The Operator

by Kim Harrison

  “You never forget.” Helen dropped two shells into her gun and locked it up. “At least, that’s what I’ve been told. I’ve not missed a year since my husband died.” Her gaze went distant out over the marsh, and Peri saw the age at the corners of her eyes in the new sun just rising. The woman’s lips twitched, and then she turned her gaze to her security. “Thomas. A moment, please?”

  Silas rocked from foot to foot, clearly uneasy. Thomas, too, hesitated until Helen’s expression shifted to one of irritation, whereupon he turned and walked away to stand at one of the cold-looking benches surrounding the platform. Her gaze lost about half its ire, and she forced a tight smile at Silas.

  “I’ll be fine,” Peri said, and his eyes went to the shotgun. “I’m here to talk. That’s it.”

  Helen’s smile became real. “Thomas, take Silas up and get him some coffee. He looks half-asleep.” Neither man moved, and the woman leaned toward Peri. “I’m not stupid. There are six people watching you through scopes.”

  “I’d be offended if it were any less.” Peri uncocked her gun and hung it over her arm.

  Helen laughed, touching Peri’s shoulder familiarly. Peri didn’t mind, liking the woman’s personal power. Slowly the two men moved off. At her feet, the dog swished his tail.

  “I regret that I hadn’t taken the initiative to meet sooner, and now having done so, I understand Bill’s continued reluctance to let you leave. But I also understand about the desire to retire—to perhaps pursue one’s own plans. Is this your intent?”

  Is this my intent? Peri brought her gaze back from the silver and gold the marsh had become in the new light. “One’s benign, not politically involved plans,” she hedged.

  Helen frowned. “Do you truly wish to retire, or are you standing your ground, obstinate in the face of Bill’s continued insistence?”

  Warning tightened in her, but it wasn’t an unexpected question. Her thoughts went to the Evocane vial in her pocket, and she wondered whether they were trying to search her car even now. It would take her living thumbprint to open the safe.

  “Bill’s clumsy attempt to force your hand by hooking you on Evocane was ill thought out,” Helen said, clearly adept at reading people. “You stole his accelerator. You want to remember. Be your own anchor, yes?”

  “I kept it to force him to leave me alone, Ms. Yeomon, not to become addicted to a new leash holder. Replacing anchors with a chemical shackle is what has been ill thought out.”

  Helen huffed, her gaze drawn by the incoming birds. “Why? Chemicals are not greedy as many anchors are. They don’t think they’re anything other than a watchdog or ask for more as their faulty view of themselves grows. They do not fall in love, look the other way. They do not lie to you or manipulate. They are clean and pure.”

  The memory of Jack rose, a fractured sensation of emotion that made Peri’s chest hurt, and she studied Helen’s profile against the rising sun, memorizing it, wondering whether that smooth, surgical perfection had ever twisted in love or passion, anger or hate.

  “Look,” Helen said, chin lifting, “here comes another flight. Get ready.”

  Helen put the shotgun to her shoulder with a smooth expertise. Still, there were six rifles pointed at her if she was to be believed, and Peri didn’t move.

  “You have nothing to gain by killing me, and everything by cooperating,” Helen said, sighting down the barrel. “Shoot a bird. I insist.”

  Motion laughingly slow, Peri readied her weapon. The world seemed to fall away as she sighted down the barrel, finding a bird intent on landing with the rest. Still, she held off, waiting for Helen to shoot first as was polite.

  The twin pops of Helen’s gun echoed, numbing Peri’s ears, and Peri let her gun droop.

  “You had a great shot,” Helen said, and Peri handed her the shotgun, done with games.

  “They were mergansers. They taste like fish.” Bitter and oily, like the remnants of her feelings for Jack. She couldn’t decide which was worse, a leash that pretended to love, or one that was unfeeling and oblivious.

  Helen frowned. “And you keep what you kill. I appreciate that.” Eyes narrowed, the woman brusquely motioned for the dog to retrieve her ducks, and the Lab launched himself off the dock. Helen’s fingers were white with cold as she reloaded her shotgun and snapped it shut. “Are you steadfast on retiring, Reed? Yes or no.”

