Painkiller

by Robert J. Crane

  “So are you two like, a couple?” Melody asked. She had her ears perked up and everything.

  “He’s my brother,” I said, wondering why I was being driven around by a part-time taxi driver instead of just getting a full-time one, especially since the government was paying for these little trips anyway.

  “Oh, sorry,” Melody said, apologizing. She let that rest for a beat before throwing out her next question. “So are you guys going downtown to party tonight?”

  “We’re heading to a police precinct, remember?” I was looking at her cock-eyed; none of the taxi drivers had tried to engage me in conversation for more than a few seconds of our ride.

  “Oh, right,” Melody said, nodding, glancing back at us in the rearview. “Probably not partying there.” She chortled, and it sounded a little like a duck quacking at low volume. “What are you going to the cop shop for?”

  “We’re federal agents investigating local transport licenses,” I said, hoping to switch this Chatty Cathy off. “You know, the kind taxi drivers need.”

  “Oh, cool,” she said, plainly not getting the hint. “I bet that’s fun.”

  “Yes, looking into local bureaucracy is totes fun,” I deadpanned, then turned back to Reed and lowered my voice. “I was trying to figure out how to trap Maclean so we could prove he’s set these assassins on us.”

  “I don’t like Maclean for this,” Reed said with a shake of his head. “I think Gustafson is more likely.”

  “You think Dr. Gustafson has meta assassins in his Rolodex?” I asked, jaw down in disbelief. “I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t pass the sniff test.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Melody asked from the front seat, way too chipper for this time of night.

  “Federal Statute N51047,” I replied, making shit up, “the use of personal vehicles for non-regulatory purposes.”

  “That sounds serious,” Melody said. “Are people breaking that law around here?”

  “People break every law, everywhere,” I said. “That’s why we have jails.”

  “Oh, that sucks,” Melody said, like it was such a bummer, you guys. “So are you going to get to do any partying while you’re in town?”

  I looked at Melody in the front seat and I finally realized something. “You’re going out partying tonight, aren’t you?”

  “Totally,” she said, nodding, a big grin on her face, her eyes not so much on the road. “That’s what so great about this gig. I picked you guys up, and it’s paying for my gas money to get into the city. How cool is that?”

  I glared at Reed and he shrugged. “It’s cheaper for us, and she gets her gas money paid for to party. That’s win/win.”

  “I feel like I’m losing in this case,” I said, and my phone buzzed. Apparently my number had finally synched with my voicemail. I dialed it immediately, before Melody had a chance to ask any more scintillating questions about partying or regulations.

  The first voicemail came as a little bit of a surprise. I saw Reed stiffen in the seat next to me as it played. “Ms. Nealon, this Jonathan Chang. We met the other night in the bar in Eden Prairie, where I presented you with a job offer to run the local branch of our new metahuman NGO. I wanted to reach out to you to follow up. I know you’re in Chicago at the moment on a case, but I’ve had a chance to look into your problems with the FAA, and I’d like to meet at lunch tomorrow to discuss them, as well as the career opportunities. Please give me a call back at …”

  Reed was glaring. “Fer real?” he asked, sounding like a … I don’t know, like he was pissed and from the San Fernando Valley.

  “What?” I asked, innocently. “I’m totally a hot commodity. Like corn or soybeans.”

  “You guys aren’t doing ecstasy back there, are you?” Melody asked, turning to look at us. I missed the glass partition that separated me from my fellow humans in a cab.

  “What?” I looked at her in horror. “What the hell are you—we’re federal agents, remember?”

  “I figured you guys were making that up because you didn’t want to talk to me,” Melody said, shrugging.

  I stared at her in sheer disbelief. “If you knew we didn’t want to talk to you, why are you still talking to us?”

  “Just because you’re really rude doesn’t mean I have to be,” she said without an ounce of judgment. She sounded like she was going out of her way to be peppy and nice, and it irked me more than I can properly describe.

  “Steady,” Reed said, catching my arm. “Don’t lose your shit because someone’s being too nice to you.”

