Driven

by Robert J. Crane

  “You were raised to break free of duct tape and kidnappers?” Ariadne asked, surprisingly calm considering she was talking to someone who’d stolen into her house in the dead of night and taken her “hostage.”

  “I was raised to fight the fight,” I said, “to survive.” I flexed my right hand, which was aching from the crash and had been complaining, especially as I’d used it to drive over here.

  “To fight what fight?” Ariadne asked, looking me right in the eye.

  I leaned back against her Formica countertop, felt an ache in my back in the muscles that surrounded the base of my spine. “Whatever fight came my way. Though in recent years it’s more like … whatever fight threatened the safety of my friends or the world. Not surprised you haven’t heard about any of them. After all, reporting on the good things I do might actively detract from reportage of how evil I am, all the way down to the bone.”

  “I don’t think you’re evil,” Ariadne said, but she looked away as she said.

  “Yeah, you probably just think I’ve made evil decisions,” I said, flexing that right hand and finding another torn muscle or pulled ligament in the wrist as well. “And I appreciate your sweetheart worldview, I really do, giving me the benefit of the doubt like that.”

  “Do you think you’re evil?” she asked. Now she was looking at me, smoky grey eyes fixed on mine when I looked up from my wound assessment.

  “You’ve been counseling with Dr. Zollers for too long,” I said, feeling my way up the wrist to the elbow, which similarly hurt. Must have happened when the airbag deployed into my AR, driving the impact up my arm and putting a lot of things out of joint. “You’re starting to talk like him.”

  “You know Dr. Zollers?” Ariadne asked, with a note of … concern? Worry? It might have been easier to tell if I’d been able to devote more attention to our conversation. Instead, my mind was like 65% focused on feeling pain, 20% on wound assessment, 10% on listening for anyone moving to assault the house, which left a roaring 5% of my concentration to Ariadne and replying to her string of queries.

  “After you lost your memory, I asked him to try and put things right … in there,” I said, touching my left index finger to my head. No pain, thank goodness. “It’s why you’re still seeing him after all this time, though he hasn’t had any luck getting your memories of me back.” I checked the left arm; it was mostly good. “Which is probably just as well, honestly. I mean, this is the kind of shitty thing that happens when you tangentially know me,” and I waved a hand to encompass her being bound to a chair. “Imagine the hell you go through when you actually remember me enough to consider me a friend.”

  “Do all your friends end up bound to chairs, hostages in their own house?” she asked dryly.

  “Pretty much. A lot end up in worse positions,” I said with more than a little chagrin. “Some end up dead. From the fight, y’know. Or wounded. Or some asshole tries to use them against me.” I worked my way over to a chair and sat down across from her. “Which kinda happened to another friend tonight. She’s a hostage right now … to some very bad people.”

  Ariadne stared at me. “Because of you?”

  “Maybe,” I said, and found myself breaking into an ironic smile. “Like yourself, lately I have some … memory problems.” The pull of my eyelids was fierce, and I had sunk into a nicely padded seat across from Ariadne.

  “I don’t know if this is normal for you lately, but …” She gave me the once over. “You look like hell.”

  “I feel like hell,” I agreed. Blood everywhere, again. Honestly, if they ever made a Sienna Nealon clothes and cosmetics line, crimson would have to be the anchor color, because bleeding seemed to be the only constant in my life. I closed my eyes. “I just … need a few minutes and then I’ll be … up and at ‘em again … need a few minutes … and a new plan …”

  The last bit came out as a murmur, and I drifted off in the comfort of the padded chair, Ariadne still staring at me from where she was bound. I spared one last thought for a vague worry about her getting loose, but, unable to come up with any other solution, I gave up the fight with my warring eyelids and drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  When I woke, the sound of a coffeemaker percolating was like an alarm in my consciousness. Her chair was empty, the duct tape torn across the lateral axes, and I blinked in surprise at the sight. The room was filled with the scent of a rich brew, and I wondered if the noise had woken me, or the expectation of sweet coffee passing my lips had done the trick, like Pavlov’s dog, salivating to wakefulness.

