Chapter Ten

 

Everything was numb until Gerald felt a sharp jab on the right-hand side. He groaned and tried to curl up in a ball, but a kind hand restrained him and a woman’s voice murmured, "Just relax!"

 

A glass was held up to his lips, and he automatically sipped the water. He tried to open his eyes, but the light intensified the pain. He clutched his head until it passed. The second time he tried to open his eyes, it didn’t hurt as much.

 

A slim blonde woman in her late twenties sat perched on the edge of his narrow bed. She stroked his forehead, pushing his hair back out of his face to press a cool cloth smelling of alcohol onto his forehead. He adjusted it slightly as a drip from it trickled down his left cheek. She leant over and kissed it away, blushing as she pulled away again.

 

It was all so fuzzy that he gave his brain time to catch up with what was happening.

 

She moved gently around the room, refilling the glass and handing it back to him. She helped him sit up a little, fluffed his pillows and straightened his blankets.

 

Not a single item in the room was in any way familiar, and he’d never felt so exhausted in his life.

 

She stroked his hair again. He hadn’t the slightest idea who the woman was, but her relaxed confidence hinted at a personal connection. She was gently proprietorial. He told himself not to worry. Every woman you've ever dated has behaved like this, he thought. Something had happened, but he couldn't fathom what. His head spun when he tried to think it through.

 

Whatever this place was, some hospital annex in the Metropolis probably, he could work out what he was doing there later. Doctors always looked after their own, and his colleagues would give him the best possible care. When he woke up again, they'd have called his parents to come right over. He smiled, relaxing at the prospect of letting them take care of it all.

 

Sleep rose up to claim him again, and he abandoned himself to it.

 

“I’ll come back later and check on you. You’ve had a rough time of it, but I’m here to take care of you. Everything's going to be fine.”

 

The woman bent to kiss him. He cupped the back of her head with his hand, stroking her blonde hair and pressing her lips against his. Whoever she is, she's beautiful, he thought.

 

On the threshold, she paused in the doorway. Her hair. Her facial shape. Her slimness and her height. He rubbed his temples. There was something familiar about her. Suddenly, it clicked. Hers was the Tungsten blonde athleticism and beauty. “You’re Hendra’s sister Sinistra, aren't you? Is that how we know each other?”

 

She nodded. He rubbed his temples again and drank the rest of his water. The thumping started to pass off, but he still felt very weird. It tasted good, and every mouthful left him wanting more. She handed him another glassful.

 

In this simple act of kindness, she exuded an aura of sadness different from the resilience he associated with the Tungstens. Hendra was ruthless, but her sister might be much more complex. It was still all very blurry, but he was on the cusp of accepting that they knew each other.

 

At some point in the recent past, he could recall them being together. At the country club, perhaps, in the bar. He could remember a blond woman being present once when he’d been there with his father. That made sense, and he was eager to latch onto something real to orientate himself. Or perhaps it was just Hendra gracing his muddled recollections.

 

Everything was so damn odd. His mind was dulled to the point of being almost robotic. I feel so strange and disorientated, he thought. What is this place?

 

“I've given you a little something to help you sleep. You’ve had a tricky day, and it’s all starting to catch up with you a bit," she said. "A sedative and nothing more. Trust me?"

 

“I can't remember anything about how I got here. What's happened to me?"

 

She smiled alluringly. “We’re alone. That’s all that matters.”

 

Automatically, he returned her smile, making her blush. He pushed his fingers through his hair and lay back against the pillows with his right hand draped behind his head. He swirled the last mouthful of water round and swallowed. Whatever it was, it tasted better with every mouthful. It was fruity and sweet. Suddenly, he felt completely alive and alert. Sinistra was gorgeous. That body of hers! She would be athletic in bed, and they'd be able to go at it for hours.

 

She moved closer and ran her fingers through his hair. He raised his face to her, and she placed her lips against his. He put his hand up to cup the back of her head and pressed his mouth more firmly against hers until she pulled away. He felt a surge of emotion pass through her as she cuddled up against his chest. He put his arms around her in silence.

 

He let his gaze roam across her body as she pulled away to look up at him. She was gorgeous: all toned muscle, firm breasts and curvaceous ass. She would be energetic and lithe. Gods, how he wanted to feel her riding up and down on top of him, or better still for him to be taking her from behind, thrusting into her over and over, harder and harder. “Whatever that pick-me-up is you've just given me, you should patent it,” he murmured.

 

When she toyed with the top button of his shirt, he put his arms behind his head and grinned. She tugged his shirt over his head, tossed it on the floor and seductively smiled at him.