  Peri felt better not holding a weapon. “Yes.” Anger and disappointment rose up anew, drowning out her wary caution. “Dr. Denier has developed a substitute Evocane. You left a big hole in your fence, and I’m taking it. Using addiction to control your drafters instead of anchors is only as good as your chemists, and I’ve got a better one.”

  Helen’s breath steamed in the bright light, obscuring her face. “A hole in my fence indeed. Thank you, Peri. This is why I insisted Bill use his best for the live trial.”

  The woman motioned, sharply, and Peri jumped when a dart hit her arm, stabbing through the thick wool and the WEFT jacket underneath without hesitation.

  “Y-you,” Peri stammered as she pulled the dart out, feeling it slip from her fingers. Her arm was numb even before the metal dart clattered on the wooden dock. “I won’t draft so you can scrub me. I’ll die first.” Shit, she had trusted this woman, and why?

  “I’m not scrubbing you. I’m scrubbing the program. If Denier can synthesize an Evocane substitute that easily, then any agent under its influence can be hijacked with a minimal investment. We need, as you say, a better chemist.”

  Lips pressed together in annoyance, Helen took a step back when Peri fell and Michael paced onto the platform. It felt as if knives were being slid in and out of her muscles every time she moved. “She won’t flip. Dispose of her,” the woman said, her expression peeved as they both peered down as if Peri were a marvelous bug.

  Dispose? Peri blinked, trying to grasp what Helen was saying. She’d found the flaws in Helen’s system, and her reward was to be . . . disposed of? Silas will never let me live this down.

  “I regret your sacrifice in the matter,” Helen said, her boots planted firmly in front of Peri’s face. “But I needed to know where the holes were, and you found them.”

  “Go . . . to hell,” Peri managed as the platform shook, sending spirals of painful sensation up from where she lay against the wood. Then she screamed, knives stabbing through her when Michael spun her around to cuff her hands behind her, almost passing out when he shoved her back down, hands searching for any lumps or bumps that could mean a weapon.

  “You should have done this before she was allowed near you,” the dark man muttered as he found the vial of Evocane and tossed it to Helen when the woman insisted.

  “She’s not dangerous unless threatened.” Helen eyed the blue liquid. “And I didn’t threaten her.”

  Peri lay on the wooden planking, afraid to move. It felt as if she were breathing glass, each rise and fall of her chest slicing her. It was the drug. She couldn’t draft. She couldn’t move! What the hell is this stuff? Face against the wood, she searched out Michael’s face from the blur. Somehow she managed a grim smile. “You’re afraid of me,” she whispered, and his eyes met hers. “I’m the better agent. Say it.”

  He kicked her. Again the knives sliced through her, and she curled into a ball, riding it out, holding her breath until she could get tiny slips of breath into her.

  “Michael, you assured me you would practice restraint,” Helen said with a sigh.

  “This isn’t restraint, this is common sense. You should kill Denier, too.”

  “No, I need him. She found me a better chemist if nothing else. Take Reed somewhere and dispose of her. This as well.”

  The clink of the vial hitting Michael’s ring pulled Peri’s attention up, and she looked at his satisfaction through blurry eyes. Thank God I don’t have the accelerator on me.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said enthusiastically as she stood up over Peri. “I’d like to be accelerated first.” He nudged Peri, rolling her over, and she gas
ped as pinpricks turned to knives. “I might have to kill her twice, and it would be a pleasure to remember both times.”

  “No,” Helen said, her disappointment obvious. “I’m suspending the program.”

  The dog scrabbled back onto the dock, shaking the water from itself in little drops that burned when they hit Peri. In its mouth was a duck, still alive but dying.

  “Suspending? How long?” Michael asked, voice heavy in frustration.

  But Helen lavished praise only upon the dog, taking the duck and walking off with it to leave Michael standing over Peri, little pinpricks of pain radiating into her from the vibrations of Helen’s steps.

  Peri began to laugh, the sound low, as even that caused pain. Furious, Michael turned to her, the rising sun making his hair into a halo. “What did you say? Why did she end the program?” he snarled, and Peri laughed even more, the sound turning into a guttural groan when his foot lashed out, making shards of broken glass cut into her middle. His foot connected again, and she stared at the sky, breathing them in. They cut her lungs, and she choked, sending more through her as his foot hit a third time.

