There was the barest gap of silence on the other side. “Fine, you want to do this now? Yes, it’s grating on me, okay? But that doesn’t mean—”
“It’s grating? Grating?” I let fly with my disbelief. “Just say it, okay? It’s frustrating and it’s never going to get any better! Unless you really love the touch of heavy leather gloves, you’ll be enjoying a nice embargo of skin-to-skin contact for the rest of your life.”
“I – what? Touch of leather gloves? You mean, like—”
“I mean it’s never going to get better, Zack.” I was firm, final.
“So, what?” He didn’t even sound real on the other end of the phone. “You want to be done? Finished with me?”
It felt a little like someone was choking me, and the pain in my head was splintering, telling me to say something I didn’t really want to. “I think we’ve gone as far as you can go with me, Zack. If you ever want to have anything approaching a normal life, yeah…I think we’re finished.”
There was a smoldering quality about the way he said his next words, like there was a fire underneath every single one of them. “If that’s the way you feel—”
“It’s not the way I feel, Zack.” I should have been on the edge of panic, ending things like this. It’s not like I set out to do it the day before, when I was content on the campus, in training, and with my boyfriend. “It’s the way it is. You’re too big a boy to keep holding back; time to grow up. My life is solitary confinement – it’s a prison sentence, and you don’t deserve it, even if you do act like an ass sometimes.”
“That’s it?” I could hear the edge in his voice. “It’s over?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t have an edge in mine. I was just tired. “It’s over. Be safe in Michigan.” I pushed the end button on my phone without waiting for his reply and sagged back onto the bed, taking a deep breath. I felt a burning at the corner of my eyes, and I couldn’t believe what I’d just done.
In a way, I was sorry I hadn’t done it sooner. I mean, I kissed another guy at the bar last night, and almost got carried away. That’s not the strongest sign that things were going well in my relationship with Zack. In fact, it was probably a sign that there were some deep, serious, underlying problems. Well, one anyway. And just because I had to live the rest of my life to less than the fullest didn’t mean he had to.
There was an insistent knocking at my door and I levered myself back up and opened it to find Kat waiting. “Ariadne wants us all on the phone in an hour to make our report.”
“Fine.” I massaged my temples. “You want to come to my room or what?”
She shrugged. “Sure. I think I can have Scott up and moving by then.” She looked down at my attire and made a face. “You might consider showering and changing your clothes. You look—”
I looked down at myself, at what I was wearing. “A little ragged, yeah. I’ll do that. See you in an hour.”
I shut the door and got to work. I rummaged in my overnight bag and found pain relievers and the other drug I was taking. I popped the acetaminophen, then an equal dose of ibuprofen, then got my syringe ready for my morning injection of chloridamide. The injection was critical because if I didn’t take it, the souls of the people I’d absorbed tended to get a little…feisty…in my head. I took a deep breath and plunged the needle into a vein. I was fortunate in that I was a meta; if not for my continuously regenerating vein structure, I’d likely be out of places to inject the drug by now.
The shower brought me back to life, and after I spent a few minutes getting my hair straightened and had changed into a fresh suit, I felt worlds better. The pain was still lingering behind my eyes, but it was in the recesses of my mind rather than front and center. And it didn’t hurt to blink.
An hour later, there was a knock on my door and I opened it to find Kat, who was as sunny in her disposition as ever, and Scott, who wore sunglasses and looked as though he’d had an anvil dropped on his head. He grumbled some sort of greeting as he slouched into the room and flopped in a chair at the table. Kat sat across from him, a small smile seeming to be her only defense against laughing at both of us.
When Kat’s phone rang, I caught a nearly imperceptible twitch at the edge of Scott’s eyebrow. I might not have noticed it but for the fact I felt one myself. “Just a second,” Kat said to whoever was on the phone. She pulled it away from her ear and pushed a button. “You’re on speaker, Ariadne.”
