“Please don’t tell anyone,” J.J. said, almost begging. “I just…wanted to see how it happened. I mean,” he blushed, “I’m still a little raw at Mormont, if you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, concentrating on the screen. “Is this video or stillframe?”
“Video.” He pushed a button on the keyboard and the picture started to move. Zollers fired and Mormont reacted to the impact of the bullets, falling to the ground. J.J. blushed again. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t tell anyone you’re watching a snuff film,” I said, frowning at the display. “Though that is a little creepy.” I looked at Zollers standing there, gun in hand. “Can you rewind?”
“Huh?” He looked at me blankly. “Oh, sure. You want to watch it again?” He let a little half-smile show. “I’ve watched it like twenty times myself.”
I stared at him, mouth slightly open and my eyes crinkled in disgust. “Ew. No. I want you to rewind and show me where Zollers came from. Are there other cameras?”
He turned back to the computer, his face scarlet. “Yeah, yeah, just gimme a…” His fingers danced across the keys and we were treated to a shot of the hallway of the training center, and Dr. Zollers walking backward in rewind, then J.J. changed cameras again and we saw him walk out the front door. The cameras followed him. They were planted all over the Directorate, as we traced his path backward across the lawn and to his office, where a camera caught him sitting alone in front of his desk. I watched the time roll back a minute, then two, as he sat there, seeming to stare off into space. “What’s he doing?” J.J. muttered under his breath, and he pushed a button, letting the picture return to the normal flow of time.
“Looks like he’s just sitting there,” I said, watching him. He had a simple rolltop desk, pushed against the wall – no computer, just Dr. Zollers, sitting, head resting with his fingers against his temples. “Would he know about the cameras?”
“Uh, no,” J.J. said, “and neither should you. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I’ve got some leverage on the bosses, but let’s not push this thing, okay? Don’t tell them I showed you this.”
“My lips are stapled shut,” I said, watching Zollers on the screen. I watched as his hands left his temples and he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a gun.
“That’s weird,” J.J. said as I stopped leaning over his shoulder and stood up over him, a cold chill running through me. “What’s he doing? How did he know to get his gun? I mean, you know, it’s like he walked straight to—”
I slipped my hands out of my gloves and balled one of them up, shoving it hard into J.J.’s mouth to keep him from crying out as I pressed my bare hand against his cheek. He made a noise that was lost amidst the chatter of the cubicle rows and I held tight to him until I felt him lose consciousness. I leaned him back in his seat facing the computer and hoped that no one would notice him until later. Much later.
I kept my calm as I left the headquarters building and didn’t start running until after I was out the front doors. I jogged across campus, trying to remain calm inside, trying to act like any one of the other people I’d seen run across the campus in the time I’d been there. They did it for their health, though; I was doing it for someone else’s.
I walked to the door I had been through a hundred times, a thousand times, it felt like. I opened it and found myself in the quiet waiting room of Doctor Quinton Zollers, M.D. The fish tank bubbled in the corner, a steady stream of noise that I usually found calming when in concert with the wood-paneled walls. I paced across the carpet to the far door and I hesitated before knocking, my hand raised, ready to descend, when a voice came from behind it, muffled, yet clear. Just like the first time.
“Sienna Nealon. Come right in.”
I swallowed heavily, reached into my waistband and withdrew the gun hiding there, felt it cool, gripping my hand, and stepped through the door.
Chapter 25
“Hello,” Dr. Zollers said once I was in the room, his dark complexion standing out against the blue sky showing through the window behind him. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“I kinda figured that,” I said. “You know why, don’t you.”
His expression was cool, but there was a hint of levity in his eyes. “You suspect.”
I nodded. “You’re a meta.”
“I am.” He kept his infuriating calm. “Always have been.”
“You’re a telepath.” The words sounded incredible as they came out.
“Which makes my career in psychiatry all the more fascinating, wouldn’t you say?” He smiled, and made his way over to the chair that he always sat in for our sessions. “Why don’t you…have a seat?”
“Okay,” I said, though I really didn’t want to.
“And you don’t need that,” he said, nodding at the gun in my hand.
“All right,” I answered, and started to put it away but hesitated. I felt an internal tension rising, and wanted to scream at myself not to put the gun back in the holster at my back. “Why would I listen to you?” I asked him, my head rising as I looked him in the eyes and felt a slight tremor in my body.
“It’s just good manners, really,” he said, and I caught a hint of weariness. “And you might consider the fact that I saved your life the other night.”
“Why?” I asked, and I felt myself slip my gun back into the holster. “How?”
“I knew Mormont was bent all along,” Zollers said calmly, his fingers steepled. “It was proving it without revealing myself that was the problem. You ever try to frame someone for being a traitor? It’s not easy, apparently, even when they are. He didn’t tend to keep any real evidence on hand, and certainly not for long enough for me to nail him on it. Not without suspicion falling on me, anyway.” He let a slight smile crease his face. “And I couldn’t have that.”
“So…” My mind raced, struggling to put things together. “…you’re like some benevolent meta, working to try and help us, protect us from threats like Mormont?”
“Hardly,” Zollers said, and the deep tone of his voice, always so soothing, so reassuring, carried enough of something else that it made me worry – just a little. “I work for…another party.”
“Omega?” I asked, feeling the chill grow.
“No,” he said with little stir. “Omega is a group of toddlers crashing through sandcastles for all their subtlety when compared to my employers.” His usual smile was faded, laced with regret. “They’re fearsome, the people I work for, and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word. You should be afraid of them. Very afraid.”
“Why?” I asked, feeling almost paralyzed. “Omega has been after me since the day I left my house. They’ve sent Wolfe after me, Henderschott, James, and those vampires—”
“These people are worse,” Zollers said without blinking. “And they don’t want you alive, like Omega.” His voice softened. “They want you dead.”
I felt my mouth dry out as I stared at the man I had trusted with as many of my secrets as anyone else. “You were going to kill me that night with Mormont.”
“I was supposed to,” Zollers said, and I saw a well of emotion within him. “But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it.” I saw wetness at the corners of his eyes and he bowed his head. “They’ll send someone else,” he said, and his eyes came back up, trying to impart seriousness to me. “Next time they’ll send someone harder, someone who won’t be as subtle. My mission was always infiltration, but they have worse. Stone killers, most of them, human and meta, and they won’t hesitate. They’ll die to kill you, if need be.” There was no smile now, just a haunted look in his eyes.
“They were the ones who killed Andromeda,” I breathed. “You betrayed us to them when she was killed.”