  And finally, she passed out.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “Where’s my Evocane!” Peri shouted at the shadowed stacked boxes and clutter just outside her makeshift cell, her forehead pressed against the cool chain links. She knew someone had heard her; voices had gathered behind the windowless steel door. Her pulse raced, and counting herself lucky she was alive, she let herself sink to the frigid cement floor. It was cold, even with the coat Helen had given her, now smeared with old oil and grease. Withdrawal was hours away, but Michael didn’t know that. She just wanted some interaction with someone other than illusionary Jack perched on a stack of boxes on the other side of the fence. She had to discover where she was—and maybe find a way out.

  “Michael will let you rot in here,” Jack said, giving voice to her darkest fears. “Turn you into his own private Evocane experiment.”

  It took everything she had not to fling the bucket she’d found in here at him. “I liked you better when all you did was warn me one of my old boyfriends was in the vicinity.”

  Shrugging, Jack tugged down the cuffs of his best Armani suit. Crossing his arms behind his head, he leaned back against the stacked boxes as if settling in to wait. He looked better than good with his clean-shaven cheeks and pressed pants, an illusionary bug-out bag beside him, untouched by the cold. She wondered what it said about her state of mind that he was on the opposite side of the chain-link fence with everything she would ever need to escape—there in his imaginary bag.

  I’m not looking for Jack to save me, she thought, though she’d admit that the rush had been real enough when they’d escaped WEFT together. He was a good partner—smart, fast-thinking, versatile, and dependable—apart from the betrayal thing. But even that wouldn’t help her now.

  Helen had closed the entire program down. An entire decade of work mothballed because Peri had done her job and found the holes. “That will teach me to be efficient,” she said, looking up at the bank of grimy windows when the gleam of headlights passed across it.

  The narrow, high-ceilinged room smelled like oil and hot metal shavings, making her think she was at one of Helen’s shipyards. Boxes and equipment were piled haphazardly against the far wall. She guessed that until recently, everything had all been in the cage, locked up so it wouldn’t wander off with an employee. Her cell might be makeshift, but it was tight.

  Frustratingly tight, she thought, tucking her sock feet under her. Someone had taken her boots, and her feet were like ice. Her shooting gloves, too, were gone along with the scarf.

  “If I don’t get my Evocane, you’re not going to have much left to interrogate!” she shouted, stiffening when Jack sat up as the metal door screeched open. A dark factory floor was quickly eclipsed by an Asian man in a lab coat.

  “Oh, look, it’s your meds,” Jack said when Peri saw the syringe in his hand. Her pulse raced, and she stood, not sure she liked this. It might not be Evocane.

  “We didn’t expect you to be awake for another hour,” the technician said as he came forward and stopped before the fencing.

  “She’s a light sleeper.” Jack ambled forward to peer inquisitively at the syringe.

  “What’s on the menu?” Peri asked, not sure she’d believe him even if he told her.

  The technician hesitated. “Your fix.”

  “Evocane?” Peri looked past him to Jack, who made a “why not?” expression. Taking off Helen’s coat, then the WEFT jacket, she pushed her sleeve up and pressed her shoulder to the chain link. Someone had just arrived and withdrawal was mere hours away. If they wanted to drug her, they only had to wait until she collapsed.

  The tech roughly swabbed her shoulder, and her chin rose. “I didn’t ask for this,” she said.

  His eyes flicked up to hers. “You didn’t want to be a god?”

  “Is that what he told you it is?” she said, stiffening against the prick of the needle and the sudden ache of pressure. “They forced it on me. All of them. I wanted to retire.”

  He pulled the needle out with a shade more gentleness. Eyes averted, he rose. “He knows I have two kids. I can’t help you. Don’t ask.”

  Leaning to see his watch, she put Helen’s coat back on, grateful for the warmth. Two hours until midnight. “Can you at least tell me where I am?” Peri asked, and his ears reddened. A pleasant lassitude was spilling into her, but it was only relief that she had another twenty-four hours before her demon would show again. Isn’t it? “Hey, what did you give me?”