“Get packed and get moving,” came Ariadne’s voice over the phone. “Early this morning a car was reported stolen from a parking lot in Ellsworth, Wisconsin, just across the river from you. We flagged it as a suspect vehicle on a hunch and it was found abandoned an hour ago by a police patrol in a neighborhood in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I’m sending you the address.”
“How do we know that the stolen car is linked to our mystery robber?” The question occurred to me even through the haze in my head.
“We don’t.” Ariadne sounded tense. “But we’ve got nothing else to go on and car thefts aren’t exactly a common occurrence in Ellsworth, where the dairy cows outnumber the people twelve to one. Get moving, all right? I’ll check in with you in a few hours; we’re managing a crisis with M-Squad so I may not be quite as quick to respond right now. Stay out of trouble.” There was a click and the phone shut off.
“Ah, words of confidence and encouragement,” I said, lighter than I felt.
We were in the car and moving a few minutes later, leaving the town of Red Wing behind. We rode through downtown, which seemed to be mostly brick buildings, and got on a bridge that stretched across a wide river. On the other side a sign proclaimed that we had entered the state of Wisconsin. If I hadn’t been so hungover, I might have rejoiced at crossing my first state line. As it was, I sat in the back and tried to keep my eyes hidden behind my dark sunglasses.
After a few minutes we cleared the low lying river country and found ourselves zipping down a road with farms on either side. Cattle grazed in the pastures as the sun beat down overhead. One cow was lingering so close to the fence I could see her jaw moving while chewing her cud as we passed.
Towns and fields streaked by as I thought about Zack. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what he was doing right now, facing off against some meta in Detroit. I truly cared for him, which was why I had to let him loose. At least, that’s how I justified it as I stared out the window, watching the endless fields of green go by. I felt like a glutton for pain, like I wanted to clutch the misery close to my heart and let it sit there. It was all for him, I told myself, and somehow that made it hurt all the more.
We took Interstate 94 east to Eau Claire, Kat driving the whole way. She didn’t have the siren roaring for this trip, though she did strategically flick it on a few times when we were caught behind slow moving cars on two lane roads. And once for a tractor.
When we got off the freeway, we followed a main thoroughfare into a stretch of commerce, and then turned onto a side street. It was past noon, and the sun was directly overhead, bright and glaring. Kat kept the car under the speed limit as we followed the GPS to the address Ariadne had sent us. There was a car, an old Dodge, parked on the curb. We came to a stop behind it and I looked around. There was no sign of movement, nothing.
I opened my door and stepped out into the boiling midday heat. The humidity once again gave my skin an immediate sensation of moistness and I felt the beads of sweat start to gather on my forehead. “Never thought I’d wish the sun away,” I muttered under my breath. I caught a chuckle of appreciation from Kat. Scott just grunted.
The three of us approached the Dodge the way we might have approached a corpse; slow, tentative, and with undue caution. “No one inside,” I said. “We’ll need to check the trunk.” I looked around the street once more. The residents of Eau Claire clearly had enough sense to stay in during this awful weather, though a lawn sprinkler was going off a couple doors down.
“You think there’s anything here?” It was Kat that answered. Her blond hair was up in
a tight bun today, and her petite frame and dark sunglasses coupled with her black jacket really did make her look like an FBI agent. I felt another tingle of annoyance; the girl could just look good regardless of circumstances.
Scott leaned over the passenger window and reached his hand through. “Glass is broken here.” He pushed a button on the dash and I heard the locks disengaging and the trunk springing open.
I walked to the rear of the car, my hand hovering just over my gun. I edged around the trunk lid and sighed when I looked down. “Nothing. A blanket, a spare tire and a jack.”
“Sounds like all the ingredients for a redneck first date—” Scott said with a smile that was cut short by a sizzling sound. His body jerked, his face drew tight and his sunglasses flew off as he spasmed, a peculiar blue light dancing over him like little bolts of lightning running across his suit.
“Kat, down!” I shouted and barely had time to hit the pavement before a bolt of electricity shot past me and hit the car. I rolled across the lawn and came up with my pistol, a Sig Sauer P250. I loved my meta powers, but they weren’t a hell of a lot of use at range – or against something that shot lightning bolts.
