Limitless

by Robert J. Crane

  Liliana Negrescu apparently used them to keep her hands on her knives at all times and to scramble across the ceiling like an insect.

  “This is why I need a gun,” I muttered as she shot to my left, skittering out of my reach while I stood there, still a little stunned by the turn of events.

  She bounded down to a wall and launched off at me. If she’d been smart and kept her distance, I probably couldn’t have caught her. She could have gone for the door, or maybe outsmarted me long enough to at least draw me away from Karthik. Hold him hostage, prey on whatever milk of human kindness I possessed. (I know, hah, right?) Instead, she’d tried to get what she thought was a better angle of attack and thrown herself at me with wild abandon.

  I whipped one of my rebar sticks around and greeted her jaw mid-flight. The breaking noise included the sound of shattering teeth, and the force of it altered her course into another wall.

  She managed to catch herself before she slid down it, slapping a hand against the concrete and dragging herself up. It was a feat of strength, agility and dexterity, and she held herself upright even with a broken jaw that had been split halfway up her cheek. That’d leave a Joker scar for sure.

  I started to ask her, “Why so serious?” but she started climbing the wall again. She still clutched her knives in her hands, darting over the computer servers that lined the left-hand wall. Not one to sit complacently while someone who had severely pissed me off tried to escape, I followed, ramming my eskrima stick up into her haunches and eliciting a scream. She kept moving, but it delayed her flight by a half a second as I sunk a piece of iron two inches into her buttock. She clenched the muscle and tried to tear it out of my hand.

  It didn’t go so well for her, and she screamed again as the metal withdrew from her flesh. She shot back up to the ceiling, but she had a distinct hobble to her movement from where I’d taken that leg out of action. I watched it sag behind her as she hung five feet above me.

  “I’d be tempted to do to you what Philip does to me,” I said, staring at her dark eyes from where she hung, upside down, on the ceiling, “taunt you and taunt you about how you can’t win, about how I’ll beat you at every turn, but we both know that’d be false bravado. You’re damned good. You’re clever, you’re fast, and that whole Jessica Drew thing you’ve got going on here—mad props on hiding it for so long.” I kept my eskrima up, ready for what she might try. “But I think we both know that the odds are running long against you here. You’re injured, and the more this drags on, the more likely you are to bleed out, giving me the win.” I looked at her over the rebar eskrima. “If you give up now, you can go to jail. I don’t know how badly you want to die for Philip’s scheme, but I’m hoping there’s some reason left in you. If not, then I think we both know it’s a battle to the death.”

  “It was always…” she said, rattling a little as she spoke, “… a battle to the death. That’s what… life is.”

  “That’s kind of dour, even for me,” I said. “But have it your way—”

  She launched at me with almost no warning. My sticks were positioned defensively, not in a great place for hard striking power. I got a little momentum out and tapped her hard enough to break a shoulder—

  But not hard enough to stop her from crashing into me with all her body weight.

  I felt one of her blades sink into my guts as she landed atop me. At this close a range, my eskrimas were next to useless. She didn’t exactly have me pinned, but she had me down. I didn’t doubt that I’d be able to overpower her, but the stab of agony in my stomach slowed my reaction.

  Unfortunately, she used that time to perforate my stomach with her knife about a half a dozen more times. I heard the blade clacking against the hard concrete floor as she drove it into me over and over.

  I stared, stunned, into her black eyes. I could see the weariness, the pain. I could feel the blood running out of her and onto me, mixing with the volumes of my own that were pouring out.

  “Now how do you favor your odds?” she said with a strange croak.

  The pain in my stomach was fierce, my innards reduced to a fine puree by her swift knife work. I wanted to say something, anything, but she’d diced the bottom of my lungs in the process.

  Wolfe, I called out in my head, but he was already there.

  She stared at my eyes, triumphant, and I kept them glassy and drifting, watching her while pretending I wasn’t, just for a moment—

  Just long enough for my abdominal muscles to grow back while she wasn’t looking.

  I stared into her eyes and brought mine into focus, letting the strength pull through me. I blotted out the pain, let the worry fade as the adrenaline shot through me just long enough to tense every muscle in my stomach, my back and my neck.

  And I brought my head forward like a battering ram against a castle gate.

  My forehead hit her nose and cheeks with force beyond the comprehension of most people. It was like a Maserati cruising two hundred miles an hour down a freeway and then channeling all its force into a two-inch square of space—the point of my forehead—and smashing into the delicate cartilage structures of her nose and beyond.

  She flew, of course.

  This time when she hit the wall, she didn’t cling to it. Bones broke, sinews tore, flesh was rent asunder by her skeleton ripping through her body from the force.

  Oh, and her head dissolved into a mist of blood and bone, but that mostly happened before she hit the wall.

  When the sack of butchered meat that had been Liliana Negrescu sagged to the concrete floor, it was barely recognizable as human. It made a couple of wet sucking sounds and twitched, like a jello in a pan that someone had tapped, for about ten seconds before it went totally still.

  “I like my odds just fine, thank you,” I said as I felt the last threads of my wounded flesh pull back together. “You Stalinist bitch.”

