“Ya think?” I squeezed my arms tight around myself. “He was dead set on releasing it worldwide somehow. Fortunately, he confessed that he didn’t have the delivery apparatus in place for it yet.”
Foreman shook his head. “I don’t think I got him to confess everything. There was something else in there, something guarded under a layer I couldn’t get through—fear deeper than any ocean. There’s more than he was telling you.”
“Gah,” I said, throwing my head back. It strained my neck, squeezing my spine together. “What could be worse than what he already threw out there?”
“I don’t know,” Foreman said, shaking his head, “but I suppose you have enough problems to be getting along with as it is.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “I haven’t even figured out how I’m going to contain Cavanagh. Dude shifts gravity with a thought. I expect he can crunch his way out of any cell we can put him in, so I’m guessing we’re going to be feeding him a steady diet of his own suppressant for as long as he lives.”
Foreman hesitated there, and he’d been looking like he was ready to head back to the car only a second earlier. “About that …” he started.
“Yeah, I know,” I said, feeling a world-weariness settle on me. “It wasn’t very … pragmatic of me, was it?”
“Seems like this cat would fall into the same category as the Cassandra in England,” Foreman said, “too dangerous to live, at least in Sienna’s world.”
“Maybe I had a sentimental moment,” I said, covering my face out of, I don’t know—shame?
“I don’t think that’s it at all,” Foreman said. “That young man you’ve been hanging around with—I get the feeling he’s been … an influence on you.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “You make him sound like booze or a teenager’s badass friend.”
Foreman chuckled, and I’d forgotten what a pleasant sound it was. “Didn’t mean it like that. Your emotional state now versus earlier today—it’s like night and day. I’m no psychiatrist, but I might suggest that you do something to keep that darkness at bay.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked. “What would you suggest to do that?”
“Hire that fellow for your team,” Foreman said, and now he did start walking away.
“I figured you’d come down harder on me for not making the pragmatic decision to kill Cavanagh,” I said. “I … didn’t expect you to go in this direction. Are you sure you’re still the same guy who wanted to blackmail me into taking the government job?”
“No,” Foreman said as he opened the door and leaned against it. “I saw things working with you that … changed my view of the world in a lot of ways. Hard-nosed pragmatism can’t always win, Sienna.” He stared me down. “Killing every single threat to humanity in the most brutal, expedient method possible is the work of an executioner, not a human being. For all your mantra of ‘I do what I have to do,’ I wonder how many times you’ve considered that these people you’ve killed are the lowest sort of scum in most cases. They aren’t ambiguous characters. They made choices that made them into the villains, choices that put them in place to kill a lot of innocent people.” He shook his head. “No, I don’t mourn them for their loss, and I never questioned your decisions to kill when you thought it was necessary.” His expression softened just a hair. “I did, however, occasionally worry about what those decisions were doing to you.” His lips twisted, and I could almost feel him wanting to say something more. But all he managed to get out was, “Good night, Sienna. And good luck,” before he climbed into the car and it drove off.
“Good luck to you as well,” I said to the car as it went past. I knew he’d hear it.
55.
I said a curiously neutral goodbye to Calderon at the station. He was swamped with paperwork and I understood that. He looked up for a few minutes as I said my piece, something about, “Nice working with you, I’m sorry things sucked for so long, but thanks for believing in me.” I left out any references to our evening together because, well, I doubted he’d forgotten, and it seemed like it would be pointless to mention it now, other than to serve as an unpleasant reminder that things had gotten a bit messed up somewhere along the line. I hadn’t gone home with him expecting anything serious, and I doubted he had, either. One-night stands didn’t translate into romance in my world. I didn’t live in a sunny romcom where the leads circled each other making acerbic comments until they reached that moment when they realized they were desperately in love with the other person. I wasn’t even sure I believed in my capacity to love anymore.
“I’m sorry things got screwed up, too,” Calderon said, nodding along. “You could have gone about it a little better, though, you know?”
I didn’t quite glare at him, but it was close. “Look … I’ll get better at being a delicate detective who knows just where to step if you want to give me lessons.”
“Hell, I don’t think I have enough time left on my clock to pull that one off before I die,” Calderon said, nearly laughing. “Just keep going at it full speed ahead, you’ll get to the truth eventually. Might end up in a few more YouTube videos, though.”
“That seems inevitable,” I said and gave him a wave.
“Look me up if you’re ever in Atlanta again,” Calderon said. He didn’t wink, but I think it might have been implied. For my part, I held in the smile until I made it outside and airborne.
I arced east, heading over the English Avenue neighborhood until I found Augustus’s house. The neighborhood was a mess, that much was obvious when I came down in the middle of the street. At least the burned-up cars and fire engines had been hauled away. I felt a deep, serious sense of guilt, looking around at houses without roofs, front lawns that were cratered, houses with holes in the brick like a bomb had gone through the window. It was appalling, the level of damage that Cavanagh’s meta army had unleashed here, and it left me shaking my head.
