They Tell Me I'm The Bad Guy (37 page)

Then the t
ears
started going
down her face. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" she
cried
. "Look what they did to me. I just want to go to my home and get in my bed. That's all I want. I want to be out of here, and I want to feel safe. I just need someplace safe."

I blew smoke out the side of my mouth. Anger, logic and outrage hadn't worked, so now she was trying to play me with sympathy. I looked her dead in the eye. "Tracey, you think that's going to work on me? How long we known each other?
You're getting arrested.
They have agents that're counselors who can help you out. You might get the ass-kicking you need, too."

"Jesus Christ, I'm not faking this," she pleaded.

"Smells like bullshit in here, Trace."

"You're an asshole," she tried to snarl but just ended up crying
more
.

I sighed smoke
. "Yeah, I know." I tried to put my arm aroun
d her, but she swatted it away.

"The fuck is wrong with you? Don't touch me." Exhaustion had caught up with her
. Silvy had pushed her too far. She wiped the tears off her face.
"Why are you going into custody?" she asked. "You've still got your fire,
go, get
out."

I sucked down smoke in a deep breath. "Name me one damn thing I've solved with that
fire
shit.
'Cause I sure can't think of one. Come on, y
ou ready to go? We'll go together."

The metal building came apart at the seams,
completely
disassembled
like in town
. I put my hands up in surrender
right before the telekinetics grabbed us both
. A
group
of agents put us at gunpoint, shouting about Smythe's Law. Tracey
had shut her eyes,
probably
picturing someplace safe,
still trying to shift away.

Thre
e guys dragged her to her feet, a few more closed around me, and the telekinetics let us go.
The towel that had been stuck to
Tracey's ass fell off
.

"Hey, take it easy on her," I told them. "They kept her prisoner."

They put my hands behind my back.

"What's your name an' power?" a cop with an accent and a bleeding forehead asked me.

"Donnie Guillory.
Das Biest von Feure
.
Pyrokinesis."

"Good man. M
akin' it easy for me."

They asked Tracey the same question but she didn't answer.

"She's Tracey Miller," I
spoke for her
. "Teleporter,
responsible for
the death
s
of Agent Red and
two Posters named Kamikaze and
Splode."

"
Shut the fuck up
, Don," she yelled as t
hey dragged her out. "I was
n't even a willing part of this.
The
y tortured me and controlled me, and y
ou think I
need to go to prison for that?
They controlled me from the beginning!
"

"
That's bullshit, Trace. And
you got, what, fifteen, twenty yea
rs of shit built up before this?
You need to go. I'll see you at your trial. I'll be the one testifying against you
r half-an-ass
for murder."

"I
hate you
, Don. You're a fucking asshole!"

The accented guy, my arresting officer, read me my rights. I nodded and said nothing, and he searched me and took my smokes and Rosemary's badge
. I made it easy for them.

I called out to
Tracey
: "Hey, Trace. You were right about Will. He did have a choice. He could've said no."

She went from actively resisting to just limp in her officers' hands, making them drag her like a kid in the grocery store. "Fuck you, don't talk to me," she said. "You're going to rot in prison, and I'll shift right out."

"Jesus, just calm down
, T
race
."

She thrashed and kicked, and they finally hit her with sedatives, and she went limp for real.

After that, everything moved pretty fast.

Cops had apparently taken
over
the tent city pretty easily because the clueless, shit head Posters looked ten times more fucked-up than the uniformed ones. While the pieces of Bob's building were formed into makeshift holding pens them, a medical team went
to work giving Ibn Meghar CPR, and t
rucks and
semis
rolled in to load up and haul away the incarcerated.

"I want a lawyer," was all I said
to my AO when he asked me what had happened
. No way in hell was I stupid enough to spill my guts to some guy I didn't know from Adam from some law enforcement agency in another damn country. I did tell him,
though,
"Just make sure everybody working the scene is careful on that foundation. There's some kinda generator that could kill us all under it."

A shout went up, and cops
pulled
an older male with no pulse
out
of
sheet metal lean-to in a corner
of the building
. Earle and Two-Stroke were already dead, so it wasn't hard to figure out who had been hiding like a little bitch
in the corner
while he had his hand up Meghar's ass
.
Medics
brought in defibrillator paddles
to shock
Bob
back to life
, but the machine wouldn't charge up to administer
it
,
so they couldn't revive him. F
ucking shame.

