Badder

by Robert J. Crane

  “Ah, yes,” Mr. Nils said coolly. “I was wondering when I would hear from you.”

  “The answer is now,” I said. “Listen—I need you to place an order for me with a different supplier. Whoever you want to use, whatever it takes, within reason. I mean, I don’t want you to give away the whole—”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Mr. Nils said quietly. “Your account has been locked.”

  I froze, the quiet of the shop seeming to develop into a blaring silence, one that echoed in my ears. “I’m sorry, what? Locked how?”

  “If you’ll wait just a second, I can transfer you to the party responsible.”

  “No, I don’t want a transfer, just tell me what—”

  Bzzz. Bzzz. The bastard had already put me on hold.

  I almost considered hanging up on him, but I didn’t, my curiosity sparked by the feeling that I’d been gut-punched. I’d had my money with this bank for years, and they’d always been on call for me, the way you would expect when someone puts almost a half billion dollars with your bank. This “Account Locked” thing was bullshit, pure and simple, because they’d put me in touch with so many shady people over the years when I needed something illegal or damned near done that the idea that they were suddenly becoming moral crusaders against the evil of Sienna Nealon was laughable, frankly.

  “Hello?” a bright female voice answered on the other end of the line, a faint, lilting accent.

  “Yes, I’m sorry—” I started to say, and then froze, my blood turning cold.

  I knew that voice.

  “Hello, Sienna,” Rose said on the other end of the line. I could almost see her smile, even in the dark of the auto shop, miles between us counting for nil, as I heard the joy in her voice at having cut off another of my avenues of retreat. “I hear you’re having some problems with your account…the biggest of them being…it’s not yours anymore.” She cackled lightly. “Because, like those souls you had, and everything else that’s yours…it’s just become mine.”

  19.

  I slammed the phone down almost hard enough to break it. I didn’t need to hear any more.

  No taunts.

  No laughter.

  No further conversation.

  I drew a ragged breath in the darkness of the automotive shop, and rested a hand on the farm truck sitting at its center as I wobbled away from the phone. That money was mine, my ace card, the thing I kept in reserve as a surprise and a hedge against all the troubles I’d faced the last few years.

  It felt like someone had yanked the rug from beneath my feet, and without Gavrikov’s power of flight to save me, I had come crashing down to the hard concrete floor of life.

  “Oh no,” I gasped, feeling like maybe I was having a heart attack. Or a panic attack. Or just death coming straight for me like a Hades reaching out with his powers and ripping at my soul.

  Sure, I was technically immune to that power, but still…it felt like someone was tearing at me.

  My brain was wheeling, whirring, again speeding at a thousand miles per second. I grabbed the Irn Bru I’d left open and chugged it, taking it down swiftly, then tossing the can in the garbage. I looked at the window high above the workbench at the back of the shop. It faced away from the farmhouse, which was good, because I’d heard the mechanic lock the door, and I didn’t need to deal with him looking out later and seeing it open.

  I jumped up, grabbed the window ledge with my fingers and hoisted myself up, tugging with my baseline succubus meta strength. It was easy enough, and once there, I unlatched the window and popped it open, sliding out and landing in the tall grass behind the building.

  Rose had been on the other end of the phone from me, and could easily have gotten caller ID on the landline I’d just used. It would have been simple, presuming somehow she’d co-opted Nils. And I had to assume that, because how else would she have locked my account?

  This was her manifestation of control again, this power she had over others. I was thankful I’d hung up on her, thinking again of her possible Siren abilities. She could have talked me into surrendering myself, maybe, if I’d kept chatting.

  And even if she couldn’t do that, she could damned sure have dispatched most of Police Scotland to the origin of the phone number I’d called her from, which meant I needed to put some serious distance between myself and this auto shop, and quickly.

  The sky was still an unrelenting grey as I sprinted toward the nearest fence, on a hilltop about three hundred yards away. I kept the auto shop between me and the farmhouse, just in case the couple within had come up for air from Stranger Things, I’d best not accelerate the process of getting the cops on my ass.

