Archon's Queen (35 page)

arkness.

Anna floated amid a void of whispers with no sense of temperature, scent, or weight. Random images flashed through the canvas of her thoughts, inane things like cartoon rabbits and car tires. A grinning blond Arsenal player held his hands up as a crowd screamed
goal!
Old farms and tractors, planes, people she had never seen before came one after the next. The whispering voices asked questions without waiting for the answer: what time is it, what’s your name, who is that, do you remember your mother, how far a ride is it to the West End from Trafalgar, what did you have for breakfast four Sundays ago?

She felt her lungs lose air, and the moan of her voice rose over the din in her skull. Her toes made contact with a surface smooth and cold, icy metal against the back of her legs. Thin coarse material itched at her chest and thighs, a smock of sorts, and a band of dense fabric had been tied over her eyes. Something seemed to squeeze itself around the top of her head, beneath the blindfold, tight to her skin.

Consciousness returned and she struggled to move. Metal restraints fixed her by the wrists and ankles to a steel chair; softer straps crossed an X over her chest and held her body against the back. Her squirming reawakened tender spots where darts had hit her and she whimpered. Chains rattled as she fought to get loose, shackles biting into her flesh. She rocked as she fought the straps, trying to lean her head toward her hand so she could pull the cloth from her face. Her desperate struggle caused the heavy chair to slide a little.

Swirls of fear and anger followed her realization of being trapped, echoed soon after by threads of pain seeping into her mind. A hot metal headband clamped about her skull as if trying to squeeze through the skin to the underlying bone, the burning intensified with her fear. The little thing in the back of her mind leapt at the walls of a cage, zapped each time it tried to touch the bars.

The more frightened she became, the more it hurt. She threw her weight forward, trying to lift the chair and get onto her feet, but she lacked the strength to budge it. The noise of her battle reverberated into the distance; the cavernous echo suggested she was the only occupant of a massive structure.

She sat there, writhing in her bindings, with no clue where she was. The cavernous space remained deathly silent, save for the clatter of restraints whenever she tried to move. It occurred to her that she had been taken by the CSB. She thrashed against the cuffs again, overwhelmed by the uncontainable need to feel the side of her neck for proof she had not been cut open and rigged with a kill switch. Metal bit into her wrists and ankles. She screamed from pain and frustration.

Minutes later, she sagged limp, out of breath, and ventured a timid, “Hello?”

Her voice reverberated to silence. She could not lean forward at all, and twisted her head about despite the blindfold. The incessant random whispering hammered her mind.

“Stop it!” she screamed. “Let me out! I’m going mad!”

Another burst of energy dissipated in impotent squirming, and she broke down and sobbed. Every time her fear got the better of her, the metal ring around her head delivered such a jolt of pain she found herself drooling. The whispers and random images continued, reaching a point where they changed her fearful struggle for freedom into a manic and desperate attempt to make it stop.

Eventually, the sound of scuffing boots broke through the mental noise. Anna stopped moving, her limbs tensing inward as far as the chains allowed. A sense of bodies surrounded her, and she trembled. Whatever garment they had put on her felt like it covered enough, but being stared at in silence by people she could not see was more intolerable than being naked in a cage. The random whispered questions changed into comments about her height, about her tits, about how cute her hair was. The scratchy voices teased her that she found her helplessness exciting, told her she liked it, called her a bad girl. It needled her as if drawing upon her insecurities and throwing them back at her.

The chair leapt an inch to the rear at her reaction to a cup pressed against her lip. Someone offered her water. It smelled normal, so she drank. When the cup retreated, a soft plastic object entered her mouth and forced her jaw open. Contorting in the chair, she tried to get away from it. Hands grabbed her head from behind, holding her still while a swab danced around the inside of her cheek, making her gag.

The mechanism relaxed, and she coughed. “Who the hell are you people? What is this?”

No one answered.

A spot of cold metal touched her right bicep, below the short sleeve of the smock. She made a fist and gasped as an air-hypo fired, again thrashing in her seat.

“Let me out this instant!”

The anger that followed her shout grew into a scream from the incredible pain the band projected into her head. Her body writhed, shaking with involuntary spasms as four shackles bit into her flesh. When her brain unclenched from the sensation of being cooked, she put together that her ‘little friend’ appeared to be triggering the device every time it tried to do something.

That’s got to be some kind of psionic leash… Damn it hurts.

Attempting to stay calm in her current situation was an order that would have been a tall request of a Buddhist monk. A tear ran down her face as she prepared herself to feel the pain repeatedly. James’s explanation of the Awakened recited itself through her head. She was afraid to mention how her power ran away with itself. It would give her away as something strange. She had to stay quiet―if she could.

Men shuffled about amid the clatter of armor and rifles. Fingers slipped between the black cloth and her temple, and the blindfold flew up and off with a sharp tug. Looming over her, the burly bald man offered a bemused smile and picked at his dark goatee.

She found herself in a prison-yellow smock, handcuffed arm and leg to a rigid metal chair in the approximate center of an old hangar. The floor was equal parts grey paint and rusty smear; the ceiling hung thirty feet in the air, dotted with old gas lamps that no longer worked. Intense beams of light focused on her from a horseshoe of freestanding portables, reducing the dozen or so men behind them to figments of shadow and menace. Anna squinted; they looked like British military, common soldiers.

Some manner of springy cord wrapped around her, the kind of thing she assumed commandos used to rappel down the side of buildings. The entire scene blurred as her head moved, swooning about like the aftermath of a drinking binge. Outside, a hovercar passed overhead, the pale blue glow of its ion drives leaked through cracks in the ceiling, angling as it went by.

Anna’s head sagged forward and she stared at the redness she had fought into her wrists. Digital code-locked restraints blinked back at her, she found it frightening not to sense the current inside them. She twisted her hand, trying to get a better look at the buttons.

