21.0 - Remember, page 16
part #21 of Girl Out Of The Box Series
She shook a fist at me, but apparently really did not want to step on the warden’s moment—lending a little more credence to my theory that my death was, if not state-sanctioned, at least sanctioned by a certain servant of the state.
One Gert respected enough to not interrupt.
“What the hell was that?” June asked, sitting down beside me.
“A solid hint,” I said, my blood feeling just a tad colder than it had been a second before, “that this whole damned place is about to go really hard against me.”
“Shit,” June said, and her dismay was apparent. I couldn’t blame her; any sensible person would have felt the same standing this close to me. The icy hate looks we were getting from the inmates around us?
They were looking for my blood.
They were being sanctioned by the warden.
My only defender was my cellmate, who did not want to be involved and especially did not want to die.
Anyone would have been terrified out of their mind in this situation.
Anyone … reasonable.
But for some reason, as I sat there, surveying the odds all stacked against powerless me, I couldn’t help but …
Smile.
30.
Warden Bletchely made his way out of the gate into our area harrumphing to the heavens, and tut-tutting to anyone who could hear him, which included unpowered me. So his audience was, presumably, everyone, and he made his way right to the center of the room, as fearless as if he were backed up by a crack platoon of Marines.
That told me a little something about the warden’s confidence level. He didn’t fear people with powers. A whole room full of ill-tempered people with powers.
And the ill-tempered people with powers? They feared him. At least enough to sit down and shut up.
I’d been in prisons before, on tours and such. In addition to the smell—it’s distinct; a brand of bodies and hopelessness—respect for administration is usually fairly thin on the ground. Most places I’d been didn’t edge as close to a riot as we were heading right now—but of course our current predicament was largely on me.
Clicking my fingernails against the steely tabletop, I assessed. They were not long enough to serve as weapons yet. But I still had my glass Clara daggers.
“Get everyone out here,” Bletchely said, snapping his fingers at a couple guards. “Who are we missing?”
“Clara Martin,” one of the guards said.
I snickered, and June looked hell at me. “Seriously? Clara Martin?” June shrugged at me. “It rhymes with Clara Barton, founder of—never mind.” I shook my head. It was probably only funny to me.
“Martin!” One of the guards shouted into her cell. “Martin, get out here!”
I tensed, still tapping my fingers against the table. I let my gaze drift around, falling on the harpies and Gert. How was this going to play out when they realized Clara was not coming out?
I couldn’t predict it exactly, but I had to guess … not well.
“Martin, present yourself for counting and proceed to the tables for the warden!” The guard shouted. Boy, he was going to be disappointed when he realized he was talking to a pile of dust.
“What do we do?” June asked, leaning over to whisper directly in my ear.
“Be cool,” I said. Everyone was focused on the guard shouting at Clara. The last thing we needed was to draw attention to ourselves by talking where most of the metas could probably hear us if they tried.
“I don’t have all day,” Bletchely said, tapping his wrist watch. It made me stop tapping the table just for fear I’d be associated with his arrogant ass.
“Okay, riddle me this,” I said, leaning over to June. “Why is Gert terrified of this guy?”
“He’s the warden, it’s a prison,” June said.
“I know, I know,” I said. “But she could grow to five times his size and rip him into tiny pieces, or tear him another hole and use him like a puppet.” I frowned, thinking. “Actually, she wouldn’t even need to tear him a new hole for that, just maybe expand the current—”
“Because they can gas us all in seconds,” June said, tension ratcheting through her voice. “There’s a suppressant sprinkler system built into this place that they can flip on at a command. If things ever get what they deem ‘out of control,’ boom, they flip a switch, no more powers, and everyone is—why the hell are you laughing?”
And I was. Oh, but I was. Slapping my thigh, bent near double, tears practically streaming down my cheeks. “Because this is so, so sweet.” I looked up and found Gert staring at me. I waved back. “Coming for you real soon, big girl,” I whispered, knowing she’d get it.
