by Ian Somers
Cameron: They’ll be ready.
Shaw: Good work, Thomas. You can leave us now.
Cameron nods to Golding and Shaw then leaves the room.
Golding: You invest far too much faith in men who are only trained to deal with military situations, and not with combating the gifted.
Shaw: They’ll do all right. They’re the best men we’ve got in the corporation.
Golding: Ordinary people are no match for the gifted.
Shaw: I remember doing all right against one when I was young!
Golding: How dare you mention that in my presence?
Shaw: My apologies.
Golding: You forget your place at times, Shaw. It doesn’t make me feel very secure.
Shaw: You’re perfectly safe here. There’s no need to worry.
Golding: How can you ask me to stop worrying? The most dangerous person on the planet wants me dead and you’re going to let her into this building. Into this very office …
Shaw: I have the situation under control.
Golding: You can’t control any situation she’s involved in, Shaw. I fear she’ll uncover this ambush of yours. We should just have her shot once she enters the lobby and be done with it.
Shaw: No. She’ll see straight through that, it’s far too obvious. What we need is subtlety. And I have set three traps for her, not just one.
Golding: You only told me about one. What are the other two?
Shaw: I have over one hundred of our finest men scattered throughout the building, once she reaches this office they will gather in each of the two stairwells, then close in on her. If she wants to evade them, the only way out will be the roof and I’ve a very special surprise waiting up there for her.
Golding: A surprise?
Shaw: Barega is on the roof.
Golding: Barega! You shouldn’t have involved him in this; he’s one of my most prized assets. He is the only person alive who has the gift of warping.
Shaw: Is he more important than getting Marianne out of the way? She’ll never make it out of this building alive.
Golding: Will we? I’m more concerned about that.
Shaw: Have I ever let you down?
Golding: I guess not … Do you have any idea where she is now?
Shaw: No. My men lost her outside the airport. She probably went straight to the hotel, but used her other gifts to sense we weren’t inside. She’ll guess we’re here and should be on her way.
Golding: I don’t like this. You know, Bentley’s not working out like we had planned, perhaps we can negotiate with her, offer her more money? If we get rid of her, we’ll have no psychokinetic. We need a psychokinetic in the corporation. We’ve always had one.
Shaw: We can always begin another search.
Golding: There aren’t any more like her.
Shaw: You said that when I suggested we set up The Million Dollar Gift. Besides, her financial demands are outrageous and untenable. We’ve been paying ten million every time she uses her gift to damage one of your competitors. That was bad enough but now she wants fifteen million a time! It’s simply not profitable anymore. We’d be spending more on her wages than we gain from her services. She knows you have a replacement lined up and she’ll be very insulted, and you know how violent she gets when insulted. Marianne is far too unpredictable to work with. This is the wisest course of action. We should probably get rid of Bentley too; he’s almost as unpredictable as her. I don’t like unpredictable colleagues.
Golding: No. Greene was right about Bentley. Judging by all the screaming girls, we can make a fortune on promoting him. He’ll turn out to be a golden hen.
Shaw: And that’s another reason to get rid of Marianne. She likes to be number one, she won’t take kindly to Bentley being such a big fish. She may even decide to come out and go public with her own gifts. After all the illegal jobs she’s done for us, we can’t allow that to happen. She’s a liability. We need to get rid of her. When she does turn up just try to remain calm and focused. Remember, she’s an emotomagnet.
An abandoned vehicle was blocking a busy street in London’s docklands. The engine was still running, the radio was blasting out a tune, and the driver’s door was left wide open. Odd considering it was a new Maserati; who would ditch an expensive car like that? The car meant nothing to the person who had forsaken it, though. Marianne Dolloway had stolen it at the airport just because she didn’t like to take taxis. Once she’d neared her destination she stopped in the middle of the street and continued on foot.
