Limitless

by Robert J. Crane

  Not exactly the question I’d been thinking he’d ask. “Okay,” I said.

  “How many people did you kill?”

  I was taken completely aback. I shouldn’t have been; I got asked this question all the time, usually by starry-eyed girls and hormone-propelled guys. From the guys it was the ultimate macho question; from the girls it was usually a quiet indictment. It didn’t always work that way, of course. I’d had a guy ask me once in a bar in Minneapolis and then spit on me when I’d given him the honest answer. Letting him walk away with both of his lungs still in his chest may have been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I’m including the day that I turned into a flaming dragon and shredded a man with my jaws.

  Needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled to find out what Webster’s reaction was going to be, because he didn’t seem like the macho, hormone-driven type that would punch me on the shoulder and call me “Bro” as a compliment once he heard.

  Still, I answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

  He blinked at the wheel in near disbelief. “You don’t know? You’re not sure how many people you killed?”

  “I didn’t exactly keep a pad with hash marks, you know? I didn’t have a cockpit where I could paint the tally as I went.” I squeezed my arms tightly across my chest. “It was war. Toward the end, especially, they weren’t human beings to me. They were numbers. I had a hundred of them to wipe out and I damned well did it.”

  “So…” he didn’t sound like he wanted to let it go, “… a hundred?”

  I felt my eyes burn in the most curious way. “More than that.”

  “Two hundred?”

  I felt a scratch in my throat and attempted to clear it to no avail. “Probably somewhere between a hundred and two hundred.”

  “Were they all part of that band that was exterminating your people?”

  I felt a shiver unrelated to the air conditioner. “Mostly. Them or the mercenaries they hired to do some of their dirty work.” Or the enemies I made even before Century and their extermination scheme fell into my crosshairs.

  “Ever kill any civilians?” he asked.

  “No,” I snapped.

  “Just curious,” he said, shrugging. “It’s war, I know sometimes accidents happen.”

  “Not to me,” I said. “I didn’t have any accidents. I was very focused when I was… doing what I was doing.” For a person who said the first part with such certainty, I sure did let the second part of that sentence trail off.

  “I would say it’s probably best you’re out of it now,” he said, tentatively, “but I suppose these last few days it probably seems like you’re right back in the thick of it again.”

  I grunted. What could I say to that? This time the body count was all at the feet of the other side. Well, so far it had been.

  “Why did you stay on?” Webster asked. He must have caught my cockeyed look at him. “After the war, I mean. The way you said it, you’d seen that pile of gold in the Omega base, and you had access to it. It was all yours.”

  “Honestly,” I said, looking out the window, “I totally forgot about it until just now.”

  “You forgot about a pile of gold that could make you as rich as Harry Potter, at least?” Webster chuckled. “I notice you didn’t bring any of it with you.”

  I held up my hands. “I don’t have a purse to carry it in.”

  He gave that half-shrug again. “Still, it seems like to me a lady just looking to do a job might have jumped all over that pile of gold like—”

  I felt the dam that was my patience break open, and I leaned over to him. “Just get to the point and say what you mean to say already.”

  “I was just wondering,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “why someone would choose to keep doing a job that—by your own admission—gives you no time off, has you running ’round the world like your arse is on fire and you’re in a perpetual race to put it out. I was wondering why someone would do all that when they had riches beyond most measures right at their fingertips.”

  I stared straight ahead. “Why do you think?”

  “Because you want to be a force for good, I reckon.”

  I felt a light cackle build until it burst forth from my lips. “You say ‘be a force for good’ like it’s something easy to choose. Like it doesn’t require sacrifices that eat the whole heart out of you.”

  He turned his head, almost apologetic. “There are other jobs—”

  “You think this is a job?” I snapped. “Clock in at nine, punch out at five? It’s not. It’s my life. Twenty-four hours a day, seven a week, three-sixty-five.” I felt my speech deteriorate as the sentence tailed off, like I was so beyond caring that it didn’t even matter to me that I was missing words.

