Limitless

by Robert J. Crane

  Actually, that was kind of how my agency worked, too, so I probably shouldn’t be quite so down on them.

  “It has kept me quite sheltered thus far,” Karthik said. “Most of the time I stay in the underground chambers and keep the doors closed.”

  “But today you’re out to greet us,” I said. “Why?”

  “I needed to go outside,” he said. “I need to try and find some of our people. Let them know they’re in danger—”

  “Some of them already know it,” Webster said, dabbing at his face with a handkerchief. “And some of them are past caring.”

  “They’re turning up dead,” I said, drawing Karthik’s gaze to me.

  “Who?” he asked, and I could see the element of anticipation as he waited for the axe to fall.

  “Maxwell Llewelyn,” I said. “Angus Waterman, too, I think.”

  “Damnation,” Karthik said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with all the old crowd, but some are harder to reach than others. They were two of the ones I’d not been able to get ahold of.”

  “Should have tried a letter to their last known addresses,” Webster muttered, face behind the hanky.

  “Who have you gotten in touch with?” I asked. “And how?”

  “We have an old communication protocol,” Karthik said, looking a little dazed. “An email system in a hidden part of the internet. Janus and I reactivated it shortly after your brother got into that spot of bother in Italy.” He looked up at me. “We decided to plumb the depths of Omega’s remains, see what was still out there.”

  “What did you find?” I asked.

  “More than we expected, that’s for certain,” Karthik said. “There are a lot of survivors out there. Many of them saw the direction of the coming wind and sought shelter. Now that Omega is dead, they’ve stepped out on their own.”

  “I’ve heard that story somewhere before,” I said dryly.

  “Well, you can’t blame them,” Karthik said with a shrug. “They were running rackets for Omega. It shouldn’t be an utter surprise that they’ve stepped into their own rackets after emerging from hiding.”

  “No, it shouldn’t come as any surprise,” I said. “Criminals always return to the scene of the crime, right?”

  “When the scene of the crime has as much lucre as old Omega was bringing in?” Karthik said with a shrug. “I can’t entirely blame them.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “You and Janus were going to restart Omega, weren’t you?”

  He looked a little caught off guard. “We had discussed the possibility. It wasn’t anything concrete. I think he felt a bit… useless. Aimless, perhaps.”

  “This guy,” I said, measuring my words to keep from snapping off some hostile ones at Karthik, “your enemy, the one who’s targeting old Omega faces. He’s a got a real anger management problem stemming from you lot. Any idea why?”

  Karthik shrugged, looking sincerely mystified. “Omega was certainly not without enemies, as well you know.”

  “As well I know,” I said. “Who else is missing?”

  “Janus,” Karthik said. “Janus and Rory Kilmeade. Those are the two I knew about before I went into hiding.”

  “Rory Kilmeade is the one that reported you missing.” Webster was finally done mopping his face. He still looked like he’d been wearing Joker makeup, though. “Who’s left that you’ve talked to?”

  “Angela Tewkesbury, Ryan Mortenson—” Karthik paused. “Are we just talking about London?”

  “For now,” I said.

  “Those are the only others,” Karthik said. “Everyone else left the city after the war. Too many bad memories, I suppose.”

  I clicked my tongue against my teeth. “But you don’t know anything about the guy doing this? Or his bomb maker accomplice?” Karthik shook his head. “Lady with the knives?” Another shake. “Well, what the hell good are you?”

  “I have access to some of Omega’s databases,” Karthik said. “Janus has opened things up for me. Other than that, I’m well aware of my lack of utility. It’s why I’m hiding rather than waiting to get snatched. If they can capture Janus, they can certainly take me. I’m even more sure of it now that you’re telling me there are three of them working in concert.”

  “Show us your databases,” I said, waving a hand at him. The relief was evident on his face, and I turned away rather than look at it. I didn’t hate Karthik, but he’d left me in the middle of the war to come back here and hide with a group of metas who couldn’t do much in the way of fighting. “I need you to open up what you’ve got to J.J. back at the Agency.”

