The Operator

by Kim Harrison

  Michael had stopped laughing. His expression was ugly as he rose and felt his bruised face. Disappointment filled Bill, and he watched now only to see how she would bring him down. “Offer is still open,” Peri said even as she looked into the sharp black-and-white of a snowy night for the best way out.

  “Michael, get back so we can dart her,” Bill said into the radio, not surprised when the man launched himself at her in a silent rage.

  Like the artist she was, Peri pivoted, smacking the back of his knee in passing. Michael’s leg crumpled, and she caught his arm, jumping two seconds back when he got a grip on her.

  Bill watched in a blue-sheened world as again she kicked his knee, this time shoving him into the lamppost. Time caught up, flashed red, and Michael hit the post with a dull thwap.

  Stunned, Michael reeled, trying to stay upright. “You little bitch!” he shouted, and she straight-kicked him back to hit it again.

  “Oooh, twice in a row,” Jen said in admiration.

  Latisha watched, her finger far from the trigger. “Did she do what I think she did?”

  Bill nodded. “The hop-skips?” he asked. “Yes. They both know they’re happening until after they’re done, and then they forget.”

  “How can she not know?” Latisha asked in awe. “It’s beautiful!”

  “It is, isn’t it.” He was watching through the goggles, slightly queasy at the tiny shifts in time. “It’s hard to notice little jumps in the heat of it all.”

  And yet she kept doing it, making Michael more and more incensed as she chipped away at him. Bill knew he should stop it, but he didn’t, wondering whether Peri was enjoying the chance to use her skills as much as he was enjoying watching her work. He jerked, thinking it might be the end when she got a foot between his and she yanked him down. He’d seen that look in her before, and he could hardly breathe as they fell together, Peri following him into the street.

  Michael was after her dropped knife, but she reached it first, eyes alight as she threw it at him even as she rose. Michael didn’t even notice it lodging under his knee, and motions graceful, she jumped at him, her foot landing squarely atop the hilt, jamming it deeper.

  That he felt, and she fell to the salt-wet pavement as Michael gasped. Jen cried out a warning when he kicked at her like a playground bully. She rolled, jumping back half a second to roll sooner so he’d miss. In a silent rage, he followed her, but she’d found the broken dishes, and she raked a shard across his face when he got too close.

  “My God. She’s cutting him to shreds!” Jen said.

  It was over. “I’m calling it,” Bill said tightly, his pride in Peri eclipsed at the embarrassment that he had ever thought Michael might have had a chance. He was good, but Peri was the queen of last chances.

  “You want me to dart her?” Latisha said, eyes wide. “He’s out of control.”

  Grim, Bill shook his head. “Shoot him first.”

  Jen scrambled for the back to make another dart for Peri, but Bill knew there was no time, and the half-dose dart Latisha had wouldn’t be enough even in the best of situations.

  Motion fast, Latisha sighted down the scope. “This isn’t going to drop him.” Three heartbeats later, the puff of air shocked through Bill. Michael bellowed, furious as he pulled the dart out. Peri’s head came up. She was going to run. She had to.

  Bill thumbed the radio on. “All backup,” he said calmly. “Bring her in.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Michael exclaimed, and Peri leapt for the darkness. Four men were tight behind her. “She’s mine. Mine!” Michael shouted. He was beginning to stagger, but he swung at the man trying to drag him away, and they both sprawled into the slushy gutter.

  It was three to Peri’s one now, and as Latisha looked for an opening, Peri sent the most eager back with a front kick, spinning to hit the second with a crescent kick. He stumbled, going down, but the first had recovered and grabbed her about the waist from behind.

  “That was dumb,” Latisha said as Peri broke her attacker’s nose with her head, then probably a rib when she threw him over her shoulder to hit the curb. Red splattered fantastically across the snow.

  “Get Michael down!” Bill shouted into the radio when the idiot staggered up and pulled a man off Peri. Recovered, she did a fast palm strike, hitting Michael’s nose. Disgusted, Bill threw the radio at the dash as Michael fell back in the shrubbery, blind from the tears and blood. “Shoot her, too,” he demanded as he reached for the door and got out. “I want her down. Now!”

