I almost blushed. "Thank you, Marcus."

"So"-he stared at Sabine-"you say that this lady is the one who killed Cassandra? She tore that woman apart with her bare hands?" He looked more than a little skeptical.

"Absolutely. She's a killer, Marcus."

"Well then"-he grinned-"guess I'll have to be extra careful."

Then the most insane thing happened. Marcus put down his gun. He walked over to Sabine, put his arm around her waist, and kissed her. It was a full, deep kiss, almost violent in its intensity.

I could only stare, utterly shocked. When it was over, they both looked at me, still grinning.

"Uh-oh." Sabine laughed softly. "Who's confused now, Tess?"

I tried to make my mouth form words, but I couldn't. The sense of bewilderment and anger completely paralyzed me. Was this really happening? Had I just seen . . . what I thought I'd seen?

All I could think of was the abrupt phone conversation that I'd had earlier with Rebecca. The strange note of panic in her voice, as she kept saying, "The photo, Tess, the photo." Now I knew, without a doubt, what she'd seen-who had taken that picture.

Marcus Tremblay.

But I couldn't say a word. I was numb. I just stood there, staring at them both like a complete idiot. An idiot who was about to die.

"Here, Tess." Marcus crossed the room and stood close to me, so close that I could see how cold and gray his eyes were. How completely devoid they were of either emotion or humanity. "Let me make this easy for you."

He struck me sharply across the head with the butt of his gun. The room swam for a moment and then everything went black.

27.

When I was a little girl, I always wanted to be different. Special. I suppose everyone wants that, but I felt that-somehow, deep inside-I wanted it just a little bit more than everyone else. Every night, I would go to bed and wish, with every ounce of my being, that I might wake up transformed. I wanted to be someone who mattered. Someone who had amazing powers, who could really fix things with the universe. Someone to be loved, trusted, and counted upon.

I never thought in a million years that I'd get my wish- or that it would end up so horribly twisted.

One day, when I was about ten years old, I was walking to school when I noticed two boys beating up on a much smaller kid. I recognized him-Gary Saunders. He was a bit of a loner, like me, a geek who wore glasses and carried his science textbooks wherever he went. He was often the target of older bullies. I'd seen kids picking on him before, but this time was different. These kids were really wailing on him, seriously kicking and punching him, like they meant to hurt him permanently. He was writhing around on the grass, his knapsack lying a few inches away, his glasses sitting askew next to it with one of the lenses broken.

Gary wasn't yelling or crying-he was just sort of whimpering, like a wounded animal who couldn't even summon up the strength to resist-and I think that's what really got to me. That horrible sound. Like a mewling kitten that was being kicked and stepped on, a devastated human being who'd been so drained of spirit that he couldn't even raise a hand to defend himself.

I walked over to the scene and grabbed one of the boys by the back of his T-shirt. He turned around, ready to clock me one-no matter if I was a girl or not-and I was startled by the naked, almost animal hatred in his eyes. He wanted to hurt me. He needed it, like human suffering was his natural food, his bodily sustenance. I didn't understand how someone could get like that. How a young kid could become so gnarled and withered, so angry on the inside, that all he wanted to do was destroy things.

He swung at me, but I didn't move to get out of the way. I just stood there, and a wave of calm rushed over me. I felt a hot warmth, beginning with the soles of my feet, then spreading up through my chest and into my arms, hands, fingertips. It was like someone had poured molten iron into my bloodstream, and it burned, but there was also something sweet and mellowing about it. A clenching and a release at the same time-an impossible heartbeat, systole and diastole at once, opened and closed, with blood, fire, and strength rushing everywhere in all directions.

It's called mystical tachycardia-the initial rush of endorphins and increase in heart rate that precedes a magical event. But at the time, all I knew was that something had just been released inside me. Something was rushing up toward the surface, and for the first time, I didn't want to stop it. I welcomed it. I finally wanted to see what it really looked like.

There was a flash of light, and I felt something like electricity burst out of my fingertips, completing a circuit between my body and his. The boy flew backward with a startled cry. He landed in the grass about ten feet away, gasping. Clearly, the fall had knocked the wind out of him. But where had that force come from? What had actually pushed him, like an invisible hand?

It couldn't have been me-right? I couldn't have done that.

Right?

The other boy took one look at me, then ran away as fast as he could. As soon as the first kid was able to rise, he ran away, too. It was just Gary and I.

"Hey-are you okay?"

I extended my hand to him, but he flinched away from me. His eyes were round with undisguised terror.

"Get away from me! Don't touch me!"

I felt a flush creep up my cheeks. It was the first time I'd ever felt truly ashamed about using my powers, but it wouldn't be the last.

