Limitless

by Robert J. Crane

  “Very nice,” Webster said, staring at me and my clear plastic poncho.

  “I kind of doubt that, but you’re sweet.”

  “It doesn’t obstruct the view,” he said and turned to head for the door, smile on his face.

  We were almost out when he stopped in the middle of the aisle. I didn’t run into him, but only because I was paying attention. “What?” I asked. His attention was fixed on the TV in the corner, and it took me only a second to see what he was looking at.

  TV news is TV news, whether it’s in America or Britain, I realized. Constantly reporting on the same recycled shit, with the same breathless vomiting of regurgitated “news” every few minutes until the air becomes so saturated with it that they’re forced to find some new tidbit or angle lest their viewers tune out. Or pass out, possibly.

  The footage of the explosion had doubtless been on all morning, dissected panel-style, with subtle glee by journalists of all stripes. I could have sworn I’d seen that at least a few times in my endless pacing of the bullpen while we’d talked. I’d figured it would have been on all day and night, as surely as the sky was blue and politicians were hard or wet at the thought of a crisis to manage.

  This, though… this, I hadn’t quite predicted.

  I knew Parliament when I saw it, and this was a full shot of it. Big Ben to one side of the frame, the view looking across the Thames quite picturesque even with a hint of haze and fog with the grey sky as background. That was normal.

  No, it was the caption on the giant bar at the bottom of the screen that drew my attention. Because that was a cause for worry and concern.

  It read, “Metahuman attack spurs Parliamentary response; emergency legislation and vote planned for tonight.”

  Aw, hell.

  Even in England, this couldn’t be good.

  Chapter 44

  “Ah, politicians,” I said as we walked down the street toward our lunch. “Always just one or two laws away from fixing everything that ails you. Utopia is just a few bills away, ladies and gents.”

  “People are scared,” Webster said, the rain dripping down the bridge of his nose and gathering there like an unfallen tear. “They want a response.”

  “How about an intelligent response?” I asked, gathering my poncho around me. “I suppose that would be too much of a stretch.”

  “You think that passing some laws in response to this situation is a bad idea?” He gave me that cocked-eyebrow look.

  “Well,” I said, “let’s see. They tried to kill your police. They murdered civilians. They stole a painting and took hostages. They set off a series of bombs in the middle of London.” I ticked the points off on my finger as I enumerated them, talking over the rain dripping against the hood of my poncho. “Seems to me that if we actually catch them, you’ve got a great basis for charging them with enough shit to keep them in jail for the rest of their lives. So what’s another law going to do for you?”

  He looked deeply uncomfortable. “Perhaps fund training for dealing with these sorts of situations—”

  “I’m sure that’ll come, and I don’t think it’s a bad idea,” I said. “But you know they’re not talking about that. Mostly they’re talking about passing laws that seek to control the situation while failing to acknowledge that sometimes the things that evil men do are just beyond their control.” I felt my expression darken. “Or they’re talking about putting those of us who didn’t have anything to do with the so-called bad guys and their craziness into jail or detention or deportation.”

  Webster looked like his cheeks were burning, but he was almost contrite. “I honestly can’t blame them.” He took hold of a door to a nondescript pub, opening it and holding it for me. That was a nice touch, I thought, even as we argued about how best to treat my kind.

  “I can’t blame them for being scared, either,” I said, pulling the hood down as I stepped into the pub. It had a bar straight in front and a lot of wooden tables dotting the room. A long plate-glass window overlooked the sodden street. There was a smell of something fried in the air. Smelled like home to me. “But again, there’s a difference between taking intelligent action when you’re afraid and just taking action. One can get you out of trouble; the other does nothing or makes it worse. It’s the difference between being in a hole and continuing to dig down versus starting to shovel sideways and up.”

  “I can’t see how passing a law is going to make it worse,” he said with a shrug as he led the way over to a wooden, circular table in the corner of the pub. There were only a few patrons here, scattered around, and having conversations as hushed as ours was.

