Mercy Strange

by Alisa Woods

  Three bright events showed up—his original, brief manipulation of Mercy when he first met her, and then the stronger, more extensive emotion-mancy with Violet, twice. First time to get the login, the second for the download code.

  Dalvi dove in there first. Swift held in the groan squeezing his chest. She replayed the two times with Violet, start to finish, slowing down in parts, drawing the whole thing larger than life, wrenching his stomach with every sickening part. Even the passing thought he had about not wanting to fuck Violet on the desk was splayed out for Dalvi to examine in minute detail. It was invasive and violating and all around horrible. The psychic pain compounded the longer it went on. After a minute—or ten, he could never tell in the haze of the memory soup—he couldn’t keep the groan inside anymore. He struggled to at least keep it quiet. They were in the fucking department of Science and Magick, on the second floor of the FBI field office. Anyone could pass by and hear. Dalvi eased off a little, and he could control the torment with some heavy breathing through his teeth.

  All of it happened without a word from her.

  Dalvi adjusted her touch on his neck, leaving that ravaged memory and shifting back to focus on his brief use of his Talent on Mercy. Fuck. That thought was subsumed in his general misery as Dalvi dredged through that moment, again and again, looking for fuck knows what. He tried not to resist—resistance made it worse—but it was like signing up to take a beating to the same spot already pummeled ten times. He couldn’t help the flinch. She shouldn’t count that against him. The worst part of the scrying wasn’t the psychic pain, although that was bad enough. It was the dizzying sense of unreality. The way Dalvi went in and stirred his memories around, hunting and pecking for any sign that he’d used his Talent outside the approved protocols. Any hint he was lying or hiding something from PsyOps or holding back. Anything that whiffed of deception would be hauled out and examined, run through the wringer a dozen times, then stuffed back into his psyche, bruised and battered for the trouble.

  Dalvi wasn’t gentle… but she was quick. Efficient. He’d submitted to other scrying examinations by witches far more brutal and who enjoyed their abusive art far too much. Dalvi got the job done, and Swift mostly had his mind intact afterward. That was why he kept requesting her when he had a choice—she was simply better at her job, which meant less suffering for him.

  Dalvi’s cool fingers lifted from his skin. The torment cut off with a crackling snap.

  Swift shuddered then rubbed his hands across his face. It was wet with the leaked tears that almost always made their way out. He wasn’t even conscious of them until afterward. He wiped his eyes and looked up at her, but she was already swishing her way back around the desk. She sat, opened her laptop, and typed up some notes while he recovered.

  He was a little shaky, but that was normal. The sense of dizziness that came after had surged and left. The piercing headache was still on the way. Most important, he’d managed to keep his thoughts away from Mercy while under the scry—that had been a Herculean effort he’d achieved mostly by leaning into the pain. It was a trick he’d learned long ago. You can’t not think of something by thinking about not thinking—you have to have something that grabs hold of your attention and rivets it in place.

  Pain is excellent for that.

  Even so, who knew what Dalvi saw. Not that he had much to hide, but he knew his feelings about Mercy were problematic. He liked her. Just a little too much. He was intrigued by her. Way more than the mission required. And she was a suspect. That was the worst part. Not that he thought she had any part in this, not really. But if Dalvi thought he couldn’t be objective about that—falling for an asset was high on the oh hell no list—then she’d pull him from the mission. And that was no good for a couple reasons: 1—he wasn’t done flirting with Mercy Strange yet, and 2—he was still new at PsyOps.

