“And a new hire,” Keisha added.
I blinked. “They sent a replacement already?”
She nodded, muscles in her neck corded. She glared at the cement walkway like she was going to burn through it with her eyes.
This was stupid.
“Let’s go inside and you can fill me in.”
She still wouldn’t look up at me. Geez, I’d only been gone two days and she acted like it was a month.
We stood there, two idiots. I rocked back on my heels. I wanted to punch her so bad my hands were twitching.
The door to the other duplex opened and out slouched Alex, in full-on grungy dude mode, hoodie thrown back, his black hair, normally not a strand out of place, a tangled mess. Somehow he’d managed beard stubble.
“Hey, Mat, how’s it going?”
Alex wandered across the lawn like he was high. Keisha looked at him like he was an assassin, then her eyes narrowed. Yup, she recognized him.
“You’re the stoner from Mat’s old place.”
He nodded, managing to look worried.
“Hey, I’m here legit.”
“Really.” Keisha’s face hardened.
“Hey, I got government assistance. You know, rent support. I’m a veteran after all.”
Keisha laughed. “You? That’s friggin hilarious. Veteran of what? Being high for four years straight maybe.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, man, I did my part.”
Keisha shook her head. “Yeah, going smoking more than your share of weed and probably doing other stuff.” She looked at me, suddenly suspicious.
“Pretty coincidental him landing right next door to us.” Her eyes narrowed. “Did you know about this?”
The best way to lie was often to tell part of the truth.
“Yeah, I did. Just found out when we got back that first night from our “trip.” He stopped by for a visit.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
Alex had wandered off, hoodie pulled up. He was studying some moldering leaves beneath the tree, like he didn’t want to be around us, but didn’t know how to leave. He had the slacker stoner part down pat.
I clenched my teeth. “Because I knew you’d have a freaking cow.”
“Yeah, because you wouldn’t tell him to beat it?”
“Like I could!” I leaned forward, lowered my voice. “Look, I’m sorry, okay. I felt bad for the guy and gave him a referral when the housing people called.”
She snorted. “You? A referral? I’m surprised you didn’t wind up back in prison.”
“My new slate is clean,” I said. We both knew that was a lie, but it still bugged me. My face got hot. “So back off about it.”
“You are a selfish bitch, you know that?” Keisha retorted.
I turned to Alex. “Dude, what did you need?”
He looked up, like a hopeful puppy. His hoodie fell back. He rubbed his head. “Hey, I was wondering if I could borrow a few bucks, just until my welfare check comes through.”
“Yeah, I can get you ten.”
I pulled out my wallet, gave him the money.
He smiled like an idiot kid. “Hey, thanks, Mat. Sure appreciate it.”
He headed down the street.
Keisha shook her head again. “That loser is just going to smoke your ten.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
Alex’s act seemed to have taken the anger out of Keisha. Her gaze followed him down the street, looking like she felt sorry for him. Pity, from Keisha?
What was the world coming to?
The new member was a red-headed young guy who called himself Diablo. He was like seventeen. He came by just in time for lunch, wearing a red and white letterman jacket with a horned devil on the back, looking like a retro ganger type.
He could control static electricity. So naturally, he called himself Diablo.
Stupid. Nicknames were dumb in general. They just drew attention. Why not go with a normal alias?
Yeah, I’d been Vine back in the Renegades, but I’d been sixteen. Diablo might grow out of it. Then again, Keisha still went by Steel Witch when she got in a real angry mood, and of course that asshole Kai Jones had called himself Mutter.
“I’ve been looking for you,” the kid said, trying to sound tough.
Keisha had let him in. I was stretched out on the couch, listening to some garbage music Keisha had on.
“You found me.”
He got this cocky, knowing look, like he had me good. “The Scourge said they got a job for us. It’s Mathilda, isn’t it?” His grin became a sneer.
“No one calls me that, punk. My friends call me Mat.” I gave him a hard stare. “You can call me boss.”
He waved his hands and a thousand sharp needles jabbed me. Static shock. I winced, rolled off the couch.
“I don’t see why I can’t be in charge. What’s your power?” The sneer again.
Little creep. I snatched a glass of water off the end table and threw it at his head. The glass shattered. I tackled him, slamming his head against the floor. I ground my knee into his stomach. The air whooshed out of his lungs. His face was bleeding from where the glass had cut him.
I banged his head a few more times to make my point, then got up.
“Dealing with punks like you, that’s my power,” I said. I reached out with my sense to the planter in the corner, and sent the ivy there growing rapidly across the floor.
“Diablo” coughed and tried to sit up, but before he could he was snared in vines. I made sure to circle his throat with them, and then tighten their grip. His face started to turn purple.
“But I’ll use my other power when I feel like making sure punks don’t challenge me,” I said between my clenched teeth.
“Hey, Mat, I think you made your point,” Keisha said. She looked worried.
“I’m not so sure.” I glared at the kid. “Have I made my point, punk?”
He tried to nod.
I let up on the vines.
“I’m only going to let you live if you follow my orders and don’t give me any lip.”
He nodded, and coughed again.
