Flashback (Out of the Box Book 23)

by Robert J. Crane

  “One final thing,” Gerasimos said. “This...other woman. The other daughter of Lethe, the one foiling our efforts these last few days?”

  “Yes?”

  “You said we had collected her blood?”

  “A great deal of it, yes,” Bast said. “I had some of it transferred from our agents on site to-”

  “Get all of it,” Gerasimos said.

  That raised Bast's eyebrow. “All of it?”

  “All of it you can lay your hands on,” Gerasimos said. “Send it to Eagle River. To the Andromeda project. It will give them more, perhaps, to work with in their studies.”

  Bast considered this for a moment, then nodded, almost a bow of her head in pure deference. “As you wish.”

  Then she left him be, and Gerasimos settled into an easy silence. He often found himself in silent contemplation, considering the future. It was always a dark contemplation, for darkness was all he saw. Myriad threats, lingering beyond the horizon, always seeking to destroy his empire, one that had its roots in the olden days of gods and men, when men knew their place.

  Now...men did not know their place, and that was fine, for their place was to be guided from the shadows. Gerasimos had long made his peace with the reality that the world had changed, that they could no longer sit atop a pyramid or temple and rule as in days past. It mattered little, even as it irked him slightly, for he would still gather all the power he could lay his hands upon. He had, in fact, taken control of this empire after Poseidon's death...

  But for now, he sat, and he thought again of the future. It must surely be dark, for things always grew darker before the dawn.

  And in his imagination, Gerasimos had a very bright dawn in mind. All his planning, so much of his resources had gone toward it. It sat across the globe, in a place called Eagle River, Wisconsin. How amusing that his bright dawn would begin in the west, how counterintuitive. It should have begun in the east if it followed the laws of nature, but...

  Metahumans did not follow the laws of nature. They were exceptional, and they were the exception to all those laws.

  Gerasimos smiled at that thought and contemplated this girl...this troubling girl. He looked at the black and white photo on his desk. She had never been seen before this, but surely...surely she would be seen again...? One as powerful as this could not hide her face forever.

  Nodding once more, he knew it had to be true. Yes, she would be back. No one with such power as hers could remain hidden for long. She would return, someday, yes...

  And Gerasimos would be ready for her.

  52.

  Sienna

  Washington DC

  Now

  I jerked as my ass hit the hard chair, the world resolving into four smooth walls and a mirror. I blinked, the scent of stale air conditioning hitting my nostrils, replacing the summer warmth of Minneapolis with the chill of an office building where someone had turned the thermostat down a little too far.

  Looking into the mirror opposite me, I seemed a little worse for the wear. With a glance, I realized my clothes had somehow changed back to the shredded mess I'd been wearing before I'd “left.”

  How the hell did that work?

  It threw me for a loop for a moment, looking at my filthy, damaged clothing. This was not what I'd been wearing when I'd left 1999.

  Had my adventure in the past even happened?

  Had I just had a massive hallucination of an excursion through time?

  Or had Akiyama somehow returned me to my present clothing when he snapped me back into this room?

  Sleep tugged at my eyelids, and I realized, not for the first time, that it had been quite a while since I'd slept, truly slept rather than falling unconscious due to injury. Probably since that first night in Des Moines. I blinked a couple more times, eyeing the table, then the mirror. These people hadn't killed me yet...

  I settled my head on the table, felt the hard pressure of it against the side of my skull. It should have been uncomfortable, but somehow it wasn't.

  One of the things Lethe said to me before we'd parted ways came back to me now: You're a succubus, aren't you?

  And I thought of her as I drifted off into sleep.

  “You picked a grim setting,” Lethe said as she appeared in my black and quiet dreamwalk. Her hair was back to its familiar curl the way it had been in Revelen, and she'd picked up just a couple wrinkles in the intervening decades. “How are you?”

  “I'm okay,” I said, looking around. I was still wearing my shredded clothes. “Just got back from a little sojourn to Des Moines...with Akiyama.”

