I stared at her. “This once?”
“Yeah, just this once,” Cassidy said, looking right at me. “Because this time, it gave me a chance to explain myself, acquaint you with what I’ve got going on here. You’ve had a chance to look around, I told you what I’m up to, and I gave you a little freebie to make the medicine slide down smoother.”
“What … medicine?” Scott asked, looking around as though the walls were going to come closing in.
“I could help you in the future,” Cassidy said, twirling in her chair. “This is kind of a sample. Audition, if you will. But it’s not going to be free next time. It’s going to cost you. A lot. A prohibitive lot, which is why generally only governments that have control of entire economies can afford to hire me. So you’re probably not going to want to do that unless you’re truly desperate, because this …” She waved a hand in front of her pasty, skinny self, “… this don’t come cheap. Also—”
She stopped as a klaxon wailed through the room, and spun back around to the computer, tapping at the keys.
“Also, what?” Reed asked, eyeing the flashing lights in the corner, but apparently not deterred enough by them to get off his point.
“Blah blah blah,” Cassidy said, half-distracted as she focused her attention on the enormous computer monitor, “I was just going to idly threaten you by reminding you of what happened this time in case you got the bright idea to try and force my compliance in the future. This is stage one,” she waved a hand in the direction of the traps. “The gentlest stage. Subsequent stages feature confinements that very definitely skirt the edges of Minnesota and federal law on harming trespassers, so … let’s not ever explore those options, okay? Wait—what the hell?”
“What the hell what?” I slid up next to her, looking at her monitor, which was a blur of computer code.
Jamal squeezed up on the other side and started to put his hand up to the computer, but Cassidy slapped it away like a mom trying to keep a kid from snatching up an unasked-for sweet. “Read, don’t touch,” she said and focused back in on the screen as nonsensical strings blazed down way faster than I could make sense of them.
Jamal did just that, ignoring the slapped hand, and craned his neck down, eyeballs looking like they were going to shoot right out of his head. “Is this legit?”
“I think so …” Cassidy said, still typing feverishly. “Trying to get confirmation through local sources, you know, stuff that’s not blindingly illegal to hack and—oof. Yeah. Someone’s got a camera phone with my app installed on the 50th floor of the US Bank building.” She did a few keystrokes, and the screen fuzzed, the little wheel spinning as it tried to load something.
“What the hell is going on?” Reed asked, coming up behind Cassidy and standing over her shoulder, staring at the loading screen.
“There’s a report of a radiological event in East Los Angeles,” Jamal said as the video started, blurry at first, but resolving into a cityscape. I recognized LA after a couple seconds while the picture got clearer, and sure enough—
“That’s a mushroom cloud,” Scott said, easing up next to me and pointing a thick finger at the screen.
“Yes, that’s what a radiological event is,” Cassidy said with obvious impatience, still typing. “Trying to get something closer …” She threw the live feed into the corner of the wide monitor as the mushroom cloud continued to rise over the city of Los Angeles, a fearful sight in the midst of the second largest metropolis in the United States.
“Ooh, got one a block away,” Cassidy said, and another loading video screen popped up live, coming up more quickly this time. It went through the blurry stage quickly, showing us a street view of a city street, smoke wafting up and pieces of paper and debris floating down in the dust.
Up the street, closer to the cloud, I could see the bright yellow of a Mexican restaurant with all its windows blown out. A couple figures were visible in the haze, staggering, one thin and one large, making their way out of the cloud, the grey haze growing clearer with every step.
The big one emerged first, coughing, shaking, his chest swollen to comically large proportions. There was something about his gait, the way he moved, that seemed really familiar—
“That’s a Hercules,” Reed said, staring at the screen. He jolted upright. “Do you think that’s—”
He didn’t even get a chance to get it out before the second figure, female, smaller, came staggering out of the cloud of dust and fallout. It should have been obvious when he saw the glow, but now it was blindingly so—
The woman who emerged from the mushroom cloud was on fire, chest and legs covered, her hair aflame, but none of it appearing to consume her one bit. Instead it was like a bodysuit, protecting her from the dust and the elements.
