Havoc
Authors: Jeff Sampson
havoc
A DEVIANTS NOVEL
JEFF SAMPSON
Balzer + Bray
An Imprint of
HarperCollins
Publishers
CONTENTS
4
Lonely and Getting All Hyperbolic
6
We Want to Know about Biozenith
8
You Recover from the Big Night?
9
Okay, You're Not Stalking Me, Are You?
10
Busting into the Enemy Fortress
16
Just a Slight Disagreement Between Girls
17
Breaking and Entering Is a Crime
18
They Can't Help It if They're Murderous Robots
Internal Document #1
The Vesper Company
“Envisioning the brightest stars, to lead our way.”
- Internal Document, Do Not Reproduce -
Details of Video Footage Recorded Oct. 31, 2010,
Part 1
*Note: This video transcription follows the end of the “Partial Transcript of the Interrogation of Branch B's Vesper 1.” Refer to the initial transcript for details prior to the following.
20:22:03 PSTâInterrogation Room C7
Two subjects in room identified as:
âFranklin Savage, Vesper Company employee White male, 42 years old
âEmily Webb, Branch B's Vesper 1 (designated “Deviant”)
White female, 16 years old
Vesper 1(B) sits at a desk opposite Savage. She leaps to her feet, breaking the chains that bind her wrists. Savage flinches, cowering behind his hands as the girl stares him down.
Behind Savage, the steel-reinforced door buckles inward and then flies across the room to slam against the opposite wall. A third subject enters the room, identified by intel as:
âAmy Delgado, Branch A's Vesper 2.1 (designated “Deviant”)
Hispanic female, 16 years old
VESPER 2.1(A): Going somewhere?
The two Deviants discuss what to do with Savage and choose to let him scurry out of the room
like a coward
.
Limon, please refrain from inserting your personal opinions into these transcripts.âMH
After more discussion, Vesper 1(B) chooses to leave behind the tape recording of her conversation with Savage and the document she wrote detailing the events spanning Sept. 7, 2010, through Sept. 13, 2010, in Skopamish, WA. The two Deviants exit the room.
20:33:17 PSTâHallway 3, Sector C
Several guards lie unconscious behind and ahead of the two Deviants, the product of Vesper 2.1(A)'s trek to break Vesper 1(B) out of the interrogation room. One wonders if perhaps our guard staff was not adequately trained to handle adversaries with telekinesis, as was brought up in a meeting on the evening of October 25, 2010.
It has been noted several times, Limon, no need to continue to do so.âMH
Stepping over the fallen guards, Vesper 1(B) reaches the door of office C12, twists its doorknob, and breaks the lock, allowing the Deviants to enter.
20:37:09 PSTâOffice C12, Temporary Office of Franklin Savage
Vesper 1(B) and Vesper 2.1(A) cross to Savage's desk. Vesper 1(B) rifles through loose papers until she has prepared a neat stack. The papers have since been identified as the second part of her account of the events prior to the Incident. Vesper 2.1(A) questions her motives for leaving the papers intact. Vesper 1(B) looks into the camera, speaking directly to it.
VESPER 1(B): Same reason I haven't been smashing cameras. They want to know what we can do? Then I say we let them watch us, and we let them read all about it.
VESPER 2.1(A): I continue to like your style, girl.
VESPER 1(B): Thanks. It's all here. Let's move.
Part 1 of Relevant Video Footage Concluded
I stood in front of my bathroom mirror and studied the bags under my eyes, which were half-hidden behind my crooked glasses. Looked at how limp and mousy my hair was, definitely not shampoo-commercial ready. I held a pair of sleeping pills, halfheartedly telling myself to pop 'em back. Go all sleazy starlet and abuse those prescription drugs like there's no tomorrow.
Don't do it
, a voice whispered in the back of my head. An angry voice. One that kept popping into my thoughts more and more over the past few evenings.
Let me out. You know you want to.
I ignored her.
It had been two nights since I'd helped kill a man after transforming into a genetically engineered werewolf. Two nights since I'd let loose my wild sides to find the man who'd murdered Emily Cooke and tried to kill Dalton McKinney. Knowing the consequences of letting myself go like that⦠I couldn't do it again.
So, I was trying out a new nighttime routine.
First, an early dinner with Dad, my stepmom, Katherine, and my stepsister, Dawn.
Then, hastily banging through my homework during the hour I had left to do it, all the while staring forlornly at my book and DVD cases, remembering the good old days when I'd had entire evenings to indulge in a little escapism.
Finally, giving up on the homework halfway through because eight o'clock was rapidly approaching. Which meant sneaking into the bathroom and pouring a couple of my stepmother's prescription-strength sleeping pills into my palm, downing them, and passing out to avoid changing into Nighttime Emily, the wild, superpowered version of me. Herself a midway state between normal me and full-on wolf-girl.
This new routine was most definitely the product of some utterly strange circumstances.
It was Tuesday night. Exactly one week since the day that regular, geeky Emily Webbâmeâfirst turned into wild-child Nighttime Emily, the same night Emily Cooke had been murdered by a man named Dr. Gunther Elliott. I hadn't known it at the time, but Emily Cooke was also a werewolf like me. She'd lost her life because of it.