  “Then why don’t you quit?” he asked simply.

  I stayed speechless for about a minute, and my mind snapped back to the multitude of people who had died in the days after I left my house for the first time. “Because once upon a time I sat back and let a lot of people die while I felt completely powerless to stop them. And now I’ve got power enough to stop anyone who threatens to do the same.”

  “So it’s like a debt, then?” His eyes were dark, his manner quiet.

  “One I can never pay back.” I swallowed hard. “Never.”

  His cell phone beeped and he held it up, a text message lighting the faceplate. He frowned, a look of distaste marring his handsome face. “What?” I asked.

  “Commissioner Marshwin wishes to see us back at the station immediately,” he said, looking up at me. “It would appear that Parliament has come to some decisions… and none of them sound very good.”

  Chapter 51

  Angela Tewkesbury screamed and screamed, and Philip enjoyed every note of it. He couldn’t decide if it was his imagination or if Liliana was going even rougher on her because she was a girl. Either way, this delicious pain felt likely to go on for some time, and that rather pleased Philip.

  The only problem was one that there was simply no escaping. He covered his hand with a sleeve as he yawned, the day’s labors having wearied him terribly.

  Liliana noticed, halting her routine of slow cutting, as Tewkesbury made a strangled, crying noise beneath her. “Is this boring you, boss?”

  “Not at all,” Philip said, stifling another yawn into his hand. “I’m afraid I’ve just reached the end of my stamina for the day. A good night’s sleep, perhaps a bit of a lie-in, and I’ll be quite fresh and ready to continue tomorrow.”

  She looked straight at him, and he could see her assessing, judging, trying to weigh what he had said. “It has been a long day,” she finally said. It sounded like a very reluctant concession.

  “Exactly,” Philip said with another yawn. “Let’s adjourn for the night. Give her time to stew in her juices. Give her a chance to look into her future,” he nodded toward Janus, who was stripped and hanging upside down, still dripping blood from Liliana’s previous efforts. “Approaching this again in the morning should offer a fresh perspective, perhaps some new pain.” He kept down another yawn, but only barely. “Or at least a newfound appreciation given that my eyes will actually be open.”

  “Perhaps.” Liliana slung her knives downward as she stood from the squat she’d been in. Blood flicked from the blades of her knives and spattered into the puddle on the floor. Philip watched it in a daze, watched the droplets rejoin the sea below, and wondered exactly how much more he’d see spilled before he got everything he wanted.

  Chapter 52

  Commissioner Marshwin was in her office, in a snit, and—for all I knew—experiencing the worst day of her professional career. The air felt stale as she filled it with heavy words. I tried to pay attention, but it was hard. Mainly because she was talking at a comically elevated level and her accent seemed to go Deep Scottish, something I did not have any experience with.

  “And what do you have to say about that?” she asked, presumably noticing the glazed-over look in my eyes at last. She slowed down for this, making h
erself understood in the process.

  “Sorry for your losses,” I said, shrugging. I actually did mean it. It was never easy to be the boss when you lost people in the line of duty. I knew from experience.

  “That it?” This with an air of disbelief. It was just her and me in the office, though I wished Webster were here to experience this joyous occasion as well. I didn’t usually take a lot of crap, but today it was coming from all sides, and I didn’t feel quite as predisposed to putting her face in the carpeting as I had the ambassador.

  “I’m not sure what else you want me to say.”

  “How about an explanation for all this?” She was looking at me with straight-on irritation.

  “Some guy is pissed off about something,” I said. “He decided to steal a painting and punch your department in the face in the process. He’s also murdering people by having a knife-wielding psycho beast carve them up like Easter ham.”

  “I know this much already from DI Webster’s reports,” she said, more than a little agitated. “You’re telling me you can’t give me any sort of explanation as to who this is causing my problems or why it’s happening?”

