Omega (17 page)

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my knuckles where I had struck her, “but she’s no Chris Hemsworth.”

The elevator next to us dinged and sent me scrambling. I wondered very briefly if I’d have to take the memory out of a passing civilian when they saw what had happened, but felt a dash of relief when Clary and Parks stepped out.

“What the hell happened here?” Parks asked.

“A clean takedown,” Reed answered. “Minus, y’know, the clean part.”

“We need to get her out of here,” Bastian said. “Clary, you’re gonna want to go to rock-form everywhere but your head. Make it look casual, like you’re wearing gloves—but keep her away from your flesh. She’s a Thor-type, and if you let her touch you, you’re gonna wish you hadn’t.”

Clary nodded, ripping away the netting that Eve had used to restrain Madigan. Madigan didn’t even twitch as Clary freed her, the nets blinking out of existence as Clary ripped through each fiber. As he picked her up, I caught a glimpse of rocky skin under his t-shirt collar, and he readjusted her to walk her in front of him in a way that could possibly be described as making her look like she might be conscious and being walked out. If you didn’t look too closely. And you were an idiot.

“We need to move,”‘ Parks said. “Folks in the lobby were asking questions about the noise when we came up. Doubtful this will stay quiet for long.”

“FBI IDs out,” Bastian said. “Let’s not go mugging for the surveillance cameras, though.”

We moved toward the nearest stairwell, Bastian at the fore with Eve behind him, Reed at my shoulder. We cleared each floor quickly, passing a few confused hotel guests as we descended, not saying anything. Bastian waved his badge at them as we passed, running interference, saying, “Please stand clear, folks, we have a dangerous fugitive here.”

When we hit the lobby, Bastian hurried to the front desk. Dressed as he was, in a suit, he pulled his ID and warned the clerks what was coming.

“I was sure one of us was going to go off the walkway at some point,” Reed confided in me as we passed the front desk. “I mean, we fight in an open-air courtyard hotel and no one goes over the balcony?”

“I was sure it’d be you,” I said as the first chill of the outside air hit me, wind blowing my hair back. I felt the tickle of static electricity run through my hair and I wondered how long I’d be dealing with the aftershocks (ha ha) of Eleanor’s attack.

“Well, at least I’d have been able to pull a soft landing,” Reed said as we approached the van. I heard tires squeal as a Cadillac wandered into the wrong lane as it was exiting the parking lot and almost got hit by an airport shuttle. “Geez. Some people shouldn’t drive.”

“Nice to know you weren’t worried about it being me to go over the edge,” I said, stepping into the back of the van after Clary.

“I would have cushioned your fall.”

“How are we gonna keep her contained on the ride home?” Parks asked. “Have her sit on Clary’s lap the whole way?”

There was a moment of perplexed silence that ended as Bastian shut one side of the rear doors. “Yep,” he said. “Clary...sit her on your lap and stay in a rubberized form.”

“What did the poor woman do to deserve that?” Eve asked, sotto voce. We all heard it anyway and Clary changed his skin to black rubber before any hint of blush or emotion made it to his cheeks.

“Just keep her subdued,” Bastian said, and I saw no further movement from Clary. He was still, arms clamped around Madigan’s limp body, as the van started up and we pulled out onto the road, the miles ticking by and no one speaking, as though Madigan were not unconscious, electricity still filling the air around us.

15.

Interlude

Bloomington, Minnesota

“Yes, they caught her,” the old man said into the phone. He swerved the big Cadillac to avoid a shuttle bus pulling into the parking lot, causing the shuttle to squeal its tires. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw the procession, the four members of M-Squad, the young man from Alpha—and her.

“I have her in sight right now,” he said into the phone, watching her dark hair, a little frizzy
, bob up and down as she hurried across the parking lot toward the Directorate van. “She is...shorter than I expected.” At that moment, she looked up at the car, and he felt almost as though she were looking at him through the rearview mirror, as though a sort of current were between them, and he pressed the pedal, accelerating out of the parking lot. As he turned, his eyes followed her, still making her getaway with her comrades. “Pretty, in her own sort of way. She has a focused air about her, her mind on the things she has to accomplish. Her will is strong, I can tell you that much. I can feel it from here.”

He waited as he drove, passing a freeway onramp that was grey, dull, and overdone—just like everything else in America. “I don’t know how much of a problem her will presents,” he said, answering the question asked on the other end of the phone. “I am merely informing you that she seems to possess a mind of her own, that she is no simple dullard as easily manipulated as the goon in Iowa whom I set upon a different path. He will wake up in twenty years as an electrician and never know that I steered him from his life of crime, because he has all the self-awareness of a microwave dinner. She, on the other hand...her mind is firm in its decisions. All I can do for one such as that is begin to stir the waters of uncertainty.”

