Codename: Nightshade (Deadly Seven Strike Force)

by Anderson, S

  “Go to Grand Central.”

  “What’s there?”

  “My life.”

  Grand Central Station.

  I have a thing about trains.

  The whistles, gentle rocking back and forth, even the terrifying connection between cars that make me feel like I’m defying death by walking through them are all happy places for me.

  I’ve been traveling most of my life, living out of the back of my mother’s Honda hatchback for the first couple years of it. Can’t count the number of planes, cars, or even buses I’ve been on, but I never forget a train ride.

  There’s something comforting about knowing it’s on a track. That you can’t get lost on the way to your destination. Some might say that’s limiting, controlling, and just plain boring.

  But I don’t care.

  I have a thing about trains.

  It’s six in the morning when we park and head into the station. Doesn’t matter how many times I enter this place, I’m always taken aback by the sheer impressiveness of its size. It’s the biggest train station in the world, and you feel it the second you step inside.

  It’s a Saturday morning. Even so, there are plenty of commuters rushing through the lobby. That’s probably my second favorite thing about trains. Watching families reunite at stations, seeing people interact and guessing about their lives.

  I lead the way to the baggage lockers, needing no help finding the one I’m looking for. It’s an old school version, no key required. The combination is welded into my brain. I spin the dial, slamming my fist against the door when it sticks.

  Claymore doesn’t bug me for information. Any question he might have is answered when I pull out the well-worn army-green backpack.

  My life.

  Agents can have covers, legends, and a handful of places in the world where they feel comfortable to rest their heads a few weeks out of the year, but we’re not allowed to have lives. When your job is figuring out how to exploit every habit someone has, you become a little obsessed with having none of your own. We don’t do relationships. We don’t have homes. Most of us have distanced ourselves from what little bit of family we have left.

  And each of us has a bag just like this stashed somewhere.

  I sling the pack on my right shoulder and close the locker.

  “You hungry?” I ask.

  “Aye.”

  We head down to the lower level concourse and to the only place open at this hour of the day. It’s a bakery with the smell of fresh doughnuts and coffee piping straight from its doors. We grab sustenance and find a place to sit away from the bulk of traffic.

  I can’t remember the last time I indulged in a doughnut. This one is chocolate with cream filling. Sometimes I forget how much I like sweet things. I’m always trying to avoid them to stay in shape.

  You deserve sweet things in life, Poppy. Don’t deny yourself that.

  I demolish my doughnut in record time and lick my fingertips before opening my bag. It’s a pathetic legacy, in all honesty. I have a beat up comic book, ticket stubs from movies and other mementos from dates with Nikolai tucked between the pages, a box of rifle shells, a pair of sunglasses, a few changes of clothes, the desert eagle I took from Hassan with a spare clip full of bullets, and five different cover IDs complete with passports. I don’t hold on to anything else. I have my bank accounts memorized and often just pay cash everywhere I go. Clothes are left behind once I’ve changed out of them.

  Although I will start packing extra underwear now.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Just making sure it’s all here,” I say. One of the shells is loose—the one I used to shoot Pishkar. I tuck it back in the box. “Never should have shot that asshole.”

  Claymore is mid-drink, his cup still pressed to his lips when I look up. His eyebrows are raised in surprise.

  I glance around. “What?”

  “Are you saying you … made a mistake?” I hear the humor in his voice, and I count to ten in my head to keep from punching him. “That you, Penelope Vincent, are capable of an error in judgment?”

  “I’m human.”

  “Really?” He pokes my arm. “I always thought you were a God.”

  I slap his hand away. “Knock it off.”

  I lean back in my chair, contemplating our next move.

  “So why are doubting… wait, who are we talking about you shooting?”

  It says a lot about me that my closest friend needs clarification on which dude I regret killing.

  “Pishkar. I should have gone with the original mission.”

  “What was the original mission?”

  “Cyanide in his champagne.”

  “Sounds like the title of a bad mystery novel.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, but they made the mistake of having me as back up detail.”

  “They tell you why?”

  “Nope and it’s—”

  “Not our place to ask, just to do,” he finishes. “So, Ace was supposed to poison the fucker and you decided to shoot him instead.”

  There’s no judgment or accusation in his voice.

  Even so, I feel the need to elaborate. “Hassan had crates full of DMG weaponry.”

  That gets me a second eyebrow raise. “Did he now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How many?”

  “Crates?”

  “Guns.”

  I close up the backpack, dropping in to the floor by my feet. “I don’t know.”

  “You said the crates were full. You didn’t get a good look at how many per crate?”

  I’m reminded as to why I stopped eating sweets. The sugary acid eating at my stomach right now is making the sinking feeling worse. “I never looked inside the crates.”

  “Bugger that.”

  Bugger that. He rarely says it, but I know it means I fucked up royal.

  “You mean you only shot Pishkar because you thought the gun you were using was from the DMG?”

  “It was. It was identical to the ones used in the rallies the next day.”

  He pushes on like I haven’t interrupted. “And you don’t even know that the gun Hassan gave you was from them or from him.”

