; the station wasn’t far off.
“Right back at you, Irish,” I said and threw a jab that breezed past his defense, popping him in the nose. I heard the crack of the cartilage; I don’t throw weak punches. His eyes crossed as he looked back at me and adjusted his defenses as he staggered from the force of my hit. For my part, I grinned and hit him again, this time in the cheek. His head crashed into the steel frame of the carriage door.
He tilted his head as he regarded me carefully, watching for my next move even as he tried to clear his head. “Canadian?”
“American.”
“Shoulda known. So violent!” He bounced off the doors and took a swipe at me that I dodged. “Gah,” his words slurred, “of all the times for luck to fail me.”
I punched him in the jaw, holding back just a little. “It does not appear that fortune is with you today.”
With that he sagged against the door, mouth open and dripping blood. “You noticed that too, eh? I’d always heard she was a finicky bitch, but I never had cause to believe it ’til now.” He held up his hands in surrender. I hit him again, in the nose then the gut and let him drop to the ground. “I effing surrender, all right!” he said from the floor, slapping the ground as though he were tapping out of a wrestling match. “In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t actually get my hands on your wallet or any of your personal belongings—”
“You had your hand in my back pocket,” I said. If he moved in any way I deemed dangerous, he’d be the recipient of one my kicks to the side of his head. It might not kill him, but luck would have to be on his side or I’d have to be feeling incredibly charitable. The jury was out on whether either of those would come to his aid. “That’s a highly inappropriate way to touch a stranger.”
“I assure you,” he said, adjusting his nose back into place with a crack, “I did not actually touch you at all; not your posterior, not anything else. I was reaching for your wallet, but apparently you felt the little bit of pull on the outside of your pocket because most of the time I can keep from touching the person at all as I’m nicking their stuff.” He adjusted himself on the floor of the car and leaned back against the doors as we surged to a stop in the station.
Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book Seven Page 2