She shoved the big Hercules clear and then stumbled herself, probably suffering from radiation sickness that even she hadn’t been able shake off just yet.
“Sienna,” Reed said, closing his eyes, his chin almost touching his chest, as the holder of the cameraphone shouted the same conclusion he’d come to.
“That’s Sienna Nealon!” the voice came, excited and fearful all at once. “And she just blew up East LA!”
36.
Sienna
My first thought, when the heat kind of cleared out a little bit, absorbed without any thought into my hands, chest, feet and face was, “Holy shit, I just blew up East LA.”
Then I remembered that I hadn’t done it, Greg Vansen probably had, and also, that I probably should thank the person in my head who’d just saved my life. Thanks Gavrikov. Reflexes of lightning, there.
Faster than, actually, Gavrikov said. A nuclear bomb goes off in—
“Should probably save the technical precision for someone who would appreciate it,” I said, then tried to hold my breath. I’d absorbed the heat from the blast, but not the force, which explained why I was planted against something kind of squishy, which was in turn up against the smashed-up facade of the Mexican restaurant. Which I felt by reaching back past the immediate object behind me and running a hand over the cracked stucco.
“Whuuuuu …?” The object beneath me let out a low, pained groan, and I realized that Friday had broken my horizontal fall with his immense hugeness. When the nuclear shockwave had kicked me back, he’d been standing right behind me. Apparently I hadn’t even noticed smashing into him and then into the wall, probably because I was too focused on the waves of radioactive heat and flame rushing into my body while I screamed mutely and inhaled it.
“Friday?” I called back, pushing off of him. I was pretty close to nude at this point because absorbing the blast had burned through my clothing, so I did my thang and lit up my skin in order to give myself a little modesty coverage, and Friday’s eyes flicked open, and he looked me over.
“Your tits are on fire,” he said, and closed his eyes again.
“That’s intentional,” I said, keeping from slapping him. I doused my hands, just in case my restraint failed. I also killed the flame down both arms from wrist to shoulder, making my little flame outfit into a unitard tank top. Might as well show off these shoulders since I was bound to get some press attention within minutes anyway. I grabbed Friday and hauled him to his feet.
He grimaced at me, holding himself at an odd angle. “What just happened?”
“Greg Vansen just upped the ante in our little war,” I said, grabbing Friday by his shirt, which was burnt and partially ripped. I shoved him forward, trying to suss out which direction was the shortest route to the end of this dust-filled mushroom cloud. “How much radiation do you suppose we just absorbed?”
“Whut? Are we radioactive right now?” Friday threw his hand up to his head self-consciously. “Nooo! I don’t want to lose my hair! It’s too pretty to die.”
“Just be glad it’s not you dying, stupid,” I said, shoving him forward again through the impossibly thick haze as I sought the way out. I could almost see light in the distance, but it was tough to tell. The cloud was dens
e, closing in on all sides like a heavy fog. I might have been tempted to just wait for rescue if not for, y’know, the radiation danger and the fact that if the cops showed up they’d try to arrest me. “How big a blast do you think that was?”
“Nuclear bombs aren’t small,” Friday said, like he was suddenly an expert filled with completely useless, vague advice.
“This one was,” I said, coughing. How bad would this stuff hurt my lungs? Wolfe— I said.
You should hurry out of the cloud. I’m working as hard as I can but you’re absorbing a lot of rads, and it took me enormous exposure over several years to build up immunity to them. You don’t want to go through that, trust me.
“But nukes are big,” Friday said, as I talked to Wolfe in my head. “I mean, they destroy cities.”
“Not all of them,” I said. “In the fifties, America built ones that were meant to be deployed in artillery strikes in case the Soviet Union came roaring through the Fulda Gap in Germany. They were supposed to be used to irradiate the area, make it impassable to stymie a Russian invasion because the Red Army was way, way bigger than what we had to defend with. They called it the Davy Crockett system, and the projectiles were—I dunno, I guess it’s been a while since I read about it, but I wanna say a little bigger than a backpack.”
