Heyyyyyy.

  I snatched one of the cups and threw it in Clara’s face as she charged, bursting into flame. She was probably planning to slam into me in a superheated ball, burning her way through my internal organs and neatly flame-cutting me in half.

  Sizzling steam burst out where the water landed, blinding her for a hot (haha) second as I jumped up on the table. She dashed past at incredible speed, flames sputtering, and slammed headfirst into a nearby pillar.

  The noise of her collision was epic, and it sounded like something broke very badly. Her fire died, and she crashed to the ground, leaving a huge indent in the pillar. Blood oozed out of her head and she did not move.

  “Leave me alone!” June shouted, and I saw her dodge behind another table as Marta came at her again. I wasn’t sure how the guards would view her after this conflict, but it seemed unfair to make her have to fight on the up and up with Marta, given that she’d just done me a solid by taking Gert out of the fight for me. Gert, who was still choking on her own bile, and was in no danger of being rendered assistance by the guards, who had suddenly made themselves very scarce to allow my own personal Thunderdome to play out unimpeded.

  I leapt down from the table I was standing on and slid over the next, heading for Marta. She was closing on June, who was running out of places to run and had a very dangerous look in her eyes that I recognized from when we’d clashed before. I didn’t think this was going to end well for Marta, but then, it probably wouldn’t end well for June, either, since she’d be depowered for sure if she got violent.

  Sliding over the last table, I landed just behind Marta as she stiffened at my approach. She definitely heard me, but she wasn’t about to turn her back on June—a for-certain foe—in anticipation of me, a possible foe.

  Her mistake.

  Last one ever.

  I reached up and grabbed her around the forehead, and she burst a quill through my hand.

  It hurt. A lot. It was a footlong needle the diameter of a quarter, and it ripped through flesh and tendon and bone and muscle and ohhhhhhhh my, my, my, did it hurt.

  But it wasn’t even in the top ten for pains I’d experienced. Probably not even top twenty.

  And it anchored my hand to her forehead.

  She was off balance, had been in the middle of a step when I’d grabbed her. Now she was standing on one leg, trying to set the other down so she could toss me, the weaker party, around.

  I didn’t let her.

  I yanked Marta back with all my force, dragging her tiny body with everything I had.

  She might have been stronger than me, but that counted for nothing when I had all the balance and all the leverage. She had nothing to push that strength against, so she came back in the direction I pulled her hundred-pound mass of needle-point shitbag.

  My hand screaming at being treated like a knife’s sheath, I ripped Marta down and slammed the base of her skull against the nearby bench. Skull and skin met their match against steel, and the crack of her spine was loud enough to make it through the first wail of what I assumed was the lockdown alarm.

  Marta’s eyes went wide in the second before impact, when she realized how she’d messed up.

  They stayed wide the second after impact, because her body relaxed in death.

  She slid to the floor, her quill dragged from my hand as I stood over her corpse. The prisoners around me were scattering, except for June, and the still-fallen Gert and Clara.

  “Welp,” I said, looking over at Gert, “guess I’ve done it now.” I stepped closer to her; she was choking, gasping for air. June’s little maneuver wouldn’t kill her, though, which meant if I let her walk away from this, she’d be back for me, probably tomorrow, or maybe the next day—or whenever it was she got her powers back.

  Mine were coming back never, I was guessing.

  That was fine. I could handle myself.

  I surveyed the scene as the door opened at the far end of the room. Guards were flooding in now. I guess they didn’t like the show. I didn’t have much time.

  “Nice knowing you, Gert,” I said, grabbing her by the hair and lifting her head up. I was going to bring it down and slam it into the concrete, over and over if necessary—

  She threw a stray hand at me, and that was all it took.

  Her meta strength collided with my human frame, and I went flying. She hadn’t even done it intentionally, there was no rationality in her eyes. She was in a panic, a drowning person trying to catch a breath.

  Instead she’d caught me, and I went for a little flight.

