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part #38 of Out of the Box Series Series
“And you just...what? Didn't?” I asked, really feeling my blood pressure spike.
“No. I didn't,” Harry said, and the scene changed again – still my house. Still the living room.
But instead of being cuddled, the TV blared pictures of the destruction of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The early phases, I recognized. The sun was barely up outside.
“I have to go,” I said. The other me, anyway.
“Sienna, don't,” the other Harry – the one in the vision – said, but he was blurry and fuzzy, like Harry couldn't really see himself. He reached a cloudy hand out, trying to take mine–
But I cast it off, broke open the back door, and was in the sky before he could stop me.
“The first turning was me leaving you,” he said, watching me fly into the air, the ground falling away behind me as I left the house, left Tennessee, left the other him behind. “Because if I didn't leave you – if I cushioned your fall and your exit from Minnesota–”
Death.
The montage of painful death hit me again. I got flayed, crushed, beaten, ripped apart, blasted, cut open, my heart ripped from my chest–
I felt them all, felt myself get shot out of the sky, stomped on, brains scattered across a thirty meter stretch of road.
I died a hundred deaths, and I felt every one of them.
Felt my heart stop, or be torn open, or simply cease to exist under the burn of some great energy discharge.
“That was the first turn,” Harry's old shadow said, “because if I didn't leave you when I did...you wouldn't have hesitated to go to Minneapolis when things went wrong.”
“That's...that's ridiculous,” I said, shaking my head. The pain of a thousand deaths and maybe more was lingering like scars on my skin, in my body. “There must have been a way. You could have told me how to–”
“There was no way, Sienna,” he said. “No matter how you arrive, they are waiting for you.”
I was shot from high in the sky and crashed to the ground, splintering into a thousand human pieces.
Flying low, something slammed into me from behind, smashing my head into a pile of mush and rendering me dead.
In an apartment, the door crashed in and as I looked up, blue plasma blasted through the wall behind and dissolved me, screaming, into atoms.
“Fly in, drive in, take a train,” Harry said, a narration to my murder by a dozen hands, “they know you're coming, they know you're there, and they find you–”
Crushed. Curb-stomped. Heart ripped out like an Aztec sacrifice. Crushed under something so large I can't even see what it is.
A thousand deaths become a hundred thousand, a million.
And I felt every one of them.
“I looked, of course,” Harry said. “Looked for ways. The perfect method of getting you in there, stopping the bad guys.” He rubbed his forehead. “But they always know, see. They're waiting. They have help and plans of their own.” His eyes locked with mine, and for a moment it felt like I was talking to the real Harry again. “No matter what you do, no matter whether you come charging in or sneak up to MSP...
“...You die at their hands, Sienna,” Harry said. “Fly yourself or go commercial. Take a rail pass a week before or hike in on the day. They find you. Sit in a hotel room and wait or hide beneath an underpass – they are watching. You have enemies that will track every step you take, every flight path you decide on, every change on the fly. They lie in wait, and they adjust when needed, always knowing you're coming.
“And they kill you.”
I died.
Again.
And again.
And again.
My blood poured out by the thousands of gallons on the hilltops of Apple Valley, Minnesota, on the river banks of Hastings, my brains were scattered across Woodbury at the east and Maple Grove when I tried to come in from the north, in Chanhassen when I snuck in from the west, and I was crushed in Forest Lake when I crept in through the north.
So many deaths.
“And not one chance at life,” Harry said. “If you went to Minnesota to stop this...you were doomed to die, because they had eyes on you, always. Bring your friends? They kill all of you. Your family? Your allies? Same. Buckets of blood, infinite times. No escape for any of you.”
“How?” I asked, breathing hard. The pain was phantom, like I'd healed these wounds but the pain remained a ghost haunting my bones and veins.
“Funny story about that,” Harry said with a rueful smile, “I don't entirely know. Satellites, I think, partly. Your phone, at times. But also...” His face got serious, “...the people trying to kill you are capable. And motivated.”
I rubbed my hand across my face, which felt like it had been ripped apart again and again; I half expected to feel blood, but there was none. “Who are they?”
Harry smiled.
And I knew.
Chase Blanton, with her dark bob haircut, her missing arm, and her lightsaber hand–
Ashleigh Simone, her tanned, cheerleader good looks and pretty smile hiding her absolutely psychopathic mind, her flunkie Lucille Thompson giggling behind her, swole as hell–
Chad Goodwin with his long beard, the man who'd gifted me my Magneto powers.
Emilio and Christy Custis, brother and sister, both with their Thor powers able to channel deadly electricity, a traveling lightning storm.
Devin Fuller, with his pasty skin and patchy beard, tech guru to Jaime Chapman and sidekick to Chase.
And a few others I didn't really recognize.
“That's Sylvia Blanton,” Harry said as I watched a Hermes speed past. She was middle-aged, skinny, and with dark eyes. “Your pal Olivia you left lying out there? She stopped her in Las Vegas a year back. A real chaos lover.”
