Destiny: The Girl in the Box #9 (17 page)

I sat back in my seat. Scott stared at me for another moment, then turned back to the window. I glanced out to see bright sunshine lighting the runway as we taxied.

I leaned my head back and felt myself lull. I’d meant every word. Except for my time with Zack, I’d done nothing but that which was expected of me since I was a child. I’d been punished, forced, guided and tormented. I’d watched my only boyfriend die in a betrayal that still sickened me to think of it.

The sunlight flared outside as the plane turned, casting a long band of light on me. I wanted to live. I wanted to see the world without the fear of Century and Sovereign hanging over my head. I wanted to be free.

I felt the plane leave the ground, weightless, fighting against the gravity bringing it down, and I wondered if I’d ever be able to achieve that for myself. Then I remembered all the baggage I carried, waiting for me somewhere below, and a dark pit settled in my stomach. My destiny was going to be something else entirely, I suspected.

The Agency had a different smell to it, I thought as I made my way into my office. It was fresher somehow, like someone had come in and cleaned while I was gone. I set my bag behind my desk. It didn’t seem quite as heavy as when I’d left.

There were memos sitting in a tray on the corner of my desk. I suspected they were mostly recycling bin fodder, things that concerned Ariadne more than me, but ended up being CC’d my way for review. I tried to read them all, but unless they had an operational component, I usually filed them in the circular bin as quickly as I could rule out their importance.

I hadn’t been in my office for more than ten minutes when I heard a knock at the door. It was the kind of quiet rap that I might have missed if I’d been immersed in something important. I was reading a document on the background of our financials involving trading activity on the New York Stock Exchange over the last sixty days though, and it was heading to the recycling bin shortly, so I heard the knock. “Come in,” I said.

After a moment’s pause, the door cracked open. Karthik’s dark face peeked in through the inch-wide gap between door and frame, and I smiled. “Do you have a moment?” he asked, always impeccably polite.

“Come on in,” I said, tossing the paper I was reading into the recycling bin. “You just spared me at least sixty seconds more of misery attempting to read this memo, so I figure I’ve got at least that much to give to you instead.”

“Ah,” Karthik said, dead serious, “I will endeavor to keep it brief, then.”

“Karthik,” I said, and he looked up, “I was kidding about the time limit. What’s up?”

He hesitated, his whole body telling me that he didn’t want to speak his mind. “You look … different … than when you left.”

“I feel … different,” I said. “More purposeful. Like we accomplished something while we were away. I don’t know if you heard—”

“I heard,” Karthik said, his head bowed. He wouldn’t even look at me. “You did well. Thirteen more removed from the equation.” He glanced up, just for a second. “Which makes what I am about to say all the harder.”

I peered at him and felt myself leaning forward involuntarily. “What is it?”

“We are leaving,” he said, and it rushed out like air surging from a hole in a tire. “The other British metas and I. There was a discussion … and I unfortunately came in on the losing side of it.”

“Leaving?” I asked, feeling the numb shock spreading through me. “Leaving for … where?”

“Back to London,” he said, and I could tell even through my surprise that he was crestfallen. “They voted to run … and I feel I owe it to them to protect them.”

“But London …” My back hit the chair as I felt my weight shift. “No offense, Karthik, but you can’t protect them. Not against Century.”

“Neither can you,” he said, but he didn’t say it in an accusatory way, “and they know that.”

“But I’m trying—”

“Your absence in Vegas following the death of Breandan and the others,” Karthik said, almost mournfully, “along with the sudden shuffle back and forth on the night Sovereign came here … it’s left them with a lack of confidence in their safety.”

“And they’ll be safe in London?” I asked, feeling as angry as if he’d insulted me. “With only you to protect them?”

His lips were a thin line, his eyes turned down. “I believe the argument that won the case was that you are the biggest target in this war at present, the most likely to get hit. They have seen what even a minimal response from Century brings, in the form of death to some of our most dear. While you have been leading, these people have been followers, watching from the distant back of the queue. They don’t see what you do, and they don’t hear my arguments in your favor. They hear that you killed thirteen of Century’s assassins and they fear what reprisal will fall upon them for it. Last time it was only ten, after all, and it landed upon some of ours.”

