by Jade Kerrion
“You can, just not when he’s conscious and aware enough to use his empathic powers. We soak him down.” The guard’s grin was malicious. “The water, combined with the shock from the electric collar, will knock him out for at least an hour, maybe even longer. The drugs we pump into him keep him docile for four to five hours.”
“And then we do this again?”
“And again and again. You don’t take any chances with class-five mutants.” The guard unwound the hose coiled in a corner of the cell. He placed a hand on the valve. His eyes narrowed on Danyael, and he bared his teeth in a macabre grin.
Twenty-seven, twenty-eight.
The blast of icy water drove Danyael to his knees and tore a scream from him. The sound, emitted by damaged throat muscles, sounded like a guttural croak. He shuddered, shivering as water sloughed dirt from him.
The guard spun the valve. The escalating volume and pressure of the water slammed Danyael to the floor.
Forty-three, forty-four.
The cell shook, walls and floor vibrating. The guards looked around, startled, and then panicked when the door blew in. Solid steel smashed into the two men, crushing their bodies against the far wall. Danyael looked up, too exhausted to summon bewilderment, as several people swarmed into the cell.
Fifty, fifty-one.
A young man knelt beside him. “Danyael Sabre?”
“Stay away,” he whispered. “Electric shock.” Fifty-three, fifty-four.
“We’re here to get you out. It’s going to be all right. You’re safe now.”
If only he could believe it. Danyael’s lips tugged into a bittersweet smile. Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine.
He had been right on the count. Danyael was soaking wet and in contact with the steel floor. When electricity surged from the collar, the current charged through the length of his body. Pain, white and brutal, ripped through him, shredded awareness from his mind, and plunged him into merciful darkness.
CHAPTER TWO
Xin watched the media broadcast from her breakfast table. Sakti’s assault on ADX Florence made headlines the following morning with good and bad news in equal measure. The good news was that the terrorist group had breached only one sector of the super-max federal detention center. The bad news? That breached sector was the mutant sector, home to some of the most dangerous criminals in the country.
Barefoot, she padded across the length of her kitchen to refill her coffee mug. Unlike the general public, she knew that the mutant sector at ADX Florence had also contained an innocent man, a man who had languished at ADX for fourteen months and whose name was now listed among the escaped criminals. The government did not negotiate with class-five criminals; federal and local authorities were under orders to kill all escapees on sight.
Her cell phone rang, its customized ring tone as intrusive and jarring as the personality of the woman it had been programmed to announce. Right on time, Zara. Predictable, as always. If she did not answer the phone, she would find an irate assassin on her doorstep within the hour. Smiling, Xin picked up the phone. In lieu of hello, she said, “I’m still not interested in helping you.” In contrast to her brusque words, her voice was softly cultured and pleasant, with a hint of her upper-class upbringing.
“At least you’re accepting my call, which is one step up from being persona non grata.” Zara Itani’s voice was as warm and sultry as a summer night. Zara’s husky “porn-star” voice typically kicked in moments before she sent her blade into a heart or a bullet into a brain. The Lebanese-Venezuelan woman had gone way past irate and was steadily working her mood beyond furious into livid. “I want to find Danyael.”
“Sounds great. Have at it.” Xin leaned against her kitchen counter. She chuckled softly at the unmistakable sound of Zara grinding her teeth.
Zara pointed out the obvious. “He’s in the hands of terrorists.”
“How is that any worse than being in a super-maximum-security prison for life?”
“I thought you’d be interested in helping Danyael. You were the only one who helped when Galahad, Miriya, and I hunted him down.”
“I have since learned that helping you and helping him are diametrically opposing goals.”
“Not always.”
Xin snorted. “Using him until he no longer serves your purpose does not count. Besides, I thought you’d be worried about Danyael coming back for his daughter. Or were you planning to pre-empt that possibility?”
A brief silence filled the space between them. “Danyael doesn’t know his daughter exists.”
