Sloth

by Lana Pecherczyk

  Damn he was good. “You’re pretty good at this acting thing, hey, bras.”

  He grimaced, ignoring her compliment. “You try.”

  Sloan’s heart clenched. She didn’t think she was ready for this. “Can we try something else? Another emotion?”

  His gaze softened. “Okay, what about pain? Can you picture yourself having a headache?”

  That, she could do.

  For the next hour, they acted out a variety of feelings. Pain, sleep, and fear. They’d decided to focus on three main sensations. The following hour, Sloan practiced conjuring that physicality internally. Then the hour after that, she was sweating it out on the rubber mat, taking a beating from her brother.

  “Arms up.” He jabbed at her head.

  She blocked, breathing hard. A dart back on her feet, and he jabbed again but she surged back again. Twisting, she sidestepped and ducked under his swinging arm to come in and put a fist in his side. He grunted, but used her low position to grapple and throw her down.

  The air knocked out of her, but Tony took no quarter. He used the full force of his strength to wrestle her into a choke hold, legs and arms both trapping her inside the cage of his body. Panic flared and her training froze in her mind.

  “Any day now, Sloan,” he taunted. “I’m still waiting to feel—ungh!”

  Slam! She’d conjured her headache and shoved it outward. That pain knocked into Tony and had him releasing her to clutch his head.

  He rolled away and entered the fetal position. “You can stop now,” he burst.

  She swapped the internalized headache with sleep and watched his eyelids get heavy until his long lashes swept his cheekbones. Only when she saw his body go lax did she let go completely and unlock a compartment of calm. Over the course of the day, she’d found a combination of Max’s compartmentalization techniques, and Tony’s internalization techniques worked best.

  Crouching down, she placed a hand on Tony’s shoulder, giving him a shake to wake him. “You okay, Tony?”

  He groaned. She’d projected those horrible feelings at him for three hours and he didn’t complain once. With another groan, he uncurled and lay on his back, long arms and legs splayed like a star, and he stared at the ceiling.

  “And the grasshopper has become the master,” he joked, then rubbed his head. “Jesus Christ, that last one still hurt. I’m so glad you didn’t make me bleed.” Something occurred to him and he snapped his eyes at her. “You’d better not make me bruise. Makeup will hate you.”

  She laughed. “I’m pretty sure the bleeding thing was only while my powers were settling in. I haven’t had another repeat occurrence since. Sorry about the pain, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. I owe you one.”

  “How about a beer?”

  “Done.” She could do with one too.

  “And then we’ll do it again tomorrow.”

  Twenty-Five

  Over the next two days, when Sloan wasn’t training with Tony, she was working on Sara’s cell. It was late in the afternoon when she sat in the basement headquarters workshop, sitting next to her father. The smell of oil, metal shavings, and something chemical filled her senses until she rubbed her nose to rid it.

  Flint’s spectacles rested halfway down the bridge of his nose. He handed her a small Philips-Head screwdriver and then went back to collecting a pile of errant bolts and nuts that had spilled when she’d first arrived and knocked them over with her laptop.

  After working diligently with him for the following two hours, she’d felt herself calm and submerge in the task at hand. So far, they’d pulled it apart, and tried hacking the sim. What finally worked was sourcing a new charger to fit the old battery. Such a simple thing to do, but neither of them had thought of it for hours, and then it took a few minutes for the battery to retain enough power for the cell screen to come alight and make a ping sound.

  Her breath caught in her throat.

  She thumbed through the contents.

  “Just as we suspected,” Flint rumbled, clapping Sloan on the back. “The cell wasn’t backed up to the sim, but there’s history in there. Good thinking, squirt.”

  “It’s basic,” Sloan replied. “Not much inside. A few numbers in the call history.” Simple social media accounts set up to act as a cover for Sara’s false identity—but Sloan knew about those. Messages between her and Wyatt—but she knew about those as well.

