Villainous (7 page)

Then again, I might not live that long. One of the prisoners broke free of the melee, shiv in hand. He had horns like a goat and tattoos up and down his arms. He charged me.

I adjusted my stance, preparing to meet him, but then he shrieked and threw the shiv away. The hand that had been holding it was red and burned. Julio’s handiwork. I looked for him, but he’d already turned his attention back to the main fight. Protecting me even though I’d pissed him off earlier. I shouldn’t be surprised. Dave would have trained him to do nothing less.

Unfortunately, the man with the burned hand wasn’t giving up. He came at me again, curling his left hand into a fist.

I drove my pointed heel into his knee, dropping him. Then I slammed my palm into his nose. He hit the floor, and for the moment, at least, didn’t seem to be getting back up.

“Yeah, the guards are so well-trained,” I said to Agent Lagarde. “You sure you don’t want to jump in there?”

Agent Lagarde watched the fight for a moment longer and evidently reached the same conclusion I had. She reached up and removed her blue glasses.

Everyone collapsed. The prisoners, the guards, Freezefire—everyone she was looking at hit the ground as though someone had dropped bricks on their heads. Agent Lagarde’s eyes burned yellow like a distant sun, and I could sense the force behind her gaze even though the exatrin had suppressed my powers. It made my knees tremble, and that was when it wasn’t even directed at me. Being on the receiving end of that gaze must feel like getting hit by a train. It was incredible.

Agent Lagarde put her glasses back on, and it was like gravity lightened. Freezefire, the guards, and the others took deep breaths and began stirring. Agent Lagarde walked calmly past them to the door to the now-silent cafeteria, clasped her hands behind her back, and let her gaze roll slowly across the room. “Anyone else?”

The prisoners shuffled back to their tables.

She offered Julio a hand getting to his feet and a brief apology. Then she turned to the other guards. “You can mop this up? Good. We need to keep moving.”

We kept walking, and I actually felt better now. Nothing like an attempt on your life to get the blood pumping. I looked at Agent Lagarde’s back with new interest as she led the way. For the past decade, the only telepaths I’d encountered were nowhere close to my power and skill, but Agent Lagarde… Her display back there was almost enough to make me wish for a reason to turn on the DSA and get her to fight me. I wanted to face the awful power of her gaze. I wanted to face it and see if I could remain standing.

“You were the target.” Agent Lagarde glanced back at me. “Were they friends of yours?”

“Never seen them before.” I frowned. “Actually, the one with the horns looked vaguely familiar. I think I might have broken both his legs once.”

“Revenge, then?”

I shrugged. “A better question would be how they knew I was coming.”

Agent Lagarde had no answer to that. And while I might not know the
how
, I had a suspicion about the
who
.

My temporary good mood evaporated when we entered the third circle. The cells here didn’t have bars but thick steel doors with small rectangular windows. Dozens of sets of eyes appeared behind them the moment we arrived, the prisoners inside screaming at us, demanding to know what we were doing here. There was no cafeteria in this circle, no rec room. These inmates weren’t let
out of their cells for anything short of a medical emergency. They ate there, slept there, and took whatever entertainment they could find there, trying anything to ease the passing of each successive, monotonous second. Nothing ever changed. There was nothing but white walls to stare at, a cot with a mattress so thin that the metal bars supporting it dug into your back, and the toilet in the corner with a stink you couldn’t smell anymore because you’d been there so long. Just that, every second of every day, until it got to the point where you’d slit your own wrists—not to kill yourself, but because decorating the walls with your blood would at least be something different.

The corridor wasn’t warm. Objectively, I knew that, but I felt feverish, sweating beneath my suit. I had to get ahold of myself. I might be able to control my expression, but I couldn’t stop my cheeks from flushing. If someone noticed…
You’re not going back there. You did your time. It’s over.
Fortunately, the door to the fourth and final circle came into view, and curiosity replaced the other feeling festering in the pit of my stomach. I’d never seen the fourth circle. My crimes hadn’t been severe enough to warrant my placement there. (Well, not the crimes they’d managed to convict me for, anyway.)