  “You want a cup?” Ariadne asked, bustling around in the kitchen, silken robe swishing gently behind her.

  “Yeah,” I said, “unless I need to be fleeing to avoid the cops.”

  She paused for a second, having just retrieved an empty cup from the cabinet above. She stared with great concentration into the cupboard. “No, I didn’t call the police. I’m not sure why, exactly, but … I didn’t.”

  “Hm,” I said, trying to weigh that one out. I eyed her as she went back to work getting me a cup of coffee, pouring it out as the percolator dripped a few drops onto the hot plate before she replaced it and handed me a tall cup black as the night outside the windows.

  I eyed the coffee, and she must have sensed my hesitation. “I didn’t even ask if you wanted cream or sugar,” she said, almost whispering, concentration elsewhere.

  “I usually drink it black, so …” I shrugged. “You used to know that. Maybe, underneath all the layers of stolen memory, you still do.”

  She looked at me in earnest, clutching her own cup. “You say my memory was stolen. By who? For what reason?”

  “President Harmon did it,” I said, matching her earnestness. “Does that surprise you?”

  She thought about it a second. “No. I worked in the White House for a short while, and I could never figure out how I ended up there.” She cracked a smile. “I really hated that bastard, didn’t even vote for him the second go round.”

  I laughed, and it turned to a sniffle. “We sat together on election night and watched him win, and he called me to taunt—this was before he revealed himself as a mind-controlling villain that was going to try and take over the world with his brain—”

  She cocked an eyebrow at me. “This … is a normal thing to happen with you? The President of the United States turns out to be a megalomaniac and a metahuman?”

  “Well, it happened that one time,” I said, “I dunno how ‘normal’ you could quantify it as. I mean, it’s not like Gondry has gone and done the same thing.” I hesitated. “Yet. But he hasn’t cleared me, either, so … maybe it’s coming.”

  “Did Harmon do … what he did to me … because of you?” Ariadne asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, unable to meet her gaze. “He was trying to undermine me in every way possible—take away my friends by mind control, take away my support mechanisms, turn me into a criminal—grind me into nothingness so I couldn’t stop him.” I stared at the steaming coffee. “Well … it’s been almost two years, and he’s just about finished it out.” I felt so bone weary. Maybe the coffee would help. “Shame that once it was all said and done … he didn’t end up wanting that anymore. The unstoppable momentum of the government machine rolls ever on, with me caught under the wheels, listening to the bones break.”

  “What does that mean?” Ariadne asked. “The part about him not ‘wanting that anymore’?”

  “Harmon? He ended up changing his tune before he died—which he did while saving my life,” I said. “Sort of. Long story. And it doesn’t really matter, I guess. It’s all in the past now.” I took another sip. The coffee was strong. Bitter. Hopefully it’d keep me going through the rest of the night, which I had a feeling … was going to be a long one. No more rest for wicked me. “The future, though … that one’s looking kinda concerning at the moment.”

  Ariadne looked down at me. “Why? What does your future hold?”

  “A showdown,” I said. “Beyond
that? Not sure. My crystal ball decided he didn’t want to brave it with me, so …” I sniffled again and felt disgusted. “Sorry. That was … self-indulgent.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ariadne said. She was focused on me, really listening in a way that … few did, other than Harry. No, scratch that. My friends did … whenever I actually got to see them.

  “I had a boyfriend with the ability to see the future,” I said. “But we, uh … parted ways yesterday.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ariadne said. “You have the strangest stories.”

  I laughed another little laugh that turned into a sniffle. “I really do. My life … it’s a hot mess.” I felt the lightness leave, and said, soberly, “And I’m sorry that yours ended up one, too. Because of me.”