  I stared at him. “And I can’t see how a law making something already illegal even more illegal is going to do anything but put a bunch of words on a page that someone will sign for no purpose.”

  He extended a hand to offer me a seat, and I sat down as he pulled off his coat and headed for the bar, ostensibly to order, since the placard on our table said that there was no waitstaff and the bar was the place to do that sort of thing. I sat there in silence, pondering what to say to him next while I waited for him to come back.

  He spoke first when he returned, surprising me. “My mum called while you were in the toilets earlier.” It took me a second to realize he must have been talking about before we’d left New Scotland Yard. “She was worried.”

  “I don’t blame her,” I said with a shake of the head. “What happened this morning was scary. She probably saw it on the news. I’m surprised it didn’t give her a heart attack or something.”

  “She asked if you were all right,” he said, sitting down next to me instead of across. He placed a menu, retrieved from the bar and covered in a smooth, faux leather binding, in front of me.

  I took a second before grasping at it. “I hope you told her I’m fine.”

  “I left out a full description of what happened, yes,” he said, browsing the faded, yellow-tinged pages of his menu. Mine smelled faintly of old cigars. I wondered how long this pub had had these menus. “I decided it would be better if she thought we weren’t anywhere near the goings-on.”

  I stared evenly at him. “Probably for the best,” I agreed and turned my attention to the menu.

  He ordered for us a few minutes later, ever the gentleman—fish and chips times two. While he was placing the order, standing at the bar with his suit pants creased and one foot up on the actual, metal bar that rested underneath the—well, the bar, he was the very model of an English gentleman.

  But I wasn’t thinking about him at the moment.

  His mother had asked if I was all right. That was… uncommon.

  My mother had died a couple years earlier, and while we’d been on good terms toward the end, it hadn’t exactly been the warmest relationship of my life. Not that I’d had a great many warm relationships. She and I had butted heads in my adolescence because I wanted to be my own person, grow and explore the world, and she wanted to keep me safe from monsters that would have used me for their own purposes. It was a long-running series of arguments that always culminated in her imprisoning me in a metal box she kept in the basement in order to keep me in line. And it worked. It was a beautiful limiter of my desire to rebel.

  It had also cast something of a sour pall over our relationship once I had escaped said house and wasn’t subject to her authority anymore. Stunted our ability to get along as adults. Not that I was much of an adult, still, now twenty-one.

  My phone rang, a harsh, discordant noise that sounded more than a little off-key compared to the ringtone I’d had yesterday. I pulled my broken phone out of my pocket and stared at the cracked faceplate, trying to read the caller ID through the shattered glass. I slid a finger across the screen and prayed it would answer. It did.

  “Sienna?” the high, near-panicked female voice came from the other end of the line before I’d even said anything. “Are you there?”

  “I’m here, Ariadne,” I said. Ariadne Fraser was the head of the administrative side of my little
agency, putatively my co-head. We worked together and had for years. It was a relatively easy familiarity, though her hair had greyed more over the last few years than I would have believed possible. Or maybe she just hadn’t had time to dye it with all we had going on. She damned sure hadn’t had time for much of a life.

  “Should only be a few minutes,” Webster said as he came back. I pointed to my phone and gave him that tight expression that you’re federally mandated to give when someone finds you on the phone and you don’t want to interrupt your conversation to tell them to shut it. “Oh. Right.”

  “I saw the news,” she said, sounding a little more urgent than usual. “What’s going on over there?”

  “Things are blowing up,” I said, nonchalant.

  “I know, that’s why I called,” she said.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. Things are blowing up.”

  “Yeah, but—wait, why would you assume I’m not fine?”

  She spoke slowly because apparently I’m an idiot. “Because things are blowing up.”

  “It’s a big city, London,” I said, a little defensive. “How do you know I was even anywhere near that—” I just stopped. “Right. It’s me.”