  Her right eyebrow inclined slightly upward, and she nodded, slowly, once. “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “How's Persephone?”

  She smiled. “She's just fine. I'm on a plane, heading to her now. When are you coming to...?”

  “I don't know,” I said. “I'm in a room in Washington DC. They brought me here after I surrendered.”

  She bristled. “Do you need us to come get you? Because we'll be there in hours. As soon as I land, I can-”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Gondry promised me clemency, and I don't think...” I shrugged. “I don't know what's going on, but...don't come get me yet.”

  Her eyes blazed. “I'm going to get things into position. If I don't hear from you, or hear that you're all right soon...”

  “Sensible.” I nodded. “Hopefully it'll all turn out all right.” I smacked my lips together, wishing I'd gotten a drink of water before I'd left 1999, because suddenly I was thirsty. “Thank you. For being there when I needed you. For giving me the space to grow up...well, like I asked.”

  She took my hand in the dream, and I fought the urge to recoil away. She smiled. “No time limits on touch in a dreamwalk, remember? And I'll always be there for you. Like I said.”

  “Now I know why you stayed out of everything,” I said.

  “It was very difficult,” she said, looking me right in the eye. “For me and Persephone both. We talked about ignoring your wishes quite a few times. Even tried to make contact with you a few years ago, though it didn't go very well.”

  “That's when I fought you,” I said, getting it. “That's a memory Rose must have stolen.”

  She nodded. “We wanted to help you...so many times. I really was on my way to Minneapolis when you fought Sovereign. I couldn't stand it anymore.”

  “I'm glad you held off,” I said. “And I'm glad you're both still here.”

  “Apropos of that,” she said, and her eyes glistened, “I've got something for you. For next time we see each other.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  She fussed about with her hands for a second, and suddenly she was holding a wooden frame in them. She handed it to me, and I took it. “This is just an approximation, you understand. But I have the real thing, waiting for you in Texas when you get down here.”

  I looked at the thing she'd handed me.

  It was the picture of the four of us – Persephone, Lethe, mom and me – sitting on the couch in my house back in 1999. It had the slightly dyed look of an old photo, but still...

  There it was. Four generations. One picture.

  “I miss her,” I said, looking at my mom. She was smiling, so different from how I remembered her in my upbringing. Of course, she'd been that way in my upbringing because I'd made her. “Maybe now more than ever.”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “But like she said...and I know she'd feel the same if she knew all you'd done since...” She smiled encouragingly, “We...are all so proud of you.”

  I didn't know what to say to that, so I just looked down at the photo, trying to burn it into my mind even though it was blurring from tears. “Thank you, grandmother,” I said, looking up. “I can't wait to-”

  A door slammed and I jerked off the table, back to the four walls and the long mirror. Someone was standing in front of the door, had come in while I'd been sleeping, not making a sound until they'd slammed the door behind them.

&n
bsp; It was a woman, painfully thin, in a dark suit, a slightly impish look on her face like she was here doing God's own work. “Oh, sorry,” she said, not remotely sincere, “did I wake you?”

  “Yes,” I said, figuring I'd have to be the one to carry the honesty bucket between the two of us. “But I wouldn't worry yourself about it.” Because plainly she wasn't, so why expect it?

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked.

  I did, but based on her attitude, hell if I was going to give her the satisfaction. “Uhm...lemme guess, you're the Special Assistant to the Undersecretary of Masturbation, here to talk to me about all the very dangerous criminal behavior I've done in that department over the years.”

  Her mouth dropped slightly, then tensed as she forced a smile. “I'm the Director of the FBI. Heather Chalke.”

  “Oh.” I pretended to be disappointed. “That's way less exciting.”

  “Do you know why I'm here?” she asked, settling her arms in front of her. She hadn't moved from in front of the door yet.

  “Because all is totally calm and peaceful on the federal law enforcement front at the moment?”