  “I don’t really remember that,” Ariadne said, rearranging her silken nightgown as she sat down on the chair, brushing aside one of the stray strands of broken duct tape as she did so. “But if you say that the president stole my memories in order to strike at you … I guess my life really was a mess. I just thought I was working at the White House because I was that damned good.”

  “You were good,” I said. “Are still, I’m sure. You were my co-director at the agency, before Harmon took it away from me.” I sighed. “You helped keep everything running. You were one of the people that … kept me running, too.” I bowed my head and shook it, staring at my coffee.

  “There are days when I wake up …” Ariadne said, staring off into space, “… and it just feels like … something’s missing from my life.” She turned her eyes to me. “Maybe that’s you. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “You probably don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.”

  I sniffled again. “Oh, I do. Boy, do I.”

  Ariadne let out a little sigh. “So … what are you going to do now?”

  “Well, I have a rendezvous with destiny now that I’m mostly healed,” I said, taking a quick inventory of my body. I flexed my hand and it seemed to be back in working order, only the mildest ache as complaint for the damage it had taken. “So I suppose I’ll get out of your hair and back down to the brass tacks business of kicking ass and taking names.”

  “Whose ass, whose names?” she asked.

  “Tamaulipas Cartel, in this case,” I said.

  “You’re messing with the drug cartels now?” Ariadne stared at me in slight disbelief.

  “I manage to stick my nose into a bit of everything,” I said casually. “I’m a meddler. I meddle.”

  “And you’re going to go …” She just let that drift off.

  “Kick ass, take names,” I said. “I’d be more specific, but it’s probably better you don’t know. I’m sure you’ll see it all on the news, just above a chryon that suggests that I’ve murdered a bunch of undocumented workers doing honest farm labor or somesuch horseshit.”

  “But … it’s not actually going to be honest farm laborers, right?” Ariadne asked.

  “Nope,” I said. “Kidnappers, murderers and mercenaries. They took a friend of mine hostage.” I stood, picking up my shoulder duffel and slinging it over. “Damned near killed me. Innocent, they aren’t. But then … neither am I these days, am I?” I felt a little rueful about that one. “And haven’t been … for a long damned time.” I thrust my hand out at her. “By the way, I need your cell phone.”

  “What?”

  She frowned at me. “I don’t want to have to reset my phone. Do you know how long that takes? I’ll be at the cell phone store for hours.”

  “It’s all on the cloud these days. You’ll be fine. Besides, I’ve already inconvenienced you to the tune of having to replace a door lock and dealing with the cops after I’m gone. What’s a few more hours in a cell phone store?”

  “It’s a few more hours in a cell phone store,” she said, getting pretty firm about it. “The most boring, unproductive hours in the history of the world because you don’t even have a phone to do anything with.” She put her foot down pretty hard on this one, folding her arms in front of her. “No. No way. You can’t have my phone.”

  I stared at her in mild disbelief. “So, if the choice comes down to ‘your phone or your life,’ your decision is final in this one?”

  She shook it off. “You’re not going to kill me. Not over a stupid phone.”

  “But … I need a working phone,” I said lamely. “My very life might depend upon it.”

  She stared at me through half-lidded eyes, then brightened. “I have a work cell phone that I don’t use much.”

  “That’ll do,” I said, and she moved to retrieve it, heading for her purse, “though next time someone dangerous asks for your phone, I hope that’s not the hill you choose to die on.”

  “I know you’ve killed people,” she said, rooting around in her purse, all her concentration on it, “and I know they say you’re dangerous—” she looked over her shoulder as she tossed me something, “—and I’m sure you are, and are probably about to prove it again to the satisfaction of everyone, but …” She sort of half-smiled. “I guess I don’t feel like you’re the kind of person who’s just going to kill me over a phone.”

  I looked at the phone she’d tossed me. It was a few years out of date, but it had numbers and a keypad, and that was all I really needed. I flipped it open and it lit up. Enough battery life for a few hours. “I’m probably not. But my point is that when dealing with dangerous people, you should comport yourself accordingly.” I looked up at her. “I just want you to be careful, Ariadne.”

