Tormented (23 page)

“Well, that didn’t go so well,” Scott said as he got back into the car, looking more than a little put out. I’d let him out a block from Benjamin Cunningham’s house, figuring it’d be better if his mother didn’t see me anywhere close to Scott, so as not to poison her first impression.

“Oh, no?” I asked, shifting in my seat.

“I think it’s safe to say she sniffed me out,” Scott said. “Either that, or she’s really just a rude person in general.”

“I could believe either,” I said, putting the car into gear and pressing the accelerator. I started drumming idly on the steering wheel as I went, trying to figure out a next move. “I only talked to Cunningham for about ten seconds, but I think that man is probably suffering from an overbearing mother.”

“I haven’t met him,” Scott said, “but I wouldn’t have any trouble believing that.” He rested his elbow on the window and put his hand, balled up into a fist, against the glass. “So … what now?”

“I always hated the passive part of this,” I said, turning at the corner to take us back to the freeway, instinctively. “This was the thing back in the day, at the Directorate, or the agency, later. Felt like we were always waiting for things to happen.”

“Tough to get too aggressive with the bad guys,” Scott said. “Sounds like you think things have gone in that direction lately, though.”

I forgot that I wasn’t dealing with Augustus anymore, someone who was tired of me picking at these scabs between me and Sienna. “Yes,” I said with more than a little relish. “I mean, during the war it was one thing. We were dealing with stakes like—”

“The end of the world as we know it?”

“Yes,” I agreed, “exactly. Sovereign wanted to wipe out our entire people, and that was without doubt. Sienna saw the vision, we watched him and Century tear through the metas in that extermination, I mean … it was righteous, you know? Fighting against the twilight of our kind.”

“You’re still fighting,” Scott said with half a shrug.

“We’re fighting mostly against wanks like Anselmo,” I said. “Actually, like less than Anselmo in most cases. Anselmo actually had this crackpot plan to make Italy his personal kingdom. Most of the people we’re using the surveillance state on are pikers like that Simmons guy. He wanted to rob the Federal Reserve Bank, so we watched his every move for a few days, busted him after his robbery, and then Sienna beat the holy hell out of him on film. Pretty far cry from the end of the world, that guy.”

“I dunno,” Scott said. “I think you know I was the first to speak up in criticism of some of the things we were doing back then, but … seems like the game hasn’t changed all that much.”

“Duuuuuude,” I said, shaking my head, “if there was one person I figured would understand …”

“I understand,” Scott said, a little huffy, “but I think you’re splitting hairs. You were totally fine with shooting Sovereign in the back of the head without a trial, remember?”

I flushed. “He was uncontainable.”

“What do you want to do with this … what’s his name again? Cunningham?”

“He needs to go to jail, or at least be … contained,” I said. “The Directorate had the tech to contain Gavrikov, remember?”

“He killed fifty people,” Scott said. “And Dr. Sessions is dead, man, and I’m guessing that all the scientific expertise that might let you keep that guy under wraps went with him. He’s a danger.”

“I think it was an accident, what he did at the airport,” I said.

“What about when he turned his co-worker into barbecue this morning?” Scott asked. “Still an accident?”

“Maybe,” I said. I’d seen the video footage J.J. had appended to the file when I checked in online while waiting for Isabella to treat Augustus. It certainly didn’t look good. “I don’t know. I just … it feels like Sienna started crossing lines at some point,” I said, bringing the conversation back to where I wanted it. “Or maybe I just woke up to the fact that … she doesn’t care, man. We watched her grow up to become the most powerful person in the world, and she just … kills whenever she feels the need.”

“My God,” Scott said, deadpan, “does she kill the rude? Like Hannibal? Eat them?”

“Not funny,” I said. “She’s just gotten to the point where … I don’t know, it stopped for a while after Sovereign. I legitimately thought that maybe he was the last person she’d ever kill. But then she went to London, and left an ungodly mess there, and since she’s been back … I mean, in January alone, with those terrorists that stormed the campus—”

“I have nearly infinite water at my command and I can’t even muster tears for those guys,” Scott said. “They were trying to kill her, Reed.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and she killed ’em right back.”

