Destiny: The Girl in the Box #9

by Crane, Robert J.

  Or maybe they weren’t worried because no one but me was crazy and stupid enough to come after them.

  I kicked the door down with one well-placed heel. It crashed inward and I was through in a second. I swept my shotgun left, then right, placing my back against the wall and looking into a kitchen.

  A man was waiting just inside, cup of coffee in his hand. He clearly hadn’t heard my approach, because his face went from blank to rage in a half-second. I hesitated, holding off on pulling the trigger until he said, “Sienna N—”

  I pulled the trigger and opened up on him with two rounds of double-ought buck to the torso and head. His face and chest exploded in a blast of red. I heard the front door come crashing down, followed by the repetitive, heavy booms of Scott’s shotgun in action.

  Once I was sure the corners were clear in the kitchen, I spared only a look to make sure my target was dead. He was; even a meta couldn’t survive having their skull emptied. I swept down the hall and broke left, kicking open a door to a bedroom.

  The whole place was yellow, from the paint on the walls to the sheets on the bed. There was a woman sitting up in the bed, eyes locked on me as I came through the door. My world started to blur and I stroked the trigger instinctively.

  The yellow walls turned red and the world around me returned to normal, her telepathic influence ended. Red streaks dotted the yellow paint and yellow sheets, and once I’d confirmed the room was clear, I left the body where it lay and moved on to the next room.

  I caught a glimpse of Scott coming out of a door at the far end of the hall. “Living room and master bedroom are clear. This is the last one,” he said.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I said, gritting my teeth as I kicked the door open. It broke neatly in half and flew inward.

  My gun was up before I’d even registered that there were three people in the room. One of them started to raise a hand, and my subconscious moved the shotgun into alignment and peppered him with three shots from a single stroke of the trigger. He splattered and fell, and I moved to the next target.

  This one was another woman, bulkier than most. She reminded me a little of Eve, save for the fact she was shorter. She had a hand up as well, but she had hesitated, her eyes glazed. Something flew at me. I dodged right and unloaded on her as well, splotches of red exploding from her midsection and chest.

  I took aim at the last target and halted. It was a man, sitting on a chair in the middle of the room. I pulled my finger off the trigger and lowered my weapon.

  “What the hell was that?” Scott asked from just outside the door. I glanced back and saw the wall opposite the door burned black from the heat of whatever sort of power the woman had heaved at me. If I’d been standing there when it came through … I shuddered.

  “Room’s clear,” I said, staring at the man in front of me. He stared back and nodded, gentle eyes sizing me up. His face was worn, bruised and bloodied. His hands were tied behind his back, his legs were secured to the metal chair by heavy chains.

  I saw Scott pop his head in behind me. “What…the…f—”

  “Now, now,” the man said in a deep voice, soothing as any I’d ever heard. “There’s no need for that kind of talk, Scott.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Scott asked, jaw somewhere around his ankles. Mine should have been, too, but somehow I was unsurprised.

  “I’m a prisoner of Century,” the man said, rattling the chains. “Isn’t it obvious? They’ve been using my … unique skills … to aid them in their mission. It would seem they’re running a bit low on internal talent for …” he glanced at me and smiled, “… some reason.”

  I took a step closer to him, still sitting in the chair as if all was well. Some of his bruises and cuts were fresh, others looked like they’d been there a while. Probably not something they’d started when they heard me crashing through the back door. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  “Well, if I’d had it my way, you wouldn’t have,” he said with a slight chuckle. “But Century caught me as I was about to flee the country. It would appear there is no safe ground when it comes to them.” His face darkened. “Or Sovereign.”

  “No,” I said, “there’s really not.”

  “So, what’s it to be?” he asked, as though he were awaiting nothing more than a minor decision. “Your options are somewhat limited, of course, but I’m quite at your mercy.”

  “Find the key to his chains,” I said to Scott, “let’s cut him loose.”

