by T. C. Edge
“You don’t want to do that, Romelia,” I whisper menacingly.
She moves back a little further, stepping away from me and towards the door. I give her space, wishing to see what she’ll do, my eyes surveying her every movement as her right hand hovers in place.
Reaching the door, I sense something different in her. She remains calm, but there’s an undercurrent of something more, some creeping concern deep inside her bones. And as she reaches the doorway, and slips through into the corridor, I watch as her pace quickens, and she suddenly starts to rush, heading straight for the front door.
And now, the hunter becomes the hunted.
With my body filling with purpose, I tense my muscles and feel my Dasher powers activate. Every fibre in me starts to hum, and in a sudden burst I power right after her.
If she gets out of this room, if she uses that interface to call for help, then I’m done for. And Adryan’s done for. And this entire mission is done for.
I have no choice now. She can’t leave this apartment.
Flowing around the corner, I charge after her, watching her frame glide in slow motion as she tries to escape. As she does, I see the fingers of her right hand creeping ever closer to the interface, ready to alert the authorities.
I don’t know how they work. It might take nothing but the tap of a button, some emergency alarm that will have the entire building’s force of City Guards surging up here to level 51.
As her index finger nears, only a centimetre away, I press forward with everything I have and swipe with my arm, knocking her right hand off course. It goes flying away from the interface, yet her body continues onwards, moving so slowly that I have plenty of time to take hold of her shoulders and toss her back.
With a fierce show of strength, caused by the impossible speed of my limbs, she goes hurtling right into the living room, crashing straight into the side of the sofa. Her body crumples heavily against it, and I press straight on, reaching her in a flash and grabbing her arms.
I turn her over, and as I do, feel my Dasher powers begin to fade. Gradually, the room turns back to full speed, Agent Woolf grunting beneath me as I hold her down.
Then, I hear footsteps running, and turn to see Adryan come clattering in, alerted by the commotion.
His eyes spot me on top of Agent Woolf on the floor, holding her arms behind her back.
“What the hell are you doing, Brie!” he shouts.
I don’t answer his question. He’ll work it out for himself.
“Get me something to tie her up with. Some tape or something. Quick!”
As Agent Woolf squirms, her actions muted by the heavy crash into the chair, Adryan quickly darts to the kitchen and returns with some tape. As I hold Woolf’s wrists together, he sets about wrapping them up, and then does the same to her ankles, before we lift her to her feet and throw her onto the sofa.
She looks slightly dazed, her eyes not fully open and staring as they usually do. Adryan looks to the interface on her left forearm, and quickly steps in, grapples with her left arm for a moment, and returns with the interface in his hands.
He turns it off, and tosses it to one side.
Then he looks to me again, his eyes begging for an explanation.
“She saw through me,” I pant. “She saw the picture of my parents, and knew who I was. I had no choice, Adryan.”
He raises his hand to his mouth, and begins pacing, thinking, his super-brain working hard to process it all, figure out some way out of this. He looks strained, stamping hard, moving from side to side as I watch him hopefully, silently.
On the sofa, Agent Woolf begins to come back to life again, the mist in her mind clearing. I see those cold, dead eyes of hers opening back up once more, and shuffling her position, Adryan looks right at her.
And as he does, her eyes seem to flash, and his body goes suddenly still.
No…
Then, slowly, Adryan turns to me, standing right between me and the agent. His face has changed. His expression has changed. His silver eyes have narrowed, staring at me in a manner in which he never has before.
I see anger. I see hatred. I see a desire to cause me pain.
She’s got to him…
He steps forward, sucking his lungs full of air and standing to his full height. His fists close, his knuckles growing white, his biceps seeming to bulge beneath his shirt.
“Adryan,” I whisper. “Adryan…stay back….”
He doesn’t. He takes another step, and I recoil, moving backwards. As he stares at me, I dart into his mind, and try to withdraw the order that Agent Woolf set. But it’s no use, not now. She’s far more practiced than I am.
And I have no time.
Because with a sudden rush, Adryan pours forward at me, his face coiling into a snarl as he reaches out with his strong hands. I try to activate my Dasher powers again, to slow time, but it’s too late. He’s on me too quickly, the counter in the kitchen blocking my path as I try to retreat.
His hands take a firm grip of my neck, squeezing hard. The flow of air to my lungs is immediately cut off, my throat closing tight as his digits set about crushing my windpipe. I flail about wildly with my arms, thrashing about on the counter and knocking away flasks of water to the floor.
I try to move back, but he pushes me straight to the ground, his eyes staring at me with a wildness inside them. I take a grip of his wrists and try to pull his hands away, but I have no strength to combat his, not without my super-speed.
With my eyes beginning to blur, I stare right into his mind, and call out to him.
STOP. STOP. YOU’RE GOING TO KILL ME.
I call over and over again, and then open my eyes to see some confusion in his. His fingers seem to ease, but only a little. It’s just enough to let a small stream of air flow into my lungs, giving me an extra few seconds before I pass out.
I gasp as his clasp eases, but then hear some words flowing from behind, away on the sofa.
