The night was dark, but the yellow light of the moon was in the sky as I rolled through a commercial district. There were a line of little stores and I followed the thoroughfare until I reached Fleet Street, where I turned left. I was going by directions I had memorized before I left Gillette, but they were as fresh in my mind as if I had them with me on a piece of paper. I eased the car down the road, squinting to read the house numbers by the moon and the streetlights.

8453. I stopped when I saw them on the front of a white house, the little bronze numerals barely visible in the dark. I climbed out of the car two blocks down and started to walk back. I felt a grin split my lips and I barely restrained myself from wanting to run.

The house was older, built in the seventies, a little one-floor rambler on a city lot, the gra.s.s now overgrown by a week or more, weeds sprouting up all over. The aged wooden siding looked like I'd get splinters just from touching it, and I had a suspicion that the dark lines on the roof meant that this place couldn't hold its water. A red door was the single spot of color on the exterior and a wooden fence higher than my head part.i.tioned the backyard off, hiding it from view.

I cleared the fence with a jump, felt the shock through my knees as I landed and cursed under my breath. I'd been jumping through a lot of hoops the last few days, had been on the receiving end of some rough luck, and whoever crossed my path next was going to be the recipient of all my frustrations for those setbacks and reversals. It was going to be sweet.

I walked slow, letting my eyes make sure the path in front of me was clear. I could see a light on in the back of the house as I came around the corner, crouched in a defensive posture in case someone was waiting for me out back. It never pays to be surprised.

The back of the house was one long, straight line, and I could see a couple people in the kitchen window, having a conversation. Both were men, one older than the other. The younger one looked to be in his late teens, while the older appeared to be in his forties. Looks could be deceiving, though, because I knew he was at least a millennium old if not older. Franklin Beauregard, he was named. He was the reason I was here.

I ducked under the kitchen window and crawled through the gra.s.s on my hands and knees. The wet of the dew was the only coolness I had felt since I left the Honda in Ellsworth. I felt it on my knees and the temporary pleasure of the temperature change gave way to annoyance at getting wet * those fellas inside were really gonna suffer for all this c.r.a.p.

I stood once I was clear of the window and climbed the step to the back door. I braced myself and took a deep breath before lifting my foot and kicking. I hit the door and felt it splinter as my momentum carried me through, breaking it into four pieces. They should have used a steel door; that would have at least slowed me down as I ripped it from the hinges.

I heard raised voices and the young man who I a.s.sumed was Franklin's son entered the back hallway first. He uttered a cry of warning when he saw me and whipped a fist through the air. I reached out, caught it and tugged him forward, ramming his head into the wall.

I was past him in a half a heartbeat, looking through the narrow kitchen at Beauregard, a smirk on my face. "h.e.l.lo, Franklin. What brings Omega to Eau Claire, Wisconsin?"

He clasped one hand over the other at his midsection and I watched his face become calm resignation. "As if you don't know."

"Oh, I know. I just wanted to hear you say it." I took two steps toward him. He didn't move. "Tell me where Site Epsilon is."

His eyes widened and I watched his aged hands turn white as they clenched each other. "How...?" His face went back to relaxed. "You...are batting at shadows."

"Nah, I'm batting at the things that cast shadows." I took another step. "Site Epsilon. Andromeda. Where? Last chance." I angled a hand toward him in warning. "And don't even think about coming at me with those*"

His battered jacket burst open, the ripping of the fabric like a thunderclap in the quiet summer eve. I jumped forward and hit him three times in the face before he landed the first attack, a hard bite on my shoulder. I grunted in pain and slammed his head against the wood floor. Two gargantuan snakes extended from his body, one from behind each of his shoulder blades. I s.n.a.t.c.hed a butcher knife from the block next to the sink and cut into the first as it struck at me, splitting the head from its body. It went limp and dropped, flopping on the floor behind him.

I got to my feet, knife in hand as Beauregard struggled to his knees, the remaining snake head giving him license to do so. It extended five feet from his body, keeping out of range of the knife, hissing and striking every time it got close to me. I feinted toward him and it snapped and came at me. I reached out with my free hand and wrapped my arm around it, trapping it in a headlock as I drove the blade through the top of its skull, slicing the head off. Without so much as another sound, it fell still and quiet, and I turned to Franklin, who was on his knees, both snake bodies limp and hanging from his shoulders.