“They’re quite secure, Miss Morgan. You’ll not be going anywhere until we’ve had a chat.”

“I have a headache and I don’t even know who you are.” She let her skull’s weight drag it back against the chair to look up at him. “Thank you for at least letting me stay dressed.”

He flashed a two-second smile before all mirth faded. “I am CSB Agent Gordon, and that is a military psi-inhibitor. You may be wondering why you cannot read my mind, assuming of course, telepathy is one of your gifts… This little beauty keeps us on the same playing field.”

His finger tapped the thin strip, sending a reverberating explosion through her head three times. Anna’s hand clanked to a halt an inch above the armrest when she tried to cradle the side of her head in response to pain.

“It will hurt more if you touch it… security mechanism. Anyway, Miss Morgan, you are probably wondering why we asked you to join us at such an ungodly hour.”

“This is asking? I’d hate to see if you made demands.”

“Mind your chelp, girl. We know.” The large man extended his hand to the right as if indicating something existed in open air.

Anna lifted her head, about to inquire about the empty space when a hologram shimmered into existence. A six-foot square panel scrolled open in midair, a hole through reality looking into another time and place. The view looked down from the ceiling into a small room with a round table and chair. A little girl, about twelve, sat at the table looking bored. The only remarkable thing about her was that she had white hair. She glanced up at the camera; bruises on her face brought back bad memories.

“I am interested in your opinion, Annabelle.” He folded his hands behind his back. “Does this look like a little girl who has just seen her father die in a freak kitchen accident?”

The child Anna fidgeted, tapped, and folded her arms. She swung her feet for a moment while scowling at the wall. If anything, she looked annoyed at being detained. When the door opened and a constable walked in, her demeanor changed. She sniffled and wiped her eyes, thanking him for whatever hot drink he had brought for her.

“You’ve had a lot of practice fooling the Met.” The bald man chuckled, leaving the image frozen on crocodile tears. “We’ve been watching you for quite some time. For a while there, we thought you were on to us.”

Red warmth filled her cheeks, the indignity of being caught in a lie. Somewhere behind her, a metal door slid open and footsteps approached.

The image changed to a floating point of view gliding over sheet-covered bodies. Silver cabinets gave away the reflection of a flying holo-recorder moving through a morgue; the only body uncovered was her father’s. She glanced away, whimpering from revulsion and guilt. The same hands that held her head for the cheek swab, grabbed her again, forcing her to watch. She twisted, biting her lip as her already raw ankles burned.

Zooming in on a hairy leg, the claw-shaped image of a reddened handprint stood out clear on his outer left thigh. Anna squirmed, trying to look away.

Agent Gordon leaned over her, a smug grin on his face. “We know what really happened to your father.”

Images of the three dead Crossmen appeared all around her, the entire hangar shimmered into a holographic recreation of the alley. The soldiers, Agent Gordon, the metal chair, all of it remained as if they had teleported to the street where she had almost been raped. Anna shifted, looking at each body. She got angry at the sight of the one who had been on Penny; the inhibitor burned her hard.

“You really ought to stop fighting,” said Gordon.

Anna’s arms shook, tense against the cuffs, fists clenched near to the point of bleeding palms. “I… Take it off. It hurts.”

“How much of a fool do you take me for?” Images appeared in floating panels around the area, showing her electrocuting the men. Flickering blue lit the walls.

“You don’t understand…”

She sat in a permanent cringe. The black van rolled into the scene like a spectral funerary wagon, stopped, and four men got out. Three walked one each to the Crossmen and unceremoniously put a bullet in their heads with suppressed handguns. A familiar face remained by the van, watching. Agent Gordon stepped through his holographic doppelganger, halting in front of her with a pleasant smile.

“The public can only handle so much truth.”

The entire false world disintegrated in a snow of fading pixels, the dark alley replaced with a pristine silver floor and a modern white-walled room. The man from behind strode into view with a silver case. Nestled within black foam, a silver triangle the size of a thumbnail sat at the front end of a small bit of wiring and a capsule the size of an aspirin.

She screamed, “No!” and thrashed. It did not matter she had no hope of breaking the chains―she tried anyway. “No!” Anna broke into whimpering. “Please don’t… it’ll kill me.”

The big man laughed. “That is kind of the point of them, Anna. Only if you misbehave.”

You don’t understand… It’ll go off on its own.

Sparks crackled around the psi inhibitor as it battled her subconscious tendency to ruin machines at the onset of emotion. The terror in her heart at the thought of having one of those bombs forcibly implanted triggered a neural shock that left her twitching out of control for several minutes.

“That is most unusual,” said a voice out of sight to her left.

The men seemed curious about the effect, leaning in closer to look. The one who kept grabbing her from behind waved some manner of handheld device past her.

Agent Gordon palmed her head, lifting it so she looked at him. “Now what did you just try to do, naughty little girl?”

The condescension in his voice brought her reason back on wings of anger. “Just kill me already. Stop torturing me.”

He squatted in front of the chair, balancing his elbows on his knees, at eye level with her. “I would very much like to ask a favor of you.” He held up a small black box, the size of what an engagement ring would come in. “In return, I’ll offer you what’s in this box instead of what’s in that one.” He pointed at the restraining bomb.

“Tell me what it is first.”

Standing back to his full height, a head taller than the other man, he pondered her request with a thumb to his chin. The thinner agent closed the case containing the implant; her gaze darted to the click of the latch. Fear of the implanted detonator built on top of her dread of the pain that followed spikes of emotion. The harder she tried to stay calm, the more she panicked. It spiraled into a building cycle that sent her into a spastic fit of screaming and yanking on her arms and legs. The whispers in her head made it worse. She could not contain her fear and could not bear the agony that followed it.