“Shut your eyes, Mr Shaw,” comes Agent Woolf’s cold voice. “Shut your eyes, and kill her.”
She’s in his head. In nothing but a flash she did it. Set the order to kill me, took control of his mind so that she can control him verbally too.
Were I not fighting for my life I’d be staggered by her power, by the depths of her skill. With nothing but a look, she’s set my husband against me, given him the order that’s about as far from his nature as you could get.
He’s killing me. He’s going to kill me.
As her words come, so the confusion in his eyes fades, hidden behind his eyelids as they close tight. I have no access to his mind now, no way of stopping him, his fingers pressing harder, digging deeper into my flesh.
I try once more to pull away his wrists, but it’s no use. My eyes wildly search for something, some way of stopping him. As they do I grip at his hair, tugging and pulling and trying to rip him free.
He doesn’t budge.
My arms flail again, reaching around me, searching for something, anything.
My eyes fade, blurring. My mind sprints with thoughts of failure, a desperate fear filling every inch of me, knowing the game is up.
Yet still, my fingers search, and my arms reach around me and behind me, grasping at nothing but thin air.
No…
There’s something.
I feel it on the tips of my fingers, something hard. Something metal.
The flask! The water flask.
With a final flurry of strength, I push back with everything I have, reaching out and setting my fingertips to the handle. I inch my nails around it, and pull, dragging it towards me millimetre by millimetre.
My eyes water. My head burns. But my resolve won’t give in.
I won’t give in.
Finally, the handle comes within reach. I take a grip between my fingers, drag it towards me, and with a final surge of every ounce of strength I have, swing it as hard as I can across Adryan’s head.
It connects with a loud thump, the flask hefty en
ough to weaken his grip. Immediately, as his fingers lose their grasp, and the air surges into my lungs with a heavy gasp of air, I tear myself away from him, kicking and scrambling along the floor.
Dazed and confused, his eyes flicker, and his body drops to the floor, and I see the blood beginning to trickle from a gash across his head.
I look at him for a second longer, making sure he’s out cold, before shakily standing to my feet. My eyes spread straight towards the sofa, where Agent Woolf lies, trying her best to break herself free of her binds.
With my pulse racing, and my breath heaving, and my eyes burning with hazel-coloured flames, I step on shaking legs towards the Savant.
She sees me coming, her efforts to escape futile. She sits up and looks at me, and I see her trying to enter my mind.
I turn my eyes to the ground, no energy in me to repel her, and ball my fist as tight as it will go. And when I reach her, and her oozing words come at me again, I pay them no mind at all.
My balled fist lifts. And with a final burst of anger, I slash it as hard as I can across her jaw, sending her eyes rolling about in their sockets, and her brain doing summersaults in her skull.
And dropping to the sofa, her frame goes still.
“Sweet dreams, Romelia,” I whisper.
100
Standing in the room with two unconscious Savants, I have no time to waste, no time to rest, as much as I’d like to.
My throat still feels like it’s on fire, my neck stiff as I set about binding Adryan’s arms and legs in just the same manner as Agent Woolf.
Unfortunately, I have no option. Until I can remove the order from his mind, he’s just going to keep trying to kill me.
I use up almost the entire set of tape just to make sure, binding his arms and legs and then wrapping up Agent Woolf’s mouth and eyes as well. If she can’t speak, and she can’t see, then her powers are muted. For now at least.
Once I’m done with her, I begin work on clearing Adryan’s mind of the order. Sitting him on the sofa, I open his eyelids and enter his unconscious mind, searching for the command Woolf gave him.
It takes a while, my own head aching desperately and in serious need of rest, but eventually I manage to find and extract it, setting his mind back in order.
Once I’ve done that, I tend to his wound, my hands still shaking as I clean up the blood and apply some healing lotion. My inspection of the cut suggests that it should heal fairly quickly, the gash long but not particularly deep.
I work fast and efficiently, making sure to keep my composure as I do so. It’s hard, given how my husband came so close to murdering me, but I need to steady my emotions and keep them in check. There is no time for tears now.
I need to be strong.
And so, with everything back in order, I grab the same flask that I used to knock him out, fill it to the brim with ice-cold water, and send its entire contents across his face.
Slowly but surely, his eyelids flicker, and a shiver runs through his frame, and I see those silver eyes reappear, groggy and clouded. I stare into them, and see no hatred anymore, no anger, his compulsion to kill me extinguished.
“Adryan,” I whisper tentatively. “Adryan, can you hear me?”
His mind continues to wake, and his vision continues to return. And then, with a weak and confused frown falling, he nods.
“What…what happened?”
As he asks the question, he looks straight past me to the opposite sofa, and the figure of Agent Woolf comes into view, wrapped up like a mummy.
“How much do you remember?” I ask.
He stares at her for a second, and then nods.
“She knows…she knows, doesn’t she?”
His eyes lift up to mine, and then suddenly fall to my neck.
“Your neck…are you OK? You’re all bruised…”
He tries to reach out, but finds that his hands are heavily tied. Then he looks to his feet, and sees that they, too, are out of action.
