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part #38 of Out of the Box Series Series
“Yeah,” I finally said, “I don't know how many times, either. For today or in total.” I sighed, and pushed the tequila back at him. “Screw that. Got any whiskey back there?”
“Oh, we have whiskey,” Hermes said with a light in his eyes.
“Pour it up,” I said, and felt the bitter seeds in my heart finally spring to life, my frustration with everything – being misunderstood, being hated, being hunted – giving me cause at last to just say to hell with it all. “Let the barbarians have this snowy hellhole.” And I picked up the bottle Hermes offered me, ripped the cork out, and took my first slug. God, it was sweet. “I'm sick of protecting these people against enemies they swear they don't have.”
Chapter One Hundred Two
Barbour
1:33 P.M. Central Time
“This better be good,” Sarah Barbour said as she walked back into the situation room. She'd been in a meeting with a long-time lobbyist friend trying to iron out a few of the last details of executive actions she was going to get through before leaving office in January. Calling a halt to it for this jackass had her pretty irritated.
“I think we have something that might interest you, Madam President,” General Baker said. He was tall, thin like a twig, and had a slight wheeze to him. Didn't these military people need to pass a physical or a fitness requirement? That must stop somewhere below General, Barbour thought, her irritation driving the uncharitable nature of her thoughts. “If you'll turn your attention to the screen.”
Barbour sat in the chair at the head of the table, admiring the comfort and irritated that she'd have to leave it behind just as she was getting used to it. “You don't think I would have noticed you showing me a movie on the screen? Get to it already.”
“Yes, ma'am,” the general said, and pointed at a drone-view of the airport from just before the explosion of the last Hellfire missile. “As you can see, what we have here is the moment prior to–”
“I SAID GET ON WITH IT!” Barbour picked up a pen and threw it at him. It bounced off the wall behind his head, causing him to flinch. “Stop wasting my time!” Her collar felt warm around her neck.
“There's movement here,” the general said, “just after the explosion takes place. And we have a thermal heat signature of a body,” and here he pointed to a vaguely human shape next to a car, “that's gone in the seconds after the explosion dies down.”
“Because they died after the blast, obviously,” Barbour said, her mood improving not at all.
“Except, if you watch this in slow motion,” the general said, clearly trying to keep buoyant.
Barbour steadied herself and did actually watch. Another streak of white against the gray background passed through, merged with the blob of the fallen figure, and then, twice as large, moved off in the other direction.
“Did someone just...streak in and scoop them up?” Barbour said, standing and slowly approaching the screen. “Scoop...her...up?” The president's eyes gleamed, and she felt a relentless malice and secret triumph creep into her soul as she looked at the general. “Do you know where they took her?”
“We think so, ma'am,” General Baker said hopefully. God, he was pathetic, seeking her favor so desperately he couldn't help but act like a puppy looking for a belly rub. With a click of a button on his remote, the screen changed to a satellite view. “We've used satellite imagery to trace the path of the, uh...anomaly...to this house on the shore of Lake...Wayzata,” he said, tripping over the pronunciation.
“Get another drone overhead,” Barbour said, feeling a slow smile press at the edges of her lips. “I want to fire all missiles at once this time, though. Make sure there's no escape, you know?”
The general's face went pale. “Ma'am...we've already had a mass casualty incident at the airport. I understand wanting to get her, but shouldn't we inform the State of Minnesota, let them handle it on the ground?”
“No, anything handled at the state level gets completely borked, these people can't do anything right,” Barbour said. “Put that drone overhead and make sure no one leaves.” She walked back to her chair and sat down with great satisfaction. “The only way to do this right is to do it the way no one else will.”
The general just stood there, looking slightly flummoxed. “How...how is that, ma'am?”
Barbour smirked. “The way Nealon herself would – massive overkill.” Her smile vanished and her face hardened. “Now get it done, General.”
Chapter One Hundred Three
Shipley
1:34 P.M.
“We've gotten an anonymous tip that led to Wayzata,” Lt. Mann said. “There's a house on the lakeshore that looks to have been broken into – commandeered, really – by someone.” She was looking down as she read. “We've spoken to the owners, and they're in Turks and Caicos for Christmas.” Glancing up, she smiled. “Getting footage from video doorbells on the street, we have what looks like a, uh...I think they call it a 'Speedster'? A metahuman that runs really fast.” She flipped her screen around and showed a blurry video still of...something.
Governor Shipley peered through her glasses. “I can't tell what's going on there. Are my glasses dirty or is that just really bad video quality?”
“It's a little blurry, ma'am,” Britta O'Rourke said, drawing a poisonous glare from Mann.
“Let me show you a still from it,” Mann said, fumbling with the tablet. She turned it around a few seconds later, and presented it proudly as a mama showing off her new baby.
Shipley stared, and finally shook her head. “I mean...it looks sort of like a man, maybe. Or a big bird with a huge beak. A roadrunner or possibly a cassowary...”
