Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book Seven

by Crane, Robert J.

  “I did the best I could,” she said, and I caught the hint of exasperation. “Time came to put him down, I did it. Just like I was taught.”

  Janus turned to face her and there was a ripple of emotion across his face. “I would not consider your teacher to be the most reliable guide for how to conduct yourself in civilized society. We do not go about slaughtering anyone the minute they get in our way. That is savagery. That is bestial. That is—”

  “The way of the Wolfe,” came a voice as the office door opened. It was thick and raspy, and the room was filled with a sudden musk of something primal. It was Wolfe, all right, standing taller than most men when he wasn’t crouched over like a dog ready to attack. Which, in this case, he wasn’t. He looked at Janus like the predator that he was, and Janus looked right back at him. “The way of pain, of fear—”

  “Of shameless bloodletting, copious destruction and pointless death,” Janus said, keeping watch on Wolfe’s slithering entrance to the room. “You have certainly trained her well.”

  “Wolfe taught her what she needs to know. How to avoid that pesky hesitation that costs you so many field agents right off the bat.” Wolfe wore a feral grin, and his black eyes burned into Janus.

  I watched Janus concentrate on Wolfe, on the black eyes, and I sensed a shift in the room. “You taught her to kill first, ask questions later. Unfortunately, I was rather hoping to question this target. He did, after all, get a look at—”

  “Sovereign,” Wolfe hissed. “Wolfe told you what he looks like.”

  “Five hundred years ago,” Janus said. “He’s likely changed since then.”

  “Still the same smell,” Wolfe rasped, his eyebrows arched down in a fearsome expression. “Janus didn’t say what he was sending the Little Doll out to do or Wolfe would have warned her to be gentle.”

  “You are not her supervisor,” Janus said tightly. “You were to train her, and her training is over.”

  Wolfe let a lazy smile come across his face. “The Wolfe leaves his mark, a mark that goes deeper than any command you can give the Little Doll, a mark that will outlast any order. Best Janus gives the Wolfe marching orders. That way they won’t get …” he looked sidelong at Adelaide and I sensed a deeply unsettling connection between the two of them, “… misinterpreted.”

  Janus stared down Wolfe. “They had best not get misinterpreted anymore, else we will have to consider other possibilities for your … employment here.”

  Wolfe let out a full-blooded hiss, as though he were thinking about coming across the desk at Janus. “Wolfe is not to be trifled with. Wolfe is not to be threatened—”

  “By me?” Janus asked with amusement creasing the lines of his face. “Would you prefer the Primus or the ministers threaten you?” He leaned over the desk toward Wolfe and Adelaide. “I am not a man who tends to pass off his duties to others or hands tasks back up the chain undone. When the Primus tells me to do something, I do it, regardless of what is asked. If that involves handing a girl,” Janus gestured to Adelaide, who sat silent, watching Janus with narrowed, angry eyes, “innocent, sweet, pure, over to a monster to have him turn her into a killing machine, then I swallow my objections and do so. My personal morality may scream in outrage. It may tell me that to hand over such a girl to a beast who has shown no respect for life is wrong, that it is appalling, that it is not something I want to associate with. It may even tell me,” and Janus’s face twisted into something worse, something beyond fury, “that it would be better to take this beast, and use all my power … to neuter him. To turn him into a helpless puppy that will do no more than chase his own tail for the rest of his near-infinite days.”

  Janus’s knuckles were flat against the desk, his jaw was squared and set, and if he was lying, he damned sure didn’t look like it. “But I don’t do what I want to do. I do what I’m ordered. My question for you, Wolfe … will you do the same? Because if not … you become rather more … expendable.”

  Wolfe let out a growl and leaned forward onto the desk, his fingernails like claws, digging into the surface. “Is that how Janus sees it?”

  Janus didn’t speak for a long minute, and Adelaide and I watched this contest of wills with no small amount of alarm; she, because it seemed destined to erupt only inches from her face, and me because … well, because it was just that gripping.