  Psychic Operations ran under the National Security Branch of the FBI, alongside Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism. This magitek gene editing thing had the dual potential to be a terrorist crime and a military application. Years ago, the only way he’d gotten out of jail was drafting into the PsyOps division of the military—that had seemed like a good idea at the time, until he was four years in and nearly losing his mind. It was fucking horrible. He’d negotiated his way out of the service by “allowing” himself to be recruited into the FBI’s PsyOps division—there’d been a little covert Talent usage to make that happen, but so far, no one had caught on. And that was sufficiently far in the past now—over a year—that it would probably stay buried. PsyOps in the FBI was a whole different breed of cat from Milspec PsyOps. It was still a dark agency, and he had to masquerade as a full-fledged Special Agent with only the bare-minimum training. And yes, he had to still use his Talent—that was all he had to offer—and yes, it could be unpleasant from time to time, but holy fuck, it was better than breaking men’s minds in “aggressive interrogation.” He never wanted to do that work again, and the only way to stay out of the military was to stay in the FBI.

  No screw ups. No crushing on a suspect in an investigation. Nothing to make Dalvi disqualify him from going back in the field.

  His handler finished her notes and closed her laptop. “So, you’ve made progress in the investigation?”

  Swift pulled in a breath and rose from his chair to face her. “Yes, Ma’am.” Fuck. The military habits came back when he was nervous.

  She blinked, and he was afraid she knew his tells all too well. “You don’t suspect Mercy Strange of involvement in the production of the bio-weapon?”

  Swift shook his head, but that only brought on the early stages of the headache-hangover—the aftereffects of the scry. He winced and rubbed his temple. “She’s definitely a subject matter expert. And she definitely wants to have the capability—it’s where her research is focused. But involved in the illegal experimentation on people? Including her father? Seems unlikely. She’s still steamed about her father losing his magick. Those feelings are real.” That was, after all, his area of expertise.

  Dalvi nodded then leaned back and laced her hands together, tapping her thumbs. “Yet she and her father stand to benefit most from this research. Will this new set of data give her the capability to make the weapon?”

  That he truly didn’t know. He shrugged. “If so, I figure the bureau knows exactly where to find her.”

  “And that would upset you.” She was carefully watching his reaction.

  He kept it cool, just frowning a little. “More like surprise me. She doesn’t seem the type.”

  “The type to want her professional goals fulfilled?” Her gaze became sharper.

  “The type to be reckless.” He lifted one shoulder like he couldn’t say for sure the kind of person Mercy Strange was—which was mostly true. “She was enthusiastic about the science. That’s her thing, for sure. And she’d make a hell of an asset if you’re going that direction—like I said, serious subject matter expert. But she’s not a rogue player. She operates within the normal scientific establishment. She’d lose a lot with unethical research. Wealth. Power. Status of a family strong in magick. She’s not going to risk all that when she knows the FBI’s watching.”

  Dalvi seemed to take that at face value. And it was mostly true. Swift didn’t know Mercy, not really… not as much as he’d like to, which was a serious problem. But he’d grown up around a legion of con artists and felons. He knew the type, and he’d learn to read people early on—Mercy wasn’t the kind to turn criminal mastermind.

  Dalvi rose from her seat and came around to face him. She stood for a moment just peering into his eyes. Nothing but the buzz of her preternatural calm. It made him nervous as hell. And his headache was ramping up.

  He rubbed at his temple again—maybe some residue of sympathy lurked deep inside Dalvi, and she’d let him go.

  “You have some dissociation,” she said flatly.

  Shit. He dropped his hand and stared her down. Losing his sense of reality would be game over. That
was part of how he convinced the military to “retire” him to the FBI—and it wasn’t entirely a lie, either. “No, I’m fine.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “I think you are. Or I wouldn’t send you back out there.”

  Relief flooded his chest. It must have shown on his face because her eyes narrowed. “But I want to see you daily. For the extent of the mission.”

  Fucking hell. Scrying that much, alone, might tip him over the edge. “That’s really not necessary.”

  “Yes, it is.” And because she had the final word, she was right. It was. She held his gaze a little longer, waiting for his objection, but there was none he could give. “Stay close to the Strange witch and her father. Watch what she does with the data. And get some sleep, Swift—you look like hell. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Only this time he wasn’t nervous. He was pissed. But there was nothing to do about that, either.

