Broken (12 page)

14.

I blinked back to awake, the orange light of sunset barely edging through the curtains. I had slept the whole day away. I hadn’t gotten home until nearly six in the morning, after dodging out of the apartment building through a back exit on the first floor. The sheets didn’t smell of sweat this time, but the pall of my night’s activity still hung in the air, and I checked the nightstand next to me. Two pistols still lay upon it, within easy reach if I needed them. I sighed a deep sigh.

Having seen Ariadne’s memory in my dream was enough to get me wondering about the Agency. It had been a mystery to me, what happened to it, especially since my mother hadn’t told me all that much. I tried to sift through what I knew, but it was so minimal it wasn’t really worth hashing it over. The only concrete thing I knew was that my father had died there. “Any of you know about the Agency and how it was destroyed?” I asked the empty house.

Yes, Little Doll
, Wolfe said.

Only rumors
, Bjorn added. Gavrikov remained quiet, which made me wonder about him; I supposed he was still upset with me about what I’d said about his sister. I didn’t care.

“
All right, Wolfe, spill it.” I leaned back on my bed and stared at the white ceiling.

The Agency was destroyed by angry metas
, Bjorn said.
A cloister in South Dakota, furious over the Agency taking some of their own and arresting them
—

“
Wait,” I said, blinking. “Where was the Agency located?”

In Minneapolis
, Wolfe answered helpfully.

“
Wouldn’t their destruction have made some sort of news? I mean, if there was a battle or riot or whatever?” I asked.

Very artful cover-up
, Bjorn went on.
The U.S. Government wanted no record of their failure of the policing structure they had set up for metas, and so they buried it, pretended the whole thing never happened, and turned the entire location into tract housing
.

“
I don’t buy how it happened,” I said. “Did either of you see the dream I just had?” There was a strange feeling of them shaking their heads in my mind. “Old Man Winter told Ariadne that it was one meta who did it.” There was a stark silence in my mind. “And I got the feeling—nothing definite—that the guy who destroyed the Agency was the same one who crippled Winter.”

There was a slow quiet inside me that I might have found excellent at any other time. “Uh … guys?”

No, Little Doll
, Wolfe said.
No meta is powerful enough to
—

No
, Bjorn said, and Wolfe stopped speaking.
There is one. The leader of Century
.

Not important
, Wolfe said, and I got the feeling he was trying to distract me. I tried to decide whether I should let him or not.
Only one thing matters right now and that’s the Little Doll’s revenge
. I felt a flare of anger, and I hated to disagree with him … really hated it. I felt a visceral reaction, a tightening of the muscles in my abdomen, a taste of bitter on my tongue, and I wondered if he’d been manipulating me all this time, pushing me in the direction he’d wanted me to go. I knew in a flash that he had, because he felt my thought and tried to backpedal, receding into the recesses of my mind.

“
You’ve been playing games with me, Wolfe,” I said in slight shock. “I knew you … I knew you could take over my body when I slept before, but … you’ve been doing things to me while I’m awake …

Nothing, Little Doll, nothing the Wolfe expected you to notice. Subtle things, almost not there
.

“
You’re touching my emotions,” I said with disgust, “you’re playing with them, flaring my anger when you want me mad—”

And flooding you with adrenaline when need be, don’t forget that, and burning off your fear when you feel it at the wrong time
. The rasp was there, in his voice, in my head.
The Wolfe is good to the Little Doll. Takes care of her. Looks out for her and keeps her out of trouble
.

I felt my head loosely fall into my hands. “Oh, God, what have I been doing?” I let myself peek between my fingers and look at the blank wall on the opposite side of the bedroom. “Have you been running me this whole time?” There was a quiet in which I felt panic that was not my own. “This whole thing … all this revenge, these killings … this was all your idea.”

No, no
, Wolfe said and Bjorn joined in the chorus.
Wolfe was only showing the doll the way, never had to do any of it for her, hardly at all. Only showed her, helped her, guided her. Got her out of a few jams
.

“
You pushed me into it,” I said numbly. “You knew how I was feeling and—”

Despair is a very useless emotion, Little Doll. Makes you feel powerless, keeps you in chains—in a box, in your case. Anger could break the doll out of it, if she used it. Wolfe waited, tried to see if the Little Doll would find it on her own, but she didn’t. So Wolfe only … gave her a little push. Just a little shove in the right direction. Wanted to make her powerful again, not weak and mewling.
I caught a hint of disgust, but whether it was from him or me I didn’t honestly know.

I buried my face in my hands. “I’m not some broken girl that needs to be saved by the crazies in my head.” There was no answer to this, as if they were fearful of my response, but the undercurrent was there, just the same; strong disagreement, like the rolling of the eyes. “I’m not some … some shattered mess that can’t … “ I felt my eyes tear up and I clenched a fist, sending a hard breath out through my teeth as though I could push the unwanted emotion out that way. “I … I won’t fall apart. Not now. Not ever.”

Little Doll already fell apart
, I heard Wolfe’s voice tell me.
She fell apart, broken, and dragged herself back to a place she swore she would never go, locked herself in the dark, punished herself for all the wrongs she’d ever done, and swore she’d never come out again
.
The Little Doll’s heart was broken; her fate was set, and she surrendered herself to die, to waste away locked in the dark for all the days of her life
.

“
No,” I said, shaking my head, trying to cast off the weight of the feelings that were bearing down on me hard now. “I’m not … I’m not broken. Not yet. I can hold it together. I can. I didn’t need your help, your push. I’m just … hurt. Just a little damaged. But I’ll make them pay, and that will fix …” I heard the hollow sound of my voice, trying to persuade me, “… fix … everything.” I didn’t even believe it when I finished saying it.