“She had no powers at the time. What did you expect? Should she have used riot shotguns laden with beanbags? Because I’m pretty sure she didn’t have anything like that.”

“Her killing people is like shooting an unarmed man,” I said, finally coming up with an analogy I thought fit.

“Because an unarmed man can’t hurt you?” Scott asked.

“Because it’s a clear disparity of power.”

Scott blinked at me. “Okay. Let’s go with that for a second. You realize a human with a gun theoretically is more powerful than me, right?”

“Yes.”

“Can I kill a man with a gun?” he asked.

I let out a low sigh. “I’ve seen you do it, back at Terramara—”

“Okay,” Scott said, “can an unarmed man kill an armed man?”

“Well, Sienna certainly did, though she was an unarmed woman at the time—”

“So, let me get this straight,” Scott said, “you get mad at her when she’s superpowered and kills weaker people, you still get mad when she’s unarmed, with no powers, and killing armed people who are out to kill her … I gotta be honest, it sounds a little like you kind of just want her to lay down and die.”

“Don’t be a douche, okay?” I was heated by this point. “I don’t want her to lay down and die. But you see all the articles and news pieces and crap, right?”

“The ones condemning her for every crime known to man? That’d be hard to miss, even for someone who doesn’t read the news, like me.”

“She brings it on herself,” I said, putting aside that little revelation that J.J. had brought to my attention earlier regarding the origin of the press heat coming her way. I’d read some of the worst stuff about her, and I couldn’t disagree with the assertions they made about how quick she was on the trigger.

“Look,” Scott said, like he was giving up the fight, “I don’t know your sister like you do—”

Nor half as well as you used to,
I wanted to tell him.

“—but it seems to me, as an observer from way back, that you’ve gotten the front row seat to the next level of her personality getting hardened,” he said. “Because I saw her after the whole Zack thing, when she was going after M-Squad with a holy hell vengeance, and it was … intense. I don’t see that here, that desire to do cold-blooded murder and unleash havoc.”

“Which is what worries me,” I said. “And is entirely the point. She agonized over Wolfe when she killed him. Wolfe. A serial killer. And when she had to kill Gavrikov to keep him from turning Minneapolis into a smoking crater like he did to Glencoe, she lost sleep over that, too. She wouldn’t kill after that, remember? She wouldn’t. Flatly refused when Old Man Winter kept pushing her and pushing her, until finally, the old bastard did—well, what he did. And after that, the kid gloves were off. It was a carnival of bloodletting. Which, in time of war, I turned a blind eye to. But now the war’s over, and she’s still killing like it’s on.”

“War isn’t quite like it used to be,” Scott said. “I mean, I was reading a thing a while back talking about how war is not a thing of nations anymore, it’s a thing that one person can bring to the table. Think about it; this Cunningham? He’s got more power than any pre-World War One army at his disposal if he’s anything like Gavrikov. He could stand in the middle of a battlefield and kill thousands of people—or millions, if he decided to unleash in a city.”

“So, we’re always at war?” I asked. It was not an answer that satisfied me.

“You don’t just kill at war,” Scott said. “I mean, I killed a Century meta in Vegas because he was trying to kill me. By your logic, maybe I should have just hit him with ever escalating force until he stopped, maybe starting with a flick on the arm, I dunno—”

I thumped my head against the back of my headrest. “Why does no one get where I’m coming from on this?”

“Because I think you’re torturing the hell out of your logic to get here,” Scott said, rapping his knuckles against the window. “And if you’re that worried about Sienna’s soul, or human decency, or whatever, why haven’t you talked to her about it instead of … whatever you’re doing?”

“I tried,” I said. “I tried on the night of the attack in January.”

“And?”

“She made excuses,” I said. “Blew off my concerns like they were nothing to her. Said she was … I dunno, that she did what she had to do.”

“And you don’t think she had to kill those people, on that night?”

“I don’t think she needed to kill all of them, no—”

“Dude,” Scott said. “I have to ask you—are you under the impression we live in a world without violence or something? Because we don’t. There are mean people out there. You’ve met some of them. Feels like your friend Anselmo is one of them.”

“And he deserves to be tried,” I said, exasperated, “and locked up for a very long time, maybe the rest of his life—”

“You think he’s going to go for that?” Scott asked. He blinked. “Man. I can’t believe I’m the one making this argument. What the hell happened to me?”