  Her look softened. “And that … is why I didn’t take it seriously that you’d kill me over a phone. Not many murderers would say that.” She kept her eyes on me. “So … what now?”

  “I gotta fight,” I said, feeling the weight of the strap on my shoulder. The bag was still heavy, mostly because what remained within it was all arsenal, bullets and guns. All the light stuff—wigs and disguises—was gone, which meant my go bag was now set for Go Time, and this was it.

  “You don’t sound happy about it.”

  “I love the fight,” I said, fingering the strap. “Love it. I practically live for the moments when I’m chasing down some do-badder and wiping the floor with them. But …”

  She waited a few seconds before asking, “But what?”

  “But I hate running,” I said, adjusting the weight. “And that’s the pattern, y’know? Fight chaotic evil, run from lawful good once it’s over. Run, run, run. Forever on the treadmill. No, not a treadmill, cuz the scenery’s been changing, but …” I shook my head. “I don’t like running. And not just because cardio sucks. I hate hiding my face … like I’m a kid who’s too afraid to look a parent in the eyes.” I stared at my shoes, which were about as scuffed and beat up as you can imagine after all I’d been through this night. “I hate that sick feeling of dread that I carry forever because I can never look my real problem in the face. I’m not guilty of what they said I’ve done, but … I’m guilty. Of other stuff. And I just … hate running. I’ve run from my problems for … so long. I’m sick of it. But … I can’t fight the law. They’re the good guys. I only fight the bad guys.” I smiled thinly. “So … I run.”

  She stared at me, listening carefully. “But you’re tired of running.”

  “Boy, am I,” I whispered, and took a deep breath. “I should go.” And I turned to leave.

  “Sienna,” she said, stopping me. “Kick ass. And take names.”

  “Thanks,” I said, another little laugh escaping me. “Sorry about your door. And the cops. And your work phone.”

  “Oh, I’m going to have them replace the work phone,” she said breezily. “I’m not sitting in a cell phone store for hours. If they don’t like it, they can fire me. I’ll find another job.”

  I laughed again. “‘Your cell phone or your life,’” I said under my breath. “Be safe.” I looked her in the eye across the distance between us. “Please.”

  “And you, uh …” She met my gaze, and I kinda froze in place as she stare
d into my eyes. There was a moment of connection between us, and then I looked away, because there was a feeling of faint discomfort as I suspected she caught a whiff of what I was thinking … as though she could read my soul.

  “Just take care, Ariadne,” I said, and hurried out the door before she could say anything else.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Angel

  Four Years Ago

  “Okay, these are the best tamales I’ve ever had,” Sienna said, munching her way through Angel’s first success of the day.

  Angel stared at her through the pass. The restaurant was closed, of course, not that anyone had noticed. Her employees had probably called her when they got there at their respective shift start times, but, finding it locked, hadn’t waited around. Now it was almost one-thirty, and no one was wandering up, so the three of them—Angel, Miranda and Sienna—had the place to themselves. The smell of the grill filled the place, sweet goodness wafting through the whole restaurant.

  Miranda wasn’t eating anything. She was staring at the far wall, thinking. When Angel had asked her, she’d passed on having anything. “I don’t think my stomach is ready for food,” was how she’d put it. She just sat, silently, until finally stirring, as Angel watched her through the pass, to turn her eyes to Sienna and ask a question. “So … you’ve seen this sort of thing before, right? Many times?”

  Sienna was mid-bite on a tamale, and not a small bite (or tamale). When she managed to get it mostly down, she answered. “What? Relationships that go sideways toward murder? Yeah, I’ve seen it a time or two.” She shifted in her chair. “Actually, there was this one case not too long ago … the husband was this total dickweed. Developed powers at like twenty something, like your cousin … already married, way too young—actually, that’s unfair, this couple wouldn’t have worked out even if they’d gotten married at fifty with all the experience in the world cuz—yanno—dickweed. Anyway …”