"Andromeda," I said as I dangled the knife before his eyes. "Would you care to guess what you lose next?"

He bowed his head, and I heard a whisper. "Decorah, Iowa. It's in Decorah."

I knelt and dropped the blade to the ground, clucking my tongue. "Why do you have to lie to me, Franklin? It demeans us both."

"I'm telling the truth." He looked up at me, his fingers resting on the floor as though he were drawing strength from it.

I reached up and my hand wrapped around his neck, applying only the slightest pressure, forcing him to look me in the eye. "Site Epsilon is not in Decorah, and we both know it. You've certainly got an Omega safehouse there, but that ain't where Andromeda is." I smiled at him. "So...the hard way, then."

He gasped as the pain began, my other hand holding him tight on the cheek. "But...you...would have done this anyway..."

"Of course," I said, my hands holding him as he started to grunt, then let out his first scream. "It's not like I trust you." I felt the surge begin as his life, his soul, drained out of him, my hands pressed tightly to his cheeks. His memories flooded into me, into my mind, causing it to swirl, a fresh infusion of life into my brain. I let his body drop to the floor and I stood up, looking down on him in pity. "Now that you're in here," I tapped the side of my head, "you can't lie to me anymore, Franklin."

I heard something move behind me and I turned. His son (I knew because of his memories now in my head) was stirring, moving from where I had put him down against the wall. I walked to the back door and knelt next to him, flipping the boy over. He still looked young, but I'd put a nice gash on his forehead. His eyelids fluttered and he mumbled something. "Shut up," I said. I stared at him for a minute, then shook my head, letting out a sigh of impatience. Too young.

"This is your lucky day," I said as I pressed my hand against his face. Even unconscious, I felt him squirm when the pain started. I held contact for another couple of seconds and then pulled my hand away. I could see the rise and fall of his chest, the regularity of his breathing a sign of the mercy I didn't even know I had in me. "Don't worry," I said. "You won't remember any of this."

Chapter 10.

Sienna Nealon I awoke to a headache that felt as though a lumberjack had decided to chop down my skull. Light was shining through a window and there was a faint rattling that I was sure was between my ears, the remnants of my brain trying to escape its own stupidity for drinking too much last night. I groaned and realized that the buzzing was not in my head: it was in fact to the left of it, on the nightstand next to the hotel bed I was sleeping in.

I rolled over and grabbed my phone, slapping the talk b.u.t.ton without bothering to check the display. I wondered for a half-second if this was what life had been like before Caller ID. "h.e.l.lo?" My voice was little more than a croak.

"Hey." I heard the quiet voice of Zack on the other end of the line and sat up, far too fast for my own good.

"Owww," I said, my hand rushing to my temple, which felt as though it were about to explode.

"You okay?" Zack sounded a little resigned. Or cautious. Actually, it was hard to tell because the pain in my head was so sharp.

"Yes. Just...have a headache."

"Hm. First night on a mission, away from the Directorate..." He sounded like he was brainstorming. "Let me guess, they gave you cover as an FBI agent, complete with an ID that said you were over twenty-one."

"Should I worry that you immediately a.s.sume the worst about me?" I tried to cram some reproach into my words, but I'm pretty sure it failed. I dangled my legs over the edge of the bed. Apparently I hadn't managed to shed my suit before I pa.s.sed out.

"You should a.s.sume that I've been a college student at roughly your age. My fake IDs weren't as realistic as what the Directorate can produce. Also, I've been on some of those *sit around and wait' a.s.signments. They're moments of excitement followed by long stretches of boring nothing."

"That sounds familiar." I stood up and hung my head, because it felt better for some reason. I paused, trying to string together some thoughts. "About last night..."

"It's all right, you don't have to apologize. I know it's been tense for you lately." His voice was soothing.

"Yeah, I...wait, what?" I bristled, every muscle in my body tensing as the meaning behind what he said made it through my fog-addled brain. "What did you just say?"

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. "I...I said..."

"Did you just say *I don't have to apologize'?" I felt my jaw clench. "I know d.a.m.ned well I don't have to apologize. I was just minding my own business in my room when you came in and we had a lovely conversation about how you secretly resent the fact that I can't put out, which is something that you've never had the b.a.l.l.s to say to my face."