“I can’t …” I struggled for words. “I don’t see how they’ll be any safer in London.”

“It is possible they will not be,” Karthik said. “And I have argued this; but mine was the only vote against leaving.”

I felt a cold anger settle in on me. “Do they know they’re going to die?”

Karthik didn’t rise to my goad; instead the sadness seemed to settle in on him like a cloak weighing him down. “I think they know it’s coming and are scared enough to try and delay it as long as possible.”

My anger broke like it was a stick I’d been waving. Karthik had grabbed it from my hand and snapped it over his knee with his honesty. “Okay,” I said, feeling nothing but loss and resignation. “We’ll get them a plane.”

Karthik’s eyes came up. “I am sorry. I wish I could stay, but—”

“You want to protect your countrymen,” I said, and my mouth was dry again. Why did this always happen in my times of greatest stress? “Karthik, you—”

“I doubt I will be of much help to you,” he said, head still bowed. “And I have committed to help these people. I committed to it before we ever voted to follow you over here. I need to live up to my commitment now.”

“Would it help if I told you how much we needed you?” I stood. “Would it help if I told you what a grand and glorious fight it’s going to have to be for us to win? If I told you how long the odds are, how stacked they are against us—”

“You could deliver your own version of the St. Crispin’s Day speech if you so desired,” Karthik said, and I could see the hurt in his eyes. “And I would indeed hold myself cheap if you come out of this, defeating Century against all these odds without my help.”

I tried to decide what to say to that. I could almost feel the guilt radiating off of him. I needed his help; I needed everyone’s help, didn’t I? It felt that way, like every person I had on my side was another bullet in the gun. I was going to run out of shots before I ran out of targets. “You should honor your commitment to your countrymen, then,” I said, and tried to be sincere about it. “You should keep your word.”

He glanced up at me, and I saw his expression waver. “I will …” Words failed him, and he stayed silence for almost a full minute. “I will see them safely home and protect them for as long as I can.” He made a slight bow to me. “I wish you all the fortune in this desperate fight.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and slipped back out through the door. I wondered if it was because he was as overrun with emotion as I was.

“We’ll need it,” I said after he’d left. “We’ll need all the luck … and all the help we can get.” And my thoughts fixed again on a place where more help waited, deep inside me, and wondered what I would have to do in order to get them to agree to render it.

I knelt again in the forest floor outside the Agency. I caught myself still thinking of it as the Directorate, even though it hadn’t been that for months. I wondered if I’d ever think of it as the Agency, or ever really consciously think of it as a place I helped run rather than being a place where I had grown up in so many ways.

The midday sun was shedding its light overhead. I was sweating under my suit jacket. I’d kept it on because I had a meeting in an hour or so, but I wanted to try this again first. I closed my eyes and ignored the bright sun shining through my eyelids. I tried not to notice the scent of the pine needles that were clinging to the knees of my pants, but they were pungent. Far more so than a car air freshener.

In a moment I was transported into the darkness in my head. My own personal Stonehenge of metal boxes surrounded me, looming ominously in the darkness. I didn’t move this time, just stood there and unlocked every single one of them with my mind. I opened the doors, and they squealed their hinges. I looked at each of them in turn, staring into the darkness.

“Hey,” Zack said, but it was terse. I felt a pinch of guilt.

“Hey,” I replied. I hoped I wasn’t going to have to deal with him being in an uproar with the rest of them. I watched the entry to each of the boxes; not one of my meta prisoners was coming out voluntarily, it appeared.

“So …” he said, and I could hear the accusation as he spoke. “Scott?”

“Oh, God, not now,” I muttered. “I hate to be insensitive, but you’re kind of dead. Please don’t be a jealous ex.”

He gave me a scathing look. “I may be dead, but I still have to watch everything you do for as long as you live, apparently, so forgive me for being a little touchy about the fact that you’re taking up with one of my friends only six months after I died.”

“I haven’t ‘taken up with him,’” I said, just a little defensively. “And in case you haven’t noticed, it turns out just being my cold-hearted self is enough to scare him away, so I wouldn’t worry too much.”

