When someone did finally show up to relieve me, it was an FBI agent that I had never met. He showed me his badge, explained his credentials, and then explained them to me slower. All the while, I glowered at him, not speaking. I wasn’t pissed off at him, I was just pissed off in general and he was standing in front of me. Green finally showed up and dragged me out of the room, much to the relief of the new FBI agent.
Since I could no longer stare the random FBI agent into disappearing, I turned on Green. Green took it well. He didn’t make eye contact, he didn’t speak, and he didn’t push any of my buttons.
The vast majority of the world was under the impression that psychopaths were the scarier of the two. Lucas believed it was sociopaths. I was willing to bet Green, who was a psychopath, agreed with him. Rage was something I had double doses of on normal days, these days were nothing even remotely close to normal. Malachi was still in the hospital and his assailant was safely behind bars where I could not rip his head off and now Lucas was entering into witness protection. And I couldn’t rip off any heads there either because I didn’t know whose head needed to be removed.
This left whoever had assaulted Valerie McGregor and anyone stupid enough to get too close to me. When I entered the conference room, everyone became silent. Green took a seat. Xavier and Fiona were both red faced with bloodshot eyes and pink noses. Gabriel was a little less emotionally distraught, but even he had been crying at some point. I had learned as a child that some people cried when they became exceptionally angry. I was guessing this was the case.
I did not sit down. My gaze looked at the shattered and shocked remnants of the SCTU and VCU and could not find the willpower to sit down. I closed my eyes, trying to fight the rage that swelled beneath the calm. It fought back, gaining momentum from the tears that had been shed in recent months. Three people were just gone and Malachi was still recovering. We were losing the battle because we were losing people faster than we could gain them. The most elite federal officers in the country were being eliminated and we couldn’t seem to do a damn thing about it.
My hands shook. I left the conference room, refusing to look at anyone. The door shuddered in the frame as it slammed behind me. Marshals moved out of the way, as I moved down the hall. My brain grabbed at threads of thought, trying to rein in some sanity. The sunshine was warm against my face as I exited the building. The only thing that saved this door from a fate like its brother was the pneumatic hinge at the top.
I entered the alleyway and ducked further into the back, moving quickly, determined. The alley opened up on a parking lot. The first vehicle was the shitty van that had picked us up on the first day we had arrived. It felt like years since we had come to New Orleans. My body ached with the need for release. I walked past it and several others to the back of the lot. The building that butted up to the lot on the other side was a warehouse. I punched the wall. It did nothing to calm my rage. I punched it again. Blood ran from my knuckles and still the rage kept building. It didn’t want my blood, refused to be satiated by it. It wanted the blood of others, but I had no one to bleed. I leaned against the wall, letting the cold brick jab my forehead with its uneven surface. Still the rage beat away inside me, screaming to be sated, demanding a sacrifice before it would scurry back to hide in the darkened calm that was my real personality.
“Fight it,” Green said quietly behind me. His voice was soothing, soft, and too close. “If you lose control today, you will not be able to take any of it back and then you will be of no use to Malachi or Lucas. You have to fight it.”
I spun around, drawing my gun without even realizing it. Green’s eyes widened just a hair. His mouth formed an O. I tossed the gun at his feet, afraid to handle it. I did the same with all my other weapons. When I was disarmed, I turned back to the brick wall, willing it to come to life and swallow me.
“No one does what you do, Aislinn Cain. No one. Not even Malachi can manage your control. You have got to harness that uniqueness and use it.” His voice was still soft and soothing. “Push the rage back down into the darkness. Store it for later.”
I slammed my palms into the building, dying to feel some kind of pain. I felt nothing except bricks. My hands should have been screaming. They should have been too tender to take such abuse. I slammed them against the building again. This was why Malachi had shot himself in the foot. To force himself to feel something else. Pain was a great substitution for rage. My palms hit the brick again, hard. Blood streaked the side of the building. It had begun to drip slowly down my forehead.
“Aislinn…”
“Shut the fuck up, Caleb.” I pressed harder, the sharp edges tearing at my skin. “Shut up and fucking hit me with my Taser.”
“I can’t…”
“Do it now, or so help me, I’m going to turn around and tear you apart.” My own blood was now feeding the rage more. I steeled myself for more argument. My jaw clenched hard, snapping my teeth together with an audible thunderclap of a click. Then there was a twinge. The prongs of the Taser entered my back. The electricity surged through me, forcing my teeth together harder. My knees weakened. A false tooth cracked within the dentures. The plate cracked. My brain screamed at me to push down the rage. My knees buckled. My arms twitched. I crumbled into a heap upon the ground and the electricity continued to flow, forcing my muscles to twitch and jerk. Then the calm came upon me. Everything still twitched, jerked, and trembled, but the rage was gone. I waited for the pain, but there was only a mild sting in my hands and the electricity was causing no pain.