  I didn’t even see the wall coming, but I felt it as I hit.

  Lots of things broke. Things that shouldn’t have broken. Things I’d probably broken before, but back when I had a reasonable expectation of them healing quickly.

  Here … that was not going to happen.

  I crumpled into unconsciousness, my broken, bleeding body slumping to the gel-filled floor, and embraced the darkness.

  21.

  I awoke under artificial lights, the disinterested face of Dr. Helen Slaughter/Sigourney Weaver watching me from a few feet away. I was gasping, like I’d just burst out of deep water, a long submersion that had been filled with nightmarish visions and terrible pain.

  The antiseptic smell of the infirmary nearly choked me, and my tongue tasted of bile, as though the entire contents of my stomach had decided to expel themselves while I was sleeping. Dull, grey paneling covered every surface of this sci-fi medical hell, and I blinked as I looked into the almost bored eyes of my savior.

  “‘Oh, good, you’re awake and going to survive, I was so worried!’” I said after Sigourney said nothing.

  She offered me a kind of half shrug, face not moving a millimeter toward concern. “You seem fine.”

  “Gotta work on your bedside manner, doc,” I said, testing for aches and pains. There were none. “You let the suppressant wear off, didn’t you?”

  “It seemed the most effective way to heal you, short of dragooning some poor Persephone in here to give of themselves.” She was looking at a chart in her hands, making notes on it with a pen.

  “Not going to ask me how I feel?” I kept a wary eye on her.

  “You feel fine.” She didn’t look up from the chart.

  “You sure about that? Are you a telepath?”

  She looked up at that. “If I were, I suppose I’d be president of the United States and not taking care of prisoners.” No reaction as she delivered a line that suggested she knew exactly who and what Harmon was. That was not exactly common knowledge.

  “Really?” I asked. “Because it seems to me that Gondry is a former college professor who thinks he’s super smart but is actually a giant nimrod. A common affliction of college professors.”

  She didn’t evince any reaction to that, just went back to making notes on her clipboard.

  “Hey,” I said, mild annoyance seeping out, “am I boring you?”

  “Yes,” she said, eyes scanning her notes.

  “Well, golly, let me get out of your way,” I said, and started to sit up. Head rush; I felt faint and almost toppled over.

  “I had to keep you drugged while the suppressant was off,” she said, still more interested in her paperwork than me, “so you’re experiencing a double whammy. Fresh suppressant plus the last effects of the sedative. I wouldn’t sit up yet if I were you.”

  “Well, I gotta do something or I’m going to die of boredom watching you fill out my chart or a crossword puzzle or Sudoku or whatever you’re doing.” I readjusted myself under the covers. “What’s your deal, Dr. Hell and Slaughter?”

  She looked up at me. “I’m a doctor. My name is Helen Slaughter. I’m new here. What else is there to tell?”

  “You’re a meta,” I said. “You saved my life back in January when I got into a clash with a guy I called the Terminator on I-94 …”

  “That’s very speculative. And also a terrible name for a villain.”

  “Well, your voice is distinctive,” I said, “and you carried me like a baby. Even with my weight loss this last year or so, I’m not light.”

  “You seem very sure of all of that,” she said, turning again back to the clipboard.

  “And you seem to not be denying any of it.”

  “If a patient comes to me and says that they’re suffering from some affliction, I don’t argue with them. I diagnose the problem, if there is one. Then we both go on with our lives.” Now she looked up. “As you will, shortly.”

  I groaned. “You’re sending me back in? Don’t I need a night of observation or something first?”

  “The warden’s orders were very clear,” she said, and here I caught the first flicker of her eyes, a movement of her mouth, that suggested she was not entirely pleased. “You’ll be back in the general population within the hour.”

  “That’ll be fun,” I said. “Tell me this, at least—Marta’s dead, right?”

  She nodded, slowly. “Yes. But I’m afraid her friends are fine order.”