  “I’m bucking my nature here, Reed,” I said, steaming, “but it’s really hard. Zollers says my natural instinct is to separate myself from humanity because I can’t take it.”

  “Yes, the milk of human kindness tastes like ash to you, doesn’t it?” he asked with a smirk.

  “As you know, I prefer a steady diet of sarcasm, cynicism and thumbtacks,” I replied, feeling my urge to kill falling.

  “That’s a rough way to go through life,” Melody said sadly, apparently deciding I needed either commentary or a life coach. “You should try yoga for relaxation. Or maybe some Kegels to work out your stress—”

  “I am not doing fucking Kegels!” I screamed in the back of the non-taxi. Everyone fell silent at my outburst.

  “You sure?” Melody asked, cutting into the silence like a knife into an artery. “You seem like you need something. Maybe a colon cleanse?”

  I sat seething in the back of the car, Reed looking sympathetic but refusing to meet my eyes, a barely-concealed smirk on his face for the rest of the ride to the police department.

  43.

  Veronika

  Veronika had never liked spending idle time while on a job, so the afternoon spent flat on her back waiting for her wound to heal had been like hell itself had risen up from beneath the earth and dragged her down into its fiery embrace. Which totally fit with the pain in her shoulder.

  Now she was moving again, though, and the shoulder felt a little stiff but was otherwise fine. Digging out a bullet hadn’t been the most fun way to torment herself, but it had allowed the news she’d received about her mother to really seep into her mind and roll around for a while. That was idleness for you; give it a chance and it’d just consume you whole, letting all your doubts and fears play in your head for a while. Yeah, that was hell, but at least it was over now.

  Now, Veronika was back on the job, pacing back and forth in front of Chicago PD’s headquarters. She’d gotten a message from her employer while she was out, giving her a nice line of sight to perfect ambush opportunities. She knew her counterparts, the competition, had gotten the same chances. She’d read the news reports on her phone, and it looked to her like Sienna Nealon had given Colin Fannon the slip after an ambush at the river, and that she’d dodged Phinneus Chalke again at some college out in the ’burbs.

  That damned sure worked for Veronika. She’d had a feeling neither of those losers would be up to bringing Nealon down. The woman was a badass, first rate, and Veronika recognized more than a few of her own tendencies in the agent. She’d skimmed some of the news articles while she was waiting, confirming a little more of what she’d already suspected. Nealon was the antisocial type, apparently always pushing people away. Veronika could relate.

  It didn’t interfere with her planning, though. Nealon still had to die; that was the job she was being paid to do, after all. Standing here, staring across at the police headquarters, she just hoped she’d gotten the jump on Colin and Phinneus. After all, Nealon was working with the cops, was an obsessed workaholic, and was almost certain not to call it a night just yet. So unless she’d picked up some other hot lead, it seemed likely that sooner or later, she was going to end up here, consulting with the detectives at the CPD.

  Veronika sighed. She’d already been waiting hours, carefully eyeing the front of the building for any hint of Nealon. She’d watched the number of visitors to the precinct diminish as the hours grew late, the night shift
dragged in, and the civilian employees clocked out. Now it was getting lonely on her stretch of sidewalk, and she’d taken to pacing back and forth a couple blocks, keeping her razor-sharp meta eyes on the front of the building when she was facing it, and her cell phone camera angled to catch all traffic when she wasn’t. It was a pretty clever way to go about it, she figured. Better than just lingering in front of the entrance all night.

  She was expecting a cab, so when a Toyota Prius pulled up in front of the entrance, she almost discounted it. But then it stopped to let two people out. Veronika paused and looked back with her own eyes.

  Yep. The dark hair, the short stature, the wider hips hidden under coat that was—wait, was her shirt yellow, her pants black and her coat brown? Veronika squinted into the dark, her eyebrows rising. Nealon looked like an idiot had dressed her, but when she passed under a light, Veronika knew it was her, the brother walking a pace behind her.

  “Showtime,” Veronika breathed, turning around to head for the front of the police headquarters. She was in a hurry, after all. No time to waste.

  44.

