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part #38 of Out of the Box Series Series
I listened carefully. Nope. Can't hear a thing. Why? Is she howling?
Must be a function of being stuck in the same compartment with her. Yes, she is screaming. In absolute agony. You seriously can't hear it?
I blocked her out. Very intentionally.
Sienna, listen to yourself. Setting someone to be auto-tortured and blotting them out? That's not you–
Today it is, I said with preternatural grimness. Today it's me. Pray it doesn't become everyday me, but today...today is special, Brianna. This is the day I left behind the childish notion that I can always save the world while remaining the hero.
But you always have.
Until today, you mean.
This is giving me a headache, because technically we're in yesterday. Yesterday to us. Because we were living in December twenty-third–
Stop getting caught up in technicalities, I said. The point is...we just watched everything I care about being destroyed.
You left this place behind. Tennessee is your home now–
“I DIDN'T LEAVE MINNESOTA, THEY KICKED ME THE HELL OUT!”
I didn't realize I'd screamed that aloud in the quiet car until Akiyama turned his head slowly and opened his eyes once more to look at me. “Sorry. Very heated argument.”
“What is it about?” Akiyama asked.
I sighed, then lied. “The chain of reasoning behind the extreme measures we're using to fix this mess. Also...I've left no survivors so far. That's a moral issue for some.”
“Hmm,” Akiyama said, the effort of keeping time in check showing in his slowed response and contemplation. “If a whole city is on the line, a few deaths to stop it would seem...reasonable, no?”
“That's what I say, too,” I said. “But some people just gotta argue, you know.”
He closed his eyes again, thankfully, signaling he was done inquiring, I hoped.
You're losing it, Sienna, Brianna said. Look at what you've done – leaping off the damned wagon into a bender, assaulting Kat and Olivia–
Technically I battered them. Assault is an action that may cause harm while battery focuses on willful uses of force or violence. I definitely caused them harm, ergo battery.
–ripping memories out of Harry and Akiyama's heads, forcing Shin'ichi to do what you want him to–
If people would just do what I ask, life would go so much easier.
–and now...look, you know I don't object to killing, and these people were asking for it. But absorbing Chase? Don't you think that's a little too fa–
I think mercy's day is done for me, I said, steering the car onto the shoulder as we crossed the bridge into Bloomington, and that if anyone wants any of that, they'd better hope they encounter me tomorrow.
This is you at your most dangerous, Brianna said. When you really let the wrath go...
I snorted. You think wrath is the worst of the deadly sins I could unleash?
You're the most powerful person in the world. You tell me – which one would be worse than that?
I'm a succubus, Brianna, I said with a tight smile. Lust. Lust would be worse. Because I would have ripped the souls out of all ten of those assholes rather than just the one who feared it most.
Feels like that would kind of be greed and gluttony, too, she said. Is that what this is about? Eating your fill? Gaining more powers?
If it was just about gaining more powers, I'd eat the souls of every single person who effed with me, today and every day, I said, keeping my head down, eyes on the road ahead. You'd better hope it doesn't come to that.
Not sure I have any more hope left, Brianna said, at least not today. And she quieted down, letting me drive the rest of the way to the Cube in peace.
Chapter Thirty-Four
There wasn't much police presence to dodge at the Cube, at least not living and functional. Burned-out cop cars and destroyed SWAT bearcats littered the entry road and filled a perimeter around the place, but in terms of living law enforcement on scene, I saw only two cars, recently arrived, with Carver County Sheriff markings on the side. The cops were holding the perimeter, clearly nervous, guns drawn, weapons pointed down the road to the Cube.
I drove past them, weaving through the burned-out ruins of vehicles dotting that road, and keeping my eyes on the prize.
When I reached the parking lot, I found the place showing plenty of signs of destruction. Smoke was piping out of the main building, something burning within and giving the air a deeply chemical smell. Maybe that gel they used to defray metahuman strength and powers. Maybe just the office equipment going up in a glorious burn.
I pulled in at the back of the parking lot, figuring I'd walk in. “I'm gonna need to talk to people here, Shin'ichi.”
“You wish me to let time flow for a space?” Akiyama asked, his eyes still pinched shut.
“Please.”
He inclined his head to me. “But we are...'on the clock,' yes?”
I felt a tightness in my chest. “Someone's going to attack downtown in about ten minutes, yes. I'll need to stop them, but I need to know what I'm facing first. Can you let me find that out, then roll time back so we can get there in...uh...time?”
He grimaced. “It is possible, but not easy. If you could limit these sort of complications, it would make it easier on me to allow you time to complete this.” He opened his eyes, and there was strain there. “You know how difficult it is to hold time's leash. It strains, always trying to move forward, and I was already tired when I reached you today.”
“I know I'm asking a lot...” I said. Brianna harrumphed in my head. “...but this is just one day.”
He stared at me through half-slitted eyes. “I will do what I can.”
“Hopefully that'll be enough,” I said, and popped out of the van.
The parking lot was dead silent, not a soul around. This was my old stomping grounds, and it felt utterly dead, as though everyone here had been killed to the last man. And woman, I suppose.