  Chapter 75

  “Where would you like the transfer to go?” Mr. Glaser asked.

  The private bank smelled like luxury. Every seat was made of wood and covered with expensive leather. Glaser’s desk was a mahogany of some sort, a rich, dark wood that perfectly suited his well-appointed office.

  Philip sat next to Janus, the cup of tea that Glaser’s secretary had brought him cooling in front of him. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a thin slip of paper. “There’s a bank in Liechtenstein that I have in mind.” He pointed to the numbers. “Here’s the account.”

  Glaser gave him a look of some regret. “Is there any way we can persuade you to keep it with us?”

  Philip gave him a polite smile. “I think you know as well as I do that with the nature of banking regulations in the UK, as well as the changing nature of our relationship with the British government—” at this Glaser’s smile thinned; he knew at least a little about Omega’s state, then, “—it’s best if we make a clean break and divest our interests from the country.”

  “As you well know,” Glaser said, “I do have to report this to the authorities. This size of transfer—”

  “Of course,” Philip said. “But you’ll wait until after the transfer is completed, I trust?”

  “You’ll have until end of business today, of course,” Glaser said. “If Westminster isn’t paying attention, perhaps they won’t notice until tomorrow, as much as they have to sift through.”

  “I’m sure they’ll send a notice of concern to the bank in Liechtenstein,” Philip said.

  “Which said bank will certainly ignore,” Mr. Glaser added with a smile of his own. “This should only take a few minutes to complete the transfer.”

  “Thank you,” Philip said and picked up his cup and saucer. He gave the tea a gentle stir with the little spoon, keeping an eye on the probabilities directly in front of him. Glaser was being truthful, and the only thing in his future of interest was a cup of tea for himself in the next half hour or so. He wouldn’t be talking to the authorities any sooner; naturally he had a reputation of his own to uphold. Janus still sa
t in utter silence, head bowed;, if he was listening to what was transpiring around him, he gave no sign of it.

  Both futures were still absolutely clear, allowing Philip to settle back in his seat, take his first sip of tea, and admire the flavors as he swished them about in his mouth before swallowing.

  Chapter 76

  I pulled myself up a few seconds later, dragging to my feet. Most of the pain was gone, but I dug Liliana’s last knife out of my belly to let the wound heal, barely noticing it as it fell to the ground with a clatter. I’d cast my rebar weapons aside.

  The smell of blood was thick, and not just from what Liliana and I had left behind. There was a big damned puddle of it on the floor where I’d fallen, and I’d made a shape a little like a snow angel in it as I’d gotten up. No halo, of course.

  “My God,” Karthik said around the gag that was in his mouth. I’d kinda forgotten he was here during most of the fight. Facing off with a crazed spider monkey will do that for you, I suppose. “You killed her. With… with…”

  “When you fight as much as I have, you make a weapon out of whatever’s handy.” I spat blood on the floor. “Like you’ve never seen me kill anyone before.” I slouched over to him, breaking his handcuffs by twisting them until the metal fractured from the stress.

  “I was surprised you didn’t kill me yesterday,” he said. “Time was, you would have struck first, smashed through my ambush and annihilated me in a matter of seconds, only checking to see who you’d killed after the fact.” He rubbed his wrists while I snapped the chain around his ankles. “I was beginning to worry you’d lost your edge.”

  “Lucky for you I found it again,” I said. I didn’t help him up, because with so much of his muscle and bone exposed to the air, I was pretty sure standing would not be a good thing for him. “Where’s Philip?”

  “He took Janus with him,” Karthik said, rubbing the spots on his wrist where the handcuffs had bitten through the flesh. Liliana had not been gentle to him in any way. “I don’t know where they went, but from what I could hear over my own screaming, this was part of some plan of theirs.”

  That was not good. “Their plans have not typically ended in anything but pain and agony for everyone who’s not them,” I said, tapping my head. “I take it he was holding the proverbial knife to your throat when we talked earlier?”

  “She was, yes,” he said, bringing up a hand to check on his own neck with a touch. I grimaced because he found exposed veins and tissue waiting for him there. As a meta, he’d heal, but it would hurt a lot in the process. His fingers came away bloody, but only drabs of it, not torrents. Fortunately for him. “He was prompting me on what to tell you.”

  “He wanted me sent to his last-known address,” I said, glancing over at the computer that Karthik had used the day before to access the Omega database. “There was a big-ass bomb waiting. Would have killed me, I think.” I blinked and thought that over. “He doesn’t care about saving me for last anymore, even though there are others in Omega he hasn’t killed yet.” I stopped speaking, trying to figure out why the hell that would be. “What did he leave off?”

  Karthik stared at me through dull eyes that were glassy with pain that was just starting to catch up with him. “He had family in the file.”

  “Leverage,” I said. “A weak point for him.”

  “No,” Karthik said, shaking his head and causing a little blood to dribble down out of his neck. I grimaced in disgust. “He had a sister, but she’s dead.”

  I stared straight at him, feeling a tingle run over my scalp. “How did she die?”

  “The file didn’t say exactly,” Karthik said, his words slowing out of either caution or hesitation. “But it did have one thing written on it—an Omega project tag that gave a pretty good hint about her fate.”

