Hush (The Infected: Ripped to Shreds Book 1) (7 page)

As she drove it away, Cin shook
her head, and then paid attention to the road. It was raining out, and cold.
Not freezing yet, but it felt too close to her liking.

"If I wanted to play in the
snow, I'd move to the freaking mountains. Grrr."

For a moment she wondered if this
was actually something that Wally was doing. Not on purpose, just because he
was kind of stressed. There was no way to know it, but it felt like snow was
coming and that was wrong. It was November, in Vancouver. That just didn't
happen. Not that it really was yet. The rain that came down had a thickness to
it. It was well and truly dark, and what was coming down was slush, not
delicate crystals.

Luckily her car had good tires on
it, and she
knew
how to drive in the snow. That came from learning to
drive in Minnesota, originally. Before her family had moved, six years before.
So that made
one
person on the road that knew how to do it. She grinned,
feeling a little wickedly about the whole thing. After all, she had snow
chains, if it came to that. Unused ones, but she could make her way around,
when a lot of people would end up locked in place.

It didn't take her a long time to
get back home, and changing into something a bit dressier wasn't a long trip
for her. A black blouse, a long skirt and some make up did the trick well
enough. Her soft blonde hair wasn't too long, being around her collar, but she
spent a bit of time on it. Not because she wanted to impress anyone, in
particular, but due to the fact that normal women would.

Cin was single, and there were
going to be three fairly eligible men at the meeting with her. It was a meal
too, which drove the sense of the thing closer to being a date. A group one.
Most likely she wouldn't have to be putting out at the end, since that kind of
thing would be pretty confusing as far as who she was supposed to be with.
Proxy had been thinking she was decently cute, and seemed interested in her,
but there were two others that might be her type. If she had one.

Gravity... He was kind of an
unknown. She'd seen some pictures of him on the news, and he was good looking,
in a slightly blocky way. Not fat, but the kind of man that had a powerful jaw
line that reminded her a little of a brutish type of person. His power was
pretty neat though, being the ability to manipulate gravity. She'd seen him
fly, which clearly meant he did more than make things heavy.

The red haired man, he was odd.
His words had been strange and very different than the others. Odds were she
wasn't going to want to be around him all that much. Not because he was a bad
person. No, it was just too hard to know what he was going to pick up on.

Bridget, the tiny powerhouse,
she
was dangerous. Honestly, they all were, most likely. Proxy was clearly a
genius
for instance. He thought in math, at least part of the time, and things came
from him nearly as fast as she could track. Trying to play him would have to be
done very carefully. The leaps he'd been making... They were huge, and tended
toward being accurate. It made sense to her that he could know the future, at
least on some level.

Nothing happened after that. Not
for a long while. Really, she kind of wondered if something had happened, or if
they were just going to blow her off. That might, she considered, be the case.
The chance at a date might not be as important as doing the actual job they
came for. That might also include wanting to spend time with family, and not
some strange half cute librarian.

Just as she was about to go and
take her makeup off, her cell phone rang. The tune was the one she'd set up,
being a bit like a music box. It tinkled along, catching her attention and
seeming very girly. That was her point, so it worked pretty well for her.

"Hello?" She didn't
give her name when people called her. Cindy was the only one that ever touched
her phone, so if they dialed the number, they got her. If they didn't know
that, it wasn't her fault.

"Cindy? Brian Yi here. We
met earlier, at the Library?"

It didn't take a master of the
world to understand that this was Proxy. The voice was the same, for one thing.

"I
do
remember that.
It's probably going to be a shock to you, but when the IPB shows up and outs
you at work, you tend to remember it." She let herself sound happy about
it, or at least wry.

There was a sharp inhalation
then.

"Fu... You didn't get fired,
did you?" The man actually sounded upset by the idea, which was kind of
nice to hear. It meant he wasn't an a-hole. Even if he was dangerous to her.

She shook her head, but got the
real idea. If she'd lost her job, it was going to be that much harder to get
her into the sack. Not that he'd been thinking that exactly.

"Nope. Glenda, my boss,
suspects Wally though. I think I managed that so far, but it isn't a great
thing. We
need
him though. He does about a sixth of the work
there." She paused and shrugged. Not that anyone could see her, being in
her own living room. "We have
fifteen
people on staff, so you get
the idea? If Wallace goes away were all going to be stuck doing our jobs. No
one wants that."

There was a polite chuckle then.
It was warm, and very nearly friendly seeming. That was a thing she'd noticed
before in her life. When she spoke on the phone Cin couldn't read what people
were thinking about, and what they meant. It forced her to focus on how they
sounded instead. That was more work, but she was smart enough to get the basics
of it. Most people lied, constantly, including to themselves.

In this case the man was probably
worried that he'd actually made Wally's life harder. Pissing off someone that
could ruin the world's weather if they decided to wasn't a wonderful plan. In
fact it made much more sense not to mess with him. In this case not getting him
fired
had
to be part of that.

Cleverly, Proxy changed the
topic.

"So, we were thinking about
just going to Denny's for dinner? I know, it's a bit high class, but Bridget's
paying and she eats a
lot
." He sounded a bit wary.

Cindy didn't really care. After
all, she hadn't eaten all day, and someone else was paying. That worked for
her. Free food was a good thing. Plus, it wasn't really a date, they were
supposed to be getting together for some kind of professional reason. That was
a bit too shy, really. Proxy had been hurt though, recently enough that this
was nearly the first date that he'd had since his break up.

