Tormented (3 page)

“I already got a girlfriend,” Augustus said, clouds darkening above his eyes. “Can we move on now? Feel like I’m in an episode of
Law and Order: Special Metas Unit
.” He tried to adjust his suit; he still looked uncomfortable.

I looked at Li and shrugged. “It’s not good to see you again, Li. Let’s catch up never. Lead on.”

Li just shook his head and went back to walking down the terminal. Augustus and I followed in our own silence.

As we drew closer to the place where the incident occurred, the smell got thicker, heavier. It invaded my nose and filled my mouth with a charred taste. I held an arm up over my nose and watched Augustus do the same. Li didn’t, but metas have a far more developed sense of smell than humans do.

“This way,” Li said, leading us right into a hallway into the customs area. There were luggage carousels side-by-side, more suitcases than I could count practically falling off them. Ahead, past a checkpoint, the air turned even smokier. There were glass offices placed just this side of the checkpoints, clearly designed to allow for surveillance of the luggage carousels and the customs lines through windows.

The windows were shattered. Glass glittered on the floor all around the far end of the conveyors, and Li led us gingerly through to the office on the left. I could see a scorched crater beyond, in the place where the customs line had been. I paused as Li brushed into the office through a shattered glass door and stared into the space beyond. I’d been through here more times than I could count on the way to various destinations. It was never a pleasant return trip. The lines were always absurdly long and they were always undermanned. They’d recently modernized by adding some sort of computer check-in system, but they hadn’t taken out any of the other customs-check steps, so the result was even longer lines, an apparent exercise in stupidity.

“What are you thinking?” Augustus asked me quietly.

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,” I said, “she had to walk into mine.”

Augustus looked at me warily. “Quoting
Casablanca
in this context makes no sense, unless this exploding person was an old girlfriend of yours.” He straightened up and bristled. “Also, if you tell me to ‘Play it, Sam,’ we’re going to have words.”

“I did have an ex who was somewhat explosive,” I said. “But I was talking more in terms of … why this airport? Of all the ones in all the world? Or even the U.S.? Is that just a wild coincidence? Minneapolis isn’t exactly the best target—or the biggest.”

“You think this dude’s trying to get our attention?” Augustus asked.

“Not ours,” I said. “We’re nobodies.”

“Pffft,”
Augustus said. “Speak for yourself. I’m somebody.”

“We’re not as well-known as another person who works with us, that’s my point.”

“Or as hated,” Li called from inside the office. I glanced over to see him staring at me, unimpressed. “You gonna just sit out there all day and have a conversation? Because I can wait right here, I guess. I don’t have anything else going on in my life or job that’s of any import, really.”

“Cool,” I said. “Because we might be a few minutes.” I then made a point of ignoring him.

“You think this dude blew up the Minneapolis customs line because he wanted to get your sister’s attention?” Augustus asked, giving me what I liked to call his
You must be shitting me
look. “There’s got to be an easier way.”

“Than killing a whole bunch of people?” I asked. “Doubtful. That’s practically the only way to get her attention. Be better at her shtick than her.”

He blanched. “That’s cold.”

“But it’s true,” I said, shrugging my way into the booth with Li. “Truth hurts.”

“Hey, lies hurt, too,” Augustus said. “And if you don’t believe me, go call some biker’s momma a whore and see what happens.”

“We have footage of the incident,” Li said, ignoring our discussion. I could tell he was annoyed. Augustus could tell he was annoyed. Anyone in earshot could tell he was annoyed. They could probably feel his annoyance down in the bathroom stalls in the airport mall. “At least up until the security cameras were destroyed.” Li stood next to a monitor. The picture on the screen was frozen, but at the touch of a button it moved forward. “Suspect enters the frame here,” he pointed to a shorter guy wearing a suit. I couldn’t see much in the way of detail on his face, but he was at the very, very back of a long line when he entered the frame. “We have some footage of him deplaning, too, and he’s staggering around like he’s drunk.”

“Flew first class?” I asked.

Li shook his head. “Coach all the way from Amsterdam. He only ended up on this flight at the last minute; his earlier scheduled one was canceled and he was rebooked. We’ve got people on the ground in Amsterdam gathering information on his stay right now, but it’s the middle of the night there. It’s slowing things down.”