My heart skipped a beat. My brain screamed for the electricity to stop. My heart skipped another beat, then another. My breath caught on the inhale. Whatever my brain was trying to tell my body died before it hit my central nervous system.
It stopped. My brain stopped trying to communicate through the electrical surge that contorted my body. The electricity stopped. My breath left my lungs and took in another. They exhaled. I concentrated only on that. My heart rhythm became regular again. The prongs in my back should have hurt. They had no doubt burned my skin, but it didn’t. The only pain was the mild sting in my hands. I continued to breathe. My eyes suddenly focused on the sky above me.
Thick black clouds hung low overhead. There was no sign of lightning. No claps of thunder. Yet the air smelled of rain. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I spit out the broken denture plate that annoyed my tongue and hampered my breathing. The pieces rattled to the ground. It was the only movement I dare make for fear of the rage returning. I was still in the world of nothingness and I knew it. The calm kept me from being angry about the Tasering. It kept me from feeling much of the pain I should have been feeling. It blocked out the world that beat against me with unrelenting eagerness to break me down.
My brain had always admitted that I liked killing. It had never admitted that it didn’t necessarily need to kill just for survival. The calm now let that thought enter my brain. My brain attempted to reject it and couldn’t. The monster I had faced in the mirror had wanted to tear out Caleb Green’s throat, because it could. My controls had not worked. My predatory instincts had been stronger this time. If he had not been willing to Taser me, I might have done exactly what I had wanted to do. Thankfully, he had, and we would never know how close I had actually come to killing him. I liked Caleb, when non-raging me had shown back up, it would not have been happy about my choice of victims.
“Need a hand up?” Caleb asked. I rolled my eyes backwards and then forced my head to tilt back as well, so I could look at him.
“No, I’m good here.” I laid there and stared at him. Yeah, it would be a shame to kill Caleb.
“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve had to use some pretty serious force to bring Malachi back from the edge.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“Oh, well, Malachi once had to shoot me to stop from killing a guy. We wrote it up as an accident.”
“No one else would have hesitated. The moment I tossed my weapons at their feet, they would have tasered my ass.”
“Malachi speaks very highly of your control and ability to be talked down from that ledge.” Caleb looked away from me, probably tired of seeing my words as I spoke. “I figured if he could do it, I could do it.”
“Malachi has never been able to do it. Nyleena, Nyleena can do it. My mother has the power. That’s about it.” I considered getting up and decided I wasn’t ready yet. “Sometimes Xavier can because even in my worst state, I think of him as fragile. No one else in the SCTU can.” Michael could, but Michael was gone. Another of his super powers lost to the SCTU. “However, I do not do it very often.”
“It’s been a rough year,” Caleb sighed and sat down on the concrete. “One psychopath to a sociopath, Malachi and I have both had some trouble lately. Me more than him, since he’s pretty much bedridden at the moment. It isn’t just you.”
”Aside from the bombing, what has been going on?”
“We’d lost Michael and Greg because of that fucking sniper that Patterson killed. Then Malachi and you had to track down Patterson, which was sort of fucked. We were all kind of glad that he killed James Okafor. Plus, the stuff with Malachi’s personal life. Your grandfathers might be totally different types of assholes, but they’re both still screwed up assholes. The biggest difference is that his is dead and yours is still fucking up people’s lives. Plus, your brain tumor coming so soon after we lost Michael and Greg, and that messed up deal in Detroit with the multiple serial killers and gang wars. Now, I’ve found out that my little sister is using Krokodil. I’d never even heard of the shit until we were in Detroit. How the hell did she find out about it? Our own screwed up serial killer chases coming one right after the other. For every one we arrest or kill, it’s like two spring up to take their place. Alejandro just delivered the coup de grace with his fucking bomb.”
“I do not believe I have ever heard you swear that much.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I swear more when I am pissed off too. I just did not think about all the shit that you guys have been dealing with too. We need a better solution. This divided agency stuff is a disaster. We should disband the VCU and make more SCTU groups. Move you guys to a new SCT unit. We all need to rebuild our ranks. Find more experts and specialists to work on these cases. We are spread too thin and have giant fucking targets on our backs.”
“I agree,” Gabriel’s voice suddenly joined us. “I’ve put in the request to do exactly that. I did it after the bombing. The problem is finding candidates for this fucked up job. How badly did you injure yourself?”
“I do not know. I think it is mostly superficial. It was not enough to stop it.”
“I saw.” Gabriel moved closer, so I could see him. “I think you and I need to discuss what I expect out of you. I think that will help your situation.”