by Robyn Nyx
“Both.”
“I’m afraid I’m a cliché. I started drinking, and Rik’s Place eventually became my church. It started with one drink, just to settle me when we got back from a mission. That turned into two and so on. I guess it wasn’t long before it became a whole bottle just to get me off to sleep…” Delaney swallowed, imagining the soft burn of a shot of Widow Jane and licked her lips. One would go down nice right about now.
“When you slept?”
Delaney gave a short laugh. “That’s when the fun and games really started. I didn’t think I had much of an imagination, but my dreams felt as vivid as if I were doing it all over again.” She shuddered and rubbed the goose bumps from her arms as if she were rubbing away the screams of her victims. All the pain and suffering she’d induced in others for the sake of the missions… “You don’t understand what you’re asking us to do. You think you have an idea, but you don’t know the realities of any of it.”
“Is that what made you want to take over Pulsus? To stop missions that put our operatives under that kind of stress?”
Delaney saw Ilsa in her mind. Beautiful, innocent Ilsa. Without the cancer mission, without having to infiltrate the Nazis, they would never have met.
“You know what I wanted to do. I talked to the board about it before I left for 1940s Germany.” Delaney screwed her toes up in her boots. At least she could hide that from Castillo, who was studying and interpreting her every move.
“Let’s talk as if I don’t know everything, almost as if we’ve never met. That way, we can get everything about this down in one place, rather than assuming any knowledge.”
Castillo’s gentle rhythmic tone was meant to be soothing. Delaney wondered if all psychs had to go to a special class to learn to speak that way. All it was currently making Delaney feel was patronized. And when she felt like that, it usually ended with blood being spilled. Control yourself. “I felt like our missions were too narrowly focused. The German mission hammered that home for me. Why not just kill Hitler? We would’ve saved the doctor and sixty million others. I wanted us to do different kinds of missions, that hopefully would also mean we had to do less of the other stuff.” Stuff? There were no adequate words for what they’d had to do.
“Tell me more about your drinking.”
Castillo’s prompt moved them away from Delaney’s motivations, for which she was glad. She needed the meeting to last long enough to give Landry time to make her play, though she wished she knew what that was. Talking about the missions pushed a button she clearly hadn’t gotten under control, and she didn’t want Castillo to put a stop to it because she felt threatened.
“There wasn’t enough whiskey in the world to drown the guilt in my soul. It was like a giant cork on the ocean, and no matter how many waves of whiskey I washed over it, it just kept on popping back up to the surface. Everything but the one thing I wanted not to feel was numb. Could be that it deadened my logic, too. I mean, I’m just an operative.” Delaney recalled Landry’s words. “How could I know better than a board of people with a combined IQ of two thousand?”
Delaney paused and waited for something from Castillo. This was exactly why she’d never engaged with the psych team beyond the basic requirements. They were trained to look and not react, to hear and not judge. Delaney preferred conversations where the other person offered something, anything, other than a vacuous smile and silent acceptance. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
Castillo’s lecture-learned smile made Delaney want to carve it off with a butter knife.
“Is there something you think I should say?”
Another trick. “I’d like to hear your opinion.”
Castillo leaned in a little. “That’s not what I’m being paid for. I need to record your opinion, the facts as you see them. It’s not for me to judge how you felt or reacted to the stimuli you experienced. I can try to empathize, but really I can’t even begin to imagine the horrors you’ve not only experienced, but been forced to perpetrate. That’s what this is all about, Delaney. Learning from your experience will teach us what we should and shouldn’t ask our operatives to do.” She settled back in her chair. “When we ask you to complete a mission, we need the operatives to tell us what they will have to do to make that happen. Then we can assess if the outcome of the mission outweighs those tasks. Plus, Elena has perfected her mind-cleansing technology. Anything operatives have to do can be wiped away like germs with an antiseptic cloth.”
“The needs of the many outweigh the sufferings of the few?”
Castillo nodded and offered a tight-lipped smile. “That’s war. As a soldier, you already know that.”
She wasn’t wrong, and likening their actions to germs was appropriate. They had been an infection that had spread and caused Delaney unbearable pain. Mind cleansing was a perfect way around it, and it would make missions easier knowing they wouldn’t have to live with what they’d done beyond the duration of the mission.
“Were there any other factors that influenced your actions?”
Castillo’s question jolted Delaney from a silence she hadn’t realized had fallen. She failed to suppress a yawn and became aware of how fatigued she was. She could feel the tiredness in her bones. “I’m sorry. The pods fix the body, but the jump still tires you out.”
“Would you like to get a little sleep?”
Delaney raised her eyebrows. Unexpected. “Aren’t you on a time limit to get this finished?” Jenkin was a strategist. Surely she’d have this whole process planned to a rigid agenda.
Castillo shook her head. “This will take as long as it takes. It seems we’re guilty of rushing and cutting far too many corners that should be acceptable, even though our two-thousand-IQ board believed they’d considered everything. We don’t want to make those kinds of mistakes again. So, no, there is no rush for you to share your experience. We need every detail to make sure we don’t let this happen again.”
