Limitless

by Robert J. Crane

  “A very bad one, but yes,” I said, nodding. “Again, just for the record, I did try very hard to get him to surrender first.”

  She settled into her chair, shifting to the right. “What were you talking about with him up there? While you were fighting?”

  “Geopolitics,” I said with a straight face. “State-of-the-world-type stuff.”

  She blinked once, and that was all the reaction she gave that the answer might not be what she expected. “How so?”

  “Well, Sovereign was of the opinion that people are in need of… stewardship,” I said. “That they should be made to fear in order to keep them between the lines. That he could build a better world just by imposing his will on all of us. I politely disagreed, telling him that you can’t stomp on a person’s free will and freedom like that. Then I disagreed less politely. With punches to the face.”

  “You have a real wit,” Gail said, and it didn’t sound entirely like a selling point the way she said it.

  “As you pointed out, I’m nineteen,” I replied. “You’re just lucky I’m not answering, ‘Totally!’ and ‘OMG!’ to everything.”

  Roth turned her head down to look at her notes at that point, leaving about a half second of dead air. I remembered taking that moment to catch my breath. I could feel the sweat rolling down my back from the nervousness. “How long had you known this ‘Sovereign’?” She frowned. “Did he have a real name?”

  “Marius,” I said, nodding. “His name was Marius. I’d known him for about a year, on and off? He came to me under false pretenses.” Very, very false pretenses. “He’d introduced himself as an ally, as a friend. It was only later I found out he was behind everything—”

  “You realize that the concept of a giant conspiracy to keep this secret of metahumans under wraps is… well, it defies most peoples’ ability to believe?” Gail asked me. She did it a little haltingly.

  I was ready for this one. “I know how they feel,” I said. “I felt the same way myself when I learned about the secret. I was raised as normal as anyone.” You know, except for being locked in my house until age seventeen. “When I found out the truth about what I was, it was an eye opener. But I quickly found out that not only were there people out there with powers beyond those of normal humans, but there was this whole other world under the surface, and there were bad things brewing in it that wouldn’t just go away if I ignored them.”

  “Back in January of 2012 there was an incident in the city of Minneapolis,” she said, looking back to her notes. “A man—”

  “A beast,” I said, ignoring the growls of protest in my head.

  “—killed two hundred plus people while putting the city under a kind of siege,” she finished. “Was that a metahuman incident?”

  “Yes,” I said. It had been. I took a breath, hoping her follow-up didn’t go in the direction I didn’t want it to.

  “A week later, the city of Glencoe, Minnesota, was destroyed in a blast not dissimilar from what you unleashed in northern Minnesota at the close of your war.” Now she was turning toward accusing. “Was that you?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “That was Aleksandr Gavrikov, a meta with a very similar power.” Exactly the same power, in fact. Because he was in my head, too, now.

  “Another incident in western Kansas a few months later,” Gail said, flipping through her notes. “Hundreds of square miles on fire. An incident in the British museum, where the security camera footage shows you fighting with undisclosed adversaries—”

  “I can explain that one,” I said, feeling like I was rapidly losing control of the situation, “those were Sovereign’s allies. Well, some of them were, at least, and—”

  Gail’s voice overpowered mine. “You seem to have been involved in a lot of… incidents. Orlando Airport. A plane crash outside Bloomington, Minnesota. Some sort of battle on the freeway. The destruction of a warehouse—”

  I felt my fingernails dig into my palms, drawing me from that moment, the moment when I could feel all control slipping away, back to the present, and a bullpen in New Scotland Yard where I was watching it all unfold on a screen. There was a tightness in my chest as I remembered the moment, and I looked away, trying to clear it out of my mind. I didn’t to be reminded of that interview, of what had happened during it. Because of it. Not now.

  “Hey,” I said, ripping Detective Inspector Matthew Webster out of his interview-induced coma with a tap on the shoulder. He fumbled, the headphones popping out of his ears before he could watch things on the screen go from bad to worse for me.