Xin set down her mug. Interesting. The anger had seeped out of Zara’s voice; she must have been feeling even guiltier than Xin had anticipated. Deliberately Xin twisted the blade. “I know you’d always believed that Danyael was too screwed up to be worthy of you. You should be thrilled now, because after a year at ADX, it’s finally true. You did the right thing a year ago when you walked away from the love he offered.”
“I walked away from a lie,” Zara protested.
“It was not a lie to him.”
The long silence confirmed that Xin had struck home with her words. “What should I expect?” Zara asked quietly.
“Not the same Danyael you knew.” Xin picked up an apple and bit into it. Its sweet, tart flavor flooded her mouth. She closed her eyes, savoring its taste.
“What happened?”
“Do you want the ADX reports?”
“Yes.”
“They’ll keep you up at night,” Xin warned.
“I’m a big girl. I can handle them.”
So you think. “All right. I’ll send them your way.”
“Are you going to help me find him?” Zara asked.
“I don’t think so,” Xin said. She turned the apple around in her hand, searching for imperfections on its rosy surface. “Whoever freed him from ADX took a huge risk. Chances are they’d fight to hold on to him. Besides, whatever’s happening to him now cannot possibly be worse than what happened to him at ADX. If he’s better off, he deserves a chance to stay that way. Furthermore,” Xin continued, “unless he leaves an electronic trail of some sort, I can’t track him down. Why don’t you ask the GPS?”
“Miriya?”
“She still has the psychic hook in his mind. She could, theoretically, track him down anywhere in the world.”
“Is Miriya still an enforcer with the council?”
“Last I heard, she left, disenfranchised by the execution of the council’s philosophy with respect to Danyael. I suspect Miriya also took it upon herself to spread her discontent. The council lost a great deal of credibility with its voter base.”
“How long ago was that?” Zara asked.
“Since she left?” Xin took another bite out of the apple and chewed on it, thinking. “Roughly five months. She stuck around for longer than I expected, given her front-row seat into Danyael’s life.”
“Where is she now?”
“Damned if I know.”
Zara sighed loudly. “Can you give me her address?”
“I’ll consider it.”
“You’re planning to make this difficult for me, aren’t you?” Zara asked.
“I think Danyael has earned a break from you.”
“Galahad wants to find Danyael too.”
“And he called you for help? Why?” Xin asked. “Is the perfect human being afraid of an empath?”
Zara chuckled. “I asked him the same question. I don’t understand Galahad any more than I understand Danyael. The male mind is a goddamned mystery to me.”
Xin smirked into her partially eaten apple. “The fundamental male mind is easy enough to understand. Add perfection or empathy to it, and it becomes a mess. Like a female mind.”
Their laughter was mutual, the camaraderie warm. In the lingering silence that followed, Xin recalled why she and Zara had become friends in spite of the many differences in their upbringing, profession, and philosophy.
Zara broke the silence first. “Xin, please. You have acces
s to more information than God. I can’t find Danyael without you.”
Xin hesitated. Tension edged through her, visible only in the slight narrowing of her eyes. She took the plunge and rattled off an address in Brooklyn, New York.
Zara gasped. “Is that—”
“Danyael’s former apartment.”
“That’s insane. What would Miriya be doing there?”
Xin shrugged. “I only provide information. The psychiatric evaluation costs extra.” She glanced at the digital clock on the microwave oven. The countdown begins. “I suggest you hurry, and take Galahad with you.”
No sooner had she hung up on Zara than her cell phone rang again. Xin glanced at the caller ID and a slow smile crept across her face. She knew Zara Itani well enough to handle over a cell phone. Alex Saunders was a different matter. Xin tugged her black hair into a messy knot that left tendrils to frame her narrow face and hurried across the length of her small condominium to her home office.
