Rio’s gaze flickered to the doorway, to the bodies that littered the floor outside it.
“I suppose not,” said Dawna. “She does seem to have some unforeseeable skills, our Ms. Russell. Is that why you like her?”
Rio didn’t answer.
“So, a continued mystery,” said Dawna. “I like mysteries in people. I see so few of them. She has no idea, and you aren’t telling me.”
Rio still said nothing. I wanted desperately to ask him what she was talking about.
“I would love to know what you have done to her,” murmured Dawna. “Inspiring such loyalty. Of course, the weakness seems to go both ways.”
“You brought me down here,” said Rio. “What do you want?”
“You, of course,” said Dawna. “I had still thought to harness your power, but unfortunately my colleagues have deemed our lack of success in that area…indicative. The decision has been made that you are a liability with too little potential for turning to an asset.”
“In simpler language, you are going to kill me,” Rio said.
“No,” I breathed. The night couldn’t unfold this way. I couldn’t allow it. I looked at Arthur again; his hand had started to shake, the gun barrel vibrating in tiny tremors as it held me at bay.
Dawna was still ignoring me. “Well. I shall not be the one to kill you myself; I do not have the stomach for such acts.” She moved to the doorway and reached down, retrieving a Taser from one of the fallen troops. “And Mr. Tresting is otherwise occupied at the moment. I think convincing Ms. Russell to do it would take more time and energy than we have here, don’t you? Though the irony would fascinate me. No, I am only going to incapacitate you, and as soon as one of my troops can be spared, the job will be done. I am sorry.”
“Forgive me if I do not quite believe you,” said Rio.
“Oh, you misunderstand,” said Dawna. “I will not be sorry for your death. Neither are you, I think—we both know it is far less than you deserve. But you have proven a most fascinating subject of research. And I do regard it as something of a personal failure that our recruitment efforts have failed in your case.”
“Quite spectacularly so,” agreed Rio.
“I am glad I have been able to speak with you one more time,” said Dawna. “You are indeed fascinating, and in a world filled with the mundane. This may be a victory in a moral sense, but in a scientific one, in the spirit of curiosity, I regret that this is our last conversation.”
Rio opened his mouth to respond, but with no fanfare, Dawna lifted her hand and fired the Taser. Rio jerked, every muscle stiffening, and collapsed.
At that moment, Arthur’s gun hand twitched.
Not far. Not far enough for it to make a difference for anybody else. Not far enough even for anyone to say he wasn’t aimed at me anymore.
But he knew me by now. He had seen what I could do. And the movement was just far enough for me.
I spun in, slipping to the side and snapping my elbow forward to smash into Arthur’s temple. He crumpled. My left hand had his Beretta; it came up and on line in the smallest fraction of a second, the mathematics flowing through me in a torrent, every motion a thousand interacting vectors in space as the sights snapped into alignment and I squeezed my finger against the trigger—
“Oh my God!” shrieked Dawna. “I know what you are!”
Every muscle screeched to a grinding halt. My finger stopped half a millimeter from firing.
Dawna was gazing at me, fearless and searching, Rio prone and forgotten at her feet. I had thought she had seen through me before, felt transparent and naked in front of her, but that was nothing compared to what I saw in her eyes now; she stripped me to the atoms, tearing every last shred of my person from its moorings to be scrutinized and catalogued—she saw the parts of me I didn’t know existed, read me like she had a detailed manual of my soul, tore me apart and undid me until I had no sense of self anymore.
Until this instant, I realized, I had only had an inkling of what her powers could do—with the full weight of her focus drilling into me, driving into the core of my being, I didn’t have the slightest chance against her. Probability zero. She had won.
“I see now,” she whispered, stepping toward me, ignoring the gun I still had pointed at her. “It all makes sense. I should have looked more closely before. But why would I have thought…” She drew closer, less than a meter from me now, and narrowed her eyes slightly. I could see her mind racing behind them, putting together the clues, discovering—finding all the right questions and slotting in the answers just as quickly.
Knowing me. Knowing me.
“You told me everything,” she breathed, more to herself than to me. “Of course you told me everything. Except what you didn’t know yourself. Hidden. So cunningly hidden, even from you.”
“What are you talking about?” I whispered.
“Drop the gun,” she said.
I dropped the gun.
She reached out a hand, almost touching my face but not quite. “It’s brilliant work,” she said. “Seamless. It had to be one of us. So much makes sense now. Your relationship with Sonrio. Why you’re more resistant to me. All your…abilities.”
“Tell me what the hell you’re talking about,” I demanded, but my voice was a croak, with no strength in it.
Dawna ignored me. “I know where you’re from,” she said, almost wonderingly. “I wonder what would happen if you knew. If you remembered.”
Remembered what?
Dawna smiled, a predatory showing of teeth. “Let us start with an easy one. Sonrio. The degree to which you trust him is frankly insane. Where did you meet him?” She spoke as if she already knew the answer.
“He saved me,” I said through stiff lips. Everything was starting to go off-balance, the world canting like it wanted to make me seasick, the numbers that always surrounded me bleeding together in a nonsensical, blurred mass.
“Saved you?” said Dawna. “From what?”
“From…” Flashes collided in my vision, as if I were in two places at once. Red tiles, and people in white coats.
The room tilted, inverting, stretching and eliding, wrong. My senses whirled, bleeding together and at the same time painfully acute, my consciousness freezing and spiking and stiffening into numbness—
The roar of a helicopter exploded outside the windows. I felt barely aware of it even as it shook me apart, the thunder of it engulfing us, the beam of a searchlight blanching everything into stark whiteness. Dawna looked up. The muffled boom of a megaphone clogged the air, someone shouting unintelligibly, and out of the corner of my eye I saw more troops materialize at the door—why were they here, hadn’t she sent them all after Checker, had they found him?—but they were angry, their report grim, and Dawna whipped back toward me, her face filled with fury, and I thought, He did it, Checker did it!
And then Dawna was on me, grabbing my collar and shouting, her face inches from mine. “Millions will die because of you! Is that what you wanted? Is it?”
Behind her, Rio rose from the floor like a phoenix, his duster flying behind him, moving so fast that the rest of the world seemed to crystallize into slow motion. Dawna’s troops tried to bring their weapons up, but they were too late.
Dawna had just enough time to shout one word, her eyes blazing, her face filling my vision:
“Remember.”
The world fractured.
My senses fragmented like shattered glass, scattering, my brain erupting with too many thoughts—I saw Rio, in another time and place, staring down at me—the wet green of a jungle morphed into steel and chrome and rows of windows showing a white winter sky—another man, a young man with handsome dark features, called to me insistently and earnestly—I raced through the darkness, the bark of automatic weapons fire thundering around me, traps at every corner, and I was avoiding them all, and it was exhilarating, I was winning, but somehow it wasn’t enough; I was failing—