Catharsis (Book 2): Catalyst (15 page)

            Especially when I realize that he was right.  I can't just hole up in here afraid to go out and face the dangers of the world.  If I do, then Chadwick has won.  I have to believe that what happened to me in that alley a year ago was for a purpose.  And for now that purpose is to make the world a better place.  Even if there are people like Chadwick out there.  That can't be what stops me.

            And with that thought, I come to a decision.

            "You know I hate you, right?" I ask the man standing in front of me, and then I smile and let it shine in my eyes.  He returns my smile and shakes his head, but he doesn't say anything.  "Ok, fine.  What's this job you have for me to do?"

PART THREE

– The Darkness -

CHAPTER THIRTY

            Ren leans back against the wall and slides down until he is sitting beside me.  "I didn't think you were going to do it if you won," he tells me with an annoying twinkle in his eye.  "You just earned yourself another week of avoiding the world and wallowing in self-pity."

            Shaking my head, I tell him, "Don't be smug, Ren.  You were right.  I need to get out of here and stretch my legs.  I'm not made to stay in a building like this anymore."  I pause and turn to look at him.  "But don't let that go to your head.  I'll deny I said it later."

            He nods.  "Understood."

            We sit quietly and stare out at the empty floor of our battlefield and watch the last few pellets roll around on the ground driven by an unseen breeze.  It's almost peaceful, and I can feel my body has nearly healed itself.  That also means my energy is low, and I'll need to let the Dark Hunger out soon.  Before I deal with that and whatever Ren's plans might be, I have a question for him first.

            "So Ren," I ask and turn to face him.  "Exactly how long had you been playing this little charade of a battle?  You seemed to have quite a few little tricks up your sleeves tonight."

            He nods again and his smile gets even bigger.  "A few days now," he tells me.  "I had to do most of the prep work when you'd go out for little snacks or to look at the moon.  You didn't give me many windows, so I had to take advantage of what I could."  His smile drops slightly at the corners and he continues, "I knew I had to break you out of this slump you've been in.  And you needed to earn a win on your own against a worthy opponent."

            I laugh and ask, "Is that what you are Ren?  A worthy opponent?"

            "Are you saying I'm not?"  He asks and looks at me.  "Wouldn't you say I gave you some competition tonight?"

            "Yes.  You certainly did.  I'm not denying that," I tell him and stop for a moment to reflect on what all he put me through.  "And more so tonight than normally."

            "I know.  That was on purpose," he sighs and shakes his head.  "I tried to think like him when I set this up.  I considered your abilities and purposely used them against you.  It's what he would do, so it's what I did."

            "It worked," I tell him.

            "Yeah, I know.  But I felt dirty," he says and then shudders.  "I don't like thinking like him."

            I have to agree with Ren.  I didn't like him thinking like Chadwick either.  He was good at it.  Scarily good.  Sometimes I wonder about the side of this man that I don't normally see.  Which brings up another question.

            "So what about this job you had for me tonight?  What'd you have in mind?"

            "Yeah.  That," he says and pauses.  "Well, it came to me while I was channeling my inner Chadwick and thinking about how he was so able to be prepared for you, and then I started thinking about the trouble we're having with cartels right now and figuring out what they're planning.  And, well, the ideas kind of merged."

            "Merged?"

            "Yeah.  Chadwick used surveillance cameras and security measures to keep an eye on you and then study what you did to find your weaknesses.  And here we've just been throwing ourselves at these cartels and kingpins and just attacking what we can see.  Why not take a page from Chadwick and set up surveillance at a suspected house and drain them of as much information as we can
before
we try to take them out.  I mean we might have to ignore some of the evil they're pushing for a bit, but it would be for the greater good."

            "Ren, I've already done that," I tell him.  "I used to sit outside these houses and watch them for hours.  There's really not all that much to learn.  I tried."

            "No, Cat, you didn't.  You're still thinking like
you
or
us
.  Think like
him
.  I don't mean you post yourself outside one of their houses and watch.  I want you to sneak inside and bug the place.  Set up cameras and microphones and let me listen to their conversations and figure out how they operate.  For days or even weeks.  Or maybe indefinitely if we're lucky."

            He turns to face me, and his eyes are shining and bright.  He's thought this out, and he wants it to happen.  This is the most excited I've seen him in a long time.  But bugging one of their houses?  Is that possible?  Can he get his hands on the technology to do that?

            I shake my head.  Of course he can.  That isn't the real worry.  My real worry isn't whether Ren can hold up his part of this plan.  It's
my
part.  Can I get into one of these houses without choking on the poison in the air?  Or without choking on the overwhelming desire to throttle every human being I come into contact with?  The thought of getting that close to one of their fortresses, or even getting
inside
one, and not destroying it goes against everything I’ve come to believe in.  It goes against every reason I've been doing what I do. 

            But Ren's right.  What if it leads to better targets that we never would have found out about previously?  In that case it may be worth it.  I just have to put my trust in his plan.