A wall of networked computers, screens lit, greeted her. The temperature in the room hovered marginally above frigid to keep Xin’s electronic heaven from overheating. She grabbed a shawl off a chair and wrapped it around her shoulders before transferring the call from her cell phone to her video-conferencing equipment.
Alex Saunders’s startled countenance appeared on a large screen mounted on the far wall. With a wave of his hand, the director general of the Mutant Affairs Council dismissed his aides from his office and then sat slowly behind his desk. His gaze bored into her.
She knew what he saw, a small-framed Chinese woman with regular, though unremarkable, features and skin pale from lack of exposure to sunlight. Alex, though, seemed to focus on the amused gleam in her brown eyes.
He scowled, bushy eyebrows drawing together in an expression of ferocious disapproval. “I’ve been calling you for months. What finally inspired you to take my call?”
“Would you believe that my social schedule cleared up?”
He ignored her sarcasm. “It’s time to face up to it, Xin. You were wrong about General Howard.”
“Was I?” Xin asked. She sat at her own desk, leaned forward, and propped her chin up on the heel of her hand. “I think it’s too early to draw any conclusions.”
Alex frowned. “We sent Danyael to ADX. You said—and I believed you—that it would force General Howard to do something equally drastic to get Danyael out. I know you want to tie Howard to the super soldier program, but nothing has happened. Instead, Sakti, which has been attacking mutant holding facilities for the past seven months to build its ranks, has freed him instead. Danyael has suffered enough. It’s time to bring him home.”
“Is it?”
“Do you know what he went through at ADX?”
“Yes, I read the reports.”
“And you can sit there and calmly suggest that it may not be time to bring him home? What the hell flows through your veins? Ice water?”
Xin laughed softly. “Slightly chilled, highly caffeinated sugar water, but that’s not the point. I have evidence that we’re approaching the end game.”
“End game? Do you even hear yourself? This is America, not ancient China. We don’t treat our people like pawns in some elaborate chess game.”
Xin arched an eyebrow. “Are you afraid of what I used to be, or who I am now?”
Alex stiffened at her cool question. “The fact that you’re Fu Hao’s clone is irrelevant. All I know is that you are dabbling in political and military affairs beyond your authority and manipulating lives you have no right to control.”
“I am American, Alex, and I resent any implication that I am somehow unpatriotic just because my genes came from a Chinese woman who has been dead for more than three thousand years. Furthermore, as a NSA analyst with top-level security access, it is my duty to use the tools at my disposal to protect my country.”
“Even if it means sacrificing individuals? We don’t do things like that in America,” Alex said.
Xin smirked. “I know Americans like to believe that the rights of the individual is our greatest good and noblest calling, but even on our best day, we’re hypocrites. Look all around you, Alex. Derivatives are routinely discriminated against if they can’t wrangle up enough wealth or power to counter it. The richer clones, in vitros, and mutants are migrating to more hospitable nations, while the poorer ones are rounded up and locked away for minor infractions.”
“We’ve had our growing pains, but—”
“You’d think that our national experiences in dealing with racial issues would have given us a clue on how to handle genetic issues; however, it appears we’re determined to make the same mistakes all over again, if only to prove how stubborn and stupid we can be.”
“The mistakes we make as a nation do not justify what you and I did to Danyael.”
“I have no need to justify what I did to Danyael. I sleep well at night. I’m guessing you don’t.”
Alex dragged a hand over his face and sagged back in his chair. “This isn’t about me and how I sleep at night. It’s about Danyael, and finally doing what’s right for him.”
“What about what’s right for the country?”
Alex shook his head. “The imaginary threat of the super soldier program has not materialized. I’m not going to sacrifice Danyael in pursuit of a conspiracy theory.”
“Two days ago, Professor Sadgati boarded a plane for America.”
“Is that’s all you have, Xin, after a year of waiting and watching for General Howard to snap at the bait? That’s not good enough. Besides, Danyael is with Sakti. He’s even further out of the general’s reach than he was while at ADX. Whatever tie the general has to Sadgati and the super soldier program, you won’t be able to prove it now, at least not with Danyael.”