  Scott looked at me like I was crazy. I noticed his hand shook on the fore grip of his shotgun. “Umm … Sienna …”

  “Do it,” I said, turning my eyes back to the man in the middle of the room.

  “Do you not remember when he—”

  “I remember everything,” I said, staring at the warm eyes that stared back at me. I wondered if he was in my head even now, moving things around to his liking. For some reason, I suspected … not. “After all, it’d be awfully hard to forget someone like Dr. Zollers.”

  Chapter 23

  It took a little while to iron things out with the Henderson PD at the scene. After all, we’d left ten bodies in the house, and that wasn’t exactly a normal thing for a raid. I’d called Li as soon as it was done, and he’d immediately whistled up the chain to his superiors in the FBI to help cover it for us. I figured he’d be pissed, but he didn’t give me an ounce of trouble. I counted my blessings on that one.

  When the Henderson PD cleared us to leave the scene, they didn’t even confiscate our shotguns. Which was a plus. Zollers was remanded to our custody without argument. I wondered just how big a dick the FBI was swinging on my behalf; I suspected that being backed up by Foreman and whomever he had on his side in the Senate wasn’t hurting a bit.

  It took about two hours for us to get clear, and by the time we were done, I was famished and had to go to the bathroom. We rode in silence until we pulled off at a place called In and Out burger. It was well past the dinner hour by now, and even if I had adjusted to Pacific Time—which I hadn’t—I would have been starving.

  The smell of burgers hit me in the face as we walked in. We ordered once I’d made my pit stop, still not speaking. Zollers was quiet, which was kind of par for the course for him, and we sat down in a booth while we waited for them to call our number.

  Scott was the first to speak, and what he said surprised me. “What the hell did we just do back there, Sienna?”

  I glanced at Zollers, who arched his eyebrows slightly as if to say, “You should have expected this.” I hadn’t, though. “What do you mean?” I asked. I knew what he meant, but I needed a second to prepare my defense.

  “Are you kidding me?” Scott leaned in, speaking in a hushed tone. “We just executed ten people. No trial, no due process, no nothing.”

  I kept my expression neutral. “And?”

  Zollers kept absolutely silent. Scott’s eyes bulged. “That. Was. Murder.”

  “Probably,” I agreed, keeping emotion out of it. I tried to remember if I’d ever argued the line between murder and killing before, and decided that if I had, it was probably in my head. Or with Old Man Winter, which made it irrelevant.

  “Probably?” Scott’s face was flushed red as a fresh strawberry. “We took shotguns in there and shot up the place.”

  “And you knew that’s what we were going to do when we kicked in the doors,” I said. I should have expected this. “You’ve killed people before, haven’t you?”

  The anger on his face dissolved, the redness abated, and his lower lip quivered. “Not like this.” I saw a slight shudder run through his frame. “It was …”

  “What about the guys in the casino this morning?” I asked. “That didn’t seem to bother you. You even got kind of …” I reddened this time, knowing that Zollers was probably reading what I was thinking, “… feisty with me afterward.”

  “It was self-defense,” Scott said, the emotion now bled out of his face. “They came at me. It was obvious
they meant to kill me. They took you down—”

  “They were the same people,” I said. Now I had my thoughts organized. “The exact same people, from the exact same place. The ones who attacked us in the casino would have been right there at that safehouse later tonight if we hadn’t killed them.” This was true. Scott had killed four people in the front room as he entered, and the floor had been covered with inflatable mattresses—enough to sleep our attackers at the casino, when coupled with the beds in the rest of the house.

  “But they weren’t there,” Scott said. “And they didn’t attack us—”

  “Yes, they did,” I said. “Look, I get your argument. You want us to execute warrants, play by the rules, by the book.” It was a funny thing for me to say to him, because truthfully, Scott had never been a by-the-book guy. I think we’d found his line this afternoon, though, and crossed right over it at high speed. “You want to try and convict these people, these Century operatives, and send them to jail in Arizona.”

