The Empowered, page 13
“Records worth more than millions. This is an archive, not a strongbox.”
Keisha’s eyes narrowed. “You want us to break into a secret library and steal some documents?”
“That’s precisely want I want you to accomplish.”
“Shit.”
She took the word right out of my mouth. So I kept it shut. One angry woman was enough here. I agreed with Keisha, but Mutter was in charge, and besides, this was all about bringing him down. Couldn’t take my eyes off that prize.
“These rare documents?” Peep asked. He put his glasses back on, making him look like a very myopic fish.
“No.”
“Then why bother?” Keisha demanded.
“Because we have been told they are important and needed.”
Peep blinked, his wide-eyed expression freakishly exaggerated behind the distorted glasses he wore. “The Inner Circle wants them?”
“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”
“Shit, shit, shit.” Keisha shook her head and turned to Peep. “It’s like I always say, Peep Creep, we’re mushrooms. Fed shit and kept in the dark.” It felt weird to agree with my new archenemy, but she was right.
“Why we are doing this is on a need-to-know basis,” replied Mutter. God, I hated that expression.
“And we don’t need to know.” Keisha’s voice was bitter. I felt another pang of sympathy for her.
Mutter shrugged.
Just like that, the argument ended before it had really begun.
“Now, let’s turn to the plan.” He pulled an index card from his pocket, which had neat handwriting in a column—a list.
“Keisha and Lyle will be computer technicians, bringing some replacement drives to the company’s server room on the seventh floor. Gus will be an American Package Delivery courier.” He looked at me, his lips in a slight smirk. “Mathilda will be delivering plants.”
Very funny.
He winked at me. “Miniature palms and climbing ivy for office space on the seventh.”
“Do the elevators run all the way to the eighth?”
“In fact they do. Keisha and Lyle will be able to get into the archive through a back door in the server room.”
“Won’t that door be locked?” Keisha snapped.
Mutter brandished a keycard. “Keys unlock doors.”
“What’s the security look like?” I asked him. This was sounding way too straightforward. Almost boring is how easy he made it sound.
“There is uniformed building security, during the day. Three to five personnel, depending upon lunch breaks, etcetera.”
Apparently Keisha wasn’t done being annoyed with the plan. “But what about Support people? You can’t tell me there won’t be black suits there?”
Keisha had a point. It seemed unlikely that there wouldn’t be Support agents onsite. After all, it was a Support office.
Worse, I had a dilemma. Since the target was Support, I should tell Winterfield. But if I did and he changed things up, Mutter might get suspicious.
“There are no Support Agents on site,” Mutter said.
“Never?” Peep asked.
“I never say never, but not normally.”
That did it. I had to tell Winterfield. If I got the opportunity.
Keisha walked around the workbench and poked a finger in my face. “What about you? You think there are Support agents?”
“If the boss says there aren’t, there aren’t.” I shrugged.
“Aren’t you little miss kiss-up.” She spat on the floor and looked up at Mutter. “You sure about this?”
“The intel is reliable.”
She crossed her arms, obviously unhappy but obviously unwilling to cross Mutter.
Mutter had mentioned nothing about his own role in this job. “What will you be doing?” I asked him.
“I will not be directly involved.”
He said it casually, like he was telling you he’ll meet you at the theater rather than catch coffee with you beforehand.
“Need to know, right?” I said to him. I did my best to sound amused.
Keisha spat again. “Kiss-up.”
Mutter ignored her outburst and went back to explaining his master plan.
After he finished, we split up. Someone followed me outside. Keisha.
“Kiss-up!” She called from behind me.
I ignored her and kept walking toward the Dasher. I had to call Winterfield as soon as possible. The gravel crunched loudly behind me. I tried to keep my breath slow and regular. Couldn’t get angry. Especially not now.
“I’m talking to you, Kiss-up.”
I whirled around. Balled my fists. “All right, what is it?”
She got right up into my face and jabbed a finger at me. That damn finger jabbing.