  “It’s you.”

  “Well, I am fine,” I said. “Now.”

  “What happened?” she asked. “Start at the beginning.”

  “Some guy is hunting down old Omega, the folks we gave shelter to during the war,” I said. “He’s got a couple of accomplices, a bomb maker and a lady with knives. Seems like he’s got a personal problem with Omega and anyone associated with it.”

  There was a pause. “Does that include you? What with your own fleeting association with them in the war?”

  “Apparently,” I said tightly. “He says I’m last, though.” Webster looked a little alarmed at that but said nothing. I’d told him while he was taking my statement on the whole ordeal, and he hadn’t looked any happier about it then, either.

  “What can you tell me about him?” she asked, all business again.

  “Not much,” I said. “White guy, looked from the edge of his mouth and his eyes like he was twenties or thirties, but since he’s a meta he could be hundreds of years old and still look like that.”

  “Any idea what his power is?” she asked. “Our database isn’t that impressive at this point, but it might be able to turn up something.”

  “I won’t go holding my breath,” I said. “As for powers? Not a clue. He’s fast, though. Fast enough to dodge bullets.”

  “That’s not normal,” Ariadne said, sounding like she was giving it some thought.

  “I’m supposed to be at the top of the speed and power scale and I can’t dodge bullets,” I said. “Ever heard of anything like that?”

  “No, sorry,” she said. “What about his accomplices? Anything on them?”

  “The woman is pretty fast, but not as fast as I am,” I said. “She’s mean, though. Ruthless and efficient. Probably the one who’s cutting up the victims.” I snapped my fingers at Webster and he got it, picking up his phone and tapping on the keys. I assumed he was making up a note to check on this for later.

  “I’ll run the government databases for a similar modus operandi,” Ariadne said, sounding like someone taking my order at a drive-through. “The FBI might have something on that. As for the bomb maker…”

  “I’ll get you a copy of the report as soon as it comes through,” I said. “I’m assuming whoever’s in charge of the investigation over here will want all the help they can get.” Webster nodded absently. “Interpol might have some record of him if he’s been playing the game for a while.”

  “Bomb makers tend to stick close to their preferred explosives,” she said. “Odds are good if he’s been active before, we’ll be able to at least trace him, and if not, maybe we can get an idea of who trained him.”

  “Cool,” I said, and realized how out of place that probably sounded. “Did Reed tell you about Janus?”

  “Yeah,” Ariadne said. “Obviously I don’t know him as well as you do—”

  “Who does, really?” I asked dryly. “When I spoke to this guy last time, he pretty much admitted to having Janus. Seemed to indicate he might still be alive. There’s some pattern in the way he’s doing things. First he kidnaps and kills a couple Omega expats, then murders a Russian spy in his own home. He pulls an art heist this morning but creates more havoc in the escape than he has with the murders he’s been spending his time on. This has the feel of unfocused rage, but he’s disciplined in his approach to everything, covers his escape by blotting out London’s surveillance.” I said this all while looking solidly at Webster, who was nodding along and tapping occasionally on his phone as I spoke. “It’d be nice to know what his grievances are.”

  “We don’t have much on Omega,” Ariadne said. “As soon as Reed got off the phone with you yesterday, he tasked J.J. to access the old Omega database in London. We have a copy on our local servers from a couple years ago, but the higher-level stuff is encrypted. J.J. is working on it, but he says to brute force it he’d need about a decade and a lot bigger team to do the grunt work.”

  “What about local access over here?” I asked. “Me at Omega HQ, giving him an in at the servers themselves. Would it be easier if he could work on the original instead of the copy?”

  “Based on his analysis of the encryption, he’s not hopeful,” Ariadne said. “But he did mention in his initial report that it might be worth a look. If Janus or Karthik had been anywhere near the computers on that side, it’s possible they opened them up for local work while using the firewall to block outside access. He said there’s been a definite change since last time we accessed it with Karthik’s help and downloaded what we have. Someone’s been in there.”

