Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book Seven

by Crane, Robert J.

  “So you’re suggesting we write off that cloister in Scotland?” Reed asked, looking at me, dazed. “You’re suggesting we let those people die?”

  “I’m not suggesting it, Reed.” I looked back at him tenderly. “I’m saying it flat out. They’re dead already. As much as I wish we could save them, even if we reach them in time, there’s no guarantee he’s going to be on his way there. He could be heading here right now.” I looked at the stripped-down office. “He’s coming here, guaranteed. He may hit Scotland now, he may hit it later, but he’s coming here, for sure, and nothing is going to stop him unless I’m here to do it.” I thumped my hand against the desk again, harder this time. “I can’t gamble with the lives of the people here on the chance of being able to save those folks in Scotland.”

  “How thoroughly practical of you,” Reed said coldly. “Looks like Old Man Winter has taught you well.”

  “What did you say?” I let the chill creep into my voice.

  “You heard me,” Reed said. “You just let the emotion bleed right out. ‘There’s no guarantee …’ As if there’s a guarantee of success if you stay here?” He jabbed a finger at me. “You realize Weissman and Madigan are out there still? Madigan knows her way around Omega HQ, she can show them how to get in without any difficulty. You’re writing off those people in Scotland—very coldly, I might add—calculating that the odds are better that you’ll be able to save the people here. I’m telling you that you might not be able to. It’s not just a Hades that’s going to be coming. Weissman has out-thought us at every juncture, and he’s gotta know he just put all his remaining enemies in one camp. That means he’s not worried about us. He’s not worried about you,” Reed amended. “He’s gonna finish Europe by rolling over us here and then we’re done. Say goodbye to the whole eastern hemisphere, because Century will own it when it comes to the meta world.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I yelled at him. “I mean, seriously? I’m one person. I’m eighteen years old, Reed! Until two weeks ago, I was just a follower, riding along on the coattails of other people who were smarter and more organized than I was, okay? I have one thing in me, and that’s that I know how to fight. That’s all I have to bring to the table. So when I tell you that making our stand here is the smartest move because otherwise we’re going to lose the cloister in Scotland as well as get everyone in this place killed, you can take that as the word of an eighteen-year-old girl who’s both scared and more than a little pissed that she’s having to play janitor and protector to the remains of a group of people who have hounded her since day effing one, okay? This is a mess, all right, and it’s not mine, but somehow I seem to be the one that gets to mop it up. And I get to do it all less than two weeks after my first love was killed and while I’m trying to figure out if I’m pregnant with his baby!”

  Reed staggered back like he’d been slapped. “You’re …” His face narrowed in horror and his voice went to a hushed whisper. “You’re pregnant? HOW?”

  “The whole family needs remedial education in that, I suppose,” Breandan said to no one in particular.

  “Dr. Sessions made a … suit …” I said. “For Zack. Before he …” I shut up, watching both Karthik and Breandan find immense interest in their shoelaces and the London skyline, respectively. “Anyway … I don’t want to be in charge of saving the world of metas, because we’re probably gonna fail.” I rubbed my hand over my face. “So, seriously. Who wants to be in charge? I’d vote for any of you.”

  “Yeah, no,” Breandan said, “my vote’s for you.” He looked around sheepishly. “You know, if I get a vote. Not really sure what the Parliamentary procedures are here, being someone who rather drifted in and all.”

  I brushed aside my hand and focused on Karthik. “This is your party, Karthik. Your house, your rules.”

  Karthik shook his head. “I’m afraid that while I am a fairly good tactical leader of a squad, I lack the long-range vision and experience to run even the fragments that remain of Omega. I defer to your experience.”

  “My experience?” I asked with amusement. “My experience is running a baby squad of metas for three months after I finished training.”

  “You’re the most powerful of us,” Reed said in a strangled voice. I looked at him, and he looked back, giving me a shrug. “Probably the most experienced team leader, too, given that Karthik just deferred to you.”

