Broken (11 page)

Her red hair danced in the cold wind that blew through the apartment now that the glass window was completely shattered and blown out. She held her blue silken bathrobe closed with her hands as she stood awkwardly, exposed, by the bookshelf near the bedroom door. I took a step closer to her, my gun obviously emptied of all bullets, the slide cocked back to expose the bare chamber. “Hello, Ariadne.”

“
Sienna,” she said, and her left hand went to the bookcase for another weapon. I threw my empty pistol at her as she pulled a book and tossed it at me. Her throw went wide, but mine was spot on; the slide hit her in the face and her head jerked back as she fell. She hit the cold tile floor with her back followed by her head and the thundercrack of her impact sounded painful. Her robe came undone as she tried to catch herself when she fell and her nakedness was all I needed to see to send me into a rage.

I grabbed her by the front of her robe and yanked her up. The silk ripped as I dragged her across the floor. She screamed and I lifted her, holding her out the window as the air rushed by. Far, far below us, the city sounds of running engines passing by gave way to the first sirens following the flashing lights that pulled up at the entrance of the building. “Where is he, Ariadne?”

Her hair whipped around her, falling in lines across her frightened face. “I don’t know!”

“
I don’t see your girlfriend.” I looked over the cityscape. “I believe she left you behind to save her own sweet ass.” I tightened my hold, shook her slightly, and listened to the fabric tear a little more. “She must really care for you to bail out the window and leave you to fend for yourself.”

“
She … “ Ariadne looked down in a sidelong glance, considering her options. I could tell she didn’t like them, but she still spat defiance when she looked back at me. “You shot her!”

I shrugged lightly, causing Ariadne’s weight to shift and drawing another scream from her. The first tears were drawn from her eyes now, rolling down her cheeks and into her hair. I wondered if they would fall from there, all the way down, twenty-eight stories like a drop of rain. “What your boss did to me was worse. Where is he?”

There was another loud rip, and I knew the fabric in the back of her robe was reaching the point of no return. If it broke now, she would fall, and I doubted I’d be able to catch her. There was an enthusiastic chorus of approval from three of the voices in my head at this idea, but I could almost hear Zack screaming at me not to do it.

I ignored him.

“
Last chance, Ariadne,” I said. “I wouldn’t struggle too much. It might hasten your demise. It’s kinda like what happened with me after your girlfriend carted you off that night at the Directorate; I struggled and I struggled, but it didn’t do me one bit of good.”

“
I’m … telling the truth … “ her voice was choked, and something occurred to me, something that would be at once more satisfying and cut right to the truth all in one.

“
All right,” I said, and I yanked her in then threw her to the floor where she landed, hard. I squatted over her as she tried to escape. “Let’s see if that’s true.” I put my weight on her and pushed her down, felt the cold tile on my hand as I rested against it and lifted the other menacingly in front of her face; her eyes had finally calmed slightly after I brought her back in, but they widened at the sight of my bare fingers.

“
No,” she said, almost pleading, “No—”

“
Funny,” I said, thrusting my hand against her cheek, “that’s what I said, too. It didn’t do me much good, either.” I pushed her face against the floor as I waited for my touch to do its work. I felt the first swirl of feeling as it began to move, her memories to mine, the first screams of pain from her as I felt the rush, felt my skin drinking her essence. My head began to swirl with the pleasure of it, and I waited as the screaming became louder, shifting to my head, but instead of being a discordant, ear-shattering howl it was more like music, sweet honey poured into my mind. My powers weren’t a torment, not to me, and Ariadne’s pain became my pleasure as they started to work, and I let it take over as I drank her, until the screaming finally stopped.

13.

“
I want you to go to South America.”

The air was clear, the ground covered with snow again, and I could tell by the glare of the sun I was in Ariadne’s office. I sat, watching, insubstantial again. The smell of the place was crisp; more Zack’s cologne, which caused Ariadne to cringe, than anything else. It was late in the day, and there was a sound of Ariadne tapping the desk with long fingernails as she spoke. I could taste the head of the pen that she was chewing, the bitter flavor of the plastic filtering through as I watched her gnaw on it. I would have considered it odd that I could taste what she was tasting even as I watched her from outside her body, but this was her memory, not mine, and in truth I only wanted to see what she had seen, I didn’t really care about the finer details.

“
Sorry, what?” Zack asked, blinking across the desk at her.

“
I want you to go to South America to get M-Squad,” Ariadne said, and I realized that this memory I was seeing was long before Zack’s little interlude in the bar, but after his meeting with Old Man Winter where he was told to get close to me. “They’re out of contact trying to wrangle a meta named Aleksandr Gavrikov, and we need them to help settle this Wolfe matter. This is of far more importance than Gavrikov, so I need you to get down there and re-establish contact. Bring them home so we can deal with this … Wolfe situation.”

Zack looked slightly rumpled across the desk from me. “Um … I mean, the Director made it clear to me that my current role was to get closer to the girl—”

“
Her name is Sienna,” Ariadne said simply. “And you may carry out whatever order the Director gave you,” ice frosted over her tone and I could sense the distaste for the Director’s order both in her head and in her tone, “when you get back, if he still wants to go through with that particular … “ She didn’t finish her sentence but I heard what she wanted to say in her mind—
obscenity
.

“
Um, all right,” Zack said, and stood. “I’ll … uh … “

“
There’ll be a helicopter waiting in a half hour,” she said, coolly watching him. “Be on it.”

“
Okay,” he said with a nod, and I looked at the lines of his face. He was handsome, no doubt, and I caught the hint from his look that he knew something else was going on, something with Ariadne giving him this order. He walked out without saying anything else, and the world changed dramatically in the moments after that. It took me a moment to realize that I was seeing time leap forward—the sun went down, the office became dark, shadows creeping in around the light cast by the fluorescents overhead. Ariadne sat there, her pen scratching out ink letters on a page in front of her.