Perfect. “Then, yeah, a break to grab some sleep and food would be great.” Time to catch up with Landry.
Chapter Twenty-nine
“After what happened with Jade, I can’t believe that you’ve gone ahead and done what you damn well pleased with Brooke.”
The vein on the side of her mom’s head was almost snake-like thickness. It would have been enough of a sign of her irritation even without her raised voice.
“I discussed it with Jenkin before I left.” Part of her didn’t want to be having this conversation at all, but this wasn’t her organization, and she didn’t get to make all the decisions.
“But not early enough to involve the whole board, was it?”
For some reason, Landry had expected Jenkin to have prepared the ground with her mom for Jackson’s arrival. That’s what she realized Jenkin had done when Landry was growing up. If ever there was something Landry needed to talk to her mom about that was potentially incendiary, she’d used Jenkin as a go-between. She half expected resistance from the board, but not from this direction. She looked to Jenkin for support.
“Elena, you know a decision like this would’ve taken them too long to consider and time was of the essence with this. We needed Lyman here to continue his work as soon as possible. Every moment of delay was costing people’s lives.” Jenkin reached across the table, but Landry’s mom pulled her hands away.
“It’s a dangerous precedent to set. What if other extractors think they’ve found a perfect recruit and they bring them back?” Her mom waved her finger at Landry. “You’ve always said that you don’t want to be seen as having preferential treatment, but a stunt like this screams that you can get away with anything you damn well please.”
Jenkin steepled her fingers beneath her chin. “As the controlling stakeholder and founder, I put in place the option to make occasional decisions without the need to seek formal board approval. This was one of those occasions.”
“I didn’t bring Jackson back on a whim, Mom. I researched what happened after our mission. She died stopping Del
aney from kidnapping you both.” Landry threw her arms in the air. “God knows what might’ve happened otherwise. And let’s not forget the fact that she released me and made it possible for me to come home.”
“I understand why you did it, Landry. But there are a lot of changes going on, and the organization is at a very delicate stage in its development. We must have a strong, united board working together. I don’t want to lose half of them because you and Jenkin have ridden roughshod over the agreed decision-making process.”
Landry stood, moved around to her mom, and put her hands on her shoulders. She smiled when her mom reached up and held them. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about it before I left. I figured you had enough pressure with Priscilla.” There it was. Landry hadn’t wanted to mention her name yet. She wasn’t sure if she was prepared if the news was anything less than a full recovery. Equally, the mission had taken priority, and inquiring about Priscilla as soon as she emerged from the time circle with a stowaway hadn’t seemed like good form.
She felt her mom’s body relax beneath her hands and hoped it was the good sign she interpreted it as.
“Subtle as Thor’s hammer, like always,” her mom said and Landry heard the smile in her voice.
Landry took a deep breath and sat back in her seat before asking, “How is she?” She felt her tension tighten in her chest, like she was pinned to the floor by a four-hundred-pound wrestler.
“Cured.”
A tsunami-like tidal wave of relief washed the wrestler away, and Landry put her head in her hands. “She’s home?”
“Jade picked her up from me at the station. She’s been home for a week. I’ve visited them twice to make sure everything is progressing as it should be. I would’ve liked to keep her here to monitor her recovery, but equally, I didn’t want to keep her away from her parents for longer than was absolutely necessary.”
As Landry processed the enormity of what her mom was telling her, the professional triumph of her mom’s achievement suddenly occurred to her. She’d been able to fix healthy bodies for three years now, and this had been the next step, one she’d been working on for decades, but had eluded her. The ramifications and applications of her progress were huge.
“That’s amazing, Mom. I’m so proud of you.”
Her mom’s tears were a surprising response. “You’ve never said that to me before.”
Landry grinned to cover the fact she was slightly uncomfortable with making her mom cry. “It’s a parent’s job to be proud of their kid, not the other way around. But I’ve always been proud of you, Mom. I should’ve told you that before.” Landry thought of Caitlin. The last time she’d seen her, Caitlin had walked out. Landry held no grudge, of course, but she had to admit being hurt by it. They’d begged her for help, and she’d told them that her help would mean not being able to see Priscilla while she was undergoing treatment. It was to be expected that while they’d happily agreed to that at the time, the reality of not being around her had been too much to bear. “How are Lizbeth and Caitlin?”
Her mom smiled. “Ecstatic and extremely grateful. They’re looking forward to seeing you…and so is Jade.”
Landry’s breath caught, and she coughed to clear her throat, embarrassed at her clichéd response to her lover’s name. She pushed her desperation to see Jade into the farthest recess of her mind to give her the mental space to deal with work first. Hearing her name opened the door to her desires. Landry longed to hold her close and feel her breath on her neck, the softness of her skin over her taut body, and see the unmistakable look of love in her eyes. All the things Landry had never particularly craved for more than the duration of an evening’s dalliance. The love that she’d never envisaged for her future was now a firm feature in her present.
“None of that means I’m not still mad as hell at both of you.”
Landry smiled at her mom. “But Jackson gets to stay?”
