Power(15)

“Of course you are, chief … err … chiefette … err …” He paused in his circuit around the table, faltering before resuming his course and ending up next to Li’s chair. “I’m just bringing in some data, as requested.” He handed the FBI agent a closed manila folder.

I turned my gaze to Li. “I’m going to assume it’s important.”

Li gave me a look that was flecked with annoyance and contempt. Per usual for him. He opened it, gave it a glance and said, “You assume correctly. Remember that storage locker in Tulsa that Century had?”

“Yes,” I said. “It was the weird thing on that list of safe houses we found for them.”

“Yes.” Li stared at the file in front of him. “The FBI raided it yesterday on my orders.” I heard Scott draw a sharp breath and Li looked over at him without expression. “No casualties. No one there. Just some … peculiar equipment.”

I waited for him to enlighten us, but he just kept looking at the folder. What an ass. “Such as?”

“Not sure,” Li said, and pulled a photo from the file, a little 3 x 5 that he clutched between his fingers before putting it on the table and sliding it toward me. I caught it and lifted it, giving him a look as he kept reading. Janus, sitting directly at my right, caught a glimpse of it as I raised it to look for myself.

I felt a slight snap of surprise. I’d seen this before. It was a black cylinder that looked big enough to hold a person inside. “This looks like …”

“It is,” Janus said, looking down at the smooth surface of the table. “It most assuredly is. Stripped down to the very core components, but … it is.”

“Okay, for those of us not in the special club at the end of the table,” Reed said, “what is it?”

I looked down at the photo again, taking in the smooth lines. “You tell them,” I said to Janus. “I may know what it is, but I don’t have a name for it.”

“It is a piece of technology that Omega developed internally to preserve the body functions of metahumans in a sort of rough stasis,” Janus said, with no enthusiasm.

“And how do you know what it is?” Reed said, giving me a frown. “From your five-second stint as the head of Omega?”

“No,” I said, tearing my eyes away from the stasis chamber. There were chills running over my scalp and down my neck, like I was looking at something vitally important but just couldn’t quite make the leap to how it mattered … yet. “It’s what Andromeda was in when I found her.”





Chapter 8


“Oh, yes,” Reed said, waving his hand in the air. “The mystery of the dead girl that Omega was keeping. I swear, we deal with so many mysteries that I’ve forgotten all the ones I haven’t had answered yet—”

“She was a succubus,” I said, looking up from the picture. “Named Adelaide.” I glanced at Janus and he looked startled. “Mentored by Wolfe. Ordered captured by the old Primus. And then … juiced with power by being forced to drain other metas at Omega’s command.” I kept my eyes on Janus. “Does that sound about right?”

He gave me a slow nod. “Missing a few details, but overall you have it, I’d say.”

“Wow,” Reed said. I saw a similar quality of shock in faces all around the table. “When were you going to mention that?”

“I have been in a coma for several months,” Janus said with a faint air of irritability. “Forgive if I do not rush to offer information that seems completely useless at this juncture. The girl is dead, after all.”

“On Weissman’s orders,” I said.

“So she was supposed to do what Sienna is doing?” Scott asked “Fight Sovereign?”

Janus hesitated. “If need be.”

Scott narrowed his eyes. “I sense there’s more to this than you’re telling us.”

“She was also kept as a possible bribe,” I said. “An attempt to buy off Sovereign.”

“That is what was called ‘Plan B,’” Janus said warily.

“Ah, Omega,” Reed said, blowing air between his lips in barely concealed fury. “You’d never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

“Heh,” J.J. said. “It’s a Star Wars line.” He glanced around the table. “It was a good line. Perfect placement.”

Janus ignored him. “It was not my plan,” he said to Reed. “It was originated by the old Primus, in the time when I was out of Omega’s operational command. I argued most strenuously against it in favor of training a succubus to fight Sovereign instead, but the Primus wanted the truth about incubi and succubi kept secret because—”