They Tell Me I'm The Bad Guy (36 page)

If
Tracey
wasn't gonna help me
, if her help was no use to me
, this was the only chance I had to
get some payback for
Will
; while she was out of it.
Jurgen Chaotischer would have told me this was the time to strike
, while she was weak
. He was a shit head, though.

I had the knife in my hand.

"Fuck."

I set the
it
down with a clatter and shook
Tracey's
shoulder. "
You
would
take this away from me too, Trace.
Wake
the fuck up
."

Her eyes blinked,
and I had to catch
her from falling out the chair.

"I can't feel my legs," she barely said.

I propped her back up.
"They're there, don't worry. They're probably numb from sitting for so long. Just kinda move 'em around and get the blood flowing. Be careful
of your ass, though."

She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at me, squinting in the light. "
Why can't I shift out of here?"

"
What?
You can't?"

"
No.
" Panic went across her face. "Why can't I?"

I kicked up a fireball with no problem. "
I don't know.
Maybe the electromagnetic field played with your head. It was supposed to tap into Posters or some shit. Just settle down. Do you know where you are?"

"Yes," she quickly answered
, agitated
. "Why can't I f
ucking shift out of this room?
And can you turn the lights off or something?"

I melted the filaments in all but a couple of the lights
to dim the room.
"
There. That's better. Just
calm down. Just breathe.
R
elax. Are
you sure you can't 'port?"

She rolled her one unblackened eye. "
Yes
, I'm sure.
What the hell's going on?"

I reached for Tracey's hand. "Come on, let's get you outside. Let's get out of this room."

She pulled her hand away.
"No, I'm not going anywhere. I just want to si
t here until I can shift again.
Why do you want me to go outside so bad?" she asked me accusingly. "What
the fuck
is
going on?"

"Nothing," I lied. "It's not healthy
in here
. You ne
ed a doctor or something, Trace
."

"A doctor? Don, they won't let me leave! Are you out of your mind?"

"
T
hey're taken care of."

"
Oh, my God.
What did you do?" she said angrily.

"
Hey
, don't get that tone.
Stop it.
I just saved you. And that fucker Duck is dead, by the way."

"Who
is Duck
?"

"Nevermind. This whole fucking thing has been really fucking hard on me. Let's just get you outside
and get you to a doctor
."

She lifted up her shirt to show me the scabbed-over knife slashes on her stomach. "Oh, I'm sorry it's been so hard for you
, Don
. I've
just been tortured here for days when
they didn't have Sylvie controlling me.
How have they mistreated you?
"

"
Christ, Tracey
.
Come on.
"

"
No, t
hat's
traumatizing
, knowing she used me and, and,
invaded
me like that."

I gave her a shitty look.
"
Yeah, I know because
you had her control me to get me to go alo
ng with the bunker thing. Remember that?
"

"That's not the fucking same and you know it."

The knife on the table caught her eye, and she lingered on it, wasting time trying to teleport it into her hand inst
ead of reaching out to grab it.

I slapped it away and stepped between her and where it landed. "Sucks not getting everything you want when you want it, doesn't it?"

Her hands went white-knuckled around the arms of the chair. The hate coming off of her was almost as physical as the heat coming off me. "You are an evil, heartless son of a bitch
, and I
hate
you
. Look at what they--"

I cut her shit off
and shouted over her
. "
I told you not to contact Will, and now he's dead.
"
I felt small saying it
because she
was
in nine kinds of fucked-
up
shape
, but she wasn't getting out of hearing it
, no matter what she had been through
. She always got to say her piece and teleport away without
having to listen to anybody
. If she was stuck, she was damn well gonna listen to every fucking word I had to say.

"
Oh my God
," she screamed, trying to lift herself out of the chair but failing. "
Fuck you!
I've gone through all this and you're still going to bitch at me about that?
I'm fucking sorry!
All right?!
I'm sorry.
Leave me the fuck alone!
"

"
Would you shut up before I smack the shit out of you?!
" I yelled at her. "Plan A was burning your ass alive,
plan B was using you to get out of here and then maybe burning your ass alive,
so shut up and be grateful I'm just bitching at you. Fuck."

Tracey struggled to get comfortable in the chair and kind of rocked back and forth, shaking her head. "You need to leave me alone. I don't want to talk to you or hear any more of your shit. If you're still here when I can shift again, you better fucking kill me."

I stepped up and got in her face. "Well, you're gonna hear it. You think you can do whatever the fuck you want and not--"

She actually shut her eyes and covered her ears with her hands, singing loudly and off-key to drown me out. A lifetime of running away from any confrontation and using her powers on anybody threate
ning her had left her this way:
a petty, immature, shallow little girl that never grew up. This was the stone-cold bitc
h we were afraid of, that the SCEIA
spent millions
hunting down.

