Enemies: The Girl in the Box, Book Seven (13 page)

“Quite violently, in fact,” Janus added. “Very much at odds with what we have just seen. Whoever Century has set out to track these spares, they are not doing it nearly as quietly as they have been with the cloisters that have been falling. Those metas have been dying after being torn to pieces or shot to death.” He shuddered, so subtly it was almost unnoticeable. “It is not a pleasant way to go. I think I would prefer to go out quietly, in a church basement.”

“So, multiple metas, multiple teams,” I said, thinking out loud.

“Yeah, yeah,” Rick said, and I caught the first hint of annoyance from him. “Like I said, enough speculation here. Go brainstorm if you have to, and bring me back some hard facts and solutions to our problems. Keep in mind our priority is still protecting our own, not people who haven’t signed on with us.”

“You’re a real wellspring of humanity,” I said.

His look darkened. “I’m in charge of Omega, not the whole damned world and all its puppies and kitties, too.”

“You’re not in charge of the kitties?” I said, mockingly. “That’s odd, because you seem like a p—”

“That’s quite enough,” Janus said quietly. “We need to focus on the problem at hand. There are indeed people who need our help, and we should reach out to them as quickly as possible, to all the additional cloisters in the isles. After that, we can look to gathering up some more of the strays before the tracker teams—or whoever is killing them singly—manage to make it to London.”

“You have your orders,” Rick said to Janus, forcing a wide smile after spending a good long while leering at me. “The rest of you can get out; I need to talk to Sienna for a minute.”

“Ooh,” I said, “looks like I have to stay after class. Bet I’m in wicked trouble now.”

I watched the others file out one by one, Janus the last, holding the door and hesitating before leaving and closing it behind him.

I turned back to Rick and stared at him over the desk. “Aren’t you worried?”

Rick gave a slight bob of his shoulder. “About what? I’ll weather this extinction just fine, and so will Omega.”

I cocked my head at him. “I actually meant about being left alone in your office with a woman who’s probably killed more of your operatives than anyone else on the planet, but thanks for the helpful insight into your megalomaniacal personality. I haven’t heard any rampant ego for the better part of a day, so it’s nice to get in a dose now and again to remind me of what it sounds like.”

He made a slow sound of, “Pfffffft,” as he blew air out the side of his lips. “No, I’m not worried about being in an office alone with you.” He didn’t deign to look at me. “Do you know why that is?”

“I hope for your sake it’s because you’re the most uber-powerful meta this side of that Sovereign guy,” I said with only barely concealed amusement.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said, dripping sarcasm and looking at me sideways as he leaned his chair back and I saw him in profile. The guy was such a prick, he didn’t even bother to look at me head-on. “It’s because you’re not stupid. You know where the power rests here. I’m the Primus of Omega, and that makes me the most powerful man on the planet.”

“What is he, Wolfe?” I whispered in the back of my throat. “Bjorn? Gavrikov?”

His power was as closely guarded a secret as any I’ve ever seen in Omega,
Bjorn said, and I could feel Gavrikov agreeing with him.
His father kept him far from our operations, far from London, for almost his entire life.

I have only met him once,
Gavrikov said,
and it was when he was still a child. He is young, only a little older than you.

“ … power rests with me,” Rick said, “because when the day came that my old man died, the Ministers of Omega—some of the most powerful metas in the world—knew who the natural successor was. I’m the Primus because I’m the most powerful man on the planet; I’m not the most powerful man on the planet because I’m the Primus. You see how that works?” He finally looked over at me. “Of course you do. You know how it works because when you were at the Directorate, you were never the one with the power. It was always Winter, and he jerked you around like a dog on a chain.”

I felt myself bristle in sheer rage. “Wolfe?” I whispered in the back of my throat, my mouth closed. “Do you know what he is?”

I heard Rick let out a little giggle. “You know what I’m saying is true, don’t you? That it’s always been about power, and you’ve never been in the driver’s seat. It’s always been about who’s yanking your strings, whether it’s through a paycheck, through threats and coercion, fear and intimidation—these are the things that drive people. See, what you have to decide is who’s going to have power over you. Because it’s going to be someone. You’re a pawn, after all, and there’s no practical way for you to exert agency over your own dealings. You tried the Directorate for a little while, saw what they’re all about. But now you’re with the big boys. And as long as you know your place, we’re not going to have a problem. All right?”

