“What else would you like me to say?” I put a little heat on my question. As if there was anything I could do about all this?
“How about an explanation?” Reed said, firing back with a little heat of his own. “You disappeared off the face of the earth! I left for Rome for a few days and when I get off the plane, they show me satellite imagery that the Directorate is in rubble.” He thumped his chest with an open palm. “I thought you were dead!”
I stared back at him, stunned. “You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” Reed asked, leaning forward. “I don’t know anything! I left to get help, and when they told me the Directorate was destroyed, I assumed you’d call me.” He lowered his voice. “When I didn’t hear from you, I figured you were dead.” The last word came out as a hushed whisper.
“I’m not dead,” I said numbly. “Almost no one died in the attack on the Directorate. Sessions, Perugini, I think. Scott was already gone; he took off after Kat couldn’t remember him. Kat,” I said, almost rambling as the emotions of that night came back full force, “she betrayed us to Omega. Resumed her … earlier personality.” I watched Reed’s jaw drop slightly in shock. “But Omega held back. Janus didn’t aim to kill anyone, the ones that died did so by accident. He was just there to knock us over. It was …” I swallowed heavily. “After they were done, Winter …” I felt a twitch in my eye, even after the week or more that had passed since it happened. “It doesn’t matter. Zack’s dead,” I said numbly. “So’s M-Squad.”
“What?” Reed’s head shook as he blinked away surprise. “I thought you said almost no one died in the attack.” He paused, and got quiet, and I felt his hand brush against mine in a reassuring stroke. “I’m sorry about Zack. How did it … how did he …?”
I thought about lying. Part of me wanted to. “Winter,” I said, and Reed’s neck bent to the side as he cocked his head at me, brow furrowed with concern. “Winter killed him. With M-Squad’s help.”
“Holy shit,” Reed breathed. “And they—”
“Like I said,” I cut him off, “they’re dead.”
Slow understanding dawned on him and his head slowly dipped back as he leaned against the back of his chair. “Did you …?”
I couldn’t meet his gaze. “I did it, yeah.”
“God, Sienna …”
I let a silence hang between us like a curtain. “I almost got Winter, too,” I said, “but he got away.” I looked up at him. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’m sorry I didn’t … dreamwalk to you or something.”
“Why didn’t you?” he asked, leaning forward again, his hand resting on the sleeve of my clothing. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I bit my bottom lip to keep it from quivering and waited to steady myself before I spoke. “I didn’t want … to admit what they did. And after I did what I did … I didn’t want to admit that to anyone, either.” I looked at him and felt my eyes water. “I’ve killed people, Reed. A lot of them, lately. Not all of them deserved it.” I felt my arm shake under his grasp. “It’s like I can’t stop, like I can’t control myself. I don’t know if it’s me, or Wolfe—I don’t even know if there’s a line between us anymore!” I heard a quaver in my voice. “When he says to kill someone, it’s like I just start moving without thinking.” I brought my other hand up to my face to cover it, as though I could hide from him. “I … killed the Primus of Omega.”
There was a shocked silence. “You … did what?”
I pulled my hand away and looked at him. “I killed the Primus of Omega. I beat him to death in his own office.”
He frowned. “Is that why they appointed the new one? Rick?”
I shook my head. “No. That’s the one I killed.”
Reed took a sharp breath. “Oh, wow. We didn’t even know that he was dead.”
“It just happened yesterday.” I brushed some of the dampness from my cheek with my sleeve. “He was trying to intimidate me by talking about how powerful he was, how insignificant I was, and I just snapped and … beat him to death.”
There was a quiet for a moment after that, and when I looked at Reed’s face, I could see he was trying to come up with something reassuring to say. “You know, Omega’s not exactly an organization built on sweetness and light. If this Rick was running the show, he was not a good guy. I wouldn’t lose a lot of sleep over it if I were you.”