Omega (12 page)

I didn’t tell Niko any of this. It was
obvious he thought I was insane. To discuss what I felt made it
more real. It was easier for me to push away my emotions and put
all my faith in the man sitting in a cell somewhere in the east
wing of SISA headquarters.

Herakles had spent over a decade taking care
of me. For once, it was my turn to do the same for him, and nothing
Niko said was going to dissuade me.

“
Well, come on,” he said
and stood.

“
Where are we going?” I
asked suspiciously.

“
Dosy knows some people.
You and I are going to walk into SISA and hope she can get us out.”
He stopped outside the café and pulled out a pair of handcuffs.
“I’ve never seen footage of a potential Oracle walking in
voluntarily.” He slid one cold cuff around one wrist then the
other.

“
You’re really going to
help me?”

Niko met my gaze. “No one
else I know would consider me walking you into SISA
helping
,” he replied.
“When we’re inside, chances are they’re going to separate us. Count
to a hundred and then pull off your red bracelet. If you really are
what Dosy says, it’ll cause some sort of chaos and distract them
long enough for me to slip away and find Herakles.”

“
This is a great plan,” I
said, my hope building.

“
It’s a terrible plan. We
have no exit strategy.”

I didn’t care. All I could think about was
Herakles. “I can take care of myself,” I told him when I saw the
worried look he cast the walls. “I know self-defense and I can
run.”

“
You have no clue, kid.”
Without another word, he took my arm and marched me across the
street.

My stomach churned as we approached the
guard post.

“
I found the real Oracle,”
Niko proclaimed.

“
Move along,” one of the
guards said, unconcerned.

“
Look, I’m a merc. I’ve
been tracking her, and I found her,” Niko insisted. “If you check
with your boss, he’s expecting me.”

Say what now?
I eyed him.

“
Whatever, sport. Keep
walking,” another guard replied.

Niko glanced at me. “Can you do anything
Oracle-y to prove it?” he asked.

“
Not that I know
of.”

He muttered something I couldn’t hear then
reached for the red cord at my wrist. Tugging the knot free, he
pulled it away.

A wave – invisible yet strong enough to
shatter the glass of car windshields – rippled outward from us. The
gate before us shook, and the plastic chairs outside the café
flipped onto their sides. Everyone within ten feet of us was
flattened. The wave lost power the farther it traveled down the
block.

Niko and I exchanged a look. We alone were
left standing. The guards were sprawled onto the ground where
they’d fallen. Replacing the red cord, Niko faced the nearest
guard, who appeared too stunned to react.

“
If you don’t want her, I
can sell her off on the black market for at least –”

The guards erupted into action and shouting.
Someone screamed for the gate to be opened while two more charged
and grabbed us both.

“
It’s working,” I mouthed
to Niko, not fighting the men jostling us towards the
gate.

He rolled his eyes.

We were escorted past the first gate where
our entourage doubled before we were permitted through the second
gate. The compound inside consisted of at least three buildings
edging a courtyard and entrance to an underground parking
garage.

We stopped there. One of the guards radioed
into someone. He was too far away for me to hear, and my gaze fell
to the building to the east, where I thought Herakles might be. It
was impossible to tell anything about the buildings and what they
held by their uniform, blank facades. No numbers or identifying
marks were visible. The building on the left was boarded up.

Someone in a suit emerged from the eastern
building to wave the guard forward. I was corralled in that
direction. Niko remained in the courtyard. I automatically began to
count as he had instructed.

The interior of the building was as plain as
the exterior. A foyer consisting of an empty space flanked by two
doors held two men in business suits and a doctor or nurse in
scrubs.

“
Just one guard,” one of
the businessmen waved the others away. He wore spectacles and
carried an iPad. “You won’t be any trouble, right, princess?” He
glanced at me.

What an ass.
But I was polite. “No, sir,” I
replied.

He waited for the door to close behind the
other guards before motioning for his assistant to open one of the
doors leading into the interior. We walked into the building, and I
peered into the offices we passed.

They were empty and appeared to have been
for quite some time. The cameras in the hallways all pointed at the
floor or the wall behind them rather than in the direction they
should. Dosy’s claim about this place being a set up for …
something began to make more sense.

“
Name,” the man in the
suit said to me crisply.

“
Holly.”

“
A pleasure, Holly. We’re
going to do some paperwork and then send you in for a medical exam.
We’ve had quite a few frauds lately, so I’m sure you’ll understand
the precautions we must take. There’s a great deal of wealth
involved.”

“
Wealth?” I
echoed.

He stepped into an office and motioned me to
sit in front of a desk. “The Oracle of Delphi’s fortune has been
growing for ten thousand years. It’s the number one reason for
fraud. People have been after her money for years.”

“
So she’s rich.” I
frowned, not understanding the divide between what the priests told
me and this. “And the downside …”

“
Downside?” He gave me an
odd look. “What downside is there to being one of the wealthiest
people on the planet, handed power on a platter and having the
honor of communicating directly with the gods daily?”

“
I guess there is none.”
Something wasn’t right about this. If what he said was true, why
did Niko say every potential Oracle who came here did so
unwillingly? The priests had only said the Oracle was tortured.
They never mentioned wealth or anything else. I knew they favored
the Old Ways and found myself wishing once more they’d taken the
time to tell me something more than they had. Like, the full truth.
Did they fear I’d be swayed to ignore the Old Ways by
money?

The guard took off my handcuffs and the
assistant scanned my arm. “Holly Rodriquez,” he said, reading the
screen. “According to this, you’re thirty eight and wanted for
murder in two states.”

All four of them stared at me.