  “Oh, oh,” Webster said, flushing as he fought to spin back around and stop the video. “Oh. All right, there you are.”

  “Here I am,” I said. “And there I am.” I gestured toward the monitor, and he clicked the mouse rapidly toward the “shut down” command without even bothering to close the browser window. “And where are we?”

  He blinked in confusion as I saw his mind try and catch up. “Oh, right. Ah, we are nowhere. No other hints of any of your friends around the city. We sent out units to all the last known addresses and came up a bit dry. It looks like the rest of them are in hiding, but perhaps your friend Angus didn’t get the message.”

  “I told you, they’re not my friends.” I let out a slow exhalation. “So, what do we do now?”

  “Well, I don’t know about you,” he said, standing, pulling his trench coat off the back of his chair, “but I’m at a dead end for the night and bloody tired.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “We should get some rest and come back to this tomorrow. Call me if something comes up in the meantime?”

  “Certainly,” he said. “I’ve got your mobile number.” He frowned. “Is your mobile still working after that explosion?”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled it out. The screen was a little cracked, but it lit up when I pushed the button. “Looks salvageable.”

  “Are you going to check into a hotel?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll just—” I reached for my credit card in my back pocket and pulled it out with a snap. It emerged as half the card it used to be.

  “Well, damn,” I said, staring at my half credit card. “I hope they’ll still accept it.”

  “Is the RFID still intact?” Webster asked, leaning down to peer at it.

  “The RF-what?” I held up the half card and tugged the other half free from my pants pocket. They were too damned tight. Always. Pants were not made for my hips.

  “There’s no RFID on this card,” Webster said with a shake of his head. “It uses the magnetic strip, and that’s snapped clean in half. You’re not going to get them to accept this because no one can read it.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered.

  “You can just stay at the U.S. embassy,” he said, putting his coat on. “Doubtless they have some extra space.”

  I glanced back at Mary Marshwin’s office, where I’d left the U.S. ambassador in a pile on the floor. “Yeah… that’s… probably not going to happen…”

  “Perhaps you could ask the commissioner for a housing allowance,” he said.

  I looked at the door of her office. The lights were still burning, and I hadn’t heard anyone leave. “Maybe.”

  “No cash?” Webster asked, pulling my attention back to him.

  “I didn’t exactly have time to hit the bank before I came over,” I said. I could feel the fatigue settling on my bones. I’d been awake for over twenty-four hours, and I’d flown here, which took a toll. Especially at supersonic speed.

  Webster had his coat on now, and it had bunched up on his shoulders, crooked lines that told me he was tense. “I’d suggest you could stay with me, but I’ve only got a one-bedroom flat.” My heart raced a little at the mere suggestion and fell at the next words he said. “It’s truly a disgrace, though, an utter mess. I think I might die of embarrassment if you saw it, actually.”

  “It’s fine, I’ll figure something out,” I said. “I’ll just… grovel to your Foreign Secretary. Ma
ybe he’ll come up with something. Or try and get someone from my office to send me a wire transfer—”

  “I rather doubt you’ll find a Western Union open at this hour,” Webster said apologetically. His face was crumpled, and I watched it loosen. “There is one other option,” he said. I could tell he was still running it through his mind.

  “Oh?” I was open to just about anything, even a youth hostel at this point. (Not the torture porn kind.) The thought of having to ask Marshwin or even Wexford to set me up with pocket money for a hotel was about as appealing to me as the thought of drinking straight out of the Thames. “What did you have in mind?”

  Webster looked embarrassed for just a flash. “Well, my mum has a place on the outskirts. It’s got an extra room, it’s not too far, and she’s a bit lonely…”

  “Your mom?” I asked, in just a little disbelief. I thought about it for a quarter of a second, and the image of me pushing Halstead’s face into Mary Marshwin’s carpeting came back to me. “Sounds good,” I said.