I clenched my eyes closed and took in a deep breath. Blinking them open, I snatched up a plastic cup from the counter, filled it with tap water, then hastily retreated to my bedroom. I set the cup on my bedside table, then lay back against my pillow.
Drugging ourselves was what Spencer and I had agreed to do, at least until we figured out what the whole changing-into-mythical-beasts thing was all about. Drug away the changes, so we don't get into trouble. Do research during the day, when we're more ourselves.
But your daytime selves can't solve problems like I can.
The voice again. Nighttime me, or at least what I imagined nighttime me would say.
Besides, there's no reason to hide in your stuffy room, girl. The bad guy is gone. We killed him. Let me out.
A shiver ran through me. “Wrong thing to say,” I whispered to myself.
The images of Sunday night came back to me in a rush, like they always did, just when I thought I was free of them for a few moments.
A man in a fedora. A gun.
Me and Spencer, both wolf-human hybrids, stalking the man.
A knife lashing out, cutting me, cutting the wolf-boy. And we leap to rip the man apart, our vision red, our goal to kill.
I could still taste his rotting flesh no matter how much I brushed my teeth. Scope wasn't exactly clearing up this plaque. The stench of his unwashed body, of his fear, sometimes seemed to overwhelm my nostrils. And his eyes ⦠his empty, blank eyesâ¦
I guess this is what they call post-traumatic stress. Fun, huh? I now totally relate to the lone survivors of horror movies when they pop up in sequels. Laurie Strode in
Halloween H20
? I feel you, girl. You too, Sidney Prescott. Not so much the girl from
Friday the 13th
. She basically got a raw deal.
The only time I didn't think about what I'd done as a wolf-girl was when I was around Spencer and his wonderful, calming scent, or when I was rushing through the blur that had become school, half focusing on teachers while thinking about all that I still needed to know about the changes.
And, of course, when I was deep asleep I didn't have to worry. If I had dreams about that night, well, I didn't remember them once I woke up. One small mercy.
I popped the sleeping pills from my sweaty palm into my mouth, then downed the cup of lukewarm tap water. No, Nighttime Emily, I was not going to let you out, because letting you out would lead to the werewolf, which would lead⦠Who knows where.
I didn't want to think anymore. Or remember. The pills swirled in my stomach, and my lids grew heavy.
Do you think you can hide from this forever? Don't you think our stepmom is going to notice her disappearing pills sooner or later? Someday you're going to have to let yourself face the night. You know it's true.
I ignored the voice, even knowing that she made far too much sense.
And then sleep came and took everything away.
My eyes snapped open, pulling me from my dreamless sleep.
It was dark in my room save for the glow from my digital alarm clock and the faint tinge of streetlight that seeped through my curtains. I wasn't supposed to be awake before morning.
A chill draft touched my skin. Goose bumps bristled on my arms. My heart pounded fast, as though my body knew what my sleep-addled brain didn't want to know.
Someone was watching me.
I pulled the covers to my chin and cradled my stuffed toy dog, Ein, as I scanned my room. Everything that wasn't veiled in black was in shades of gray. The room was still, silent. Outside I could hear a car alarm going off somewhere down the street. I half expected to see Dr. Gunther Elliot there, some undead version of him coming to take his revenge on me for killing him.
No one was there. It was PTSD, I rationalized. Just more residual fear from a night that seemed so very far away even at the same time it felt like it had just happened moments ago.
My self-assurances didn't stop my hands from shaking or my pulse from pumping.
For what felt like a long time, I lay in bed, my eyes darting around my room from the closet to the door to the window, my brain telling me to calm down, my body refusing to listen.
Then, out of the corner of my eye: movement.
My eyes shot toward the window and came to settle on a figure at the foot of my bed, the size and shape of a grown man. Only this man was a shroud of misty blackness that had congealed to form a featureless, three-dimensional shadow that stood perfectly still and silent.
My heart thudded faster, pounding out a dance-track beat that became all I could hear. I swallowed, trying to convince myself that I was not seeing what I thought I was seeing. Because I'd seen this thing before, or something like it. Before, it had appeared only when I was a wolf. I wasn't a wolf now.
Yet here it was.
I could see my DVD case and TV right through it, but it was more than a shadow, I knew it, I
felt
it. It wasn't the dead man. It was something worse. I whimpered as a primal fear I had only ever experienced as a wolf came over me.
The shadow's head tilted, slowly, methodically. It was studying me.
I squeezed my eyes closed, willing the thing to disappear, to leave me the hell alone. I lay there, sheets to my nose, for how long I couldn't tell you. Then, as my heart finally began to slow to a waltzlike crawl, I opened my eyes.
The shadowman was above me, its featureless face inches from my own. It raised a hand, reaching for my head with long, slender, translucent fingers.
I opened my mouth to scream. But all that came out was a squeak, like some pitiful horror-movie cliché. As I lay there, unable to move, the shadowman's cold fingers grazed my cheek. It wasn't solid, exactly; more like the wispy touch of wet fog against my bare skin.
Still, it was
touching me
. Now was not the time to get all paralyzed.
I rolled to my left, away from the shadowman. I knocked Ein to the floor and grabbed a lamp from the bedside table, the squat one that my best friend, Megan, and I had long ago decorated with various shades of glittery nail polish.