  I saw him straighten at that, almost bristling. I could see the conflict in his motions, like he’d frozen for just a moment at the mere suggestion of cooperating with us. Which I thought was interesting, considering that a couple years ago, Karthik had contorted himself into a pretzel shape trying to help me out in the early days of the war.

  Now, a couple years later, he was considering resisting. I doubted he actually would, but it was interesting to watch him struggle with it. It suggested that he’d changed since last we’d met, and not for the better.

  Or maybe it suggested that he’d thought I’d changed. In either case, I didn’t like it because it had the overtures of a very “us versus them” mentality. I don’t like it when people oppose me. It makes me want to crush the life out of them.

  “The servers are still downstairs,” Karthik said, leading us into the wood-paneled office that had once been the seat of Omega’s Primus, their grand poobah. The room looked incredibly dusty, like the quality maid service had lit out of the place decades ago. I guess Karthik and Janus hadn’t tidied up since their return, which made me wonder exactly what they had been up to.

  The wall to our left was fitted with long bookshelves, covered in a layer of dust that would have made Pompeii look clean by comparison. One of them was noticeably cleaner than the others, and I brushed past Karthik to grab the spine of a copy of Charles Dickens’s Hard Times and pull it.

  The bookcase slid back like something out of a Bond movie, and Webster made a subtle noise of surprise. “What the eff?”

  “They were proper villains, Omega,” I said, looking into the darkness beyond as fluorescent lights struggled on. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Ian Fleming knew them, because they really did it right, embracing all the tropes like a Bond girl getting on Connery after he’d just saved her life.”

  “You sound as if you might have had a fantasy or two about a proper British gentleman who handles himself well in life-threatening situations,” Webster said to me with a grin that was hardly impaired at all by the white powder still plastering his face.

  I batted my eyelashes at him playfully. “Maybe once or twice.” So sue me, I’m bad at flirting.

  “Down here,” Karthik said, interrupting our back and forth.

  “I remember the way,” I shot back. I followed him into a concrete staircase that descended into the depths of Omega HQ. I hadn’t been kidding when I said they were proper villains. They had a secret underground lair and everything. Well, sort of.

  It was really more like a concrete bunker in the sub-basement, but it certainly looked a little sinister. It had a corner filled with treasure that looked a lot less shiny and large since I’d last seen it. There was a kitchenette area and what looked—bizarrely—a little like a science lab. Something had been welded to the floor there, once, but it was gone now and had left a gaping space where the coloration of the concrete clearly denoted the absence of something. A series of beat-up, seventies-vintage filing cabinets had once rested along one wall, but they were gone now, replaced by servers giving off a prodigious amount of heat. I walked by one and felt like I was going to start sweating, even in the cool subterranean basement.

  “I see you’ve brought Omega into the twenty-first century,” I said, running a hand over the warm casing of one of the servers. “Does this mean you’re Primus now?”

  “Janus and I haven’t discussed the formalities,�
� he said with a hint of bitterness. “Seemed a bit like putting the cart before the horse, since it was only the two of us with no operations of our own to supervise.”

  “I don’t get it.” I gestured at the treasure trove in the corner, and Webster turned around. It was cute. His jaw dropped and everything. “Why not just sell that stuff and retire? That’s got to be millions in gold right there.”

  “It’s not about the money,” Karthik said with a frown. “It’s about the exercise of vital powers.”

  I just stared at him. “The what?”

  “Classic Greek definition of a good life,” Webster said, peeling his eyes off the gold in the corner. “‘The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.’ I think your own President Kennedy might have quoted that once.”

  “Did you steal that from Janus?” I asked Karthik as he made his way toward a computer set up on a folding table.