Credit to Li; he was a pro. Annoying and armed with a personality that I wouldn’t choose over hugging a cactus whilst naked, but a pro all the way. “What’s his name?” I asked.

“Benjamin Cunningham,” Li said, picking up his clipboard. “Age 27. Lives in Roseville, Minnesota, which is presumably why this is the gin joint he chose to explode in.” Li stiffened. “Though … based on the footage, I’m not sure he
chose
it.”

I stared at Benjamin Cunningham as he made his way through the line. Li had the recording on fast forward, and the comically quick motion of people milling about in an extremely slow line was the only hint that it was moving at abnormal speed. Because that line? It was molasses on the shores of Lake Superior in January: not going anywhere fast.

When Cunningham reached the electronic kiosks, we finally got somewhere. He started to rub his eyes heavily, like he couldn’t see. An employee came over to help him, and they looked like they were squabbling. “What’s that all about?” I asked.

“I can only give you the bad lip-read version,” Augustus said.

“Microphones?” I asked Li. He shook his head.

Cunningham finally rejoined the line, looking like he was staggering side to side. If he wasn’t drunk, he had something else terribly wrong with him.

“Hey, did that dog take a dump in the line?” Augustus asked, pointing to a gap in the people ahead of Cunningham.

“Unconscionable,” Li said, shaking his head. He looked genuinely offended.

The three of us watched as Benjamin Cunningham staggered right into the dog pile, realized what he’d done, exchanged words with the people around him, now almost doubled over and pawing at his eyes.

Then he burst into flames. They covered his skin, draping him in orange fire from head to toe. There was a flash, and less than a second later, the screen went straight to fuzz.

“Looks like a Gavrikov,” I said.

“That man had a bad day,” Augustus said.

I looked at him with pure WTF-ery. “
He
had a bad day? How about all those people he scorched into nonexistence?”

“He didn’t even look like he could see straight,” Augustus said. “Unless you think he stepped on that dog poo intentionally?”

“No one steps in dog poop intentionally,” Li said.

“Coprophiliacs,” I muttered.

Li froze. “Well, then he wouldn’t have been angry enough about it to explode, would he?”

“You assume it was linked to anger,” I said. “It might not have been.”

Li looked like he was about to pull a Cunningham and blow up on me. “You know damned well that Gavrikov-types typically manifest when presented with strong, uncontrollable emotion.”

I blinked. “I … actually did not know that. How did you?”

Li let out a sigh of exasperation. “Because I did the damned required reading back when I had
your
job.”

“Now there’s required reading?” Augustus asked. “I got enough coursework to deal with as it is. Did you know they try and weed you out in freshman and sophomore years just so they can keep the graduation ratio down? They don’t give you a tuition refund, though, do they? I’m starting to smell a scam.”

“You mean you picked over FBI files that you didn’t bother to give the rest of us access to?” I asked Li.

“You had access,” Li said evenly. “You just never went looking.”

“Well,” I said, bowing my head, “I defer to your experience as the number one person on the scene in the area of Gavrikov-types. You think this guy is one, and he triggered due to anger?”

“I do,” Li said. “And also, I think I shouldn’t be the damned expert on-site when it comes to Gavrikov-type metas, not when you’ve got someone on your staff who actually has the original Gavrikov in her head.” He looked straight through me. “Where is she?”

“Unavailable,” I said, suddenly a little uncomfortable.

Li smiled snottily. “Unavailable. Of course. She would take a vacation right now.”

“Vacation?” Augustus asked. “Is that the polite, government way to say it? Because I heard ‘suspension.’”

Li’s smiled vanished. “She’s suspended? What did she do now?” His eyes dulled. “Oh. That.”

“Yeah, that,” I said. “But honestly, does it matter?” I stared at the static-laden screen as my stomach dropped. “She’s not here. She can’t be here. Not for two weeks, so …” I smiled, swallowing back all those fears I had about being in over my head and channeled it into a spiteful swipe instead. “Buck up, Buttercup. The pros are on the case.”

Cassidy Ellis watched the exploding footage on a loop, over and over again. She’d hacked the Minneapolis airport security system in about thirty seconds—yawn—and was already through the FBI firewall via a backdoor she’d installed months ago. She had three displays going at the moment in her sensory deprivation tank, and more thoughts in her head than could be controlled at any given time.

