It seemed to take forever to drive the five miles or so from Ruth’s apartment to North Portland.
The new place turned out to be an old house built just before the Three Days War, in the early 1960s. A willow tree stood in the front yard, behind an overgrown hedge. I drove past, as instructed in the file, and parked in an empty lot two blocks away, beside another boarded-up building.
Ruth liked to say Portland had its ups and downs, but mostly downs. While I had been in Special Corrections another recession had hit Oregon. Portland still hadn’t recovered. Another reason why I’d had trouble finding work.
At least it made finding empty lots beside boarded-up buildings easier.
The rain came down even harder, pounding the pavement. I ran the whole three blocks to the house. The trees I passed murmured in a slumbering chorus.
I wondered if the green giants dreamed, or if the murmurs were just them trembling in their sleep? The thought rattled around in my head as I ran.
I reached the dark house. A towering row of arbor vitae surrounded the backyard. No fence. I eased my special sense into the arbor vitae, urged it to move. The bushes trembled and the branches shifted slowly to create an opening in front of me.
My stomach churned. I bent over and gagged bile. Awakening the slumbering plant hurt. It wasn’t like urging blackberry vines to grow, the arbor vitae moved so much slower.
I staggered through the opening.
I couldn’t do this every time I went through the arbor vitae. I sucked in air, straightened, and tried to ignore the flaring pain as I directed the hedge to close around the opening until a thin curtain of branches hid the passage.
That would have to do. I winced and massaged my side. The bullet wound was gone, but the exertion made my side ache where I’d been hit. Still couldn’t believe I’d nearly died.
Now here I was, about to sneak into my new place.
I unlocked the padlock on the back door with the key Support gave me, then unlocked the deadbolt. The top corners of the door frame were covered in old spiderwebs.
The air inside the house was musty. Not a huge surprise.
No lights, when I flicked a switch. On the kitchen counter was a battery-powered lamp, I flicked the penlight I’d been given on, and looked at it. A note written in block print said “use this.”
Okay, so I was an idiot.
I half expected to find a hoarder’s paradise, but the house was nearly empty. The floors were bare and the place was actually pretty neat for being “abandoned.” We-think-of-everything Support actually owned the house, and used foreclosure as a convenient cover. Must be nice to be able to control things like that. Assuming you didn’t mind doing everything because you were assisting the Hero’s Council. Yeah, I was feeling cynical.
The bedroom had a clean floor, a clean sleeping bag and pillow, and another battery-powered lamp.
I checked the bathroom—the plumbing worked. Thank God for small favors.
There were insta-meals in the cupboards—enough for weeks.
I should be starving, but I wasn’t hungry, despite my nearly killing myself getting the arbor vitae to play open sesame. I was restless. I paced the house until I got bored walking around the dark rooms.
I knelt in a corner and stared at the hardwood floor in the yellow lamplight. I traced my finger along the whorls in the pine. The pattern the whorls made pulled at me. I caressed the wood. I couldn't help myself. I extended my sense into the dead pine.
Sensations flashed in my mind. Sticky hot. Dry hot. Warm. Frozen water. Rain soaking, splashing, pounding.
I gasped. Past seasons ran through my mind. I trembled. I had never tried to reach into dead wood before. The seasons echoed through my mind, so many seasons, flying by now.
I struggled to pull my awareness away. The wood was dead. It should be easy, but there was something locked inside, a final message.
Pain’s sharp edge still screamed in the pine. Great pain. Searing pain still echoed in the dead wood. I jerked my awareness away from the tree, yanking my fingers off the floor. So much pain still locked away in that dead wood, the last impression of the pine tree’s life.
The next morning lasted forever. I woke, ate an insta-meal of oatmeal and apples, drank some instant coffee, and sat in a chair in the kitchen, waiting for Gus to call. But the damn phone remained silent.
I paced the house. Lunchtime came and went. I had no appetite but ate anyway. Pasta with chicken and broccoli.