I waited for a response, and when it came, there was a little heat on it. "This isn't the time to have this conversation."

"Really?" I almost yelled at him. "When's a good time to discuss the fact that we've been dating for months and can't touch for more than two seconds per day? Wedding night? Golden Anniversary? When would be the appropriate time to talk about the fact that we can't have s.e.x, Zack? Please, tell me so I can write it into my schedule!"

There was the barest gap of silence on the other side. "Fine, you want to do this now? Yes, it's grating on me, okay? But that doesn't mean*"

"It's grating? Grating?" I let fly with my disbelief. "Just say it, okay? It's frustrating and it's never going to get any better! Unless you really love the touch of heavy leather gloves, you'll be enjoying a nice embargo of skin-to-skin contact for the rest of your life."

"I * what? Touch of leather gloves? You mean, like*"

"I mean it's never going to get better, Zack." I was firm, final.

"So, what?" He didn't even sound real on the other end of the phone. "You want to be done? Finished with me?"

It felt a little like someone was choking me, and the pain in my head was splintering, telling me to say something I didn't really want to. "I think we've gone as far as you can go with me, Zack. If you ever want to have anything approaching a normal life, yeah...I think we're finished."

There was a smoldering quality about the way he said his next words, like there was a fire underneath every single one of them. "If that's the way you feel*"

"It's not the way I feel, Zack." I should have been on the edge of panic, ending things like this. It's not like I set out to do it the day before, when I was content on the campus, in training, and with my boyfriend. "It's the way it is. You're too big a boy to keep holding back; time to grow up. My life is solitary confinement * it's a prison sentence, and you don't deserve it, even if you do act like an a.s.s sometimes."

"That's it?" I could hear the edge in his voice. "It's over?"

"Yeah." I didn't have an edge in mine. I was just tired. "It's over. Be safe in Michigan." I pushed the end b.u.t.ton on my phone without waiting for his reply and sagged back onto the bed, taking a deep breath. I felt a burning at the corner of my eyes, and I couldn't believe what I'd just done.

In a way, I was sorry I hadn't done it sooner. I mean, I kissed another guy at the bar last night, and almost got carried away. That's not the strongest sign that things were going well in my relationship with Zack. In fact, it was probably a sign that there were some deep, serious, underlying problems. Well, one anyway. And just because I had to live the rest of my life to less than the fullest didn't mean he had to.

There was an insistent knocking at my door and I levered myself back up and opened it to find Kat waiting. "Ariadne wants us all on the phone in an hour to make our report."

"Fine." I ma.s.saged my temples. "You want to come to my room or what?"

She shrugged. "Sure. I think I can have Scott up and moving by then." She looked down at my attire and made a face. "You might consider showering and changing your clothes. You look*"

I looked down at myself, at what I was wearing. "A little ragged, yeah. I'll do that. See you in an hour."

I shut the door and got to work. I rummaged in my overnight bag and found pain relievers and the other drug I was taking. I popped the acetaminophen, then an equal dose of ibuprofen, then got my syringe ready for my morning injection of chloridamide. The injection was critical because if I didn't take it, the souls of the people I'd absorbed tended to get a little...feisty...in my head. I took a deep breath and plunged the needle into a vein. I was fortunate in that I was a meta; if not for my continuously regenerating vein structure, I'd likely be out of places to inject the drug by now.

The shower brought me back to life, and after I spent a few minutes getting my hair straightened and had changed into a fresh suit, I felt worlds better. The pain was still lingering behind my eyes, but it was in the recesses of my mind rather than front and center. And it didn't hurt to blink.

An hour later, there was a knock on my door and I opened it to find Kat, who was as sunny in her disposition as ever, and Scott, who wore sungla.s.ses and looked as though he'd had an anvil dropped on his head. He grumbled some sort of greeting as he slouched into the room and flopped in a chair at the table. Kat sat across from him, a small smile seeming to be her only defense against laughing at both of us.

When Kat's phone rang, I caught a nearly imperceptible twitch at the edge of Scott's eyebrow. I might not have noticed it but for the fact I felt one myself. "Just a second," Kat said to whoever was on the phone. She pulled it away from her ear and pushed a b.u.t.ton. "You're on speaker, Ariadne."