“Um, well,” Mann said, hastily putting the tablet behind her back, “we're sending a response unit out, complete with Mr. Hampton's forces as well as BCA SWAT. We have a few officers on scene already, down the street. They'll form a complete picture of the situation, then we'll move in if necessary.”
Shipley heard the lack of ambiguity in her tone. “You really think this is her, then?”
“Yes, ma'am,” Mann said. “We think she received aid from either an escaped meta or one that's been ducking us, and this is where she's holed up until she can slip the dragnet and leave town.”
“She can fly,” O'Rourke said snarkily. “You really think she's sweating your police checkpoints?”
“We have combat air patrols from the 148th Fighter Wing overhead right now,” Shipley said, trying to keep the patient aura of an educator she'd learned back when she was a middle school teacher. “So yes...I think she's probably intimidated by the prospect of facing off against them in a bid to try and get out. She's not invincible, after all.” Shipley cocked her head. “You seem to have a personal connection here, O'Rourke. Weren't you assigned to watch her?”
“Yeah, I spent like a month surveilling her,” O'Rourke said, bleeding a kind of frustration that Shipley didn't see much in her life these days. Not in person. Not since her ascent to the governorship. “She knew we were watching. She was funny and cordial and decent to me. And you know what? She's not the insane psychopath you seem bent on portraying her as.” She pointed at Mann. “If she's here killing criminals, I'd be curious what her reasoning is. Because I bet there is one.”
Shipley chuckled maternally. “She's a psychopath. You can't look at her body count and think otherwise. And what she's done here, killing these prisoners? It's inexcusable.”
“Then why can't we ask her what her excuse is?” O'Rourke looked around the room. “Does nobody else have this...” She made a face and waved a hand over her midsection, “...this gut-level sick feeling in the pit of their stomach like something bad has happened? Like way worse than this, which...I don't know what is going on at the airport, but up until then we had dead criminals, some property damage, and some cops restrained non-lethally. Yeah, not a great day for us–”
“We cannot tolerate that kind of willful assault on law and order,” Mann said, her hackles raised.
“–but hardly the end of the world,” O'Rourke said. “We've put up with worse and for probably less reason.” She frowned, still feeling that twisting, black pit in her belly. “Seriously, does no one else feel that?” She looked around the room for support. “The sense that...I don't know...we just walked over a mass grave or something?”
Shipley felt a momentary flash of feeling...and ignored it. Leadership was about taking people where you wanted them to go. “We don't run this administration based on feelings in our tummies,” she said. “We run it based on the cold facts on the ground, and the facts are Sienna Nealon is killing people. Prisoners at first, sure. Then innocents at the airport. Personally, I think the reason she killed the prisoners is that they were going to eventually reveal that she's been deeply involved in the prison-industrial complex, sending innocent people to jail simply for the purposes of lining her own pocket.”
O'Rourke's eye twitched. “Ma'am...have you seen the crime statistics? She doesn't need to send innocent people to jail, there are plenty of guilty ones out there, and in my experience they're not devilishly hard to find.”
“Whose side are you on in this, O'Rourke?” Mann asked.
“That's enough,” Shipley said, leaning back in her chair. “We'll hear from your men when they get on the scene. And we'll decide where to go from there.”
Chapter One Hundred Four
Sienna
“You know what the worst part is?” I asked, about three drinks into my bottle. Hermes was being a really good listener, nodding along as I was putting 'em back, taking down his own drinks at an even quicker pace than me. “To save these assholes in Minnesota, I just threw away my future in Tennessee.”
“You're as slippery as Alcibiades,” he said, working his way through a bottle of gin. “Just watch. You'll reinvent yourself, get back in these people’s good graces. You've got time. And charm.”
I stared at him blankly. “Who the hell is Alky-whatever?”
“Never mind,” Hermes said. “Point is...you'll figure things out. None of these people will last as long as you. And an unpleasant truth of the world...” He leaned in closer, his long hair hanging over his eyes. “...there are a lot of countries on this planet where you could find the same kind of sanctuary you had in Tennessee. You just might have to do a little, uh...wet work for them. From time to time.”
I sighed, hugging the whiskey bottle to my chest. “I know everyone thinks I'm all murder-happy, but I don't kill randoms, okay? The people I shuffle off the mortal coil earn it, Hermes. They earn it by pointing a gun at me or someone else, or by being armed combatants in a place where murdering is happening. I don't just trust some asshole in a government office building to tell me who is worthy of being shot down like a dog in the streets. They gotta do something to earn it before I'm willing to dispense death.”
“Living by a code,” Hermes said. “I respect the hell out of that. Few do anymore. I imagine that makes your life tougher, though.”
“Ugh,” I moaned. “Yeah. I can't decide whether it'd make things easier or harder if I just killed freely like a psychopath.” I lay back against the couch. “I will say I'm sick of carrying all this weight.” I glanced down my body. “And I don't mean the weight that comes from my love of tacos and Five Daughters donuts and Bishop's fried chicken.” I sighed.
“It's a lot to carry,” Hermes said, then quickly added, “the responsibility, I mean. I think you look mighty fine. I don't care much for women who look like toothpicks.”
I turned my head to him and saw at last that gleam in his eyes that I had probably been ignoring because I was just happy to have a place to go where I wasn't being shot at. “You're trying to get in my pants right now, aren't you?”
He grinned sheepishly. “I've been in prison for months. You can't blame a guy for thinking, 'Hey, pretty, strong, dangerous woman...maybe she's got one other bad habit, too?' Ya know?”
I sighed deeply. “I don't know how to tell you this other than to say I am so very dramatically not in the mood.”
“I could be quick,” he said.
“That is not as much of a selling point for me as you might think.”
“Well, then I could be persuaded to take my time,” he said with a boyish smirk. “It's not easy for me to go slow at anything, but–”
His expression changed, and he sat bolt upright.
And then the house exploded around us.
Chapter One Hundred Five
Barbour
“Fire.”
She felt that curious sense of self-satisfaction as the gray thermal view of the house turned white, the explosion rippling out from its center as four AGM-114 Hellfire missiles pounded down from above and brought the lakeshore about a hundred yards inland.
“Ma'am,” General Baker said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, “we don't even know who was in there.” He had such sad eyes, like a little puppy. Barbour wanted to slap his face to see them rattle in his head while she laughed, but she'd learned to control that impulse in her years in politics. “If anyone was home, those people were probably American citizens and–”
“Who gives a shit about that?” Barbour asked, almost laughing. “We're bringing down Sienna Nealon here. That's the job. Nothing will interfere.” She looked at the remains of the house on the screen. The explosion had almost died down, and water from the lake was pouring into the crater. “I think I just did something that my two predecessors were unable to.” She folded her arms across her chest. History would remember her for that, wouldn't it?
Chapter One Hundred Six
Elaine O'Brien
“I'm watching the Carlson house, Fred!” Elaine O'Brien shouted at her husband. She was walking out of the living room, shuffling toward him because he'd called her, and had just made it into the kitchen when she was thrown to the ground by a great hearty shove.
When she raised her head again, all her possessions were strewn about the room, launched from the shelves as though grabbed by a hurricane and tossed. Crystal music boxes, Hummel figurines, Depression glass, even the books looked like they'd been hurled everywhere and torn from their bindings.
Elaine blinked, looking back at the living room.
It was gone, the roof timbers collapsed in and cutting off her view. The room, the windows, all her things...it was as though someone had collapsed the wall she'd just been standing by, bringing down that entire side of the house.
“Are you okay?” Fred called. He was still seated in his recliner, but it had fallen over backwards, and his legs were up in the air.
Elaine took all the destruction in with the sweep of her gaze, and felt the despair build in the back of her throat. It came out in a great cry:
“My house! Look what she's done to my beautiful house!” And she sat there and wailed, the ruin of her home creaking around her, threatening to fall in.
Chapter One Hundred Seven
Sienna
Hermes grabbed me and shattered the window as the first missile hit. His feet hadn't even touched the snow when the shockwave from the explosion struck and drove us forward, followed by a second.
I felt his arm around me as we smashed into ice and rolled into the water, and the shock of the freezing chill covered my entire body in a second. I gasped in surprise, water threatening to push into my nose and mouth. Hermes's arm tightened around me in his fear, and I wondered if he could swim.
Didn't matter.
Shhh, Brianna said, quieting the momentary panic that had sprung up. Remember yourself.
And I remembered.
Scott, I said in my mind, and the waters cleared five, six inches in front of our faces, a bubble of fresh air linking us together. Hermes gasped into the sudden abundance of oxygen.
Gavrikov, and we began to coast forward, cutting through the water and moving deeper beneath the surface. A drone was overhead, and it surely had thermal imaging to pick my body heat out of the snowy, icy environs surrounding the explosion.
They were watching.
But the solution was as simple and obvious.
We went all the way down, skimming the bottom of Lake Wayzata, moving forward out of the inlet where the house had been, toward the wide, open center of the lake. Around us, the rush of water seeking its level and entering the giant crater the missiles had produced rumbled as it pushed against my impromptu barrier.
Hermes, still gasping beside me, managed to sputter out, “You really are the most powerful aren't you?” Catching his breath, he added, “Really glad they sent your brother after me and not you. I'd probably be dead right now.”
“I'm pretty sick of killing people at this point,” I said as I upped the speed but used my water power to control the ripples so no sign of our passage would show on the surface above.
But that wasn't true at all.
There were still people I wanted to kill very much.
The question was whether I'd get to them before my fatigue and desperation completely wore me out.
Or the government killed me.
Chapter One Hundred Eight
Shipley
“So she blew up the house?” Shipley asked, staring at the screen Lt. Mann had thrust in her face. “To...what? Skunk her escape? Cover her tracks?”
“We assume so, ma'am,” Mann said, keeping the tablet right in front of her, where she almost couldn't look away.
But Shipley desperately wanted to look away. A prime lot had just opened up on the shore of Lake Wayzata, and she couldn't shake the feeling that even if they were donors, they'd probably blame her at least in part for this.
