The glass window to my left shattered as a human being came sailing in, unconscious, and hit the ground, rolling slightly until he hit the wall with a thump. Once I overcame my initial shock, I shouted over Casey’s screams, “Yo, guys! We got something here!”
I dropped down and grabbed the man who’d flown through our window. He was all cut up—no surprise after what he’d just gone through—but as I rolled him over, I stared at his face. Felt like I recognized him instantly, and the name hit me in a jolt as Scott came busting around the corner first, and I looked up at him as he came to a stop, Jamal right behind him, followed by the others.
“Yo, you guys,” I said, pointing at the bleeding man on the floor, “I think this is Mark McGarry.” I looked out the window, searching for a sign of where he’d come from, but there was nothing there. “Special delivery, I guess …”
74.
Sienna
“Boom,” I said, already on my way back up to the Concorde circling above, “that’s how it’s done.”
Greg was riding my back as usual, but we’d left Friday on top of the plane. “What do you want to do now?”
“I don’t know—” I started to say, but was interrupted when something—someone—went whooshing past, straight up into the sky on a platform of rock.
Augustus.
He was riding it up toward the nearest low-hanging cloud, like an elevator into the sky. “Yo!” He shouted at the cloud, like an old man who had a bone to pick with it. “Sienna!”
We both watched him zip up there, and Greg said, “You know, I think that fellow believes you’re up there instead of down here.”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
“Sienna!” He was really hauling ass for the cloud. Like he could have caught me riding a self-made meteor if I’d really been trying to fly away from him.
“What do you want to do?” Greg asked.
I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but did I dare? “I guess … I should go talk to him, huh?” I waited for Greg to be the voice of reason, talk me down from it. “I mean … he’s just going to keep yelling at clouds if I don’t, right?”
75.
Augustus
“Sienna!” I said as I flew into the cloud, white haze surrounding me, cold air nipping at my nose. “I know you’re up here.”
“You caught me,” a voice said behind me, and I whipped around to see her standing there, her hair darker and slightly shorter than when last I’d seen her. She looked … tired, though I suppose that shouldn’t have been a surprise. “How’s it going, Augustus?”
I just stared at her as she hovered a little closer to me. “That’s all you’ve got to say to me? After all this time?”
“I know it feels like an eternity since you’ve had the pleasure of my company,” she said with a wan smile, “but it’s only really been about six months. I’m sure you’re trucking along okay without me.”
I opened my mouth to rebut that. “Of course I am. But … you just threw a dude through our window, and you don’t even stop and say ‘hi’?”
“That’s for your own good,” she said. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Sienna this … drained, emotionally. She looked a little dead inside, and maybe more than a little outside. Fit as hell, though. “I’m a fugitive, Augustus, and your paycheck comes from state and local governments that want your help maintaining law and order. I don’t think being seen with me would help your cause much.”
I just stared her down. “Come on, girl. We were friends. You got me into this. I wouldn’t deny you in front of the world right now. I know you didn’t do what they say you did. You’re innocent.”
“Innocent might be trying to carry the point a little far,” she said. “But … thank you. For believing in me.”
“Jamal said you were working with him a couple months ago,” I said.
“… And?”
“I dunno,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”
She laughed, but it lacked any joy or authenticity. “I’m running, Augustus. Far from here. Halfway around the world, in fact, as soon as we’re done talking.”
“I heard you were saving Friday’s life,” I said. “That true?”
“It has been saved,” she said. “The job’s done. I kept him from dying at the hands of an assassin so that he could meet his inevitable end when he sticks his junk in a bowling ball exchange again.”
I felt a world of questions bubble up there, and I didn’t want to ask any of them, or know the answer to them. “Part of me wants to say you’ve changed … but another part thinks maybe you haven’t. Not that much. You were always guarded. Now you just seem … I dunno. Like you’re a castle. Ain’t nobody getting behind those walls.”
She just hovered there, staring at me, and finally, she parted her lips a little. “I’m so sorry, Augustus. My life … it’s in ruins. Destroyed, still burning … and anyone who gets close … they’re going to get burned, too. You’re doing a good thing here,” she said, looking off to the side, as though there were someone else waiting for her in the clouds. “You’re making a difference. What you did to McGarry’s organization … it’ll save more lives than you can count.”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling a little tightness in my chest. “What’s it going to take to save your life, Sienna Nealon?”
I thought I saw a little glimmer of a tear in her eye, and it took her a while to answer. “I don’t think I believe in miracles anymore, Augustus.”
“That’s depressing,” I said. “You know … your brother is down there. I could whistle him right up, give you two a chance to hash things out face to face—”
“No,” she said. “I need to get out of here.” Now she was like stone, settled, a gargoyle in the middle of the clouds. “And you should get back to your paperwork.”
I frowned. How’d she know about that? “So … you’re going somewhere, then?”
“Nowhere you should know about,” she said, a drift of puffy cloud coming between us, causing her to fade. “Go live your life, Augustus. And don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
The drift ran over her and when it passed, she was gone.