  Damn. Clara and Gert were still walking around, and Gert had that chip on her shoulder because of Reed. I couldn’t really find it in myself to be mad, though, because I could easily imagine the situation being reversed and hoo boy, my brother would be in deep shit, because I’d pissed off A LOT more people over the years than he ever had. “But … they’re declawed for a few weeks, right?”

  “The guards wrote the whole thing up as some sort of accident,” she said. Another flicker of emotion, but it was impossible to tell what it meant. Playing poker with this lady would be a cast iron bitch. “So, no. They’re quite powered. I’d watch myself if I were you.”

  “Greaaaaaat,” I said. “Not much chance you could let my suppressant evaporate off for about a day, could you? Because I wouldn’t mind some help tidying up a couple loose ends real quick.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” she said, eyes scanning the page in front of her before she flipped it, the rich crackle of paper almost louder than her speech.

  “Yeah, because this job—which you just got the night I arrived—is clearly vitally important to you.”

  She almost smiled. It was so close. “Clearly.”

  “What kind of omelet is the warden making here?” I asked, and for this, she looked up. “Since he seems committed to breaking my particular egg.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, meeting my eyes with her own, steely blue ones.

  “No words of wisdom and warning?” I asked, as the infirmary door buzzed. Hanna Owens appeared, smiling more with the half curl of her lip at sight of me than Dr. Helen Slaughter had the entire time I’d been in her infirmary.

  “You’re a big girl,” the doctor said, unmoved as ever. “I’m sure you’ll figure it all out.”

  “If we meet again and I have powers,” I said, so low only a meta could hear me, as Owens made her way over, “I can’t guarantee I won’t kill you for sheer obstinacy.”

  Having not looked up and concentrating on whatever the hell she was concentrating on, she must not have realized I’d switched to meta low. “Good luck with that,” she said, and turned away.

  “How’s it going today, Nealon?” Owens said as she arrived at my shoulder. “You feeling like a million bucks?”

  “I feel like a dollar dragged through the mud,” I said. “I missed shower day, and I can feel it. I guess the doc here doesn’t do sponge baths.”

  “Nope,” the doctor said, not looking up.

  “She good to go?” Owens asked.

  “Take her,” the doctor said, and walked off without another word.

  “She must have learned bedside manner at the elbow of the greats,” I said. “Like Mengele.”

  That got her to turn around, and there was a dangerous spark in her eye, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Wooooo,” Owens said, taking hold of my gurney. “Let’s get you out of here before you need another round of treatment, shall we, Nealon?”

  “Bye, doc,” I said. “See you again soon, I’m sure.”

  “I’m sure,” the doctor said as Owens unstrapped me from the table. Dr. Helen Slaughter disappeared into her office, a little room built into the corner of the infirmary and shut the door.

  22.

  “Well, you sure made a stir in here,” Owens said as she walked me back through the corridors. I knew where we were from my days in charge here. The configuration of the Cube wasn’t complicated—the prisoners were housed in a five-story high cube structure, ringed by an ovoid, five-story series of corridors with offices or administrative rooms, storehouses, and an exit. The exit was north, admin to east and west, and there was some empty space that used to be storage at the south.

  That was not exactly all that lay at the southern facing, though.

  One day in prison, and I had already killed someone and been bushwhacked. That fight could have gone much worse than it did, if not for June, and if not for Gert & Co. being deeply stupid.

  This was not how I’d planned my stay in prison. I’d thought I’d be dispassionately punished for my supposed crimes, but …

  It was sure looking like the warden and the guards were totes cool with me being killed. That … was not justice.

  And it was starting to make me think about escape.

  This was not going to be something I could easily execute. Not without powers. And not from here.

  “This is what I do, I shake and stir,” I said, walking alongside her. There were no other guards with us. “I’m a martini shaker.”

  “Wouldn’t you also need a stirrer if you were going to shake and stir a martini?”