Her destination was the Laberinto building. It resembled the many office blocks in the city, but internally it lived up to its name; it was constructed as a fall-back position if Golding ever got into trouble while in England and it was designed as a labyrinth. It was a five-storey building with no elevators, just two tight stairwells on either side of the structure. Once she ascertained that her employer was no longer at the Golding Plaza hotel she knew he’d be hiding out at the Laberinto.
Marianne strode along the street as if she hadn’t a care in the world. No one would have guessed by looking at her that she was about enter a life-or-death situation.
She was in her mid-twenties, but most people struggled to guess her exact age; she had one of those faces that sometimes seemed full of youthful vitality, but at others betrayed an entire lifetime of memory. It was a face that was attractive yet stern. It was a face that expressed the enigma that lurked behind it.
Her athletic build was partially hidden under a white fur jacket and black leather trousers. She was average height, but her high heels made her seem quite tall. Her fingers, wrists, neck and ears were covered with silver rings that jingled as she moved along the pavement and gave her an almost robotic look. The most striking aspect of her appearance, though, was her hair. It was as white as snow and styled in long, very well-maintained dreadlocks that were tied up above her head. Her make-up was just as extravagant and her thick eyelashes were as white as her hair.
She paused on a street corner and fixed her gaze on the entrance to the building across the street – the Laberinto. There was no visible activity in the lobby but she sensed heightened levels of anxiety in those who occupied the offices above. One of Marianne’s gifts was emotomagnetism; she could pick up on the emotions of others, even from a considerable distance, but she would need to enter the Laberinto to find out what was making the occupants so anxious.
There was no point in delaying the inevitable; she had to get inside the building to find Golding. Waiting around to scope out the place was pointless. She cracked her neck on both sides then paced across the road to the revolving glass door. As she passed through the entrance she saw three uniformed guards watching her from behind a counter. Their anxiety levels went through the roof when the caught sight of her. She liked evoking that reaction. Marianne loved to intimidate people, men in particular. Mostly because the majority of men couldn’t accept that they could ever be outmatched by a woman. She chuckled as she walked across the marble chequered floor of the lobby.
There was dead silence as she approached the counter. She used her emotomagnet gift to assess the guards’ emotions and to uncover the thoughts giving rise to those feelings. She tried to hide her amusement; each of the guards was waiting for one of the others to do the talking.
‘What’s wrong boys?’ she asked, her accent an elegant mixture of English and American.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?’
Marianne knew she already had them eating out of her hand. She sensed they had been warned about her and they knew she was dangerous, but they were also very attracted to her and instinctively wanted to be nice. Deep down each of them could have overlooked the menace she represented if they thought they could get her phone number.
‘Well? Isn’t this when you ask for identification?’
‘They’re expecting you,’ the oldest of the guards said. ‘They’re on the top floor, room 415.’
‘Who is waiting for me?’
The guards looked at each other, but none had an answer for her.
‘There was a message left by the lads on the early shift.’ The older guard actually made a point of placing the sheet of paper on the counter top so Marianne could read it for herself. ‘Have a look if you don’t believe me.’
Marianne Dolloway – Employee S26
(Girl with white hair)
is expected in room 415. No security
check is needed.
This was an unexpected, but clever, move. Her employers knew she was an emotomagnet so they hadn’t let the lowly security staff in on their plan, they knew Marianne would immediately sense it in their minds.
She grinned as she picked up the sheet and rolled it into a tight ball. Only Derek Shaw could be so devious. He’d always been able to keep her on her toes. He was a repulsive individual on so many levels, but Marianne did like the way his mind worked.
She tossed the ball of paper over her shoulder and turned away from the counter then headed for the nearest stair. She’d been in the Laberinto once, a couple of years before, and remembered there were only two stairwells, each of them tight and dimly-lit. They were perfect for an ambush, but this didn’t phase her. Marianne was one of the most powerful humans who had ever walked the earth and she felt indestructible. Many had tried to kill her in the past, even when she was a child, but none had even come close to defeating her.
