The chill covered me from his words. Fifty metas could level the Directorate campus to the ground. What little army the Directorate had left had zero chance against fifty metas, even if their only power was their super strength, speed, reflexes…“And what are you going to do with your fifty metas?”
Janus smiled again, this one less patronizing, and it faded just as quickly as it came. “I’m going to do exactly what you think I’m going to do with them.
“I’m going to destroy the Directorate. Permanently.”
24.
“You said you weren’t going to kill anyone.” I felt a quiver run through me and down the gunbarrel. I looked over it at Janus, calm, cool, composed, and watched him smile again.
“I’m not going to kill anyone, nor allow anyone to intentionally come to harm, not today,” Janus said, cupping his hands one over the other. “I don’t need to. Destroying the Directorate isn’t a matter of killing someone, or everyone. I’m going to destroy your campus—just as I’m destroying every other Directorate campus in North America, even as we speak—and I’m going to leave your people with a warning that the next time you cross Omega, then,” he said, and the smile vanished, leaving me cold, “then I will begin the killing.”
“And you made such a point of differentiating yourself from the people who sent Wolfe, and Henderschott, and Fries,” I looked at him with a kind of feigned disappointment. “You’re not any different.”
“Oh, but I am,” he said, and the smile returned. “I don’t like killing. But that doesn’t mean I hesitate to employ it when necessary. The company you keep has thwarted us on several occasions—our Primus would, of course, like you to come with me, but he’s been convinced now of the importance of gaining your cooperation, making you understand your importance, your place in things to come. I’m not threatening you. I come to you openhanded—delivering a message by destroying your organization, true, but not out of malice for you, rather for what your organization has done.” His face darkened. “You have no idea what damage you’ve allowed by letting Andromeda escape, by getting her killed. The new guard was content to give your Directorate a slap on the wrist by wiping your agents out until you did that. Once Andromeda went loose,” he said with a quiet shake of his head, “it was…how do you say it? All bets were off.”
“What is it about that girl?” I asked. “What is it about her that has you so…has everybody so…edgy?”
“Andromeda was the future,” Janus said. “That project was our hope, our weapon, our chance to defeat an enemy monstrous in their application of force. I know you’ve heard it said that there is a storm coming, that you’ve heard others tell you of the threat to us, to all of us, and I am here to tell you that it’s only partially true. Humans are safe; they have little to fear from what comes. For now, at least. The Directorate is not our enemy, you see, they were but a buzzing fly. And you know what you do to a fly, yes?”
“Please say catch them with honey,” I said. “Because I’m getting tired of this manure.”
“This is more like vinegar,” he said. “The truth always is. I laid the trail for you myself, so you could see I went to Shenzen after the murder of the Chinese metas. They were wiped out, to the last. The government soldiers guarding them were all killed, or rendered so useless of mind and body as to be unwhole human beings for the rest of their lives. India was no different, and even now, across Africa, and the rest of Asia, it continues, the extermination, the destruction of our race—on a smaller scale, one at a time, because there are no cloisters there.” He looked grim now, deadly serious, “and it will spread, and grow, across all the continents, until the last of us are dead and in our graves. They who perpetrate this? They…are our enemy. Your Directorate is nothing more than a fly that I have had to take a month out of my schedule to swat. After tomorrow, I won’t think of your Directorate again. I will only think of you, and I will be waiting for the day when you join us, as surely you must.”
I laughed, at his face, from fifteen feet away. “You think I’ll join you? You’re talking about destroying my home, threatening my friends with death if we don’t disband, and you think I’ll…what? Come find you in six months asking if I can join your special club?”
He gave me a noncommittal shrug. “I’d be surprised if it’s more than a month. But then, I know things that you don’t.”
“I.Will. Never. Join. You.” I let each word come out with emphasis, and I re-centered my pistol on him, cocking it. “But I’m going to put you in a cell now, then I’m going to get to work checking out how many metas you actually brought with you—”
“Check your phone,” he said, with that little bit of a smile, and I forgot I was still holding it. “No tricks, I’m not compelling you to do anything, just suggesting that there might be information that you don’t yet have.” He smiled enigmatically.
I pulled the phone up after a moment of wrestling with my mind over whether I should. I thumbed the messages and the next came up, this one from J.J.:
Over fifty, REPEAT, over fifty enemy metas presently in continental United States based on analysis of passport batches.
I looked up and saw that smile, and I didn’t know whether to scream or put a bullet in him. “The case for letting you live while I’ve got fifty other metas to deal with is not one based on logic.” I faltered. “How did you know about the message?”
“Mmm,” Janus said, cringing, “now, you see, this is where the truth is really going to hurt.” He held up a hand and slowly put it in his pocket, bringing it out with a cell phone identical to mine.
“Looks like a Directorate phone,” I said. “What, did you hack it? Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head in amusement. “I’m nowhere near clever enough to manage that. No, it was given to me by one of your own.” He flipped it over, and the sight of the pink otter box case gave me a shudder. “Come out,” he called, “she knows it’s you, now.”
The door to his left slid open, the one to the room we had all stood in while watching Clary and Old Man Winter interrogate Madigan. Other doors slid open, too, the one to Bjorn’s cell, and Madigan’s, and behind Janus, so did Fries’. My eyes weren’t on any of them.
My eyes were on Kat Forrest, who strode out of the watchroom in a dark blue jumpsuit, her hair pulled back, and wearing an impish smile that didn’t fit the demure, quiet girl I had known for almost the entire time I’d been at the Directorate. “You?” I asked. “You betrayed us, Kat?”
“I’m not Kat,” she said with a sour smile, one that truly reminded me of a cheerleader, all sneer and no sweetness. “I’m Klementina—or as near to it as you’ll get.”
I felt the stir of Aleksandr Gavrikov in the back of my head and ignored him. “You still had a human personality when I saw you a couple days ago,” I said, drawing a bead on her as she took position at Janus’s side.
“Oh, Sienna,” she said with a slight laugh, “don’t act so wounded. I don’t remember you coming to visit me in the medical unit after you brought me in; unless I missed it, being absent as I was the last day or so. I still remember the things Kat remembered, the things that weren’t lost while I was trying to save your life, Reed’s life…” she let her voice drop precipitously, “…Scott’s life.”
I felt a sour taste in my mouth, a bitterness. “We were friends.”
“Don’t friggin’ kid yourself,” she said, and there was none of Kat’s sweetness there. “We were never friends.”
“Klementina, dear,” Janus said as she rubbed up against him in a manner that 1) I was sure was meant to make me vomit and 2) would have been really appropriate for ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE, EVER, “would you kindly let James, Bjorn and Eleanor out of their cages?”