Worse than the hollow words that echoed in my ears was the silence that followed from the voices in my head. It was a silence that told me that every one of them was sure I would have been finished if not for their help—and no more likely to be put back together than anything else that had been irreparably destroyed.

15.

It was after nightfall when I pulled into the parking lot of yet another bar. I was in a town called Hamel, Minnesota, and the bar was a faded white building with cracking paint. It wasn’t as showy as the one I’d been in a few days earlier when I met Kurt, but then this place wasn’t the same, either. It was a small town, and I could see both sides of it from where I’d parked on the main street. In a way it reminded me of Glencoe, a town that wasn’t even there anymore, one that I’d been the last living person to leave. I filed that thought away for later, hoping that random memory was completely unrelated to what I was about to experience here. Snow was coming down all around me now, clinging to my hair as I crossed the quiet main street. It was late—after eleven but before midnight—and it had been snowing for a few hours now.

I stepped into the quiet room, scanning the entire place in one smooth movement. I found my target, in the corner, his back to me and a beer hoisted in the air in front of him. He had a crowd with him, and it was the only table in the place that was occupied. It was a weeknight, and these were the hardcore drinkers, the ones who drank every night of the week. He was right in the middle of them, just one of the guys. I tried to decide what to do about that, and finally figured I’d just walk up and tap him on the shoulder.

Before I could even get halfway across the room, he turned to the bartender. “Hey! Another round for my friends!” His sandy-blond hair came off his scalp in curls, and the faux smile on his face might have fooled almost anyone else but not me. He was sloshed and wearing a kind of fake-happy grin that kept him going through one drink after another. He waved at the barman, who was already in motion, as a chorus of cheers and hoisted glasses around the table in the corner let me know what his companions thought of his generosity.

One of the drunks at his table who was facing me was the first to notice my approach. I wasn’t wearing the sunglasses, but I did have on my long black coat, and so far as I knew, I probably looked like some lesser version of the angel of death. The first one to see me nudged the guy next to him in the ribs with an elbow, and one by one the table quieted down until the only one still talking boisterously was the one I was here to see.

“
Hey,” one of his compatriots interrupted him as I hovered behind the blond-haired man. “Someone’s here to see you.” The guy stood and glared me down. “You aren’t … Kat … .are you?” There was a touch of menace in his voice.

I would have rolled my eyes at him, but instead I fired off the hardest glare I could imagine as Scott Byerly swiveled in his chair to face me, his head dipping enough that I knew he’d already had plenty to drink. “Kat?” he said as he saw me. I caught the millimeter fall in his facial expression from disappointment before he spoke again. “No, guys, this isn’t Kat. This is Sienna.” He let out a low, unserious laugh. “They are not the same person at all.” He paused a beat. “Thank God.”

“
Thank Him once for me as well,” I said, standing over Scott with my arms crossed.

Scott laughed again, but it wasn’t mirthful. “You should join us. We were just drinking.”

“
I noticed that. What with this being a bar and all, I figured it was down to either drinking or darts, and I remembered you’re not very good with small objects when you’re loaded, and I could smell the alcohol on you from across the bar.”

He squinted at me. “Wait, what?”

I let out an impatient sigh. “I was a making small penis joke.”

“
Oh.” He frowned. “That’s not very nice.”

“
You were expecting nice from me? How hammered are you?” He shrugged and I tossed a thumb toward the bar. “Can I talk to you?”

He wobbled in his seat but managed to stand, casting a look back at the men behind him. “I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t go anywhere without me.”

“
They won’t,” I said. “Where else are they going to find an idiot to buy them free drinks all night?”

Scott nodded. “It’s true.” He shrugged at them. “Back in a few.”

I led him over to the bar and he pushed himself onto the stool and made a motion to the bartender for two drinks. The bartender, already filling his last order, nodded, stopped and made his way down to us with shot glasses. “Drink with me, Sienna,” Scott said as the bartender put the glasses in front of us and poured an amber liquid into them.

“
That doesn’t seem like a winning idea to me,” I said as I looked at the drink, the strong smell of alcohol hanging over it like a cloud, almost causing my eyes to tear up. “Maybe I’ll stick with water.”

“
Boooo,” he said, slurring. “It’s bad luck to toast with water.”

“
Do you feel like there’s been an overabundance of luck that’s come our way of late?” I looked at him with what might have been a wry smile once upon a time, but now it felt more like a leer. He stared at me, and I saw the smoky hint of something in his eyes. “You know, don’t you?”

He looked away, took the shot from in front of him and downed it in one swift motion, his lips pulling together in a grimace after he was done. “Jackson came over to drink with me a day or two ago, told me about what went down.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye as he motioned for a refill. “Sorry about Zack.”

“
I’m sorry about Kat,” I said, not really sincere. “Did you ever hear how that one turned out?”

He looked at me with a frown. “I heard she and Dr. Perugini are missing and presumed dead in the destruction of the campus.”

I eyed him, then nudged the shot glass from in front of me to in front of him. “She’s alive and well, and a full-on Omega lackey.”

The shot glass was almost to Scott’s lips when he dropped it out of his hand. He didn’t bother to step back as it hit the floor and splattered whiskey all over his jeans and shoes. “She what?”

“
She’s back to who she was before Kat,” I said. “Back to working for Omega, I guess. She betrayed us.”

Scott leaned forward, putting his elbows on the bar. “Jackson didn’t … mention that.” I saw a waver of uncertainty. “Does she remember me?” I caught the note of hope.

I didn’t pull the punch. “No. Not really.”

He let that sink in then looked at me sideways. “How did you find me?”