I watched my hand, hovering just above the holster on my belt, and I let it drift down to stroke the leather covering my new Sig Sauer. I was faster now. I was stronger. I could take more damage and shrug it off, assuming it wasn’t a fatal blow. Put in the same situation Li had forced me into a few months ago, now I might have been able to survive his firing squad if I fought back.
But would I?
I felt my palm drift over the rough grip of my pistol, and then jerked my hand away as if I’d been burned, just for considering the idea. Killing people who were sent to apprehend me in the name of the law was …
It was murder.
It was wrong.
And yet that had never stopped me before.
I let my eyes fall from the mirror, not liking what I saw there, and felt my hand go right back to resting above my holster as I left the room, as naturally as if it were coming home.
Chapter 23
“We got problems,” I said as I strode into the conference room. Everybody was assembled and waiting, and no one bothered to get up to meet me as I came in.
“What else is new?” Reed said from his place down the table.
“Well, Li is down with that arm wound,” I said, “and most of Century appears to have decided it’s now okay to kill me, to hell with Sovereign’s wishes to the contrary.” I stopped at my place at the head of the table and sunk my knuckles down onto the flat, cool surface. I could hear the air conditioning churning overtime above me, that faint humming noise that I usually didn’t even notice. “So, that’s new. Oh, and the entire meta world is probably going to get outed in the press in the next few weeks.”
“Wait, what?” Scott said, blinking a little. He’d looked so relaxed a moment earlier.
“The president’s plans for countering Sovereign include briefing a much wider group of people than has previously been aware of metas,” I said. My gaze slid over Ariadne, who looked a little stunned, then to Janus, whose jaw had clenched. “They think it’s going to break soon.”
“Yay, our secret war is about to get exposed,” Reed said without any humor. “Maybe now we can get some soldiers on our side and start fighting it like it’s a real one.”
“The freeway thing felt pretty real to me,” Kat said. I glanced at her, sitting next to Janus. She looked pale. Which meant she’d probably used her powers to heal someone. I doubted it was me, since I’d still been a physical wreck missing skin when I’d woken up, so that probably meant she’d triaged and helped someone else. Maybe J.J. “But I haven’t been in many wars, I guess.”
“This changes things somewhat,” Zollers said, staring at me with cool eyes.
“Not really.” I shook my head. “I want to find a way to win this war before the word gets out.”
“Sure, killing eighty or so more metas, including the most powerful one in the world in the next few days with just us? Easy peasy,” Reed said. “And for my next trick, I’m going to make the entire Rocky Mountain range disappear.”
“That could work,” Scott said with a semi-serious expression. “Get enough pot smoke floating around in Colorado and—”
“Century,” I said. “They’re going to come at us. We need to flatten them, and do it now.”
There was an uncomfortable exchange of looks around the table. “Sienna,” Reed said, stepping up to break the news for me. “We don’t know what they’re planning. We don’t know where they’re planning to do it. All the hidey-holes we had for them have dried up—”
“Where is Weissman’s computer?” I asked, cutting him off. “We were on our way to the airfield to pick it up when we got hit. Where is it now?”
“J.J. has it,” Ariadne said. “Li got the FBI to send it over. We found some interesting things too, things that might explain your attack.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“Century has a bunch of civilian drones buzzing around here,” Reed said with a sour look. “They’ve been keeping us under surveillance.”
I frowned. “Like … Predator drones?”
“Much smaller,” Reed said. “I took a few of them out; they’re only about the size of a manhole cover, and they sell them on the internet or in retailers. They’re supposed to be for fun—” He paused. “Because I can’t think of anything more fun than spying on your neighbors.”
Scott pursed his lips. “It could be fun, depending on your neighbors.”
“Gross,” Kat said.
“Try and imagine how it is for those of us who get a full psychic blast of those sort of events, whether we want them or not,” Zollers said, giving her a glance full of deep and yucky, yucky, yucky meaning.