"Get packed and get moving," came Ariadne's voice over the phone. "Early this morning a car was reported stolen from a parking lot in Ellsworth, Wisconsin, just across the river from you. We flagged it as a suspect vehicle on a hunch and it was found abandoned an hour ago by a police patrol in a neighborhood in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I'm sending you the address."

"How do we know that the stolen car is linked to our mystery robber?" The question occurred to me even through the haze in my head.

"We don't." Ariadne sounded tense. "But we've got nothing else to go on and car thefts aren't exactly a common occurrence in Ellsworth, where the dairy cows outnumber the people twelve to one. Get moving, all right? I'll check in with you in a few hours; we're managing a crisis with M-Squad so I may not be quite as quick to respond right now. Stay out of trouble." There was a click and the phone shut off.

"Ah, words of confidence and encouragement," I said, lighter than I felt.

We were in the car and moving a few minutes later, leaving the town of Red Wing behind. We rode through downtown, which seemed to be mostly brick buildings, and got on a bridge that stretched across a wide river. On the other side a sign proclaimed that we had entered the state of Wisconsin. If I hadn't been so hungover, I might have rejoiced at crossing my first state line. As it was, I sat in the back and tried to keep my eyes hidden behind my dark sungla.s.ses.

After a few minutes we cleared the low lying river country and found ourselves zipping down a road with farms on either side. Cattle grazed in the pastures as the sun beat down overhead. One cow was lingering so close to the fence I could see her jaw moving while chewing her cud as we pa.s.sed.

Towns and fields streaked by as I thought about Zack. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what he was doing right now, facing off against some meta in Detroit. I truly cared for him, which was why I had to let him loose. At least, that's how I justified it as I stared out the window, watching the endless fields of green go by. I felt like a glutton for pain, like I wanted to clutch the misery close to my heart and let it sit there. It was all for him, I told myself, and somehow that made it hurt all the more.

We took Interstate 94 east to Eau Claire, Kat driving the whole way. She didn't have the siren roaring for this trip, though she did strategically flick it on a few times when we were caught behind slow moving cars on two lane roads. And once for a tractor.

When we got off the freeway, we followed a main thoroughfare into a stretch of commerce, and then turned onto a side street. It was past noon, and the sun was directly overhead, bright and glaring. Kat kept the car under the speed limit as we followed the GPS to the address Ariadne had sent us. There was a car, an old Dodge, parked on the curb. We came to a stop behind it and I looked around. There was no sign of movement, nothing.

I opened my door and stepped out into the boiling midday heat. The humidity once again gave my skin an immediate sensation of moistness and I felt the beads of sweat start to gather on my forehead. "Never thought I'd wish the sun away," I muttered under my breath. I caught a chuckle of appreciation from Kat. Scott just grunted.

The three of us approached the Dodge the way we might have approached a corpse; slow, tentative, and with undue caution. "No one inside," I said. "We'll need to check the trunk." I looked around the street once more. The residents of Eau Claire clearly had enough sense to stay in during this awful weather, though a lawn sprinkler was going off a couple doors down.

"You think there's anything here?" It was Kat that answered. Her blond hair was up in a tight bun today, and her pet.i.te frame and dark sungla.s.ses coupled with her black jacket really did make her look like an FBI agent. I felt another tingle of annoyance; the girl could just look good regardless of circ.u.mstances.

Scott leaned over the pa.s.senger window and reached his hand through. "Gla.s.s is broken here." He pushed a b.u.t.ton on the dash and I heard the locks disengaging and the trunk springing open.

I walked to the rear of the car, my hand hovering just over my gun. I edged around the trunk lid and sighed when I looked down. "Nothing. A blanket, a spare tire and a jack."

"Sounds like all the ingredients for a redneck first date*" Scott said with a smile that was cut short by a sizzling sound. His body jerked, his face drew tight and his sungla.s.ses flew off as he spasmed, a peculiar blue light dancing over him like little bolts of lightning running across his suit.

"Kat, down!" I shouted and barely had time to hit the pavement before a bolt of electricity shot past me and hit the car. I rolled across the lawn and came up with my pistol, a Sig Sauer P250. I loved my meta powers, but they weren't a h.e.l.l of a lot of use at range * or against something that shot lightning bolts.