I let my rock carry me back down to the ground, stepping off as I let it rejoin the landscaping at the office park.
Reed watched me landing, standing outside, staring up into the sky. He gave me a canny look, kind of piercing. “You see anyone up there?”
I opened my mouth and started to say, “Yeah, your sister,” but I killed the words before they even reached my tongue. “Naw,” I said instead. “Looks like whoever did this is long gone.”
He stared at me for a minute, and I wondered if he was going to accept the lie. Finally, he just nodded, and said, “Just as well.” And when I cocked my head at him quizzically, he said, “If we knew for sure who did it … it’d just be more paperwork …”
I didn’t quite laugh at that, just tried to plaster a fake smile on my face as sirens sounded in the near distance, the cops on their way to pick up Mark McGarry from our custody, and tried to ignore the sick feeling inside as we prepared to put this case to bed for good.
76.
Sienna
Safe back inside the Concorde, I let myself breathe for a moment after my conversation with Augustus. Greg was bustling around in the cockpit, preparing to take it off autopilot, though he was waiting for a destination from me …
And from Friday, who was leaned back in the front row again, hands behind his head, looking for all the world like he’d just won a big battle singlehandedly.
“If you get any more relaxed, I would swear you’d need a cigarette for the first time in your life,” I said, taking a seat across the aisle from him. When he didn’t get the joke, I moved on. “So … where are you headed next?”
“I might bum around town here for a little while,” Friday said, shrugging his small shoulders. He blinked, then smiled at me. “Heyyyy … can I put my mask back on again now?”
“Not just yet,” I said,
and he stopped, hand thrust into his pocket already.
“Oh,” he said, pulling his hand back out, mask gripped tight in his fingers, like a black do-rag in his skinny digits. “So … I guess you’re ready for your payment now …” When I stared at him steadily, he elaborated. “You know … the name of the person who told me where to find you?”
I stared at him, watching his reaction. “It was Harmon, wasn’t it?”
Friday’s face fell. “You knew?”
“I suspected,” I said, doing a little lean back of my own.
Guilty as charged, Harmon said.
I’ll take, ‘Things I don’t want to say to an arraigning judge for $1,000, Alex.’
Hahah, Harmon said. It’s good to maintain your sense of humor about these things.
“If you’re going to stay in Minneapolis,” I said to Friday, “I’ve got a safe house nearby. I’ll give you the address and where the key is, and you can stay there for a while. Grab a spare phone out of the stash, too, if you want.”
Friday looked at me with these big, kind of watery eyes. “I … I don’t know how to thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”
“I do,” I said softly, and leaned closer to him. “Wexford told me that you know why McGarry was trying to have you killed.”
Friday seemed to shrink before my eyes, even though I had thought he was already as small as he got. “I … okay. You deserve it, I guess.” He looked down at the mask on his lap. “But … can I put this back on first?” He looked at me pleadingly.
“Sure,” I said, and waited as he put the mask on.
77.
Friday
Sienna note: I think this might have actually happened.
Bredoccia, Revelen
Eastern Europe
December 17, 1989
The Iron Curtain was falling, knocked off its rod by the Soviet Union crashing down on its mouldering foundations. We didn’t really know what we were doing at the time, only that we were participating in history as it was being written. Most of the time during that period, we were waiting in the wings, waiting to see what would develop, almost as if the people planning our ops didn’t have any better idea than anyone else what was going as things started to fall apart.
But the day they sent us into Revelen …
Well …
The revolution was already churning its way through the streets when we parachuted in one moonless night. We could see the torches burning down in Bredoccia, the capital, but we were tasked with infiltrating a castle that sat up on a hill in the nearby mountains. Apparently during the days before World War II, before the Communists had taken Revelen, the whole country had been run from that hilltop chateau.
And as we parachuted in behind the walls that night … I could easily have believed it.
The place was in disrepair, towers falling down, their blocks crumbling and moss-covered. I could see them as Jon guided me, cradled in my parachute, right into the drop zone atop one of the walls. As soon as I landed, he zipped off and got Theo, doing the same for him. Chase was next, and finally Greg showed up on his own. We stood there, in the dark, the power to the entire country cut for all I knew, staring into the sheer blackness of the night, and Greg beckoned us forward, our metahuman eyes guiding us as we stole into a door in the castle wall.
“Voices down,” Greg said, whispering meta-low. “Keep our formation tight. Our objective is a meta being held in the basement dungeons by the local authorities. Extract and I’ll exfiltrate us. This whole thing should only take ten minutes. If we get separated, we meet here. Anyone not here in ten minutes gets left behind.” His eyes seemed to flash in the dark, and we all took him seriously.
We descended into the castle, tiptoeing and trying to keep up. It was so dark, and my eyes weren’t adjusting as well as the others. They felt like they were watering, like I was in an eternal squint. I bumped into a wall and Jon swore under his breath at me.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. I can’t see. I think I need glasses.”