  “It’s all a mystery to me,” I said. “But hey, I got you a couple names for this guy’s accomplices. Which is more than you’d have without me.”

  “This is precisely the sort of madness that has Parliament pondering a law even now to remove your kind from the United Kingdom,” Marshwin said with something between disgust and self-satisfaction.

  “Good luck with that,” I said, slapping my hand on my knee and rising to leave.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To go find this guy, truss him up, and hang him on that coat rack in your corner,” I said, gesturing at the wooden monstrosity that took up three square feet of floor space. “I know the UK doesn’t have the death penalty anymore, but I figure if I leave him there long enough, you’ll drown him in sanctimony and speechifying.”

  “Och, you’re a smug thing, aren’t you.” Not even a whiff of suggestion, just a flat statement. “Do you have any idea how many officers I lost today?”

  “Less than you would have lost if I hadn’t been here,” I said, no sugar added. “Do you have any idea how many pints of blood and pounds of flesh I’ve parted with since I’ve been here?”

  “Well, then walk away, why don’t you?” she sneered. It fit the moment.

  “I don’t cut and run,” I said, “and I damned sure don’t get cut and then run.”

  “I don’t want you anywhere near this case,” she said.

  “Well, that’s brilliant,” I said. “Got anyone else who stands a chance against these maniacs? Or is your strategy to just keep overwhelming this guy with dead cops until he cracks under the strain of stepping over their bodies?”

  Her relative calm shattered and her mask deteriorated into shock as her jaw fell. She said nothing for ten seconds, then twenty. After a minute I stopped counting, and she just continued to stare at me in mute shock.

  “Well, shit,” I said, “looks like I broke her.”

  “I’m not broken,” she said, voice back at normal volume, though slightly brittle. “Though it occurs to me to make mention of the fact that you’ve yet to make much of a dent in these conspirators yourself when you’ve gone up against them. Why do you think that would change if you were to face them again? Perhaps this time they’d actually finish the job proper and leave you dead—and me explaining to your ambassador how I got you killed.”

  “Try and pretend he wouldn’t be overjoyed at the news,” I said and thumped my knuckles down on her desk. “If they can do that to me, imagine what they’ll do to all those poor, unarmed police officers you’ve got out on the streets.”

  “We have armed response teams standing by,” she said, a little iron in her spine causing her to straighten, “they’re ready and eager to get their own back.”

  “I hope they kill this guy, I truly do,” I said. “But trust me when I tell you that I’m a better than fair shot with a pistol and he sidestepped my bullets like I’d lobbed a slow, underhand softball at him. Whoever he is, your villain is not playing by amateur rules. He’s a pro. He’s big league, not bush league. He’s shown you that he’s serious and willing, and I would submit to you that the only thing scarier than a man like that is the fact that he’s got two accomplices that seem to cover his every weakness.” He had to have weaknesses. Everyone did.

  She walked to the window behind her. It looked like she was dragging her way over, she moved so slowly. “Wexford came in before you got back to explain the political situation to me.” She glanced over her shoulder. “They’re going to vote metahumans right out of the country in line with the rest of the European Union. After what happened today, we have no enforcement, and the politicians have no tolerance. They’re going to start expelling every one of you within the next few days.” Her expression softened.

  “Well, I hope your bad guy follows that law,” I said dryly, “but his past history leads me to believe that much like every other bad guy, he’s going to continue to hang around until he either gets what he wants or you catch him.”

  “Or kill him?” Marshwin asked.

  “Or kill him,” I said, but I did not meet her eyes.

  She started to say something else, but the door burst open to reveal Webster standing there, hanging on the knob. I could see Marshwin ready to unload on him but she held back long enough for him to silence her burgeoning critique. “Someone just called 999 claiming they’d escaped a captor that was torturing them.”

  I straightened, my knuckles coming off the desk so fast they left indentations in the wood. “Janus?”