  My defenses flare up. I’m cranky and exhausted and getting damn tired of being told I’m a fuck up. “The council already ruled that I made the best move. The guns were deemed DMG by formal investigations from teams in Doha. And fuck you. I’m not a child.”

  He still looks disappointed, but his voice is softer when he speaks. “Shade, you know that sounds an awful lot like a setup, aye?”

  I bite my bottom lip. Hard. The deepest wound I have, the one I won’t even let myself admit exists, tears open again at his words.

  Hassan used me.

  “I knew he showed me the crates for a reason,” I say. “I just assumed it was bragging. He wanted me to know he knew where the monsters we haven’t been able to track down are.”

  “Bloody hell,” he says, rubbing his hand over his face. “This changes a lot. I can see why you’re sorry you shot him.”

  “That’s not why I'm sorry I shot him,” I admit. “I'm sorry I shot him because I need…” I gauge whether or not I should share this and then just decide to say 'fuck it'. “After I kill, I need to release… cut loose. I need—”

  “Marko.”

  He says it matter of fact, like he gets it on the same level. Somehow, though, I doubt it. I’ve seen into his side of things now. Marko is more than an escape for him—he’s his home. For me, he’s just a balancing beam.

  “If I hadn’t killed Pishkar, I wouldn’t have been here, and Marko wouldn’t have gotten hurt. Countess might even still be alive.”

  Silence envelops us then. I used to wonder what the phrase 'deafening silence' meant. I like it quiet. When I line up a shot, my ears shut off. I rely on the absence of sound. I couldn’t understand how silence could overwhelm someone. Nikolai explained it to me once.

  Deafening silence is the calm before a storm, Poppy. It’s a qui
et when everything inside of you is screaming. A void that your mind is filing with sound you don’t want to hear.

  It’s several minutes later when he says, “So, where are we going?”

  “I don’t know where to even begin.”

  “How bout with you telling me who you’re running from.”

  It’s time, Poppy.

  I hate the emotions that rush up inside me. My eyes sting, but I don’t cry. “I saw… Nikolai.”

  I know where I should go. I should turn myself into the closest clinic, lock myself up for insanity. I’m a loose cannon with a gun and a God complex. Maybe Stevens and Justice are right about me, after all.

  Claymore hears me, and taps his fingers on the table, but he doesn’t offer an opinion. He knows there’s more to it than that.

  Sometimes I hate how well he knows me.

  “The attacker, the assassin who ran us off the road and then showed up at the hospital, was Nikolai. Or at least I thought it was Nikolai.”

  He can’t hide the surprise on his face as he realizes exactly what’s been bothering me. “Prizrak.”

  “Yes… I don’t know… I hope not.”

  His laugh is humorless and shock is still dominant in his stare. “That’s not possible, Shade. You know that, aye? You know he died.”

  Do I? I know someone told me he died. I know I haven’t seen him in ten years. He might as well be an unopened crate in Hassan’s hallway.

  “I know,” I say, “but still… it was him. His eyes. His lips. He threw me around the room with the same force that Nikolai used to have. He got the upper hand on me… twice. That’s something only he used to be able to do.”

  Claymore wrings his hands together and glances away. I can tell he wants to pull out his knife, but this isn’t exactly the best place to do that. “That’s why you’re on the mind control kick.”

  “What if whatever happened to Vixen and Countess is happening to me?”

  “It won’t.”

  “You don’t know that. I don’t know that. All we have to go off of is the fact that we’re all seeing ghosts and two of us are dead because of it. I should be dead. If Countess hadn’t shot him, I would be.”

  “It’s not going to happen, Shade,” he says, looking back at me. The intensity in his eyes is unsettling. “It's not going to happen, because I won’t let it.”

  “Did the file say anything about where she was shot?”

  I shake my head. “Security cut me off before I could read the full report.”

  We’re back on the road, this time in a dark blue Toyota with a stick shift. We circle the streets just to stay mobile. I clutch my backpack in my lap like a lifeline. My world is unraveling like a worn out sweatshirt. I don’t know when the first string was pulled, but I can’t tie them all back together anymore.

  The only thing that makes sense is the bag in my arms.

  “Well, I know she took a town car that night, because I saw her leave.”

  “Yeah, but where did she go?”

  “I said I saw her leave, not that I read her damn mind.”

  I roll my window down. Frustration is becoming a fog in the cab of the truck, and I need it vented out. “She said she had a mission to get to, and the file said she was Veltriv’s bodyguard.”

  “Aye. Maybe we’ve been going about this the wrong way.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, Marko has no logical reason to be a target, but his father does. He was getting in deep with military contracts, nothing Marko paid much attention to, but what if whatever he was working on spooked him? If he was planning on defecting to America…”

  “Then his country would want him eliminated.”

  “Aye.”

  I stare ahead, not seeing the road, but seeing the possible scenarios lined up instead. “That still doesn’t explain why we were attacked.”

  “Of course it does. You know as well as I do that killing somebody does little more than send a message to the next guy. Hurting the target means giving them a permanent reminder by way of a scar.”

  “Exploiting their weakness ensures they do what you want,” I finish. Another of Nikolai’s lessons.