“
About that …” I cleared
my throat.

Note to self: tell Niko
never to use Marty again.
Then again, this
was probably karma after Niko stole money from his criminal
friends.

“
It hasn’t been
reprogrammed,” the assistant continued. “Which means …”

“
You either killed Holly
Rodriquez or bought a biotag on the black market,” Spectacles
finished.

“
I didn’t kill anyone,” I
said quickly.

“
There are no traces of
her old biotag being removed. How did you come to have no biotag?”
the assistant asked.

“
I’m not even sure what a
– ow!” I snapped and yanked my arm back. A tiny, sharp prick of
pain throbbed on my forearm in the spot where he had removed the
chip.

“
DNA sample,” Spectacles
directed the medic. “There’s more than one way to uncover your
identity.”

“
I’d like to know that,
too,” I told him.

They gave me the same look Niko did pretty
much every time I spoke.

I was escorted down the
corridor, past more empty offices, to a small medical lab, past a
hallway with
Prisoners 0-24
listed on the wall, and motioned to a chair in
the doctor’s office. Realizing I had lost track of my count, I
started at fifty and watched the doctor prep a needle. He wrapped
rubber around my arm and then tapped the bluish vein inside my
elbow.

“
You’re very calm,” he
said with a glance at me.

“
I’ve had my blood drawn
before,” I replied.

“
No, I mean with all
this.” He motioned to the guard at the door and the assistant of
Spectacles, who was typing into his iPad.

The insertion of the needle stung, and I
watched the plastic vial fill with blood.

“
I guess I don’t
understand what the big deal is,” I replied truthfully.

His eyes lingered on my features, as if he
didn’t believe me. It was hard for me to be deceptive about
something I knew nothing about.

He finished when I got to ninety nine in my
countdown, so I kept counting. I didn’t want to knock everyone down
with a needle in my arm.

“
You really don’t know, do
you?” he asked and slid the needle free.

“
I don’t even know enough
to know what I’m supposed to know about,” I quipped.

“
Hold the cotton ball for
ten seconds.” He smiled. “I see a lot here, and everyone is usually
trying to get something over on someone else. It’s the political
nature of DC. Even the frauds are trying to game the system
somehow. But you … you’re not right.”

“
I get that a lot, Doc.” I
lifted the cotton ball to check the prick beneath.

“
A place like this will
destroy you if you aren’t her. The trials might do the same even if
you are. The gods are not happy. Be careful.”

I looked up, not expecting the compassion,
however distant and passing it was. “Thank you. I’m sure I can
handle it.”

“
I’m done.” He motioned to
the guard.

I joined the guard at the door. A closer
look at the mask showed me it was almost sheer. Nothing impeded the
breathing or sight of the man beneath it. The color prevented
people from seeing his features.

“
Where to next?” I asked
the guard curiously. This wasn’t the ideal area to unleash my
strange magic wave. I wanted to be closer to the prison.

“
We wait for DNA results
to identify you based on the genetic profiles kept in the biotag
database,” the assistant to Spectacles said. “You can wait in
John’s office or the courtyard.”

“
John’s office sounds
great,” I said cheerfully.

Even he looked at me like I was crazy. I
didn’t understand what everyone was concerned about. I had a
feeling I’d be in trouble if I were a fraud. But I wasn’t, and I
didn’t think being the Oracle could be worse than lying to people
with no senses of humor who were probably quick to pull the trigger
on a fraud.

We returned to the office. John wasn’t
there, and the guard took up his post outside the room. The
assistant started to sit. Wanting as few people around as possible
when I took off the bracelet, I spoke up quickly.

“
Hey, can I get some
water?”

The assistant glanced at me and stood once
more without responding, leaving the room.

I had long since passed the count of a
hundred and hoped Niko wasn’t in trouble. I listened until I heard
the sound of the assistant’s footsteps fade then crept to the door
and untied the cord at my wrist.

In a confined space, the weird shock wave
was way worse. It shattered the glass office windows behind me and
slammed into walls, reverberating back towards me and knocking me
to the ground along with the guard. An alarm went off in response
to the building shaking, and the lights in the hallway flickered. I
hastily replaced the cord and made a mental note never to take it
off inside again. My ears rang as I scrambled to my feet ahead of
the guard.

Before he could stand, I had snatched his
handgun.

I bolted towards the direction of the
hallway where I’d seen the sign for the prisoners. Darting down it,
I heard someone shout for more security forces. The alarm blared. I
covered my ears. My heart was slamming into my chest and my
adrenaline racing as I reached the intersection at the end of the
hall.

This one wasn’t labeled. I was a little
turned around in the building that had no windows in the corridors.
After a split second of debate, I raced to the left, which I hoped
would take me toward the wing with the prisoners.

The alarm turned off. “Thank the gods!” I
murmured and paused near another intersection. I heard the sounds
of mobilized guards from the direction I came from but couldn’t
determine if or which way was where I wanted to go.

I headed left once more. The boring,
whitewashed hallways expanded and emptied out into a courtyard at
the center of four buildings. Ducking behind the wall to keep the
guards rushing around from spotting me, I saw another sign
indicating the prisons across the courtyard from me and waited.

One guard in particular seemed to be
directing traffic in the center of the courtyard. Dressed similarly
to the others, he wore a red patch on one arm I took to mean he was
a commander or someone up the leadership chain. The courtyard was
lined by long dead bushes and shriveled trees.

Once the traffic in the courtyard
dissipated, he strode away as well, and I inched out from the hall.
Herakles had taught me how to hunt without alerting my prey, and I
used those principles to move into the courtyard stealthily to the
edge of the covered positions behind a post.