            "Ok," I say after thinking it through.  "So you just want me to break into one of these houses and drop some cameras and microphones around the place and let you go all 'creeper' on them, right?  I can do that."

            "Actually," he says standing up and shaking out his body after sitting on the cold floor.  "I told you I'd been trying to think like Chadwick.  There's actually a little bit more to it than that." 

            Then he laughs.  But it isn’t his normal, humorous chuckle.  No.  He commits to a full out evil-villain-hiding-in-his-lair-planning-the-overthrow-of-mankind laugh.  And it is wonderful.

            It’s enough to make me believe the cartels are finally in for some real trouble.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

            After Ren finishes explaining his plan, I'm all for it.  Even if we don't glean the information from them that we want to, he's worked in a failsafe to cover all the bases.  It's ingenious and very much in line with Chadwick.  Which
should
bother me, except in this case I'm all for it.

            The only drawback is that we have to wait a little over a week for all the supplies to get shipped to us.  Ren may have come up with the thought a few days ago, but he hadn't moved forward with all the expenditures until I was fully on board with him.  I'm a bit bummed at having to wait before getting out and putting it all into action.  Now that I've decided to embrace the outside world again, I'm anxious to get out and make it happen.

            But Ren assuages that anxiety by upping my exercise routines to focus more on stealth training over combat.  I start by doing a lot more climbing and vertical scaling of the environments around us.  Ren has me go outside and practice finding ways to get up to the upper levels of the surrounding buildings without damaging anything or making any noise.  It's far from easy and it's surprisingly taxing on my intellect (I'm used to the just-charge-right-in-and-beat-them-to-a-pulp method as opposed to the analyze-everything-from-every-angle-before-approaching one.), but it's fun.  And it's nice knowing I am training for a purpose.  I have a goal now other than just trying to avoid suicide while tackling impossible odds. 

            Turns out I am almost as skilled at sneaking as I am at hunting.  I haven't had quite as much practice at it, and quietly being near a person
without
trying to attack them does go against my very nature (Well, at least, my most recent nature, that is.).  But it is all for a good cause.  Whenever Ren doesn't have me training, I spend my time either resting and trying not to think about anything at all or sending messages to Leyna.  And since I don't have to sleep much that means there isn't much reason for down time.  It's exhausting.  The only real breaks I get are when I run out of energy and need to feed.  Then he'll give me a few hours to relax and digest what I’ve taken in.  But those breaks are few, and the training sessions are many. 

I've tried to do my best to ignore the irony of the fact that it took a self-imposed banishment and no longer seeing her for me to become close to my sister.  But we are.  We are talking more and more often, and I'm really getting to know her.  Plus, it's allowing me to feel a little bit more normal.  A person can only train for so many hours on different ways to take down an opponent quickly and silently before they start to lose a little bit of a connection to that seventeen-year-old-girl life.  I don't think I really share too many interests with my peers any more.  But with Leyna we can just talk.

            Except about her new boyfriend.  On that she is still relatively silent.  I try not to let it bother me too much, but I don't like the fact that she has this big secret and she won't open up about it.  I know I have to give her time and she will when she's ready, but it still requires a higher level of patience than I'm ready to give.  I do, though.  For her.

            Not that that means I don't keep asking her about it every chance I get.  I'm sure I've annoyed her with my pestering, but it amuses me.  And right now, I could use all the amusement in my life that I can get.  Even if it comes at the discomfort of my sister.

            "Just leave it alone for now Cat," she told me during our last conversation.  "It's a slow process, and I'm not trying to mess it up.  I'll tell you more when it's time, ok?"

            "Well, at least you're not calling me Kitty," I tell her.  "And come on, Leyna, I want to live vicariously through you since I can't live that part of my life on my own.  But how can I do that if you won't give up the info?  You're killing me here."

            "'Kitty' is for when I'm happy with you, and that's not happening right now," she grumbles.  "And you can't live
my
life any faster than
I
can, and I'm not ready to speed things up with him.  Right now we're just talking.  We haven't even gone on a date, yet.  When we do," she pauses and sighs melodramatically, “I'll be sure to let you know so you can have some kind of annoying little celebration.  Does that work?"

            "That's all I'm asking for, Leyni," I giggle in spite of myself.  Her sarcasm is just so adorable.  "I'm looking forward to it."

            She's thinking it'll be another week or so before he asks her to go out somewhere, so I'm preparing myself for the big event to happen next weekend.  My little sister might be going on her first date with a boy!  It's about time...even if she does have me beat in that area.

            Ren's supplies come in a week and a half after we decide to commit to the plan, and it only takes him a few more days of playing with the equipment and testing it out before he declares them ready.  He dropped a good chunk of our savings on the technology.  We wanted to get the highest quality available to us so that he can remain at the warehouse while he does the monitoring.  Plus, there was the little bonus failsafe he had added in and that wasn't cheap, either.  Hopefully we won’t be forced to use it for a while, or ever, but if we do it will be effective.  And it had better be for how expensive and hard to find it was. 