Benjamin Cunningham, age 27, of Roseville, Minnesota. No signs of being a meta at any prior point in his history. Did that mean he hadn’t manifested yet? Or had he just kept it under wraps? It was possible, though unlikely given the reams of anecdotal evidence Cassidy had read on meta manifestation.

Or it could have been Edward Cavanagh’s breakthrough, the one that unleashed meta powers. Cassidy hadn’t been able to get her hands on the formula, though she’d tried. The Atlanta P.D. had locked down Cavanagh’s testing site pretty quickly after the incident, boxing up the computers and shipping them off to a black site she hadn’t been able to track them to. That was unusual, but not totally unexpected. She’d read the internet’s version of tea leaves and knew that someone pretty powerful had played around with that data, deleting it off at the source. It took a lot to completely destroy a digital trail, and if Cassidy couldn’t dig it out—

The rapping at the side of her tank threw her out of her blur of thoughts. That was Cassidy’s gift—and her curse; she could think faster than anyone else. Her meta gift was cognition. The problem with it, of course, was that it overwhelmed, overloaded her in some cases, and she couldn’t fully use it unless she eliminated the distractions of her other senses. Lying here in the warm salt water of the tank, listening to no sound but her own breathing, allowed her to get her thoughts out uninterrupted.

The thumping against the side came again, and she recognized who among her companions was knocking just by the tempo. Quick, impatient, repetitive, almost unhinged. Just like the person doing it.

Anselmo Serafini.

Cassidy turned her face to the side and burbled into the water, let her lips make a sputtering sound and the salty liquid get a few drops between them before blowing them out. It was a rich, echoing noise in the privacy of the tank, interrupted by another fevered thumping from Anselmo. Patience was not the man’s strong suit.

Then again, very few things were.

Cassidy gingerly moved the specially-made waterproof screens and keyboards out of their positions and let the darkness envelope her. She took another breath, a slow one, steeling herself, and then fished her stiff, rubberized dressing gown out of the water where she always left it while floating in the tank, slipping into it with practiced ease. She fumbled with grasping fingers for her inhaler and took a hit. It was almost unheard of, as near as she could tell, for a meta to have asthma. Still, she had it, though she was fortunate in that it didn’t affect her life much.

Cassidy closed her eyes and unlocked the tank. There was a keypad on the outside with a combination code that Eric could use to unlock it if need be, but Eric was gone at the moment, out of town. He left a lot lately, trying to spend as little time in Omaha as possible while they were bunkered here at the Clary house. He’d seemed willing to stay at first, and he certainly hadn’t lost faith in her plans, but just dealing with the people they were living with on a daily basis was a challenge of its own sort, one that made Cassidy thankful that she could spend almost all her time locked away in here.

She didn’t even get to push open the top herself; Anselmo seized it and pulled the tank open, bathing her in bright light from outside. She kept the screens in the tank at low levels, and the blinding light of the world outside streaming in was enough to force her to close her eyes.

“Get out here,” Anselmo said, his voice as scratchy as ever. She’d heard the interrogation tapes of him before Sienna Nealon had burned his skin beyond its ability to heal; he sounded much different now.

“Give me a minute,” Cassidy said, opening her eyes slowly to squint. The light was so bright.

“I said now, girl.”

“Anselmo,” a voice from behind him said, “be a gentleman and give her a moment, would you, please?”

Cassidy didn’t need to open her eyes to recognize the speaker. The voice was thick and husky, the voice of woman who’d lived a hell of a life. It had taken some searching to find her, but she’d been quite the find once Cassidy had located her. Her name was Claudette Clary, but everyone just called her “Ma.”

Ma’s words landed on Anselmo like a perfectly aimed sedation dart. Before, Anselmo’s heart had been hammering so loud that Cassidy could hear it. Ma’s gently phrased request hit the Italian in just the right place, his ego, softening him up. Anselmo thought of himself as a gentleman first, a manly sort of man who, while always in charge, had manners. It didn’t quite match up with Cassidy’s vision of him, but she knew it was how he defined himself. Ma Clary wasn’t exactly book smart, but she could read a person like Cassidy could read binary.