Hush (The Infected: Ripped to Shreds Book 1) (37 page)

"She'll stay here for the
time being. This is, at least in part, a first mode problem. It also kind of
isn't
.
She was played, and that isn't totally inside her control, but she didn't seek
out help when she could have, so I'm betting she's in for a tough time for a
while." No one had said that, but it was going on inside of Bridget's
mind. Since it was about the only thing that was going to keep another fight
from breaking out it wasn't a horrible idea really.

Hobbs, who had just stood there,
focused on what was going on the whole time, smiled at her, meaning it.

"Aye. There is fairness to
that. This is not such a harsh keeping for her crime of betrayal. When called,
ere she not flee first, we shall explain this to her. Perhaps it would be best
if Lady Bridget does not attend at this time?" That was spoken not to
Bridget, who was right there, but to Cin. Like
that
made any sense in
the world.

She nodded however.

"Good plan. Bridget, why
don't you go and report all of this to Marcia? Tell her that we're leaving
Lauren locked up for a while. At least a month or two. She'll agree to
that." She meant Turner, though that was a guess, but Bridget wasn't
convinced, or on topic.

"Why should she? She's fixed
now. She can just leave and no one can stop her from doing it." There was
anger and misery in the words and more arm crossing. She looked nearly ready to
cry about it, which wasn't in keeping with what the girls reputation said.

So Cindy shook her head. It got
attention from everyone, but her words were still going to be a surprise.

"I meant that Director
Turner will agree. Lauren is staying here, and won't even try to get out
without permission. If she does... We'll leave her all alone." It seemed
like a small enough thing, but Denis grimaced at the words.

The reasoning was what she was
using, though he had a bit more personal insight into the whole thing. The
words appeared for her, like a story being told. About how Lauren's first mode
was loneliness, but was similar to his own of greed. People didn't understand
it really, thinking they did. With him, he wanted everything, but getting it
gave him no relief. He just desired, manically, something else.

Level, on the other hand, always
felt alone, even if surrounded by friends. Unless Den stood there and used his
emotional control powers to overcome that, which he normally did several hours
a day. If he wasn't allowed to visit her, she'd be stuck, and sink into
depression over it.

A moment later, the words that
she could see through the solid wall we called out.

"You can all come
back?" There was hesitancy, since she was afraid of what was coming.

Cin slapped Bridget on the arm,
to get her moving.

"Go report this for us?
We'll be over shortly." She didn't know if Bridget was actually going to
do it or not. After all, sending her along to run the errands could work out
too. Cindy wasn't in charge of anything, especially not Impulse.

She was just trying to make
herself look good. In the moment that meant playing to her strengths. Things
like being able to know how people were going to jump, for instance. Most of
the time that worked for her or had been, even with the girl in front of her,
but at this instance, in this case, even she didn't know what was going to come
next. She could just storm in and kill Lauren for instance. Even if the others
tried to stop her, if she did it fast enough it might just work. Instead she
took a deep breath and started to meditate.

Then she nodded once and walked
out, in control of herself. Even with her mode beating at her brain, trying to
get her to do what felt good to her. In this case, killing the source of her
perceived anger.

As soon as she got out of the
building, Cindy turned to lead them all back in, her face set into a bit of a
smirk.

"All right. You're in here
for sixty days. Right now Denis is going to come and see you for an hour in the
morning, and the same at night, unless he gets called away. If you try to
escape, you get nothing that way. He'll be ordered not to help you, ever again.
Not that it will be a problem, but just in case, you need to know that. Also,
just to be clear, the person you were working with?"

She was fixed by large black
lenses, the woman sitting on her cot.

"Agent Burkes?"

She nodded, "it
isn't
him. Someone was faking it. A mimic. Proxy is off with Lancaster dealing with
the man right now. Anyone could be one of them. We don't know what happened to
the real Agent Burkes. I need to go and try to find him, if I can. So, do you
agree to stay here and not give these men any problems? If not, let us know now
and we can handle this in a very different way."

What that would be... Well, the
only thing she could think of involved having the woman's arms and legs ripped
off by Impulse. That sounded fair to her, but messy. Wonderfully so, along with
splendid screaming.

There was a large nod from the
armored giant then. Like she knew all that.

"Yeah." Her voice was
soft, and she was pretty convinced that Denis really would leave her alone if
he was ordered to. Really, she wasn't certain that he wasn't being forced to do
things for her as it stood. "I... Don't really know why I did it. I
shouldn't have. I was just so... Alone."

Which she always would be except
for the brief moments she was with her buddy, Den. Cin wanted to say that it
was a stupid nickname, but hers was worse, so she didn't let herself go there
for long. Denis was even a real first name, unlike hers.

Waving, she walked out, calling
back to the woman.

"Sixty days. Then you'll be
on probation. Don't think of this as
anything
other than people being
nice to you. Bridget was calling for your death, or at least a trial for
treason. The only thing that might get you out of that is doing everything
right, from now on. So, I'll have some paper and a pen sent over. I suggest you
start apologizing for everything, ever, and keep doing it every day for the
time being." The lady could write, though it was really big printing, and
bold since she was so powerful. It would work, so Cindy just left. Then she
wondered how the heck she was supposed to get anything done there.

Smiling she waved at the man that
liked to read.