I felt the streak of fury run through me right to my core. “You think you … what? Own me?”

He laughed, a long, cackling one that pissed me off even more. “I don’t own you. I don’t have to own you. I have power over you. That means you’ll sell yourself out anytime I need you to, just like everyone else—to survive, to get what you want, whatever that might be.”

“You think so?” I stared at him coldly.

“If you’re smart,” Rick said, and he pursed his lips in an infuriating smile, “you’ve already figured out who has the power here. If it takes a while to accept it, that’s fine. But you
will
accept it. Once you do, you’ll find that being a loyal servant of Omega doesn’t go unrewarded. A hell of a lot more rewarded than you were at the Directorate, I can promise you that, anyway. But the converse of that is punishment—”

“Wolfe,” I whispered again, “what is he?”

Don’t know,
came the rasp finally,
but let’s find out.
I blinked at the response, trying to figure out what he meant until the follow-up came a moment later.

Kill him.

I was out of my seat a second later, already flying over the desk. I don’t know if you could say I was proud that he didn’t have a chance to register surprise, but he didn’t even respond facially before my fist connected with his cheek and sent him flipping out of his chair. I followed right after him, landing on his belly with my knee. I heard all the air rush out of him as I did so, and I didn’t waste a moment of time in punching him twice more. I heard the shattering of his face as I smashed his jaw and broke the bones around his eye.

“Who has the power now?” I shouted as I slammed his head to the marble floor, cracking the tiles and his skull. I heard the door open behind me and I stood suddenly, grabbing the chair that he’d been sitting on from where it had fallen when I had knocked him out of it. I stood and held it above my head, the rollers above me and the leather back in my hands. It weighed a hundred pounds, easy, and it felt light in my grasp as I let it hang there.

I saw the others rushing back in now—Bast, Janus, Karthik—he was already going for his gun, but he’d never make it in time—Madigan, and Kat. Madigan was the only one I had to worry about, and she was the last coming into the room. Everything was in slow motion, and I saw Janus reaching out a hand to me, shouting at me to stop, to not do it, and I suspected he’d be toying with my mind any second.

I brought the chair down with all my meta strength and it dashed Rick’s—I never did catch his last name, did I?—brains out all over his pretty marble floors, a spray of red and grey matter splattering as the frame of the chair shattered from the impact.

There was a collective gasp around me as I took a step back from what I’d done and surveyed the room. They’d assembled in a little half-circle centered on me and I could tell they were all about a second from action. Karthik was raising his pistol and Madigan’s hands were already up. I had held onto the arms of the chair as a weapon, and I flung them at Eleanor and Karthik, catching each of them in the torso and sending them flying back, impaled. I wanted to feel bad about it, but I wasn’t going to do it now.

There was movement outside the office; probably security details coming as I could hear the sound of feet on the floors, of people speaking outside in the cubicle farm. Bast was limp, slumped, staring over the desk at me in sharp disbelief. Janus’s eyes were closed, and Kat was openmouthed as she knelt next to Karthik, preparing to heal him with her touch. “You’ve changed, Sienna,” she said into the rushing void that was the office, the desperate quiet.

“No shit,” I shot back. “In case you haven’t noticed, even without your new necrophiliac habit, you’re pretty different yourself.” I reached down and grabbed the remains of the back of the leather chair and threw it, hard, out the window behind me, shattering it.

“Where will you go?” Janus asked, watching me as I eased closer to the window. “What will you do now?”

“I don’t know,” I said, letting my foot rest on the sill of the window. I looked down below into a busy street, and saw traffic passing by on the road. It was a long way down; I was on the fourth floor. “Guess I’ll find Winter myself.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Janus said quietly.

I laughed. “I just killed your leader.” I gestured to the splattered remains of Rick. “I kinda doubt his meta healing or even Kat’s touch is going to put him back together again.”