  “No,” Janus said. “That is not how I see it. That is how the Primus sees it. Now … will you be a good dog and respect your leash? Or do you wish to spend the rest of your life licking your own genitals in a corner of the office?”

  Wolfe recoiled in fury, leaving five long scrapes along the surface of Janus’s desk. “Wolfe will not forget this.”

  “Good,” Janus said. “Never forget. Never forget what I can do to you, what I will do to you, should you slip the leash.” He waved at the door. “Now get out, and close the door behind you.”

  Wolfe stalked off, making me wonder if he’d stop to open the door before plunging through. He opened it, stepped through, and was about to turn it loose in a slam that would break the glass when Janus spoke up again:

  “Ah, ah, ah,” Janus said. “Gently.

  Wolfe seethed so loudly I thought he’d spit blood, but the door was shut without being broken, and Janus turned his attention back to Adelaide. “I’m sorry you had to see that, my dear,” Janus began. “But unfortunately, you are a part of a bigger whole, and as part of Omega, you must realize that the mission is of critical importance. Nothing else matters, nothing but winning. Succeeding. Beating the odds. What you have done today has compromised an important source of information.”

  “I thought he was a definite kill,” Adelaide said, and there was a little shake in her voice. Whether it was from the confrontation she’d just witnessed or the realization that she’d blown her mission, I didn’t know.

  “No, he was supposed to be capture only,” Janus said. “We did not want him dead until after we could question him.”

  “I’m sorry I failed you,” Adelaide said, and I saw her cheek twitch underneath the heavy black eyeliner that coated her eye.

  “It is not me who you have failed,” Janus said carefully, sticking a hand in the pocket of his vest. “It is the Primus.”

  Adelaide’s face went blank with the sort of horror that can’t truly be expressed. “Please. I’m sorry.”

  Janus clicked his tongue. “I trust you will try harder on your next assignment?”

  “Yes, yes,” Adelaide said with a fervent nod. “I won’t fail you again.”

  “Temper your enthusiasm for Wolfe’s approach,” Janus said. “He can get away with the things he does; you cannot. Even more than most of our operatives, you come into this with a handicap of your own—”

  “I know,” Adelaide said, her head bowed, the points of her mohawk shaking as she did. “I’m … thankful for the opportunity. I was merely trying to do what I had been told.”

  “Recall that you report to me, not Wolfe,” Janus said, “and you will not make an error such as this again. Now, go—report to the stylists downstairs, have them give you a once-over to transform your appearance. We can’t have the police hounding you every step of the way, after all.” He let a light smile grace his stern features. “Go on.”

  “Thank you,” Adelaide said and stood, opening the door and excusing herself. She didn’t exactly fold before Janus but close. It reminded me of a similar conversation I’d had with Ariadne.

  “And Adelaide?” Janus said, catching her just before she walked out.

  “Yes?” she paused, her hand on the wooden door. The glass in the middle of it was streaked with fingerprints, a greasy mess that made it look like it had been smeared with oil.

  “You did not use your power in the encounter, correct?”

  “No,” she shook her head quickly.

  Janus studied her for a moment, inscrutable. “Very good. Go on.”

  “Thank you, sir.” She tucked the door shut behind her.

  Wolfe was waiting just outsid
e, down on all fours, watching Adelaide as she came out of the office. His scrutiny made even me uncomfortable, and I lived with him in my head. I couldn’t imagine how Adelaide felt about it.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said with more starch than I would have given her credit for. “You set me up for failure.”

  “Wolfe only told the Little Doll what she needed to hear.” His fingernails clinked on the tile, like a lion stalking slowly toward its prey.

  “Horseshit,” Adelaide threw back at him. “I killed him. Like you wanted. You basically set me up for it; you taught me to kill fast, urged me on to it, got me all riled up to get out there and prove myself, and then it turns out I’ve bollocksed it up. I killed the man for no good reason.” She didn’t seem that bothered by the killing, more by the deception.