  He turned and marched out of his handler’s office, rubbing the pain that kept growing just behind his temples. Dalvi had really fucked with his head. It would take him all night to get over the hangover. He gave up on the idea of checking one more time on Ms. Mercy Strange and went home to sleep it off.

  Chapter Seven

  Mercy’s eyes were starting to cross.

  She put her head down, giving up on her screen for the moment. Swift had been right—there were terabytes of data. And it wasn’t all big genomic data files. Quill’s AI was crunching away on that. It was the reports that were killing her. All written with code names and procedure short-hand and abbreviations—it was like reading a mad scientist’s secret diary.

  She lifted her head and grabbed the edges of the screen with both hands. “Why can’t you just say what you mean!” she growled at it.

  “Uh oh,” a male voice said.

  Mercy jumped in her seat so hard, she nearly slid out. She would have brought the screen down on top of her except the surprise had jolted her hands-free. She clutched the edge of her desk to keep from falling to the floor and twisted to send a death glare to whoever had snuck up on her.

  It was just Quill. His face was scrunched up in comic horror. “You okay there, sparky?”

  “If I tell you to fuck off will you take it personally?”

  He smirked. “Depends how you say it.”

  She groaned and dragged herself back into the chair. Then she rubbed her eyes, hard, for what seemed like the twentieth time that hour. She had been up all night, and it felt like she had made no progress.

  “Wait...” Quill stepped into her office. “Those are the same clothes you were wearing yesterday.”

  “You’re a genius.” She dropped her hands and gave him a look. “Do you have something better for me than fashion advice?”

  “Did you seriously not go home last night?” He frowned. “You might want to go look in the mirror.”

  “Okay, now I’m really telling you to fuck off.” She glanced wearily at the time on her screen. Nine in the morning. What? Did she doze off? The last time she checked, it was still before six. A quick glance out the open door showed the lab was filling up with her regular staff, and sunlight was sneaking in through her blinds. It was Saturday, but she’d asked everyone to come in for overtime.

  Quill stepped closer and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You need a break.”

  She shrugged it off and turned back to her screen. “What I need is a secret decoder ring. I can’t track all the code names and their meanings to decipher these damn reports. And I’m sure they have the recipe for the gen-magick in here. I just can’t…” She made claw hands at the screen. “Make it make sense.”

  “Maybe I can help with that.”

  She flicked a scowl at Quill for teasing her, but he was scanning the screen with a serious expression. “How so?” she asked.

  He peered closer at the report she had up. “It’s easy to build a roster of the code names, and it wouldn’t be that hard to build a pattern recognition routine to sort out their meaning.” He straightened back up. “Something more complicated, like a deep learning routine to piece together trends across the papers, would take more time. But the pattern recognition part could at least get you started.”

  She let out a sigh. Why hadn’t she brought Quill in earlier on this? Oh, right—she kept expecting Swift to make an appearance again at the lab. But he never showed, and by then, Quill had gone home. “I take back all my fuck offs. And I’ll buy you coffee if you can do any of that for me.”

  He smiled. “I’ll grab you some coffee on the way back. Won’t take me long. Go take a nap or something, okay? You look like you need it.”

  “Go make the code magick.” She shooed him away.

  He grinned but only made it as far as the doorway before turning back. “Oh, did you get the data on the new body?”

  She’d been slumped in her chair, but that made her sit up straight. “What new body?”

  He frowned. “It’s on the news. You better check it out.” Then he hustled out the door.

  Fuck. Another death. It wasn’t her fault, she knew that, but if she’d been a little faster… She brought up the news on her screen, and it was splashed in huge headlines. Serial killer strikes again in Chicago. It was the same as the others—mutilated with a note taunting the FBI and everyone else to find them. It seemed crazy to Mercy. If you were killing people, wouldn’t you try to get away with it? Why leave clues? Especially when you were obviously smart enough to develop world-changing drugs that had eluded some of the best scientific minds in the world? Then again, those minds were constrained by things like ethics and the International Human and Magick Experimentation Protocols. If Mercy didn’t mind torturing and killing people, she supposed she could make a lot of ground-breaking scientific progress, too.

