“I hate to interrupt this lovely conversation,” Zollers said, still heavy with sincerity and concern, “but could we adjourn to the medical unit? I’d like to insure that Sienna gets bandaged up.”
“What, these?” I held my forearms up, and watched a small shower of droplets hit the concrete below, looking almost like water droplets in the heavy floodlights. I took a deep breath through the nose and could have sworn I smelled the iron in the blood, which had mostly clotted by now. “No big deal.”
“All the same,” Zollers said, “let me bandage you up.” He held out an arm in invitation, sweeping it to indicate that we should walk toward the headquarters building.
“Why?” I asked, almost uncaring. “It’ll heal by tomorrow anyway.”
“Consider it a courtesy to those of us who don’t like to see you bleed.” His eyes were warm, and I felt my resistance and uncaring fade, and I started along meekly.
“Don’t mind me,” Reed said from behind me, still seated by the helicopter. “I’m just going to sleep here.”
“Zack,” Ariadne said, “please help Mr. Treston to his room, will you?” She looked down to Reed. “We’ll talk about your conversation with your headquarters tomorrow, unless you have anything desperately urgent to tell us now?”
I watched Reed open an eye. “Nothing catastrophically revealing – I’m allowed to help you. And one other thing – you’ve got a traitor in your organization.”
“Well yeah,” I said after a minute, “we’ve known that since Andromeda told us before, remember?”
“Yeah,” Reed said with a shake of his head. “Some detail, though – they’re highly placed. Our sources inside Omega say your traitor has access to nearly everything.” He blinked. “Which might explain to you how they managed to set a trap to ambush my helicopter. They even knew the flight path we were taking and put those vamps in our way with a guided missile to take me down.”
“But why?” Ariadne asked. “Why bother, when you didn’t really have anything to tell us?”
“Because,” Reed said with a tired smile, “the worst thing for Omega would be the joining of their worst enemy – us – with the most powerful meta force in North America. It’s the unholy union of old-world knowledge of metahumans with the new school of technology and science.” He shrugged, but it was a weary sort of sad one. “Looks like they mean to wipe you out in the next few moves, and I think they worry we might be an impediment to that.”
“Why?” Ariadne said, and she actually stooped to look at Reed when she said it. “We’ve had no run-ins with them, really.” She paused, gave it a thought, and went on. “Other than over—”
“Her,” Reed said with a nod to me.
“I’m sorry, what?” I blinked and looked around at the circle of faces that had turned to me. “Me? You told me before they were after my mom, that they were using me to get to her.”
“Sienna’s why they’re attacking you,” Reed said. “All along they’ve been after her, since the day they sent Wolfe to retrieve her. They’ve got a mean-on for her for some reason, and no one knows what it is. And I’m starting to think it might not have anything to do with her mother at all; they’ve been more or less ignoring Sierra, after all.”
“What about you?” I asked. “You’ve been after me nearly as long.”
“Because Wolfe was after you,” Reed said, eyes on mine, but a veil over his, where I couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking but could see there was something more to it. “I got the word he was on your trail and I tried to get there first.” He looked to Ariadne, who was still next to me. “What about you? How did you know to go for her?”
Ariadne hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said, and I remembered long ago when I’d had a conversation with her in a confining room when I’d first awakened at the Directorate. “The Director handed me her address and flagged her to be brought in immediately, highest priority—”
“Interesting,” I said, a little smug. “That’s not what you told me when you brought me in.”
“And if you’d asked the Director,” she said, flicking a cool look back at me that contained more than a grain of discomfort at having to admit her lie, “do you think he would have told you if he didn’t want to?”
“I guess we’ll find out,” I said solemnly. “Where is he?”
