He was quieted for a moment, one in which I heard Scott shout from the back of the plane, near where the prisoners were trussed up, “We need a par-tay! When we get back.”
“You all right?” Breandan asked.
“Fine,” I said. “Would you go check on Scott? Make sure he’s not too overdone?”
“Sure,” Breandan said, unfastening his seatbelt. “But when I come back, maybe we could discuss hazard pay for this danger you keep thrusting me into—”
“Take it up with Ariadne,” I said, sinking into my seat, a padded one, with a sigh. I thought about pushing the seat rest back, maybe trying to nap, but I wanted to be awake in case I had to pound the stuffing out of a prisoner. I’d considered starting the interrogation right then and there, but the interior space of the plane was too small to start working them over one by one, and I really wanted to get them on an individual basis. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d even have to use my power to sift their memories in order to get what they knew.
I sighed and stood, as I looked back at Scott, gyrating to music only he could hear, a bottle of open champagne in his hand. The prisoners were behind him, strapped to their seats, most of them looking fearful. As telepaths, I suspected they conversed to each other largely through speaking with their minds. Now that they were gagged and Foreman was shutting down their ability to communicate mentally, the six of them were frantic, eyes wide. The Hercules was still out cold, his face a mess. Blood crusted his cheeks below his eyes, and his head was tilted to the side, right-angling his neck. He would definitely have a crick in it tomorrow, and that bothered me none.
“You did well on the Hercules,” came my mother’s voice from my right. She eased into the seat across the aisle that Breandan had just vacated. “I didn’t even get to find out what type my escort was; he came at Karthik a little too hard and I had to put him down.”
“Yeah, well, I knew what to expect,” I said. “Thanks to Adelaide.” I thought about it. “Thanks to Zollers, I guess.”
“What do you mean?” Her face was a little scrunched. She and I hadn’t talked much over the past few months outside of work. If she was interested in more of a relationship with me, time didn’t allow for it. We worked a lot of hours, and almost always it broke down with her leading one team, me leading another. She was good; I couldn’t deny it. It’s why I had left her in charge of the second team rather than letting Karthik lead. She had experience, and it showed.
“I had these visions while I was in London,” I said. “Zollers gave them to me. They were of a succubus named Adelaide who worked for Omega.” I stroked the leather arm of my seat. “She was the one who killed your father.” I looked up at her and saw her surprise. “She drained him in an alley in London on the orders of the Primus.”
My mother’s reaction wouldn’t have been obvious to anyone but me. Her emotion just cut out and she got cold. “When was this?”
“I don’t know. Late eighties sometime, maybe early nineties by then,” I said. “I didn’t get the full story, just a quick shot of the fight.”
“He left on a business trip,” she said slowly, “and never came back.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute. “I have some passing familiarity with how that feels.” I didn’t add any judgment or spite to it, but my mother blanched almost imperceptibly nonetheless.
“Wolfe got me,” she said. “Captured me. I was coming out of the hospital from work one day and saw him, he saw me, and I had a quarter second to run before he was on me. He beat me down, knocked me unconscious. I thought I was dead for sure. I woke up in a warehouse, hanging from the ceiling by a chain. I only barely got out, had to break my own bones to do it.” She smiled bitterly. “I crawled outside and managed to get to a convenience store. A good Samaritan picked me up. I knocked him out by draining him, took his phone and called the Directorate. I was useless, arms broken, couldn’t drive, couldn’t fight, even. I tried to move the car but couldn’t. I just passed out. When I woke up, I knew it had been too long. I was healed. When I got back to the house, you were gone.” The bitter smile faded. “I saw you on the Directorate campus. Once I knew you were safe, I headed for Gillette, Wyoming, where I had a safehouse. Dug a hole in the earth and pulled it in after me.” She leaned her head back against the headrest. “Didn’t come out until someone sent me an email from an anonymous account spilling some of the details of the Andromeda project.”