by James Moore
“I thought that was a given.” He shrugged.
“You haven’t figured out the part that matters, boy.”
Seven arched an eyebrow and leaned back as best he could on his metal table. “Pray tell.”
“I decide how long that life is.” Her lips curled slowly into a smile that was as cold as his, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “And I decide how much pain you feel for the entire time I let you live.”
The smile on his face crumbled, and for just a moment he let his rage out as well. His teeth actually changed in front of her, growing slightly longer as he roared, “You better be damned sure about that, Evelyn! You better know for certain that I’m never getting away! Because if I do—if I ever manage to break loose again—I’ll ruin everything you ever loved!”
“You already did that!” Her voice broke as she screamed and she felt George’s hands on her shoulders urging her back, trying to get her out of the room—but she shrugged him off and moved forward, her hand slapping across Seven’s mouth, smashing his flesh and drawing blood. “You already took everything away!”
She felt the blood on her fingers along with the spittle that she’d brushed from his mouth with her blow and backed away, realizing exactly how easily he could have taken her fingers had he been fast enough to react. One does not place one’s hand in the mouth of a lion.
Instead of roaring anymore, Seven’s smile returned, broader than before, though no less sadistic. Pink trails of blood dripped across his teeth as he asked, “How’s little Gabby these days?”
George’s hands grabbed Evelyn’s shoulders again and forcefully pulled her from the room before she could respond. She looked at her second in command with wide eyes and realized she couldn’t feel her face. Shock was beginning to set in. Seven did that to her. He got her so rattled she didn’t even use the command phrase when she had the chance.
She should have been furious with her personal assistant, but she couldn’t be. She was too grateful. For just one moment, she’d been ready to beg for Gabby’s life.
Insanity. Gabriel was strong and capable, and his Doppelganger, Rafael, was one of the best soldiers she had ever seen. Surely Subject Seven wouldn’t win in a fight between them. Rafael had already bested Seven in combat.
She kept telling herself that as she walked away. Still in the back of her head was that little voice, the one that belonged to the woman who answered to Evvy back when she was far more innocent. That voice kept whispering in her head, asking the question she didn’t want to ask: Who’s really the captive here?
Chapter Thirty
Joe Bronx
JOE CLOSED HIS EYES and listened to the sounds of the people leaving.
He wondered why it was that he hadn’t bitten down and taken a few fingers when he had the chance. He should have. Instead of dwelling on it, he ran his tongue across his swollen lips and tasted his own blood. The flesh was already mending, knitting seamlessly back to what it should have been. He’d taken a bullet through his arm a few days ago, and that wound was barely even a memory anymore—just one more scar among many.
He’d riled her. That made him happy in a way that little else did. He was where he wanted to be, but not in the right way. What she’d said was true: he could feel the drugs coursing through his system and try as he might, he couldn’t hear the others in his head. Either the drugs were dulling his senses a bit or his new allies were dead. He didn’t much like that notion. He should have been able to hear them, to feel them, and there was nothing, and that bothered him more than he wanted to admit, because already he was growing very used to hearing them. They helped keep him calmer.
And they were gone.
And he was alone.
Again.
He shook the thought away. They were expendable. All of them. They were just pawns that he needed to get what he wanted from the world. He didn’t dare let them be more than that, because he’d already lost the other Subjects when he was younger, hadn’t he? He’d barely survived that. He needed to remember that they were only important as long as he needed them. No feelings, no connections, because those things led to pain that was nearly impossible to get past.
Deep breaths. He made himself stay calm, because losing it wouldn’t do him the least bit of good. He’d learned the hard way that he had to have patience to survive in the world. Even when the world was one little room.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to play out. He wanted to get an advantage over Evelyn. He needed that. He needed her properly afraid of him or she would never help him. She was the only one who could, much as he hated that notion. Her or one of her flunkies, one of them somewhere had to know how to get rid of his Other. He needed that freedom.
Chapter Thirty-One
Not-Tina
SOLE DEMARCO HANDED OVER the weapons without any trouble at all, especially after she waved the money under his nose. He wasn’t smart, but he was greedy and that made her happy. After that, Not-Tina felt a little better about the way her day was going.
Fun fact she did not expect: lots of people put their phone numbers out for the public to see. Josh Warburton was one of them. He was actually that stupid. It wasn’t the phone number that was the problem for him, though; it was the address. She found his home with remarkable ease, and then she stowed a few weapons at a house about a block away.
A casual stroll through the neighborhood told her most of what she needed to know. First, she got a good whiff of the man’s house and realized that several people lived there. Judging by the toys in the front and back yards, he had at least two kids. She also saw the maid service go in, so she got to see his wife answer the door. Nice place. Tina could have fit around ten of her last apartments in there.
She also got a good idea of what the man smelled like. Maybe not quite good enough to track him from his house to work, unfortunately, but definitely good enough to recognize him when he came home. That was the best part about scents: they lingered like fingerprints. If Warburton walked to work, she could have followed him. He took a car, and the smells from his car weren’t distinct enough for her to separate out from all the other vehicles on the road. Maybe given enough time, but she hadn’t really had much practice at any of this yet, and she was winging it.