  “You were just bashing the hell out of my decision to make this our defense point a minute ago,” I said, trying to see if there was something behind his eyes that he was hiding, some sarcasm I wasn’t detecting.

  “I was bashing the lack of emotion behind it,” he said calmly. “I didn’t question the logic of it, I just hate that you’ve had to come to a point where you see it as a game of probabilities instead of a battle for the lives of people.”

  I felt my mouth dry out. “There are numbers behind the people.” I lowered my voice. “Two hundred and fifty-four.”

  Breandan cocked his head. “Sorry, what?”

  “It’s the number of people who died when Sienna first faced off against Wolfe,” Reed said, never taking his eyes off me. “I honestly kinda figured you’d forgotten.”

  I shook my head slowly. “Never.”

  Reed gave me a slow nod of understanding. “All right, then. What’s the play?”

  “Umm …” I thought for a second. “We need everything we can get. Can you bluff those mercs at your safehouse into coming over here to help us establish a perimeter?”

  “If you’re okay with throwing away their lives,” Reed said.

  I sighed. “Is there anything … anything at all that you’ve got at your safehouse that could help us here?”

  “Some guns,” he said with a shrug. “Half of them were the ones you had with you when we rescued you.”

  “We could certainly use those,” Karthik said. “We’ve had to ship out quite a few these last months, trying to arm human agents to shore up weaknesses in our roster.”

  Reed gave him a nod. “I’ll get them over here and take inventory over what we’ve got, see if there’s anything else that would help. I doubt I can get the mercs over here—I don’t even feel good about trying, going into this fight—but I’ll ask. See what I can do.”

  “All right, you do that,” I said. “Karthik, I need a full assessment of what Omega has at our disposal. Every meta better be ready to fight if it comes down to that. This may be a game of seconds, if Weissman comes into play, and we’ll need to stop him for as many of them as we can. Get me a list.” I paused. “And something else—I need Omega’s files relating to a succubus named Adelaide as well as whatever you have on me and my family, including my grandfather.”

  Karthik nodded seriously. “Do you have a name for him?”

  I shook my head. “She called him Mr. Nealon when she killed him, and I never heard my mother mention his name, or that of his wife. Janus said they debriefed my grandmother later in life, though.”

  Karthik gave me a look that was filled with tempered optimism. “We have two analysts remaining, both metas who are staying here for protection. They know their way around Omega’s systems. I’ll see what I can get them to do. It’ll be a good distraction.” He gave the office a look. “We also need to decide where we’re going to set up. Defending the whole building will be … problematic, especially from Eleanor. She’s worked here for years, after all. She has more clearance in this building than I do.”

  “We make our stand on this floor,” I said. “The open air layout is ideal for a fight if we can get rid of those damned cubicles.”

  He smiled. “I can pretty well guarantee that we have the muscle on hand to get those out of the way quickly enough. Anything else?”

  “That should do it for now,” I said and looked to Breandan. “I need you to get me a pregnancy test.”

  Breandan looked at me, slack-jawed. “Why does this particular chore fall upon me?”

  I didn’t glare at him, exactly. “Is there anything el
se you could be doing right now to help us prepare for the battle?”

  He gave a slow, resigned nod. “Right you are, then. Old-fashioned or digital?”

  I gave him a cocked eyebrow. “Picked out a few of them in your time?”

  He shrugged. “For those who can make contact with the opposite sex, we do tend to enjoy the sort of activities that might lead to the tensest three days of one’s life.” He didn’t smile. “Speaking hypothetically, of course.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course.”

  He tossed a look at Karthik. “Got a corner store nearby?”

  “Sure,” Karthik said. “I’ll have one of our floaters show you the way.”

  “Thank you,” I said, looking from the two of them to Reed. “Thank you all.”

  “You’re the one in charge now,” Reed said with a faded smile, “I think we should technically be thanking you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” I said. “Save it until it’s all over.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Breandan agreed. “Wouldn’t want to go thanking you before we survived, after all. What if we went and gave you all this gratitude, and then we ended up dying in this little last stand? Truly a waste, it’d be.” He slapped Karthik on the back, dragging him toward the door.