  “What did it say?” I asked, waiting expectantly, like this would be the answer to the questions I’d been asking since I’d first run across Philip, pondering his mysterious motives.

  “Only one word,” Karthik said, staring back at me, his face going slack. “Andromeda.”

  Chapter 77

  “… and that concludes the transfer,” Mr. Glaser said with as happy a look on his face as he could probably muster after watching almost half a billion pounds in deposits disappear out of the back door of his bank. “Is there anything else I can get for you, Mr. Janus?”

  “Hm?” Janus looked as though he’d just been awakened. Probably had, Philip reflected; the poor sod had had a few very traumatic days, and they hadn’t included much in the way of sleep.

  Which was how Philip had planned it, of course.

  “No, I require nothing else,” Janus said in that peculiar, old-world accent of his. “Thank you, Mr. Glaser.”

  Nothing he said so much as hinted at a negative probability in Philip’s analysis of his near future. Philip drained the last of his cup of tea—just perfect in the amount of milk and sugar—and set it back on Mr. Glaser’s desk before standing and placing a hand on Janus’s shoulder. The good son, giving his father an arm to stand up with. “Come on then. Let’s go conclude our other business.” Not even a subtle movement in the probabilities from Janus. He simply stood and shuffled out of Glaser’s office, utterly resigned to his fate.

  Chapter 78

  “She left her phone,” I said, staring at the black cell phone—mobile phone, over here—sitting on the desk next to the computer terminal. I crossed over to it and thumbed it on, and the first thing my eyes alighted on when the screen came up was a GPS tracking app.

  “No way,” I muttered. “No chance.” No one could be this arrogant, could they?

  I tapped it with a thumb and it came up with a map. I held my breath while it loaded, and it came up with a flashing indicator that said, “NO SIGNAL.”

  Without even a backward glance toward Karthik, I flew out the door and up the stairs into the main room, hovering in the office and waiting for the screen to change.

  The “NO SIGNAL” message disappeared, and the map reloaded, with a pin showing me exactly where I was on it, squarely in the middle of the block that I knew was Omega headquarters.

  And then another pin appeared, with the name “Philip,” on it, and my question about who could be this arrogant was effectively answered.

  A villain who not only thought he was smarter than everybody else but could see the future. Because why bother to hide what you’re doing from people whose future you know?

  I guess he hadn’t seen this coming.

  I studied the map and started to zoom in on Philip’s position when the screen lit up and the ringtone sounded, warning me that a call was coming in from—yep, you guessed it—Philip.

  Chapter 79

  “Dispose of Mr. Karthik,” Philip said as he rode the elevator down. He hadn’t waited for Liliana’s greeting, of course, because why would he? There were things to be done.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Philip,” came the female voice from the other end of the line.

  Philip’s eyes widened, and he felt his stomach drop, his fingers clenching tighter on to the phone. How had he not seen this? He felt a swell of fear, replaced by the sickening sense of something forgotten in the scramble to get to the bank—

  He’d forgotten to look into Liliana’s future.

  This was exactly how he’d gotten caught at the Ministry. He’d gotten complacent, sloppy. He’d failed to do the basic checks, the probability watches on the people who were closest to him. Because it was always them that screwed up, always them that got rolled up first.

  This was why he preferred to work alone.

  “I suppose you’ve deprived Ms. Negrescu of her phone,” Philip said, smoothly, recovering quickly. He put a smile into his reply.

  “I deprived her of her damned life,” came the answer, the voice hazy with static.

  Philip felt his eyebrows rise as the lift doors opened. He glanced left and right and saw a staircase leading up the left side of the room, disappearing back up into the privat
e bank. He checked the probabilities and saw it clear to the top. The roof seemed like the direction to go, but his mind was rabbiting so quickly, trying to track the staircase, the lobby and Janus, watching the probabilities for all three, that he felt his cheeks burn. Flustered. This was how it always went in the stressful situations. Too much to manage.

  “What’s the matter, Philip?” her voice came again, taunting. “Surprised?”

  “More than a little,” he admitted, talking without being able to filter due to his distraction. “I would have expected her to at least slow you down.”

  “Like good cannon fodder, right?”

  Philip felt a grin from the banter as he narrowed his focus to the stairs. Clear for the next minute, and that was what he needed. He tried to reach beyond but failed, needing to have eyes on it to see the future. He glimpsed back at Janus and saw the man doing nothing but slumping and falling over for the next twenty minutes, at least. He was useless. “Well, yes. What else are they good for? It’s not as though I kept them around for the dinner conversation.”

  “That’s cold.”

  “It’s necessary,” he said, letting truth spill out. “You let others get close, it gives them the ability to be a weakness for you. You should know all about that.”

  “So should you,” she said. “What with Clarice and all.”

  Philip felt his blood run cold, the fury pump anger into his face. “So you found out about her.”

  “Yeah,” her voice came back. “You did all that spying for Omega and they went and used your sister as a sacrifice while trying to beef up Andromeda. She was the Cassandra they fed to Adelaide in order to make her more powerful. That was how she saw the future. Because of Clarice—”