“Coretta Howe,” Harry said, showing me a woman with a vicious smile and gleaming eyes that flared with red power. “Eyebeams, of course.” Another woman, blond, tall, growing taller by the second as she strained beyond normal human height and proportions to become tall as a building. “And Sarah Cashmore, an Atlas.
“And they were all waiting for you,” he said, and in a flash I could see them moving, responding to the merest report of me. Devin with his laptop; all of them with secure comms stolen from the Cube during the breakout. “A perfectly-matched Sienna Nealon kill squad, ready to do all the damage they could.” His smile faded. “And as you can see...they could do plenty enough.”
“They were certainly motivated,” I said, taking in the knowledge of my death. “So you're telling me...you broke up with me...and sacrificed Minneapolis–”
“Wasn't a sacrifice, Sienna,” Harry said, showing the first real sign of life. “Minneapolis and St. Paul are dead.”
The world changed around me, and the scene was the middle of Interstate 94, smack dab between the two downtowns. Cars were abandoned, crashed. Bodies lay strewn here and there. In either direction, east or west, I could see the stubs of the remaining skyscrapers beneath a dull gray cloud that covered the sky.
“They were always going to die,” Harry said, “because you would die trying to get there. No knowledge I could give you, no scenario I could run would see you safely there.” His voice boomed. “So I left you, and you spiraled, and you hit rock bottom. You learned humility. Felt the crush of being small instead of being great. Remembered the lessons of Scotland–
“And you didn't charge into death,” he said, his eyes pained. “I saved your life from something that would have ended it.” He drew back a step. “I saved you so that you could save us...for a little while longer.” And now an anguished grimace plastered his once handsome face, and he took another staggering step back. “Sorry...this is where I'm starting to crack.”
“Why?” I asked, almost too numb to know what else to say.
“Because no matter what I say now,” Harry said, “your clock is ticking.” He swept a hand around the ruin of my cities – my beautiful cities – and laughed bitterly. “You can't stand this, you see. You can't live with it. And there's so much in front of you. You have enemies whose names you don't even know – and they are holding all the cards, Sienna.” He looked at me. “More than me, even.” He looked at me, and his eyes were haunted, a precursor to the dull, lifeless ones I'd seen staring at the ceiling in Kat's guest room. “Your days and weeks and months you have left...they will not be easy...and I can't see a way out. Not a single...way...forward.”
Tears welled in my eyes. “You should have stayed. You should have told me.”
He cocked his head. “Would you have listened?”
I bowed mine. “I'm guessing you know the answer to that.”
“Are you listening now?”
“You could have helped me,” I said, reaching out to touch him, but stopping myself. He was nothing, a shadow of a memory.
“I just did,” he said.
I turned, started to leave, and remembered that I wasn't in a place that I could turn and leave.
“Think about who was trying to kill you, Sienna,” Harry said. “You sowed this. Your desire to do what was right. And occasionally your wrath. No matter what I say, you'll blame yourself to the end of your days...which are sooner than I would have liked–”
I looked around the destruction of the Twin Cities. “My world already ended here, Harry. I mean – look at this. Did anyone even survive?”
“Not for fifty miles in any direction,” he said. “But it's not your fau–”
“Miss me with that bullshit copout,” I said, and tore out of the soul-drain, ripping my hands from the insensate Harry – the real Harry's – cheeks.
I was back in a room in the Hollywood Hills, far from the ruin of my cities.
“Are...are you all right?” the nurse asked me.
“Hell no I'm not,” I said, and staggered out the door, crashing through the closest full-panel window, launching myself into the warm, LA night.
And I knew from what Harry had told me – and the gut-deep feeling in my own stomach – that I never would be, ever again.
Chapter Twenty
December 22nd
11:57 P.M. Central Time
Do you want to talk about it? Brianna asked me, voice tinkling in the back of my mind as I left the city lights of LA behind in a thunder of sonic booms.
“No,” I said, flying over the western edges of Los Angeles, Riverside passing beneath me. I was keeping the altitude at a thousand feet or so, really hammering home to the people below us that I was present, and pissed, and to hell with you all, I don't care if you sleep or your kids sleep or anyone ever sleeps again.
Also, if the US government was going to fire a missile at me to take me down, I really wanted everyone at the lower altitudes to see it, hear it, hell, smell it when they found my corpse shredded and mangled. Assuming Sarah Barbour had the stones to launch a missile at me. I doubted it, but after today there was little that could surprise me.
What if I want to talk about it? Brianna asked.
“What's there to talk about?” I asked. I could feel the cry on my tongue, the craving for whiskey. It was a hopeless feeling twisting me up inside, that same powerlessness that had driven me to drink in the first place. “What's there to do? Other than get plastered, I mean?”
You just took out two of your friends back there, and you didn't even seem to care.
“Calling Kat a friend is a little bit of a stretch. Olivia, too, really. Colleagues, maybe.”
Fine. You just annihilated two of your colleagues and left one of their homes in a state of disaster. Is that unworthy of comment?
“I mean, I wish you'd shut up, but I'm not going to stop you, so comment all you like.”