  “Little Doll killed him for a very good reason. Little Doll needed to get her first kill in, oh yes she did.” He smiled wide, his sharp teeth looking ready to sink into a vein. “So much training, all … theoretical,” Wolfe said, surprising me with a big word. “Little Doll needed practical experience. To be a killer. To be like Wolfe. Like they want you to be.” His grin grew wider.

  “I think they want me on a bit more of a leash than they have you,” Adelaide shot back. “I’m coming in at a disadvantage and you’re pushing me to break all the rules. They hand me a plum assignment, an important one that requires subtlety and finesse, and rather than get a chance to prove myself, you decided to make a mess of it for me by giving me the wrong idea.”

  Wolfe shrugged. “The Little Doll is angry and fearful of the wrong people. Little Doll should be thankful that the Wolfe managed to get her over the first obstacle cleanly. Now the Doll is ready for anything.”

  “Oh, I’m ready for anything, all right,” Adelaide said coldly. “But whatever comes next, I won’t be hearing it from you.”

  Wolfe bristled. “Wolfe trained the Doll, taught her everything—”

  “Oh, yes,” she interrupted, “you’ve just taught me a brilliant lesson.”

  “And now the Doll throws it back in the Wolfe’s face?” He sneered. “Ingratitude brings a penalty of its own, Little Doll.”

  “Try me,” Adelaide fired back hotly, her face red with emotion. “We both know that if it comes down to it, I won’t hesitate now.”

  Wolfe hissed. “Little Doll had best watch herself.”

  “Wolfe had best stay clear of me,” Adelaide replied. “I’m not your Little Doll anymore.” She brushed past him without another word, without fear of his response, and he seethed as she did it. Seethed, but did nothing else.

  She made her way to the elevator, pushed the button, and waited for the door to open. Once it did, she stepped inside the familiar box, and looked out over the main floor of Omega’s headquarters. Across the distance, Wolfe still watched her, following her all the way with slitted eyes, saying nothing, and holding his place until after the doors had closed on Adelaide.

  Chapter 20

  I awoke to light streaming in, the feel of nausea infecting me, and a kind of grinding fatigue that seemed to have settled in my bones. I couldn’t decide which I wanted to do more—lie there and feel sick or roll over and go back to sleep. The choice was made for me a moment later as the nausea swelled and I gagged, running for the little bathroom in the corner of the room. I dodged inside to find a small toilet, sink, and a shower, all of which looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in quite some time.

  I found I didn’t much care as I fell to my knees and heaved, my stomach draining its contents and making me wonder what I had done to so wrong it for the second morning in a row. I lay there stretched out next to the bowl once I was done, and I heard the door to the bedroom open. A moment later there was a knock at the doorframe.

  “Everything all right in here?” Breandan’s voice came around the frame from the bedroom.

  “No,” I croaked. “I just had a digestive hemorrhage that cost me everything I was going to eat for the next month.”

  “That’s a lovely image,” Breandan said, poking his head around the doorframe to see me lying on the tile. “Can I get you some tea?”

  “God, no.” I cradled my head. “Two days in a row of this, and I haven’t even been drinking.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s wrong, are you in the family way?” He looked down at me sympathetically.

  “In the family way?” I looked at him in pity. “What is this, the eighteenth century? No, I’m not preg …” My voice trailed off as a tingle crept over my scalp. “No. It’s not possible.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me and leaned against the wall. “I assure you, that from a purely physiological standpoint, it is entirely possible for women to become pregnant. I’m told it’s how we propagate the species, in fact.”

  I rubbed the back of my hand against my forehead and found it drenched with sweat. “Why am I not surprised you wouldn’t know firsthand?”

  “Well, that was a pointed little dig, now wasn’t it?” Breandan said with a little smirk, but his voice was hollow, his face ashen. “You sure I can’t fetch you some tea while you try and decide whether you’ve been fertilized or not?”

  “I can’t see how I could—” I stopped and rolled back to my knees to heave again. When I finished, I spit the last foul taste out of my mouth. “How can this be?”