God, it was like being back in Special Corrections again, the first month inside, before I made friends with Lenore. The last thing I needed was some little jerk with delusions of power adding to my troubles.
He got up eventually, moving slowly. “You coulda killed me.” Great, he was a whiner, too.
I nodded. “Keep that in mind.” I helped him into a chair. Keisha brought him a glass of water.
I sat beside him. “What’s your name, kid?” I asked. Time to let up on the rough.
“Diablo.”
“No, your real name. You know, the one your parents gave you.”
“Connor O’Brien, ma’am.”
All of a sudden he was as polite as a kid in church. Getting your head banged against the floor a few times can have that effect.
“Where are you from?”
“Iowa.” That explained the swaggering overcompensation, as the prison pyschs would say. I heard the Great Plains states were pretty strict.
Keisha decided to chime in, too, and play good cop to my suddenly sympathetic one. “When did you Empower?”
He looked at his glass of water, finished it off. Coughed. Looked like he was having a nasty memory.
“I was sixteen. Last winter.”
Geez, he’d only been Empowered for as long as I’d been out of Special Corrections. Probably still erratic, and high on creating static electricity and mayhem. The Scourge really had scraped the bottom of the barrel.
What if that was all the Scourge could send?
Didn’t make sense, especially not with Zhukova and company claiming the Scourge was pretty big, and responsible for a ton of criminal “incidents.”
“Okay, Connor,” I said.” I’m willing to give you a break on being stupid.” His miserable expression suddenly turned hopeful. I continued. “You’d better act right, and follow my orders. I’m in charge.”
&nb
sp; Keisha leaned forward. “You don’t listen to her, you’ll answer to me.” She gave him a nasty look.
He shuddered. “Sh-sure,” he stammered.
I wondered what our fourth member, Simon, was up to. Personal business could cover a lot of things. Not knowing made me nervous, and that made me want to kick Connor. I settled for glaring at him until he put his head in his hands.
Connor minded his manners after our first encounter. No word from the Scourge. I started taking long walks, bathing in the peaceful sounds of slumbering plants in fall.
Sunday morning, two days after Connor and I had had our “chat,” I called Ruth’s while I was out walking. If Ruth still went to church, then she wouldn’t be home.
Ava answered. “Hi, this is the Brandt residence.”
Wow, when did she start being all formal? “Hey, it’s me, sis,” I said.
Her tone changed from polite to annoyed. “You’re not supposed to call, Mat,” Ava said.
“Hey, that’s not fair. I can see Ruth not wanting me around, but I should be allowed to call.”
She sighed. “I didn’t make the rules.” Suddenly it felt like she was the older sister. “Why are you calling?”
“I wanted to see how Ella is doing.”
“She’s home sick.”
I stopped walking. “Still?”
“Yes,” Ava said. “And before you get more wound up, I’ve already talked to Ruth about Ella not going to the doctor. Ruth’s convinced this will blow over soon. Remember when I was sick with pneumonia? Ruth says this is like that, only it isn’t pneumonia. No one knows what it is, either, Mat. So, please, just let it be.”
For now I would. But when I could, I was going to stop by for a visit.
Ava hung up before I could ask her how she was doing.
I was getting real tired of my family thinking I was a criminal.
And here I was, waiting for my criminal boss to contact me.
Life wasn’t fair. Not one bit. No surprise, but it still sucked.
Simon showed up one night a few days later, while Connor and Keisha were watching another episode of that stupid Rogue Hunters show. I was in the kitchen, trying to ignore the TV, when the doorbell rang.
I practically jumped out of my chair. I crept to the door, and looked through the peephole. Simon stood outside, calm and collected like he was dropping off flowers.
I opened the door and led him into the kitchen.
Keisha and Connor both glanced up as he passed in the doorway. Keisha nodded at him, went back to her show. Connor tried to hide it, but he looked worried. Another person to beat him around. No, I didn’t feel bad about slamming his head into the floor a few times. I felt bad that he was stupid enough I had to do it.
“Who is this?” Simon asked me. Connor blinked, returned to watching Rogue Hunters.
“Our newest member.” I kept walking. No reason to make Connor either piss his pants or lash out with his static electricity.
“I see.” Those two words said “so this is the naive kid high on his power who you just slapped down.”
Simon could see through durasteel.
There was sludge that had once been coffee in the pot on the stove. Simon poured himself some black caffeinated tar, looked at me.
“No thanks. I want to keep my stomach in one piece.”
Slight smile at my crack. He sipped the stuff. His expression never changed. Incredible.
We sat at the kitchen table.
“Any word from higher ups?” He asked.
“No.” It had been two weeks since we’d gotten back. I never took off the necklace the Scourge used to communicate with me, except when Winterfield and Alex came to take me to the Dungeon. Someone there might get tempted to take it apart. I wasn’t letting them mess with the only way the Scourge had to secretly reach me.
“I wonder what they think about what we discovered in Colombia?”
“How to weaponize it, no doubt.”
“Perhaps.” His face was like a wall. There might be a mural painted on it that showed a cheerful scene, or a proud one, or a funny one, but you didn’t know what was past the wall. “Those battery pods have an obvious use—powering stunners and the like. They possibly have a less obvious one.”