“Probably not,” Bastet said with quiet rage, “since he was human.”

I looked at Rick’s head; there wasn’t much left. “Excuse me?”

“He was a human,” Janus said quietly. “His father’s only remaining son, but born a human to a human woman. He was only in the position of Primus because we needed to maintain continuity during this time of transition. He was just a man.”

“A really arrogant, blustering man,” I said, and felt the heat on my cheeks. Had I really just beaten a defenseless man to death? “He just spent the last few minutes trying to convince me I was utterly under his power and that I should be ready to basically whore myself out to whatever purpose he had in mind for me.”

Janus gave a slight nod. “Young and foolish. You understand, I suppose?”

I looked at the mess at my feet. “I suppose.” I glanced back to them. “So long, Janus.”

“You don’t have to leave,” he said, and I caught the urgency from him.

I swallowed heavily. “I think I kinda do.”

Without another word, I turned and stepped over the edge. I heard swearing as I did it, the voices of Bast and Janus, already arguing. I fell about fifty feet and landed perfectly—right in the center aisle of an open-topped, double decker bus. It was a long drop, and I felt it in my ankles as I landed, but I managed to avoid any injury to myself or the bus. I dodged past the surprised people around me, marveling at my sudden drop out of nowhere, and I took a seat in one of the black plastic chairs and took a breath.

I looked back over my shoulder as the air from the bus’s passage whipped my hair around. Janus was up in the window, watching me, his eyes tinged with disappointment that I could see even from this distance. His eyes never left me, following me even as the bus turned around the corner and out of his sight.

I hopped off the bus after it turned the corner and sprinted full out for the underground station sign I saw up ahead. I popped inside and bought a ticket to take me back to the Russell Square station and rode in silence through the first three stops. The air was heavy but cool, and it felt almost a little stuffy inside the train itself. It was busy, and I had to change trains at Holborn station. I walked through the crowd, oblivious to anything but my own problems. I jostled and brushed against pedestrians, never long enough to feel my powers work but enough to feel the presence of others just on the outer perimeter of my own sense of self.

Did you just kill the Primus of Omega?
Zack asked me, his tentativeness coming through in the way he said it.
Did that really just happen?

It was beautiful,
Wolfe rasped.
Glorious. The pampered scion of a dying family brought to a bloody end, his head splashed all over the floor just as marvelously as if Wolfe had done it himself. He’s not so arrogant now, is he?
The sound of a chortle echoed in my mind.

“Oh, God,” I whispered as the crowds moved around me while I walked to the Piccadilly line platform over a series of escalators and moving walkways.

Killing the Primus of Omega is a big deal,
Bastian said with something that sounded like grudging respect.

Yes,
Eve tossed in,
I’d be dancing if it weren’t for the fact that I’m dead.

Sienna …
Zack said quietly,
what were you thinking?

“I don’t know,” I said and it came out choked. I realized in that moment that I truly had no idea why I’d done what I’d done, other than the fact that Rick had seriously pissed me off in his attempt to assert verbal control over me.

I got on my train, watching the area around me with care. I didn’t know what Omega’s next move would be. Part of me couldn’t believe that I’d killed their leader. The other part felt disgusted at the realization that he’d been just a man, not even the one who’d sent all of their clowns after me. Somehow his speech had twisted me up inside, listening to him go on and on about power, about how he and Winter had it and how I didn’t. Something snapped with just the slightest provocation by Wolfe. It hadn’t taken much, I knew that. I wouldn’t have been asking Wolfe about what he was if I hadn’t already been thinking about attacking the man, after all.

The walls of the underground blurred together outside the windows, and the clack of the tracks beneath us grew to a maddening pitch as I heard the screech of the train, jarring me out of my thoughts. I didn’t know where to go, didn’t know what to do. Janus had seemed surprisingly pragmatic about Rick’s death when I left, but I didn’t know if that was mere show or if he really meant it. For all I knew, they were absolutely fine with me slaughtering everyone in the building. On the flip side, they might have been placating me just long enough to throw me into a storage tank like they had with Andromeda. It was hard to say without a mind reader at my disposal.