  Reed lingered as Karthik shut the door behind them. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I keep waiting for the next betrayal, for Breandan to turn around to me and be like, ‘I’ve been working for Century all this time!’ before he stabs me in the back.”

  Reed squinted at me in deep thought. “From what you just described, it sounds like he’d be looking you in the face. Hard to stab you in the back from the front. Unless he was a contortionist.” He pondered that for a moment, dark face turning into a deep frown. “Are there contortionist metas?”

  I let out a little noise of impatience. “You know what I mean. Kat betrayed us before the Directorate went down. My mom left me just before things went all to hell. The people I placed my trust in turned out to be liars and murderers.” I felt my face drop into my palms. “I just wish … I knew what to do. You’re all looking at me like I’m a leader, and I’m gonna do everything I can, but I’m sitting here terrified, wondering who’s going to turn on me next. I feel like I don’t even know who my enemies are anymore.” I laughed mirthlessly. “I’m running Omega, Reed. Take a moment to marvel at the irony of that.”

  He put a hand awkwardly on my shoulder. “Life’s not clear like that, Sienna. It’s not a collection of straight-line paths to your objectives. People don’t yell out, ‘Ha ha! I am betraying you!’ just before they break your heart. In spite of how you’re feeling, not everyone’s a bad guy.” His look turned sour. “Hard for me to admit, as we’re currently not just in bed with Omega, my worst enemy, but fully … uh …” He peered at me and his olive skin grew flushed. “Never mind. Bad analogy, given … uh … What I mean is, when it comes to trusting people, you’ve had a damned unlucky run. But I think … even the Irishman seems to be genuinely afraid. And we’re all looking to you because you’re a fighter.” He made a mirthless chuckle. “We’re all looking to you because maybe it’s obvious that you’re the one of us that’s most prepared for this … because you’ve been through all those things.”

  “I’d rather have been through none of it and be able to sit at the back of the room with Zack, unnoticed,” I said. “I don’t want to be the kind of person that it’s going to take to win this fight.” I felt a lump in my throat. “I don’t want to be the kind of person who kills so casually and never feels anything bad about it … a monster. I never wanted to be a murderer, Reed, never wanted to be some thoughtless killer who could do what Charlie did and just drain a man, or be like Fries and casually kill because I wanted to, because it sated some thirst in me.” I wiped my eyes. “I thought I was different. I thought I could just be me.”

  “That was never gonna be part of the deal,” Reed said, leaning some pressure onto the hand on my shoulder. “You’ve always been destined for this. Your powers decided it, your mother prepared you for it, and every step you’ve taken has made you harder, made you the kind of person that everyone looks at and says, ‘I think she’s tougher than me. I’m following her.’ He wrapped his arms around me, and I felt the warmth of an embrace, something I couldn’t recall feeling since the day Zack had died. “I think by the time this is all over, you might be the only person who’s still sorry that you did go through the fire you have. Because the rest of us … as unfair as it is … are counting on this new girl to save us from the hell that’s coming to kill us all.”

  Chapter 32

  Reed left shortly thereafter, and I lay down on the couch while waiting for Breandan to return. Thoughts were blurring through my head, a thousand of them, a million of them. For the first few minutes I could hear the sound of cubicles being moved outside the doors of the office. After a few minutes I tuned them out, though, focusing instead on my own thoughts, on the smell of the smoke from the previous occupant of this office, the lingering sweet aroma of it. It settled in the back of my nose with the acid that my stomach was churning, begging me to eat something. I thought about opening the door, saying something to Karthik or someone else, but I couldn’t get up. I didn’t want to look them in the face. I wondered if any of the others, the ones Karthik was speaking for, thought I was a bad choice. I laughed at that out loud in the quiet dark of the office as the day drew to an end outside. If anyone wanted to stage a coup, they were welcome to the responsibility that I’d picked up purely by accident. I didn’t want it.

