Catharsis (Book 2): Catalyst

by Campbell, D. Andrew

  "Well," he continues. "When they failed to kill you with that house filled with explosives or that more recent one filled with professional hitters, I think they realized they were outmatched. It appears they've accepted that just killing you isn’t really in their skillset. So since they can't make you go away, they're trying something new: make your motivation go away."

  I just blink at him as he tries to let that sink in. "But they are my motivation," I tell him. "Their plan doesn't make any sense."

  "Well not to you and me, no," he agrees. "But that's because we know why you're doing this, and they don't. They think you just want their money and to burn their supply. They haven't quite grasped that your ultimate goal is their complete annihilation. They're just thinking that if you have less drugs and cash at each location that maybe you'll get bored of attacking them and move on."

  "That'll never happen," I snort. "This is way too much fun. I mean, heck, I'd do it for free if I needed to."

  "Well, you're welcome to pass that sentiment along to them tonight when you're out, and we'll see how it affects their future plans."

  "Right," I say, smiling, and point back to the house he has marked on the screen. "So how does the McMansion fit into their new schemes then?"

  "Actually, I'm not completely positive," he tells me. "I have an idea about what they're trying to do, and that's where you come in. I'm pretty sure they're going a bit more mobile and attempting to keep their on hand stock as low as possible. To make that happen, they are sending around trucks to pick up and deliver the drugs and cash each night to the houses that they supply. I'm pretty sure this house is the starting point for one of the refill trucks."

  "Ok," I tell him. "I'm following you so far. So what do you think we should do about it?"

  "Under normal circumstances, I'd have you just follow the vehicle as it leaves and mark whatever houses it stops at so that we could come back to them later." He looks at me, and I nod my approval of the idea. "But tonight isn't 'normal' as you're wanting to make a quick trip and get back to Chadwick's to pay him a visit, right?"

  "Correct," I say agreeing with him. "Tonight isn't for reconnaissance. I just need energy so that I can be a bit better prepared for my return appointment with Mr. Sparkle-Boom! He's my main priority right now. Let me quickly put him away, and then we can get back to our regularly scheduled thug-busting."

  "That's what I figured, too. So we're going with Plan B instead."

  "And that is?" I ask, already liking the way he's starting to smile as he thinks about the plan.

  "Simple. You just intercept the truck as it goes from house to house and decommission it. Any way you see necessary."

  "I really like that particular plan," I say returning his smile. "But if it's already left the house for the night, then how am I supposed to find it in the city?"

  "Easy," he says as he lets his smile consume his entire face. "They’re paranoid and security-conscious criminal thugs. They wanted to protect their investment, so they put a LoJack tracking system on it. Once you're in the area I'll activate it. You just have to follow the signal back to them."

  Chuckling, I turn and run towards the glint of metal hidden in one of the darker shadows of the warehouse. "Perfect," I say into the microphone on my neck. "Give me the directions once I'm out."

  CHAPTER NINE

  The crushing rip of the wind tears at my clothes as the motorcycle accelerates out of the warehouse's backyard. The black, polarized visor of the helmet blocks out nearly all the light from the passing street lamps as I zip past them, and the insulated helmet protects me from any unwanted sounds or smells.

  I lean into a turn and downshift to prevent the powerful bike from sliding out from underneath me. Twisting hard on the handle in my right hand, I accelerate out of the corner and rocket down the next street heading away from the warehouse.

  Renny definitely earned my respect with this one, I think, as the mass of metal beneath me silently hums with the road vibrations. An electric motorcycle. I never would have thought of it on my own.

  When Ren first suggested I use some kind of vehicle to get from house to house at night and not burn up my energy reserves by running, I thought he was crazy. There was no way I was going to drive a car (I needed the freedom to move quickly and easily in case of danger, and being encased in a car seemed the antithesis of that.), and a motorcycle was just too loud and smelly to be a viable option. I couldn't keep something at the warehouse that would reek of gasoline and sound like thunder when it started. I'd lose my sanity before the end of a month.