“The Little Doll is quite the frost princess,” Wolfe said from the darkness behind me. I turned to find him out of his box, still clutching at the edges. “She drives away and destroys everyone around her, given enough time.”

I stared back at him warily. “What about you, Wolfe? Have I driven you away?”

His eyes flickered. “The Little Doll destroyed the Wolfe.”

“You’re still standing there,” I said. “So you’re not totally destroyed.”

“But the Wolfe is incorporeal,” Wolfe said, and he threaded his way toward me in a slow walk, like a predator stalking. “Unable to affect the world. Unable to touch, to feel, to taste—”

“I sympathize,” I said, in a voice that probably didn’t convey much sympathy. I couldn’t find it in myself to be sorry he wasn’t able to slaughter people anymore. “Being somewhat unable to touch myself,” I amended.

“But the Little Doll can touch the world, oh yes,” Wolfe said, eyes narrowed. “The Little Doll holds the whole world in her hands, oh yes, she does. If she falls, and it tips out of her hands, it crashes to the ground and breaks. The Little Doll may not be able to touch a person without hurting and destroying, but she touches the world in ways no one sees.”

I tried to gauge his emotion. Why was he telling me this? “Does that displease you, Wolfe?”

He took a long, seething breath. “The Wolfe cares not one way or the other. The Wolfe sees things the Little Doll doesn’t, though. Sees the works of her foes and knows their names. The Little Doll is in far, far over her head.”

I looked at him coldly. I couldn’t help it. “I live over my head. Every day.”

He wasn’t leering, not exactly. There was an aloofness in what he was saying that was unusual even for Wolfe. His joyful smugness was gone. “The problem with being in over her head for too long is that eventually the Little Doll will have to take a breath or else she’ll drown.” He circled closer to me. “And the Little Doll can feel the water, can’t she? Pressing in on all sides? Can the Little Doll feel the pressure? Feel the primal urge?”

I didn’t blink, but his words were like claws to my heart, triggering some emotion and hurt within. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, I feel it. I feel it every day. Like I’m drowning and all I can do is keep thrashing.”

“The Little Doll’s thrashing has done some good,” Wolfe said. “She’s fighting hard for her life. But blindly.”

His black eyes circled closer to me. He was all shadow now, even though he was close. All the light had fled from this place, like it had been drained out by the slow onset of despair that was infecting me. “Help me,” I said, and it came out choked, like a plea. I stared at each of the steel monuments around me. “Please. Help me. I need … help.”

One of the doors slammed, then another, then another. “Ahhh,” Wolfe said, and now there was glee in his voice. “Desperation. Begging. Fear. Does the Doll see the future coming? Can she taste the despair as the hour approaches?”

“Yes,” I said, and I shook as I said it. “I can feel it. One moment I’m hopeful, like there’s a chance to batter our way through, and the next I remember that there are eighty of them and maybe eight of us. It hangs on me like a cloud, surrounds me like I’m drowning in it.” I took a step closer to Wolfe and looked into the black eyes. “Help me. Please.”

Another door slammed behind me, and Wolfe stared back at me. “Oh, Little Doll …” His face broke into a wide smile. “Little Doll, begging for help, asking for the Wolfe to save her from drowning. Take a deep breath, Little Doll.” His face receded into the shadows. “… and drown.”

Dark laughter filled the space around me, a cackling from Wolfe that was as hideous as any I’d ever heard. It was hearty, filled with joy, and I slammed him back into his box and locked the door with only a thought.

I broke my trance and I was back on the floor of the forest, kneeling as the sun sunk low in the sky. My breathing was rushed, coming in gasps as though I hadn’t taken a breath the whole time I was in the dark. The sound of laughter hung in my ears, echoing; the last ringing taunt of the cruelest creature I’d ever known.

“So you let them leave?” Reed sounded incredulous, voice wafting through the air like the scent of the coffee someone had brought into the conference room and left on a side table. It was nearing sundown now, but I still had a strong cup in front of me steaming over the top of the white Styrofoam that enclosed it. “Are you kidding me?”