He pulled the car onto the freeway. “We will be prepared by tomorrow to finish this.”

He waited, listening, though he wanted more than anything to interrupt, to assure the man on the other end of the line that, in fact, he was wrong, but one simply did not do that to one’s boss, not in Omega.
The fastest way to the gallows
, he thought, and listened to the prattle, waiting for his opportunity to talk. “Yes,” he said at last, when the rhetorical question was asked, “but this is simply a choice. I know you had high hopes that they would step aside after we wiped out their human agents.” He let a smile split his lips. “No, you know I didn’t agree with that operation, and clearly it did not bear the fruit that your advisors told you it would. Because they do not know Erich Winter, his stubborn resolution.”

There was a pause in the conversation. “Erich Winter lives up to his name. His coldly analytical nature, his refusal to budge, like a frosted hinge...you were never going to receive the results you were looking for by simply doing things the way they told you to. Anyone who was close to the situation would have said so...and this is the problem with your advisors...they are too young, too unfamiliar with the old ways to deal with the old ones, who are more myth and legend to them than real.”

There was a flat pause and the old man looked up at the greying sky, at the impending approach of winter itself, of the trees, now nearly naked on either side of the boulevard he was driving on. “Stanchion is mine, my operation. I will show you. Tomorrow, we move. Tomorrow, everything falls into place. I will call you after it is done, and we will talk. I will fix this intractable mess that your young minds have created for you.

“And after that, Erich Winter will no longer be a problem.”

16.

Sienna

“So this is Eleanor Madigan,” Old Man Winter said in a low, rumbling tone, the glass between her in the interrogation room and the eight of us watching feeling far too thin for a woman who could cast lightning. She sat on a metal chair, her legs and those of the chair resting in a children’s wading pool filled halfway with water.

“I wouldn’t advise using ice on her.” I said, “I don’t think it would end well for you, more like an AC/DC song.”

“AC/DC?” Reed asked, turning to me.

“Thunderstruck,” Clary said, mumbling. “Good one, Sienna.”

“Her talents do not concern me,” Old Man Winter said. “Keeping her in a pool of water should nullify her powers.”

“Is that an old trick for dealing with Thor-types, sir?” Bastian asked.

“No,” Old Man Winter replied, a glint of amusement in his eyes. “I saw it on an episode of
Heroes
.” There was a pause, as though someone had thrown a grenade in the middle of us and we were all waiting for it to explode.

“Oh, wow,” I said into the tension. “Was that a joke?”

Old Man Winter’s voice scratched as he replied. “Yes. Do none of you recognize one when you hear it?”

I looked around; taking the temperature of the room, I felt one thing and one thing only—discomfort. “From you, no.”

“What’s to stop her from turning the chair over?” Bastian asked.

“Clary will assist in the interrogation,” Old Man Winter said; whether he was ignoring Bastian or simply felt that was answer enough was anyone’s guess. “While he and I are speaking with Madigan, Parks and Bastian will again have a conversation with Bjorn, and Sienna and Eve will speak to Fries.” Old Man Winter turned from facing Madigan to look at all of us, a wintery glow of blue in his frosty eyes. “They will be moving soon. I will have names. I will have times, locations...whatever they know, I want it.”

“Did Bjorn talk?” I asked as Old Man Winter began to turn away. “After you broke his arm off, and whatever else you did to him?”

There was a pause, and I got the sense everyone else was waiting, the same as I was, to see if he answered. “No,” he said finally. “But that does not mean he will not say more now.” He walked out the door, Clary at his heels, and a moment later we saw him enter the chamber that held Madigan.

“He thinks the clock is winding down,” Ariadne said after Old Man Winter had begun to speak to Eleanor. “He thinks they’ll be getting cocky now, that some unstoppable hammerblow is about to rain down on our heads.”

“We’ve captured three of them now,” Eve said, a certain lazy, I-don’t-care-ness to her tone. “You’d think they’d be losing some of that arrogance.”

I thought for a moment about Eleanor, when we were talking during the fight in the hotel. “Hmm,” I said aloud, drawing Reed’s eye, and then Ariadne’s.

“What?” Ariadne asked.

“When I fought Eleanor,” I said, “she didn’t seem all that concerned about being blindsided by four Directorate agents. She even sat there and monologued until I attacked her. That’s either some deep arrogance or—”

“Or they’re playing at something else, something that would instill a serious overconfidence,” Reed said. A beep came from his pocket and he pulled his cell phone, looking at the screen. “‘Call home.’ Be back in a few.” He made a move toward the exit and disappeared into the hall.

I watched as Old Man Winter asked Eleanor why she was in Minnesota. The English woman did not answer, did not even deign to acknowledge him, and I watched him gesture for Clary. Clary’s skin turned black as rubber, and he stepped into the wading pool and positioned himself behind her, his wrist across her neck, holding her face in place and forcing her to look up at Old Man Winter.