"Gary, don't worry. I'm Tess. I want to help you-"

"No, get away from me, you freak!" He was stumbling backward, groping blindly behind him for something, maybe a weapon of some kind that he could use against me. Tess Corday, the freak. He finally grabbed his knapsack, stumbled to his feet, and ran off.

I bent down in the grass and picked up his glasses. They were broken in several places and smudged with dirt. I remember that I sat there for a long time, just sat there, slowly rubbing the dirt off those glasses.

I sat there for an eternity.

Huh. I don't know what made me think of that.

Why would I think of that now?

I blinked.

When was now? Where? Where was I, and why did I hurt all over?

Slowly, I opened my eyes. Everything was a mess of hard angles and sharp lights, glaring and indistinct. I was aware of a pounding pain in my left temple, as well as a feeling of general dizziness and nausea. My mind seemed to be working okay, but my body was a wreck.

As the shapes came into focus, I started to remember. I saw the window overlooking Gastown, the comfortable bed, the old hardwood floors. I saw my gun and athame sitting on the nightstand, about six feet away from me. They might as well have been six miles away. I felt an odd tightness in my wrists, as well as the feeling of something sharp and heavy against my back and shoulder blades. I looked down, and realized what it was.

I was tied to a chair.

A tall, familiar woman was standing over me, smiling. It was Sabine. She reached out and applied something cold and soft to my aching temple. A damp washcloth. I wanted to push her hand away, but it felt so good.

"Sorry about Marcus," she said sweetly. "He has such a temper, you know."

Marcus was sitting on the bed, his hands folded neatly on his lap, as if he was about to watch a really great movie. Lying next to him, her hands tied behind her back with the same rope, was Mia. Her eyes met mine, and I saw real fear in them.

I struggled to speak. Sabine pressed a cup of water to my lips, which I resisted at first-but my throat was dry and constricted, and I'd be less than useless if I couldn't talk. Judging by the dizziness and nausea, they'd already drugged me with something, so they weren't about to do it a second time.

"It's just water," Sabine confirmed.

I took a couple sips, and the liquid moistened my mouth enough so that I could croak out a few words.

"Don't hurt her," I whispered.

"Well, Tess-" Marcus rose, giving me an amiable look. "I think that would be missing the point. This isn't a social call. Both of you have become a bit too much to handle lately, so I'm going to have to do something drastic."

"Mia hasn't done anything to you." I could feel my voice coming back, although my body still felt broken and impossibly weak. "She's just a kid. Let her go, and whatever you want to do, you can do it to me. I'm the real threat."

Marcus rolled his eyes. "I'm afraid you're wrong there, sweetheart. Mia is the real threat. You're just collateral damage. In fact, up until a few days ago, you weren't on anyone's radar. Nobody cared about you. Nobody thought of you as anything but the perennial screwup who couldn't even make it past OSI-1."

"If you're trying to piss me off, it won't work. I used to be a retail employee, Marcus. Psychological torture is what I live for."

"I'm not torturing you. I don't have to. In case you haven't noticed, you've pretty much screwed the pooch here. You don't have any options left."

Buy some time, I thought. Just keep stalling him, and buy some more time. Like they taught you in that hostage negotiation class in year one.

Crap. Why hadn't I paid closer attention in that class? I'd spent most of my time passing notes to Derrick about how cute the professor was.

"What did you drug me with?" I asked.

"Oh"-Sabine smiled-"sorry about that. We used GHB. Sebastian happened to have some in his fridge. He was a sweet kid, you know, but he had a real problem with those illicit substances."

"I think I'd rather be drunk for this," I said.

"Well, sorry, but Sebastian didn't have any booze that we could find. You'll have to content yourself with dizziness and-if you're really lucky-mild incontinence."

I closed my eyes. "What about Mia?"

"Miss Polanski?" Marcus put a hand on her shoulder, and she recoiled from him, eyes wide. "We decided not to drug her. I wanted her to be lucid for this. Gives the whole situation a certain edge, don't you think?"

"I think you're a pretty sick fuck, Marcus."

"Am I?" He chuckled. "You know, I always just thought of myself as a professional middle manager. Downsizing, cost cutting"-his eyes were dark as they held mine- "retiring employees. Especially problem ones, like you, Corday. People who've outlived their usefulness, and no longer have anything to offer to the CORE."

I searched for a line of questioning that might steer him away from death threats. Come on, Tess-what do you know about Marcus Tremblay? He's arrogant. Most calculated killers are arrogant. So appeal to his vanity.

"How did you get Mia down here?" I asked. "She was holed up in the Wal Centre-heavily guarded."

He shook his head. "Sweet, stupid Tess. Who do you think assigned that guard detail? Who do you think had the key to her room?"

"I should have known."

"Not really." He shrugged. "Nobody expected you to figure it out. After all, you're not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. All that training, and still just an OSI-1? That's got to be some kind of record for global incompetence."