“Texas,” Ariadne said as Zack helped Reed to his feet. “He’s at our campus down there trying to help them get back on their feet.” She looked at Reed almost apologetically, and he raised an eyebrow as he leaned most of his weight on Zack. “Metaphorically speaking. You’re more than welcome to ask him when he gets back, but it could be several days, as he’s somewhat busy helping them deal with the massacre of almost ninety percent of their agents by Omega.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, turning to Reed, who was already beginning to hobble away with Zack’s help. He didn’t turn back to me, though Zack turned to look. “Are you suggesting that this whole war with Omega is because of…of…” I floundered for a moment. “Because of me?”
Zack stopped, and after a moment Reed turned with him, a slow circle Zack walked while keeping Reed in roughly the same place. “I’m sorry,” Reed said. “I didn’t mean to suggest it.” I took a breath until he spoke again and it all came out in a gasp. “I meant to say it flat out.” His eyes were laden with sympathy for me. “You are the flashpoint, the reason that Omega is at war with the Directorate. It’s because they wanted you and were thwarted twice, losing two of their most powerful operatives. That’s not the sort of threat to their influence and reputation in the meta world that they could tolerate.” He blinked. “So they came at your support mechanism, seeing weakness there.” He smiled again. “After all, with the Directorate gone, who’s going to protect you?”
Chapter 14
I let Dr. Zollers lead me off to the medical unit without protest, let him gesture me over to a bed where I sat, staring ahead, trying not to think about everything going on but failing miserably. He came back in a moment with three layers of latex gloves on, some bandages in hand, and disinfectant. “This will probably sting some,” he cautioned as he rolled a stool up to sit in front of me.
“Worse than when my arms got raked apart to begin with?” I asked with a dull smile.
“Probably not,” he conceded as he started to examine them. “I doubt this is enough of a layer of protection from your powers—” he held up a gloved hand – “so I’m going to minimize flesh contact.” He extended a swab after dabbing it in the disinfectant. “This is more of a precaution. I know you’ll heal on your own.”
“Then why are you doing this?” I held my hand out and he ran the swab down one of the gouges in my flesh. “Why bother?”
He seemed to think about it for a moment as he worked, staring intently at what he was doing. “Because it feels better than doing nothing.”
“But it’s pointless,” I said. “Won’t change a thing.”
“Wrong,” he said. “I told you, it feels better than doing nothing; ergo, it changes how I feel. That’s not nothing.”
“It’s not important how we feel,” I said. “It’s important what we do.”
He raised an eyebrow at me and stopped his work on my arm. “That is possibly the most incorrect thing I’ve ever heard, and dangerous to boot. Ever tried to ignore overwhelming feelings for too long? How do you think it turns out? Well?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking back down with the swab in motion, stinging me. “Probably not. Human emotions are like the most fearsome lions when aroused, and yet as easily torn through as a paper tiger at times. Ignore them at your peril.”
“My feelings lead me in stupid directions,” I said, staring at the metal wall, trying not to look at Kurt a few beds away or the body in the distance of the unnamed agent who was covered by a white sheet that had started to tint red with blood. “I don’t like going in stupid directions. The heart betrays you.”
Zollers didn’t a
nswer for a minute and I wondered if he had heard me but decided not to argue. “Sometimes.”
I chuckled, but it wasn’t with any real feeling. “That’s what you’ve got to make me feel better? I thought you’d try and talk me out of it.”
“Try and talk you out of thinking that the human heart is capable of making some dumb decisions?” Zollers looked up at me. “Far be it from me to try and convince you of that. It absolutely is capable of making stupid decisions. But they’re not always wrong ones, even if they are inconvenient.” He took a bandage and ran medical tape along the sides before wrapping it over my arm and running a finger along the tape. “Take you, for instance – you might be a little conflicted right now—”
“I might be,” I said coolly, interrupting him.
“But I think your heart is in the right place,” he said. “For example, your mother is in direct conflict with the organization you work for. Now, your mother and you have a history, to put it in mildest terms. Still, there’s a connection, and someone who didn’t know better might think you could feel guilty for not helping her.”