“
You sent Zack Davis away,” came the rumble from the door, and Ariadne looked up.. The chill had crept into the room preceding him, and I saw Ariadne fold her arms across her chest, partially out of a sense of defense and partly to warm herself from the rush of cold air.

“
I did,” she said, pulling her arms tighter around her. “He’s on his way to retrieve M-Squad from South America. He should be back in a day or two.”

“
I see,” Old Man Winter answered coldly. “And did you do this because of my orders to him to get closer to the girl?”

“
No,” Ariadne said, and I knew that she was lying. Winter knew it, too, I was sure, but he said nothing. “He was available. A grunt, but one we’ve trusted with more responsibility. He seemed the one to do it.”

“
Is that so?” Erich Winter asked, his towering figure taking up the whole of the door frame. “I have taken the opportunity to use this to our advantage.”

Ariadne froze in a way that had nothing to do with the cold in the room. “Oh?”

“
Yes,” Erich Winter said, “I’ve had him say a farewell to the girl that involved extracting a promise to remain here, on the grounds, until he can get back. It should give her some hope and allow us to keep her here just a bit longer. Perhaps it will give us some time to solve the mystery of what type of meta she is, which will perhaps give us some insight into why Wolfe is pursuing her as aggressively as he is.”

Ariadne brought her pen up, but halted it an inch from the outside of her mouth. “He’s working for someone, isn’t he?”

“
Oh, yes,” Winter said, “but the question is ‘who?’ And also … ‘why’ is she so important to them?” Winter shook his head. “Wolfe has always been a dangerous foe, and his choices of employers is always carefully considered. He has served a dozen masters in the time I have known him, each dangerous in their own way, all of them a threat to whomever they considered their enemies.” Winter’s eyes narrowed. “This time feels different, though; whoever has sent him here has done so for reasons that he has left behind him. Wolfe wants to hurt the girl, now, to make her suffer because she has hurt him. He does not countenance any sort of will being turned against him; he considers it a challenge to break resistance that is offered to him. Whoever his employer is, he is not heeding their wishes at this point, I would wager. He will not take the girl unharmed, though whatever remains of her when he is done may eventually be offered to them.”

Ariadne’s voice was low when she answered. “But we’re going to protect her, right?”

“
For a time,” Winter said. “We will keep her safe, for now, and try to determine what she is.”

Ariadne frowned. “Wait. For a time?”

Old Man Winter gave a little shrug. “She is of some import, to someone, somewhere. We need to find out who at some point. If we cannot gather these answers ourselves, the natural conclusion is to find a way to track her … and then make certain Wolfe gets his hands on her.”

Ariadne sat back in her chair, her brow furrowed as she stared at Old Man Winter in sickly disbelief. “I thought we were going to protect her. That’s why we’re here, to protect metas, to keep the entire species out of danger by policing them—”

“
We have many purposes,” Old Man Winter said darkly, “and protecting one at the expense of more is doing us no service.” He began to turn but Ariadne made a noise that caused him to stop and survey her with his cold blue eyes. “What?”

“
You knew the girl … Sienna … you knew her mother, didn’t you?” The pen was no longer resting in Ariadne’s mouth. Now it was clenched in her hand.

“
I did.” He watched coldly. “What of it?”

Ariadne swallowed visibly, and I could see her taking care with her words. “Her mother was the one who betrayed the Agency and caused it to be destroyed? While you were there?”

Winter’s eyes narrowed. “It seems likely that she gave us over to … “ There was a flash of frost in his eyes. “To destruction.”

“
What destroyed the Agency?” Ariadne asked. “You never talk about it.” She let out a small laugh, which was no louder than a sigh. “You never talk about anything, but especially not that.”

Winter’s cold eyes faded as though looking far off. “It was not a simple ‘what’ that destroyed the Agency. It was a ‘who.’”

Ariadne blinked, almost flinching. “You mean one of the old-world meta organizations?”

“
No,” Old Man Winter said. “A person. One man.”

Ariadne’s face furrowed, lines stitching the slight wrinkles that barely showed around her face. “One meta, I presume?” Old Man Winter nodded. “How is that even possible? I thought the Agency had a hundred metas at their disposal for all manner of tasks—”

“
We did,” Winter said. “We did indeed. And one meta … was all it took to undo it all, to turn a facility twice the size of this one into utter wreckage and kill every metahuman in the entire place save for two.”

“
You and … Sierra, I think her name was?” Ariadne waited for Old Man Winter to nod. “But how did you escape?”

Old Man Winter’s head slumped, subtly. Anyone who didn’t know him that saw it would think nothing of it; that it was a slight nod, a nearly insubstantial incline of his jaw. But to those of us who knew him … even after the surprise he’d given me recently, I knew somehow … that this was his feeling of defeat. “Because,” Old Man Winter said, “he let me live.” The blue eyes came up, glowing again, with a cold fury. “And he told me so. There was no need for him to prove his dominance over me, to assert his superiority.” Winter leaned back against the door frame as though hurt, and his fingers went to his torso, massaging the material of his dress shirt as though he could rub at an old wound beneath.

“
I don’t understand,” Ariadne said, looking at him with undisguised curiosity. “If he killed the rest, why would he let you live?”

“
Because,” Old Man Winter said, now holding his shoulder as though it pained him, “he had already broken me … before.” Without allowing for further explanation, he turned, leaving Ariadne in her office, and returned to his own. The slow, quiet sound of the door closing in the next office was almost as loud as an explosion as Ariadne stayed there, alone, pondering the complete incongruity of what he had said.

I watched too, insubtantial, and thought about what he had said, and waited to wake up.