So instead she waited, patient as could be, for Warburton to come home. Meanwhile, she needed to take care of other matters.
She was starting a war. That takes time and effort. The money she’d used earlier was earmarked for costs and expenses while she was in town, hotel rooms and travel and all sorts of other things, but while that mattered to Joe and she liked Joe, it wasn’t the only priority in Not-Tina’s mind. She had vendettas of her own to handle. Scarabelli and his lieutenants came immediately to mind.
While she sat in the bushes of the house closest to Warburton’s place, she contemplated the issues she had to get boiling a little faster if she wanted her plans to work.
Sol DeMarco liked to talk when he was working. He liked to brag, especially to pretty girls. Maybe Not-Tina wasn’t as fine as Kyrie or her counterpart, but she had been good enough to keep Sol’s attention all on her own. She had listened while he bragged, and she had flirted and made sure that he knew how impressed she was by all of his connections. And like all men who like to brag, he had dropped names.
The cell phone in her back pocket worked just fine. She dialed the number from memory as she leaned against the brick wall in the upscale neighborhood. School had let out, and kids her own age walked past, most of them lost in the drama of their own lives, not the least bit interested in the chaos she was brewing. Maybe if it got made into a movie, they’d care. Either way, they barely mattered to her, except for the blond boy who walked past. He was damned cute. She bet she could put a smile on his face.
Instead she listened until the fourth ring, and when Scarabelli’s voice told her to leave a message, she did. “You know who this is,” she purred into the phone. “I just wanted to let you know I got some help to take care of you.
Niko Belucci sends his love. Says when I see you, I should remind you about his cousin and that little thing that was supposed to happen that didn’t.” She paused for a moment and closed her eyes, imagining his fat face as he heard the words. “I’m coming for you, piggy. You’re gonna be squealing soon. You’re gonna bleed.”
She hung up the phone and smiled, knowing he was going to go nuts when he heard her words. He was also going to get himself into a lot of trouble with one of Chicago’s meanest dogs. She liked to think about how that would play out. She could almost imagine him going into one of his rants. His little fits amused her.
The warm glow she got from thinking about Scarabelli all pissed off kept her comfy and cozy for the next two hours while she waited for her target to finally come home. She still waited, settling back and staring through the hedges next to the house.
There were things she still had to consider.
And she was waiting for her orders.
What’s my name? The thought came to her unbidden, and she craned her head around to make sure no one had snuck up close to her. Not-Tina wasn’t so much a name as a way to separate her from the screaming little crybaby locked inside her at the moment. She knew that. She should have come up with a name before then, but she had been busy with other things, more important things, like the tattoo on her arm and pissing off the mobsters that had offended her by being alive.
A flutter of fear ran through her. The feeling was mostly a ghost, a little leftover emotion from Tina, but this time it was real and that meant she had to consider it. If she was afraid, there had to be a reason.
Not-Tina shook that away. No. She didn’t do fear. She didn’t like to be afraid. That was Tina’s way. She was afraid of having a name? Forget that!
“Theresa. That’s my name.” It was just that simple. She spoke her name and that ghost of fear went away. Of course she knew what it was. Commitment. Having a name was something permanent, and she didn’t like things that were forever. She liked things to change, give or take the occasional tattoo. That was the other difference between her and Tina. Tina wanted everything to be calm and stable, and Theresa didn’t like that at all. She liked things to be crazy.
She let herself smile a bit and was about to find a different hiding place when the man she’d been waiting on came home.
He never made it to the front door.
Theresa slid out of the hedges in a low crouch and looked Josh Warburton over. He was a little butterball of a man, but she knew a guy didn’t have to be all muscles and guns to have power. Scarabelli had taught her that. That fat old bastard had ruined Tina’s father and mother without ever touching them. He had that kind of power. So did Warburton.
Josh Warburton probably never touched Tina in his life—or Theresa for that matter—but he was responsible for what they were, same as Evelyn Hope. He had people that worked for him. He had power.
Theresa envied that. So she was more than glad to take it from him.
Before he could scream, Theresa had her hand over his mouth and was pulling him to the side of his house. She’d looked the place over carefully. This spot, on the right side of the house, just under the start of the back porch, was dark and secluded, and the neighbors didn’t have windows that looked down on it.
Warburton grunted and fought, his hands punching and clawing at her even as she dragged his little piggy self around the side of the house, an enormous structure that he probably thought of as his castle. Theresa pushed him down into the dirt and debris under the porch, into the shadows where he hid the imperfect parts of his world, cast-off gardening gloves and a hose that had seen better days along with a few of his kids’ toys that had long since lost their appeal.
He deserved to see the darker parts of his life a little better. Theresa was glad to be the one to show him.