“That’d be a stupid way to feel,” I said, the crimson burning my cheeks. “Especially since she hasn’t asked for my help and seems to want to be around anyone but me, if possible.”
“Oh my,” he said and stopped again, this time looking me in the eye. “You’re jealous of Kat?” He raised an eyebrow again. “What? You didn’t get enough of being locked up by her the first time around? You feeling a little homesick?”
“Oh shut up,” I said mildly, even though I was annoyed. “No, I’m not…homesick or eager to get locked away again. I just…I don’t know.”
“You wish your mother had cared enough to want to take you with her.” He said it certain, and that certainty pissed me off. “You don’t know, she might—”
“She might have a lot of things,” I snapped at him. “She might have wanted to, she might not have been able to, she might have been playing a dangerous game that she didn’t want me involved in – I’ve thought of all of them. But you know the conclusion I’ve come to after all that? She didn’t want me with her for the same reason she disappeared for months and months. She came here, to the campus, and didn’t want me to go with her when she left. She ran into me beaten, bloodied, near dead and she didn’t want me with her then, either. I think it’s time to face facts,” I said with a cold smile. “She’s finished being my mother. Nothing left to do, nothing left to be said between us.” I felt a cold satisfaction at the words. “She cast me out, said, ‘best of luck,’ and that’s it. She’s done with me.” I held my head up. “And me? I’m done with her, too.” I brought my hands down and felt a lump in my pocket – the watch, the one that came with the note that said my father had wanted me to have it. I moved my hand away.
Zollers started to say something but I caught a flinch from him as though he’d been struck, a cringe that hinted at something bad. The door to the medical unit slid open a moment later and Michael Mormont appeared, a calm smile on his face, Eve Kappler a few steps behind him. He looked around the unit, past where Dr. Perugini was working on Kurt, and over to Zollers and me. Within a second of locking eyes with me he came my way and I felt the dread in my stomach rise unexplainably. Well, I might be able to explain it.
“Well, well,” Mormont said as Zollers rose from the stool after sliding his finger along the edge of a bandage, pressing it to my flesh. “Feeling any better?”
“Not much,” I said, holding up my unbandaged arm. “Why? Do you care?”
“Not really,” he said with a little shrug. “I need you to come with me, back to headquarters.”
“We’re in the middle of this right now,” Zollers said, pointing to my still-bloody right arm. “Can it wait just a few minutes?”
“Hardly.” He nodded at Eve, who looked at me in her usual inscrutable solemnity and walked behind the bed I was sitting on. I turned to track her, but Mormont spoke and drew my attention back to him. “Ariadne wants you at HQ.”
I exchanged a look with Zollers, whose eyes held something I couldn’t understand. “Fine,” I said, and stood up, letting my feet fall the half foot to the floor from the bed. “But I—” I stopped as I felt hands behind mine, and felt something hard and metal close onto my wrist, like when Clary had clamped his hands down on them. The pain seared on my open cuts and I swore. “What the f—”
“Handcuffs,” Mormont said with a smile. “They’re something new, designed to hold even a top-of-the-scale meta like you.”
“Is this really necessary?” Zollers asked with a tired look, as though he already knew the answer.
“Yeah, it’s necessary,” Mormont said, and his hand went into his pocket. “You know what this is?” His hand came out with something small between his thumb and forefinger, something small enough I couldn’t really see it from a few feet away.
“Yeah,” I said snottily, “it’s your d—” A hard blow to the back of the head dropped me to the ground as Eve drove an elbow into me that caused a flash in front of my eyes.
“I shouldn’t be surprised you’d go to the lowest common denominator when it comes to defiant answers,” Mormont said as I stared at his shoe, my cheek on the floor, blood in my mouth. I felt Eve’s hands seize me around my sleeve as she dragged me back to my feet.
“Manners,” Eve said in that stiff German accent of hers. I restrained myself from spitting blood in her face in response, instead let it drip, felt it go down my chin.