“Oh, shit,” June said, “you’re going to do it, aren’t you? Get us gassed?”
“You gotta admit,” I said, steadying myself as the guard finally stepped into Clara’s cell in order to check on her, “it’ll level the hell out of the playing field—in my favor.” I cracked my knuckles. “Bet these other bitches never learned to fight by doing so every damned day, whether you felt like it or not.”
I’d trained with my mom, who was meta, back when I didn’t have powers yet, and she never once let me win. Not a big believer in letting her child have easy victories, my mom. “Unearned self-esteem is a badge for losers,” she said one time when I confronted her after reading a pop psychology book she’d brought home for me to study. “Go win and you’ll feel great about yourself.”
“Thanks, ma,” I said for the thousandth time since I’d left my house, rising to my feet.
“Martin’s gone!” the guard shouted across the room. Must have missed the accumulated dusty remains of the lady in question. Which had kinda been the purpose of my flush operation.
“Impossible,” Bletchely said, snapping his fingers and sending a few more guards into action. “She’s in here somewhere. Who saw her last?”
“Nealon was in her cell,” one of the guards answered, some guy with a deep voice.
“She wasn’t there when I was in there,” I said, shrugging, as every eye in the place flew to me. I pretended I was stretching, very casually.
“What were you doing in there?” Bletchely asked, looking at me with narrowed eyes. He was so pasty he’d be certain to fade into the background of any cloud rolling by. Not many of those down here, though.
“Well, I went to try and make peace so as to avoid getting burned to death,” I said, “but when I found her not so much there, I uh … used her bathroom and, uh … wiped my ass with her pillowcase a few … dozen times.”
That produced a ripple of laughter from my fellow prisoners, as well as a solid glare from Gert and her new pals. I remained standing, beaming back at her. I could feel the sharp edges of my glass daggers against my palms, just waiting to drop out of my sleeves.
“Go cell by cell,” Bletchely said. “She’s here somewhere.” Orders given, he turned his attention back to me, giving me an unsubtle glare. I stayed standing, stretching for effect.
The guards sprang into action, and it was all win for me. Only a couple remained in the middle of the room with Bletchely; all the rest tore off to go toss the cells, looking for signs of a dead woman whose remains had already mostly left the prison.
“Someone has seen Clara!” Bletchely said, his voice rising in pitch as he looked around at the other prisoners. He sounded a little like a parent who’d lost sight of their kid in a park. He knew they were still there, and most probably just fine, but that irrational edge of worry was cutting into him anyway. He was probably feeling that heart-drop effect, where you feel like your stomach lurches when something bad happens. Oh, he was trying to keep up a brave face, but … I could see it plain, he wasn’t that brave. “Tell me where she is.”
Moving right to the implied threat. Amateurish. I would have gone with the carrot, then moved to the stick when it didn’t work.
“I’m telling you, Nealon had something to do with this,” Gert said, and every eye in the center of the room came right back to me.
“What do you think I did, Gert?” I stared her down. “You think I murdered the shit out of her and then dismembered her, flushing her body down the toilet piece by piece? Cuz, lemme tell you from personal experience—taking a person apart? Would have left a bit of mess.”
Unless someone else had turned her to glass and killed her, leaving me to dispose of a crystalline, bloodless body.
Gert flushed a bright red, her fat face puffing. “You did something, Nealon.”
“Moi?” I asked, pointing at my chest. “Why, like the rest of you, I’m completely innocent, Gert. Pure as the driven yellow snow.” I grinned.
“That’s enough out of the two of you,” Bletchely said. He wasn’t even looking at us, he was staring at the upper level. “You—have you found her yet?” A guard on the upper story just shrugged and went into another cell. I could hear them overturning some of the bunk beds as they conducted their sad, exhaustive search.