How she knew that, Cindy wasn't
all that certain. It was close to something that she'd read earlier, but not
exactly the same. It was right. She knew that, but how it was happening she
didn't understand. It wasn't until she looked up that she got it.

Even though they were talking on
the phone, she could see his words in front of her. Floating in the air, in
multiple colors. The things were big, and see-through, but normal enough that
she hadn't realized they were there at first. In fact, she'd been reading them
the whole time, not even being aware of it.

That
had
to be about her
level of focus on the man. She tried to concentrate on him, which did very
little, but when she stared at the words, the image became darker, and clearer
to her eyes.

The story wasn't that great of
one.

Proxy, Brian, had been ripped
around as far as relationships went. Women that he'd trusted had betrayed him,
and used him sexually. It was pretty much rape in at least a few cases, too.
Enough so that if he'd been a woman someone would be in prison at that point.
Instead they'd all walked, since no one really cared what happened to men that
way.

So he was recovering, on his own.
His last real relationship had been a trick, too. Something set up by Devorah
Timberland to mess with his head and try to control the world.

After a moment the voice in her
ear came back.

"Did I lose you?" He
sounded concerned, and the words explained to her that he was worried that she
wouldn't be impressed enough with Denny's. That he should have found something
nice, and possibly even asked her out like a real person, instead of taking the
safe route. Just as he began to give up, she cleared her throat.

"I'm good. I was just
reading. Your info? I've never done that over the phone before, so it was
distracting. Denny's is fine, by the way. We can see if we like each other well
enough for a real date later?" That was dangerous, being too forward, but
that kind of thing most often worked for her.

People liked what they thought of
as honesty, as long as it didn't hurt their feelings too much.

"Um... That sounds good.
Luckily I'm used to people reading my mind." There was a bit of scolding
to the tone, but not enough to make her feel like he was really upset.

"I'm not, really. It's more
like reading a textbook about Brian. Or whoever I'm researching at the moment.
I don't get to control what I get, and it isn't your thoughts directly either.
So, it's useful, but, you know, it's just not the same thing. Plus everyone
presents differently. I probably wouldn't even have gotten anything right now
except that the whole IPB thing is freaking me out." Admissions of things
like that tended to make people feel closer to you, she knew. It was a trick
that she'd used before, many times.

In this case it was working
pretty well, too.

"So, we can meet at Denny's
in half an hour? We're already here, and have a table. Bridget couldn't
wait."

That got her to nod.

"Hmm. Ten minutes? I live
pretty close. I'll be right over?"

"Sounds good. See you
then!"

He hung up, but the words didn't
fade at all. Instead the story went into things about
her
. It wasn't
nearly dirty enough to be entertaining, since most of it was about his self
doubts, and about how many ways things could go wrong between them. It was a
little sad, watching it all, but
she
was deep enough to know that things
like that were normal. Proxy wasn't some kind of sad sack, he was just like
most men.

Except the part where he could
kill her in a fight, even if she got the drop on him. She'd seen him doing it,
on the news. Taking out a small army of Infected people. Each of them had powers
that should have killed him in about ten seconds. Class fours at least, for
most of them. Instead they'd all died, in less than a minute.

It had been impressive. Now that
she'd been learning to fight herself it was clear that it was a lot more
special than even that. Cin could kill, and fight, but she wasn't an idiot.
Proxy was way out of her class that way.

Seeing what he was like inside
was confusing, actually. He seemed... Nice. Really, like Wally was, in a lot of
ways.
If
Wallace had less sex running through his mind all the time.
Weirdly, Brian was going on about relationships, and being close to people a
lot more than anyone else she'd ever read. It probably meant he was either a
stalker or the best boyfriend material possible.

She had to stop paying attention
while she drove, and lost the page in her mind. Otherwise she probably would
have crashed, since there was actually snow coming down now. Not sticking, but
that would come, she didn't doubt. It was inconvenient, so of course it would
work that way. No one else got that yet, so Denny's was actually busy. It was
about eight, so that was right.

She couldn't see anyone inside.
Not that she recognized, at any rate. There were people, but those were just
bodies to her. She didn't know them, so they didn't count as more than
background decorations. Walking in she looked around, wondering if it was the
wrong place. After a few moments, a tiny redhead in a pink dress and running
shoes, which were also pink, popped around the corner to the left.

"Cindy! Over here!"
Impulse waved at her, happily.

Like they were old friends, not
people that had just met that day. Then, she'd figured out why Cin had been
invited to the meal already. Both because she was bright, and because she'd
heard the entire phone conversation. It was also clear that the girl had
smelled her coming. For half a minute she wondered if she should have taken a
shower first, but that wasn't a problem. The girl enjoyed her scent. Bridget
was just so keen that way she could pull her profile from a room full of
people, grabbing it from under the food scents.

That was impressive, really.

So she waved back, smiling
hugely.

"Hey! Is everyone back
here?" It was the case, and the girl, helpfully, gave her a page of data
on everyone as they turned to walk.

Doug Tibs, Gravity, was Brian's
best friend. Bridget kind of liked him, as in wanted to have sex with him, but
was playing a long game there. She was still a bit too young for him, and
looked more youthful than her real years. She was sixteen. Her looks made her
seem closer to thirteen or fourteen.

That had to mean that Wally's
brother had been a real life perv however. Impulse had been twelve, which was
young, when she'd started having sex with Clark. But she'd
looked
about
nine. It was all right there on the page, but that shifted back to the people
at the table, as soon as they got there.