Power(10)

I let Ariadne steer. Let her guide me.

We stepped into my office and I noticed the squishing of my shoes, still wet from my plunge in the river. It was chilly, but I didn’t care. I felt nauseous and strong bile threatened to burst out of me. My shirt was clinging, which I was pretty sure was the main reason that the guy who picked me up on the side of the road bothered to stop at all. It was also the reason I rendered him unconscious seconds after getting into the car. The shirt felt clammy against my skin.

“I got your suit dirty,” I said to Ariadne, realizing that her pinstripe suit was sodden where she’d wrapped an arm around me.

“It’s okay,” she said as I sat on my couch.

“My mom,” I said, and my face felt strangely paralyzed, like it wasn’t capable of motion, “did she … was she the one … who … Weissman?”

“It looks that way,” Ariadne said, and she sat down on the couch next to me. Reed was next to the door, and so was Scott. I saw Zollers there, too, barely in the frame.

“She took him out,” I whispered. “How would she have …?” The suspicion came to me, and I glanced at my desk to see the bonsai tree that I’d left there, with a fresh envelope in front of it. “A debt repaid.”

“Shhh,” Ariadne said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

I leaned back against the soft cushions of my couch, and the weight of everything that had happened that evening hit me. My meeting with Akiyama, my fight with Weissman and the Wolfe brothers, my imprisonment, and my discussion with Adelaide … with Andromeda …

Remember.

My eyes felt weary. It had been a long day.

Mom.

I felt my eyes get heavy, again, and I fought back against their urge to water, fought back against the lump that threatened to rise in my throat. I pushed down on myself, flexed my inner muscles and thought of frigid cold until the heat of the emotion faded to a manageable level.

“Weissman’s dead,” I said. “Maybe … maybe without him running the program … maybe Sovereign will change his mind. Call the whole thing off. I’m not sure he has the stomach for doing what he’ll have to now that his right-hand man is out of the game.” I swallowed hard, the mere thought of what had been sacrificed to remove Weissman threatening to make me well up.

“Maybe,” Ariadne conceded. “We don’t have to think about that now. There’s nothing more to be done at this moment.”

“She’s right,” came Zollers’s gentle voice from the doorway. “You should rest.” His words carried the weight of wise suggestion, and I wondered if he’d suggested it with more than just his voice.

“I don’t know if I can sleep,” I said and put my head against the couch. The world tilted sideways.

“You should at least try,” Zollers said and gestured toward the door. “You’ll be right here in your office, and if anything happens, we’ll wake you.”

“I’ll be right outside,” Reed said with a sharp nod, his long, dark hair swaying in agreement with the Doctor’s pronouncement.

“Me too,” Scott said. I looked at him for just a moment, and in his flushed cheeks I saw none of the uncertainty that had plagued him so badly in the last few days. Washed away, I suppose, by the knowledge of what our enemies were doing—had done—to his family. “We’ll keep an eye out and let you know if anything …” His voice trailed off.

“Thank you,” I said, as he disappeared through the door. Zollers followed with a gentle smile, and I knew without him saying anything that we would talk later.

Later. When I could handle it.

“Just call if you need anything,” Ariadne said as she stood, smoothing out the lines of her rumpled skirt. “I’ll be in my office next door.” She pointed a thumb, as though I were too discombobulated to recall where her office was.

“Thank you,” I said, voice a whisper. “Ariadne …” She paused at the door. “Thank you for … everything. Everything since the day I met you. You’ve been … kind to me, even when I wasn’t to you.”

She flicked the light switch, and the scant illumination from the fluorescent bulbs shining through the door and in the cracks of the blinds of the window above the couch where I lay cast the entire office in faint light. She started to open her mouth to say something but stopped. Her face went from a hint of a smile to a moment’s discomfort and settled into unease. “Just rest,” she said, and closed the door as she left.

She’d acted like a mother to me since the day we’d met, protecting me more than once from the machinations of Erich Winter when she could. But she wasn’t my mother.