“I honestly can’t fully explain it,” I said truthfully, “but it sounds like you pretty much crawled into my sister’s head and live there.”

“Because your sister knows bad people,” Scott said, “and she damned well should. Wolfe and Bjorn are among the worst on the planet, and they’re in her head.”

“And I think they’re making their influence felt,” I said, as the cold snap of revelation hit me in the back of the head like a rubber band. I paused and let it sink in. “She didn’t used to be like this.”

“She made some hard—some terrible choices,” Scott said quietly. “But she also saved the world. I don’t work with her every day, but I don’t think the news gets it right at all. And I doubt she’s just going out and killing indiscriminately.”

“Not—I didn’t mean—ugh …” I let my head sink. “I’m not saying she’s a psycho killer that’s about to start cooking her enemies and serving them like—”

“Wolfe?”

“Hannibal,” I said. “Wolfe ate his prey raw, by all accounts.”

“Ew.”

“I’m saying that she’s lost sight of what’s okay in a fight,” I said. “That she’s too quick on the trigger. That she’d just as soon put down a Benjamin Cunningham as try to save him. And that’s not right.”

“Huh,” Scott said, pulling his lips together. “I guess you and I learned a different lesson when fighting for your life. Because I always figured if someone was trying to kill me—and I think that’s what Sienna is dealing with most of the time—it’s perfectly acceptable to kill them right back. No pulled punches. No—aim for the leg or whatever, which is a stupid idea that can kill them anyway. Just … getting the job done.”

“But is it
right
?” I asked, letting the doubt show through as I asked. “She’s the most powerful person in the world, deigning to stoop low among us fleas. She could stomp us all flat, like Sovereign wanted to. You’re telling me she doesn’t have the obligation to be different, to do things different?”

“She’s not invincible, Reed,” Scott said, looking at me with … pity? “One good shot, she’s as dead as any of the rest of us. I think that’s something that people forget. Humans are frail creatures, and it doesn’t take all that much to kill any of us, meta or otherwise. I knew a guy … he got an argument with a teenager over something stupid, and the guy just slugged him in the back of the head when his back was turned. Caused a brain hemorrhage that killed him.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. And that could have been Sienna, honestly. Just the right timing, the right punch, the right place, and his life was over.” He looked over at me, and I tried not to look back, tried to concentrate on the road, on the freeway in front of me. It was clear, but I still needed to concentrate. “Reed, people are trying to kill her, and she could die any time. What would you have her do?”

I stared straight ahead, but I felt that burning in my throat again. “I don’t know,” I finally said. It wasn’t something Augustus could have ever even forced me to admit, but Scott had ripped it out of me, damn him. I took a deep breath and sighed it all out. “I honestly have no idea.”

They entered the building through the back entry, without regard for whether anyone saw them. Benjamin found it thrilling and frightening all in one, his heart pounding in his chest and blood rushing through his veins in a way he couldn’t recall feeling before he’d come back to Minneapolis changed. He realized that before he’d met Anselmo, before the airport, before the monster, his whole life had been some bloodless exercise in survival, and that only now—now that he was being guided by someone as powerful as Anselmo—was he finally living, taking the deep breaths of life.

Also, he had to pee and wondered when he’d get the chance to go.

“This is the way,” Anselmo said under his breath, steering Benjamin down a stark hallway, bereft of color. “This is the way that Cassidy suggested.”

They paused before the obvious double doors, glass with the cross insignia upon them. They whooshed open as Anselmo stepped in range of them, and Benjamin followed, his shadow, trying to learn everything that Anselmo had to teach him, even down to trying to walk taller and prouder, like his mentor did. It was not effortless; that much was certain. He sucked in a breath and followed into the medical unit to see two people talking in the middle of the room to his left. One was the African-American meta cop that he’d seen Anselmo hit earlier, at his work.

The other was a woman. Tall, voluptuous, with a white lab coat and dark hair that was mussed in all the right ways. Benjamin found himself licking his lips nervously merely at the sight of her. He watched the two of them for only a stark moment and he already felt like he was invading someone’s privacy, like he ought to be elsewhere, not watching this, watching
her
, unasked.