Her mom raised her eyebrows. “You ask as if that were ever a question. I can’t see the board spending sixty million dollars to send her back, could you?” She pointed at Jenkin. “And you knew that when you gave her the tacit go-ahead.”
Jenkin glanced away, looking like a naughty child caught with her face in mom’s apple pie. “I’m sure you’ll find an inventive way to ensure I pay for that.”
Landry’s mom smiled back in a way no child ever wanted to see on their parent’s face. “Okay, so are we done with Jackson because I want to talk to you both about Delaney?”
“For now. But Brooke is your responsibility, Landry. And the official response if anyone asks, is that she was an authorized extraction. We don’t need any other extractors thinking they can pull this kind of shit and get away with it.”
“Fair enough. Can I delegate orientation to Mason? They get along.”
Jenkin nodded. “What is it you want to discuss in regard to Delaney?”
Landry chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment before answering. Was she being irrational and letting her emotional attachment to Delaney rule her thought process? “What’s happening with her?”
“She’s currently being interviewed by Castillo. We’d like to truly understand what made her take the path she traveled. We’ve accepted responsibility for not picking up on the warning signs, particularly after she requested a meeting with the board. We want to make sure we never allow something like this to ever happen again.”
It was good to hear that Pulsus was claiming some culpability for Delaney’s actions, and Landry hoped to use that guilt to persuade them to keep Delaney with them. “And then what?”
Her mom frowned and looked puzzled. “You know what’s next, Landry. I rewind her memory to before we recruited her.”
“Have you considered the consequences to that course of action? The disorientation? How will her family react?” Not that her family gave a rat’s ass how Delaney was. She’d been estranged from them for years. But still, blood was blood.
“It’s not ideal, we know that,” Jenkin replied. “But it’s not like we have an abundance of alternatives. We can’t just let her leave the island and run the risk of her telling the world about us before we’re ready to tell them ourselves.”
Landry tilted her head. “I’ve got an alternative.”
Both her mom and Jenkin narrowed their eyes and looked distinctly unconvinced such an option existed that they hadn’t considered. That they hadn’t responded with an immediate negative was a good sign that they might be open to entertaining the idea.
“What do you have in mind?” Landry’s mom asked.
“Delaney is the best operative we’ve ever had, and you know that. Mom says she can pinpoint memories like she’s selecting scenes from a movie. Why not just remove the nightmarish mission action and everything from the Chicago mission? Sign her up for six months with Castillo’s team before you even give her a sniff of another mission. In the meantime, she trains the current influx. It’s a win-win situation.”
Neither of them responded. Silence was good. It meant they were processing rather than dismissing it.
“How would everyone else react to that? We’d just be letting her return to active duty with no consequences for her actions. What precedent does that set?”
Landry heard the concern in Jenkin’s voice, but there was a hint of uncertainty, too. “I think that having a chunk of your memories deleted is a fairly strong consequence. You said the board accepted responsibility, but where are their consequences if all you do is delete the problem and remove Delaney from the island?”
Jenkin shrugged. “Perhaps you have a point.”
“And I’m not proposing returning to mission duty necessarily. But with Mom’s mind wipe tech being perfected, you’re removing the mutiny but not losing the soldier. She’ll work with Castillo’s team and won’t go on another mission until you’re one hundred percent satisfied she’s safe.”
“What about you? Would you be able to fully trust her in the field with you?”
Her mom’s question
was a fair one in the circumstance, but Landry hadn’t had a full debrief, so they didn’t yet know the full story. “I’ll tell the whole story when I’m debriefed, but when it came down to it, Delaney risked her life to save mine. The bullet she took to the chest was meant for me.”
“Who tried to shoot you?”
Landry smiled at her mom springing to her defense to protect her cub. “Simson. Jackson was making an approach from behind, and Delaney didn’t warn her. And when she did pull the trigger, Delaney pushed me out of the way and took my bullet.” Recounting the story only made Landry even more determined to make them see the sense of her proposal. It wasn’t the first time Delaney had saved her ass. And Landry didn’t want it to be the last. “When I’m out in the field, there’s no one I’d rather have by my side than Delaney. She knows she’s fucked up, but in the end, she didn’t actually do anything wrong. Nothing came of her actions.”
Jenkin laughed. “That’s because we authorized an extra sixty-million-dollar mission to put a stop to them.”
Landry shrugged. Fair point. “That’s true, yeah, but she made the right choice in the end. You shouldn’t punish her for something she didn’t end up doing. When she was faced with the option to go through with her plans, she chose not to. She chose to save me and forfeited her coup.”
“You’re saying she made a conscious decision to stop what she was doing?” her mom asked.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. She’s resigned to losing everything because of her actions. And that’s what you would be taking from her—everything. Pulsus is her life. We’re her family. We owe her this. I owe her this.”
Landry waited for their response. If she had to, she’d take this to the board. Delaney deserved a second chance. What had happened wasn’t solely her fault, and the board knew it. Jenkin and Landry’s mom looked at each other and shook their heads.
“We’ll have to run it past the board.” Her mom looked pointedly at Jenkin. “This has to be something that everybody agrees to.”