“Well, how big was this thing?” Friday asked.
I tried to think back as I shoved him again through the haze of smoke and dust that completely clouded what had been a clear sky when we’d stepped out of the Mexican restaurant. I was feeling a little woozy, and I doubt it was because of that one margarita and the Patron chaser. “Really small. Maybe a little bigger than a baseball. And I don’t think it made much of a bang, comparatively speaking.”
“Maybe it was just a regular bomb, then,” Friday said as we stumbled clear of the cloud at last, coughing and half-blind. My eyes were burning, and I heard somebody say the same thing I’d thought when I first came back to my senses in the cloud:
“… she just blew up East LA!”
The words broke through the desire to cough, the urge to just lie down for a while and let Wolfe work his detoxifying magic until I felt better, but instead I turned around to look at the mess we’d left behind.
A very clear mushroom cloud rose up several stories into the air, the size of a skyscraper plopped right here in the middle of the street, and crowned with a mighty bloom that was already extending out for miles in every direction.
“Nope,” I said, feeling my heart sink. “That was not a conventional bomb. Come on.” I snatched up Friday’s arm and took care to place his tattered shirt between my fingers and his skin.
He didn’t struggle. “Wait—we have to leave now?”
I bit my lip as we rose into the air. “Yep. A nuke going off in a major metropolitan area is the sort of thing that tends to draw attention, see. And I don’t want to be around for the fallout—literal or metaphorical.”
Friday went kind of quiet for a minute. “What do you mean?”
I took a minute to answer, and when I did, it was very curt, because I was trying—really hard—not to choke up. “They’re going to blame me for this.”
37.
Augustus
“Sienna …” Reed said quietly as we watched her fly off into the sky on the feed from that pedestrian’s phone camera, “… what have you done?”
“This is like Eden Prairie all over again,” Scott whispered, “but so much worse.” The mushroom cloud was billowing out from ground zero, spreading radiation all over East LA.
“She didn’t do this,” Cassidy said, shaking her head and tapping the screen.
“There’s a massive nuclear explosion and Sienna just flew off from the middle of it,” Reed said, hand over his mouth as he spoke, as though he could mask his emotions. He sounded drained. “How is this not her?”
“You said it yourself,” Cassidy said, then waited, as though we lackwits would just get it.
Then I got it. “Wait, this was a nuclear explosion—”
Jamal went next. “Sienna can’t go nuclear—” He pivoted on Cassidy. “You’re sure this was a radiological event?” She nodded, but if she was pleased we’d all caught up to her line of reasoning, she didn’t show it. “So if she didn’t … what happened here?”
“Someone she pissed off, clearly,” Scott said, prompting all of us to look at him. He flushed, his ruddy complexion going dark red. “What? If someone launches a nuke at you, there’s gotta be a reason for it, and let’s just state a fact we all know—she’s really good at bringing out the ragemonster in people.”
“You just think this is part of the mess she’s in with Friday?” Jamal asked.
“Look at the size of this mushroom cloud,” Cassidy said, already back to look at the first feed, the one from US Bank Tower in downtown LA. The cameraman was moving around a little, and she hissed in impatience until it steadied, then froze the frame before it moved again. “The detonation? It was small. Like, really small. Smaller than anything in the US strategic arsenal. This is small even for a tactical nuke.”
“That cloud is like fifty stories high …” Reed said.
“Yes, the cloud is,” Cassidy said, “but the actual damage you can see is incredibly tiny. I mean, if you look here,” and she pulled up the footage from the other pedestrian, the one that had caught Sienna coming out of the cloud, “you can see the Mexican restaurant in the distance is still standing. Nuke goes off next to a building, it tends to lose structural integrity, you know what I mean?”
“Sure, like in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where it flattened shit all around,” Jamal said, leaning in.