“Too late.” The voice was low and gravelly. I saw Kat lying on the street behind the car, splayed out on the ground with three guys in black tactical vests huddled around her and Scott. Two others stood at either bumper of the car, covering me with weapons of their own, big shiny silver ones that reminded me of the kind the Directorate used to bring down stray metas. Their leader was standing over Kat, an assault rifle in his hands and pointed at me. “Now are you gonna give yourself up or are we gonna be leaving your body to go rancid in the heat?”
Chapter 11
I stared him down, my gun aimed at his comrade who was standing to my right. Assuming they were human, even my meta speed and my skill with the pistol wouldn’t be enough to save me from getting blasted by at least one of them. I took a closer look; their vests were bulky, which told me that they were likely kevlar. I considered trying to aim for their heads instead of center mass, but dismissed it as a bad idea. Aiming for a small target in my first combat shoot seemed like a recipe for failure. Besides, even with a vest the bullets would put a full grown man on the ground in a world of hurt.
“So what are you gonna do?” Their leader spoke again, and I saw the others flick their eyes toward him. “Live or die, your choice.”
“I’m somewhat attached to the former,” I said, keeping my gun trained on the rightmost enemy.
“Then you might wanna put the gun down, real slow.” His voice was rough and used to issuing commands. “Otherwise we’re gonna have to cut that loose, pretty quick.”
On one knee as I was, I couldn’t see Scott or Kat, and I wondered if they were still alive. I had seen what hit them, and I hoped that the weapons they’d been shot with were no more fatal than the Directorate equivalent. “All right,” I said, not really sure if I was going to follow his command or shoot, but knowing I didn’t have much time to make a decision.
“Put the gun on the ground in front of you. Go slow.” There was that command again.
I felt my jaw tighten and I started to inch the gun lower, keeping the bearing on my target. I’d be less accurate firing from this position, but I still felt confident I could put him down. The other two…well, that was the problem, wasn’t it? That was why I was even considering surrendering. I started to say something but I heard the squeal of tires at the end of the street to my left and it took all my training to keep from jerking my head to look in the direction of the noise.
They were not so well trained, and all three of them turned, giving me an opening. I fired a double tap on my target, two quick shots that sent him over backward, gun skittering away. I changed targets quick, drew a bead on the leader and fired twice more. I knew they were bound to be less accurate than my first shots, and one of them went wide, but the other hit him in shoulder and knocked him over. I started to change targets again to the last guy, but he had heard me firing and had drawn a bead on me. I knew I wouldn’t make it in time.
A car slammed into him, bumper smashing him against the stolen car. I watched his body fold at the knees, a scream from him faint in my ears after the echoing of the gunshots nearly deafened me. He was pinned between the cars, legs crushed, and his upper body had fallen into the open trunk. I could hear little cries coming from within; likely the sound of him screaming, but from where I stood it was muffled. I opened my mouth and closed it, trying to restore my hearing after the trauma of firing a gun repeatedly with no ear protection.
I knew there were two more enemies behind the car where I couldn’t see them, and I wasn’t about to stick my head up to see. I looked at the car that had crashed into the stolen one, but the front window was spider-webbed, the cracked glass obscuring the identity of the driver. I thought I heard the sound of fighting from the other side of the car, where Scott and Kat were laying, but I couldn’t be sure through the ringing in my ears. I edged toward the hood, away from the crashed rear, and raised myself up, gun pointed. My eyes widened at what I saw and I hesitated.
“You’re just like me; you know how to get yourself in trouble,” came the soft voice of the woman standing in front of me, holding the bodies of the two remaining assailants by the back of their collars. Both appeared to be unconscious. She was wearing a red tank top, cut off jeans again, and flip-flops. Her dark hair was hanging around her face and she dropped the bodies to the ground. “What would you have done if I wasn’t here to save you?”
“Charlie?” I stared at her in near disbelief. I heard a grunt from the first guy I had shot, laying about a foot to my right, lanced out a foot and kicked him in the head, causing him to go limp. “What are you doing here?”