  Sienna

  The police department wasn’t as grand as I expected. It certainly wasn’t ivory towers; just more brick and glass, and when we went inside I found the standard corridors and painted drywall that seemed to be the mark of every bureaucratic institution from colleges to law enforcement agencies.

  Detective Maclean’s cubicle was on the fourth floor, and Reed and I found it without too much difficulty. Like every other police station I’d ever been in, it smelled of coffee and effort, along with some hints of smoke that had clung to clothing in the chill air, trailed inside by those who’d gone out for their smoke breaks.

  Maclean was looking more than a little weary as we came up on him. He’d evidently been warned we were coming, because he was watching down the row when we turned the corner. “Heard you caused some trouble out in Naperville, too,” he said, not looking amused in the slightest. “And of course, I assume that flying dragon over the river was you?”

  “You get a lot of dragons around here when I’m not in town?” I quipped, simmering rage boiling beneath the surface. Okay, not too deep beneath the surface. Maybe like a micron beneath my surface at most.

  “It’s not a common occurrence, no,” Maclean said, and he was watching me a little more carefully now. He’d probably picked up on my mood. Like I said, it wasn’t well concealed. “We got the cab, too. Looked like someone pulled it up onto the riverbank. Was that you?”

  “No,” I said, frowning, taken aback. I’d left the damned thing at the bottom of the river. Who would have bothered to dredge it up again? That was just weird.

  “I’ve got this profile for the second vic,” Maclean said, apparently choosing to bypass both my surprise at the taxi revelation and my prickly greeting and go straight to business. Normally, I would have approved. At the moment, though, seeing him here, giving me a little dose of shit, I was having a hard time controlling my emotions, which were rapidly breaking in a distinctly hostile and unproductive direction. Thanks to numerous sessions with Dr. Zollers, I was aware of this.

  Thanks to the fact that I am a rage-monster of a human being, I also did not presently care.

  “These assassins just keep finding me,” I said tightly. I could feel Reed stiffen behind me at the knowledge of what was coming.

  Maclean cocked an eyebrow at me. “There’s more than one?”

  “There are three now,” I said, faux-chipper, heading toward woodchipper. “A speedster who can move superhumanly fast, like the Flash, a sniper who can’t miss—” I paused, “uh, except when he shoots at me, apparently, and a woman who can absorb fire and turn her skin to a burning plasma that’s hotter than anything I can produce and also is one hell of a fighter—”

  “Yeah,” Maclean took this knowledge in stride, apparently not too concerned with either my well-being or the assassins on my trail, because he turned back to his computer screen. “I put that ‘Graves’ into the database and came up with bupkis. I also looked into murders committed with .44-40 ammo and came up with a little more, courtesy of your friends at the FBI—”

  “I don’t have any friends at the FBI,” I said, steaming. “Only enemies.”

  Maclean looked right at me. “I can’t imagine why.”

  It took everything in me not to rip him out of his chair and shake him like a party mix. My fists were clenched, my lips were pressing against each other so hard that if I’d ever had collagen injections, they’d be exploding out from the pressure. I felt like someone had twisted my insides, like they’d put a good, solid grip on my guts and were squeezing …

  Before I could let fly a raging reply, my phone rang. It played Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” which was a song I found soothing, and which had apparently downloaded from the cloud in order to overwrite my new phone’s default preferences with the personal ringtone of the individual calling me at the moment.

  Dr. Quinton Zollers.

  “Hello,” I said in a pleasant tone as I raised the phone to my ear.

  “You need to calm down,” Dr. Zollers said, traces of sleepiness in his voice. “I can feel your blinding rage from here, and it turned a quite pleasant dream into something akin to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

  “How interesting you picked that to reference,” I said, “since I am in Chicago.” I was still staring hard at the object of my rage, Detective Maclean.

  “I am aware of that,” Zollers said with a yawn. “Deep breaths, Sienna.”

  I took a deep breath in through my nose, out through my mouth. “Okay,” I breathed.

  “Turn away from the man—it’s a detective, isn’t it?”