  “Aye. So they put the squeeze on Marko to send a message to his father. I’m guessing his father tried to back out yet still, and Countess paid the price.”

  It’s a formed picture in my head now, but outlying questions still nag at me.

  Why would any of us see ghosts?

  “Ace’s face,” I say, recalling the conversation from earlier.

  “Aye?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  He waves a hand between us. “I don’t know. I just thought it was weird. The council tells all of us that he’s hurt. You’re one step away from being put on psych eval leave because of it and the bastard is completely fine.”

  The council tells all of us…

  Those words stick out in my mind. The council told me Ace was shot. The council agreed immediately with the declaration that DMG was supplying guns to the Saudis.

  “The council.”

  He side-eyes me. “Aye?”

  “If DMG had nothing to do with the weapons, why did the council go along with it? And if Ace wasn’t hurt, why was I being reprimanded for my actions?”

  His hands tighten around the steering wheel. “Why was Countess burned instead of quietly buried?”

  “They didn’t just burn her identity, they implicated her in a crime,” I say, piecing more of it together. “A crime they linked to—”

  “DMG,” he says. His jaw ticks. I can tell he’s trying to hold his rage in check.

  I feel it, too. The council is the only force we answer to, the one organization in the world we’re supposed to trust to be on the level. I don’t lie to myself and say they're completely noble. You have to have a decent dose of greed in you to be able to control anything in the world. But I believe they fight for what they believe is best, and they pay the seven of us to do their dirty work.

  I never realized how dirty some of it could be.

  “You ever wonder why we can’t find any real trace of DMG?” I ask.

  He makes a left at the light. I don’t know if he has a destination in mind or if we’re still just traveling in circles. “Aye. I’ve never been sent on a mission to find a nest, either, but you know who has?”

  We’re not supposed to have knowledge of each other’s missions. We’re breaking every rule we’ve worked our asses off to maintain for the past ten years.

  “Who?”

  “Ace.”

  I feel sick. Bile hits the back of my tongue, and I choke it back down. “So what are we saying here, MacNeal?”

  “That the council knows more than they’re telling us, and Ace might be in on it.”

  I was afraid that was what we were saying.

  “Why do I get the feeling we’re about to drive into the middle of Oz and demand to see the wizard?”

  “Shade, please,” he says with a dramatic eye roll. “I’m the gay one. Stop stealing my good lines.”

  I punch his arm as he laughs.

  We both need the humor to distract us from what’s ahead.

  I don’t know what we’re about to uncover. I hope it’s nothing. My gut tells me it’s bad.

  Either way, the past twelve years of my life are starting to feel like they might be a lie.

  “Fuck you,” I say, flopping into the green plastic chair next to Deputy Miller’s desk.

  “I’m not bothering with giving you the riot act, Penelope,” Deputy Miller says, looking at my arrest record on his computer screen, noting yet another misdemeanor. “But you know what you did was wrong.”

  “You’re right,” I say, spinning a pen on his desk. “I should have accessed the files through the remote server so they couldn’t trace the router.”

  He gives me the frown that I suspect kids with good dads get from their fathers when they’re disappointed in them. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
<
br />   I know it. I’m seventeen. I should know better.

  “What did I actually harm?” I ask in all honesty. “I don’t see the problem with me just practicing my computer skills.”

  “You hacked into the FBI’s Most Wanted database,” he says like I wasn’t in the room with myself when I did it.

  “But I didn’t do anything except flip through files.”

  “You broke the law. It’s illegal to see those files without authorization.”

  “If they didn’t want people to see them, they shouldn’t make it so easy to access the files.”

  “They don’t,” he says, his voice growing louder with frustration. “Those files were on a protected server and encrypted by programs only other computers can unlock.”

  I shrug, flopping back in the chair. “It took me ten minutes.”

  Deputy Miller sighs. It’s that what-I’m-about-to-say-next-won’t-stick-but-I’m-going-say-it-anyway sigh that he uses every time I’m sitting in this seat. “I understand that you’re smarter than most everyone around you.” I snort. That’s a drastic understatement. “But rules are rules, Penelope. You have to learn that. Just because you can do something, even if it’s something no one else can do, doesn’t mean you should do it.”

  “Is the morality play over, or are Oscar and Kermit going to come out and teach me about sharing next?” I don’t mask the contempt in my voice. The thing I hate more than being treated like a child is being told I’m a smart child, but still… a child.

  I get it. What I did was wrong. Let’s move along.

  “Can I call my mother before you book me?”

  Deputy Miller shakes his head. “Nope, your mother has already been contacted.”

  That’s weird. Usually they just book me, processing me into a night of juvie, and I call my mother to tell her not to wait up for me. “What’s up?”

  “What’s up?” Deputy Miller echoes with a mild case of humor that makes me want to rearrange his face. “What's up, Penelope, is you broke the law. Big laws, with federal consequences.”

  Someone calls his name, and he excuses himself. I’m not handcuffed or locked to the seat in any way. I could make a break for it. But where would that land me? Resisting arrest would only make matters worse.