“But here,” Cassidy said, pointing the screen, “I mean—I doubt this restaurant was much to look at to begin with, but now—the exterior facade’s a mess, the windows are busted, but architecturally … it doesn’t have a list, the roof doesn’t seem to have blown off … this bomb was small. Tiny.” She leaned back in her chair, which threatened to swallow her minuscule frame, and she chewed her lip as she processed her way through what she saw on the screen. “Smaller than this country has ever made.”
“So … is there a country that has made bombs this small?” I asked.
She looked up at me and blinked a couple times. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess I could spend a few minutes reading and finding out, but …” She shrugged.
“But what?” Reed asked, looking like he was barely keeping himself from losing control right here.
“But it’s the sort of thing I’d need to get paid for,” Cassidy said. “I mean, I could get to doctorate level mastery of nuclear physics in an hour or so, but … my time’s valuable, and this isn’t really your case, is it?” She looked at Reed knowingly.
His jaw went so tight an ant couldn’t have crawled through the gaps in his teeth, and I could tell he was working hard not to threaten her. “My sister just damned near got nuked by someone.”
“Probably this Greg Vansen she’s been after all day,” Cassidy said matter-of-factly.
“Do you know anything about him?” I asked.
“Nope.” Disinterest flooded out of her. “And I won’t learn or search for free, either. Business is business, boys, and business—is booming.” She favored us with a disingenuous smile. “I’ve given you about two million bucks' worth of my time for free already, for … old times’ sake,” she gave Reed an almost apologetic look. “Past history and amends and all that. But … I’m all about the future now, so … unless you guys want to hire me, you need to head out.” She glanced back at the screen. “As interesting as this is, I’m about to have to shut it off and get back to the sort of work that clients pay me for.”
“I know someone who might be able to get us some answers,” Jamal said, like he was laboring to tear us away from Cassidy before something went really wrong here. I got the feeling he was reading Reed pretty accurately on that.
“Good luck finding her,” Cassidy said with a smug smirk that reminded me she was one of Sienna’s bigges
t pain-in-the-ass villains not so very long ago.
Jamal froze, but the rest of us turned to stare at him. “Who’s she talking about?” I asked.
“No one.” The answer came way, way too quickly to be convincing. Also, he had, “LIAR,” written all over his face.
“ArcheGrey1819,” Cassidy said.
“The cyber terrorist?” Scott asked, looking from Jamal to Cassidy in open-mouthed disbelief. “Are you serious? You want us to work with a criminal?”
“Says the guy who just finished running a manhunt with my sister,” Reed said.
“That was different,” Scott snapped, “Sienna is innocent.”
“As much fun as it is to watch you boys argue,” Cassidy said, “I’ve got work to do. If you decide to come back with a big wallet, please call ahead or at least ring the bell next time.” She made a little wave with her fingers, one at a time. “Stairs are in the corner. I’ll close the trapdoors so you don’t accidentally go for a repeat of your earlier drop.” Then she made a shooing sign, and with Reed as our guide, clearly boiling over with a desire to reply to Scott’s comment, we walked up the stairs in a silent line and out the front door.
Just as we came out, a window and door repair company van was pulling up to the curb to park. Reed took one look at it and seethed audibly. “She saw us coming a mile away.”
“That’s what happens you’ve got someone able to tap your communications,” Jamal said, thankfully diverting the conversation into this new direction instead of back to Sienna, which sounded like it was poised to be a contentious topic for at least some of us.
“Yo,” I said, sidling up to Jamal as we crossed the lawn and the repair guy sauntered past us on his way up to the front door, “you really trying to date a terrorist?”
“I’m not trying to—” Jamal got the same look he used to wear when Mama would humiliate him by calling out something obvious he was hiding, like the time that he broke my Stretch Armstrong and wouldn’t cop to it. “I don’t even really know her, okay? I was just putting her out there as someone who’s better than me and cheaper than Cassidy.”
Small Things (Out of the Box Book 14) Page 18