She climbed the metal steps slowly. All the while she was reaching out with her emotomagnet gift, trying to pick up on any feelings from others in the building. There was that same anxiety she’d been sensing since she neared the Laberinto, but it was coming into focus. It was mainly radiating from one person. It was Golding. She knew the scent of his fear.
When she reached the top floor she entered a long and narrow hallway. The floor, walls and ceiling were completely covered in black marble that reflected the light from the bright overhead lamps in strange ways. It was difficult to see properly and she struggled to focus on the other end of the corridor; it just appeared to go on and on forever. It was an optical illusion though, designed to disorientate any intruders, and as she advanced the opposite end became clear. There was another entrance down there to the only other stairwell. It was identical to the one she’d just come from.
She paused for a moment. It was too quiet. It had to be a trap. She knew they would have set up some sort of ambush for her even before she decided to enter, but she still couldn’t sense how they intended to kill her. It made her more than a little uneasy, but there was no turning back now. This matter had to be resolved without further delay. They had tried to replace her while she was on vacation. This simply would not do. This was a serious insult. Made even worse by the fact they’d chosen a reckless teenage skateboarder to take her place. She continued along the corridor until she reached room 415.
She took a moment to assess the situation. The door might have been booby-trapped, but she was now sensing that Golding was in the room. They wouldn’t put him at risk. Under any circumstances.
She tapped the door with the rings on her left hand and waited for a response.
‘Please come in, Marianne.’ It was Shaw. She’d know his voice anywhere. ‘The door is unlocked.’
Marianne pushed the door open and took a step into the room, a spacious office with a long window opposite the only doorway. She scowled at the two men, Golding and Shaw, who were sitting behind an oval mahogany table, as she entered and closed the door behind her.
She glanced at a flat-screen TV on the wall and grimaced. The news channel was showing images of Ross Bentley at the Golding Plaza Hotel. She tapped into her psychokinesis gift and the TV suddenly rattled on its hinges then fell to the floor and went dead. She walked slowly to one end of the room, instinctively distancing herself from the window, and leaned against the wall. Her attention first went to Shaw. He’d insulted her many years before and she’d flown into a rage and hit him with a glass table. His face had been cut badly and the scars were still horrendous.
‘Hey, Derek. How’s the face?’
She knew the remark would make him furious and she took pleasure in watching him hold back his rage.
‘It’s not quite what it was before you hit me with that table, but it’s not as bad as it has been in the past. The twitches have stopped now, since I had my nineteenth visit to the surgeon.’
‘Sounds like quite an ordeal with all those operations.’ She smiled maliciously at him. ‘You should be more careful with your choice of words in future. Some people don’t like to be insulted.’
‘Maybe some people need to learn to control their temper.’
‘Shut your mouth, you gorilla,’ she snapped, ‘or I’ll shut it for you! Permanently!’
Her expression had changed and was no longer attractive; her face was contorted into a vicious frown. ‘I should have made sure one of those shards cut your tongue out so I wouldn’t have to listen to your crap.’
‘Okay, let’s not get into this very old argument again,’ Golding interrupted. ‘What can we do for you, Marianne? I thought you were on holiday? Tahiti, wasn’t it?’
‘Ah, yes, my holiday.’ Marianne laughed sarcastically. ‘Of course I needed some time off after that last nightmare you two dropped me into. So, picture this: me, sitting by the pool yesterday morning, sipping on a cocktail and relaxing in the sunshine. Then my relaxation is broken by a buzzing sound. Everyone around me is buzzing. They keep repeating the same two words over and over again. “Ross Bentley, Ross Bentley, Ross Bentley,” So, I ask this very fat man wearing a very small pair of briefs, who keeps saying that name, what the buzz is all about. And he looks at me like I’m a talking crab. “What rock have you been living under, darling?” he says. “You should go look at the news,” he says. So, after he inexplicably fell off his sun lounger, I went to the hotel bar to order another cocktail and watch the TV. Lo and behold, I see some little twerp doing very familiar tests.’
