by Red Harvey
He moved closer to Ada. He wasn’t really listening to Erma. He let her talk as it gave him time to decide what exit to use, how to grab Ada, and run. Erma raised her gun.
“You’re more powerful than you let on,” she said, her eyes glittering behind the lenses of her glasses. “You could have subdued me and every other agent in this complex, but after that, the State would come for you and for Ada. They’re quite persistent, you know.”
He thought of the two times he’d been taken in by Ms. Julane. Nine years had passed between the occurrences, and he assumed he was off their radar after turning in Ada. He realized now the State never forgot, they only waited. “Yes, I know,” he said. She smiled and pushed her glasses up. “Then let’s make a new deal.” She aimed at Ada. “You for her.”
The deal was a lie. Moretz was a politician, and he knew a false promise and the sound it made as it squeezed past human lips. A trade could have been successful, if Phennell hadn’t left. But there was only Moretz. Once he surrendered to the Sammie, there was nothing to stop her from taking the troublesome father and daughter.
He knew this, but he nodded his consent anyway. From the hallway, they both heard a new voice say, “Sounds good to me, boss.”
Erma aimed her gun at the doorway. The owner of the voice appeared with his arms up in the air and a sheepish grin on his face. “Just here in a back-up capacity, ma’am,” Shylar said.
“He one of yours?” she asked Moretz. He sighed gratefully. His father had really planned for every contingency, excepting his death. Or had that been part of the larger plan as well?
Moretz gestured for Shylar to join him at Ada’s side. Quickly, he asked about Darcy’s well-being, at which Shylar nodded. Then Moretz turned back to the Sammie, “Yes, he’s one of mine. He’s here to get Ada.”
Erma tightened her lips into a thin line. “Fine.” She nodded the gun in Ada’s direction. “Take her.”
Shylar moved, but before he could get to Ada, Moretz held up his hand. “I have to wake her first.”
“Thought as much.” Erma chuckled darkly. “Nothing we tried would revive her.”
Moretz hoped he could. Kressick’s tricks were practiced and near impossible to reverse. Still, he had to give it the ol’ ‘lectric try. He placed one hand on her forehead and sent a small but focused shock through her body. She twitched, but otherwise remained unchanged.
He realized the deep sleep went deeper than a mere physical manifestation. He needed to talk to her. Moretz closed his eyes, and imagined the deep layers of her brain. Most of the connections lay dormant, but he located a bright, blue tangle abuzz with activity. To the tangled mass, he whispered a plea. Wake up. Sparks from the tangle branched out slightly, then retracted. He tried once more, changing the inflection of his voice to resemble her husband’s.
Wake up. She woke instantly, wheezing for air. Her gaze went from Moretz to Shylar, and then to the woman with the gun. She didn’t wait for details. Strike first and survive second were her thoughts. Energy hissed and built inside of her. Ada would have taken all three of them down with a strong energy surge, but Moretz’s words gave her pause.
“Let her go. I’ll stay without a fight.” A decision was taking place on Erma’s face as she compared father and daughter. Her gun stayed level with both of them, even as Moretz or Ada could have easily disarmed the laser pistol from a short distance. In an apparent surrender, Erma put the pistol down on the desk.
“I’m more honorable than you are, Congressman,” she said, painting a self-righteous note into her tone. “They can go.” She pointed at Shylar and Ada.
Her permission inspired Shylar to move fast. In seconds, Ada was in his arms and they were out of the room.
Ada’s voice echoed from the hallway: “Put me down, you idiot. And where are my fucking clothes?”
Next came the sound of receding footsteps, followed by silence. Moretz and Erma stared at each other in the light of the ELS cylinders.
Finally, he asked, “What happens now?”
Erma shrugged, then she smiled.
Thirty
Ada calmed at the sight of Darcy in the backseat of the station wagon. There were no hugs or tears when the sisters greeted each other. When she was dressed with a spare pair of clothes from the trunk, Ada got into the driver’s seat and programmed the car to return to Kressick’s.