“This is ridiculous,” Zollers said, anger rising. “I’ll be reporting your conduct – both of you – to the Director.”
“He won’t do anything,” Mormont said, and his hand came up again. “As I was saying – this is a listening device. Found it in Ariadne’s office. Small scale, short range, so whoever was listening to it was right here on campus.”
“Congratulations,” Zollers said dryly. “There are hundreds of people on campus. Why are you harassing this one?”
“Very simple, Doc,” Mormont said with a smirk. “Because when I searched her room a few minutes ago – and yes, she was the first person I suspected, but for other reasons – what do you think I found?” The smirk grew wider but Zollers failed to react. “If you guessed the matching set for listening into this, you’d be right. Just turned it on—” he pulled a little black box from his suit’s other pocket, something that looked a little bigger than an MP3 player, complete with a headset – “and suddenly I hear the world’s worst case of screeching feedback.” He held them both up in front of him, the microphone and the bug. “Still want to defend her?”
“Absolutely,” Zollers said, clenching his teeth. “You’ve got not one speck of evidence that these belong to her.”
Mormont shrugged. “I found ‘em in her room, Doc.”
“I really oughta start locking my door,” I said through a rapidly swelling lip.
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Mormont said, grinning at me. “You’re coming back to headquarters to answer some questions. And regardless of how that goes, Ariadne has declared you a person of suspicion.” He took a breath through his nose as though he were savoring the moment. “Couldn’t have said it better myself, because I’ve got some suspicions about you.” His smile broadened. “So you don’t have to worry about locking your door for a while, because where you’re going, it’ll be locked…pretty much all the time.”
Chapter 15
One Year Earlier
The air was thick in the box. The cool damp of the basement faded as the air had become warm and stuffy inside. I could see the light coming in from the seam around the door of the box, streaming in from outside the basement’s painted windows. Of course, I couldn’t see them, but since Mom had turned off the basement light, I knew it was daytime now. I had been in the box for over eighteen hours by my reckoning.
My back and legs were stiff. I was sitting, my knees bent in front of me, crammed sideways into the box and taking up every inch of space. The pressure of the metal again
st my back and my legs was tight because of how little room I had. I felt numb. I was sitting in my own filth and had been since yesterday. The smell would have been unbearable but I had been exposed to it for so long that now it was just another constant, like the tapping of the pipes overhead in the basement as water ran through them, or the thrumming of the air conditioner unit outside as it started to run every hour or so.
I leaned my head against the metal side, and smacked my lips together. I hadn’t had a drink of water since I was locked in, which meant I was due to get out soon, I hoped. Mom never left me without water for more than a day. I felt weak and my stomach roared with desire for food. I didn’t even care if I showered, I was so hungry and thirsty. I had sobbed myself to sleep in the darkness and I woke up frequently throughout the night, the discomfort to my neck and back causing me to awaken at unusual times. Once, I had a fit, the claustrophobia pressing in on me when it was totally dark, and I slammed my hand against the metal until it bled, but afterward I had broken down and started crying, and fell back asleep for a little while. When I woke up, I was calm again.
I heard something outside, faint tapping. I listened and realized it was footsteps on the stairs. I heard them leave the wood steps and pad onto the foam mats that covered the basement floor where we practiced martial arts. They halted outside the box and I held my breath, daring to hope it was over. I heard a screech of metal as the little slot above me opened, and I struggled to my feet, willing my legs to work after being crammed in a desperately uncomfortable position overnight.
The light streamed in from the aperture. I looked out and squinted my eyes shut. The light was so bright, it hurt my eyes like someone was sticking their fingers into them. I opened them slowly, little by little, over ten seconds and looked out. A shadowed face stood a few feet away, and I could see the disappointment even through my squint. I smacked my dry lips together, hoping for some moisture. “Hi, Mom,” I said.
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