She pushed herself away from the wall and slowly moved forward. ‘I can tell you now that I won’t stand for this. I won’t be replaced by some snot-nosed teenager. If that is your intention, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.’
‘Meaning?’ Shaw asked.
‘Meaning I’ll have to rip Bentley’s head off his shoulders.’
‘He isn’t intended to be your replacement, Marianne.’ Golding told her. ‘He’s just an extra hand to be around in case of emergencies. If you’re on vacation and we need something done in a hurry, we can call on Bentley so that you’re not disturbed. We all know that no one could ever take your place.’
‘Come off it, Golding. I know how you work. I’ve already made my position clear on this and I want an immediate answer. Either you make him disappear or I will.’
‘You’re the most important person in the corporation,’ Golding replied. ‘Bentley is a maggot. We’ll step on him for you.’
Marianne circled the oval table, her heels making dull knocks on the marble floor. ‘Make sure that you do. Do it quickly, I don’t want—’ she paused, then looked at both men and grinned. ‘You two gentlemen do remember that I’m not just a psychokinetic. I do have other gifts.’
‘Of course we remember, Marianne,’ Golding said. ‘How could we forget?’
‘What do you call it, Shaw…? Ah, yes. An emotomagnet. I can sense strong emotions from those around me, then tap into the thoughts that fuel those emotions. I’m picking up very strong feelings from you both right now. Golding, you are very afraid. I see that you fear I might kill you. That’s natural enough I suppose. Shaw, I’m sensing that you’re very wound up. You’re oozing nervous excitement.’ She stalked around the table and approached him. The sunlight pouring in from the window made her silver neck rings gleam and her blue eyes were as bright as neon. ‘Ah, you’re feeling anticipation now. I was wondering how I got in here so easily. You’ve set a trap for me, haven’t you?’ She moved to the back of his chair and placed her hands on his shoulders. ‘Let me read those dirty littl
e thoughts of yours.’
She straightened all of a sudden and her expression went blank.
‘There’s interference. Someone else is feeling anxious. Someone outside—’ Marianne sensed there were people in the building across the street who were monitoring activity in the office. She bolted to the window and placed her hands on it. The glass instantly frosted over.
‘Damn it,’ Shaw cursed. ‘Nothing’s ever easy, is it?’
‘The sniper you placed in the building across the street hasn’t got a target now,’ Marianne said. ‘He can’t see into this room and if he fires a shot he could hit either of you.’
‘There’s more than one sniper out there, in fact there are eight of them, and the instant you take your hand off that window, the frost will disappear and they’ll blow your head off. They’re armed with the most powerful rifles ever built, and they’re all set to automatic. I bet you wish you were a precog now, then you would have been able to deflect the bullet.’
‘I can deflect bullets.’
‘Not from a high powered rifle you can’t. You’re in quite a pickle there, aren’t you?’
‘Not quite…’
Marianne knew she had to take matters into her own hands; they probably had more than one ambush set up. She reached out towards Shaw with one hand, releasing a burst of energy out of her body and sending him hurtling across the room. He clattered into the wall and collapsed to the floor.
‘It doesn’t have to be like this, Marianne,’ Golding pleaded. ‘We can still renegotiate your contract.’
‘I don’t negotiate with people who try to kill me.’
She ran from the window and the glass suddenly cleared. A volley of bullets blasted through the window and whizzed into the room, tearing the mahogany table to shreds. Marianne threw herself to the ground and slid under the remains of the table. The bullets cut the room to ribbons. Glass and splinters rained down on her, but she remained unharmed. She bolted for the door as soon as there was a pause in the attack. Another flurry of bullets dashed against the marble floor, but she was quick enough to evade them all. She continued through the doorway and slid into the hallway where she sensed a massive a surge of anxiety.