The guard went through the same keycard swipe and access code process to open the door, and we were on our way.
The fourth circle looked disappointingly like the rest of the prison: same white walls, same yellowish lights, same armed guards—oh, wait, these guards had machine guns. The guards in the first and second circles certainly hadn’t; too big of a risk that a prisoner could take their weapons from them, so they weren’t allowed any. That was less of a risk here and in the third circle since the prisoners never left their cells, but the guards in the third circle just carried tasers. Machine guns were a serious step up.

The cell doors here were sunken into the wall, seemingly even thicker than the ones in the third circle. And someone wasn’t too happy to be locked behind one, judging from the deep, dull pounding coming from somewhere, like super-strong fists slamming into reinforced metal.

“Belmonte!” The muffled roar was more than familiar. “Belmonte! I know you’re here. I can smell you.”

Bloodbath. I opened my mouth for a snappy comment then realized it would infuriate him more if I ignored him, so I did just that. The doors here didn’t have windows, so there was no telling which one he was locked behind. Not that I wanted to see his ugly face, but I itched to know which direction to expect an attack from. Bloodbath had been here for years, so the chances of him escaping during the one time I happened to be visiting were slim. But it would be just my luck.

Agent Lagarde stopped in front of a door shaped differently from all the others, and the guard moved forward to pull out his keycard again. Agent Lagarde held up a hand for him to wait and then turned her glasses-covered gaze on me.

“This is your first and only warning. No games. If you try anything that even looks funny, we’ll shoot you and sort out the details when you’re in the ER. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly,” I said.

She kept her gaze on me a moment longer then had the guard swipe the card. A small, rectangular room waited on the other side of the door, its only furnishings two chairs facing each other. Separating them was a thick wall made of something clear as glass but presumably much stronger. Dr. Sweet sat in the far chair. His hideous Hawaiian shirt and white lab coat had been replaced by an orange jumpsuit, but otherwise, he looked the same. He was a soft, pudgy man whose gray hair had been long and greasy even before he’d been imprisoned. I stepped inside, barely breathing. I couldn’t afford to let my dread of the Inferno affect me now; I had to be at the top of my game. The door shut behind me with a metal clang, and I lowered myself into the chair and crossed my legs.

“Ms. Belmonte, what a nice surprise. I hope you didn’t have any trouble getting here.”

Of course he talked to me. What an honor—a twisted, disturbing honor.

“I suppose that sorry excuse for an assault was your doing?” I asked.

He smiled, wrinkles creasing his smooth, round cheeks. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I wasn’t mad at him for sending the goon squad after me. I wasn’t even mad at him for what he’d done to me in August. Under any other circumstances, yeah, I’d be absolutely furious about that, but he’d kidnapped Elisa first, so I didn’t have any rage left for my own abduction. My urge to gouge out his eyeballs with my perfectly manicured fingernails was all for my daughter’s sake.

“Let’s talk about brains,” I said. “You’ve cut up a lot in your day.”

The chains on his handcuffs jingled as he shifted in his chair. “None of them as interesting as yours. Why? You’re not here to donate it, are you?”

“Hardly. But considering how many telepaths you’ve dissected, you must have a pretty good idea how telepathy works. Maybe enough to develop a drug that gives the talent to normal people.”

“An amazing accomplishment. If anyone could do it, it would be me.”

“So you did invent psyc.”

His grin stretched even wider across his doughy face. “I never said that.”

“But you had ample opportunity. All the free time you must have had between burning to death in your laboratory and offering your services to Starla Strauss.”

“It bothers you, doesn’t it?” He leaned forward, and I resisted the urge to lean back. There was a wall between us; he couldn’t put a single greasy finger on me. “You and White Knight have killed me twice, and yet here I am. And you have no idea how.”

He did have an annoying ability to live through what should kill him. But then again, so did a cockroach.

“That’s not the mystery I’m here to solve,” I said. “And our friends in the DSA back there are going to kick me out if I don’t stay on track. So. If you did invent psyc, it doesn’t really matter in the long run. Someone else is making it now and taking all the credit for it. I don’t suppose you had a lab assistant?”