 

At the prospect of what was coming next, he pitched upwards and ripped her shirt open. Her buttons popped, scattering across the bed. He tugged the shirt off her, tossing it aside and reaching round to unzip her skirt. It’d risen up when she leant over him, and the top of her black stockings and the suspender belt were just visible. He bent to kiss her thigh. Her skin was gloriously soft, and it smelt of lavender body oil.

 

She twisted her upper body to gaze down at him, and he rested on his elbow and met her eye. There was something wrong here, but he struggled to understand what. She wore such an odd expression on her face, such a terrible image of a yearning that was eating her alive from within.

 

His lust for her pushed aside his uncertainty. He was more randy now than he'd ever been. It was more than the usual healthy male reaction to the sight of a beautiful blonde woman in suspenders taking off her clothes. All he could think about was shafting her until he shot his load.

 

There were tears in her eyes. He sat up, resting his hands on her shoulders, but her gaze darted away again and her upper lip trembled. He folded his arms around her and held her close.

 

It was horrible, but that infernal randiness was still gnawing away at him. The dull ache of unfulfilled sexual need had settled in, and it wasn’t going anywhere. Time to turn on the charm, or you'll never get laid, he thought. His body screamed to thrust inside her immediately and to keep thrusting until he climaxed.

 

Tucking his finger under her chin, he raised her face to him and placed his lips very gently against hers. He pressed against their warmth and tightened his arms around her. She probed his mouth with her tongue, and he let her wrap it around his. He returned the favour, his arousal deepening.

 

Reaching behind her, she undid her bra. He put his hands behind his head and watched her slither down his body. As she hit the spot, a smile of pure ecstasy spread across his face.

 

*

 

Don stood in the Blackacre library and closed his eyes. He searched his mind to find out where Gerald was now, and an image formed of the lab. Gradually, a small bedroom with a desk and chair emerged, and the picture became clearer until he could see the whole room.

 

He saw Gerald naked, lying up in bed. A woman was cuddling into his chest, and he was kissing the top of her blonde hair and smiling. Don was sure the woman was Hendra Tungsten’s sister. The resemblance was striking. He was repelled by the hints of what had just taken place here, as he always was by sexual activity of any kind.

 

Opening his eyes, he wiped away a tear. He hadn’t appreciated until that point how much he’d counted on Gerald coming back for them. He felt desolate and uncertain about what lay ahead for them if Gerald didn’t return.

 

I don’t understand. This isn’t right, he thought.

 

Don had shared a palm-to-palm experience with Gerald before he left. In those brief moments, he witnessed a lifetime's yearning in vain for a father’s love. He saw five years wasted on squiring one woman after another. He understood the lack of emotional attachment to any woman, a failing overcome by the growing friendship with Ivy. Their deepening connection was evident to everyone. Had it in fact meant nothing at all?

 

Don bit his nails. He ached to stay strong and rational rather than letting his emotions run away with him. Gerald couldn’t have forgotten about Ivy so quickly. He couldn’t have acquired racist and elitist views on life in a few short hours, not when he’d resisted so long when his father was alive. After a year surveilling Gerald, he knew everything about the man, and he wasn't convinced by the images he was seeing now.

 

He stared bleakly into the dusty interior of the Blackacre library. “I just don’t understand what's going on here,” he murmured. "Is this your playing games with me, or is it really happening?"

 

*

 

Once she'd finished cleaning and preparing her quota of bedrooms, Ivy ran upstairs two at a time and dashed along the corridor to her tiny bedroom. The attic floor was set aside for hotel staff, and her room was tucked away right at the end of the farthest corridor on the women's side. She fumbled for her key, grating it in the lock and in her hurry to get inside not inserting it properly. Finally, the key worked and she flung the door open and stormed inside.

 

She tore around the room, tugging out the contents of her wardrobe and rifling through the back to find her rucksack in vain, then she wriggled under her bed to search around the boxes and suitcases there for it. When she found it at last, right at the back and covered in dust, she pulled it out and dragged it onto the bed.

 

The rucksack certainly felt heavy enough to still contain her gun, knives and vials of poison, and Ivy's spirits rose. But as soon as she unclipped the lid and tossed it back to delve inside, her questing fingers found walking maps of the region, a dog-eared guidebook to the Tyrol and a small purse that jingled with a few coins of loose change when she shook it. She rifled the side pockets, but her vials of poison were missing, replaced instead by boiled sweets wrapped in plastic that had once been brightly coloured but was now faded. One of the sweets had cracked, and its sugary filling had seeped out of its wrapper and coated the inside of the pocket. The other pocket yielded a compass and a small first-aid kit.