“You look like you’re a presidential candidate,” Augustus’s voice reached me from the shade under the tree on his lawn. He was just sitting there under the somewhat scorched—maple? Oak? What the hell am I, a botanist? He was sitting under it with Taneshia, and his mother was in a folding lawn chair next to them. “Circling the FEMA disaster area, nodding your head with a serious look.”
“I’m sorry I’m brought this down on you all,” I said, walking tentatively into the shade.
“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Augustus asked.
“Hear what?” I asked, looking around at each of them. Momma had a very serene expression on her face.
“It seems Mr. Cavanagh has found himself a heart,” Augustus said with more than a little gusto, “and has signed over a large portion of his fortune to assuage his guilt over the destruction here.”
“That’s … surprisingly generous,” I said cautiously. I wondered for about a second how much Foreman had had to do with this, and then I realized—he was probably entirely responsible. Then again, Cavanagh was the sort of narcissistic dipshit who might try and do something like this just to make himself look better in a press that was currently in the process of ripping him up like buzzards working over a carcass.
“I always thought that Mr. Cavanagh was a good man,” Momma said.
“Momma, he sent those metas that destroyed the neighborhood,” Augustus said.
“Allegedly,” she said.
“He confessed!”
“I don’t think I believe that,” she said, shaking her head. “Just like I don’t think I believe that Jamal ran off with a girl. You know, a mother would know if her boy was seeing some hussy on the side. I think he just wanted to get away from all this.”
Taneshia and Augustus exchanged a look with me. “The timing was suspicious,” Taneshia agreed. “But I can’t blame him. The neighborhood is going to take time to come back from this, even with Cavanagh’s money. And you just know when the word gets out, every scammer for twelve states is going to come running to get himself a piece of that.”
“Somebody ought to w
atch out for people around here,” I said.
“I believe I will,” Taneshia said. “Or at least, as much as I can while still completing my degree.” She elbowed Augustus.
“I believe I will, too,” Augustus said too, but with much less enthusiasm. “Without the degree, though.”
“I would bet that the University of Georgia would be more than happy to accept a bonafide superhero into college there,” I said.
“Oh, yeah?” Augustus said with disinterest. “You think they’d pay for it, too? Because that’s the real sticking point.”
“Mmm, maybe not,” I said.
“Just as well,” Taneshia said. “I hate the Bulldogs.”
“How about the University of Minnesota?” I asked nonchalantly.
“Nobody likes them,” Taneshia said. “Golden Gopher? What the hell is that, even?”
Augustus just rolled his eyes. “You think they’ll throw out a free scholarship? They got one for superheroes up there?”
“Yeah,” I said, “it’s a government scholarship with a work program attached.”
“Work program?” Augustus frowned. “What work program?”
“You come work for me at the agency,” I said, “and in return we’ll pay you and fund your college.”
“Whaaaaaat?” Augustus asked, looking at me like he didn’t think I was serious. “That’s not a thing!”
“It’s a thing,” I said. “A real, genuine thing that I am making up in my capacity as person in charge of hiring and budgeting for the operations department.” I smiled at him. “My team’s a little light, and I could use someone around to remind me … what a real hero is like.”
“You serious?” Augustus asked, lips open. “You’re serious?” He looked at Taneshia. “Is she serious? I can’t tell!”
“I’m serious,” I said to Taneshia, who looked—not surprisingly—torn.
“She’s serious,” Taneshia said, nodding. I thought I saw hints of tears in her eyes.
“Oh, yeah, everybody’s serious,” Momma said. “I miss my television programs. They are way less stupid than y’all.”
“Momma, I’m going to college,” Augustus said, nodding his head. “Hell yeah, I’m going to college!” I wondered if he was going to stand up on his tiptoes and bellow it out to the world. He didn’t, but I sensed it was a near thing.
“I heard about that,” Momma said. “Whole damned neighborhood just heard about that.”
“Can you just be happy for me for a minute, Momma?” Augustus asked.
She stared at him, and then rose from her chair and put a hand on each of his cheeks and drew him in. Then she looked him in the eyes. “Augustus, you put the community’s number one advocate in jail. You landed your boss in the clink and his factory is almost certain to shut down, casting a whole mess of people out of jobs. People who live all around us. In spite of all that … I still think you did the right thing, and I’m proud of you.” She kissed him on the forehead. “But I’m glad you’re going, because until things get rebuilt around here, people are going to be all manner of irate with you.” She looked at me. “When can he leave?”
Augustus looked at me, hopeful. “As soon as he wants,” I said. “I’m actually escorting Cavanagh and Laverne back to Minnesota with a few of the others so we can contain them there until trial. The flight leaves tonight at nine from the cargo section of Hartsfield-Jackson.”
“I’ll be there,” Augustus said, and I could see he was swallowing the intense emotions down. “And … thank you.”
“Damned right you say thank you,” Momma said. “I was worried for a minute you’d forgotten all those manners I taught you.”