  “I didn’t steal it,” he said. “We’ve had many discussions about philosophy, about our place—metahumans’ place—in the world now that the secret is out. He mentioned it at one point, and I thought it was a fantastic answer. Selling off your baubles,” he made a dismissive gesture of his own toward the treasure trove in the corner, “would certainly afford me a retirement. But it would not result in the exercise of vital powers, there’d be no lines of excellence, and I think the scope would be somewhat limited.”

  “I could sell a few of them,” I mumbled as he started tapping keys, “maybe afford to take a beach vacation that I’d never come back from.”

  “Help yourself,” Karthik said. “I don’t want them and neither does Janus.”

  “Let me get a shovel,” Webster said, grinning at me. “We’ll split it and both be rich.”

  “Find your own stash of bullion and goods, copper,” I said. “According to our villain, I’m the last Primus of Omega, so technically that is mine, all mine.”

  “Because recognizing the fiat handed down by a murderous madman is good practice,” Webster said with a cocked eyebrow.

  “When in Rome…” I said with a sly grin.

  It took him a second to get it. “Hey! That’s my country you’re talking about.”

  “Mostly kidding,” I said, leaning over Karthik’s shoulder. “Just a little friendly, across-the-pond trash talk.”

  “I’m in the database,” Karthik said, looking up at me. “I need search parameters.”

  “Can you search for a woman who kills with dual knives?” I asked.

  Karthik blinked a couple times. “I can certainly try.” He tapped some things on the keyboard and a minute later something popped up. “I only have one active in the file. Liliana Negrescu. Romanian born, KGB trained. Emigrated to England under an alias following the fall of the Iron Curtain. Looks like the British government granted her citizenship in ’95. She’s worked a lot of off-the-books jobs, freelance. Omega tried recruiting her once…” His eyes skimmed across the monitor. “She spat in their faces, called them the worst sort of capitalist pigs.”

  “She sounds bloody charming,” Webster said.

  “And then she proceeded to eviscerate the recruiters and spread their body parts around the city,” Karthik said, “along with a note expressing the aforementioned sentiments.”

  “Ding, ding, ding,” I said. “We have a winner. Omega let her get away with that?”

  “Looks like she skipped town afterward,” Karthik said. “Our trackers couldn’t get a location. Tried and failed.”

  “But they can find a shut-in in Minnesota without any trouble,” I muttered.

  “Actually, I read your file,” Karthik said, looking up, “when I was bored, a few months ago. Omega was completely unaware of your existence until—”

  “Story for another time,” I said. “This chick got any known associates?”

  Karthik went back to the computer, his dark skin illuminated white by the monitor. “Nothing here. Solo operator since she left the KGB.”

  I made a sucking noise, pulling in air between my front teeth. “How about bomb makers? I’m guessing Omega has tons of them on file.”

  “Without doubt,” Karthik said. “Can you give me any more?”

  “Olive complexion,” I said, thinking about it. My brain searched around for something, anything. I remembered the guy clutching the tube close to him, and remembered the way his hands gripped—

  His hands.

  “Burn scars on his hands,” I said, leaning over again.

  “Probably fairly common for a bomb maker, but let’s see if it narrows down—” Karthik rolled his head back like he was surprised. “Here’s one. Antonio Ruelle. Looks like he’s a bit of a mystery until he showed up in…” Karthik leaned forward and squinted. “… in…” He sighed, and sat back. “I don’t know how to say that.”

  I leaned forward and read the monitor to where he’d left off. The name of the town was Cwmbran. I stared and read it again to see if I had it right. “That’s a town? What the hell does that say?”

  “That the Welsh have hilarious notions about the utility and placement of vowels,” Webster said with more than a little mirth.

  “Anyway, he shows up in our records at… Cwumbran,” Karthik said, probably maiming the name of the town but doing at least as well as I would have, “and nothing before. He learned his craft from a former member of the IRA who decided to leave the isle before his luck ran out. Took on Ruelle as a pupil and passed on his trade. Ruelle has been active in bombing for hire, according to our info, taking on contracting work from dozens of terrorist cells.” He pursed his lips. “But never here in the UK. Apparently he prefers to keep his backyard clean of his own mess.”