 

Tossing aside her rucksack in confusion, she slumped down beside her bed. The rucksack was full of precisely the sort of walking paraphernalia that her alter ego would have taken with her for a hike into the mountains with friends on her afternoon off. Yet, externally, it was still the one Ivy had transported here with her earlier today.

 

Something had intervened when she teleported here from Blackacre. She'd felt it during the transition process. Someone knew she was arriving in Ubersneller and that she was dangerous. It had disarmed her effectively. Should she abandon her mission? That meant leaving Honigbaum out there, conducting his sadistic experiments. It also ran the risk of his being one of the key players, stepping into the void left by the Master's weakness and her assassination of Ironbark.

 

She reminded herself that with two backup plans in play, her mission should still be a success. However, with every turn of poor luck, her options closed and she needed to be more and more cautious about proceeding. Eva's Giga-poison pendant contained all she needed to take Honigbaum down. If for any reason she couldn't snatch it in time, she was trained to kill with her bare hands as an absolute last resort. But Honigbaum was tall and muscular, and that meant she would have to catch him off guard to snap his neck.

 

She remembered what it felt like to kill. It’d only been a few days, but already she was struggling to remember what it had been like not to have taken a life. She stared across the room at the polished-silver door handle, intrigued by the distorted reflection of herself in its knob.

 

Luck hadn't been on her side earlier with the disappearance of her rucksack. She would need to have all her wits about her to assassinate Honigbaum, but she would be ruthless. Her training had given her everything she needed to complete her mission, and, with obstacles already rising up to get in her way adding to the challenge, she was more determined than ever to kill him.

 

*

 

Sinistra snuggled down into Gerald’s chest and smiled, rubbing her cheek against his soft skin and letting him hold her. He rested his chin on top of her head and stroked her hands as she curled into his embrace, exhaling a slow breath of satisfaction.

 

Even though he was a very confident lover who'd just proven that he knew how to satisfy her, she’d lured him into her web for one reason only. His role was to give her a baby to replace the three who’d died in her womb in the last four years. She was done with going partway through a pregnancy only to have the ultrasound technician tell her it was bad news yet again.

 

As she recalled those gut-wrenching funerals with tiny coffins after the last two pregnancies went on long enough to produce stillbirths, she hardened herself to the deception ahead. You've been through that trauma for the last time, she promised herself.

 

This man was going to give her a baby, and he was going to be a father to that baby. She would pour her soul into persuading him to love her, and if he refused she'd have to crack the whip just a little harder. Her baby deserved the best father going, and Gerald was by far the most promising specimen to ever wander into her clutches.

 

He reached down, raised her chin and kissed her. She shrank away, but he persisted. “What were you thinking of just now? It seemed like something crawled across your soul?” he asked.

 

When she shivered, he wrapped his arms more tightly around her and kissed the top of her head.

 

“Some things are best left in the past,” she said.

 

“Tell me.”

 

She thought carefully about how to respond. Being completely honest seemed like the worst possible option. She didn’t speak until she trusted herself to be able to adopt a breezy tone of voice. “Actually, I was thinking about how much I want you to break up with your fiancée and be with me instead. That’s all. I'm sick of hiding what we've got going on. We love each other, and you know it. We've talked about you telling your folks you don't love her, and now's the moment to make a firm decision and stand up for yourself. It's her or me. Right now, decide!”

 

He jerked away from her in a surprise that was patently sincere. "Fiancée?"

 

He had told her this morning that he had a fiancée waiting for him at the Redoubt. He’d been utterly convincing in describing the situation, yet now he seemed to have forgotten all about it. Could he have met the woman within the last three months? Would someone so famously shy of commitment have become engaged in so short a time?

 

Slipping off the bed, she slowly got dressed, all the while buying time to gather her thoughts. He lay back against the pillows. He was perfectly alert now the sedative had worn off. “Did I say I was engaged? Doesn't sound like me to want to settle down.” He sounded utterly bemused. "You'll have to be very patient with me and fill in as many blanks as you can. I can't remember anything about being here with you at all."

 

The ocean of lies he could so easily have told her broke across her consciousness. She took a moment to steady herself into a determination that would see her through. This is for a baby, she told herself. There's nothing you wouldn't do to be a mother.

 

The expression of utter confusion on his face deepened as he waited for her reply, making him adorable. He was vulnerable this way, and that fact burrowed inside her heart like a parasitic worm and curled up there. She knew she would regret being kind to him, but when he got up and came over to her, she let him put his arms around her and draw her into his embrace.

 

“When you arrived here, you told me that you had a fiancée handpicked by your folks. You hinted that I was fit to be your mistress, but I want more from you. I know you can't remember any of this, but over the past three months we've really come to care for each other," she said.

