“Although if you’re going to waterboard, it could be worse.” He struggled in the hard metal chair, and when the two soldiers with helmets concealing their identities finished securing him in chains like an interrogation prisoner behind the table, they left and gave him a chance to breathe — and assess the situation.
He certainly hadn’t seen this coming.
Should have.
I’ve never missed something this big before.
Indeed, his entire life had been plagued with visions of every bad thing that was about to happen or that would eventually happen to him. In time, he had learned to prepare — and thwart the outcomes he had reluctantly seen, but this time…Nothing.
All the visions, not to mention corroborating fieldwork and intelligence, had pointed to a huge success. Not this crushing setback. That this one psychic, Boris, had that power to subvert his sight, was astonishing. That lone man couldn’t have done all this himself.
The door opened, and the last person he expected walked in.
Although, I shouldn’t be surprised.
Miriam Agreson. Miriam the inscrutable. Miriam the deadly, apparently.
“So it was you,” he said.
In a smart blue power suit he had seen on her before, she crossed her arms and slowly shook her head. “The great Mason Calderon. How you’ve fallen.”
The way she said the name of his late host gave Montross a chill, and a pause. He kept his mouth shut for now. Let her do the talking.
“Yet of course, dear Senator, you know the public has what they want now. You’re the goat, and all your past sins will now come to light.”
He looked up, frowning. She wouldn’t dare. Might as well play along. “Never,” he said in his best Calderon voice. Confident, arrogant. “The people I work for, the people who set me on that path—”
“Are my people too,” Miriam said with a sly grin. “Yes, but of late, they have come to the conclusion that you…how to say this? Aren’t quite yourself anymore?”
Montross swallowed hard, but tried to recover and not give away confirmation. Glanced around, hoping for cameras that weren’t there, for help that wouldn’t be coming. “What bullshit are you—?”
“You can drop it, Xavier. We know.” She pulled out the chair opposite him and poured herself quietly into it. Folded her hands together, crossed her legs and fixed her steely gray eyes on him.
Montross let out a thin sigh. “Who the hell are you?”
“All your powers, all the visions from your friends — if you asked for their help? Couldn’t dig up anything?”
“You know I couldn’t,” Montross said. “That was my mistake, continuing with my plans even though a major unknown was right in the room with me every time.”
Miriam shrugged innocently. “And not just me, you know, but we’ll get to that. Right now, I think you’ve been briefed before your…incarceration. You know what’s happened to your precious team.”
He grit his teeth. “No, I don’t. Not specifically.” Control your anger, he thought, but it wasn’t working. This was new to him, being on the opposite end of intimidation. “All I know is you were somehow behind this. You gave us false visions.”
Miriam raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” Montross said, “I’m making a not-so-huge leap here that you know what I am. What the people I work with are, and…”
“How you got your information? All your intelligence. Your oh-so-secret resource.”
“Yeah. So somehow you fed us the ultimate disinformation in the form of visions we could believe. Got us to massacre those kids. The nuns. Innocents.”
Miriam’s expression never changed.
“So now what?” Montross looked at himself, his hands in chains. “Two birds with one big rock? Brought your senator down as well. Made him your fall guy.”
“He was no longer in our services. That much was clear. And his crimes, once brought out into the open, were admittedly unforgivable.”
Montross met her eyes and gave a smile of his own. “At least I stopped that son of a bitch. And if your plans and his were in line, well, that sucks for you.”
Miriam nodded, but her look softened. “Granted, but there were those among us who never wanted such a…drastic endgame. Calderon accelerated the time frame and took on his own plans of megalomania and immortality. His dreams were contagious, and he got the right people backing him. And…well, he played by the rules.”
“The rules?”
“You must know something of the enemy you face. The ones who, by and large, limit their interference directly in our affairs.”
“Oh, so you’re not one of them? Just a lackey?”
Her smile faded. “What you don’t know, despite all your efforts and your powers to see under every rock and into every crevasse, could fill terabytes.”
The light overhead gave off an electric hum that Montross could hear now, unnervingly loud like a buzzing fly just out of reach. “So, what’s next? What do you want from me? Besides obviously touting me about as the villain of the century?”
“Oh, you’ll never get out into the public eye again. Far too dangerous, you understand. You and your kind, you’ll be kept in solitary or in induced comas somewhere no Civil Liberties Union or rich defense lawyers will ever touch you.”
“Ah, of course.” Montross started calculating options, thinking of possibilities, not coming up with much. He needed time, time to think and see, truly see the future and what it held for him.
“Right now you’re thinking if you could only trust your visions, then maybe you could see a way out of this. But that’s just it, isn’t it?” She leaned forward on the table, dangerously close. “Trust?”
“Actually,” Montross lied, deciding to switch gears, “I’m thinking about how stupid you and your exalted masters must be, believing you have a chance.”
She said nothing.
“I mean, aren’t you part of the losing team? You got your collective asses kicked millennia ago, if I understand the legends right. You had your chance, and you blew it. The good guys — maybe they couldn’t or wouldn’t defeat you utterly — but they made damn sure you couldn’t get the weapons and tools you wanted. Hid the Emerald Tablet away good. And then, more recently your pals gave it another sad attempt, and again they blew it.”
“Perhaps, but maybe not. You and I, with our meager life spans, we don’t — can’t — comprehend the strategies of these minds. Plans that have been evolving as long as the human race has taken to evolve.”
“If you say so.” Montross leaned back, clicking his teeth. “I still say it’s all bullshit. All you have is desperation, and you will always underestimate your enemy. You try to wipe us out, but fail, and can only resort to keeping the rest of humanity in the dark, in ignorance, conflict, poverty and pain.”
“Patience. We’ve just finished step one. Which is getting you, the opponent’s most valuable piece, off the game board.”
Montross smiled suddenly as his mind shifted and plucked something from the ether. Just a fragmentary vision. A face, a pair of eyes, oh so familiar. Oh so deadly.
Nina. She’s coming.
Just keep her talking. “Well done, then. Hope you’re prepared to handle the poor pawns remaining on the board.”
Miriam’s eyes flickered, and he knew she sensed something. “What are you hiding? Did you see something that might be of interest?”
Montross allowed himself a grin. “Nah, just your death…” He played at struggling with his bonds, giving Miriam the illusion that he was working at the obvious when he pulled his attention away, turning it inward.