Sienna, Brianna said, and I could tell she was using her serious voice. I'll say this one thing, and I'll be done–
“I bet you won't.”
–knowing what you know now...surely you see there wasn't ever anything you could do. That group of people who hate you? They were set up, lying in wait. A speedster to move them around and operate a fast reaction force. An eyebeam person to blast you from the sky. A telekinetic to hold you in place, and a half-dozen others to deliver the coup de grace.
“Yes, knowing what I know now,” I said, feeling the bitter night winds blowing at my eyes, making them tear up, “I would never have put any of them in prison.” A tear streaked down my cheek. “I would have killed them all instead of bothering to arrest them.”
You don't mean that.
I laughed in the cold night. “You know I do. And furthermore...you understand it. Or you should. Think about what you did for your sister–”
I do understand. But I don't think it's wise.
“Well, I'm just full of unwise choices. Especially today.”
It doesn't have to be that way.
“But it is.”
Just remember this: knowing what you know now, you should realize there was nothing you could do. And knowing what you knew then...acting in your usual manner would have gotten you killed. This was just...fate, Sienna. Destiny, maybe.
“This was a flood of pieces of shit that I flushed instead of killing them when I should have,” I said, another tear streaking down my cheek as the wind battered my eyes. “And now a whole city is dead because of it. Because of them. Because of a governor who hated me so much she couldn't get her head out of her ass and call me for help–
“And because of me,” I said. “Because of my stupid desire to show mercy, to have people like me. That's the facts. Now – I don't want to talk about it anymore. For realsies, this time.”
She quieted down, blissfully, blessedly, and I was left to my thoughts as Las Vegas's lights appeared on the horizon. I was heading slightly northeast, intent on making it back to Tennessee as quick as I could. I could barely hear the rumble of discontent behind me as I rode the wave of sonic boom, leaving nothing but the loudest damned noise on earth in my wake.
“'Knowing what I know now,'” I muttered. “Knowing what I know now, I'd find a way to kill them all.”
But I shook my head. That was foolishness, the rage talking. I'd seen Harry's visions, felt them, and they were...comprehensive.
Even in the instances where he'd told me what to do, where to go, who I was facing...
...I still couldn't get to Minneapolis without getting murdered.
And if by some miracle I could...
...that ravening wolf pack of metahumans was waiting to ambush me, to bring me down, immobilize and murder me in no time at all.
Something jangled in my mind about that, and I felt myself turn slightly more north and less east.
“Knowing what I knew then...” I whispered. “...And what I know now...”
I felt Brianna stir in my head. You'd know it's impossible. That's the constant between then and now. Either way, it's–
With a jolt, I tried to push myself forward, faster, and somehow – unbelievably – I think I managed to do it, because a ripple in the atmosphere trailing me suggested I'd just pushed into a higher speed and was leaving an even more aggressive wake behind me rippling through the air.
Uh, what are you doing?
“We're going to Minneapolis,” I said, feeling what can only be described as a lazy, malignant grin settle over my lips.
Why?
“I need to see for myself,” I said, knowing full damned well there was zero chance I was going into the city right now. To see it as it was now...well...
That'd put me in the bottle for a good, long while.
And I had plans that I needed to execute first.
Or at least one...and if it worked...
...Well, then I'd have more. A whole bevy of plans.
You're keeping me out of your thoughts? Brianna asked. Why does it feel like you're plotting someone's death?
“Because I am,” I said, and laughed like a psychopath, not even bothering to specify which of those I meant. Because the laugh really answered it for me.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sessler Oil Refinery
St. Paul Park, Minnesota
December 23rd
12:51 A.M.
I saw the fires on the horizon and held to my course in spite of a magnetic pull to see the carnage for myself.
But no. I couldn't see it, didn't want to see it, not really.
I wanted to find the people responsible and kill them, but...
...well, they were already dead.
The search parties would already be moving into the cities, trying to determine what went wrong and when and how, but I had no patience for any of that right now. I was single-mindedly focused on one thing and one thing only.
The people who would have killed me to keep this catastrophe from happening.
The Sessler oil refinery sprawled for many acres beside the Mississippi River, broken into three non-equal portions. A small area of white tanks in the northern third or so, then a section of command center and buildings and truck docks where the actual refining took place, as well as the loading and transshipping, and then a lower third-to-one-half in the southern part of the property, which was another massive tank farm comprised of twenty or so giant oil tanks the size of multi-story buildings as well as another twenty or so smaller tanks. They were in uneven rows and clusters, a pattern of utter randomness, and painted a variety of colors.
I saw a couple corpses as I flew over, and came in low to take a look. They were wearing the orange jumpsuits provided by the bureau of prisons to inmates of the Cube. Two I hadn't known, Sarah Cashmore and Coretta Howe, I was pretty sure. Whatever had destroyed the city – and I had a dim, distant suspicion about that – had come as a surprise to the two of them.
But there was no time for the contemplation of their deaths, or the mystery of what finished the job in the now-dead Twin Cities of Minnesota.
