The Reckoning (17 page)

“
That’s
how you learned about the plutonium?” I asked, coming to my feet. “What if it’s not the right plutonium? From the sound of it, your friends in Iran are all chomping at the bit to get ahold of the stuff. For all we know there could be a dozen of these factories.”

“Hardly.” His gaze skimmed mine before resting again on Stella. “I knew immediately that this was far more serious than just my competition in Iran, and I began investigating more deeply. My son also realized we couldn’t allow them to take it to Iran. He said he had a plan to expose them. We talked once more, but I haven’t heard from him since.”

“So where is the plutonium?” Ritter strode toward the man, one hand gripping his rifle, the other clenched. “When are they moving it? How many guards? By land or by sea?” When Shadrach didn’t answer, Ritter’s expression hardened. “Do you know
anything
useful? Why are you even here?”

Shadrach’s nostrils flared. “Habid will know. If we rescue him, he’ll be able to help us. And you know why I’m here. I want to save my son.”

“So basically you called us here on a rescue mission.” Irritation filled Ritter’s words, and I knew it wasn’t because he didn’t want to help Shadrach’s son but because we’d been played. “You told us you had vital information.”

Shadrach stood, straightening his shoulders. Even then, he seemed small compared to Ritter. “There is still time to intercept the plutonium at a later date if we fail here. The information you have proves that. But stopping it here would be far safer and easier than back in my country. So, yes, I want you to help me save my son, but I believe our best chance to get the plutonium is here. Or at some point before entering the Middle East. He’ll be able to help us do that.”

Stella met Ritter’s eyes as if to say
Dial it back.
His nostrils flared before he eased away.

“The problem,” Ritter said, his voice calmer, “is that we believe your son and all of the employees he lived with have been taken to an unknown location after he agreed to meet with an American journalist.”

Shadrach nodded. “That’s what I feared.”

What went unstated, though all of us knew, was that without Shadrach’s son, our chances of finding the plutonium before they shipped it out had gone down drastically—especially now that the Emporium was aware of his spying.

“Getting him back won’t be easy.” Ritter walked over to the small table and gestured for Shadrach to follow. “Provided he’s still alive.”

“You think they’d hold them at the factory?” I asked. Because from what I understood about plutonium factories, the entire sum of which I could probably print on the palm of my hand, was that there was a limit to the exposure workers should have, even while wearing protective suits. “I’d think they’d be a lot more trouble there. The factory won’t be set up for that, and the fear of exposure would make them harder to handle. So the employees they took from the condo are either dead or they’re keeping them somewhere else.”

The others nodded. “But where?” Stella asked.

“The woman agent,” Ritter said. “She might know the place.” We both glanced toward the bathroom. While waiting for Shadrach, he’d brought in the Emporium agent I’d captured and put her in the bathtub in case we needed her for questioning. She was conscious—barely—and Stella had shot her up with curequick and bound her neck. Stella had also given her a pillow, which was more than I’d felt like doing after she almost killed me. But Stella was nice that way.

Maybe she wouldn’t be so bad for Chris.

“She’s not just going to tell us what we want to know,” I said. “I’ll have to break through her shield, and it’s still pretty strong, considering how hurt she is. I can do it, though.”

“No need. She’ll tell me.” Shadrach’s smile was back, but it was a frightening one that sent a chill crawling across my shoulders. “If there’s one thing I learned in my native country, it’s how to make people talk.” Something he had in common with the Emporium, apparently, and which further blurred the lines between them and us.

Suddenly my leg and arm ached, and my lip hurt even worse. I wanted nothing more than to curl up in one of the beds here and sleep for a week, regardless of the room’s questionable cleanliness. Of course, sleep would have to wait. I just hoped that while I waited the snake didn’t take away too much of what was me. Because that’s what it felt like at the moment.

I looked up to find both Ritter and Shadrach staring at me, both with equal expressions of concern, though I was sure I hadn’t let out so much as a sigh.

“I’ll get the woman,” Ritter said after several more seconds of studying me.

I really hoped Shadrach could convince her to talk because I honestly didn’t know if I was still capable of breaking through a strong shield. Of course, Ritter could snap a few bones and that might make her weak enough. I shuddered at the thought. It was one thing to consider torturing someone who had hurt you or someone you loved, but it was another thing altogether to actually do it. Ritter, Shadrach, Stella, and all the older Renegades had seen too much of that. Maybe it made them a little less human.

And what if it has?
My Unbounded genes certainly didn’t care. They exulted in the difference of near immortality and denied me the comfort of self-pity or collapsing on the bed in a shivering lump. They would fight the snake and Delia.

I would fight.

Ritter came from the bathroom, his hand gripping the woman’s arm. He’d untied her legs so she could walk but left her hands secure. He shoved her into the chair Shadrach had vacated. “Where did they take Habid Salemi?” His voice was controlled, though I could feel anger rolling off him.

The woman shut her eyes and opened them again, reminding me somehow of Jeane. Her brown hair was still tightly bound in a braid, exposing the angular beauty of her face. Her dark eyes were on the large side, but they held no innocence. “I don’t know.”

“What about the rest of the employees?”

“I don’t know.”

Ten more variations of the questions, and still the same answer. The woman didn’t show anger, but her eyes burned with the loyalty of the truly converted. She believed in everything the Emporium stood for. Ritter nodded, as if predicting the outcome of more questions. He nodded at Shadrach, who already had a needle prepared with liquid from the case he’d brought.

“You really will tell us.” He flicked the syringe for emphasis and then injected the substance into her exposed neck above the bandage Stella had tied there.

“Your truth drugs won’t work on me,” she said, as if we hadn’t already known.Shadrach’s face wore the same frightening smile as before. “Oh, I know your metabolism works too fast for the drugs to have much effect. However, this isn’t a truth drug. You should know that Habid is my son and I will do anything to get him back. As a healer, I understand how to both soothe and cause incredible pain.”