Bletchely looked back at all of us. “We will find her. And when we do—”
“Does she win a prize the longer she stays hidden?” I asked, raising my hand. “Like, if she can make it an hour, does she get declared hide-and-go-seek champ?”
“Sit down, Nealon,” Bletchely said, paling, probably at the thought of this search stretching into an hour.
“How ’bout …no.” I said and started around the table.
There was an audible gasp in the room.
Bletchely’s eyes went wide. “Sit down, Nealon, or—”
“Or what?” I asked, threading my way through the tables. Gert was ahead, sitting at one of the circular ones, directly opposite where I’d been. Her three harpies were between us. “You’ll … disempower me? Too late. You’ll have your guards beat me …? Good luck doing more damage than what Gert and her thuggish ho-squad have already done.”
I stared Bletchely down, and he visibly paled another shade, before reasserting some control over himself. “My guards may not be metas,” he sniffed, “but I assure you … you will feel the pain.”
“You think that your pussywillow guards,” I eyed the two of them that remained in the area, moving subtly toward me, batons in hand, “can match what I’ve been through in my life, Bletchely? I bet at their best they couldn’t deal out a beating to me that’d crack my top twenty. Hell, they probably couldn’t even crack my skull.” I flashed a smile.
All the drama was here in the middle of the room. Every prisoner was watching. Glaring, in most cases. Smiling, in some. Everyone wanted to see Sienna Nealon catch hell.
Or death. Most of them wanted to see me die.
“I think we’re about to find out,” Bletchely said with a smile.
I was almost to Gert’s table, but I wasn’t focused on her. I was looking past her, at Bletchely. Everyone in the room was watching me do so, and the guards subtly altered their courses. They were thinking of me as a meta, even depowered, because that’s what they were used to. One of them whispered into his mic, and I heard it—“Stand by.”
That’s right, boys. Set the table for me. Dinner was going to be delish.
I took it nice and slow, eyes on Bletchely, not paying one whit of attention to Gert and her crew, and they seemed quite content to watch my little power struggle with the warden play out. Bletchely, like most oblivious, overly secure idiots, hadn’t caught on to the threat to his personal safety that the guards had picked up on immediately. He was arrogant, looking angry eyes at me, assuming he was inviolable, like those morons who jogged down city streets with earphones in, unaware of the dangers lurking all around them.
“Hold,” the guard said into his mic. “Be ready—on my command, to unleash—”
“Hell,” I said to him, sliding my gaze to him.
You could have heard an ant fart. The prison was utterly silent, Bletchely staring at me, me staring back. I was two steps away from the two closest harpies, and they were just watching in awe as I walked right up to them, never looking, never betraying my intent—
Silence. My heartbeat was a slow thud, probably a few beats per minute higher than usual, but a calm thing. I was either about to win, or I was about to die, or maybe get horrifically injured—no matter what, there was no reason to fear. Things were about to go in one of several directions. My choice was at hand, but the consequences were out of my hands.
A faint gasp from behind me. Someone else was more likely to have a heart attack from the tension than I was.
My palms were dry as the daggers slid down into them. I avoided the sharp ends and gripped at the center, hiding them from sight. Razor-like threads of glass cut into my palm, exacting a price of blood for my use of them.
Fair trade. I was about to pay in a whole lot more blood anyway.
Just not mine.
“We can’t find her, sir!” A lone guard called from above.
Bletchely swallowed, visibly, not breaking eye contact with me. For the first time, he’d started to realize a predator was stalking him. One that was unafraid of him. He’d noticed the guards drawing closer to him, his own Praetorians, and my fearlessness seemed to be draining the courage right out of him.
It fell quiet again. So quiet you could hear my final step even if you weren’t a meta.
A bead of sweat tumbled down Bletchely’s forehead to his nose.
I licked my lips. They were a little dry. “Hey, Bletchely.” He looked right at me. “You want me dead?”