Still no call from Gus.
Damn him, this was supposed to be a shoo-in. I exercised in my bedroom, pushups, dips using the windowsill, followed with squats and lunges but the nervous energy wouldn’t go away.
By 4PM I was ready to climb the walls. What was taking the little jerk so long? Screw it. I had to take a walk. I slipped out the back, checking to make sure no one was watching me, and slipped through the arbor vitae. I fast-walked down the street, hood up, face down.
I called the number Winterfield gave me from a pay phone at a gas station a few blocks away.
Always keep in persona, the briefing had stressed.
“Mister Winterfield, it’s Mathilda Brandt.”
“Good afternoon, Miss Brandt.”
We sounded like clichéd versions of the parolee and her PO, but this was the procedure.
“Have you heard back about that job?” Fake PO Winterfield asked.
I fought to keep the frustration out of my voice as I answered. “Not yet. I thought they would have called by now.”
“These things can take time, Miss Brandt. Keep me posted.”
Click. Gee thanks for the information, Winterfield. Always nice to chat with you. He was a big help.
All the next day, my phone remained silent. I didn’t hang out well. I needed to be doing something, moving this job forward. Not just sitting around on my ass and watching moss grow in the backyard.
The day after that I was not only ready to climb the walls, I was ready to tear them down.
I had to get out again.
After the sun went down, I got in the Dasher and drove over to Ruth’s. At least I could see how they were doing.
Yeah, I know, Support had specifically instructed me to not see my family, but the hell with them. I couldn’t wait around any longer.
I parked the car next to the storage building, and sat there for a long time, warring with myself. I had left with lots of drama, left like I was supposed to leave. Burned my bridges.
Screw it. I went up the stairs, shoulders hunched, and knocked on Ruth’s door. If I could talk to her, I could make things right.
I shifted my feet, stared at the door handle rather than the peephole.
The door’s deadbolt clacked. The door opened a couple of inches, the door chain still hooked.
Ella peered at me through the crack.
“Mat? What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see how things were going.”
“About the same.” Talk about a non-answer.
“How’s Ruth?”
“About the same.” Ella wasn’t budging. Come on open up, I wanted to shout. Let me in!
“Can I come inside? I want to talk to Ruth.”
Her expression hardened. “She doesn’t want to talk with you. I don’t either.” She closed the door in my face. I heard the sound of the deadbolt locking.
I stood there like an idiot, staring at the door, wishing it would open. I still had my key. I could unlock the door and slam it open, snapping the chain. It wouldn’t be hard.
I slunk down to the car and drove back to the house.
Noon the next day there was still no word from Gus. I’d had enough. I was going to track that weasel down and find out why he hadn’t called me. I had memorized his haunts from the files Support had me study. Typical Gus. Dive bars and bookstores, the grungier the better.
I went to his hidey-hole first. I climbed the fire escape and slipped inside.
No Gus. I cased the place. Just as when I'd first visited, p
iles of moldering newspapers and magazines clogged the place. There were dog-eared paperback books, a cassette player so old it was covered with chips and dings. The only tapes were classical. I hadn’t known Gus’s taste in music. He'd never seemed interested in music back in the Renegades, so I never imagined he would be into Brahms and Handel.
The copy of Great Expectations still lay on the old chair by the window.
I picked the book up. An Oregon Shakespearean Festival leather bookmark, one with a unicorn stenciled on it was in the book. The bookmark Gus had had since forever.
I left, and spent the rest of the day hitting up every dive bar and bookstore on the list. No sign of him. I asked around, mentioning I was a friend. None of the staff at the various places recalled seeing him lately. I got a few looks—no surprise there, they were probably all shocked that a young woman was looking for scummy Silco. That’s what my best friend Tanya used to call him back when we were in the Renegades together.
I can’t believe I had defended Gus, back then. Sure, he didn’t stink—no matter how much time he spent on the street—and his clothes, despite being old, always somehow managed to be clean, but he was a weasel.