“Didn’t you bring NVGs?” Theo hissed at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Just follow me, fool,” Theo said, and he was moving again.
I tried to follow him, really I did. But I went around a corner, where I thought he’d turned just a minute earlier, and …
Theo was gone.
The hallway in front of me was dark, no sound echoing down to suggest they’d passed through. I fumbled my way down, hands scraping across the stone walls until my probing fingers found a wooden door and it swung against my slight pressure.
Light cracked out, spilling over the hallway, and I blinked in surprise at the intensity of it. I opened it further, the hinges squeaking as I stepped inside, my AK-47 drawn and ready to fire—
“What is your name?” a calm voice asked as I stepped into the room. The light came from a single lamp by the window, and a man sat in a chair behind a tall desk, long, thin fingers cupping a very old book in front of him. His hair was near black, slicked along the sides and top of his head. His hair met in a dramatic widow’s peak on top of his forehead, and his eyes rolled over me—
Oh, God. His eyes.
They were glacial blue, and they found me like they had lasered through the darkness and seen me coming before I’d even settled on the outside wall. His lips were stiff, stern, no hint of a smile on them. His suit was old too, but immaculate, the shirt beneath perfectly white.
“I asked you your name,” he said, closing the book quietly and placing it upon the desk in front of him. He gestured to the AK in my hands. “Put that away. You don’t need that.”
“Okay,” I said, and tossed the AK-47 off to the side like it was six-week-old chimichanga. I looked after it as soon as it was gone, sudden panic setting in.
Why had I just thrown away my gun? My only gun?
“What is your name?” he asked again, infinitely patient.
“Y-yancy,” I said, barely getting the words out between chattering teeth.
“A polite answer to a polite question at last,” he said, long fingers stroking his chin. “You are an American, yes?”
“Y-yes.”
“Yancy the American,” he said, rising to his feet. He was so much shorter than me. “And, Yancy the American … are you a metahuman?”
“Yes.”
“Mmm,” the man said, slipping around the corners of his desk as though almost ephemeral, passing through them. “What is your power, Yancy?”
“I’m a … Hercules.” I felt so small, so ashamed in that moment. I couldn’t decide why I was answering any of his questions, why I had thrown my gun away. I felt so insignificant, like I would somehow slip between the floorboards and fall into the castle’s darkest dungeons, never to be seen again.
Never to see the light again.
“What is your father’s name, Yancy the American Hercules?” the man asked again, smoothly, silky voice filled with that infinite patience.
“I …” I shook my head. “… Wh-what’s your name?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, then smiled, and it made me shiver like he’d opened the windows and somehow all of Antarctica had poured in. “Curious. I have … so very many names, Yancy. Many you would not have heard of. Perhaps a few you would have. My most famous was Vlad. The least? It hardly matters. A name is simply a way to allow your reputation to precede you.” He drifted around the front of his desk. “But we hardly have need for that now, do we, Yancy? Because … it hardly matters that you know my reputation, does it? I mean … do you need to know anything more of me?”
I found myself shaking my head. “No, I … I think I … know all I need to about you.”
The man smiled, wolfish, delighted … and it almost made me fall to my knees, ready to beg for my life. “Now, Yancy … what is your father’s name?”
I swallowed hard. “Simon.” My knees were quaking, threatening to make good on my desire to beg. “Simon Nealon.”
SLAP!
OW! What
the hell was that for? I’m telling you the damned story you asked for!
Bullshit!
It is not! I’m telling you the truth! *whisper* This time.
You never told me your last name was Nealon!
Because it’s not! Ow, my cheek. That really hurt! It was my dad’s name, and I never even met the guy!
That’s my last name, idiot!
Yeah, so? Lots of Nealons in the world.
Yeah, but Simon Nealon was my grandfather, you twit! And he was a Hercules!
Oh. Wait. So … does that mean …?
It means, if you’re telling the truth …
You’re my damned uncle.
Wow. Weird. I didn’t think I had any family left.
… Yeah. Weird.
So should we like, hug, or something?
… Why don’t you finish the story?
The man stood there, staring at me. His smiled had vanished. “I knew Simon Nealon. It was a shame about what happened to him in London.” He lapsed into silence for several minutes, a silence I felt absolutely no need to break. When he spoke again, it was as though he’d made a serious decision. “I will let you live, Yancy the American, because of my past associations with your father. Next time, though,” and he wagged one of those long fingers, giving me a glimpse of a fingernail that looked like iron grafted to his cadaverously thin digit, “you will not be so lucky.”
“Th … thank you,” I said, bowing as I felt myself unfreeze from the spot. I started walking backward, urging myself to go faster, to break into a run, to hurl myself out his door into the dark hallway, anything to get away from him, to get away from those eyes, that face …
“Go in peace, Yancy,” he said as I escaped through the threshold. “And do not come back to Revelen again.”
Small Things (Out of the Box Book 14) Page 35