Bletchely let out a ragged breath. Apparently I was getting to him. “I want you to sit down, Nealon, or we will be forced to … deal with you.”
“I’ll give you a deal,” I said. I was right behind the nearest two harpies. Arm’s length. Weapons in hand.
They had no idea. They were just watching me approach, heads turned, dumbfounded, jaws slack, looking up at me.
“You tell me who wants me dead,” I said, staring Bletchely down, “and I’ll seriously consider leaving some people alive. Deal?”
Pin drop.
Or maybe “mic drop.”
Bletchely laughed nervously. “You don’t fool me, Nealon. You’re a big talker, that’s all. You certainly haven’t—”
“Killed anyone lately?” I smiled.
“A fluke,” Bletchely said.
Gert stirred for the first time, a little uneasily, across the table from where I stood.
I looked at her. “You will die, before this is done.”
“You can’t threaten me, Nealon,” Gert said, glaring back at me.
“That wasn’t a threat, Gert,” I said, and looked back at Bletchely. I felt the tiniest swell of pity for what I was about to do to his afternoon.
But then I remembered: he was letting the law of the jungle do its thing, and hoping it’d cull the weak …
Namely, me.
“It was a promise,” I said to Gert.
And I drove my knives into the necks of the two nearest harpies.
The strike surprised them both; I caught the carotid artery on one and the jugular vein on the other. I didn’t rest on my laurels, though; when you had a small knife and were trying to kill a meta, large quantities of damage were the name of the game.
I pulled my daggers out and thrust them in, again and again, ripping and tearing and generally annihilating every square patch of skin on the neck I could find.
The first hit prompted a murmur of surprise to ripple through the audience. They didn’t quite believe what their eyes had seen.
The second and third? That was when the blood started to flow in earnest. Screams and shock, people leaping over tables and tumbling over backwards trying to get the hell away from the bloody violence that had broken out in their midst.
I watched what I was doing only dimly, out of my peripheral vision, as the two harpies tumbled over, to the floor, clutching at themselves.
They’d bleed to death very shortly, and no meta powers short of Wolfe abilities were going to spare them.
I looked at Gert, spared a glance at Bletchely—he’d turned a whiter shade, something approximating pearl, and his mouth was open, hanging there in horror, and his guards were starting to move—
“All right, a-holes,” I said, letting my bloody daggers show as people leapt tables and screamed and generally unleashed chaos and sowed horror trying to get the hell away from the crazy depowered murdering lady that was me. “Let’s do this thing.”
31.
Sophie
New Asgard, Texas
Four Years Ago
“How about I judge you?” Sienna asked, eyes fiery, her anger coupling with the humidity to produce a steady drip of sweat down her forehead. Her dark hair was matted and frizzing, and her eyes were drifting between the whole lot of them but resting mostly on Penny in the lead.
Penny had that calm look, a steadfast rock in the middle of a ridiculously stormy sea. Fury would ebb and fall over her and she wouldn’t even notice. She’d suffered much worse wrath, Sophie knew, than that of Sienna Nealon. “We are thousands of years old, child,” Penny said, but the tone was simple, matter-of-fact, and lacked the sting of condescension that so many others of her age would have imparted, especially adding child to the mix. “If you think we lived those years without making … considerable mistakes … I don’t know what to tell you. If you want to judge us for them—”
“I’m not talking about mistakes,” Sienna said, pure acid washing out. “Mistakes are you walking down the street, going to wave to someone, your meta strength kicks in and you accidentally bust a human’s head to pieces on your backswing. Whoops. That’s a mistake.”
Mag stared at her. “Has … has that happened to you?” he asked in a tone heavily accented by Norse.
“No, but it would be a mistake if it did,” she said, not losing a degree of the heat rolling off her voice. “An accident, a poor choice. If you really wanted to push it, a lack of control and discipline. A whoops.” She looked at each of them in turn. “I’m not talking about anything like that. No misjudgments …