And as I walked toward the smoking entrance, I saw the scattered corpses of a dozen guards, leaving me with the distinct impression that maybe...
...they had been.
I wanted to fly a recon mission, a quick circle around the property, but the wind was whispering through the pines that circled the parking lot, and I knew Akiyama had let time go. If I was seen here...well, who knew who was watching.
Perhaps my enemies who were set to destroy Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Perhaps the mysterious allies who'd set up a pack of killers in that refinery to lie in wait for me.
Perhaps the cops arriving to pacify the scene. They'd definitely believe I was here, on forbidden ground, just to help them out, right?
I paused just before the entrance, because I realized something was off in what I was seeing.
Smoke was pouring out of the building where one entered the mostly-underground Cube facility, that was true.
But there was a lot of smoke coming up. More than there was window space for it to be coming out of. Keeping below the height of the trees surrounding the facility, I lifted off the ground and flew a quick orbit of the entry point...
...and figured out where all the rest of the smoke was coming from.
“Whoa,” I whispered.
There was a hole in the ground some thirty feet across and extending into the depths of the earth.
Someone hadn't just staged a small, armed breakout of the Cube through its front entrance.
They'd opened the damned thing up like a can of corn.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The Cube
9:50 A.M.
“Man,” I said, looking down into the open depths of the Cube. The smoke was pluming, almost billowing, rising past me into the sky beyond. The fires within seemed localized, coming from only certain spots on each floor below. A couch was burning at my eleven o'clock on the highest floor I could see; below that, at my three o'clock, two desks blazed, the fires crackling as the papers on their tops were gradually consumed.
And everywhere, it looked like rooms had been simply rent asunder as a semi-truck-sized earthworm clawed its way out of the prison for metahumans.
I flew to the edge and slowly started to drop. Down one floor, then another, I passed through the administrative spaces. Dead bodies, scarred, chopped, otherwise disfigured, were waiting. Two I saw were on fire, always a great sign.
Another floor down and I'd passed the guard levels and slipped into the men's section of the prison. A giant, two-story open courtyard ringed with cells, the place looked pretty quiet except for a few faces that peeked out at me from their cells. They were keeping their heads down. I recognized one, face half-showing, distorted by a gel-packed window.
“How you doing, Morris?” I called.
Morris Mack popped his head up. “I didn't have anything to do with any of this,” he called back. “I'm just chilling in my cell waiting for order to be restored.”
I couldn't help but chuckle a little at his answer. The man had killed some radicals in New York who'd murdered his father, and surrendered when I'd confronted him. I guess he was still intent on serving his sentence.
“You see what happened?” I called back.
He shook his head. “Not really. Was in my cell reading when all hell broke loose. Didn't dare come out after, when everybody was going nuts.”
“I saw what happened,” came a voice from below, strong and clear. I looked down...
...and shouldn't have been surprised.
“If it isn't June Randall,” I said, descending into the women’s section of the prison. “How you doing, cellmate?”
“Life is quieter without you around,” June said. Her strawberry blond hair looked stringy and her build had gotten thinner than even last time I'd seen her. Tattoos stood on both arms beneath the sleeves of her bright orange jumpsuit. She stood in the wreckage of the women's courtyard, piles of slagged metal all around her. A few more familiar faces were gathering 'round now that they'd heard my voice.
“I thought you were banned from Minnesota?” Madison Gustafson asked. Her sister, Amanda, and her brothers followed behind. I guess staying was a family affair in this case.
“Desperate times and all that,” I said, watching her carefully. She and her fam had been involved in the same dirty scheme as Chase, after all, wanting revenge on me in the worst way. “Your pals Devin and Chase tried to kill me a little bit ago.”
Madison looked away. “Yeah. They're having a hard time letting go.”
“Not anymore, they're not,” I said, as casually as if reporting the weather. “So...what happened here?”
“You killed them?” Amanda Gustafson asked. She took a step forward, and I saw a glow in her eyes.
“They were setting an operation to kill me,” I said, looking at her hard. “How does that usually work out for people?”
The glow in her eyes faded, and she looked away. “Not well.”
“Then why is it a surprise that it went about like you might expect it to?” I asked.
“This was supposed to be different,” Madison said, and I felt a little stir of the familiarity that had come from her posing as our secretary for a time. “When the breakout happened, there were these...people...up top, making promises.”
“What...people?” I asked, voice so hard that everybody but June took a step back.
“Spies,” came a voice with a French accent from above, and upon a piece of metal descended Fortune Renard, looking not quite as glamorous as I remembered in my head. His goatee was gone, his black hair all mussed. “Or that was my read on them. I would have guessed they are working for a major intelligence service, and one with evil intent.”
I should have smiled, seeing Fortune hanging around here. But today, I just didn't have it in me. “You're going to have to narrow that one down for me, because every major intel service I've dealt with seems to have ill intent.”
“They had a plethora of accents,” June said, weighing back in. She did look at Fortune twice – once at his face, then...at the rest of him, which drew more of her interest. “I wouldn't place them in any one category like Russian, German, British – I thought I heard a couple African accents, some native English speakers with American accents mixed in, definitely an Asian guy in there somewhere–”
“She is correct,” Renard said, looking me right in the eye. “But they were offering satellite surveillance and other things that would indicate to me strong state backing.”
“Or billionaire backing,” June said, still giving Fortune the once-over. I guess she had been in prison for a while.
“Pretty sure I've killed all the billionaires who wanted me dead,” I said. “Now...I need to know who got out.”
“Lots of people stayed,” Madison said. “Those of us not interested in waging war on the government.”
“Or on you,” Amanda said, looking at me rather pointedly. “Again.”
“A lot of people wanted revenge, though,” June said. “Against you. Your team. Even against that other company, the one with the Spec Ops guys.”
“Hampton's bunch,” I said, remembering his group's scheduled demise at the airport in about three hours. Another thing I'd need to take care of. “Okay. There's a lot happening here. Buildings are going to start falling in Minneapolis in a few minutes. There's a swath of destruction going to be cut to St. Paul. The airport and capitol are going to be destroyed, and finally the Cities and everyone in them is going to just die at about two o'clock.”
June stared at me. “How do you know all this?”
“Long story,” I said.
“Her ex reads the future,” Fortune said a little wryly.
“It's a little more complicated than that,” I said.
“Oh, good,” June said. “Because I smelled the whiskey on your breath and was worried for a minute there that you were coming in here on a wing and a prayer.”
“No prayers, just me,” I said. “But I need to know what I'm up against – and before you ask, the man who can read the future? Not in play right now.” I looked at each of them in turn. “I need to know what you know...or everyone in this place dies at two P.M. with the rest of the cities.”
That prompted some awkward looks exchanged...except by one guy.
“I'll tell you exactly what happened,” Renard said, without a second's hesitation. “It started just after breakfast...”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Fortune Renard
The Cube
7:14 A.M.
“...because the eggs are rehydrated and produced in bulk,” Renard said, enjoying the attention of nearly everyone at the long, metal table. He enjoyed the attention, keeping them spellbound with his highly-accented voice.
“So are they not real eggs?” Brance Venable was staring at the white and yellow, hard-as-pellets lumps hanging from his spoon.
“Yo, idiot, you not know what 'rehydrated' means?” A guffaw from the bulky man at the end of the table was like a pig snorting. He was a beast named Maurice, but since the day Renard had arrived, everyone had called him “Moose.” Across from him sat a slim man who was known as “Stubs” for the strange protrusions sticking out of his shoulders. And across from them, a bald man with a misshapen head and cold blue eyes.
“Ignore them,” Renard said to Brance. “Gangsters, all.”
“What did you say?” Moose called.
“If you could hear me, you would know,” Renard said under his breath.
But they could not hear, for the bald man sitting with them was a leech, a dead zone for metahuman powers, and the reason that they were crammed at the far end of the table.
“This cuisine leaves a little something to be desired,” said the man beside Renard. A middle-aged man with long, graying brown hair, he let a soft burp. “But I guess I can't complain,” Hermes said. “Could be so much worse. Did I ever tell you about the time I got food poisoning in ancient Tyre?”
“Every time you are served this tripe,” Renard said.
“Oh.” Hermes put his head down, clearly disappointed. “Well, it's memorable, I guess. Do you even know how hard it is to give a metahuman food poisoning?”
A tray clanked next to them as someone else sat down. It was the new arrival, Wil Waters. His hair was getting shaggy, and he wore a glowing smile upon his face. “Good morning, gents,” he said sunnily, lifting his eyes and looking at the clock that hung above the courtyard. “How's everyone doing this fine morning?”
“You're in an awfully good mood,” Hermes said. He seemed to flash for a moment, and his tray was gone, then he was back, hair stirring to indicate he'd clearly moved. “What happened? Get laid last night?”
“I'm sure my cellmate would love that,” Waters said, glancing down the line. His cellmate was Sherman Bowers, and sitting only a table away.
“What are you looking at, new fish?” Sherman called with a distinctly redneck accent. A hard-faced man with one foot, he was seated next to his perpetual partner in crime – literally – Benjamin Schmidt, and the two of them guffawed in harmony, a most distressing sound.
“Can't tell you how much I'm going to miss that guy,” Waters said, sliding his tray forward. “The intellectual conversations we have after lights out? So stimulating.” His voice dropped and an accent rolled in. “'You ever see that episode where Daisy Duke gets kidnapped and then rescued and banged by her brother?'” Waters's face twisted in distaste. “Then the bunk starts squeaking, and I know to keep my eyes pointed at the ceiling and definitely hold my piss in.”
“Why would you miss it?” Hermes asked, a piece of not-actually-bacon suddenly in his hand. “Where do you think you're going?”
“You getting a cellmate transfer?” Brance asked, and looked sideways at the table with Sherman and Schmidt. “I'd bunk with you over Schmidty. Let them have each other.”
“Tempting offer, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline,” Waters said with a smile. “Tonight I'll be bunking with some lovely young lady who's there only to satiate my every desire. Thrice, I think.” He glanced up again, and a very slight smile crept over his lips. “Asian, if I'm not mistaken.”