  Once I reached the fence I hopped it, trying to control my breathing, and scouted the land on the other side. No buildings in sight. I started forward again, heading west along the fence line. I’d just run using this cover until I found another obstacle.

  I did that all the way to the intersection of the fence, some two miles down the way. There, I found myself steeped in a wood, weary and breathing heavily again. I crept through, crunching a few stray, fallen leaves, shivering, less from cold than from constant exertion and fear creeping in. My heart was hammering and I was exhausted. My eyelids were trying to creep down on me. I hadn’t gotten a lot of restful sleep last night, I’d run and swam for miles and miles today, and had been kicked in the ass by adrenaline more times than I could count.

  Mopping my sotted brow, I tried to figure out what to do next. There was another farm below, this one with just a barn, a farmhouse, and one outbuilding. The farmhouse looked abandoned, but that was hardly a guarantee. The grounds were overgrown, which was another mark in their favor, but again, no certainty that this was empty.

  There was no sound of helicopters overhead or in the distance. I felt certain that Rose would have tracked back my call by now. I definitely hadn’t known how to block the caller ID, not here in the UK. Hell, I could barely figure out how to dial their phones. It would have been a smart skill to learn before coming over here, or during the months I’d spent in London, but you couldn’t anticipate every possibility. Brushing up on the telecom systems of the places you visited? Ranked somewhere below daily cardio and martial arts practice.

  I couldn’t stop at this farm, but I did decide to make a break right through the middle of it. It was a risk, but a calculated one. If I stuck to fence lines, I’d have to really take the long way around, and I needed to put a ton of distance between me and that automotive shop before I did hear the helos overhead.

  That in mind, I sprinted out of the trees and bolted over the field, heading for the stone fence that waited on the other side of the farm.

  I covered the ground in a matter of sixty seconds or less, which seemed considerably longer since I was in the middle of open fields, not an ounce of concealment anywhere nearby save for a couple of scraggly bushes not far from the farmhouse. I kept my distance from the buildings, a plan I was willing to change if I heard a helicopter’s buzzing.

  It didn’t come though, and I made it to the other side of the property without incident.

  The longer I stayed out in the open and the more time elapsed between when I’d hung up with Rose and now, the more likely it got to be caught out in the open. My breathing was coming furiously, my already exhausted body having reached the point of quitting. There was exertion—say, running a marathon, or a triathlon, both of which I’d kinda done already today—at a human pace, and then there was doing all the above at a metahuman pace.

  I was an impressive athlete among humans. I could win just about any event at the Olympics without putting much effort into it, solely on my natural gifts. (Which had become a problem the IOC was dealing with.)

  But today I’d done far more than just a normal human run, or even a superhuman run conducted at a human pace.

  I’d run a marathon at a meta pace, sprints, stopping and starting constantly.

  I had gone for a swim that lasted less than an hour but covered
something like ten or fifteen miles.

  And I’d experienced more stress and adrenaline and fright and hell and trauma in the last twenty-four hours than I could recall facing—with the possible exception of that time I caught a bullet in the brain, and even that was debatable—maybe ever.

  It felt like I was dying, like my legs were going to give out on me at any second, like my lungs were taking their last breaths. I was well conditioned for a human, maybe even for a meta, but my body had reached the wall and I was now being thrown back, hard. If I’d gotten a decent night of sleep last night, maybe—

  No.

  This was it.

  I was crashing.

  I’d had nothing to eat but what I’d raided from John’s fridge this morning and the sugary crap I’d taken out of the mechanic’s junk food stash since…hell, I’d been starving myself in Edinburgh yesterday, too. I probably hadn’t eaten a real meal since the day before, and exerting this many calories on a near-empty tank…

  It was beyond unhealthy. It wouldn’t be fatal, because I didn’t think metas could die that way—I knew of high-level ones like me that had been asphyxiated and starved for years or even centuries that had somehow survived, albeit badly brain damaged—but it would mean the end of my run.