  “A word of caution about my mum, though,” he said, and I could tell that some regret was already settling in. “She’s a bit… um…”

  “It’s fine,” I said and tried to give him a reassuring smile. “Whoever she is, trust me when I tell you that she’s probably an absolute angel compared to what I’ve dealt with in the past myself.”

  Chapter 14

  Philip could smell the fear in the room. He liked that smell. The scent of piss and blood, the anticipation of what was about to happen. It made him quiver under his suit. He wasn’t going to get his hands dirty, not on this one, but he was more than happy to stand back and let Liliana do her level best to make Angus Waterman scream until his head burst.

  “I got nuffing to tell you,” Angus said, his Adam’s apple bobbing from where he sat tied to a steel chair. It had a nice aesthetic, Philip had thought when he’d bought it. It wouldn’t look out of place in a modern flat.

  Or here, bolted to a concrete floor, with a shuddering, naked, fat-arsed man attached to it via steel handcuffs.

  “I don’t need you to tell me anything, Angus,” Philip said, giving him a thin smile.

  “Oh?” Angus looked from him to Antonio, who stood in the corner in the shadows, arms folded as he leaned against the wall. The bomb maker looked thoroughly bored, as if he might keel over from the tedium right there. “Then why are you bothering with me?”

  Philip took a breath as a way to measure his response. Then he took another. Fear was created in those moments between words, in that heady silence that came before Angus saw something that would take his own breath away.

  Like now.

  Liliana pulled the old man along on the chains suspended from the ceiling. He was hooked upside down, still, long strips of skin still missing and the muscle beneath exposed under a thin layer of blood. He hung, well, just a lump like the sides of beef and pork that had probably been suspended in this very warehouse when it was open for operation. It was handy, having the ceiling tracks so they could pull someone along like that.

  The rattle of the chains drew Angus’s head around just in time to see Liliana dragging the old man into his view. Angus’s face drained of the slight color it had possessed before, and he was left smacking his lips together. “What is this?”

  “This is your future,” Philip said, not letting even a hint of a smile creep out. “Though I daresay yours is perhaps not as long, torturous or even robust as his.”

  Angus’s lips pursed together hard and Philip enjoyed the sight of it. The bigger man was clearly fighting for courage. But there wasn’t much courage to be had here. After all, courage sprouted from hope—hope that one could accomplish something, hope that maybe he would be able to hold out for rescue.

  There wasn’t any of that here.

  And Philip was going to enjoy every minute of watching Angus come to that very realization himself.

  “Is that…?” Angus’s voice sounded small at first, then gained in strength. “Is that you, Janus?”

  The old man made a feeble croak. “Yessss…”

  “Good God, what have you done to him?” Angus’s look went to a more deeply horrified place.

  “Flayed him,” Liliana said in that dead tone. It caused Angus to look over at her, as though he were taking notice for the very first time that she was even here.

  “You bastards,” Angus said, which was unexpected. Philip almost snorted a laugh, to see this little pig try and stand up on its hind legs in defiance. “You’re all a bunch of right bastards.” He spat at Philip. “You’re an arse.” He looked to Liliana. “You’re a twat.” He turned his gaze to Antonio in the corner. “And you’re a prick.”

  Antonio came off the wall slightly, a perplexed look crossing his dark features as he turned to Liliana. “What’s the difference between a twat and a prick?”

  “It is no great surprise to me…” Janus said from where he hung upside down, bleeding to the floor, “… that you would not know the answer to that.”

  Antonio started toward the old man, but Philip stopped him with a simple motion of the hand. “His future is not that bright,” Philip said. “Let him bask in the pain.” He snapped a finger at Liliana and she produced a knife, which she stabbed into the old man’s thigh. A high-pitched scream cut the air. She ran the blade down through the meat, and the agonizing noise continued.

  But now Angus added to it with a sound of his own—feverish, heavy, high-pitched breaths drawn all too quickly.

  Ah. There was the fear.