He was still a weasel. He was hiding, or dead. It would be just my luck if he were dead. My chance of getting into the Scourge cell would be blown for good and with it, my freedom.
Winterfield wasn’t the understanding sort.
Then it hit me. I’d missed the obvious. Gus loved to read. He always had a book with him. Always. And he always had to finish what he started.
That copy of Great Expectations and the bookmark in it. He wouldn’t be parted more than a day from that bookmark, or from reading the book it was in. He had to get in his reading fix and, like I said, could only read one thing at a time.
Stupid—I should have saved myself the runaround.
I raced back to his hidey-hole. Up the fire escape and into the grunge.
No Gus. My heart pounded as I reached the end table. The book was still there.
Good. Now I just had to wait.
Of course, if he was dead, then I was out of luck, but if there was one thing I was sure of about Gus, besides his being a weasel supreme, it was that he was a survivor.
I’d never read Dickens, this was as good a time as any. I found a place near the window but out of sight of the outside, and settled in to read.
A soft clumping on metal brought me out of the story. Someone climbed the fire escape. My skin tingled in that way it did when another Empowered was near.
I slipped further in the room, deeper into the shadows. I reached with my power, brushed the ivy growing up the back of the building, urged it to strengthen and pull nitrogen from the air.
A silhouette appeared in the window, framed by daylight, and dropped down into the room.
Grow, I commanded the ivy and it snaked up, vines like hot wires in my mind, until it covered the window behind the figure.
The hood fell back, revealing Gus’s long tousled hair. He went to the end table, froze.
“Looking for this?” I held up the book. “Pretty good read.”
He jerked away from me, stumbled over a pile of magazines and fell backwards into another pile. And then he was gone.
The mesh of vine trembled. I pushed my essence into the mass, thickened the vines into rope.
Gus reappeared against the window, frantically trying to burrow through the tangle of green.
I grabbed his hood, hauled him off the windowsill, and then whirled him around to face me.
“I thought you were going to help me, Gus.” I pushed him away from the window and into a wall, still facing me.
“I tried, Mathilda, I tried, but they said no.”
“Who said no, Gus?”
He flinched away from my glare. “Mutter. The cell leader. He said no.”
“And you caved just like that? You promised me, Gus.” I didn’t have to fake my rage.
I slammed him into the wall.
“Ow,” he grunted.
Blood pounded in my ears. Everything was on the line here: my family. My freedom. This weasel wasn’t going to stop me from getting into the Scourge and completing my mission.
I leaned in close to him. “You promised,” I said in a low voice.
He sucked in air. “I couldn’t do anything. I tried, but you don’t know Mutter. He’ll kill me if I go against him.”
“Weasels always say they’ll get in trouble if there’s something they don’t want to do. You need to be worried about what I might do to you right now.”
I shoved him, hard, back into the wall. Banged him again. He had promised me, and again, he was letting me down.
He yelped, eyes squeezed in pain, and he suddenly stank of fear. He tried to blend into the wall, but I still held him.
“Mat, please, please! You have to believe me, I wanted to help you, really!” The words tumbled out of him in quick bursts. “I went to Mutter, told him I had a new recruit. I figured he’d be pleased, but he asked all sorts of questions. When he found out you’d just been released, he lost interest. Said you wouldn’t work out.”
“Wouldn’t work out, what the hell does that mean?”
He shrank against the wall.
I must have looked like murder.
“He doesn’t think you are right for the cell.
Killing Gus wouldn’t get me anywhere except back in prison for good. Think, Mat, think! I told myself.
I had to find this Mutter and show him I was what his cell needed.
I relaxed my grip on Gus. “I need this, Gus. Take me to Mutter and I’ll convince him I can help.”
He shook his head, suddenly frantic. “I can’t! Wish I could, really I do, but he’ll kill me. Slowly.”
The fear in Gus’s eyes was real.
I switched to guilting him.