“What was that bullshit back inside?” she demanded. Her nostrils flared.
“Just listening to the man.”
She leaned even closer, her breath hot on my face. “Listen to this then, bitch. You’d better not screw this up. I got my eyes on you.”
It would be so easy to gut punch her right there. See her on the ground, before she could work her steel voodoo, summon up blackberry vines to pin her arms, lash her face. I heard a whisper in the weeds behind me. Took a deep breath and forced the anger down. “I’ll do my job.”
“You’d better, Kiss-up. I will be keeping my eyes on you.”
I shoved her. I didn’t think it was very hard but she stumbled and fell on her ass.
I loomed over her. “Watch yourself, bitch.”
She scrambled up and threw herself at me. We grappled. She punched me in the side of the head and my ears rang like a bell. I tripped her but she hung on and together we smacked the ground hard. Damn she was strong. She tried to gouge my eyes. I ducked my head and punched her in the kidneys. She yelled then, and I rolled on top of her, raised my fist to smash her face. I was going to end this.
The air went boom. Keisha and I were flattened against the gravel. The rocks dug into my butt and back.
“That is enough!” Mutter’s voice was a scorching whisper in my ears. “STOP NOW.”
I pulled away from Keisha. Got up.
Keisha also got to her feet and started to lunge toward me again. She stopped and grabbed her throat. She gasped but no air came out. Mutter was doing his vicious air blockage trick. Her eyes bulged. My stomach twisted. A moment ago I had wanted to kill her, but now I felt badly for her.
Then she drew a ragged breath and doubled over. Took more ragged breaths.
Mutter strode up to us, radiating ice-cold anger.
“Idiots! Control yourselves.”
His anger actually made me look away. I scuffed my shoes in the dirt.
“I don’t trust her,” Keisha said.
“But I do,” Mutter said. And that must be good enough for you.” I looked up. He was calm, collected now, in control.
She nodded, chest still heaving.
He looked at me, pursed his lips. “I imagine you were provoked, but nonetheless, fighting in my cell is off-limits.”
“Yes, sir.” I didn’t have to fake my agreement.
“Good.” His lips curved into a nasty smile. “Never forget this is my cell.”
I watched Keisha follow Mutter back into the garage like a whipped puppy. The side door closed. I stood there for a long while, trying to calm down, blood roaring in my ears. Mutter was a cold-blooded, sadistic control freak who probably wouldn’t bat an eye when it came to killing someone. Including one of us. What the hell had I wound up in?
11
I was cold and wet, thanks to the misting rain, as I huddled against the wall-mounted pay phone at the Night&Day Mart off 82nd avenue. Why were phone booths so freaking rare now? This was all thanks to Winterfield and his damn phone security “protocol.” I could be dry and warm in my car right now if he would let me use my cell phone, but no. Had to be by the book. His book.
The connection crackled with static. “Say again,” Winterfield ordered.
“It’s the company store,” I repeated, using the old-fashioned term he’d given me to refer to Support. “Did you get that?” I hated pay phones.
I wanted to meet with him in person, but Winterfield nixed the idea. Wouldn’t say why, but I got the message anyway. Clearly stuff was on a need-to-know basis, and I didn’t need to know. Just like Mutter. Ironic, huh?
“We got it,” Winterfield answered after a long pause. “No change to the plan. No alterations. Your manager has the situation in hand.”
I wanted to know what Winterfield thought the Scourge was up to, but no way he’d tell me over the phone.
“Okay.” Being a mushroom sucked.
“Check-in after your visit, when you can.”
“Will do.” I hung up.
A police cruiser rolled toward me on Foster. The last thing I wanted was to have to talk with the cops. I didn’t want any attention from the police. Who knew, maybe some neighbor had said something to the cops about me being the last one to see Hatcher and his goons.
I ducked into an alley between the Night&Day and an adult video store. Pulled up my hoodie. I suddenly wanted to wear stylish clothes, like Keisha, and not skulk around in ex-con duds. I heard a car door open behind me, the crackle of a radio.
“Miss!” The officer’s voice was a deep baritone. “I need to speak with you.” Why, why now, did some random cop decide I looked suspicious?
I ran past a dumpster and around the corner to the rear of the adult video store.
A graveled lot lay behind the video store with a wooden fence on the far side that was leaning over from the weight of overgrown bushes. The door to the store was right beside me. I opened it, reaching out with my sense to the bushes, made them tremble and thrash against the fence. It swayed.
I ducked inside the video store, praying the cop would think I’d vaulted over the fence.
The room was lit by a sparkling light from a disco ball suspended from the ceiling. Spindle racks filled with porn discs stood in front of me. Great. Last place I wanted to wind up in. Off to one side was a counter with a cash register and a guy in a pork pie hat.
“Can I help you, miss?” Pork Pie Hat asked, brightening when he saw me. I swear he stood up straighter.
“Just browsing,” I blurted. I know, lame. The guy gave me the once over with his eyes. My jaw tightened. I didn’t have time to deal with perverts. Too bad.
I went past an interior wall and discovered a little stage where a skinny, pale woman gyrated against a pole while a dozen or so men sat in folding chairs and drooled at her.
Yuck.
The front entrance had an emergency exit sign over it with a crash bar below a sign on the door that said “alarm will sound.” Trust an adult video place to have the front entrance in the back, and the emergency exit facing the street. Didn’t want to scare the neighbors. Or let them get a good look at the customers.
Crap.
I circled the stage. A grimy curtain hid the far end of the room. I hesitated. The curtain parted, and a young woman gestured at me. I slipped inside, and she closed the curtain behind me.
It was a dressing area with lockers and two old antique bureaus with mirrors. It smelled like clove cigarettes, reminding me of Ava. God, I did not want her to wind up in a place like this.
The woman’s hair was dyed blue. She had high cheekbones covered with lots of sparkly makeup.
She leaned in confidentially. “You need a back way out of here?”
“Uh, how did you know?”
She pointed at a TV monitor mounted on a wall behind me, screen split into three views. The top one showed Foster Road, and the police bureau cruiser parked at the curb, the lower left showed the little lot behind the store. The police officer jumped down from the fence and strode toward the back door, face set in an angry line. He looked like the arresting type. He opened the door and disappeared from camera view.
“Yeah, I need a way out, fast.”
She pointed at the lower right camera view on the monitor. It showed another alley, the opposite side of the building from the Night&Day.
“Employee exit,” she said.
“Thank you!”
“No problem." She flashed me a sympathetic grin.
I went out the employee entrance. My car was parked in the little parking lot on the far side of the Night&Day. Chances were the cop would spot me before I could drive off.
I ran down Foster to another side street and into a neighborhood. I needed to hide for a little while.
A deserted lot filled with chest-high grass waited for me. Was I always going to have to hide in the weeds?
Beggars couldn't be choosers, so I slipped into the wet grass, and sat cross-legged. The grass moaned in my mind, crying out from where I’d trampled it.
My stomach was empty and my head ached, but I sent vitality into the grass, helping it stand tall again, growing it even taller than it had been before, until I was surrounded by a wall of jade green grass.
My head pounded and I closed my eyes. The tall, tall grass sang in my mind, content, and I let myself get lost its song.
The next day the cell assembled at the garage. A bright crimson American Package Delivery truck with the box and arrow logo was parked on 17th while a white paneled van was parked alongside the garage. Inside Mutter, wearing a familiar-looking cobalt blue jumpsuit, stood beside a black van with tinted windows. The side door was open. Computer equipment lined the interior.
I spotted another figure in the familiar-looking cobalt blue jumpsuit walking inside the van from the driver’s compartment. The head was hidden inside a close-fitting blue helmet with a reflective visor. From the way the hips waggled, I guessed incognito person was a woman.
Then I finally noticed the stylized gold HC on the left breasts of both jumpsuits.
Damn. No wonder the jumpsuits looked familiar. They were Hero Council uniforms.
“Are you ready for the big day, Mathilda?” Mutter asked.
“Uh, sure.” I couldn’t tear my eyes off the uniforms.
“You will be eating flies if you keep your mouth open like that.”
I shut my gaping mouth. Hero Council jumpsuits made me shudder.
I shook myself. “Who’s that?” I nodded at incognito person, who now sat at a computer station inside the van, back to me.
“Someone you haven’t met yet.” Mutter gave a Cheshire cat smile. Yeah, yeah. This was on a need-to-know basis, and once again I didn’t need to know.
Just then Keisha and Peep entered the garage through the side door. Keisha’s mouth shot open, just like mine must have when I realized Mutter and his secret friend wore HC uniforms.
“What are you doing in those?” Keisha demanded.
“Insurance,” Mutter said.
“They’ll kill you for wearing those,” Peep said drily.
Gus looked scared shitless. His face gleamed with sweat and he kept wiping it with a rag.
Peep was right of course—the UN charter of 1965 mandated the death penalty for both non-sanctioned Empowered and normals caught wearing the uniform of the Hero Council. The prohibition against wearing an official Hero Council uniform had been drummed into our heads in Special Corrections Empowered Codes class, which all prisoners took as part of the Rehabilitation curriculum, even though nearly all the convicts were lifers.
“Wearing Hero Blue will get you killed,” went the slogan.
“We will not be caught.” Mutter’s certitude felt like gravity. It conveyed absolute confidence.
Keisha looked like she thought this was a very bad idea but said nothing. I also kept my mouth shut.
It was weird to agree on anything with Keisha.
Peep just listened, wearing his tech support outfit—gray slacks, slip-on shoes, white shirt, portable computer in a sling case. Keisha was dressed in a gray skirt, sensible shoes, white shirt. She carried another portable computer.
Gus wore a red American Package Delivery uniform and lace-up shoes. His hair looked combed beneath the red baseball cap he wore. The last person I’d ever expected to see in an APD uniform.
Mutter tapped the gold HC symbol on his breast. “These jumpsuits give us the proverbial ace in the hole. In all likelihood, they will not be required,” said Mutter confidently. His voice seemed deeper, like it was coming from the ground rather than through the air.
He waved us over to the van. We stood in a semi-circle around the van’s open door. His mystery driver sat at the computer station inside the van, facing us, still helmeted, face hidden behind the opaque visor. I saw my reflection shining faintly in the visor.
Mutter’s voice changed, now a secret whisper right beside me. The air tickled the inside of my ear like a lover’s tongue. I shuddered, and I saw Keisha’s jaw tighten. The whisper routine must be to protect against any bugging devices that might be listening in, or it could be just because Mutter enjoyed making us uncomfortable.
“Steel Witch and Peep, you will enter the lobby of the building, check in with building security, presenting your ID badges as required. You will then proceed to the seventh floor. Once there, you will head to the server room.”
Gus looked like he wanted to disappear into the surroundings as Mutter turned to him. “Gus, you will deploy the Scrambler at the front security desk, using your blending ability. You will then monitor the lobby.”
Mutter pointed at me. “Mathilda, your job is straightforward. Take the plants up to the seventh floor and wait. You are the reserve, to go into action if I tell you to. Or if Gus tells you of a problem and you need to intervene. Obviously, you are carrying plants for a reason—your power.” Keisha snickered at this. I bristled, but kept my eyes on Mutter. She could laugh all she wanted. If things went south, she’d be glad I was there. If I didn’t hang her out to dry. Mutter kept on going. “I’ll be monitoring the operation nearby. Each of you will be issued military-grade CB radios. If interference is needed, Mathilda will take action.”
Keisha glared at me. “I don’t trust you.” She growled the words.
“You don’t have to trust her,” Mutter said. “You only have to follow my orders.”