The tears and hugs came later, but only after Darcy showed Ada Kressick’s body in the master bathroom. Shylar commanded the dissipating door of the bedroom to appear, to allow the two women to grieve privately.
In the morning, he reversed his ideas about their privacy. Shylar told the door to open, and the barrier disappeared. The sisters were asleep on Kressick’s bed. Their hands were intertwined, puffy eyes and swollen cheeks indicators of their shared misery.
He carried Kressick’s body to the guest bathroom. Being a State fugitive, he could not have a traditional funeral. He had pre- briefed Shylar on what to do with his body in the event of his death. Shylar vividly recalled the orders, and after waking, he prepared the bathroom accordingly. Yards of plastic sheeting covered the tub and floor. A roll of black plastic bags and a laser cutter completed the necessities for the job.
He forgot his gloves and stepped out to the kitchen to find them. When he got back to the bathroom, Ada was at work dismembering her grandfather. She was using concentrated energy from her fingertips in lieu of the laser cutter.
Slightly taken aback but greatly impressed, Shylar grabbed the cutter from the bathroom counter. He knelt next to her. “Not everyone would be able to do a task like this.”
“I’m not everyone.” She paused. “I’ve been through worse.” He held quiet, and his patience paid off when she elaborated. “When I was 18, I had an abortion. I was lucky, because they were still legal then. I was just out of high school, and I couldn’t have Moretz’s child, and so I...panicked.” She peeled off the gloves and wrapped her hands around her arms. “The procedure felt as if I was actually giving birth, there was so much pain, and I had to push, and the pushing went on for so long.” Tears washed her cheeks. “The nurse had me sit on a toilet while I pushed, like what was coming out of me was a damn piece of trash. She told me ‘whatever you do, honey, don’t look down.’ I didn’t know what she meant, but while I was pushing, while I felt the...the fetus...coming out of me, I looked down and saw its face. I have always regretted not listening and seeing that face.”
Her tone and the words intuited to Shylar that she hadn’t told anyone the particulars of her abortion until now. August might have known about the procedure, but not the details. Shylar should’ve felt special, but didn’t. Instead, he experienced Ada’s pain and wanted to make it end. She let out silent tears and hugged herself, not looking at him once. Comfort wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to confess her deepest, darkest experience to someone. In confessing, she wanted to let it go, and she had.
Mostly, he wanted to end Moretz for violating his daughter and for creating an even deeper spiral of hurt by impregnating her. If the bastard hadn’t turned himself over to Sammies, Shylar was certain he would’ve used the laser cutter a second time.
Wordlessly, they finished the grisly task together. After their charge was bagged, they burned the body parts in the kitchen incinerator. Shylar collected the ashes into an urn Kressick purchased for that specific purpose. He set the poly-carbonate urn on the kitchen counter, sliding it over to Ada.
She gave him a look which, for the first time, was devoid of disgust. “Thank you for listening, for not judging me, and thank you for saving my life. There’s really not enough in the words ‘thank you’ for all you’ve done for me.”
Anything for you, he thought, but he knew better than to spew niceties to Ada out loud. Shylar’s mind had been conditioned to protect her. His love for her existed beyond the parameters of Kressick’s programming.
Darcy’s screams interrupted their peaceful moment. She had seen the inside of the guest bathroom, and they hadn’t yet f
inished cleaning it up.
~*~
It took a day for Darcy to calm down. When she was ready for rational words, she asked to see her mother. Ada agreed. Only Shylar seemed reluctant to take them to the Moretz estate.
Her voice flat, Ada informed him, “We don’t need you to go anywhere. We’re going, regardless. Then later, you’re going to tell me where to find the black site you took me from.”
“We’re never going back there again.”
“I never said we’re going anywhere, but you will tell me.” Shana hadn’t contacted her again, which meant she was still gathering intel or planned on going back on their deal. Knowing the location of the site would be a start.