            While I've been training over the last couple of weeks, Ren has been combing through every bit of information he was able to dredge up about the cartels.  We need to figure out which buildings would be the best candidates for a visit.  He narrows the final list down to five, but we only acquired enough equipment to hit three.  Knowing that limitation (and not wanting to spread what we have too thin), he takes another day to weed out the final two.

            "I don't want to waste your time, Cat," he tells me after I bug him with my impatience about the delay.  "It's better to take the time now to pick the best targets rather than figure out I chose poorly later on.  I want to make this as effective as possible."

            Once he manages to eliminate one of the houses (It's located too close to another option, and he wants to spread out our "eyes and ears" as much as possible.), I finally get him to just eeny-miny-moe for the final three.  My rationalization is that he worked this hard to get them down to four, then they must all be good choices.  This is like trying to decide between which sports car to buy, the Lambo, the Ferrari, the Porsche or the Mercedes.  They're all great choices with advantages and disadvantages, but you can't go wrong with any of them.  He reluctantly sees my logic and removes a house at random.

            With our final selections made, I pack a bag full of supplies for the trip (One never knows when a few battle necessities could come in handy in case things don't go as planned.) and double check to make sure the Zero is charged.  Our plan is for me to hit as many of the locations as I can in one night and get Ren soaking up the information as quickly as possible.  I can then take a few days to rest and recharge while he analyzes everything, and then I'll start systematically dismantling their operation while he continues to monitor the results. 

            We'll never really be hurting for money (I've stolen more from these men than we can ever hope to spend.), but Ren is constantly pushing me to replenish whatever we dip into.  He wants to be prepared in case we ever hit a dry spell.  Even though I'm convinced we'll never make a dent in what we have, he disagrees.  Apparently once we start purchasing big ticket items or start calculating bribes at government institutions (Ren has let slip that that is how he gains some of the access he has acquired.  It's not all computer skills.  Sometimes it is about knowing who else has the access, and then finding a way to access
them
.  Still sounds brilliant if you ask me.), then the money could flow through our fingers much more quickly.  And we'd be devastated if we hit a short supply in the middle of a critical strike.  So because of that I've been told that tracking their current money supply will be one of his first priorities.

            I'm fine with that.  Ren knows what he's doing.  And even when we're robbing them of their liquid assets, I am still hurting the men that are poisoning the streets.  And I'm sure I can work in an opportunity for pain at some point.  A girl has to have her own priorities at times.

            Once my pack is prepped and tightened onto my back, Ren brings over a new saddlebag that he attaches to the Zero behind my seat.

            I watch him buckle the shiny, black leather into place for several moments before speaking.  "Is that it?"  I finally ask. 

            He continues to tighten a belt that he's looped through a rigging on the bike as he answers me.  "This, Cat, is all the supplies for tonight.  I've separated everything into smaller satchels that can be removed and carried to make things easier on you."  He stops fiddling with the strap long enough to tilt his head and look up at me above him.  "You
do
remember all the pieces I showed you and how they work, right?  It's imperative everything is installed
exactly
like I showed you.  We can't really go back in and make adjustments later."

            Smiling, I tap the side of my head and say, "Perfect recall, remember Ren?  I can't forget it even if I wanted to.  You explained it to me
and
made me watch the installation videos.  If I'm confused, then I can always just bring up the replay."  I pause and wink at him as he frowns slightly at me.  "Plus, I'll have you right there with me the whole time.  I can just ask you if I run into any issues."

            "Cat," he says sternly and burns his eyes into mine with a glare.  "That's the point.  You
can't
just stop and ask me.  This is a silent operation.  No sound.  At all.  No alerting them.  If they even knew you were in the house, then everything is just rui-"

            I cut him off mid-rant before he can get himself worked up.  "I was kidding, Ren.  Relax.  I've missed having the old uptight and high-strung version of you around.  I just wanted to make sure he was still in there.  We're good," I tell him and give him my best no-one-can-hate-a-teen-girl smile.  All it gets me is an eye roll and a recommitment to the saddlebag, but at least he calmed down.

            My tone may have been flippant, but I was serious about missing this side of Ren.  Our world had been thrown into turmoil with Chadwick and his efficient dismantling of how I viewed my own existence.  Ren couldn't be his adorably curmudgeonly self while I was wallowing in doubt and anxiety.  He wasn't happy having to be the 'cheerful' one in our group, and it didn't feel right to me, either.  But now the world is back where it's supposed to be.  Chadwick is out of my life, hopefully forever, I'm focused on my abilities and getting better at what I do, and the cartels are firmly in our sights.  The only real change has been for the positive, and that is my conscious desire to live a very long and very successful life.

            It's just going to have to be a life that pits me into danger on a consistent basis.  But what other life is really worth living?

            Strapping on my helmet as Ren puts the finishing touches on the saddlebags, I wait until he straightens up before jumping onto the bike, flicking the starter with my thumb and gunning it out into the welcoming night.

            It's past time for the fun to begin.