  I had to rest. There was nothing else for it.

  There was an agonizing stitch that had sprung to life in my side, screaming like someone had taken a knife and plunged it in. Rose sort of had, I guess, but that was more of a back wound, and not a literal one.

  I scanned ahead, hoping for some sign of—

  There.

  In the distance was another farmhouse, this one well-kept and the fields growing sprouting, green crops that were about a foot out of the ground. I couldn’t tell what they were, and I didn’t care unless I could eat them as I went by. I might not even have had the energy to chew them at this point. There was a barn here, and it, too, was in good repair. And out from the barn a little bit…

  Was a covered car port, with an old truck parked beneath it. There were no walls, and it was exposed to the elements, but the truck didn’t look like it had been moved in a long time. In fact, compared to the rest of the farm, it was in dismal shape, the hood all rusted and at least two of the tires flat as Iowa.

  I belly-crawled over the distance between us, probably close to a mile, trying not to disturb the hay that hid me at first, and then keeping myself between the rows of the budding crops on the final approach. No helicopter sound echoed on the horizon, but my breaths were still coming furiously.

  My hands were numb as I scraped along on my elbows and knees, like some sort of wounded dog. My brain had slipped into a twilight state, the corners of my vision blackening, a tunnel forming in my sight between me and my objective. My legs seemed to be seizing up, painfully, aches screaming at me as the muscles gave up the ghost.

  I fought them back into action, always one more pull forward, always just one more elbow ahead. I swayed from side to side with each motion, always in danger of tipping over.

  Somehow I made it out of the row of crops and onto the manicured lawn. There were only ten or fifteen yards between me and the old truck now, and I felt every single one of them. I tried to stand and failed, crumbling back to my hands and knees. Running had been a thing I took for granted this morning. Moving normally had been possible only an hour—had it only been that long since the call? I thought so—before.

  Now I strained to get the last few feet. When I reached the concrete floor of the car port, I dragged myself across it, not caring that I was leaving a dirt trail, a blood trail. The next good rain would wash it all away, I hoped. Maybe that would even come tonight, if I was lucky.

  Ha.

  Me.

  Lucky.

  That was a good one.

  I dragged myself beneath the truck, and just in time. My whole body quit as I did so, my neck muscles giving way and my face crumpling gently to the concrete. There was an oily smell lingering here too, but not as strongly as the automotive shop. The lingering orange, metallic flavor of Irn Bru was stuck on my tongue, and the pavement grain felt like it was burning at my brow.

  I didn’t give a damn about any of that.

  I was safe as I could be.

  There were no choppers buzzing in the distance.

  Every inch of me hurt, was sore, was tired, was shutting down from exhaustion.

  I felt like I was forgetting something. To escape, maybe, but that was impossible now. I couldn’t have run any farther if I had to. My heart could have been pumping wildly—hell, it still was; I could hear it—and I couldn’t have traveled another inch right now.

  I was in for the night. The grey horizon was barely visible beyond the shadow of the truck above me.

  And as I lay there, mind almost blank from fatigue, from fear, from the complete and total mental exhaustion that went with the physical, a single thought came to me.

  Reed.

  And with that last, stray thought, I plunged into the darkness of sleep.

  20.

  Reed

  The day was dragging, because there wasn’t anything else to do except call Peter every once in a while and let him know all the things I was working on doing for him. So I was doing that every hour or two, after having received his permission to do so, and offering food, and gently requesting—oh so reasonably—that he give us the youngest kid. Just the smallest. Make your life easier. Give us a sign of good faith, I would say, as I baked in the hot Texas sun, sweat rolling down my face in great rivulets.

  And the answer was always, “No.”

