Broken(30)

    I grabbed her by the front of her robe and yanked her up. The silk ripped as I dragged her across the floor. She screamed and I lifted her, holding her out the window as the air rushed by. Far, far below us, the city sounds of running engines passing by gave way to the first sirens following the flashing lights that pulled up at the entrance of the building. “Where is he, Ariadne?”

    Her hair whipped around her, falling in lines across her frightened face. “I don’t know!”

    “I don’t see your girlfriend.” I looked over the cityscape. “I believe she left you behind to save her own sweet ass.” I tightened my hold, shook her slightly, and listened to the fabric tear a little more. “She must really care for you to bail out the window and leave you to fend for yourself.”

    “She … “ Ariadne looked down in a sidelong glance, considering her options. I could tell she didn’t like them, but she still spat defiance when she looked back at me. “You shot her!”

    I shrugged lightly, causing Ariadne’s weight to shift and drawing another scream from her. The first tears were drawn from her eyes now, rolling down her cheeks and into her hair. I wondered if they would fall from there, all the way down, twenty-eight stories like a drop of rain. “What your boss did to me was worse. Where is he?”

    There was another loud rip, and I knew the fabric in the back of her robe was reaching the point of no return. If it broke now, she would fall, and I doubted I’d be able to catch her. There was an enthusiastic chorus of approval from three of the voices in my head at this idea, but I could almost hear Zack screaming at me not to do it.

    I ignored him.

    “Last chance, Ariadne,” I said. “I wouldn’t struggle too much. It might hasten your demise. It’s kinda like what happened with me after your girlfriend carted you off that night at the Directorate; I struggled and I struggled, but it didn’t do me one bit of good.”

    “I’m … telling the truth … “ her voice was choked, and something occurred to me, something that would be at once more satisfying and cut right to the truth all in one.

    “All right,” I said, and I yanked her in then threw her to the floor where she landed, hard. I squatted over her as she tried to escape. “Let’s see if that’s true.” I put my weight on her and pushed her down, felt the cold tile on my hand as I rested against it and lifted the other menacingly in front of her face; her eyes had finally calmed slightly after I brought her back in, but they widened at the sight of my bare fingers.

    “No,” she said, almost pleading, “No—”

    “Funny,” I said, thrusting my hand against her cheek, “that’s what I said, too. It didn’t do me much good, either.” I pushed her face against the floor as I waited for my touch to do its work. I felt the first swirl of feeling as it began to move, her memories to mine, the first screams of pain from her as I felt the rush, felt my skin drinking her essence. My head began to swirl with the pleasure of it, and I waited as the screaming became louder, shifting to my head, but instead of being a discordant, ear-shattering howl it was more like music, sweet honey poured into my mind. My powers weren’t a torment, not to me, and Ariadne’s pain became my pleasure as they started to work, and I let it take over as I drank her, until the screaming finally stopped.





13.





    “I want you to go to South America.”

    The air was clear, the ground covered with snow again, and I could tell by the glare of the sun I was in Ariadne’s office. I sat, watching, insubstantial again. The smell of the place was crisp; more Zack’s cologne, which caused Ariadne to cringe, than anything else. It was late in the day, and there was a sound of Ariadne tapping the desk with long fingernails as she spoke. I could taste the head of the pen that she was chewing, the bitter flavor of the plastic filtering through as I watched her gnaw on it. I would have considered it odd that I could taste what she was tasting even as I watched her from outside her body, but this was her memory, not mine, and in truth I only wanted to see what she had seen, I didn’t really care about the finer details.

    “Sorry, what?” Zack asked, blinking across the desk at her.

    “I want you to go to South America to get M-Squad,” Ariadne said, and I realized that this memory I was seeing was long before Zack’s little interlude in the bar, but after his meeting with Old Man Winter where he was told to get close to me. “They’re out of contact trying to wrangle a meta named Aleksandr Gavrikov, and we need them to help settle this Wolfe matter. This is of far more importance than Gavrikov, so I need you to get down there and re-establish contact. Bring them home so we can deal with this … Wolfe situation.”