"I'm a slow worker," I said from between clenched teeth. "I was concerned with doing my job right-not with getting promotions."

He laughed-it was a sharp, ugly sound. "Oh God, that's a good one! I was concerned with doing my job right." His eyes narrowed to hateful slits. "Corday, you couldn't do your job right if your life depended on it. Everyone knows that you're one taco short of a combination plate, honey. You screwed up paperwork, botched evidence, showed up late, clocked out early, got hopelessly confused on your way to the bathroom, and you couldn't even work the photocopier. You were a vapor trail. A walking stain on the crime lab's record. The most idiotic, autistic child could do your job better than you could."

I wanted to say something angry in reply, but some small part of me believed him. I knew that Marcus was a maniac- that he'd killed, probably several times before, and that he was probably going to kill both of us tonight. But he still retained that cold, steel-trap logic of his, and right now, what he was saying held a grain of truth. It was worse than getting pistol-whipped. He was hitting me with what I couldn't control. The truth about my life. About what a colossal screwup I'd always been.

"You're weak," he continued. "You've always been weak-" And something flickered in his eyes-an ugly, sallow flame. "Just like Meredith. She died stupidly. And you should have died, too-that night in the alley. Don't you think?"

My heart was pounding. "How did you know-"

"I watched it, of course. You know the CORE-we see everything. It's all on tape, kiddo, and I watched it in Technicolor. "

"You-" I thought I might throw up. "You just- watched-"

He laughed. "It was a fucking showstopper."

Everything went red. "You sick son of a-" I tried to move, felt my own power pushing against the restraints, almost breaking them. I didn't see Sabine. One second she was standing off to the side, and the next she had her hand wrapped around my jaw. Her fingers were crushing into me. I couldn't speak or turn my head.

"I'd watch that pretty little tongue," she said, "before I bite it out. The only reason I haven't done it yet is because Marcus likes to hear you blabber on. But all he has to do is say the word, and I'll reach my hand right down your throat. Understand?"

You can't always be a locked tower, Tess. You have to let people in. You have to stop apologizing for being so- human- Meredith's laugh. Meredith's smile.

She was dead, and Marcus had watched her die. Probably countless others had watched, too- watched, and done nothing. I wanted to bang my head against the floor, to vanish in a storm of blood and pain, until my consciousness finally snapped. They saw everything, they knew everything, and I was just-what? One person. A number. A piece of film.

Even as the madness poured through me, my survival instincts kicked in; I willed myself to listen to Sabine's words carefully-not because I was terrified (although I was), but because of the interesting and unexpected truth that they contained. She wanted to torture me-just like she'd tortured Cassandra-but she hadn't yet. Why? Because Marcus didn't want her to.

All he has to do is say the word.

Sabine was following Marcus's orders. She obviously needed something from him, and right now, he was the one calling the shots. If I could find a way to take out Marcus, Sabine might just fall in line.

Either way, Marcus would be more willing to keep us both alive for longer. Sabine liked the thrill of physical violence, but Marcus was into psychological warfare. He wanted to tear us down mentally before he gutted us physically. If I could keep Marcus talking, then Sabine wouldn't be able to do anything without his consent.

"I understand," I said after Sabine had removed her hand. I swallowed through the pain. She'd come close to dislocating my jaw, and it hadn't taken any effort at all. She was an elder vampire-she could pulverize my skull by flexing her fingers, and do it so fast that I wouldn't be able to react at all.

"Now, Tess." Marcus put a hand on Sabine's shoulder, drawing her away from me. She glared at him for a moment, but stepped aside all the same. "I want you to do something for me. I want you to read this crime scene. Put the pieces together, and tell us exactly what happened."

I stared at him.

"Come on, Corday. You're an OSI, aren't you? All that extensive training, all those hours. You do this for a living. So do it now-for me." He smiled. "Tell me everything, tell it just right, and maybe I'll even let the girl go."

I knew that was impossible. He was just goading me. But I didn't have any other options left. I'd have to play along.

"Don't listen to anything that he says, Tess," Mia said. "He's going to kill both of us, and you know it. He's not going to let me go!"

I looked at her, and saw how grim her expression was. She'd gotten past the fear, and now she was in the same place that I was in. The numbness of defeat. It killed me to see that look on her face. And she was right. Marcus was going to kill both of us. All I could do now was delay the inevitable, and hope for the right moment to make a last stand. If I got him absorbed enough in the details, I might even be able to snag some of Mia's power and use it against him.

"Do you want me to start from the beginning?" I asked coldly.

28.

Marcus grinned. "Just pick a place, and go from there. I'm confident in your reconstructive abilities. And besides-it's one hell of a good story."

"Yeah," I said weakly. "It's a real page-turner."