"Agent Mathews? You'll need
to run things past Director Turner, but we should let Denis in twice a day for
treatments, so that Lauren won't give you problems. That isn't really my call.
Can you get her a pad and some pens? She needs to write letters to people. Then
make sure they get delivered? I know it sounds like a small thing, but..."
Well, it probably was, but not letting the woman do something would drive her
insane, and that could lead to escape.

The man just shook his head.

"I'll call it all in. This
is about as screwed up a thing as I've ever heard of. You
can't
hold a
class five. They'll always find a way, eventually." He was pretty certain
of that one. Like it had been trained into him.

It was probably even true really.
Eventually someone that powerful would manage to get away. If that happened
this time, then Proxy would have to go and kill her, or take someone else to
her for that reason.

So, lying, she smiled at the man.

"She'll be good. This isn't
about locks and doors. It's about the loss she'll have to deal with if she
doesn't toe the line." It sounded good.

Everyone else seemed to think it
was about right too, though after ten minutes of walking, as soon as she got
inside the main office building, having been planning to try and find Agent
Burkes, Turner stuck her head out of her office and yelled to her.

Not
at
her. The tone was
no worse than what Glenda would have used with her. If a good bit louder, since
they weren't in a library. That reminded her that she needed to call in and
explain why she hadn't been there. Some of the women there might actually worry
about her. Wally would, she thought.

"In here, if you have a
moment, Ms. Mableton?"

That kind of indicated that she
was supposed to go alone, and when she got in the room, there was no one else
there. No Bridget or anything, waiting to ambush her for overstepping far too
soon.

The woman played with the papers
on her desk, not really reading them. Ignoring her for a moment, on purpose.

"So. What's your plan here?
You've been coming out of the gate pretty strong. It isn't a bad thing, but I
can't trust it.
Serial killer
, so you know..."

The odd thing was, as the woman
looked at her, suspiciously, she really did.

Making a face that wasn't too
unpleasant, Cin nodded.

"Trying not to get killed?
This gene therapy thing might not really work for me. It also might, but I get
that I have to give up the only good thing in my life in order to make it. It's
hard, but ingratiating myself to you, to all of you, just makes sense. That's
pretty much all of it. No special plan or anything, other than making myself so
valuable that keeping me around might eventually seem worth it." Which
meant she couldn't kill Lancaster. No matter how much she suddenly wanted too.

Taking a deep breath, she tried
to focus like Hobbs had shown her, and failed at it, but kept going.

In case it worked better with
practice.

Director Turner nodded then, her
features softening.

"That sounds honest enough.
Then, no one said you were
useless
, just a killer. What are your plans
for the day?" She actually asked, even though she wanted to set up a list
of targets for her. That was fine enough. It was still just about the weakest
part of her skill with her power.

"I was going to see if I
could find Agent Burkes. I don't really know if I can. If he's dead I might not
get anything at all. We know that Sam the mimic had to touch him, for several
seconds, and that his whole body was there at the time and seemed to be alive.
For all we know he has to stay that way for the whole thing to work." She
tilted her head, since other than that she didn't know what the plan really
was. There was a hand written list on the desk, which was slid over to her.

"Good, after that, find what
you can on these people. I have Chris Pours working on a different part of this
right now. Normally she'd be doing this, but we have you, so make it or
drown." The words sounded cold, but the ones above her were actually
almost kind.

The woman didn't like that she
wanted to kill Lancaster, but
did
appreciate that Cin had sent him away,
to protect him. The woman also knew that if she went for him, she'd just die,
but it showed an effort having been made. Secretly, even as the woman expected
her to fail and have to be killed, she was rooting for her to beat her problem.

It was almost nice of her,
really.

"Well, let me see which it
is? Burkes first though, since he should be the easiest for me to find."

Really, if she were a better
person she would have done more on that earlier. Instead she'd looked in on
Lancaster, and got sidetracked by the delicious thought of stabbing him in the
throat. Then telling him all about why she'd done it as he died. Even if that
part was sometimes ridiculously silly sounding, even to her. It was fun though.
It would be with Darryl, too. He had so many skeletons in his closet that it
would even seem nearly fair.

Wrong however. Even as part of
her was willing to die to make that happen. She tried more of the ineffective
meditation, hoping that it would take enough to drive her back to at least not
wanting that one man dead. She truly did want to do that.

Taking the list she went to use
her office, or at least the one that she'd been shown to the day before.
Getting her name on the door would help make having her there seem real and
right, she knew. That would take a while to set up however. At least until she
could work out who was responsible for that, and get them in to do it. She had
work to do first however.

Agent Burkes didn't take long to
find, and the news wasn't even
that
bad. He was drugged out of his mind,
and stuck in a dark cell that wasn't much bigger than a box, but he had food
and water in there with him, and people checked on him constantly. It smelled,
from what the story said, but when she worked things out, she was able to do
something that surprised her a lot. Even without a name, she was able to work
from him to one of his captors. The man that made certain that the drugs didn't
wear off too soon.

That man, Willy Gomez, wasn't any
too certain about the whole thing, but he needed the money, having snuck into
the country a year before, and not having a real job in all that time. His
family needed the cash, so he'd worked at anything he could find. When the men
came and offered him this job, they'd promised him one hundred thousand dollars
a year, and had paid up front, before taking him there, to the secret location.
He had no clue where it was, however.

Someplace in the north, but how
far, was too hard for him to guess.

Following him as he moved, the
words changing and describing what he was seeing, from the tiled hallways done
in light blue and white, like a hospital, to the next little cell, where there
was a woman being held, also drugged.