Xin shrugged.
Alex ground his teeth. “I’m sending in my teams to pull Danyael out. I’m going to give you the same ultimatum you gave me a year ago: you can help or you can get run over.”
Xin laughed. “Really, Alex?”
“Would you like me to tell Zara, Galahad, and Lucien why exactly I changed Danyael’s status to a class-five threat? How do you think they’d react if they knew the role you played?”
Xin shrugged again. “Friendships do not interfere with my responsibilities. Furthermore, I imagine you’d come across as something of a laughingstock to have gambled away the freedom, and maybe even the life, of one of the world’s most powerful empaths merely on a clone’s hunch.” She flashed a wicked smile. “Still, I will help you, Alex. What can I do for you?”
“Can you track Danyael down?”
“No, but I know someone who can.”
“Miriya?” Alex’s eyes widened. “Do you know where she is? We lost track of her after she left the council.”
“I can do one better. I’ve sent someone to retrieve her for you. They’ll call me when they’ve located her.” Her smile vanished from her face. “Let me make this clear. I’m not giving you carte blanche access to Miriya, and consequently, Danyael. We started this together, and we will finish it together. I’ll arrange for a short-term assignment to the council. Make sure you sign the paperwork when it shows up on your desk in the morning.”
~*~
After Alex Saunders disconnected the video call, he leaned back in his chair and stared out of the window. His office overlooked a scenic bend of the Potomac River, but he noticed little of the view that day. As director general of the Mutant Affairs Council, he was, politically, the most powerful mutant in the country, yet he always felt disconcerted by his conversations with Xin. He was not sure which unnerved him more, her cool certainty that she was absolutely, positively right or her willingness to sacrifice whatever necessary to prove it.
Alex sighed heavily and squeezed his eyes shut. Xin was the worst kind of devil—the well-intentioned one—and damn his soul to hell, he had made deals with the devil herself.
~*~
Zara stepped out of the cab and peered up at the grimy brick facade
of the apartment complex. She squared her shoulders against the uncomfortable tickle of deja vu. Tendrils of long dark hair peeked out from under her white-furred hood. She brushed them back impatiently with an elegant hand.
Galahad joined her on the pavement. He raked his hand through his pale blond hair, styled in the latest fashion. He too looked up, studying the building and its surroundings, before returning his attention to her. “And you say Danyael lived here?”
“Yes. I came out here after you and Miriya left the country.”
“I never asked before why you came after him. You seemed to despise him back then.”
Zara’s smile was bittersweet. “You did tell me never to trust anything I feel about Danyael, or anything I feel when around him. Call it guilt, misplaced, perhaps, but he did give you his ID, which allowed you to leave the country safely.”
“We never talked about what happened afterward, between you and Danyael.”
Had she imagined the veiled resentment in his tone? Zara shrugged. While the action was indifferent, her tone was not. “Whatever happened between Danyael and me is private.”
“Don’t I have a right to know? You left me for him.”
“I left you for him? I walked out on you nine months ago, and until this morning, Danyael was in a super-maximum security prison, for life. Tell me exactly how that constitutes ‘leaving you for him.’”
He caught her arm to keep her from turning her back on him.
Zara twisted out of his grip, like water sliding through grasping fingers, and shoved him against the wall. She caught him off guard, surprising, given his enhanced kinesthetic awareness and his genetically optimized reflexes. “Careful,” she warned in a low purr.
Galahad said nothing. His features, as perfect as a Michelangelo sculpture, were immobile. His dark eyes looked at her with intensity.
Danyael’s gaze, Zara reflected, was never so direct.
She checked herself; she had to stop comparing Danyael and Galahad. They were physically identical, but in every other way that mattered, they had nothing in common. Any attempt to compare them would—as she well knew—only result in the frustration of realizing that perfection could be imperfect, and that imperfection could be perfect.