“I work alone.”

“Of course you do. What I want to know is where. Where did you disappear to and cook this up? A private Caribbean island, perhaps?”

He snorted. “Like your father?”

“No, you’d want somewhere more crowded, wouldn’t you? A place you could get test subjects. What about Latin America? Honduras, maybe? Though the beaches in Brazil are nicer.”

“Can you get me out of this cell?”

“Definitely not.”

“Then I see no reason to tell you anything.”

It was my turn to smile. “Come on, Doctor, don’t fight your urge to monologue. I know you want to brag about how you’re outsmarting the DSA.”

“You know nothing about me.”

I stood and walked slowly up to the glass wall. “I know what it’s like to be inside a cell,” I told him, “to have your entire world reduced to four close walls. Pretty soon, you won’t even be able to dream of the outside world, you know. It’ll be that dull, white room both waking and sleeping. Cooperate, and the DSA can at least allow you some books to pass the time. It’s worth it. Believe me.”

He remained sitting. “Your attempts to manipulate me are pathetic. I’d explain why it’s pointless, but our intellects are on such completely different levels that it’d be like trying to explain gravity to a dog.”

“Oh, look. A supervillain who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. How shocking.”

He shot to his feet. “You want to know about psyc? Try looking closer to home.” He stepped closer, the prison lights gleaming off his oily face. “Tell me, do you know what your sister has been up to lately?”

My sister?

He smirked and pointedly turned his back on me. “Thank you for dropping by, Ms. Belmonte. I enjoyed our little chat.”

I opened my mouth to argue but then snapped it shut. If he said he was done talking, I wasn’t going to plead. I turned around and waited for the guard to open the door for me. Oh God. The guards, Agent Lagarde, Julio—they were all out there, and they’d just heard Dr. Sweet accuse one of my sisters of being behind the psyc operation.

You know what? Maybe it wasn’t too late to book that flight to Morocco.

Chapter 7

He was probably lying.

The obvious intent was to waste my time. I’d have to investigate my own family just to be thorough, slowing down progress on finding out who was actually behind this. But this was going to slow me down no matter what I did. Once we left the prison, Agent Lagarde called her superiors to report the development, and then she’d promptly suspended me from the investigation until further notice. Apparently, the fact that my sister might be behind this put my trustworthiness into question.

Pretty stupid, right? The whole reason the DSA had made this deal with me in the first place was because they wanted to exploit my relationship with Jean-Baptiste. Now they had a chance to make me rat out my own sister—an even closer relationship (depending on which sister it was), and they weren’t jumping on it. Opportunities like that don’t come around everyday. Which was exactly what I’d told Agent Lagarde, but she’d just said to sit tight for now.

I’d never been good at sitting tight. As much as I didn’t want to believe Dr. Sweet, what he said would explain how the Combuster was killed. Any one of my sisters could have done that by psychic assault, overloading his brain telepathically until he hemorrhaged and died without a mark on him. As we waited at the gate for our flight to start boarding, I texted my favorite sister, Bianca. She mostly smuggled guns, but she did some drugs on the side. Pot, mostly, but she might be branching out.

Hey. Ever heard of psyc?
I typed.

She didn’t make me wait more than thirty seconds for a reply.
Hi! Yeah. Worst drug ever, right? I’d rather smoke something that gives me laser-vision.

Then she texted this:
:=)===

I squinted at it.
The hell is that supposed to be?

Laser-vision smiley.

Of course. How had I missed that?
Sorry I asked. So are you importing psyc?

Lol no. If it were me, I’d jack up the $ about 200% and sell to big corporations that want to spy on their competitors.

I didn’t sigh, but only because Julio was right next to me, and I didn’t want to draw his attention. Of course it wasn’t Bianca. She would’ve helped me, and I didn’t have that kind of luck.

My phone vibrated again.

But don’t tell Mary I said that. She’d think I was criticizing her.

I was already getting airsick.
Mary?