The Empowered Series (Book 1): Empowered (Agent) Page 13

  “That is enough!” Mutter’s voice was a scorching whisper in my ears. “STOP NOW.”

  I pulled away from Keisha. Got up.

  Keisha also got to her feet and started to lunge toward me again. She stopped and grabbed her throat. She gasped but no air came out. Mutter was doing his vicious air blockage trick. Her eyes bulged. My stomach twisted. A moment ago I had wanted to kill her, but now I felt badly for her.

  Then she drew a ragged breath and doubled over. Took more ragged breaths.

  Mutter strode up to us, radiating ice-cold anger.

  “Idiots! Control yourselves.”

  His anger actually made me look away. I scuffed my shoes in the dirt.

  “I don’t trust her,” Keisha said.

  “But I do,” Mutter said. And that must be good enough for you.” I looked up. He was calm, collected now, in control.

  She nodded, chest still heaving.

  He looked at me, pursed his lips. “I imagine you were provoked, but nonetheless, fighting in my cell is off-limits.”

  “Yes, sir.” I didn’t have to fake my agreement.

  “Good.” His lips curved into a nasty smile. “Never forget this is my cell.”

  I watched Keisha follow Mutter back into the garage like a whipped puppy. The side door closed. I stood there for a long while, trying to calm down, blood roaring in my ears. Mutter was a cold-blooded, sadistic control freak who probably wouldn’t bat an eye when it came to killing someone. Including one of us. What the hell had I wound up in?

  CHAPTER 11

  I was cold and wet, thanks to the misting rain, as I huddled against the wall-mounted pay phone at the Night&Day Mart off 82nd avenue. Why were phone booths so freaking rare now? This was all thanks to Winterfield and his damn phone security “protocol.” I could be dry and warm in my car right now if he would let me use my cell phone, but no. Had to be by the book. His book.

  The connection crackled with static. “Say again,” Winterfield ordered.

  “It’s the company store,” I repeated, using the old-fashioned term he’d given me to refer to Support. “Did you get that?” I hated pay phones.

  I wanted to meet with him in person, but Winterfield nixed the idea. Wouldn’t say why, but I got the message anyway. Clearly stuff was on a need-to-know basis, and I didn’t need to know. Just like Mutter. Ironic, huh?

  “We got it,” Winterfield answered after a long pause. “No change to the plan. No alterations. Your manager has the situation in hand.”

  I wanted to know what Winterfield thought the Scourge was up to, but no way he’d tell me over the phone.

  “Okay.” Being a mushroom sucked.

  “Check-in after your visit, when you can.”

  “Will do.” I hung up.

  A police cruiser rolled toward me on Foster. The last thing I wanted was to have to talk with the cops. I didn’t want any attention from the police. Who knew, maybe some neighbor had said something to the cops about me being the last one to see Hatcher and his goons.

  I ducked into an alley between the Night&Day and an adult video store. Pulled up my hoodie. I suddenly wanted to wear stylish clothes, like Keisha, and not skulk around in ex-con duds. I heard a car door open behind me, the crackle of a radio.

  “Miss!” The officer’s voice was a deep baritone. “I need to speak with you.” Why, why now, did some random cop decide I looked suspicious?

  I ran past a dumpster and around the corner to the rear of the adult video store.

  A graveled lot lay behind the video store with a wooden fence on the far side that was leaning over from the weight of overgrown bushes. The door to the store was right beside me. I opened it, reaching out with my sense to the bushes, made them tremble and thrash against the fence. It swayed.

  I ducked inside the video store, praying the cop would think I’d vaulted over the fence.

  The room was lit by a sparkling light from a disco ball suspended from the ceiling. Spindle racks filled with porn discs stood in front of me. Great. Last place I wanted to wind up in. Off to one side was a counter with a cash register and a guy in a pork pie hat.

  “Can I help you, miss?” Pork Pie Hat asked, brightening when he saw me. I swear he stood up straighter.

  “Just browsing,” I blurted. I know, lame. The guy gave me the once over with his eyes. My jaw tightened. I didn’t have time to deal with perverts. Too bad.