I found myself laughing, out loud, in a way I hadn’t in a long time, as my phone started to buzz in my pocket. I’d been ignoring my boss for about two days now, and he’d stopped calling. I hadn’t heard a peep from him since the story broke about Cavanagh, and I figured this was going to bite me any moment now. Time to face the music, I figured. And the music was probably that damned “Black Horse and Cherry Tree” song.
I stared at the caller ID on my phone, blinking. It was the same simple white lettering as always, but it felt somehow … smaller.
Katrina Forrest. Los Angeles, California, the phone told me.
“I’m going to college!” Augustus called out from behind me. “We need a party! I need a going away party, like nowwwww.”
“You do need a party,” Taneshia said. “There needs to be some celebrating. And I think the neighborhood would be very happy to say goodbye to you now that you’ve destroyed everything.” They broke into playful laughter.
I stared at the screen of my phone, just blinking at it. Should I answer? Should I let her have it? Unload all the emotional baggage that I’d been feeling for the last few months at this little war of comparison she’d kicked off?
Those questions ran through my mind in less time than it took for the phone to buzz twice more.
“Sienna, you’re coming to the party, right?” I looked up to see Augustus staring at me, Taneshia and Momma right behind him.
“What?” I asked, and then my mind processed it. “Yeah. Sure. Of course. Cavanagh and his boys are suppressed, and I can get there in seconds if I need to. Count me in.”
“Who’s on the phone?” Augustus asked.
I watched the phone buzz once more, and then it stopped, warning me of a missed call. I stared at the screen for another second and just hit the power button, letting it fade to black. “No one,” I said, and put the phone back in my pocket. And I went to go help plan the party … like a normal person.
56.
Augustus
One last thing:
HELL YES! I am going to college!
I am SOMEBODY!
Damned right. Always knew I would be.
Epilogue
Edward Cavanagh
Fulton County Jail
Edward Cavanagh leaned his head back against the hard concrete block and stared at the bars in front of him. The smell of the crappy food was still lingering in the air from dinner. He’d tried a few bites and nearly threw up. It wasn’t just unpalatable; it was gross. He’d been prepared for hardship, but he wasn’t prepared for that.
Everything seemed a little hazy for him, a little … like the world was in a fog. That was a shame, but not unexpected given he had a full dose of the suppressant in his veins. That little chemical had been an interesting discovery. Of course, coming up with it had been a very natural byproduct of reverse engineering the serum that unlocked powers, but no one had needed to know that the chicken had come before the egg.
Cavanagh wasn’t exactly sure what had possessed him to make his confession, but he had his suspicions. An empath, probably. When they’d come to him, when this whole thing had started, they’d warned him about what types of metas there were in basic terms, and in fairly explicit ones when it came to certain, more problematic types.
He’d been warned, and he’d ignored it. But then, playing with the serum hadn’t been something he was supposed to do, not yet. The word hadn’t come down, after all. That had been his own initiative. His idea. His vision.
And up until the moment when Laverne had sunk him by striking at bait he shouldn’t have gone after, his vision was looking better than 20/20.
Cavanagh felt the pressure of the brick against the back of his head as his thoughts swirled half-formed in his mind, coalescing so much more slowly than they would if he hadn’t been on the suppressant. He knew it didn’t have an actual effect on his cognition—maybe it was just the disturbing change of environment and circumstances coupled with that sick feeling in his stomach—but his mind didn’t feel like it was moving very fast. He could hear the heartbeat in his ears, though, the blood rushing through his brain.
The first spike of pain behind his eye was the clue that gave it away. It sent him back to thinking about the list, the list of metas they’d told him about. What did they call the one that could affect your—
Oh—
Oh no—
Cavanagh could feel the pressure build in the front of his skull, and it forced his eyes to roll back in his head involuntarily. It was like someone had a fist in the front of his brain and was squeezing, squeezing until the blood pooled, each beat of his heart building the pressure like an overburdened dam, all the way until it came to a frenzied peak—
Splat.
Cavanagh saw the wash of red hit the wall of his cell out of the corner of his eye as he pitched over. He left a trail of it, but by the time he was on the ground he was only dimly aware of it—or anything else. His consciousness faded to the point where he couldn’t hold even a simple thought.
But the last one that crossed his mind was a doozy, though just a little incomplete.
Shouldn’t have crossed A—
Location Unknown
“It is done,” the voice on the other end of the phone said.
The watcher did not acknowledge the message, merely hung up the phone. It was not his way to acknowledge, merely to receive the report, to operate within the guidelines. Edward Cavanagh had had his guidelines and had chosen to exceed them. That was his foolish mistake, and now he had paid for it with his death. His silence was assured.
The news flickered on the screen, and once more the watcher was treated to an image of the girl, Sienna Nealon. He had been watching her for as long as he had been in this place. Of course she had been involved. She was always involved. Pesky. That was how he would describe her.
But her day would come. And it would be according to the guideline, the day when he would leave the darkness again.
And his first day back in the light would be her last day alive.
Sienna Nealon Will Return in
TORMENTED
Grounded (Out of the Box Book 4) Page 28