  My mind turned over the other responsibility I’d been considering, too. The idea that I could end up being a mother was downright bone chilling. I was eighteen, technically I was unemployed (doing volunteer work, I supposed), a single mother (unless you counted the voice in my head as the father, which sadly, for sharing responsibility, I really didn’t—sorry, Zack). I knew nothing about kids, having never been around them. I tried to remember my own childhood, but everything I could see of it was all after we’d shut ourselves in the house, after mom had basically rolled up the carpet and closed up shop, locking me away from the world.

  And if I failed to stop Century, it bothered me to admit, I’d just about have to do the same.

  I ran a hand over my belly. It felt just as flat as it had a week earlier, two weeks earlier, a month earlier. There was no sign of anything amiss. If I was pregnant, it was soon into the goings, maybe a couple weeks along. That was still a big ‘if.’ The idea of what I’d have to do to protect a child made me nauseous. In a world run by Century, where a telepath could be hanging around a city at any time, waiting to find a meta to sic a team on, isolating yourself and hiding was just about the only recourse, unless you wanted to take on a hundred metas all by yourself.

  That line of thought alarmed me. Just by contemplating these things, these fears, considering how I’d handle things, didn’t that make me as bad as my mother? If my back was against the wall, would I do the same things she did under the pretense of keeping my daughter or son ‘safe’?

  Would I lock my child away to protect her from certain death if we were found? I swallowed heavily and wondered if that was what Mother had been thinking when she did all the things to me that she did. Once upon a time, only a couple weeks earlier, I had believed that I was the sort of person who wouldn’t cross lines, who believed that there were certain things that were just wrong, that I wouldn’t do in the name of winning, of beating my enemies. There was a time when I couldn’t even bring myself to kill.

  Now I wondered if there was anything I wouldn’t do to stop Century from killing every meta on the face of the planet.

  Sometime after I had that thought, I drifted off into sleep, and the world changed around me. I was with Adelaide again, and time had shifted. I watched as the darkness took form, becoming the office around me, the same one I had been lying in when I had fallen asleep.

 
“He’ll be along shortly,” Janus said, shifting back and forth on his feet. Janus wasn’t a man predisposed to show his nerves, at least not in my short experience with him. His discomfort was tangible, and he stood there with a file folder, shuffling it back and forth between each hand.

  “Why am I here?” Adelaide asked, and I could see her nerves showing as well. She stood next to one of the bookcases, eyeing the titles on the shelf. She looked up. “Is this about my next assignment?”

  “I am not sure,” Janus said, taking a look toward the couch, the one I had been sleeping on. It was empty, unoccupied, the yellow upholstery looking to be in slightly better repair than what I was lying on some twenty-odd years later. “Would you care to have a seat?”

  “No, thanks,” Adelaide said. “I should … probably just keep myself out of trouble.” She pulled her hand away from the bookshelf, as though she were afraid of damaging the dusty, leather-bound volumes.

  “You are no trouble,” Janus said with quiet calm. “You are … one of our best, if I am being honest.”

  Adelaide gave him a weak smile in return. “If you’re being honest? Does that mean you’re not honest that often?”

  Janus chuckled. “It means I’m often not allowed to give a frank assessment. Unbridled truth often gets sacrificed on the altar of the greater good.”

  She watched him with eyes that showed a clever intelligence, and I wondered what she was thinking. “Does that mean you have to hold things back in order to be good at your job?”

  Janus stared out the window, his reaction not immediate. “I suppose it does,” he said after a moment. “If we are being honest,” he flashed her a smile, “that galls me as well. Since the day I was old enough to associate myself with the world our kind created, I have been a servant to others who had more power than I. True, I was an influencer, an advisor, but a servant nonetheless. I have always tried to do the right thing in every circumstance.” He cast his gaze down and pulled off his glasses. He tugged a handkerchief from his pocket and began to wipe the lenses. “At times, it has meant telling one person a particular kind of truth and telling another a completely different one.”