Chapter 18
Seth awoke with a start, hands splaying against the blankets that covered him as he sat up. Pain shot through his side, and he eased himself back down, suppressing a moan.
“You nearly lost a spleen.” The voice came from the corner nearest him. His eyes darted over to see Liane sitting on the floor, her back against the wall. She looked exhausted, dark shadows coloring the pale skin under her oddly-colored eyes. “The bullet nearly severed it. Ahmad knew a surgeon who was able to stitch you back together, but you’ll still need to rest for several more weeks.”
Seth glanced around the room. It was filthy and decrepit; obviously abandoned, the walls caked with grime and the lone window covered with a stained sheet in lieu of a curtain. But the mattress on which he lay was new, the blankets clean. Swallowing with a dry tongue, he asked, “Where are we?”
“The ruins beyond the city,” she answered. “There are no cameras or patrols out here. It seemed safer than anywhere else.”
“How long have I been out?”
“Four days,” she said, gesturing to the case of syringes near his bed. “I bought enough to keep you out completely. It made it easier for me to leave you alone, to not have to worry about you giving us away.”
“How did you get us out of the building?”
“Through an entrance I found when I first moved in,” she said nonchalantly. “I never told Damian about it, so I knew it would be safe.”
Seth glanced at the covered window, observing, “I don’t think anywhere is ‘safe’ for us anymore.”
“It’s not,” she agreed with a nod. “I thought about trying to get out of the city, but it seemed too dangerous with you like this.”
“Do you intend to leave it now?”
“No.” She shook her head, her face grim. “The Agency is battered, but it still stands. And since it’s here, that’s where I need to be in order to bring it down.”
Seth admitted aloud, “I didn’t think . . . I didn’t know that it would be as bad as it was back there.”
“Both of us nearly died,” Liane said. “But after seeing what they’re willing to throw at me to keep me quiet, I have a different plan of attack. I just have to live long enough to make it happen.”
She stood, brushing the dust from her black pants and looking sadly at him as she went on, “But this is my fight, not yours. I want you to do what I originally suggested, to run as long and as far as you can. There are a couple of forged passports by the sink, and enough food to last you for a week of travel.”
Seth tried, and failed, to sit up again. Collapsing back on the pillow, he asked, “Where are you going?”
She looked back at him, saddened. “You’ve been a good friend to me, Seth. I wouldn’t be much of one if I didn’t give you a chance at escaping all this.”
“You can’t bring down the Agency on your own,” he protested. “You’re just one person. You’re going to need help in this.”
“Help from you?” she said with a small, patronizing smile. Seth thought back to the fight, how she’d moved unlike any human, modified or not. Clearly she was doing the same.
“So I can’t fight like you,” he said, stubbornness filling his face. “There are other ways of helping.”
She leaned back against the wall, folding her arms and waiting.
“I know how this world works,” Seth said defiantly. “Your life has been in the Agency. You don’t know anything about how to survive outside of it. I can help you blend in, to pass as a normal person.” Liane tensed, clearly taking offense to the last, and he went on doggedly, “You can’t do anything to bring down the Agency if you can’t hide.”
Liane glanced away, seeming preoccupied as she said, “I shot Damian.”
“Good,” Seth said immediately.
“But I didn’t kill him,” she said with a shake of her head. “The Agency is more than capable of healing his wounds. When they do, they’ll send him after me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to protect you again.”
“Then don’t,” Seth retorted. “Let me protect myself.”
Liane was quiet for a long moment. He saw her glance at the door, and for a moment he thought she meant to head towards it and leave him behind. But then she turned, returning to the corner and sinking down again. As she leaned back against the wall, Liane glanced to the window, observing, “When the sun goes down, we’ll move on. And tomorrow, we’ll begin.”
Seth settled back down, watching her until exhaustion pulled him into sleep. Just as he drifted off, he heard her observe, “I’ve never had a real partner before.”
“Well then, good thing you’re starting with the best one in the whole of London,” he murmured. He thought, as he fell asleep, that he heard her laugh softly. But perhaps it was only his imagination.
|| | || | | || |
Deep under the ground floor of the Agency complex, Damian stood in front of a single, reinforced metal door. His wounds were nearly healed, save for some tenderness in his right knee. He’d been training it against the doctor’s recommendation, knowing that he would need every bit of his strength for the task ahead. Weakness when dealing with Liane would be asking to be killed.