  “Don’t try and poke logic holes in metaphors, Owens,” I said. “I’m guessing with the IQs around here that’d be a full time job.”

  “You’re not wrong,” she said. “So … Gert and her single surviving friend aren’t exactly cowed by your first encounter.”

  “Which is a shame, because they are all, actually, cows.”

  “They’re gunning for you,” Owens said. “And they’re still—”

  “Empowered? I heard. One of the few useful the nuggets the doctor gave me.” I chucked a thumb back the way we came as a giant armored door buzzed and slowly opened in front of us. “Seriously, what is her deal?”

  Owens shrugged. “She’s new. And this place is weird. It works on you, you know?”

  “It works the body. With punches. That much I know.”

  Owens laughed. “I think that was more Gert and Clara.” Her smile vanished. “Seriously. They are after you. As someone invested in your success to the tune of thousands of dollars—”

  “You put thousands of dollars on me?”

  “No,” Owens said, shaking her head. “I put fifty bucks on you. Those were the long odds, though, so—”

  “Nice,” I said. She took my elbow and guided me past a couple guards, who shot me resentful looks behind their standard issue helmets and body armor. “Surprised these guys don’t collect their winnings by ‘accidentally’ breaking my neck in a hall.”

  Owens shook her head. “Terms of the bet are clear—one of the meta prisoners has to do it. This goes on long enough? You might get some guards trying to pay some prisoners to do it, but for right now … the early birds are content to let nature run its course.”

  “Nature is an ugly beast, with lots of blood on her teeth.”

  “How are you going to deal with Clara?” Owens asked, almost whispering over the honking of the klaxon before the next door.

  “I don’t know that I can,” I said. “Without weapons, I’d need her to do something stupid, and even dumb people seldom make the same charge-into-a-waiting-pillar kind of mistake twice.” I shrugged. “She’s gonna be a problem, unless I get issued a flame-retardant jumpsuit or have my next fight with her in the shower.” I cursed myself for not pausing and breaking her neck cleanly before going off to deal with Marta. Stupid me and my stupid loyalty and mercy and shit.

  Well, more loyalty to helping June than mercy, I suppose. Somehow coming in here—and maybe even the clash at the quarry—had reaffirmed in my mind that yes, it was okay to kill people who were trying their little hearts out to kill you. If someone was half-assing it, maybe I’d apply some mercy there.

  But really going for the kill? On me?

  Yep. I was going to mess ’em up. To death.

  “I want to live,” I muttered.

  “Don’t we all,” Owens said under her breath as the last door opened. We were back at the Cube.

  “No, we don’t all,” I said, and she gave me a funny look. I’d clashed with a Japanese fellow only a few months ago who had very distinctly not wanted to live, and unfortunately, thanks to the shit I had on my plate and how much of a monkey wrench he was throwing into things, I’d had to grant his fondest wish. Funnily enough, I felt worse about that than any of the hired guns I’d killed at the end of a rifle barrel back in the quarry before I’d landed here.

  But the little grain of truth remained—in spite of being in prison, trapped with people who very definitely either wanted me dead or actively wanted to kill me—

  I wanted to live.

  Even this pathetic shell of a life … I wanted it.

  Part of me thought that giving up at the quarry, giving up my freedom after being pursued to the ends of the damned earth—or at least Scotland, which was kinda the same thing—maybe I was just … done with life.

  Maybe I was ready to die.

  But here I was, in the heart of freaking darkness … and I wanted to live.

  I wanted to see the outside world again. Walk barefoot on the grass. It would have been nice to fly without a plane beneath me, but … since that wish would end in death …

  I wanted out.

  “I’m going to walk you to your cell,” Owens said, her eyes searching. The prisoners were in their social area, and I saw Gert and Clara stand up and follow me with their eyes. Lost in my own thoughts, Owens had caught the danger while I was mentally napping, or enjoying a revelation or whatever. “After that …”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26