  And that's when Ren showed me a website for the newer electric motorcycles. “It’s silent and doesn’t use gasoline so no nauseating smell of fuel to haunt the place,” he told me. Plus he could get me a helmet that would protect my senses from being overwhelmed while I was on the streets. It's not like I had much else to spend the ill-gotten cash on, so I told him to go for it.

  After a few weeks of practice riding at the warehouse, I was set up with a whole new way of traveling. Plus, it's fun. Really fun.

  Of course I can't use it every time I'm out, as it still doesn't really work for transporting large sacks of ill-gotten cash back to the warehouse (Ren has slowly been convincing me to invest in an electric car as our next purchase. As much as I don't like the idea of being trapped in a large, metal box, I do find the idea of not caring bags of cash across a city at night highly appealing.). But for quick trips around town to scout out a new house or find a place to feed without burning up my energy reserves, it's been a life-saver.

  Noticing that I still have over ten minutes before I'll be near the right neighborhood, I activate the phone that Ren wired into my helmet. "Hello phone," I say as the phone responds to my voice. "Call her." (Being severely limited in who I interact with anymore has allowed me to only have two people pre-programmed into my phone. One's a guy, and the other is a girl. For simplicity's sake, I programmed the phone to just respond to "him" or "her" depending on which I'm calling.)

  I only have to wait for the phone to ring twice before it's answered. "Hey, Cat!" shrieks a high-pitched girl's voice through the helmet's speaker (Thank goodness Ren was able to build in some sound-dampening when he wired the helmet for me or I would end up crashing my bike every time I made this call.). "It's been a few days," she continues and her voice drops more into the pouty range after starting off excited. "I was beginning to think you were going to ignore me."

  Giving into one of the few genuine smiles that are so rare for me anymore, I embrace the sound of the voice that I had feared for so long I would never hear again. Every word she speaks brings back a little piece of my previous, happier life. A life I can no longer seem to hold on to unless we're speaking.

  "Hey Leyna," I say through my grin. "I'm sorry, kiddo. It's been a busy few days around here. How's life?"

  She giggles before answering and the previous taint of poutiness quickly dissipates from her voice. "I'm great Cat. But more importantly, how's city life treating my big sister?"

  CHAPTER TEN

  The wicked whip of life’s ironies has never failed to make an impression on me. A year ago before I left home, my sister and I were both teenagers and we had started bickering on a regular basis. We have completely different personalities, and we weren't hanging out together very much anymore. Most of our interactions involved me being angry at her for one thing or another. We lived in the same house, and yet we attempted to speak to each other as little as possible (She's taller, prettier and more outgoing than I'll ever be. She has the natural personality of a social butterfly, and that combined well with her upbeat attitude to make her a person everyone always wanted to be around. She's peppy, happy, friendly and the type of person that strangers are instantly attracted to. All of that made it very easy for me to not like her as she got ready to join me at the high school. She wasn't even at the school yet, and she was already more popular than I would ever be. I loved her, but I didn't really like her. And the fact that she wasn't bothe
red in the least by my annoyance only bothered me more. It was Leyna I was fighting with that fateful night my life changed. A fact I haven't forgotten. Nor has she.).

  But now that I've been gone from home for almost a year, her voice is one of the only things that truly brings me to a smile anymore. I miss her, and I've made a point of contacting her to talk at least once a week. I know she wants to hear from me and know that I'm ok, but the calls are more for my sanity than hers. That's why I had Ren set up an untraceable number when I dial her. I can't have her tracking me down. Being kept at a distance is something I know she doesn’t like, but she has learned to accept it. It’s still better than the alternative: not hearing from me at all.

  "It's been good, Leyna, thanks," I answer in response to her question. "The city continues to be a big, scary place that constantly keeps me on my toes, but I think I'm winning the battle." I pause and think back over the events of the night. "At least most of the important ones."