The light on the top of the doorframe was red; when it blinked to green, he pulled open the now-unlocked door and entered.
The room beyond was vast, echoing. A single light shone down upon a single chair in the center of the chamber. Damian sat, looking forward to the elevated table. Dim reading lamps allowed him to see the hands and silhouettes of the people sitting there, but little else. Not that it mattered; he knew that he was looking at the top-ranking Administrators in the Agency, and that they’d been assembled to pass down judgment on him.
The woman at the center of the table leaned forward, her fingers interlacing as she said, “You know why you’ve been brought before this inquiry, I take it.”
Damian shifted in his seat, leaning back slightly. His posture was confident and relaxed, as was his voice as he answered, “The Agents and Handlers under my command all died, and my Agent evaded capture. You have my detailed report, but you’d like to hear it directly from me.”
“You seem inappropriately blasé about this,” said the chairwoman, coldly.
“You expect me to wail and rend my clothes?” Damian returned, even more nonchalant than before. “That’s not our way. If you’ve forgotten that, perhaps you’ve been out of the field for too long.”
Another Administrator spoke up, noting, “Handlers are held accountable for the mistakes of their Agents. You underestimated your Agent, and the damage she’s wrought is incalculable.”
Still reclining, Damian shrugged, “One exposé was leaked; one lab was destroyed. The Agency still stands, and no damage has been done to our day-to-day operations. How is the damage incalculable, again?”
“Be careful, Damian,” said another Administrator in a clipped, icy voice.
“Why? I’m not the one at fault,” Damian retorted, sitting up and glaring at them. “Your directives were the cause of all this. The only reason Liane rebelled was because she found out that she’d been lied to while you sat here and demanded perfect honesty from her.”
“You point the blame at us?” demanded a female Administrator at the end of the dais. “She was under your oversight, Damian.”
“If you hadn’t made me lie to her, that’s where she’d be now,” he retorted, temper rising. “I made her into the best Agent in this country—”
“Enough,” said the inquiry chairwoman, her voice sharp. “You have not been called here to justify your actions, or to find fault with the Agency’s directives.”
“Then don’t find fault with Liane,” he said, eyes drifting from figure to figure as he went on, “We taught her how to kill, and she did merely what she was trained to do.”
“She wasn’t trained to undermine this organization.”
“She was taught to go after a target until it is destroyed,” Damian said with growing impatience. “Since the Agency still stands and we’re alive, that means her mission isn’t completed yet. We have time, then; time to both find her and correct her mistakes.”
It was as if they had been waiting for him to broach the topic. The chairwoman asked in a measured voice, “How do you plan to go about finding your Agent?”
“The same way I find any target; follow the trail, then hunt her down.”
“Yet you’ve handed down orders for a live capture, not termination.”
“She’s a valuable asset,” he said. His voice was light, detached; as if this was business, nothing more. “Aside from the time and expense of her training, she’s taken down more targets than any other Agent in the Program’s history. You don’t euthanize a prize animal when it runs; you catch it, and then retrain it.”
“And you believe that you can do so?”
“I’ve been her Handler for ten years,” Damian said, sitting straighter as his dark eyes moved over the shadowy figures. There was an intensity to his voice that hadn’t been there previously as he said, “I know how she thinks, her habits, the patterns of her work. She can’t hide from me. I’ll find her.”
“And if you don’t?”
Damian stared up at the shadowy figures, saying, “Then the Osiris Contingency will go into effect, and the matter will be resolved.”
The Administrators nodded in agreement. The center figure shuffled the papers in front of her, announcing, “Against my recommendation, your promotion to Administrator will be processed as scheduled. Until then, you’ll assume the title of Chief Handler. Your first and primary objective is to recapture your rogue Agent. Bring her home, and we will determine if your recommendation regarding her life is warranted.”
Damian stood without another word, walking from the room. As he neared the door that would take him back to the world above, he thought fiercely, I’ll find her. No matter what it takes, no matter who has to die; none of it will stop me from getting her back.
The door opened, and the light swallowed him as he headed out into the world to make good on the promise.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .