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part #38 of Out of the Box Series Series
“You're an idiot, Scout,” I said, turning my face to look her right in her stupid eye, feeling the hard pain of her bare forearm against my throat. “You always have been, from your moronic, uncompromising ideals that win you none of the things you supposedly care about to your utter lack of attention to what's going on in the world around you.” I leaned my face just a touch forward, all I could muster. “After everything I've done today, it's obvious to all but the hopelessly stupid like you that I'm not a hero. And I don't care if there's no one to save me anymore.”
With that, I pulled the dart gun and jammed it into the underside of her wrist. With a pull of the trigger, I heard the hiss of air.
Scout's eyes widened. “What did you do?”
“I'm no hero.” I looked her right in the face and I grinned. “I'm a stone cold killer, Scout. And I just killed you.”
“You–” she flipped her arm over, releasing me at last to reveal the dart buried in her wrist, and she screamed as I fell away from her, “–you've killed us both!”
“Good,” I said, and turned away as gravity took me in its embrace and began to drag me down. I heard her scream as I began my fall, the street seemingly a thousand miles – but really only a few seconds – away.
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Three
Scott Byerly
His phone rang as Sienna hovered over the street with Scout Cole at her back, and Scott's entire body was tense. He answered it with one hand, the sound of Augustus knocking on Reed's door like background music as Scott said, “Hey, sis, what's up?”
“I just died I just died I just died–” Amy's voice was fast and incoherent.
“Whoa, slow down,” Scott said.
“You don't understand!” Amy screamed, and Scott was forced to pull the phone away from his ear. “She saved us, Scott! Sienna – she did something – I don't know – but she saved Minneapolis, don't you get it?”
“Oh, no,” Jamal whispered, and Scott turned his attention back to the screen.
The news camera's angle pushed in tight as Sienna whipped out something from behind her back and jammed it into Scout Cole's arm.
“She darted her,” Jamal said.
“She's going to die, Scott,” Amy said, “she's going to die and – tell me you're here. Tell me you're close. Tell me you're with her, about to help her, about to–”
“I'm in Miami,” Scott whispered, and watched her drop, helpless, into the empty space between the tall buildings. “We all are. There's no one...” He lowered his head as she continued to fall, and he knew – somehow he knew–
She'd been darted, too, and couldn't fly.
This was the end.
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Four
Akiyama
He watched her fall, helpless.
There were many things he could do, but all of them lacked any practical worth.
Stop time?
She would hang there for all eternity, until he wearied, until he lost his grip, and then...
Roll it back?
And do what? His final stunt to awaken the authorities here to what foolishness they were up to had left him weary, left him tired, left him with only the most tenuous grip on time.
He would have needed help, and there was none to be had.
So Shin'ichi Akiyama watched her fall, the hard winter winds picking up and whipping down the Minneapolis street as she came down, down to the fate that awaited all, and most ironic for her–
Death.
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Five
Chandler
TBI Headquarters
He looked at Marsh as the scene played out, Sienna falling into the gap between the towering buildings of downtown Minneapolis. “Damn the law,” Marsh said, transfixed, “we should have gone with her.”
Chandler could not find it in himself to disagree. But all he could do was hide his eyes as he watched his partner plummet to her end.
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Six
Hades
The Villages, Florida
“Fly, girl,” Odin whispered. The two of them were anchored to the TV, and had been all day after calling short a promising round of golf when the news came across the phones.
“She can't,” Hades said, watching her drop with a single tear streaming down his cheek. “If she had her powers...she would have carved that girl's head off rather than be taken hostage.” He looked away; he couldn't bear to see this finish.
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Seven
Lethe
New Asgard, Texas
“No,” Persephone whispered as Sienna dropped. She wasn't moving, swinging, fighting the winds – nothing. “It can’t end like this.”
Lethe didn't answer. She was shaking, and her eyes were wet, because she knew how physics worked, and how human beings worked–
And she knew when a person had given up...
...as Sienna plainly had.
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Eight
Sienna
I fell for fifty floors, and I was fine with it.
Gravity pulled me down, the hard wind hitting against my face as I sped up with each passing floor. The glass reflection blurred as I went, tears springing up in my eyes from the fierce chill.
It was the strangest feeling, dropping. I could hear Scout screaming behind me, and I was silent.
How many times had I been Death to others, but dodged it myself?
How many last-minute saves had I experienced against impossible odds?
Too many. Too many times I'd won that particular lottery, but this was it. I was all out of miracles to pull out of my hat.
This was the problem with working without a net. Sooner or later, there's no one to catch you when you fall.
I felt tired as I fell, the cold wind working against my eyelids; so tired.
I wanted quiet. Sleep. Peace.
But like Odin said, there is no peace to be found on earth, so...
...maybe it was time to go.
Another thought occurred as I passed into the last fifteen, then ten floors.
Two hundred and fifty-three people in Minneapolis and St. Paul had died when I'd refused to face Wolfe. It was a debt I'd carried with me for years, a nagging thing following behind me like an anchor I'd dragged all the way to Tennessee, and when the shit had gone sour here, it had pulled me back.
No more.
As the last floors disappeared, and the wind roared in my ears and the street swelled up to greet me, I knew that longstanding debt was paid, in full, with what I'd done here today.
Paid in full with my blood.
Paid in full with my life.
I closed my eyes, because I didn't care to see Death coming, not the last few feet and inches. The wind howled against my cheeks, cold and bitter and hard and with such force.
“AHHHHHHHHHH!” Scout's screams were violent and angry and terrified, and she was beside me, and then...
SPLAT.
She hit the ground and blood showered out from her body as it dissolved into a stain on the street. I opened my eyes in time to see it from thirty, forty feet away.
And...
...I...
...didn't.
The wind rushed around and carried me along, curving as someone touched me from behind. I spun in the air, in my cradle of wind and for just a second...
...I thought I saw my father.
But the long, dark hair and deep brown eyes were just the hints of him that had been left behind in his only son, and my brother flew along in the winds of the hurricane that wrapped me up, carrying me past the skyscrapers and buildings as I looked into his eyes. “I...Reed...” I said, so tired, suddenly so tired, and feeling sick and sickly, the radiation working on me, “...You should have let me fall.”
“Never,” he said, like he was never more sure of anything in his life. And he took me in his arms and held me to him as he carried me off, away from the Cities I'd almost died to save – so warm – as I drifted off, the tired and the sick feeling taking me.
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Nine
Shipley
“We have Drusilla Cross in custody, she's dosed, but we're taking her for medical attention now,” Hampton's voice was a little staticky over the phone. “With Scout Cole dead, she seems to be the last of the high-risk prisoners escaped from the Cube.”
“Well, get that wrapped up and keep looking for the others,” Shipley said, her cheeks burning. “And...I appreciate you not shooting Sienna Nealon in front of the news and everybody.”
Hampton sounded strained when he answered. “She did some bad things today, but I think we're all starting to get the feeling she might have done them for a reason.”
Shipley closed her eyes, removed her glasses, and massaged the bridge of her nose. “How, though? How could she justify what she did today? You tell me – what superpower does she have that let her know what was going to happen? For all we know this was just a mass delusion.” O'Rourke was shaking her head in the corner.
“There are metahumans that can read the future, ma'am,” Hampton said. “And I've heard there are ones that can mess with the flow of time itself. After what I saw today – after what we all saw today – I wouldn't be surprised if she used one or both of them to make this happen.”
“We'll sort this out later,” Shipley said. “Keep up the good work.”
Once she was off the phone, O'Rourke was right there. “I don't want to be involved in this case if you're going after Sienna Nealon for killing those prisoners.” She thumped a hand against her chest. “I know what I felt today, and it was a steady sense of doom rolling over me, like everything was going to hell.”
Shipley looked her right in the eye. “Dozens dead, not counting the escaped criminals she dispatched? Everything did go to shit, O'Rourke.”
“We have laws against metahuman activity in this state,” Lt. Mann said, but her voice was flimsy, and she kept dabbing at her forehead, which was profuse with sweat. “We can't just ignore them.”
“And even if we wanted to let her skate because of the criminals she killed,” Shipley said, “we can't ignore the explosions at the airport, at the house in Wayzata...” The governor turned her head to look at the TV, because something was happening, a giant BREAKING NEWS had just flashed across the screen, and a reporter was standing in front of the Pentagon. “Turn that up,” she said, and O'Rourke dutifully trotted over to do it.
Chapter One Hundred Fifty
Barbour
“...Flashforce News has confirmed through multiple sources, both in the Situation Room at the White House as well as in the Pentagon, that President Sarah Barbour employed a Reaper Drone to launch Hellfire missiles at several targets including the Minneapolis airport this afternoon,” the reporter said. “We are expecting a statement shortly from General Baker of the US Air Force confirming.”
Barbour wanted to scream, but she restrained herself. The Situation Room had emptied, gradually, over the last thirty seconds or so, and thus it wouldn't matter if she indulged herself by letting her frustration go a little...
But she didn't. Because the Secret Service agents were still there, and she didn't want to give in to the indignity.
“What now?” she muttered, watching the screen.
“I'm guessing that you'll get tossed from office tonight and arrested tomorrow, at latest,” the agent behind her said, with great amusement.
Barbour didn't dignify that with a response, either.
Chapter One Hundred Fifty-One
Akiyama
Watching Sienna swept away by her brother the wind god, Akiyama smiled. A better ending than he could have constructed with what he had at hand.
Oberheuser was paraded out in handcuffs moments later, his head held high. Akiyama watched him from the end of the block, and when Oberheuser saw him, he flashed a smile.
“My job here is done, I think,” Akiyama whispered.
And with that, he turned on his heel and left, intent to let the rest of the details sort themselves out.
Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Two
Oberheuser
“Come on, out of the truck.”
Hampton ushered him out once they were in the hanger next to the airport. A hundred or so of them were out there, seated on the tarmac, most wearing the orange gear of prisoners from the Cube.
“Oberheuser!” Fortune Renard shouted at him from his place on the floor next to a strawberry blond who leaned on his shoulder. “Didn't make it as far as you hoped?”
“The day took a turn on me,” Oberheuser said as Hampton released him. With a nod and a smile at the lawman, he threaded his way through the crowd under the eyes of scowling guards and seated himself next to Renard and the woman at his side. “How was yours?”
Renard looked at the woman. “I quite enjoyed myself. And you?” His smile was as charming as ever. “How did your date with destiny go? Find her a bit, ah...unpleasant?”
“If by 'destiny' you mean Sienna Nealon,” Oberheuser said, smiling serenely, “I find I misjudged her, in fact.” And he stared at the far wall of the building.
Renard was quiet for only a moment. “What happened?”
Oberheuser could not shake his smile. He had not felt this way since...well, since Sovereign died. “She saved the day,” he said simply. For him, it said as much as needed to be said.
Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Three
Harry Graves
He sat up with a gasp, and it was loud enough that his mother came running from across the house. She found him sitting on the edge of his bed, pale and shaky, and asking for a cigarette the moment she came in.
But he settled for a drink of water, wishing it was whiskey instead, and his hand shook hard enough to spill it in great splashes onto the carpeting.
“Harry,” Kat said, stroking his hair. “What happened?”
He tried to explain it all – Sienna, the hopelessness of the situation, and–
“But she's fine, Harry,” Kat said. “She pulled some kind of rabbit out of her hat, saved the city, and Reed – he saved her.”
Of course he knew all that – now, and said so.
“You don't understand,” he said, mopping at his sweaty, long hair. How long had it been since he'd had it cut? He flexed his muscles. How long had it been since he'd been out of bed, stuck in that paralytic mental state, unable to grasp a way forward that didn't involve Sienna dying?
Oh. Months. Right.
“What don't I understand?” Kat asked, leaning in, whispering, soothing. The mom in her was coming out.
“This isn't the end,” Harry said, “not for Sienna. Don't you see? She came through this particular gauntlet safely, that's all. But it's not the worst. Not by far.” He shook his head slowly. “This thing...it's just the beginning.”
Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Four
Sienna
December 25th
For a day I woke up puking and shedding hair like both of my dogs combined and magnified. I sweated in the warm night, feverish, clammy and tangled in damp sheets, shadowy figures tending to me with hushes and whispers and mumbled promises that everything would be all right.
And on the third day, I woke to familiar faces all standing around my room, staring at me with daylight poking through thinly slatted blinds.
“Hey,” Reed said, the first to speak, the first to be at my side. Around the room I saw others, too – Lethe, Persephone, and...
“...Alannah Greene?” I asked the thin, dark-haired girl in the corner, her hair a twisty-tangled mess like mine. If I didn't straighten it occasionally.
“Sup, bitch?” Alannah said, nosing in. “I come to spend Christmas with great-grandma and here you come washing up, sicker than shit, pretty man carrying you in with his long hair all twirly in the wind. Like a modern day Adonis, but with better pecs. And glutes.” She gave Reed a barely-disguised once-over.
“That's...he's my brother,” I said, not quite sure how to react to her.
“But he ain't mine,” she said.
“But he is right here listening to you talk about him like a piece of meat,” Reed said, not deigning to turn and look at her.
“Sienna,” Lethe said, sliding in next to me, “you've been out for three days.”
“Does that mean it's Christmas?” I asked. My voice was weak, I felt weak.
“Yeah, we didn't get you a present,” Alannah said. “Because we were busy worrying about you dying and all. But I can tell what we're gonna get you – a wig. Or a collection of them, give you some variety.”
I stared at her blankly in the dark. “...What?”
“Sorry, Sienna,” Reed said, and boy could I hear the pity in his voice.
I reached up to my head and found...
Stubble. A scalp full of stubble.
“You took a hell of a dose of radiation,” Persephone – Mimaw – said, leaning in behind Reed. “If your brother hadn't got you here when he did, well...I don't know that you would have survived for the serum to wear off and your natural healing to kick in.”
“She means we took it in turns to heal your sick ass,” Alannah said. “Now I can't remember who won the last season of Flavor of Love, and I'm blaming you for it.”
“Anyone who watched that was the loser,” Lethe said. “There, now you're whole again.”