That swamp of confusion hits him again. He doesn’t remember what he did.
Then, the realisation dawns.
“Did I…was that me?”
His eyes are clouded, troubled by the thought. I immediately set about quenching his guilt. Right now, we have other things to worry about.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I assure him. “You had no control.”
He shakes his head and scrunches up his eyes. Shutting them hard, I see a grimace flow through him. When they open again and find me, their corners have grown damp, his contrition so intense his eyes have watered.
“I’m so sorry, Brie…I can’t believe I…”
“Adryan, stop,” I say firmly, grabbing his cheeks and steadying his gaze on me. “You had no control, do you hear me! No control! That woman could make anyone do anything. And now we have to figure out what to do with her.”
My stern words force him to refocus. He stares past me again, nodding slowly. And as he does, I begin removing his binds, satisfied that all remnants of the order have been expunged.
“OK…you’re right. I remember hearing a commotion, and coming in here. We…we tied her up, but there’s nothing else. My memory…it’s…”
“Faded,” I finish for him. “I know. You won’t remember the order she gave. But that doesn’t matter now. I managed to knock you off…”
I gesture to his head, and his now unbound hands reach up and feel the sensitive cut with a grimace.
“I put some lotion on it. It’s not deep, and should heal up fast. Please, Adryan, don’t try to remember what happened. It’s best you don’t.”
He nods in muted fashion and takes a breath. Still, there’s an apology in his eyes that won’t go away.
I need it to go away.
I need him to think of a way out of this mess!
Slowly, however, he turns his mind back to the task, doing just what he was doing before Woolf set him on me. He begins pacing again, more groggily this time, scratching his chin and letting his brain work its way to some conclusion.
As he does so, my own mind begins working on full steam once more, searching for its own way out.
And yet, in the end, nothing sticks, nothing makes sense, except one single thought.
We have to kill her.
As Adryan continues to pace across the room, I vocalise the thought. He turns to me with a look that suggests he’s thinking along similar lines, but would rather not resort to such a thing.
“Do we have any other choice?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he breathes, shaking his head. “But if we kill her, someone’s sure to come looking. And it won’t take them long to track her here.”
“Then what? What else is there?”
He looks to the windows, arching his eyes towards the northern quarter way into the distance.
“We need to get her down there somehow. Somehow…we have to get her to your brother.”
“But what good will that do? They’ll still come looking for her if she’s missing…”
“But not here, Brie. I’m thinking, still thinking. Give me a few minutes, OK.”
He seems to be onto something, a plan of sorts formulating in his mind. My own thoughts, meanwhile, are running wild.
Could we somehow get Titus involved? He helped me once before, and maybe he could again. Maybe Magnus too, seeing as they’re brothers. They could smuggle her out, couldn’t they?
The thought rushes through my head and out of my mouth. Adryan listens but immediately shuts it down as he always does. And he’s right to. It was a stupid idea.
He returns to his own thinking. Thinking and pacing, up and down. Then he stops, and looks out of the window for a moment, and I wait for him to speak in hope that he’s figured something out. And then, off he goes again, pacing and thinking. Back and forward, spinning on his heels, the motion driving me mad.
I turn away, burying my head in my hands, and rack my brain for something else.
Could I manipulate the people downstairs? Could
I somehow fashion some path for us to sneak Woolf through?
No, surely not. Not with all the tension around the place, the heightened security.
I dismiss that idea without verbalising it, and return to my thoughts as Adryan continues his endless march.
And then, just when I’m reaching the far reaches of my creativity, he stops. The sudden change in motion draws my eyes, and I lift my head to look at him. He swivels on the spot, his visage now set with a firm plan.
“Can you manipulate her?” he asks.
I’m disappointed. I’d thought of something similar but decided it wasn’t even worth discussing. I really hoped he’d come up with something better.
I shake my head.
“She’s too strong. Even if I could set an order into her mind, it would never stick for long. She’d break free, and then…game over.”
I see no disappointment across his face. It’s as though he expected the answer.
“And…if she wasn’t so strong?” he asks. “What about then?”
“I…I guess so. But how would that happen?”
Now his face does change, and a smile begins to rise on his lips.
“Drugs, Brie,” he says. “I can get drugs that will relax her mind and weaken her for a short time. It should allow you to manipulate her as if she was just a regular woman.”
I begin nodding quickly, standing up.
“OK…that might work. But what order would I set?”
“One that gets her over to Outer Haven. If people see her leaving the High Tower, then there will be no suspicion that she’s gone missing, at least not here. You have to make her go over to somewhere in Outer Haven where your brother can have her taken in. No one will suspect you, or us, then. And…it will give Zander a chance to extract information from her too. Two birds, one stone, Brie.”
He smiles, although it’s more of a wince, and lifts his hand to the gash on his head once more. I step forward and inspect it again to see that it’s trickling blood.
“I’m sorry…if it hurts,” I say. “Do you have any plasters or bandages for it? I couldn’t find anything to use.”
“It’s OK,” he says, shaking his head. “The lotion should close it up soon. Any dressings will just raise questions.”