"Tracey, listen to me--"

She screamed for help as loud as she could.

I grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands away from her ears. She got a leg up and
kicked me as hard as she could.

"
You got Will killed!
" I
roared
in her ear. "And you killed Agent Red! And you killed Rory."

She kept screaming.

"And you don't give a shit about any of them.
Stop screaming.
"

She managed to get louder and kept kicking me.

I finally let her go
. "
Fuck
, Tracey."

She stopped screaming when I backed off. Her eyes were like a wild animal. "Will practically came through the phone when I called him with that job. He blew up my voicemail calling me about it afterward. He couldn't
wait
to do it. So, sweetheart, don't blame me because your butt-buddy didn't want the boring life you did. He didn't even tell you
I called him
, so how good'a friends were you, really?"

I had to take a deep breath because my thoughts were on the verge of unintentionally burning her alive. "
Tracey.
I told you to leave him alone. I knew he'd ta
ke the job, t
hat's why the
fuck
I told you not to contact him.
And you did it anyway, like you always do.
"

She rolled her eye. "Oh, fuck you, Don
. Just like always, you're right, huh?
You're always fucking
right
, aren't you? Like a fucking saint. I bet he just loved you telling him what to do all the time, too.
I'm sure you made him feel like your equal w
hile you manipulated him and talked down to him to try and get him to do what you thought he should do. I'm sure he loved that."

Fuck, I needed a fucking cigarette. I found a pack sitting on the rolling table. My brand. Thank you, Jesus. I snatched it up and slapped it against my palm. "
Y'know what, fuck all this.
You're going into custody, T.
Cops are all over the place outside, and we're gonna
surrender to 'em."

She sat upright in the chair. "
Oh, my God,
There
'
s cops?
" she gasped. "
Oh, lawd, what will we do? Protect me, Don. I'm just a stupid little girl who can't do anything for herself.
It's not like I'm a
fucking teleporter
or anything."
Then she sighed and blew me off like it didn't matter. "Fuck you, asshole. Fucking
fine
. My powers will come back, and I'll be out of custody anyway. You want to waste your time bringing me in, and, by the way, get yourself arrested in the process, then you're a dumber motherfucker than I thought you were. I'll be home by tomorrow. I know a healer who can fix what they did to me, then I'm taking a vacation in the Maldives for two weeks, then it's back to work."

She did it just to push my goddamn buttons. She always knew how to and loved the fuck out of doing it.

I pried open the pack's foil with my finger and smelled the tobacco. Like Heaven. "I left your ass in the apartme
nt of some Indian girl I banged,"
I told her. "
They gave it to me and I just forgot it."

Two people could push buttons.

"Whatever," she said,
trying not to show she was
pissed
but turning red with anger.

"What if your shifting doesn't come back?" I asked her.

"Then I guess I'll get a job at a fucking factory. That's what you'd like so I can be like you, right?"

I put one of the cigarettes in my lips and lit it. "You're going into custody. I think the time will help you
reflect on some things
in your life."

She took a swing at me, but
I was easily out of her reach.

"When you feel like you can walk with my help, Holyfield, we'll head outside."

"You left London, too," she said.

My blood iced at what I knew she was abou
t to say. Fucking buttons, man.

"The fu
ck're you talking about, Tracey?
"

Her eyes practically rolled back like a shark smelling blood in the water. "You know what I'm fucking talking about. You left, the same as I did. I didn't see you trying to stop Jurgen and the others from killing everybody they could. You walked away."

"Motherfucker, so did you. You went
first
, and you left me
there."

"Yeah, because, according to you, I'm an unremorseful bitch monster,
which I'm fucking
not
remorseless because I fucking apologized about Will and gave you his cut
, but you did the same thing I did in London, so what does that make you?
But anyway, I just shifted away back to my parents' house
. Done
. You, though, you had to crawl out of the city, seeing the shit
Jurgen and the others
were doing every bit of the way. Did you stop and help anybody? Did you
just
watch people die?
And you're
going to
stand there and
pass judgment on
me
? Fuck you. You know what you did, Mr. Perfect. Put Agent Red and Kamikaze and whoever else you want to up against the death toll in London that you let happen
. O
r that fire you set in your town.
How remorseful are you for all that?
"

I muttered out, "Just
let me know when you're ready."

S
he knew she had me by the balls with that London stuff, but
since I didn't try to fight against her, it didn't satisfy her.
She tried to attack me again, launched herself out of that chair
and
to get her arm around my side and make a play for the knife, but she was hobbled by what they had done to her, and I shoved her hard to the floor.