  Webster shook his head slowly. “It’s a she. Said her name is Angela Tewkesbury.”

  Chapter 53

  We rolled up next to a warehouse in South London, the red brick crumbling and fading. There were other cop cars filling the street, their lights off and their sirens silent. I counted three SWAT vans, and I knew they weren’t empty just by looking at how low they rested on the shocks. There was another warehouse behind us, deep blue corrugated sides showing in the light of a dim street lamp. It was the only one working in view.

  I took one look at Angela Tewkesbury and knew she was the real deal. I suck with names but I’m pretty decent with faces, and I knew her right off. Brunette, scared, one of the secretarial pool at old Omega in the days when they’d been the only game in town for protecting metas. She’d been a secretary at the Agency back home for a few months, too, and done some decent work if I recalled correctly.

  Now she was missing chunks of flesh. She had a hand raised, pointing down a nearby street, and her fingers were shaking as she made the gesture.

  I’ve been told it doesn’t take much to piss me off, but something about seeing Angela Tewkesbury partially skinned alive, sitting in front of me… well… it just put me right into the red zone.

  I didn’t remember opening the door and getting out, but I was standing in front of her before I knew it, and she let out a low gasp. “Ms. Nealon!”

  “Angela,” I said. I looked down at her arm and saw one-inch squares of skin missing up and down both arms. She should have been in shock. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “They’ve got Janus,” she said, nearly breathless. “They’re… they’re torturing him.” Her lips became a thin line and her eyes scrunched up. “It’s terrible.”

  “We’re going to get him back,” I promised. We were. I was going to do what was colloquially referred to as “laying an ass whooping” on this scheming, torturing clown. “How far?”

  “Three blocks, big warehouse windows up high,” she said, her lip quivering. “I just ran when I got out.” Her hand landed on my sleeve, tugging it like a weight. “He helped me get out—Janus did. My powers are… they’re weak. He boosted my emotion, helped me use my luck to sway my odds to unlock the chains they had me in…”

  “Janus did that?” I stared down at her.

  “
He told me to just go when I tried to unlock his.” She wasn’t crying, but I suspected it was only because she’d probably lost every tear in her body while she’d been screaming in pain. “I had nothing left, and he knew it. He told me to get out, and I did.”

  “Smart move,” I said, gently tugging my hand free of hers. “You did the right thing, getting the police here.” I felt the lines of my face harden. “Now it’s time for me to do what I do best.”

  She blinked at me. “What’s that?”

  I stared down at her arm. “Make these bastards bleed a gallon for every drop they cost you.”

  Chapter 54

  Philip was having such a pleasant dream. He knew it was a dream, of course, by that all-too-pleasant way that dreams have of commanding your attention through the most unusual things. It surely wouldn’t hang together in any logical way once he was awake, but he was enjoying it while he was in it, submerged like it was a bath of warm feelings.

  Then, rather unexpectedly, he was shaken awake.

  “She’s gone,” Liliana announced as Philip tried and failed to fight off the bleary feelings that clouded his mind.

  “Who—?” Philip asked, his head in a fog. He was dimly aware that Liliana was still shaking him, damn the woman, and if she didn’t stop soon he’d feel compelled to slap her damned head right off her shoulders. The irritation rose.

  “The girl,” Liliana said in her hard, flat way. “Angela. She’s gone.”

  Philip felt the stirs of the world’s pieces falling back together around him. Some of what she said had started to make sense. “Gone where? She was bound in chains and hung from the ceiling.”

  “She’s gone,” Liliana said with a final shake that jolted Philip into full consciousness. “Not in the warehouse.”

  Philip sprang up from his cot with a rattle of the metal links that kept the light mattress in the frame. He walked past Liliana to the door and opened it, looking out. He reached out and got a sense of the place, felt for what lay out there, sure that it was the same, dull, boring future that had existed for this place the last time he’d felt for it, just as he was about to go to bed—