  I went past an interior wall and discovered a little stage where a skinny, pale woman gyrated against a pole while a dozen or so men sat in folding chairs and drooled at her.

  Yuck.

  The front entrance had an emergency exit sign over it with a crash bar below a sign on the door that said “alarm will sound.” Trust an adult video place to have the front entrance in the back, and the emergency exit facing the street. Didn’t want to scare the neighbors. Or let them get a good look at the customers.

  Crap.

  I circled the stage. A grimy curtain hid the far end of the room. I hesitated. The curtain parted, and a young woman gestured at me. I slipped inside, and she closed the curtain behind me.

  It was a dressing area with lockers and two old antique bureaus with mirrors. It smelled like clove cigarettes, reminding me of Ava. God, I did not want her to wind up in a place like this.

  The woman’s hair was dyed blue. She had high cheekbones covered with lots of sparkly makeup.

  She leaned in confidentially. “You need a back way out of here?”

  “Uh, how did you know?”

  She pointed at a TV monitor mounted on a wall behind me, screen split into three views. The top one showed Foster Road, and the police bureau cruiser parked at the curb, the lower left showed the little lot behind the store. The police officer jumped down from the fence and strode toward the back door, face set in an angry line. He looked like the arresting type. He opened the door and disappeared from camera view.

  “Yeah, I need a way out, fast.”

  She pointed at the lower right camera view on the monitor. It showed another alley, the opposite side of the building from the Night&Day.

  “Employee exit,” she said.

  “Thank you!”

  “No problem." She flashed me a sympathetic grin.

  I went out the employee entrance. My car was parked in the little parking lot on the far side of the Night&Day. Chances were the cop would spot me before I could drive off.

  I ran down Foster to another side street and into a neighborhood. I needed to hide for a little while.

  A deserted lot filled with chest-high grass waited for me. Was I always going to have to hide in the weeds?

  Beggars couldn't be choosers, so I slipped into the wet grass, and sat cross-legged. The grass moaned in my mind, crying out from where I’d trampled it.

  My stomach was empty and my head ached, but I sent vitality into the grass, helping it stand tall again, growing it even taller than it had been before, until I was surrounded by a wall of jade green grass.

  My head pounded and I closed my eyes. The tall, tall grass sang in my mind, content, and I let myself get lost its song.

  The next day the cell assembled at the garage. A bright crimson American Package Delivery truck with the box and arrow logo was parked on 17th while a white paneled van was parked alongside the garage. Inside Mutter, wearing a familiar-looking cobalt blue jumpsuit, stood beside a black van with tinted windows. The side door was open. Computer equipment lined the interior.

  I spotted another figure in the familiar-looking cobalt blue jumpsuit walking inside the van from the driver’s compartment. The head was hidden inside a close-fitting blue helmet with a reflective visor. From the way the hips waggled, I guessed incognito person was a woman.

  Then I finally noticed the stylized gold HC on the left breasts of both jumpsuits.

  Damn. No wonder the jumpsuits looked familiar. They were Hero Council uniforms.

  “Are you ready for the big day, Mathilda?” Mutter asked.

  “Uh, sure.” I couldn’t t
ear my eyes off the uniforms.

  “You will be eating flies if you keep your mouth open like that.”

  I shut my gaping mouth. Hero Council jumpsuits made me shudder.

  I shook myself. “Who’s that?” I nodded at incognito person, who now sat at a computer station inside the van, back to me.

  “Someone you haven’t met yet.” Mutter gave a Cheshire cat smile. Yeah, yeah. This was on a need-to-know basis, and once again I didn’t need to know.

  Just then Keisha and Peep entered the garage through the side door. Keisha’s mouth shot open, just like mine must have when I realized Mutter and his secret friend wore HC uniforms.

  “What are you doing in those?” Keisha demanded.

  “Insurance,” Mutter said.

  “They’ll kill you for wearing those,” Peep said drily.

  Gus looked scared shitless. His face gleamed with sweat and he kept wiping it with a rag.