“We can go to both places, and you’ll see the first is abandoned, and the second is another type of bad idea,” he said.
She believed him about the black site being abandoned, as it made the most sense. The whole idea behind a State black site was anonymity, which was impossible to maintain after what transpired with Moretz.
“Okay, we’ll go see Darcy’s mom and that’s it,” Ada said.
The three of them rambled into the car. She situated Kressick’s urn on her lap. From the backseat, Darcy told the address to the car. In twenty minutes, they arrived at the Moretz estate. The guard waved them through the front gate when he saw Darcy.
As the vehicle advanced the length of the winding driveway, the ramp appeared and lowered. The car drove into the sub-garage. No one greeted them after they parked. Their steps echoed in the concrete space, with the only other sound being the grind of stone on stone as the ramp closed.
Darcy looked around the sub-garage. “Maybe no one’s home.”
Shylar walked away from the sub-garage to the main floor stairway with a deep frown. “They’re home.”
From his attitude, Ada thought back to her gun and wished she had brought it along. But she surmised she didn’t need conventional weapons—she was a weapon. Oh, Chancelin and Phennell aren’t going to hurt us. The grim look on Shylar’s face said otherwise.
Upstairs, the hallway was dark. A light from Moretz’s office encouraged the trio to investigate. Chancelin sat behind Moretz’s desk, tapping away at several panels, her manicured nails clicking along the fluid surfaces. When she looked up, the first person she noticed was Darcy.
Chancelin showed a teary smile. Her smile slipped at the appearance of Shylar, transforming into a sneer when Ada came into view. Immediately, she spoke into one of the panels. Phennell answered, and his footsteps could be heard coming down the main staircase.
“Where is Brontes and Kressick?” Chancelin asked Shylar.
He looked at her directly, but with a degree of respect.
“Here’s Kressick.” He held up the urn, and she gasped. “As for Brontes—he’s with the authorities, ma’am.”
“What did you do?” was the first thing Phennell said when he walked into the office.
When Shylar didn’t speak, Ada half-turned to see why. The Phennell she was used to was nowhere in the room. There was no concern or understanding left in the young man before her. If anything, he resembled his stepfather and not in a flattering way.
“I didn’t do anything,” she said, frowning. “Your father made a deal with the Sammies on my behalf, trading himself for my freedom.”
“That doesn’t sound like him,” he scoffed.
“No, it doesn’t.”
She was merely repeating what happened from the gaps Shylar filled in for her. Why Moretz saved her was a mystery. Kressick’s inspiration couldn’t be entirely transformative, could it? His power allowed for nerve control, but she had been unaware his abilities included cognitive control. Had he altered Moretz on a neural level? If so, then Kressick managed to reverse his son’s perverse habits, replacing them with selfless ones. She stared at Shylar through a new lens.
He was also a different person from when she first met him at the motel: annoying, insecure, and creepy. The new Shylar was anything but insecure. How had she been changed? As she watched Shylar and thought of his change, she knew Kressick had changed her in some ways too. It couldn’t have been for the worse, because she still felt the same. She smiled.
Phennell sneered at her. “Stupid bitch. You killed my grandfather, and you did something to my father.”
“Kressick was dead when we got to his place. I don’t know how it happened.” She came to Atlanta wanting to end a life. Now someone really was dead, and she couldn’t feel worse. “I did nothing.”
Her accuser wasn’t backing down. “You changed him. I know what you are, what Grandpa is.” His words held a speck of hysteria. “What he was. Fucking freaks.”
He got in her face, his eyes full of an angry nature she neglected to see earlier.
“Enough, Phennell,” Chancelin said. “Your father warned us something might happen before he left to get your sister. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”
“Actually, ma’am, you and I both know that’s not true,” Shylar said.
Chancelin pretended indifference. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve gotten reports of your husband’s ‘extended overseas vacation’,” he remarked.
She nodded slowly.