  Philip watched as Liliana pulled her blade from Janus, and with a nod he beckoned her on to Angus. The little piggy did better than he would have expected, lasting almost a full thirty seconds before he let loose his first scream.

  After that, he did not stop until it was over.

  Chapter 15

  It was a simple brick house with a lovely yard—I think they call them gardens over here—and a white picket fence ringing the whole thing. If the sun had been shining instead of grey clouding out the twilight, it would have been idyllic. We parked on the street and got out, still wordless, Webster having fallen into a deep hole of reticence after we got in the car at New Scotland Yard.

  I suspected he was afraid of the same thing all big, strong, proud men were afraid of.

  That his mommy was going to tell me embarrassing stories about him. Or show me pictures of his naked butt from childhood. Which I didn’t care about. Because I was more interested in his naked butt as an adult.

  That didn’t need to be said, though.

  He went through a sequence of emotions as we walked up to the front door. They played out on his face one by one, and the common theme undergirding them all was fear. I knew because when it came to mothers, I was deeply familiar with fear. I knew all about it.

  “Listen,” he said, pausing on the step just outside. The hesitation was a force of its own, his lower lip jutting slightly. It was kinda cute. “My mum…”

  “Is she some kind of heinous villain who’s going to cut me off at the knees?” I asked.

  “No, nothing like that,” he said with a shake of the head. “Besides, you’ve already had that happen once today.”

  “Is she cruel? Will she lock me in the basement and never let me out?”

  “What? No,” he said, mildly horrified.

  “Then we’re fine,” I said and knocked on the door for him. He looked a little jarred as I did it but swallowed his pride and knocked himself, a little louder, as though I hadn’t just done it.

  “Just a minute!” came a high voice from inside, muffled by the doors and walls between us. I could hear someone bustling across wood floors in a hurry. When the door swung open, we were faced with a delightful, matronly lady who stood partially obscured behind the door. Her hair was tinged with red, making it a light auburn. She already wore a smile before she even saw Webster, but it brightened immediately once she laid eyes on him.

  “Matthew!” she cried out in joy and had him in a great hug a
second later. She crossed over the threshold without even taking notice of me, and she buried her head on his chest. She was shorter than him by a head or more and looked to be an inch or two taller than me, if that. She carried with her a faint scent of sweet perfume that reminded me of grandmothers I had passed in various stores.

  After a solid minute of hugging him, she came off and saw me. “Oh, and who is this?” She asked with a twinkle in her eyes. “Matthew, have you brought a—”

  “She’s working with me, Mum,” Webster said before she could finish her thought. “Sienna Nealon, this is my mum, Marjorie. Mum, this is Sienna Nealon.”

  “It’s lovely to meet you, dear,” she said and hugged me, too. I felt her arms envelop me and was utterly powerless to stop her. She was warm and sweet, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been hugged.

  Then I remembered and felt a lump in my throat.

  “Oh, let me look at you,” she said, breaking off. “Any friend of Matthew’s is welcome in this house, of course.” She hurried back inside. “I wish you’d called, though!” She disappeared through the door. “I haven’t had a chance to straighten anything at all, the place is a dreadful mess.”

  Webster gestured for me to enter, and I did. I found myself in a hallway that led past a narrow staircase. To the right was a sitting room that opened into a small kitchen. Overstuffed couches filled the sitting room, and bookshelves filled with books lined the walls. Each shelf was neatly arranged from tallest to shortest book. There were two perfectly folded blankets on the back of each couch.

  My eyes fell to a table just to my right in the entry; it had freshly cut flowers from the garden, bright yellow and red ones, and when I let my finger run idly across the surface of the table, it came back completely free of dust.

  Clearly, Ma Webster and I had differing ideas about what constituted a “dreadful mess.”

  “I’ve got Lancashire hotpot on,” she called from in the kitchen. “The kettle’s almost boiling as well, if you’d care for some tea.” Her head popped around the entry to the sitting room. “Sienna, was it?”