“Enough of these childish games,” Eve said, tapping me on the shoulder. “Let us speak with your incubus.”

“Excuse me?” I said icily. “He’s not ‘mine’.”

Eve rolled her eyes to the side, as though annoyed at my daring to speak back to her. “Let us speak with this little man whom you almost let into your
scheide
and drag the truth from his lips, all right?”

“Well, when you put it that way...”

As we left, Ariadne was activating the monitor for Fries’ chamber. Bastian and Parks followed a few paces behind us, entering the room across the hall from Ariadne’s. As near as I could tell, Ariadne was going to be watching three interrogations at once, which I did not envy, especially considering the one involving Clary and Old Man Winter was fairly certain to degenerate into something I wouldn’t care to watch.

The door slid open with Eve’s key card and we found Fries sitting at a table in the middle of the room. He went from sullen to all smiles, as cheerful a transformation as I’d ever seen a person make in two seconds.

“Who just shot a ray of sunshine up your ass?” I asked as Eve slid into the chair across from him.

“You are such a colorful person,” he said. “It makes me glad I didn’t kill you in Eagle River.”

“Not for lack of trying.” I said, “The only reason you didn’t is because you got your ass kicked by girls. Twice.”

“Yeah, well,” he shrugged. “One of them is dead, and the other might as well be. I’d tell you that your aunt is a real piece of work, but you already know that.” He laughed, an empty one. “She is seriously damaged goods.”

“Said the black hole to the kettle.” I folded my arms. “Got anything to tell us, James? Because, otherwise, I’ve got better things to do, like filing my nails.”

“You should try doing your hair,” he said with a nod that almost caused me to subconsciously reach up; I’d forgotten that Eleanor had run ten thousand volts through me. I probably looked like Lady Frankenstein.

“Can I beat him unconscious now?” Eve asked me, ignoring Fries completely.

“I have no objection.” I really didn’t.

“Your hospitality is lacking around here,” Fries said as Eve stood and circled around the table toward him.

“Gloves,” Eve said to me, and I puzzled at what she meant for a second before nodding, taking off my gloves, and placing them into her outstretched hand. She slid them on, one by one, and I heard the sound of leather stretching. “You have small, girlish hands,” she said, but I didn’t really hear any judgment in the way she said it.

“Isn’t that the way you like them?” Fries asked, smiling sweetly at Eve.

“It is,” she said, smiling back, from just over him. “It really is.” The first punch didn’t so much knock him over as flatten him like a wrecking ball hitting a small building. His chair skittered across the floor and hit the wall, making a gawdawful racket. Fries hit the ground sideways, head bouncing of the tile floor with a terrible crack, his hands still cuffed behind him.

“Oh my,” Fries said, his head turning as though he were woozy. “I shouldn’t be surprised you’re a man-hater, really.”

Eve knelt down and got astride him, balancing on one knee, cracking her knuckles. “It isn’t that I hate men. I work with some very decent ones.” She pulled back her fingers, exposing her leather-covered palm, and then reformed her fist and smashed Fries in the side of the head with it, rattling his head against the floor again. “Bastian, Parks, even Old Man Winter. Decent sorts. Clary...has some rough edges.” She hit him again, and I watched him spit out blood. “You, on the other hand, I find no redeeming value in.” She pulled back her fist into a palmhand and ran it into his nose, causing it to break. Blood dripped down the sides of his face and, I presume, into the back of his throat, because he started to gag.

“You,” she said, rolling him over and placing her weight on his back, “are the worst sort. I know of you, James Fries, and I know what you do to women. How many bodies have you left in dumpsters in the last year? In your lifetime?” She took his face and rammed it into the cold, black floor tiles. “I’ve been begging Ariadne for months to let me have a shot at you—just one shot, as a personal chance to thank you for how you treat women. It sets me—how do you say?—on edge?”

Fries took a moment to answer, his eyes rolling in and out of focus. He smiled, a terrible, bloody smile. “Yeah. On edge. And I’ve left some bodies by the wayside, it’s true. In alleys, in dumpsters. Tons of them.” She snapped him hard in the nose and he gagged, making a glottal-stop noise as he spit blood out. “You gonna beat me to death for them? You didn’t even know them.”

“I bet,” Eve said, wearing the thinnest, most lethal smile, “if I told you that I would kill you if you didn’t correctly write down the names of the last five girls you slept with, you’d not only die, you wouldn’t remember a single one of them.”

Fries smiled again, and I could see the bloody lines tracing between his teeth. “You got me there. I don’t even remember one of them. Sandy, maybe? Cindy? Ah, who cares.”