He continued, “In a few weeks, the vacation will turn into an illness, an accident, a murder—their pick. State-run news outlets will report his death, and the authorities will be able to hold him indefinitely.”
After his information had been absorbed by everyone in the room, Ada noted that tears and sniffles were scarce. Moretz was not the type of man to be missed. It didn’t matter that his last known actions had been self-sacrificing because everyone’s memories of the Congressman were dominated by his cruelty. The impact of his personality reboot had not affected anyone’s feelings for him.
Still, Ada remained undecided. She had hated Moretz for most of her life, born of his ill-treatment and actions. As she aged, her hate blossomed into blame. Blame had been convenient, but it had never felt right. Recently, hate and blame were two things she experienced least, with grateful far down on the list as well. Her emotions in regard to Moretz were gliding toward resentment, which was a vast improvement over hate and blame.
Later, Shylar and Ada were sitting in the living room, sharing a tight silence. Darcy had told them to wait for her while she spoke with her mother. He looked around the room, seemingly interested in the art on the walls.
The questions came quietly at first, then Ada shot them out anxiously: What happened the night Moretz came to the compound? How had Shylar found her? Why was he still around?
For each question, he gave explicit answers. An element of his explanations led him to tell Ada about the tracking device Kressick had implanted inside her.
“Why the hell would he do that?” she asked.
“Your grandfather’s primary concern was always for your safety. He never fully trusted your father or that you wouldn’t fall into State hands. We had to have a way to find you.” An apology colored Shylar’s face a slight pink.
Arguing against the caring attitude of a dead man seemed impossible. Kressick had circumvented a few of Ada’s liberties, but he had done so because it was right. All men thought that their highest calling was to protect a woman, and her grandfather, and Shylar, were no different.
She asked him where the foreign beacon had been implanted.
“I don’t know.”
“Never mind. I’ll find it myself.”
If it emitted an electronic signal, she could figure out where it was located. To aid her concentration, she closed her eyes. It was quiet. Underneath the thump of the other electronics in the room and in the building, she detected a new pulse.
“What are you doing?” Shylar asked.
“Shut up.” She kept her tone playful.
The ebb of the pulse returned to her and grew louder. Suddenly, she could feel it in her wrist. She encircled her left wrist with her palm and visualized the pulse evaporating harmlessly within her. Internally, the device fizzled
and ceased to function. She opened her eyes when she felt the connection with the pulse end.
Shylar’s wristlet buzzed.
“Signal lost,” the interface announced.
He arched an eyebrow in Ada’s direction. “Shouldn’t have told you.”
“I’m sure you’ll find another way to rescue a damsel in distress.”
“If only there was one around, then I might be of service.”
Her mouth twitched upward, slowly becoming a full-fledged smile. “You never answered my last question. Why are you still here?”
Shylar checked his interface again before answering, his fingers scaling across the screen with inhuman speed. He looked up at her after as if he just solved cancer on his device and was taking time out of his busy schedule to talk to her.
“Why are you still here?” he countered.
Ada sat up straighter. She didn’t want to answer questions; she wanted to ask them. Why was she still around? Kressick was dead, Moretz might as well be dead with where he was at...was it Phennell? Hmm, the prince had proven to be a fucktard like his stepfather.
She thought that maybe Darcy had learned how not to be a fucktard from watching her brother’s example. Darcy, her little sister. Other than her mother, Ada thought she was alone in the world, but she had a sister. A sister who might need her guidance and support. Who am I to guide or support anyone?
However, her lack of a mentor had allowed her destructive side to flourish after August’s death. Her sister didn’t have to become a watered down version of that.
“Darcy might need me.”
Shylar searched her face, then sighed. “Kressick always hoped you would look past your vengeful pursuits and focus on other things.”
“That used to be my life, when I had someone else in it. Then I—” Killed him. I killed him.
The admission lifted Ada and pulled her down simultaneously. A black curtain of denial opened in her mind while a heavy weight of guilt emptied her sense of self-worth.