  Her mouth tightened into a thin line. “You're as feisty as everyone has said. Do you know how much trouble you could still be in?”

  I yawned. “Oh, sorry, were you saying something? Because someone woke me up in the middle of a nap.”

  Her eyes flashed. I was guessing FBI Director Chalke was the sort of mini-fascist who wasn't used to having her authority shat on right before her eyes. “So you've decided to be uncooperative.”

  “Maybe if you told me why I was here, I'd have some notion of what I'm supposed to cooperate with,” I said, leaning back in my chair, folding my arms in front of me. “As it is, I'm still not convinced you aren't the Special Assistant to the Undersecretary of Wanking, because from where I'm sitting, with a presidential pardon on offer...all you've got is dick.”

  That wiped the smirk off her face. “You got a pardon once before. How long did that last?”

  “Until some asshole in the Oval decided to frame me for a bunch of things I didn't do,” I said, not backing off an inch. I cocked my head and rested a finger on my chin, pretending contemplation. “Say...I wonder what ever happened to that guy?”

  “Is that a threat?” Her eyes lit up.

  “No, it was a genuine question,” I said, letting my own smugness melt off. “Because I'm guessing you were in the FBI at the time, so...what happened to the president? On your watch, no less.”

  “The president is the responsibility of the US Secret Service,” she said. “That's Department of Treasury.”

  “Not the Department of Wanking? You sure? Because Harmon, he was a hell of a wanker if ever I met one-”

  Whatever residual patience she had left evaporated before my eyes. “I told President Gondry this was how it was going to be with you, but he didn't believe me. He thought you could be reasoned with-”

  “I can be reasoned with just fine, if you send me a reasonable person and not some Obergruppenführer who's spent so long in the bureaucracy that she's never even tasted the possibility of getting fired for her smug stupidity.” I stared her down, she stared back. “But he sent you, Cocky McCockerson.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “My name is-”

  “You said it once already, but I still don't care,” I said. “If you just came to threaten me with prison...skip it.” I laid my head back down on the table. “I surrendered because I intended to face justice. If that means a pardon, fine. If it means jail, that's fine, too.” I turned my head on the table so I could look at her. “But if you think it means I'm just going to lay down and let you – or someone like you – pull the crap you tried last time you sent me up the river without putting up a hell of a fuss...you have sadly underestimated me. Again. Because I will make a mess of you and your Department that will be so epic in the annals of Washington that it'll make Second Manassas look like the White House Easter Egg Hunt. And then you really will wish you were the Assistant to the Undersecretary for Wanking.” I turned my head away from her.

  “So that's how you want to play it?” she asked.

  “You threaten me, I threaten right back. What's the matter?” I asked, not dignifying her by looking at her. “You got too used to your unlawful detainees just folding when you get all bossypants on them? Because I've been nearly killed by the best, so it's really hard for me to sweat over some pantsuit-wearing, over-promoted lawyer with badly failing antiperspirant vaguely promising me more of the same crap I've already beaten. Say something new and exciting...or just go screw your mediocre self.”

  She didn't say anything for a while after that. “You're awfully jaded for twenty-six.”

  “I've lived a full life,” I said, still not bothering to raise my head to look at her.

  “And now you're ready to die?” she asked.

  “Always have been,” I said coldly. “If that's what it takes.” Like my mother before me, I didn't say, choking down the emotions that came with that thought, so freshly in mind.

  “You don't have a job.”

  “Oh, but I do,” I said. “And I always have.” Now I raised my head up to look at her. “That's something that maybe you've never quite gotten through your collective heads in this town. I'm going to save the world whether you like me or not, I'm going to stop the bad guys whether you want me to or not, and I'm going to be there when people need me...” And here I stared her down. “...No matter what. So... threaten me. Sideline me. Cage me, if you think you can. Try and bury me, if you think you've got the brass to pull it off. I'll be back when I'm needed. And I don't care whether you're the Assistant Undersecretary for Wanking, the Director of the FBI, the President of the United States, or the Goddess of Justice. If you push me...you can count on me to knock your ass the hell off.”