He was a grown man and he was strong for his size, but he wasn’t physically created to be a killer. She was. When he looked into her face for a moment, she knew he recognized her for what she was too. Maybe there was something about studying the subjects they’d killed that let the fat man understand what made her different. Maybe he was just realizing that she’d kill him as soon as look at him. Either way was okay with Theresa. Either way he finally calmed down, panting heavily against the hand that covered his mouth.
“You Josh?” She leaned in closer and looked into his eyes. He was thinking about lying. She could tell by the way he didn’t quite look into her eyes. “Before you answer, I’ve already looked inside, seen the wife, the kids, the maid. I’ll kill them all if you lie to me. Don’t think I’m kidding. I’ve killed worse for less.” That wasn’t quite true, but it was close.
He nodded and sighed against her palm and fingers. She nodded in return and spoke softly. “This is between you and me. No one else has to be involved. But if you scream or get stupid, I’ll make you watch while I kill ’em.”
She leaned in even closer, her body hovering over his in a way that some would have found compromising, though she knew neither of them were even close to feeling frisky in that way. “Here’s the thing. You and your people, you made me and mine. You took my friends away. All of them. I want them back.” She took her hand away from his mouth so she could see his face.
“What do you want me to do?”
“You’re going to tell me where they are. And then you’re going to help me get to them.”
“I can’t do that.” His voice was trembling a bit, but he was good at trying to hide it.
Her hand covered his mouth again, tightly.
Theresa leaned in until her lips were against his ear. “Don’t scream, or I’ll kill your family.” The words were whispered as softly as a baby’s breath.
Theresa caught his hand in hers and sought just one digit. The sound of his little finger breaking was only a little louder than her voice had been.
Warburton gasped, and despite her warning, the pain made him scream. He bucked and thrashed and she pinned him in place, smiling at his discomfort. Even at her worst, Tina would have felt bad for the man. Theresa just enjoyed the show.
“That was one. Give me three screams, they all die. Not kidding around here. Mean it.” She kept her voice low, and even when he tried to roll over and get away, she held her lips close to his ear and kept him pinned in place.
Her eyes looked him over and the expression on her face told exactly how little she thought of what she was seeing. “You think you’re so damned tough. So smart and so rich. You aren’t anything that I can’t get rid of, Josh. You get me?” Her voice was pure venom and hatred, and she let that much show without hesitation. She wanted him to know exactly how much she could ruin him.
“I only dislocated one little joint. You’re smart. You can tell all your friends how you closed your finger in the car door, and everyone will believe you. Trust me, this is nothing. I can do a lot worse, stuff you can’t begin to hide.” She sniffed. He stank of fear and pain.
She let her hand leave his mouth again.
“I have money.” He wanted to bargain.
“So do I. If I want more, I’ll get it. What I want from you is my friends.” She looked into his eyes. He was scared, but not scared enough. Not yet.
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked again.
Theresa smiled and leaned in so close she could have kissed him if she wanted. She most definitely did not want that. “You know what I am?”
“A Doppelganger.”
“No. A Failure. You and yours, you threw me out with the dishwater. I’m supposed to be dead. So, really, I ain’t got a lot to lose here.” She smiled to make her point. “And what little I have, you just took away from me. Those other Failures, see, they’re all I’ve got left. You took my family. I want it back.” She covered his hand again and found a second finger, and though he wanted to fight, he didn’t dare. “Or I take from you. I take everything. I kill that pretty family. I break your legs. I break your hands. I break out your teeth and leave you to find them and collect them with your
broken fingers. You getting me here?”
He nodded vigorously. “Yes. Got you.” She smiled and released his finger, unbroken this time.
“Tell me where my family is. You tell me where the others you took from me are, Josh Warburton, or I. Will. Destroy. You.”
She sat up and moved off of him, letting him slowly sit up. His eyes were wide now, fearful. There might have been a little craftiness hiding in there before, but it was difficult to detect if it was still there.
“What do you want from me?”
“You need to do everything you can to make sure my family is safe so that your family can be safe.”
The two of them left the shadows under his house and moved toward his car together.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kyrie Merriwether/Not-Kyrie
KYRIE LOOKED AT HANK with concern. He was sweating so much that he’d soaked through the simple jumpsuit he wore. The garment had been fitted to Cody, and the difference in their sizes left the fabric strained and taut across his body. His face was turned away from her at first, but eventually he looked toward her with eyes that saw nothing at all. He didn’t focus on her; he merely aimed his eyes in her general direction.
Gene coughed and sighed. “We’re never getting out of here.”
“Can you not be so negative? We don’t even know what’s going on, not really.”
“You think so?” Gene laughed, but it wasn’t an amused sound. “You think they’re going to let us go? They’re going to either cut us open and see what makes us tick, or they’re just going to kill us. You heard the others. We shouldn’t even exist.”
It was Hank that answered, before Kyrie could come up with a proper response. “We’ll get out. I have a plan.”
Gene laughed again and Kyrie hated him right then, because even his laugh sounded bitter and angry. “You have a plan? Well, I feel all reassured now, brother.”