“You promised me you could help,” I said. “Promised. I’m in a bad way. I need money, help—a way out of this mess. I pull off a crime on my own, and I’ll be caught, but if I’m in your group things will be different, I know they will.” I laid it on thick. I hated lying, but what choice did I have?”
I let that sink in.
“You go and think about this, Gus.” I dragged him over to the window. “I’ll hold onto your book while you do, and just wait here.”
I waved my hand, willed the vines to part. I brushed against one, heavy with seeds. I ordered it to separate just below the buds. Palmed a sprig.
Gus rubbed his face. “Mat, I’m sorry.”
“Go, think about what I said. Talk to Mutter.”
Gus’s problem was that below his weaselly exterior there really was a conscience. I bet it would push him to go to the big, bad cell leader and ask Mutter to reconsider my application for Scourge membership.
He started to say something else, but he took one look at my face and turned to climb over the sill.
I snuck the sprig into a hole in the back of his jacket, and flowered the vine, filling it with life, willing it spread out in the lining of his jacket just enough that it could live.
He climbed down the fire escape and blended in with the junk around the fence.
I gave him a minute and then followed, holding another piece of the same vine in my hand.
Back when I was in the Renegades I used to plant a sprig or a blossom on someone when I wanted to follow them. Worked really well on normals, and it also let me track Gus. Tanya and I used to call Gus “Creepo Supremo” behind his back. He liked to pop out of nowhere and talk to us in that nervous stutter of his. Once I planted a dandelion on him, kept it alive while I followed him around with Tanya. Tanya was a “peeper”, an Empowered who could see out of someone else’s eyes, as long as she could see that person.
Like I said, Gus’s blending didn’t make him invisible, it just made him really hard to spot. As long as I kept close after I “planted” him— a hundred yards, or two hundred at most—I knew where he was. If I knew where Gus was, I could spot him. Then Tanya could see through my ey
es to see Gus, and then see out of his eyes.
He’d come back and Tanya would spin all kinds of stories about how she could read the mind of a “susceptible” Empowered at a distance.
The Professor let us have our fun. Gus bought it hook, line, and sinker
He never got angry, just frightened. I guess it made Tanya seem awesomely powerful if she could scan him from any distance, because he was “susceptible” to her power.
I wonder if things would have gone differently if I’d “planted” a sprig on him the day the Hero Council came down on the Renegades like God’s hammer.
I pushed the memory away. No time for bad memories.
No way I was going to blow this chance. Winterfield would be pissed when he found out what I was doing, but that was the breaks. No time to ask for permission, so I’d settle for forgiveness.
It started raining as I followed Gus over the Burnside Bridge. New high-rise buildings cut off the view of the West Hills. Broken bottles, old cigarette stubs, newspapers, and other crap littered the sidewalk. The Hero Council’s “clean patrol,” one of its youth organizations for “normals,” could stand to make a visit.
I kept Gus in sight. The sprig riding in his field jacket pulsed in my mind. Gus was a shadowy figure, almost like one of those paper cutouts, standing out against the background of the city.
A car passing by me hit a big puddle. Water sheeted up. I ducked, threw up my arm to cover my head. Still got soaked. I wiped my face, swore. Blinked.
Gus had vanished.
I started running. I dodged a couple of streeters pushing shopping carts filled with junk. Jumped over an occupied sleeping bag.
It stopped raining, and the clouds parted. A white blimp was high overhead, with the blue Hero Council logo on the side, a stylized “HC” with a globe between the letters.
Shit. I skidded to a stop, my heart hammering in my ears. That thing bristled with high-powered cameras. I ducked my head. The surveillance blimps were new, rolling out while I was in Special Corrections. All part of the “keep the world safe for normals,” initiative. They recorded everything out in public, to pick up any crimes. The UN was still hashing out building a camera network in US cities on the ground, so this was supposedly a temporary thing, showcasing what it could do. Portland shared one with Salem and Eugene to the south.
Empowered: Agent (The Empowered Series Book 1) Page 8