She glared at him, clamping her jaw shut as if daring him to do his worst. Almost, I felt a grudging admiration for her. In the space of a heartbeat, her eyes grew impossibly wide and her mouth opened in a scream. Shadrach grabbed a pillow from the bed and clamped down over her mouth to blot out the sounds. Her body jerked back and forth with terrible agony, contorting as if she were changing into something inhuman.

Sickened, I jumped to my feet. “What are you doing? Stop! I’ll get inside her mind. You don’t need to—”

Ritter crossed to me. “It’s not Shadrach. He only gave her a euphoric. We usually have better luck getting information that way.”

Jeane arose from the bed in a fluid, catlike movement, her eyes intent. “I’ve seen this before at Emporium headquarters. She’s taken something.”

The woman’s screaming had ceased, though her jerking continued for several more seconds. Shadrach lifted the pillow and laid his hand on her cheek. Her eyes stared at me, unseeing, her face still locked in agony. The healer took his hand from her cheek. “Her insides have turned to mush. I haven’t seen anything like this except in biological warfare.”

By the time she stopped moving and slumped in her chair, her life force was almost completely extinguished. But not gone. No poison we’d ever encountered could kill Unbounded.“We’ll give her curequick,” Ritter said. “You should be able to help her regain consciousness fairly quickly. We need the information sooner rather than later. We can’t wait.”

Shadrach shook his head. “Even with my help, her recovery will take days.”

“Of course,” Jeane said. “That’s why the Emporium equipped her with it. Probably glued it to the side of a tooth. Delia was testing the drug at the time I was made a prisoner. I didn’t think it would be successful because word got out about how horribly painful it was, but apparently this woman—and maybe everyone connected with this project—is loyal enough not to care.”

“It’s like the cyanide capsules given to pilots in the 1960s,” Stella mused. “What a horrible way to die.”

“But effective,” Ritter said. “By the time she’s awake, that plutonium will be long gone, and everything she knows will be old news.”

The whole thing frustrated and repulsed me. “Why haven’t we heard of this before?”

Ritter met my eyes. “Probably because it’s only reserved for their most important operations. If we’d had any clue, we would have checked her for it while she was unconscious.”

We all stared down at the pitiful figure. Gray liquid was now leaking from her eyes and mouth in a gruesome manner I hoped wouldn’t be echoed in my future nightmares. Ritter tossed a blanket over her, and together he and Shadrach carried her back to the tub.

“What now?” I asked when they emerged. I wished I’d used my ability to investigate the woman’s mind, snake or no snake, before she’d regained full consciousness, though I knew there was no guarantee that I would have stumbled on the right information, even if she possessed it.

Even as we spoke, her colleagues might be moving the plutonium. Worse, the whole route would be changed if the Emporium so much as suspected it was us and not the Hunters who’d taken the female agent. I had a wild vision of us going into the factory, guns blazing, but it wasn’t realistic, not if it meant risking the Emporium blowing up the place or escaping. Without a viable plan, we were blind.

Ritter scowled. “We can have Erin read the people coming out of the factory, but if we can’t find the plutonium, we may have to catch up with it in Syria.”

“What about Habid?” Shadrach’s voice sounded old.

Ritter was about to speak when Stella said, “Uh, Ritter, Cort’s calling. He’s been trying to contact you. I’m putting him on speaker. Go ahead, Cort.”

“Thanks, I was getting worried.” Cort’s voice came not from Stella’s headset or her phone, but from the speakers on her laptop across the room.

“We’ve been a little occupied,” Ritter responded.

“I figured.”

“What’s up?”

“Movement in front of the factory. A dozen soldiers arrived, heavily armed. Emporium by the look of it. Not replacements, apparently. Just reinforcements. Then a guy from the factory came out and examined someone still inside the van. We glimpsed a wounded soldier. Lots of talking, but they’re obviously blocking signals because our spybots picked up nothing. Then the van drove away—with half of the extra soldiers. But not out to the main road. It went past the factory on a dirt trail.”

“You follow it?”

“I sent Jace. He’s on foot, but they can’t go very fast. He should be able to keep up.”

My brother was fast, but I hated the idea of him being out there alone.

“You told him observation only, right?” Ritter said, echoing my own concern.

“No, I told him to light himself in flames and do acrobatics. He knows what’s at stake.”

“He’d better.”

Cort cleared his throat. “You coming?”

“We’re on our way. Let us know if anything else happens.”

“Will do.” The line went dead.

I paced a few steps. “The wounded guy in the van must be the guard I shot.”

Ritter was already heading for the door. “I’m thinking those other soldiers might be going to where they’ve taken the employees.”

“Not taking the plutonium somewhere?” Jeane asked.

“No” Ritter said. “They’re reinforcing the factory, and that means something important is still there. But they might be moving it soon. Either way, we have to get over there.”

“Only six extra soldiers dropped at the factory with the others going elsewhere?” Stella shut her laptop, tucking it into her bag. “They don’t know we’re here, then. They must think they’re only up against Hunters.”

Ritter’s smile was almost as disturbing as Shadrach’s had been earlier. “Sounds right to me. Let’s go. Everyone out.”

“What about our guest in the bathroom?” Stella asked.

Ritter grimaced. “She doesn’t need a babysitter. Contact Mari and Keene. Tell them we’re all leaving.”

RITTER’S ARM BRUSHED MINE AS
we headed to our rental SUV, the others trailing behind. It was the first semi-private moment we’d had since getting on the plane in San Diego. Electricity sparked at the point of contact, settling deep in my bloodstream.

“You all right?” he asked.

I knew he wasn’t referring to the wounds but to Delia’s snake.