  Irate, Bill jogged to the street, Ron tight behind him.

  If Michael got ahold of her, he’d kill her. Bill’s thick hand smacked into his hip holster, and he pulled his weapon. “Peri Reed! Stand down!”

  Peri spun. Behind her, the man she just kicked fell into the snowbank, clutching his ribs. She poised, her thoughts almost visibly tumbling through her: recognition, hatred.

  “It’s time to come home,” he said softly, and then guilt joined her expression.

  The hesitation was her undoing. With an audible thump, the second, half-dose antidrafting/sedative dart thunked into her arm, right through her coat.

  Peri frantically pulled it out, but the damage had been done. “No,” she groaned, no longer able to draft her way out of the mistake. Ron stupidly rushed her.

  “Wait!” Bill called, one hand outstretched, the other raising his Glock. It felt small in his hands, and he hoped the sight of it might slow her down enough to listen. He’d bought a half hour of police ignorance, but a gunshot would negate that.

  Slow from the drugs, Peri spun, slamming her foot into Ron’s face. A dull crack of his neck breaking made Bill wince, and then Ron fell, dead before he hit the ground. “I don’t want to come back,” Peri rasped as she staggered. “That’s your warning, Bill. Understand?”

  But she’d seen his Glock and the drug had done its job, and he shook his head. “Don’t make me shoot you, kiddo. You can’t draft your way out of this. Not for another hour at least. Besides, I have something you want.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Michael slurred as he tried to claw his way upright using the lamppost. “You promised it to me!” he exclaimed, slipping back down to the slush and filth.

  “You want to remember, yes?” Bill said, motioning for the tightening circle of agents to back off before they spooked her. She was like a wild horse, untamed and ready to run. “Be your own anchor? No one telling you what’s real and not?” he added, hiding a zing of excitement when her gaze slid to Michael, still rambling in a dangerous, drug-induced tirade as he lashed out at anyone coming near. “I can give you that now,” he said gesturing at the van. “Let’s talk.”

  Peri’s eyes shifted from him to Michael, weighing the man’s drugged rage against Bill’s confident, welcoming smile. Slowly she rose to her full height, trying to hide the sedation, such as it was. “No cuffs.”

  “No cuffs,” he agreed, knowing her quick agreement was only half due to wanting the increased privacy and time to metabolize the drug to make escape easier. He was her handler; she was fighting ten years of conditioning. She might not trust him, but she’d listen if she thought she had a way out. She didn’t. Her need to remember had chained her. All that was left was her realizing he was making her a god.

  “Good girl.” Bill’s grip tightened on the Glock. “After you.” He lifted his head. “Back off!” he shouted. “I want everyone to stand down! And clean up this site. We are to be gone in forty seconds!”

  “I’m not your girl, Bill,” she whispered breathily. Her pace to the van was slow to hide the effects of the sedative. The six men bracketing her followed at a respectful distance. She was free to kill and maim, and they had to hold without damaging her. Such was the rarity of her skill. Such was the pearl of his Peri.

  “I’m going to make you perfect, whether you want it or not,” he whispered as he holstered his Glock, anticipation pooling in him.

  One of his cars was pulling up, a second one behind it. Sirens sounded, f
aint in the distance. Even without gunplay, his window had been compromised. “Get him out of here,” he said, gesturing at Michael. Only now did two men approach, efficiently bundling him into the first car. There was a bellow of anger, and Bill smiled, thinking Peri’s knife had just come out.

  Her rifle uncocked and hanging over an arm, Latisha ambled forward. Peri’s wet scarf was in her grip, and a smile quirked her lips as she watched Peri be escorted to the van. “Did that go well or not? I can’t tell.”

  “One dead? Yes. It went well,” he said as Ron was zipped into a bag.

  “Mr. Heddles? What do you want to do with the cat?”

  “Cat?” Bill turned to the agent holding Peri’s zipped purse. There was a wildly moving shape inside. Carnac, he thought, eyebrows rising. “Let it out of the bag,” he said, taking the tattered, slush-soaked journal the man had tucked under his arm. It was one of Peri’s. She’d want it back, and having it on his person might keep her from running a few precious seconds more.

  Bill strode to the van, leaving others to collect Peri’s Glock and broken dishes. He was heady with the anticipation of working with her again. Even better, Helen would be pleased, and with that, she’d get off his back and let him work.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Peri stiffened at the collective soft intake of breath of the agents surrounding her as she walked right past the van. Safeties clicked off, and her eyes narrowed. Hands moving slightly away from her sides, she turned. Bill was waiting by the van’s open door, his expectant expression wary. The woman Peri had spilled coffee on this morning was inside, and Peri’s lip twitched. How long have you been watching me, and who gave me away?

  “I’m not getting in that van,” she said, and Bill took a slow breath. She hated vans. Nothing good ever happened in a van. Well, almost nothing. “You want to start this all over again?” she asked as the men surrounding them became more severe.

  Bill put his hands in his pockets in a show of impatient annoyance. “You have to agree we need to vacate,” he said, voice rumbling, and she glanced past them to the approaching lights.

  “You wanted to talk, we can talk,” she said. “There’s a dance club on the corner. You. Me. That’s it.”

  The woman in the van drew back, clearly nervous, but Bill rocked back and forth on his heels, considering it. “Give me the Evocane and accelerator,” he said to the woman in the van, and her blue eyes widened.

  “Bill,” she protested, and he grimaced.

  “Do it,” he said tersely. “I want everyone out of here. I’ll find my own way home.” His smile returned as he looked at Peri, but his assurance fell flat on her. “We both will.”

  Not likely, but we can play it like that, she thought, shifting her balance when the blond woman vanished into the van, reappearing immediately with two prepped syringes, one blue, one pink.

  “That’s not enough Evocane,” Bill said as he took them, dropping the capped syringes behind his coat and in his suit coat’s pocket. Peri stiffened, seeing her diary already there, lost in the fight and now in his possession. “She needs a half cc,” he added, frowning at the men surrounding them, fidgeting at the approaching siren.

  “Seriously?” The blond woman’s gaze darted to Peri. “That’s a lot of synapses. I thought she could only draft forty seconds.”

  Bill nodded. “It’s not how long, it’s how far she reaches.” His expression shifted as the remaining cars left. There were only the six men surrounding them and the two women. “Give me the Evocane vial, Jen. Go. If we aren’t back in an hour . . .” He smiled, his teeth catching the streetlight as he handed the nearest man his Glock. “We’ll be back in two.”

  The slim blond woman reluctantly gave him a vial, and Bill tucked it away. “Come on, Jen,” the woman behind the wheel demanded, and Peri inched forward as their security broke up and let them pass. The men got into the van, and it drove off even before the door rolled shut.

  Peri watched it bounce and jostle back onto the road, vanishing quickly. She turned to Bill, listening to the night and feeling the chill through her coat. It wasn’t unusual for Bill to take a personal hand in dealing with his drafters. He’d been her handler since she’d graduated from Opti Tech. But still, it felt odd, just her and him, in the cold, in the dark.

  Bill stood before her and waited, wisely giving her a moment to assess the situation. They both knew she couldn’t draft. Bill had her on weight and was as good as if not better than her at hand-to-hand, enjoying hitting things into submission whereas she used it only to evade. The smell of spent gunpowder still lingered, but she’d seen him give his Glock to one of his security. She could run, but the lure of what he hinted at was too much to walk away from—and Bill knew it.

  Not to mention he’s got my diary, she thought, the idea he might read about the year she had studied and prepped with Allen and Silas to bring him down intolerable.

  “Shall we go?” he finally said as the sirens became loud, gesturing to the nearby bright lights at the corner and the dance club.

  I am such an idiot. “You first,” she said, and amendable to that, he turned on a heel, taking a moment to stomp the snow off his shoes when he reached the salted sidewalk. She’d lost her scarf somewhere, and it was cold.

  “I want to apologize for darting you with Amneoset,” he said as she came even with him, staying a little behind and to the left. “But you wouldn’t have listened if I had just walked in and ordered a coffee. Besides, I had to find out who was better, you or Michael.”

  She said nothing, her eyebrow going up as she looked askance at him.

  “Okay, you’re right,” Bill conceded as they passed under a streetlight. “But you have to admit he has skills.”

  “Skills? He’s psychotic. You should have thrown him back into whatever psych ward you got him from,” she muttered, knowing that most drafters were found there. She’d been an exception, her wealthy mother overreacting to a small incident, her fuss getting Peri recognized by Opti and brought in before she was labeled insane by well-meaning health-care providers who had no capacity to accept that what she was experiencing was real.

  “You, though, are the best,” Bill said as if she’d said nothing. “My best operative I’ve ever had the privilege to train. No, the best I’ve watched evolve, because this is who you are, Peri. You are perfect. Beautiful, deadly, perfect. She wants you for the live trial. To make sure it works before accelerating the rest. I just want you back where you belong.”

  She. He had said “she.” Someone else was pulling Bill’s strings, funding him now that the government wasn’t. That van had looked rather tatty for Bill.

  “I want to make you into a god,” he said, and she snorted in disbelief, stoically crossing against the light when they reached the corner. But Michael had seemed to believe it was possible, so possible that he had been incensed that she was getting it and he wasn’t. You couldn’t fake anger like that. Psychotic or not. Perhaps Bill was playing them both, though.

  Head down and hands in his pockets, Bill paced quickly beside her, his steps totally out of synch with hers. “I know what you’re thinking, but if I wanted to wipe you and start over, I could have done it already.”

  “So you say,” she admitted, glancing back at her coffee shop as the cops drove by, slow with searchlights from the car playing over the scuffed snow spotted with blood. She couldn’t go back, but she’d known that before she’d locked the door and threw the cat carrier full of dishes at Michael. They’d let Carnac go. He’d be okay, but it bothered her. “How did you find me?”

  Bill chuckled. “It wasn’t easy. I never thought you’d use a medical facility to hide your radiation marker. It was Allen, and let me tell you, it’s been a test of patience, letting him range as he wanted this past year. I knew he’d eventually bring me to you.”

  Allen. But she was glad it hadn’t been Silas who’d blown her cover. Hunching deeper into her coat, she thought of her diary, wanting it back. Before them, noise and laughter s
pilled into the street as they neared the line of cold women with bare legs and men stoically listening to them complain, waiting for their chance to go in.

  “I’m going to need to know if you want to work with him again by the end of the week,” Bill said, adding “Allen” when she looked up, confused. “Personally, I think it’s a mistake, but that could only be my wish to beat the hell out of him. Seriously, if you want him, let me know before I give in to myself. Otherwise, Jack is available.”

  “I’m not working with either of them,” she whispered, shivering from more than the wind coming in from across the Detroit River. She stopped. They had reached the front door. “You have nothing I want,” she said, his confidence turning her stomach.

  “Yet here we are.” With a cool confidence, he handed the doorman a large bill. The velvet rope dropped, and he crossed it as the crowd complained. He turned when he realized Peri was still on the sidewalk. “We broke the memory barrier, Peri. It took almost forty years, but we can do it.” He hesitated, a thick hand extended. She knew how it would feel, curving around her waist, and she frowned. “Are you coming? It’s just talk.”

  Her arm ached where the dart had stuck her, and she felt queasy from the lingering Amneoset, but her foot was by far worse, the swelling in her ankle beginning to make walking difficult, even in her boots. She could run. He had no weapon—apart from the lure of memory.

  Head down, she came forward, sidling out of his reach as she went in.

  Immediately the feel of the place washed over her, the electronic music with its steady heartbeat soothing her as much as the muggy body heat. It was crowded, people standing at the bar and around small tables. Face paint had been utilized far beyond its original intent to thwart the facial recognition cameras—a fashion statement more than a defiant gesture.

  Feeling out of place, she ran a hand down her coat, the expensive material now coated with a grungy film of wet street dirt. Her slacks and sweater under it would make her look like a frump. That Bill was impeccably groomed didn’t help, and she eyed his somewhat water-fat face cleanly shaved and his graying hair dyed black as he gave his outer coat to the coat check and arranged for one of the quieter booths on the upper floor terrace overlooking the stage and bar.