  “Something to make the next hour more tolerable,” he muttered. Again the door screamed a torturous squeal of metal on metal, and Peri backed up as Michael deliberately pushed the technician aside and came in, eyes roving over the space to tell Peri he hadn’t been here before, or at least not with the boxes on the wrong side of the fence. His dress shoes looked odd on the cold cement floor, his tailored suit and coat even more so among the industrial grime and dust.

  “Out,” Michael said, and the technician obediently left. Peri chuckled when Michael shut the door, sealing the two of them in the cold silence lit by a bare bulb at the ceiling. Eyeing her, he swung a metal chair from the pile and set it down before the chain link. “You find being confined amusing?” There was a bottled water in his hand, and she licked her lips. “The evening shows promise.”

  “Oh, God. He’s going to monologue,” Jack said as he tried to follow the technician out, but the door didn’t budge. “Just shoot me now.” He hammered on the thick metal, the echoes of sound that weren’t really there making Peri jump. “Hello? Hey! I’m not supposed to be here. Can someone let me out before Major Delusion starts talking?”

  Peri pulled herself out of the shadows and into the bare bulb’s light, not happy her sarcastic humor was showing itself through Jack. “I think it’s sweet you spent last week trying to kill me, and now that you’ve got me, you’re keeping me alive against Helen’s wishes.”

  Jack quit hammering on the door, turning to lean against it as a faint hope sparked through her. Bill probably didn’t know about this. He wanted her alive. She was his girl. Every moment she sat in one spot, the stronger the signal of that radioactive tracer he gave her last spring would become. Perhaps she should play nice—stall for time. “Sorry about this. I didn’t know I was running a double-blind study. But that’s Opti for you.”

  Michael smiled without mirth, pulling the chair back another three feet before sitting. “It’s fixable, and with Helen thinking you’re dead and Bill thinking you’re missing, we’ve got time. And speaking of dead, what’s your car’s pass code?”

  Eyebrows high, she snorted. “It hasn’t been searched yet? Opti is getting slow.”

  He brought an ankle up to a knee, reclining as he checked his phone and set it on his upraised leg. “They cleared out the safe behind the communications screen before we left that swamp. Your thumb turned everything
on but the engine.” He took a sip of water and wiped his mouth. “What is that? Voice activated?”

  “No,” she said, wondering why Jack was so fascinated with his hand all of a sudden. “One of the drugs you gave me must have registered over the legal alcohol limit.” She couldn’t help but wonder whether her car was anywhere close—or at the bottom of a cliff with a dead woman who looked like her in it.

  “Your car is a Breathalyzer? Damn. That’s rough.” Setting the water down, Michael leaned toward the fence, his smile wicked. “If the lock pad didn’t require living, oxygenated tissue, I would’ve cut your thumb off. Made it into a car fob.”

  Close, she guessed, disgusted at the mental image his words had evoked, but thankful someone had known about the Mantis’s living-tissue lock.

  Michael’s smile faded. “That was Evocane in the safe, wasn’t it.”

  She nodded, remembering Helen giving him the vial she’d had with her and telling him to dispose of it. Peri had just been given one dose. That left twenty-four hours—best case. “Few days’ worth,” she said, knowing she had to be out of here before then. “Why do you need the pass code if it’s been searched?” she asked, the beginnings of a plan trickling into place. She didn’t even know whether Silas was alive. If he was, she would get him free. If he wasn’t, she’d send Michael to join him.

  “To reset it to me,” he said slyly. “Some idiot put it into lockdown trying to drive it out. Helen thinks it went into the Atlantic with you, but you don’t throw something that beautiful away. At least not until you’ve used it up.”

  Her lip curled. “Stay out of my car.”

  Chuckling, he looked at his phone again. It was starting to irritate her. “You might change your mind.” Apparently satisfied, he put his phone away and took another swallow of water, eyeing her as if waiting for something. A flicker of unease rose as she realized Jack was still staring at his hand in fascination, his fingers going see-through. What’s more, a pleasant lassitude was filling her. Evocane wasn’t supposed to do that.