  “I guess that leaves me with my next destination planned,” I said. “Thanks, Ariadne.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, with none of the frost I might once have expected from her. “I’ll call you if I have something.”

  “So where are we going?” Webster asked, standing as the barman beckoned him over. A couple of baskets of fish and chips were waiting on the long, wooden bar, steam coming off them. I could smell them from here, a deep-fried slice of heaven.

  “You’re going to get our food,” I said slyly. “Then we’re going to eat it.”

  “I see,” he said with amusement. “And then, after that?”

  “To the belly of the beast,” I said with a smile, as I pocketed the wreckage of my phone. “Right to the heart of where it all began. Omega Headquarters. Right here in London.”

  Chapter 45

  Philip was sitting in the darkness when she came in. He did not bother to open his eyes, because that would have necessitated looking at her, and he couldn’t quite stomach the thought of that. Not yet.

  It was an odd thing, the nature of his sensibilities, and he would be the first to admit it. He could sit and gladly watch Omega operatives get their skin pulled off in fine strips all day long, with all the requisite screaming. But to watch her drag one of her knives across priceless pieces of cultural heritage…

  It made him ill to think about it.

  “Antonio is in his bunk, cradling the painting’s tube as though he’s ready to make love to it,” Liliana said, her low voice coming steady, completely unamused. “I think now he would follow you into the bowels of hell if you asked.”

  “I don’t plan to go there anytime soon,” Philip said, leaning his head against the leather seat. “But it’s excellent to hear that if I needed to cross the Styx, I’d be assured of at least some company.”

  “You would have worlds of company,” Liliana said. “All the souls of the capitalist swine would be with you in any such world.” She let out a little scoffing noise. “Of course it does not exist, so there is little to fear, but if it did… all the swine would be there. You would not lack for playmates.”

  “You truly hate them, don’t you?�
�� Philip asked, cracking an eye. “Do you still long for the good old days?”

  She sniffed, and her eye twitched just barely in the dark. “I long for the days when men believed in the cause. When they were strong and willing to do what it took. Before the KGB and the Politburo all sold their souls so they could drive BMWs to work every day and listen to iPods filled with Western corruption in their dachas. For the days when the worker was—”

  “All right, then,” Philip said, keeping his smile carefully concealed. “Are you ready for our next target?”

  “And the one after and the one after,” she said, deftly switching gears. He had heard her on such ideological rants before. It was a fascinating dichotomy, really, to be fueled by such rage for a system that she felt had betrayed her, yet to be open to what he offered, well…

  It was more than a little delicious, that irony.

  “All right, then,” Philip said, and he pulled the felt-lined bag out from beneath the desk. He knew what he was looking for and his hand groped in the semi-dark until he found it. The light necklace chain was at the bottom of the bag, and as he pulled it out, it snagged on one of the other objects in the pouch. He tugged it free carefully, not wanting to break it. He laid it out on the desk before him and ran a palm over it, gently, letting his skin brush it.

  The flood of images cut loose in his mind, and he could see the owner. She was out there, hiding, quivering, mewling in the dark. Her future looked painful, there was no doubt. Angela Tewksbury. An old name for a young lady. He knew her past by her file, knew she’d been just a secretary at old Omega, sitting in the middle of the most grossly criminal underworld organization man had ever seen. Right in the middle, rivers of filth and corruption passing all around her.

  Even a lowly secretary could not help but get dirty in the midst of all that.

  Philip focused his mind. He’d gotten quite good at this, the discipline part of it. It wasn’t terribly difficult, focusing in. He could see what he needed to see by looking past the fears, the terrors. Success lay in slowing it down through the lulls. The unemotional parts, the lowlights were never as exciting as the highs. It was easy to skip over them given how mundane most of what he saw was.