  “Well, he broke that rule today in rather spectacular fashion,” Webster said.

  “Oh?” Karthik asked. “What did he do?”

  “Blew up three buildings around the Hartsford Gallery and killed nearly a hundred cops,” Webster said.

  Karthik’s eyes widened. “What’s that American expression? ‘Go big or go home’?”

  “Known associates?” I asked, bringing us back on point before I was forced to come up with something to rebut that quote. Given my track record of late, it would probably backfire in yet another hilarious double entendre.

  Karthik scrolled, then held up his hands. “I have nothing for you there. His mentor has been dead for a decade. I can give you a list of groups that have hired him—” He froze. “Well, that’s interesting.”

  I felt a tickle down the back of my neck. “Let me guess: Omega has tried to hire him in the past.”

  “He made the bombs that we destroyed your Directorate with,” Karthik said in surprise. “Went to America and built them himself, showed our people where to place them based on maps of the targets—”

  I felt a twitch in my eyelid. That was just another reason for me to lay a beatdown on Antonio. For a group of people I hadn’t even formally met until a few hours ago, this bunch of assholes had a lot of personal ties to me in some way or another. “Last known address?” I asked.

  “Still in Cwumbran,” Karthik said.

  “Oh, for—” Webster said, exasperated. “It’s pronounced Cumbran.”

  “What the hell?” I felt my whole face scrunch at him. “What law of English allows for a silent W?”

  “Who cares?” Webster asked, throwing his hands up. “So, if this bloke is from Cwmbran, I can have the constabulary up there knock down his door.”

  “Send the local police to kick in the door of a bomb maker who created a booby trap that blew my foot off,” I said, not bothering to hide my disbelief. “You might want to reconsider that one, Ace.”

  “Bomb squad, then,” Webster said, looking a bit sheepish.

  “Good call.” I turned back to Karthik. “I need the contact info you have for those other two people you mentioned that were still here in London.” I racked my brain. “Um… I already forgot their names.”

  Karthik looked a little steely-eyed at me. “You didn’t re
member them when they were under your protection in America either, so why would you recall them now?” He let that little dagger of guilt twist in for a moment. “Angela Tewkesbury and Ryan Mortenson. I’ll find you their last known addresses, but I believe Ryan has left the city by now, and Angela has bolted if she knows what is good for her.”

  I gave him a slow nod. “Best we check up on them anyway,” I said. “Because sometimes people just don’t know when to leave.” I caught him looking away, unable to meet my eyes as he went about the business of looking up the files I’d asked for.

  Chapter 50

  I waited for Webster to get off the phone before speaking to him on our drive back to Scotland Yard. He’d made a call, got some cops dispatched to take a look at Mortenson and Tewkesbury’s last known addresses. He’d taken one look at them and informed me that they were across the city, which was apparently not easily reachable for us at this time of day, late in the afternoon.

  Staring at the cars ahead of us as we eased onto a roundabout, I bowed to his wisdom on the matter of London traffic.

  “How long do you think it’ll take the police to get to them?” I asked. The car smelled a little like fish and chips because one of us—okay, it was me—had wrapped up a bit of fish in a paper napkin and brought it along two stops ago. What? I was hungry.

  “Couple of hours, I’d imagine,” he said, nodding as he took us out of the roundabout on the other side. I had to admit, I preferred intersections with stop signs or stop lights to traffic circles, but part of that was because I’d traveled through a Wisconsin town last year that had gone nuts with the damned things, slowing down what otherwise might have been a pretty fast trip into a slow, painful crawl. The town only had a thousand people, tops. Just spring for the traffic lights, you damned cheapskates.

  “Hopefully we’ll catch up to them alive,” I said, just putting that thought out there. Webster seemed a little distant, like he was running through a few thoughts of his own after sending out his orders.

  “Hopefully,” he said by way of agreement. I could tell he was working up to something, and then he said, “Can I ask you about the war?”