  “So... that's how it's going to be?” she asked.

  I put my head right back down. “That's how it's always going to be. So put that in your pipe and smoke the hell out of it.”

  “Okay, then,” she said.

  But she didn't leave.

  I just sat there, head on the desk, wondering if she'd say something first or I'd fall asleep. Either way, I was well past caring. We could wait all night, all year, for the rest of our lives if need be. Mine would be a lot longer than hers, probably.

  Fortunately...I didn't have to wait that long.

  Epilogue

  Reed

  Eden Prairie, Minnesota

  “Where the hell is she?” I asked, for the thousandth time, pacing the bullpen like I was a bull, and someone had penned me in. No one had, of course, I could leave any time I liked, but staring at the four walls around me, I felt like I was in non-solitary confinement, heat crawling up the back of my neck and the agitation filling me like excess blood. I was flushed, warm, bordering on angry.

  “Still nothing on her whereabouts,” Jamal said, shaking his head, his phone delicately clutched in his hand, finger on the charging port so he could interface directly with the internet. “Last known position was Joint Base Andrews in DC. After that...” He shook his head again. “It's like she disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  I thrust out a hand and blew a chair across the room, leaving an impression in the drywall and scattering a half dozen papers.

  “Oh, hey, thanks for messing up my desk,” Olivia Brackett said, stooping to retrieve some of them. “Like I don't have to clean up after my own powers enough of the time,” she mumbled, though everyone could hear her.

  “How does someone as high profile as Sienna Nealon just disappear?” Augustus Coleman asked, hand over his face. I couldn't see his eyes, but he looked tired. Which made sense, given that most of us had been running on very little sleep for the last week or so.

  “Federal Court has no record of her in the system,” Miranda Estevez said, appearing from the entry. She, too, looked tired, tossing her briefcase onto the nearest desk. “Wherever she is, she's not in holding, or in jail, as near as I can t
ell.”

  “I could have told you that from here,” Jamal said.

  “J.J.,” I said, “Abby. Anybody?” I looked around the faces crowded in the bullpen. “She went to Revelen, she survived, she was on a military plane – HOW DOES SHE DISAPPEAR HERE IN THE US?” My voice hit the highest registers. “How does nobody – not the government, not the press, nobody – know where she is?”

  “I know where she is,” Guy Friday said, arms folded in front of him as he sat, surprisingly calmly, in a chair.

  I sagged. “Don't mess with me right now, Friday.”

  “There.” He didn't show any sign of hesitation, just raised his finger to point at the TV. “She's there.”

  I looked to the TV out of pure habit of looking where someone pointed, not because I thought there was a chance in hell that Friday knew a damned thing. “What are you-”

  I froze.

  Because there she was.

  “Turn it up! Turn it up!” Augustus lunged out of his seat and swiped the remote like he'd been launched out of a catapult. He speared the volume button and sent the little bar at the edge of the screen shooting into the stratosphere, from 0 to 50 in a half second.

  It took me a second to realize what the hell I was looking at, because it was such a surreal scene. The president was there, on a stage, with a half dozen other people, including...

  My sister, right behind him, framed by the gold curtains in the background, dressed neatly in a suit with jacket and everything. It was surreal seeing her like that after two years of her disguises, of casual dress Sienna, of fugitive Sienna. She was all cleaned up, her hair nicely done and pulled back in a ponytail, and she stood on the stage behind Gondry without expression, listening to him speak, arms folded in front of her.

  That posture, at least, looked authentically Sienna.

  “...I'm pleased to share the stage with Ms. Nealon after all this time,” President Gondry said from the presidential podium. He turned to indicate her with a hand. “I know we've had our misunderstandings, but given her recent actions, I have nothing but praise for Ms. Nealon. In speaking with her, I've found her to be a dedicated servant of the people, someone who has the best intentions at heart.”