  “No!” Scott said, and he was flushed again. “I get that things are different, okay? That we’re not even subject to regular laws in the best of times, which these aren’t—”

  “We’re at war,” I said, like it ended the argument. It didn’t, but it stopped him in his tracks. “This isn’t just criminal behavior. They’re not perpetrating a normal series of crimes. They’re committing mass murder of an entire race in anticipation of conquering another one. Laws don’t quite cover this. Simple treason doesn’t fit the scope of their plans, and murder charges in a courtroom do a disservice to the epic nature of their evil.

  “They mean to put a boot on our necks and squeeze the life out of us,” I said. “Quietly, where no one can hear us struggle or scream. Where no one has the power to stop it, outside the realm of human laws. You want a black and white world where we can live by the laws? I’m here to tell you that you’re going to drown in the grey. This isn’t law and order and justice for all mankind. This is survival. This is the law of nature—a pack of wolves who are going to eat you in the dark of night, and you can either shoot them first or get devoured. Your choice.”

  Scott listened to me unload without stopping me in the middle, and I could see the warring emotions on his face. His hand shook as he picked up his water cup, and he fumbled it before putting it back on the table. “It felt wrong, Sienna. Just wrong.”

  “What would you suggest we do instead?” I asked.

  “Overwhelm them with all our people,” he said without waiting a moment. “Raid them without going in and blowing them to pieces without warning. Cuff them and send them off to Arizona to cool off under the desert until we had them all—”

  “Conveniently in one place?” I asked. “Where Sovereign can get them all at once?”

  “Like we did with that telepath, Claire,” Scott said. His voice sounded stronger than he looked. “That was righteous. That was—”

  My phone buzzed, loudly, and he stopped talking. I pulled it out and checked the number. It was my mom. I accepted the call. “Hello?”

  “Well, you got the ‘hell’ part right,” she said. Mom was always tense, but right now she sounded tenser than usual.

  “What happened?” I felt a sick drop in the pit of my stomach, and I stood involuntarily, knocking my knee against the edge of the table as I got up. They’d come. Finally. They had to have—

  “Century just hit our prison facility in Arizona,” she said. “And they left a lot of dead bodies in their wake.”

  Chapter 24

  We were headed south on US 93. Our prison facility was outside Phoenix, which according to the GPS was less than five hours drive. Quicker than trying to get a flight. Scott had us going about a hundred miles an hour, and Li had warned local law enforcement that we were coming through in a civilian vehicle and not to mess with us. That was convenient, I had to admit.

  Zollers was in the back, still keeping his silence. Scott had been quiet for the last few hours as well. We’d hurried to eat our burgers—which were amazing, by the way—before running out the door. There wasn’t really any reason to hurry; the facility was utterly destroyed according to the one person we’d had on the scene.

  We didn’t have any metas on duty in the prison, because we didn’t have any to spare. The Directorate had employed a few low-level meta guards, but they had died when Omega had hit the place.

  But we didn’t have very many prisoners, either, which meant meta guards weren’t as necessary.

  The dry desert stretched all around us, or at least I thought it did. It was night, and darkness shrouded everything. Stars gleamed down from overhead and the high beams of the rental gave us enough light to see by. There were taillights ahead of us in the distance, and every once in a while Scott would skirt around someone at high speed. There was not much traffic at this time of night.

  Not much scenery, either. I was surprised at the level of foliage at the side of the road. There was a constant string of dry, brushy trees with branches jutting out, lit by our headlights. After we’d come down from some mountainous driving, I’d expected flat, empty desert. I hadn’t seen it yet, though. I saw a surprising amount of green in the headlights. More than I would have thought, which would be none.

  We passed through a town called Wickenburg, and I wondered why we were even bothering to come down here. We’d heard the report; the prison was destroyed. I would have said leveled to the ground, but it was already underground.