  “I’m not describing it for you if you don’t already know. Seems like that’d cross a line, since I just met you and all—notwithstanding the fact that you did sleep in my bed last night.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and used a bit of paper to wipe my mouth. “Okay, so, yes, it’s possible. I just don’t think it’s probable, let’s put it that way. We were …” I looked at him with slight embarrassment, “ … safe.”

  “Oh, I’m certain you were,” he said with a formal nod, “because it never, ever happens that being safe could go wrong. In fact, they don’t even have a word for that circumstance because it never, ever happens.” He pretended to have a thought dawn on him. “Oh, wait, yes they do—it’s called an accident. But surely it doesn’t happen often … oh, wait, yes it does. All the bloody time, in case you missed the courses where they put you in a room with a teacher who looks like they haven’t ever done the business they’re telling you about. It happens all the bloody time.”

  “Oddly enough, I did miss those classes,” I said, staring up at him from the bathroom floor.

  “Well, that would explain how this might happen, then.”

  “What, you’re going to sit here and berate a pregnant lady?” I asked, leaning my head against the wall.

  “It’s hardly a foregone conclusion,” he said with a shrug. “Perhaps you’re just acclimating after travel. Maybe you caught a bug on your flight. Or your body is reacting poorly to stress. Whatever the case, I wouldn’t get all in an uproar about it quite yet.” He smiled brightly. “You sure you don’t want that tea? I’m having some.”

  “What is it with you Brits and your obsession with tea?” I asked, waving him off. “No thanks. And I never get sick. Never. Not since I manifested. Whatever this is, it’s something else entirely.”

  “If you say so.” He pushed off the wall and I could hear his footsteps heading out the bedroom door and into the small kitchen as I stared at the white porcelain of the bathtub’s side. “I can recall being sicker than shite a few times since manifesting,” his voice carried as I heard him clanging in the kitchen. “Of course, those might have more to do with the number of pints I had the night before than they did with any sort of sickness I might have picked up. Except this one time—”

  There was a sudden bang and the sound of a door being kicked off its hinges in the main room. I sat bolt upright, almost hitting my head on the edge of the tub.

  “What the—” I heard Breandan say, and then his words were cut off by the sound of suppressed gunfire. It doesn’t sound like it does in the movies; it’s still incredibly loud. Behind it I could hear thumping of bullets hitting wood, impacting on what I suspected were th
e cabinets in the kitchen.

  I was moving on muscle memory alone, on my feet and out the door, my nausea put aside as easily as a thought. I could feel the adrenaline flowing, any memory of what I’d been talking about with Breandan only a moment earlier completely thrust out of my mind. As I cleared the door to the bathroom I saw a man in full tactical gear—vest, hood, all black—linger with his back to the door of the bedroom. He gave me such a choice view of his back, I couldn’t help but abuse it.

  I hit him in the kidney with a hard punch and he screamed. I hung my left arm around his neck and dragged him behind the doorframe for cover as bullets hissed past me. On television, suppressed gunfire sounds whisper quiet. It’s not. The sound of the bullets whipping out of the barrel and shattering the thin walls was still quieter than the bark of the shots ringing out, but they were only quieted a bit, not silent.

  The man I had in my grasp decided to fight, and with more of his comrades in the next room, I had no time to deal with the possibility he could rise up and catch me from behind while I went to stop his friends. I broke his neck cleanly the way Glen Parks had taught me to, killing my second human being in less than twenty-four hours. I felt the rough assurance from inside that I was doing the right thing, the smart thing, but a small voice within cried at the thought that I was even in this position.

  I pulled his submachine gun off the strap, gripping it in my hands as the first of his fellows burst through the bedroom door. I was ready and ripped off a clean three-shot burst that caught him in the chest. It staggered him and I followed it with another that caught him in the black-hooded face, splattering the wall with blood and grey matter. He slumped and fell as another submachine gun peeked around the doorframe and fired blind above me, showering me with plaster dust where I was hiding, covered over by the body of the man whose neck I had broken. I tried to keep my eyes open, the gun trained on the door’s aperture, waiting for the next one to appear.