  Peep was right of course—the UN charter of 1965 mandated the death penalty for both non-sanctioned Empowered and normals caught wearing the uniform of the Hero Council. The prohibition against wearing an official Hero Council uniform had been drummed into our heads in Special Corrections Empowered Codes class, which all prisoners took as part of the Rehabilitation curriculum, even though nearly all the convicts were lifers.

  “Wearing Hero Blue will get you killed,” went the slogan.

  “We will not be caught.” Mutter’s certitude felt like gravity. It conveyed absolute confidence.

  Keisha looked like she thought this was a very bad idea but said nothing. I also kept my mouth shut.

  It was weird to agree on anything with Keisha.

  Peep just listened, wearing his tech support outfit—gray slacks, slip-on shoes, white shirt, portable computer in a sling case. Keisha was dressed in a gray skirt, sensible shoes, white shirt. She carried another portable computer.

  Gus wore a red American Package Delivery uniform and lace-up shoes. His hair looked combed beneath the red baseball cap he wore. The last person I’d ever expected to see in an APD uniform.

  Mutter tapped the gold HC symbol on his breast. “These jumpsuits give us the proverbial ace in the hole. In all likelihood, they will not be required,” said Mutter confidently. His voice seemed deeper, like it was coming from the ground rather than through the air.

  He waved us over to the van. We stood in a semi-circle around the van’s open door. His mystery driver sat at the computer station inside the van, facing us, still helmeted, face hidden behind the opaque visor. I saw my reflection shining faintly in the visor.

  Mutter’s voice changed, now a secret whisper right beside me. The air tickled the inside of my ear like a lover’s tongue. I shuddered, and I saw Keisha’s jaw tighten. The whisper routine must be to protect against any bugging devices that might be listening in, or it could be just because Mutter enjoyed making us uncomfortable.

  “Steel Witch and Peep, you will enter the lobby of the building, check in with building security, presenting your ID badges as required. You will then proceed to the seventh floor. Once there, you will head to the server room.”

  Gus looked like he wanted to disappear into the surroundings as Mutter turned to him. “Gus, you will deploy the Scrambler at the front security desk, using your blending ability. You will then monitor the lobby.”

  Mutter pointed at me. “Mathilda, your job is straightforward. Take the plants up to the seventh floor and wait. You are the reserve, to go into action if I tell you to. Or if Gus tells you of a problem and you need to intervene. Obviously, you are carrying plants for a reason—your power.” Keisha snickered at this. I bristled, but kept my eyes on Mutter. She could laugh all she wanted. If things went south, she’d be glad I was there. If I didn’t hang her out to dry. Mutter kept on going. “I’ll be monitoring the operation nearby. Each of you will be issued military-grade CB radios. If interference is needed, Mathilda will take action.”

  Keisha glared at me. “I don’t trust you.” She growled the words.

  “You don’t have to trust her,” Mutter said. “You only have to follow my orders.”

  Keisha’s lips curled into a nasty sneer. “I’ll kill her if she screws up.”

  “Anyone who fails to obey my instructions will die,” Mutter said. He pinched his fingers together, muttered something.

  Keisha clutched her ears.

  “Pain,” Mutter said to the rest of us, “can come in many different forms.”

  His lips twisted back in a sadistic smile, like he was pulling the wings off a fly and enjoying it.

  Keisha rocked back and forth, and sweat ran down her face.

  Mutter lowered his fingers, closed his mouth.

  She wiped tears from her eyes.

  “You understand, don’t you?” Mutter asked her.

  “Yes,” Keisha gasped. “I do.”

  His grin became a satisfied smile.

  I sat in the delivery van, stuck in a traffic jam on the Nixon Parkway just past the Ross Island Bridge exit and tried not to think of that little scene back in the garage. Past the waterfront, wind whipped up waves on the Willamette River. The office buildings on my left were a mixture of old brick and, newer, higher, glass and steel towers.

  The woven poly-carbide flex armor beneath my white painter style overalls itched against my skin. It felt like I’d gained ten pounds and was bloated to boot.

  I glanced at the dashboard clock. Damn it. I was five minutes behind schedule already. What was the delay?

  I craned my neck to see what the holdup was, and spotted a Rose City Transit Bus blocking the left lane up ahead. Stalled.