  “Maybe we’ll find something there,” Zollers said, breaking a silence that had lasted for umpteen hours now.

  I turned to face him in the back seat. “Do you really think so, or are you just telling me what I want to hear?”

  He shrugged and offered a weak smile. “Probably the latter. I am more than a little indebted to you, after all.”

  I turned back to the view of the headlights falling over the brush on the sides of the highway. “Enough to want to join the fight?”

  “Well, let’s not go crazy or anything,” Zollers said dryly. “By my rough estimation and bearing recent events in mind, you’re still overmatched on the order of something along the lines of eight to one.”

  “Well, it was easily ten to one when we started, so at least we’re getting closer,” I said tautly. Scott said nothing, but I detected a noticeable flinch where he was hunched over the wheel.

  “Yes, but every one you lose is worth more to you than seven of theirs,” Zollers said. “I’m just going to point this out to you—the moment they remove your support system, you are effectively finished.”

  I pursed my lips, hard. “I know that.”

  “I don’t think you do.” His polite tones were even more irritating than his accurate points. “I think on a cerebral level, you recognize that without this new cobbled-together Agency, you’d be in over your head. I think on a gut level, though, you’re in a state of pure reaction.”

  “Stop the car,” I said, and Scott shot me a look like I was crazy. “Pull over. Now.”

  He did, bringing the car to a gradual, coasting stop. Zollers obliged me, not saying anything else until we were on the side of the road. I started to tell him to get out, but he did it without me having to open my mouth. “Wait here,” I said to Scott, and opened the door to follow Zollers out into the desert.

  The night was still damned warm, and my feet sunk slightly in the sand, like I was walking on a beach. Zollers led the way, the shadow of his form guiding me into the desert. We walked a hundred feet off the road before he stopped, probably sensing I wanted some distance from Scott for this. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, it was that … I didn’t want him to hear what came next.

  “What do you know?” I asked.

  “Not much more than you,” Zollers said. He watched me calmly, hands in his pockets. He pulled them out and showed them to me, open-handed, and it took me only a second to realize my naturally suspicious nature had caused me to think he might be holding a weapon before I’d even had a chance to verbalize anything. “But
I’ve met Sovereign, and I have a sense of the man. I’ve met Weissman, and I know he’s a snake. Sovereign won’t let him hurt you, directly, but Weissman will come after your support mechanism with everything he has.”

  “He hasn’t done it yet,” I said, jutting my chin out in defiant pride.

  “You haven’t been a big enough pain in his ass until just now,” Zollers said. “That Omega operative—Hildegarde? She was a bigger thorn in his side until recently. When word got out in the safe house about what you did in Florida to their telepaths, there was this sense of palpable dread. I get the feeling you weren’t considered a problem until then. Now, you’re bound to be priority one.”

  “How did the people in Vegas know about what happened in Florida?” I asked.

  Zollers sighed. “Something you need to understand about your enemy—they are on offense, not defense. The reason you’ve been so effective in your last few moves is that they’re attacking, not countering you. They’re set up to destroy, and very little thought was given to what you would call operational security. The idea that they could be attacked, that they would even be visible to their enemies … I don’t think Weissman saw it coming, and I’m not sure that with the hundred people he had at his disposal he could even cover that risk.”

  “So he’s vulnerable,” I said. “They’re vulnerable.”

  “They’re only vulnerable so long as you’re still a threat,” Zollers said, and I could tell he was cautioning me. “You’re the only threat to them. If a SWAT team had crashed down their doors, with human reflexes instead of your meta ones, Century’s people might—maybe—have suffered one or two deaths, but the rest would have swept through that team and escaped. They were not prepared for your response. Don’t be so arrogant as to think that they’re not nearly invulnerable to anyone else’s. Short of sending in the National Guard, their independently operating units are going to be nearly impossible to crack for anyone short of a meta team.”