I shrugged. “Such as?”
“A power source for other devices.”
This was just guessing.
I was getting itchy. Stoner Alex had dropped by to talk to me twice since Keisha found out he lived next door. He and I took a walk each time and each time he asked me for an update.
It was getting old. Support was getting antsy. Zhukova probably had her panties in one hell of a knot over my lack of progress. She wanted the Scourge taken down.
It was weird sitting there talking with a Scourge member while remembering that my real boss wanted them taken out.
“They ought to be thinking about finding out what was behind that freaking horror show we walked into down there.” I still couldn’t stop thinking about that.
Simon’s jaw tightened and he took another long sip from his mug.
“That was a bloody nightmare for sure.” For an instance, the wall was gone and he looked older, haunted. “Those kids.” He closed his eyes. “Yeah, it would be nice to speak with those responsible.”
I didn’t know much about Simon. Yeah, he was a rogue Empowered hanging with Keisha and me in the Scourge. He was English. Never heard him talk about what it was like back in the Republic of England, or what he thought about America. Like I said, he played it tight. Everyone was an outlaw in the Scourge. Why they were, ate at me. I forced myself to push that why away. I couldn’t afford to see past the surface.
Simon didn’t seem crazy. He didn’t seem to care about being in charge. Money, maybe it was about money. I think I knew why Keisha was in the Scourge. It was the same reason I’d joined the Renegades back when I was sixteen: she wanted a place to belong. In this case belonging meant doing what ruthless leaders wanted. But Simon? I didn’t know what he’d done in the Scourge before joining my cell. Ashula had deflected my question when I had asked her. I had no doubt he’d kill to get what he wanted, even if it was just money.
Ruth liked to say “caught between the devil and the deep blue sea” when you faced two equally awful things. That was me right then. Caught between the devil that was the Scourge and the deep blue sea of Support. That Empowered teenager in the public library, the difference was Support killed him when they couldn’t subdue him. The Scourge would have recruited him. Which was worse?
I got up and paced the room. “We need to keep moving.”
“We’re not sharks,” Simon said. “We can wait.”
“Not me. I want to be getting stuff done.”
He watched me over his coffee mug, but didn’t say anything. I couldn’t show too much of how I felt. I had to hang tough. It would be nice for a change to be able to relax but that wasn’t going to happen.
I leaned against the sink. “You didn’t ask about the kid, but I think he’ll work out.”
“Didn’t have to ask. It was obvious you’d already sorted him.”
Sorted him, that was a good way to put it. “He got my message.”
I went back to pacing. I walked past the living room. Keisha had gone to her room and Connor was asleep on the couch. Rogue Hunters had finally ended, and the eleven o’clock news was on.
On the television a blonde bimbo was reading a news story about a new learning center opening in North Portland. I went over to switch it off.
“Tomorrow Ellis Corporation’s founder and CEO, Brandon Ellis, will be in town to dedicate the learning center and talk to the media.” She gave the time.
I stood there, staring at the TV, wheels turning in my brain.
Ellis was going to be in town. I could talk to the man himself.
I turned off the television. It was time to cut to the chase.
Chapter 11
There was a crowd outside the new learning center. Lots of kids and parents, excit
ed looks on their faces. A couple of black SUVs were parked alongside the building.
There was a crowd of reporters, and in the middle of that crowd, a pair of big hulking security types, wearing sunglasses and earbud comms. But no one except me seemed to notice them. Everyone was watching the slender guy in the silk shirt and slacks flash his perfect, white teeth, and gesture around him.
So that was Brandon Ellis. He looked nearly as tall as me. He stood easy, like a gymnast.
God, that smile. It was the ready smile of a veteran sales guy, and they were all eating it up.
I pushed my way through the crowd.
There was a tug on my arm. Keisha.
“Mat, what are you doing?” she hissed.
I ignored her and kept pushing forward, but she grabbed my arm at the elbow, hauled me close.
“Hey, girl. We shouldn’t even be here. You just wanted to take a look.” She kept glancing around nervously.
I pulled my arm free. “That’s what I’m doing.”
I plucked the sketch pad out of her hand. “I’m going to borrow this.”
A redhead in a form-fitting floral dress raised her hand. “Mister Ellis, Annie Simkins from the Oregon Journal.”
Ellis nodded and flashed the pearly white, nauseating smile again. “Call me Brandon,” he said, smooth as fresh milk. Yuck. Everyone was charmed by his B.S. “What’s your question?”
Mister Casual was so smooth.
The woman actually stammered out her question. “So-so, how does this learning center tie into your other enterprises?”
“Well, the learning center is about kids, not me making money.”
Sure, pal.
The smiled faded. “What it’s really about is the future, not quarterly profits."
I snorted, but everyone else listened to him like he was the second coming, nodding like they were all on the same time.
The Oregon Journal reporter smiled and nodded, too, but she must not have been completely snowed, because she asked her question again, a little differently.
"Your subsidiary Emerald Biologic, will it be involved in any of the funding of the national learning centers program?"
Empowered: Traitor (The Empowered Series Book 2) Page 10