  Some thoughtful person who’d clearly been in Texas law enforcement for some time had set up a tent for us to hide under while we waited. It was just a simple canopy, but in the summer heat, the shade was appreciated by me and everyone else. Angel and I were sweating through our suits, and I had big ol’ beads dripping out of my thick hair every few minutes.

  I wiped my brow with my shirt sleeve, admiring the new, translucent shade the white broadcloth had turned from absorbing all that moisture. It was not a trivial amount of sweating I was doing, and suddenly I wished Miranda had called Scott instead of Angel. He could have set up his version of a misting device, drawing moisture out of the air and blowing it over us to defray some of the life-choking heat.

  But as Teddy Roosevelt said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

  I doubted he’d been standing in a suit in the sweltering summer sun in Texas when he’d said it, but anything was possible I guess. Those guys were crazy back then. They wore suits all the time, and everywhere.

  “Getting close to the hour,” Angel said, a quiet, tense reminder to me that the moment was coming up for me to place another call to Peter.

  We’d managed to identify him, finally, after a little more coaxing allowed me to get his last name out of him. Peter Upton, age twenty-six, a troubled lad with a troubled life. He had a rap sheet for petty stuff, but I hadn’t seen the kicker until Angel pointed it out to me.

  Peter Upton was five foot six, and as near as I could tell he had all the brains to match his stature—which was to say, in both these ways, he was below average.

  Every one of his prior convictions read like something out of America’s Dumbest Criminals. Robbed a liquor store, no mask, using a squirt gun—that was yellow. When the clerk laughed at him, Upton proceeded to beat the clerk with the squirt gun, giving the man some serious contusions. But the clerk did fight back, and ultimately drove Upton out of his store and into the arms of a police patrolman who happened to be driving by just as Upton ran out with the offending squirt gun, wild-eyed and slightly bloody.

  That wasn’t even the best highlight in the reel, at least in my opinion, but it was pretty emblematic of Upton’s history. Dumb, easily angered, cruel when he thought he had power over others. He felt like my worst analysis of humanity, all the regressive genes rolled into one person and illustrative of the least favorable part of our natures. He’d kept a somewhat even
keel so far in his dealings with me, but he was not bright enough to realize how dumb he actually was.

  Which made him extremely difficult to deal with.

  And somewhat sensitive.

  “Yeah,” I said, stirring to wipe my forehead for the millionth time. I’d shed my suit jacket and so had Angel, who was sweating through her blouse. Honestly, Angel in a blouse and suit didn’t seem quite right to me for some reason. She was a tense, terse woman who would—again, I suspected—rather be wearing a tank top and boots than heels and a suit. It wasn’t that she didn’t wear them well—she did, and Isabella hadn’t taken my eyes away so I wouldn’t notice—it was that she didn’t look like she wanted to be wearing them, that she was generally stiff all the time she was in them.

  Her bare, dark arms showed signs of sweat as well, little beads hiding on her biceps and forearm, companions to the ones that she, too, kept wiping off her forehead. “You don’t sound excited about this,” she said, not exactly bringing the thunder in the enthusiasm department herself.

  “I’m not so sure stalling is going to work with this guy,” I said, giving her my heartfelt assessment. “He’s dumb, but I’m not sure he’s dumb enough to realize he’s being played. And he’s stubborn enough that I think he’s probably stuck in a mode where he just wants what he wants, no room for compromise in his head.”

  “Dangerous profile,” Angel said. We’d worked together for a while, and I still had no real idea of her background. Her hiring had predated mine, brought to the team when Sienna had reorganized it after Harmon had torn us apart. Sienna had done so using Miranda as the guiding force through which she’d done everything, which made sense given that Sienna was on the run from the law at the time. I’d come in to a ready-made team, but it had included Angel as part of the bargain, hired by her cousin Miranda.

  That choice by Miranda had made me curious. Angel’s performance these last few months had given me no cause to think her hiring had been motivated by nepotism. She was steady and did her job, kept a cool head in crisis situations, and didn’t gripe about stupid stuff like the heat in Texas on a summer day.