 

“I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to treat you that way.”

 

As she rolled up her stockings, clipping them to her suspender belt, her feelings hardened.

 

She asked herself, What's going on here? He was the one disorientated by everything that had happened to him, and he was reeling from exhaustion, but she couldn’t shake the feeling he was somehow the one playing her. There were things he was withholding. It felt very unpleasant to be on the receiving end of that kind of behaviour rather than being the one dolling it out.

 

Had the drugs failed to wipe the whole of the three months? Had they wiped some memories but not others? Did he know his father was dead? Could he remember anything at all about the uprising that had swept the authorities from power? It was going to take all of her cunning and guile to determine precisely what he could remember without falling into the trap of giving him information to use against her.

 

She straightened up and fixed him with a cool stare. “We ought to get back to the lab. It’s a very full afternoon and some of our experiments are urgent. I'll help fill in what you can't remember about our work here,” she said.

 

"Thanks. Anything you can do in that way would be helpful. I'm sorry if my memory loss puts us behind."

 

As Sinistra pinned up her hair, she stopped partway and turned to stare at him in surprise. She hadn’t forgotten his earlier reaction to the experimental subject in labour. Yet his remorse appeared genuine. With luck, the memory loss drugs were working, and if not she'd simply up the dose and hit him again. One way or another, he would stumble into a total oblivion that would give them a fresh start together on her terms.

 

“I think we ought to let the work you've been doing here speak for itself,” she said. He opened the door for her, and they slipped into the corridor. “Oh, your mother called earlier,” she lied. "Something about heading up to Blackacre for a few days to catch up with the family."

 

A smile spread across his face. It was the first completely spontaneous gesture she’d witnessed from him. Suddenly, he was completely open and guileless to her. She registered his physical expressions, waiting for him to speak so she could remember the precise tone of his voice. This was the default honesty setting she would compare to everything he said and did from now on. Any other response could be calibrated against it.

 

“Blackacre's my cousin’s farm up in the north. Brett and Radclyffe became parents a while back. We’ve been talking about heading up there for a while to meet the twins. My mother's very fond of that part of the world.”

 

"You haven't been there for a while, then?"

 

His gaze flickered to her face, scrutinising her response to his statements, concerned about how to reply.

 

"I don't know."

 

Reaching over, she placed her finger against the biometric reader. The door sprang open and he motioned for him to step inside first. He obeyed in a docile trusting manner she longed to accept as the absolute truth, but he had taken such a long time to reply that she no longer knew what to make of the delay. There was simply no way for her to tell what he remembered.

 

For a moment she pitied him, but it passed. He was a consummate liar, and she intended to make it her business to identify and memorise every last tell that betrayed when he wasn’t telling her the absolute truth. She was eager to see his reaction to their work, too. There was no longer any doubt that he had hidden depths of deception, but this would shock him into honesty. If he were foolish enough to imagine he could get the better of her, the sight of what they were doing at the facility would flush him out. The details of what went on in her labs would put his talent for deception to the test.

 

*

 

Janus Fidens sat at his desk with his head in his hands. The phone kept ringing, but he’d long since stopped bothering to answer it. Nothing he said made the slightest bit of difference to whoever it was on the other end of the line, anyway. He got up and went over to the window, drinking in the beauty of the leafy park. West Metropolis had nothing like this, and the sight of so much verdant life here in the eastern half of the city was taking some getting used to.

 

From his office at the top of the Ministry for Home Affairs, the view stretched for miles across the capital. People were now gathered around all the central government buildings. They’d protested in the city centre all morning, but in the last hour the numbers had swelled and the volume of noise had burgeoned.

 

The armed forces had stayed in their barracks and ignored Janus’s calls for help. He contacted them during the night when looting broke out all over the Metropolis, but they refused to intervene, saying it was for the police to deal with the violence. The head of the armed forces called Janus personally to tell him that, since he’d started this mess, he could be the one to sort it out.

 

Shortly afterwards, the police went on strike for the first time in history. This brought concerned citizens onto the streets again, but this time they were protesting for Janus’s removal, rather than his appointment as the head of government to replace the leader of the authorities. How quickly they lost all faith in me, he thought.

 

Staggering back to his desk, he fetched out a chipped glass and half-empty bottle of whisky, pilfered from the country club the resistance used as its headquarters. He unscrewed the cap and sloshed an inch of whisky into the glass. When he tossed it back in one gulp, the liquor burnt his mouth. He slumped back in his chair and closed his eyes. They smarted with self-pity, and hot tears ran down his cheeks.