She shrugged. “I was bored in Minneapolis, so I came looking for you.”
I stood slowly, looking around the street, which was quiet save for the ticking sound from the engine of the car that had crashed. “And you decided to go looking on a random street in Eau Claire, Wisconsin?”
She laughed. “No, I absorbed the mind and soul of a tech geek a few years ago. I tracked your cell phone’s GPS.”
I looked down reflexively at my pocket. “Really?”
“It’s not as hard as you’d hope it would be.” She shrugged. “Looks like my timing was good. What’d you do to provoke an Omega sweep team?”
“Omega?” I felt a thrill as I made my way around the car to check on Kat and Scott. “These guys are from Omega?”
“Uh huh.” She leaned down and grabbed one of them by the chest, ripping open his collar to reveal a small tattoo of the Greek letter Omega. “See?”
“Curiouser and curiouser.” I bent over Kat, trying her pulse (not an easy task with leather gloves on). She stirred at my touch, causing me to sigh in relief. I reached out and shook Scott, causing him to groan, his eyes fluttering. “Omega must be tracking our robber, too.”
There was a sound from behind me of metal stressing and squealing and I was back to my feet, gun drawn again. The door of the car that had crashed was opening. “I thought you drove that?” I asked over my shoulder to Charlie.
“Nuh-uh,” she said without concern. “I parked down the street and hustled up when I saw these guys ambush you. I thought it was one of your guys driving.”
“Whoever’s in the vehicle, hands up and come out slow,” I said. “No sudden moves.”
“Uggghhh.” The moan was not subtle, and was followed by the sound of a body hitting pavement. I saw the head and shoulders of a man, his long, dark hair tangled around his face. “I save your life and this is the gratitude I get?”
“Reed?” I stared at him before holstering my gun and running to his side. I rolled him over once I reached him; his nose was bloody and he had the start of a bruise forming under his right eye. “What are you doing here?”
He coughed, then grimaced. “There’s an Omega safehouse just down the street. I was surveilling it; figured it might be a nice, boring place
to keep an eye on while I waited for word on another robbery. Then you and your pals go and get bushwhacked by an Omega sweep team, and suddenly my life gets really interesting.”
“Can you walk?” After I said it, I heard Charlie approach behind me, her flip-flops smacking against the pavement. The ringing in my ears had begun to subside.
“I think so.” He took my hand and I pulled him to his feet. “We need to get out of here before the law arrives. Doubtful they’re gonna ignore a scuffle this big.”
“I need to get a look at this Omega safehouse,” I said. “Preferably before the cops get here.”
Reed waved his hand in the direction that his car had come from. “Down the street. 8453 is the house number.” He clutched at his side and his face was a mask of discomfort.
I looked at him, then Charlie in turn. “Can you get Kat and Scott into my car and meet me in front of the safehouse?”
She got a lazy grin on her face. “You just need all kinds of help today.”
“Can you do it or not?”
She shrugged. “Sure. Keys?”
“Kat had them last,” I said, already turning to run down the street. “Check her pockets – and, Charlie…” She turned and I shook my head at her attire. “Remember to touch them only on the clothing.”
“No problem with the blond girl,” she called back. “But the boy…I might touch him some other places.”
I ignored her and ran down the street at full clip. I saw faces staring out of the windows of houses, saw curtains rustle in others as I passed. I watched the house numbers decrease until I reached 8453, a nondescript single story white house. I decided to avoid the front door and instead jumped over the wooden gate to the backyard. I listened over the slight ringing that persisted in my ears as I came around the corner and saw the back door kicked in.
I drew my gun, changed to a fresh magazine and stepped inside. The door led into a small hallway. I could see a kitchen to my left, along with a body and a lot of blood. Straight ahead was a family room, and off to the right was a hallway leading to several bedrooms. I went into the kitchen first, which had a nasty green tile backsplash over orange countertops and beige linoleum floors. Those were distracting, but the body in the middle of the kitchen was more bizarre than the horrific 70s color scheme.
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