  Crap. Another five minutes to pass it, crawling down Nixon parkway. A statue of President Richard M. Nixon stood on the waterfront facing the Parkway. Pigeons sat on the statue’s shoulders and head. The big bronze plaque at the statue’s feet said “President, Chief Justice, and Savior of the World.”

  President Nixon had led the nation during and after the Three Days War from Colorado Springs after Washington D.C. had been destroyed by a Soviet nuke fired from Cuba. Congress had been annihilated along with the capitol. When the old CIA sponsored a rebel attack on a Soviet nuclear missile site in Cuba, the Soviet commander there panicked and fired nukes. The war would have widened but President Nixon, counseled by Doctor Prometheus, held off, even when the Soviets launched a larger strike. The new U.S. defense network Prometheus had created stopped nearly all of the follow-on missiles. If nuclear war had broken out in Europe between the old United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, we would be living in a very different world today.

  Nixon went on to become Supreme Court Chief Justice, dying in 1994.

  I knew all this because of Ruth, and because U.S. History was required in Special Corrections.

  Finally, the line of traffic passed the stalled bus and I swerved into the left-hand turn lane and the intersection at Nixon and Agnew. Another endless wait for the light to cycle, then onto Agnew and toward Fourth.

  Keisha and Peep would have arrived at the Lansing Building by now, with Gus close behind as an APD man in green. I turned onto Fourth at last, but the street ahead was blocked off by a city crew working on the sewer drain. Great. Why today of all days?

  I made a quick U-turn and drove down a side street, past where Mutter said he would be stationed, but his black van was not there. I suppose he could have chosen a different street, but he had been very specific.

  I finally found a loading zone a block away from the Lansing Building.

  All that time there was no sign of Mutter’s van. Strange. Mutter had stressed that his van would be just two blocks away from the Lansing Building. But it wasn’t.

  I parked, loaded miniature palms, climbing ivy, and bonsai trees onto a dolly. Headed to the front of the Lansing building. Ten minutes late.

  Gus would have deployed the Scrambler by now. The building would be isolated, the computers offline, the guards running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It would be chaos.

/>   But that’s not what I found when I entered. It looked like business as usual.

  An older man in a navy blue suit held open a door for me. I pushed the dolly past him.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  The lobby’s floor was marble. The palm trees in the big wooden planters on either side of the entrance were fake.

  Ahead was the security desk. Two guards waited there, looking bored.

  If the Scrambler had gone off they would have been anything but bored. Why hadn’t it?

  No sign of Gus.

  I pushed my cart to the elevator, pressed the button for the seventh floor.

  Security was way more lax than we’d expected. I thought there would be cameras all over the place, not just one mounted on the wall facing the elevator.

  I pushed the cart inside the elevator and turned around.

  A guy in a business suit tried to join me. “Sorry,” I told him, “no room.”

  He gave me an annoyed look but didn’t try to barge in. The doors closed and the elevator began to climb.

  My thoughts raced around in circles. Why hadn’t the Scrambler gone off? What had happened to Gus? What was happening with Keisha and Peep? For that matter, why had Mutter sent Peep, a peeper, along with Keisha instead of me or Gus? It made little sense.

  Mushrooms. Mutter treated us as mushrooms.

  At last the elevator reached the seventh floor. Another standard office level, nothing special.

  I pushed my cart down the long hall, reaching the end to turn into a short corridor which ended at double doors. The archive.

  Just as I reached the doors my radio buzzed.

  “Mat!” Gus’s voice was frantic. “The police are here! I can’t reach Keisha or Peep.”

  Shit. Funny how it’s always hurry up and wait until things go pear-shaped, and then it’s hurry like hell.

  “How many?”

  His voice dropped to a whisper. “There’s a bunch of police cars outside, and an armored SWAT van.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  The area was deserted. The stairs were on my right, the elevators my left. I had to haul ass.

  I shoved palm trees in planters in front of the elevators and the stairwell door. The climbing ivy was on racks. I hesitated, then flung the racks, one by one, from the cart onto the floor. The ivy cried out in my mind. The smell of green, living plants warred with the heavy, antiseptic smell of the hallway.