  Twisting the throttle of the bike, I push its speed and pass a car on the road as if it was standing still. One of the joys of having heightened reflexes and near immortality is that I don't really worry any more about the repercussions of reckless driving. I've come close to taking a tumble a number of times, but so far my body's self-preservation abilities have always kicked in and saved me.

  "How's school going so far?" I ask her so that we can stick to one of our safer topics. We've learned there are a few areas of our lives that neither of us dredges up, but the boring neutrality of the educational world has remained a staple of our conversations. "Any news I should know about with the report coming up?"

  "Ha! Nothing that wouldn't embarrass you," she tells me through a laugh. "I always thought you were supposed to be the smart one, but I'm starting to make your old grades look bad. I'm going to make honor roll again this term, but my history class is getting tougher. I'm hoping if I can keep it at least a B+ for the rest of the year then my math grade will help offset it. ."

  "You still rocking that crazy, high math class and getting A's?" I ask as I slow for a red light and wait for it to change (I may speed at times and bumper-slide more than I should, but I try not to run lights if I can avoid it. That's just bad karma.). "I still can't believe how easily that stuff comes to you."

  "It just makes sense to me," she says in a quieter voice. "I don't even have to try in Mr. Porter's class. My brain just gets math." She stops talking after that, and I can almost hear the neurons rubbing together in her brain as she considers her next statement. "I get that from mom. You know that."

  I don't respond as I stare at the stoplight in front of me, and I do my best to not let what she said affect me. The moment the light becomes green I kick the gears and accelerate as hard as the bike will let me without flipping over. I know I can't run away from this conversation as easily as the bike did from that intersection, but I can wish for it to be that easy. I know I need to address what she said, but I don't want to.

  "Leyna, you know I don't want to talk about them. It's too painful, and it does me no favors," I tell her as I do my best to not picture the two people she's talking about. "I call you to find out about your life, not theirs. I can't go down that road. Not right now. Not for a while, at least."

  "I know. I'm sorry," she tells me. "They just miss you and ask about you. And I promised them I would..."

  "Leyni Jay!" I growl out my pet nickname for her before she can continue. "Stop. Please. I don't want to have them on my mind tonight. Do me that little favor?"

  "Ok, ok, Cat. I had to at least try, or I wouldn't be able to look mom in the eyes later when she asks," she says with a final dig at the topic. "Forgiven?"

  My younger sister may only be in her first year of high school, but sometimes she shows the twisted genius of a young Machiavelli. She knew mentioning our parents would haunt me until I eventually break down and write them another letter. She can still find ways to manipulate me, and I have to respect her for it. But respect and forgiveness are two different things.

  "Uh huh," I say non-committal. "Speaking of fun topics for us to bring up, how are Brandon and Evan?"

  "Ugh," she groans into the phone, and I have to smile at her discomfort. Her constant social machinations with the boys of the school are a world that I never had to deal with, and I get no end of joy tormenting her with the topic. "They're both getting a lot more persistent, thanks. Sometimes I just think I should swear them all off completely..."

  She continues to rant about the social hierarchies at the school, but I only half listen as I approach the neighborhood that Ren had indicated on the map to me previously. Her words become a pleasant hum in the background as I do my best to push her comments about our parents from my mind.

  I know my disappearance nearly destroyed them, but I honestly don't think I could have handled it any other way. By the time I had enough of a handle on my life to start thinking about them again, it had been months since I had left. And I had disappeared after attacking our school nurse in the middle of the day and then fleeing the school building by jumping out of a second-story window. Then they had no contact from me for weeks. And that contact was only because I let myself be seen on a convenience store's security video so that they would know I was still alive.

  Looking back at the past year, I can't imagine how they might feel towards me. Leyna says they love me, but I know that love has been tested. I won't let her talk about them or that day I left. I don't want to know what the school thinks about me or my old friends or how my being gone has destroyed my parents. I can't change it, so I've learned to accept it.