  “Yep,” I said tightly and did as he asked. I turned around to find Reed watching me with alarm all over his face and his color quite washed out. “Don’t look at me like that,” I snapped at him. He held up his arms in surrender and took a step back, then another.

  “I know it’s not as fun as imagining how you’d gut this man,” Zollers said coolly, defusing my annoyance a couple more notches at the absurd reference to me gutting Maclean. I wouldn’t do anything that horrific. Smack him around, steal memories, threaten to drop him out of the sky without a parachute, yes, all possibilities I’d considered. But gutting people was a Wolfe thing to do—

  It is so delightful, Wolfe said.

  —not a Sienna thing.

  “Good,” Zollers said, soothing. “Now … I know you’re heading into a confrontation. Try to imagine what you want to get out of this conversation.”

  “Information,” I said, very neutrally and not entirely honestly. What I wanted was more along the lines of “Detective Maclean crying profusely as he admits to sending three stupid, annoying metahuman assassins after me. While wetting his pants.”

  “Picture with clarity how you’d like this conversation to go,” Zollers said, almost certainly aware of exactly what I was thinking at the moment. “Imagine it without violence, like we’ve discussed. Try to picture a peaceful resolution, one where you get everything you want without once having to use force. Can you do that?”

  I pictured myself grabbing Maclean by the crotch and twisting until he sang in a higher key, bursting into beautiful song and elucidating how he’d hired assassins to kill me. “I’m, like, halfway there.”

  “Better,” he said, though I suspected he was patronizing me, as therapists do. “Now go the whole way. Picture getting what you want through persuasion, without having to raise your fist, or turn a man’s dangling bits into a braid, because that is still quite violent. Also, it’s the sort of thing that scares away potential dates, just FYI. Don’t set fire to that bridge.”

  I took another breath, and pictured a calm, placid conversation with Maclean in which he admitted to sending assassins after me, and which I finished by punching him through the skull. Whoops. “This is really difficult,” I said.

  “Imagine if perhaps you’re wrong in your accusations against this detect
ive,” Zollers said. “Picture yourself killing an innocent man, having his blood all over your hands, his widow crying because you’ve killed her husband.” I felt a cold chill run down my back at the thought of a woman wailing in my ears, at hearing his colleagues talk about what a good and decent man Maclean was. He’d given me shit, and I hated that. It made me angry, especially when I had three assassins after me, not one of which I’d cleanly bested. They were all still out there, and it was hanging over my head—

  “That’s right,” Zollers said, interrupting my train of thought. “You feel threatened. Your anger is leading you in directions that the evidence doesn’t fully support. What if you’re wrong? What if you beat this man to death with your bare fists and it turns out they keep coming because someone else is responsible for your predicament?”

  I took a ragged breath and it stuck in my lungs painfully, like my ribs were still broken or something. The last of my flaming rage died in that instant, and it came out on my next exhalation, along with some of the pain. “You’re right,” I said, my mouth tasting bitter. I should have eaten before we came here.

  “You’re in control,” Dr. Zollers said calmly. “Don’t let these assassins, or worrying about what they’re going to do, let you fall out of it. Don’t let the blinding rage take over. You’re in a mystery, and the only way you can solve it is if you keep in control. Short-term violence may seem like a satisfying answer, but inflicting it against innocent people … well, you know how you’ll feel about it later.”

  That ashen taste in my mouth got worse. Yeah, I knew how it felt to push my rage in the wrong direction. “Thank you,” I breathed, still raggedly, and hung up, once more in control of myself.

  “You done?” Maclean asked, sounding more than a little cynical.

  I turned to answer him, but I never got a chance to say a word, because the desk next to me exploded as Veronika came smashing through a cubicle wall, her fists aflame with blue, shards of plastic showering me and forcing me to shield my eyes. When I pulled my hands back, she was standing there in a grey pantsuit, looking refined and lethal, her hands smoking blue light as the plasma rolled off of them. She wore darker red lipstick that stood out against her pale face and rosy red cheeks, a smile perched on her lips. “Hello, my dear,” she said, “thanks for keeping the assholes at bay until I recovered. Now … let’s you and I finish this thing, shall we?”