  That thought just made her pissed off as well as tired.

  She closed the news and texted her sister, Ever. Just saw the new body. FBI have a sample for me? Usually, Ever’s boyfriend at the Magickal Crimes Division sent Mercy samples to add to the genomic database she had for all the victims. It was horrible that it happened often enough to have a standard protocol.

  Then she leaned back in her chair and wished she could even contemplate a nap. Just as she was closing her eyes, her phone buzzed. Zane is on his way.

  “Great.” Mercy sighed. The MCD had to be working overtime on all the data Swift had brought back as well—the new body wasn’t the only horrible thing promised for today. There was still whatever their bad guy was planning for this afternoon hanging over everyone and everything. She honestly had expected Swift to come back after he took the data to the field office, but he never did. Was he done? Off the case now that his undercover work was over?

  Would she never see him again? That left a weird hollow sensation in her chest.

  “Knock knock,” a voice at the door said.

  Mercy didn’t jump so badly this time.

  It was Nia Lockwood, Ever’s bodyguard, friend, and ex-special services badass. She hovered in Mercy’s doorway, wearing her usual understated leather pants and plain black t-shirt and carrying a duffle bag. She was model gorgeous with her deep brown skin and towering height, but her idea of fashion was running a comb through the full afro she was growing out. Mercy could never convince her to wear anything more complicated. But it was weird to have her visit.

  “Hey, Nia.” Mercy could hear the fatigue in her own voice. “What’s up?”

  “First, I want you to know that I am not in the habit of running personal errands for anyone, much less women who could learn the meaning of the words high maintenance.”

  “Um… okay?” Her brain was way too tired to figure out what this was about.

  “Also, I brought you a change of clothes.” She stepped into Mercy’s office and handed over the duffle bag. “Ever said you needed something. If this is unacceptable, you’ll have to get it yourself.”

  Mercy rose up from her chair to take it and just… blinked. She was oddly touched. “You didn’t have
to—”

  “Ever insisted.” Nia still looked a little put out by that. “But if you’ve got some actual security needs related to the Resurrectionist case, I’m 100% available for that.”

  Mercy smiled. “Thanks.” She lifted the bag. “For both.”

  Nia gave a nod like Mercy’s thanks were barely tolerable as payment for services rendered. Then Nia tipped her head toward the lab. “You should go change. You’re a mess, and I hear Agent Walker’s on the way.”

  “Has the FBI made any headway on what’s supposed to go down today?”

  “Not to my knowledge. But then I wouldn’t know.” She seemed grumpy about that too and waved Mercy out of her chair like she was conducting traffic at the airport.

  “All right, all right.” Mercy shuffled out of her office and kept her head down as she ambled through the lab and headed to the restroom.

  Once inside, she started the laborious process of unbuttoning. The Victorian era had a lot of buttons. She was only halfway through when she glimpsed her face in the mirror. Holy crap. Her elaborate red makeup with the painted black eyebrow-horns had melted and smeared and now resembled something out of a horror film. The bathroom had little in the way of supplies, but when she dug through the duffle bag, she found Nia had meticulously packed not only makeup removing supplies but an entire makeup bag, towels, soap, and some of that Victorian perfume she’d vowed to throw out but hadn’t gotten around to.

  “Thank you, Nia!” she said to the empty one-person bathroom she was occupying. She wriggled out of the dress, cleaned up, then pulled out the clothes Nia had packed for her. They were ordinary leggings and her knee-high lace-up boots, both black, plus one of her more modern coat-dresses. The buttoned-up front was a series of metal latches, and the body of the coat was embroidered silk, but the sleeves and the petal-layered tails were all black lace. When standing still, it looked like a dress, but in motion, it flared and rippled. Mercy could just see Nia agonizing in front of her closet trying to find something “normal” to wear—this was probably the closest she could find.