  Plus, I've had Ren set up multiple savings accounts in Leyna's name using the money from the drug houses. I'll never be able to use it all, and I know my parents would be horrified to even think about taking money like this from me. So I invest it in Leyna. Someday she will be a very rich girl. I just hope I'm still alive to see it. But that's a dream I doubt a little bit more with each passing day.

  "Cat, you're close," Ren's deep voice tells me over the helmet's speaker cutting into Leyna's melodic ramblings about the kids at school and her exasperation with them. "We're going live in about thirty seconds. Be ready."

  "Hey Leyni, I gotta go," I say interrupting her mid-word. "Sorry. I love you, little sis." I consider saying more, but nothing comes to me.

  She seems unfazed by my abruptness, though. "Love you, too. Be safe out there. Please."

  "I will. I always am," I say before disconnecting the call. I've never exactly told Leyna what I do in the city, and she's too smart to ask (She knows I'd never actually tell her.). But somehow I have the suspicion that her guesses would be frighteningly accurate. Like I said, she's a smart kid.

  "Ok, Renny. I'm ready for ya," I say into the helmet's microphone and slow the bike as I approach the street he had originally pointed to on the map. "Let's find me a way to release some pent up hostility."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  "Cat, you're going to first have to turn on the tracking system on the bike," Ren tells me. "It's the small box I wired in below the gauges. Give it a moment to start up, and then let me know. I'm only going to activate their LoJack in bursts so we can try to find them without also popping up on the police’s radar."

  "What do you mean by their 'radar'?" I ask as I hit the little green switch on the device and watch it power up. "And it's on now."

  "Remember how last time we used this thing I left it pulsing and it brought the entire local police force down on you mid-battle?"

  That wasn't exactly a pleasant experience, and it's definitely not one I want to try for a second time. "Yeah, I remember that," I tell him. "We can avoid that now? Ok. I was just planning on being faster this time."

  "Well, I didn't really know what I was doing last time. Kinda just learning on the fly. Apparently, the LoJack sends out a constant information stream screaming, 'HEY, I'M A STOLEN VEHICLE! COME GET ME.' And that was why the cops interrupted your interrogation of those cartel boys. That LoJack was consta
ntly waving a big red flag telling every cop nearby that they needed to come investigate. The only thing that slowed down their response time was the fact that it wasn't in their system as a 'missing vehicle'."

  "And now?" I ask him. "What's different this time?"

  "Well now," he tells me. "We're just going to do a quick on-off pulse every once in a while to let you try and find them. You'll be the only one looking and the chances of a police car being nearby and scanning will hopefully be very slim. It'll take us a bit longer, but it should also cut down on the chances of you having any unexpected visitors."

  "Sounds good, Renny," I tell him as I pull back onto the street. "I'm moving now. I'll just drive the neighborhoods while you do your thing. I'll let you know as soon as I pick anything up on my end."

  "Copy that. I'll pulse it every thirty seconds until you get something from them. It shouldn't take very long," he tells me, but I can hear there's more he wants to say.

  I give him a moment to speak up again, but he doesn't. "What's up, Ren?" I finally ask when I realize he isn't going to say anything on his own.

  "Nothing," he finally says in a quiet voice. "Just," he pauses before continuing, and I can hear him breathing over the open channel. "Be careful out there. I know you're in a hurry to get back to Chadwick, but don't make any unnecessary decisions."

  "I won't Renny," I say and smile at his thoughtfulness. The guy may be dark and mopey at times, but he has a great heart. It's why I couldn't survive out here without him anymore. He’s becoming the soul that I’m slowly losing.

  I've come to respect the irony of our situation. The fact that I can't feel normal unless I'm around a person whose blood is so full of toxins and poisons that my dark hunger balks at the very idea of ever drinking from him. In order for me to feel like I'm really alive, I have to spend time around someone who is close to death. Fate, you are a wicked mistress.