  “Here.” Flint offered her a USB cable. “Let’s try the file recovery software again.”

  She plugged it into the port on the cell, with little hope. She was out of ideas. She’d tried everything.

  Evan waltzed in at that moment and came over to their bench. He flicked a stray screw out of the way so he could lean on his elbow to watch her. Flint scowled at him, made a point of picking up the rolling screw and put it back in the collection container.

  “Sorry,” Evan mumbled, noticing his mistake.

  Flint grumbled in response and took his container to a supply shelf on the wall.

  Evan turned to Sloan. “Shouldn’t you be in your room keeping an eye on the monitors?”

  Giving him the side-eye, she continued running the program on her attached laptop. “Shouldn’t you be covering some poor soul in permanent ink?”

  “Nah. Shop’s closed.”

  “It’s that late?”

  “He nodded. Only just gone five.”

  “Wow. I’ve been immersed in this, then training with Tony, then this. We shared a beer at Heaven, then I left him to come here. Some fan recognized him and he decided to hang.”

  It was funny when Sloan thought about Tony and his acting success. When Tony had announced Gluttony’s alter-ego would be a movie star, no one really thought he’d be successful. A forever auditioning actor was a decent cover for being a vigilante. But then Sara came along and ruined their team. All the Deadly Seven had scattered to the wind and become immersed in their day lives to get away from the fact that they may have been responsible for the death of over forty innocents—or at least the public thought they were. When Tony got cast in a starring role, it took him by surprise. It took them all by surprise.

  Parker had been on his case to find a new career for months. His rigid hours weren’t easy to work around and fighting the Syndicate came first. She knew that better than anyone.

  “So what you doing?” Evan asked again.

  “I’m searching the cell Sara left at Wyatt’s.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you kidding me?” She turned to him. Had his electric power fried his brain?

  “What?” He looked offended.

  “Well, bras, maybe if you’d actually had a psychic vision or something about Max, we’d be able to find him and I wouldn’t need to do this.”

  “No need to get snippy. I can’t control them, you know that. I’ve only had weird random dreams about Daisy and gardening.”

  She slumped. Flint, who was closing up a draw on his shelf, glanced over with a look that told her to settle down.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m still on edge.”

  “S’cool. Besides,” Evan said as he poked at the cell. “It looks different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That time I followed her up to Wyatt’s apartment and found her making a call, the cell she was on looked different. Maybe like…” He reached into his back jeans pocket and pulled his own cell out. It was the same brand the entire family shared. “Maybe like this.”

  Silence shattered the room.

  A heartbeat passed. Then another.

  Almost too afraid to speak, she asked, “Did you overhear the conversation? Did it sound like—”

  His eyes unfocused as his mind turned inward. “She was giving them an update on her plan. It was how I knew she’d been lying to us. That’s when I confronted her.”

  Maybe Sloan didn’t hear right because it sounded like he inferred Sara used another phone to call the Syndicate—a phone that looked like his, and like the rest of their family’s�
�like Wyatt’s. Or was her mind reaching, and it was just a coincidence?

  Flint cleared his throat. “Evan. Did you just say Sara may have used Wyatt’s cell to call the Syndicate?”

  “I guess. We all have the same phone model, right?”

  Sloan shouted at AIMI. “AIMI. Pull up Wyatt’s cell phone records from—” she looked at Evan and whispered. “What date?”

  Looking flustered, he shrugged. “I don’t know. What date? Shit! Why are you so excited?”

  “You idiot.” She poked him. “If Wyatt’s cell has a record of the number belonging to the Syndicate, it could lead us to their location.”

  “If that number is still active,” Flint reminded her. It was his way of saying, don’t get your hopes up.

  She bit her lip. “We could still find something.”

  “Okay, let me look.” Evan activated his cell and opened up his calendar application. “What was the date?” He murmured to himself. “Got it. November thirtieth.”

  Sloan relayed the information to AIMI and directed her to bring up Wyatt’s cell phone records on her laptop. While that was happening, she pulled up the GPS history from Sara’s phone. On its own, the information from Sara’s cell was a needle in a haystack, but coupled with the location of the caller from Wyatt’s cell on the day she’d called the Syndicate… they’d have a location. It might not be the place Max was being held. But it was a start.

  After five minutes of searching, she looked up and met Evan’s eyes. “Found something.”

  Twenty-Six

  “Wake up.”

  Pain burst in Max’s cheek and he jolted awake, wincing. The crusty dried blood on his face cracked and itched.

  After the cloud dissipated from his vision, he saw the woman who’d kidnapped him crouching, watching his reaction with curiosity. He could see how she was related to Sloan—same beautiful features, wide mouth, plump lips. Except… Sloan’s glossy black hair stood out, framing her face while this woman’s hair blended with her white leather collar. Sloan’s eyes always smiled with mischief, but this woman… when she stared back at Max, he saw a dark chasm yawning with the depths of despair. Soulless, and lonely. She reminded Max of how he’d felt at his lowest—when he believed Sloan had left him after Gale had died.

  He’d lost track of time in this place. No windows. No hope of discovering if it were day or night. Having only eaten soggy bread and water, his stomach cramped, revolting at the smell from the bucket in the corner he’d done his business in, and he desperately wanted to raise his hand to test the spot on his cheek where she’d hit, but he couldn’t. His hands were tied.

  Daisy moved suddenly and Max flinched. He couldn’t help it. She’d beaten him often, but so far, he’d never been hurt beyond superficial wounds and it was the anticipation of something worse that played on his mind. His eyes went to the blood spray on her white collar and then his mind moved to a conflicting idea. Could it be possible she avoided permanently maiming him for another reason? Was she thinking about her family, about Sloan? Maybe she didn’t go too far on purpose… because she had hoped one day they’d forgive her.

  She cocked her head to the side allowing her white mane of hair to swish over her shoulder.

  “You are a curious person, Maximillian Johnson,” she stated.

  “So are you, Daisy,” he replied.

  She blinked. A flicker of something passed in that violet chasm and then her delicate brows puckered. “My name is Despair.”

  “That’s not your name. That’s your duty.”

  Keep her talking.

  It’s all he’d been doing for days on end, and the more they talked, the more likely it was she let slip something important.

  “What do you know about duty, Maximillian Johnson?”

  Grinding his teeth, he stared back, gaze never wavering.

  “I know that duty is what you make of it,” he said. “I know that it’s hard, and sometimes you think you’re doing the right thing, but you’re not. You make mistakes. I also know that there is no mistake you can’t come back from.” Her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing, so he added softly, “Your family misses you.”

  She backhanded him. He breathed through the numbing pain on his other cheek. This was good. It meant he was getting to her. He spat blood on the floor.

  “You’re a filthy liar,” she declared, and Max actually heard emotion in her voice. “You speak of duty, but I know what you did for your friend. I know that you went on a killing rampage all in the name of so-called justice. How are you different to me?”

  “I’m not proud of what I did,” he replied as a suffocating feeling sat on his chest. He frowned, fighting back the memories of his time exacting revenge on the insurgents that murdered his friend. His mind went completely dark and filled with utter chaos. It hurt him to talk about, but if it kept her attention away from Sloan, then so be it. He snarled at her. “Those assholes killed my friend. It was war. But I should have listened to my leaders. It’s a regret and a stain on my heart that will follow me to my grave.”

  This made her blink and her toneless voice was back. “You are stained. You embody everything she fights against. You murdered in cold blood. You are a sinner. You are unwanted.”

  No. He shook his head. That wasn’t true. He’d felt Sloan’s emotions. He knew the truth. She loved him as much as he loved her. She and her family would find him. He just had to hold out. He trusted her. But, even as he repeated the mantra in his head, the doubt Daisy had planted began to grow.

  What if their brief reunion wasn’t solid? What if Sloan oscillated back to whatever motivation kept her from coming after him the first time? What if she got to thinking about their relationship, truly thinking, and decided that someone like her—a warrior for justice—couldn’t love someone like him… a flat out murderer.

  Max took a deep, shuddering breath.

  He pushed out the doubt and replaced it with hope. If he couldn’t trust their relationship, then they were back in the same place they’d been two years ago, and he wouldn’t do that. Not on his end this time. He could only hope Sloan felt the same on her end.

  “I can feel your despair knocking at the edges of your soul, Maximillian Johnson.” She leaned closer and whispered. “Let me in, little piggy. Let me in.”

  “I won’t let it in. You shouldn’t either.”

  One of his escape scenarios involved turning Daisy to his side. She was a Lazarus; the eldest of eight. Sloan had told him they thought Daisy perished in a fire. Looking at her now, Max could barely see the faint pale sliver of scar tissue down the side of her face. Being burned alive as a child would be a horrific memory, perhaps one the Syndicate used against her. That fire started when their biological mother decided to destroy all the evidence of the project. What if the Syndicate told Daisy she was part of that evidence and that her mother wanted her dead? There were many gaps in the reasoning and knowledge of what really went down that day, and Daisy only went by what the Syndicate had told her. Perhaps these gaps could be exploited to bring her back to the right side of the battle.

  He knew one thing for sure: whatever they’d told her to make her believe she was worth being left behind, it had eaten away at her psyche. She was despair.

  “How did you meet Sloth?” Daisy asked. Again.

  They’d been at this for an eternity.

  He gave her the same answer he gave every single time. “You mean Sloan?”

  She pursed her lips and stood to tower over him. “You know who I’m talking about. Enough of this nonsense.”

  There was that tremor of emotion again.

  He smiled. “Can’t remember.”

  A boot to his ribs was her response. He coughed, doubled over.

  “When did you know you were her mate?”

  Now he laughed. “In Australia, we’re all mates.”

  Another eye-watering kick to his gut. This time he rolled, curled to protect himself. His head lolled and pressed against the cool floor, taking a small comfort in the
temperature. The specks in the stone aggregate were green.

  Daisy dragged him back to sitting and shoved his back against the wall. He winced at the pull from the cable ties around his raw wrists and ankles.

  “When did she discover her powers were linked to you? Was it the first time you copulated?”

  He arched an amused brow. Copulated? That was new. She’d never asked about intimate details before. “Now, I’ve been told my cock was magic, but that’s taking it a bit far, don’t you think?”

  Besides… they’d never gotten that far. Not yet. Thoughts of that event kept him warm at night. He knew exactly how their first time would go. Already, his mind took him there, sliding into fantasy, and away from reality. Silk sheets. Diamonds.

  Daisy let go and stood back, nostrils flaring as she glared down at him.

  He was getting to her. Why? The crude language? Unlikely.

  He stared at her while he unpacked his thoughts. She’d been on a roll until the talk of sex. It made her awkward. Daisy’s fingers twitched at her side.

  “You’ve never been with a man, have you?” he asked, curious.

  The flicker in her eyes told him, perhaps no. Perhaps she’d been too busy, doing her master’s bidding. Perhaps she was too deep in the pits of despair to want love, or maybe, she’d couldn’t feel desire at all.

  But that twitch, that hesitation, that tremble of emotion and pink tinge to her cheeks. She longed for that human connection as much as anyone.

  Stained. Unwanted.

  His heart went out to her, and it must have shown on his face because her expression morphed into disgust, then anger. “You answer my questions, not the other way around. Tell me exactly what Sloth can do.”

  “She talks about you all the time,” he replied, resting his head back on the wall behind him. “I don’t see why. They should just give up on you. That’s what I would do. But that entire family is determined to bring you back into their fold.” He paused. “Do you know they set a place for you at their table every time they have a family meal?”