"Too late." The voice was low and gravelly. I saw Kat lying on the street behind the car, splayed out on the ground with three guys in black tactical vests huddled around her and Scott. Two others stood at either b.u.mper of the car, covering me with weapons of their own, big shiny silver ones that reminded me of the kind the Directorate used to bring down stray metas. Their leader was standing over Kat, an a.s.sault rifle in his hands and pointed at me. "Now are you gonna give yourself up or are we gonna be leaving your body to go rancid in the heat?"

Chapter 11.

I stared him down, my gun aimed at his comrade who was standing to my right. a.s.suming they were human, even my meta speed and my skill with the pistol wouldn't be enough to save me from getting blasted by at least one of them. I took a closer look; their vests were bulky, which told me that they were likely kevlar. I considered trying to aim for their heads instead of center ma.s.s, but dismissed it as a bad idea. Aiming for a small target in my first combat shoot seemed like a recipe for failure. Besides, even with a vest the bullets would put a full grown man on the ground in a world of hurt.

"So what are you gonna do?" Their leader spoke again, and I saw the others flick their eyes toward him. "Live or die, your choice."

"I'm somewhat attached to the former," I said, keeping my gun trained on the rightmost enemy.

"Then you might wanna put the gun down, real slow." His voice was rough and used to issuing commands. "Otherwise we're gonna have to cut that loose, pretty quick."

On one knee as I was, I couldn't see Scott or Kat, and I wondered if they were still alive. I had seen what hit them, and I hoped that the weapons they'd been shot with were no more fatal than the Directorate equivalent. "All right," I said, not really sure if I was going to follow his command or shoot, but knowing I didn't have much time to make a decision.

"Put the gun on the ground in front of you. Go slow." There was that command again.

I felt my jaw tighten and I started to inch the gun lower, keeping the bearing on my target. I'd be less accurate firing from this position, but I still felt confident I could put him down. The other two...well, that was the problem, wasn't it? That was why I was even considering surrendering. I started to say something but I heard the squeal of tires at the end of the street to my left and it took all my training to keep from jerking my head to look in the direction of the noise.

They were not so well trained, and all three of them turned, giving me an opening. I fired a double tap on my target, two quick shots that sent him over backward, gun skittering away. I changed targets quick, drew a bead on the leader and fired twice more. I knew they were bound to be less accurate than my first shots, and one of them went wide, but the other hit him in shoulder and knocked him over. I started to change targets again to the last guy, but he had heard me firing and had drawn a bead on me. I knew I wouldn't make it in time.

A car slammed into him, b.u.mper smashing him against the stolen car. I watched his body fold at the knees, a scream from him faint in my ears after the echoing of the gunshots nearly deafened me. He was pinned between the cars, legs crushed, and his upper body had fallen into the open trunk. I could hear little cries coming from within; likely the sound of him screaming, but from where I stood it was m.u.f.fled. I opened my mouth and closed it, trying to restore my hearing after the trauma of firing a gun repeatedly with no ear protection.

I knew there were two more enemies behind the car where I couldn't see them, and I wasn't about to stick my head up to see. I looked at the car that had crashed into the stolen one, but the front window was spider-webbed, the cracked gla.s.s obscuring the ident.i.ty of the driver. I thought I heard the sound of fighting from the other side of the car, where Scott and Kat were laying, but I couldn't be sure through the ringing in my ears. I edged toward the hood, away from the crashed rear, and raised myself up, gun pointed. My eyes widened at what I saw and I hesitated.

"You're just like me; you know how to get yourself in trouble," came the soft voice of the woman standing in front of me, holding the bodies of the two remaining a.s.sailants by the back of their collars. Both appeared to be unconscious. She was wearing a red tank top, cut off jeans again, and flip-flops. Her dark hair was hanging around her face and she dropped the bodies to the ground. "What would you have done if I wasn't here to save you?"

"Charlie?" I stared at her in near disbelief. I heard a grunt from the first guy I had shot, laying about a foot to my right, lanced out a foot and kicked him in the head, causing him to go limp. "What are you doing here?"

She shrugged. "I was bored in Minneapolis, so I came looking for you."

I stood slowly, looking around the street, which was quiet save for the ticking sound from the engine of the car that had crashed. "And you decided to go looking on a random street in Eau Claire, Wisconsin?"

She laughed. "No, I absorbed the mind and soul of a tech geek a few years ago. I tracked your cell phone's GPS."