The shadow guy
appeared on the scene to yell at the medics
who
'd had to bring a lifter in just to do the
compressions on Meghar's dense chest
.
He barked at them
and
turned to all of
us and trotted out some clear
English, "Who. Did. This? Show me who did this now."

None of the cops said anything. The Apaches casually drifted over to us.

I looked up at my AO
from where I sat on the ground. "I'll go talk to him."

"Shut the fuck up, Guillory."

DeltaBlue passed overhead with a "Yeah, shut the fuck up" to me.

He set down on the crac
ked foundation, his palms open at his
sides, not
looking
at all
confrontational. Whatever
he and the shadow guy
said
to each other
, they
were quiet about it.
DeltaBlue nodded and bowed a little and walked steadily towa
rd me.

His voice came over the cops' radio.
"Why isn't anybody getting
Guillory
on a truck yet? Get him on a fucking truck with the lights on
now
."

They
pulled
me up off the ground as the medical team zipped Bob's corpse up in a heavy black body bag. They dropped him when they picked him up the first tim
e, and I got a good laugh
.
I hoped somebody recorded it and would put it on the Internet. On a loop with like that Benny Hill music and some sound effects and shit.

The last glimpse I got of Tracey was her laid out on the ground, unconscious from the sedatives, her mouth wide open. Somebody with a
medical kit cleaned her wounds.

Blue barked at me, "
E
yes front. You do that to her?"

"No, man
. I pulled her out of there."

"Oh, well, good job, hero.
You
saved a
wanted criminal
and killed Ibn Meghar.
You know what you just did to foreign relations? You got any idea?"

"I fucked it up?"

"You fucked it
all
up, that's right. Like a blind boy with his
first hooker.
I don't guess you want to tell me why you did it?"

I just said, "Lawyer."

"Yeah. That's what
I expected from somebody like you
."

The cops
cleared out an idling armored car full of
other
Posters
so I would be solo in the truck
.

DeltaBlue
did another search of
me for weapons himself
before he put me in
. "I'm gonna be flying over the truck
keeping the light in here from throwing shadows
,"
he said, giving me some thorough patting, "
Nobody's going to be able to get at you, you're safe. Now, you try any shit,
however,
and it'll be the last shit you try.
You got me?
"

"Yeah, shits everywhere, hey, is Lee okay?
Guy named
Stagga
Lee
?"

Blue looked like he was about to say something smartass but
said
, "Yeah, he wants to turn state's evidence.
Wonder where he got that idea.
He's in rough shape, but he's writing out a full confession right now. Some dreadlocked fool is too."

Blue bro
ught out the steel cuffs, and
I put my hands behind my back. "I think Silvy's off-site. Are you looking for her?"

He
tightened the
m up on me
. "Don't worry about her.
We know our job. For some reason I'm sure you wouldn't know anything about,
she threw off a psychic backlash everybody in the Western hemisphere felt and half could pinpoint. They got a team rolling on her right now.
But you don't know anything about that, right?
"

"
Lawyer,
"
I replied.

"Righ
t
."

Blue had me sit down and locked the doors up.

I leaned back
and put
my head on the thick armored wall. Christ, I needed a cigarette. The armored truck dropped into gear and lurched forward. It would be back to Washington and on to Stone Pass for me. I would be all over the fucking news again, too.
I put all that shit aside. Fuck it, man, a
t least I would get some peace and fucking qui
et in my cell. No more fucking bullshit from people for a while.

I shut my eyes and
stretched out
on the hot metal floor. I had nothing left
. I was
just spent.

I noticed a pack of cigarettes in the corner of the truck, bouncing around on the floor with every bump. My brand
, too
. One of the cops must have thrown it in for me
. Very un-asshole
of them. Although,
they did it with
my hands cuffed behind my back, so it might have been a straight dick move to
screw
with me.

"That's entrapment," I said to no one and melted through the chain
links
on the cuffs.
Das Biest von Feure
was back in retirement, and I deserved a
fucking
smoke to celebrate.

The pack
was
brand new, unopened. I slapped them against my palm. Fucking weird.
I had opened that pack I found. The pack I found
in Tracey's room. My brand. Right when I wanted them.
Just like now.

I stopped slapping the pack.

No fucking way. There was no fucking way.
Those assholes
had been full of shit. No
fucking
way had
that set-up or the
fucking universe code bullshit done anything to me.
Uh-uh.

But
Tracey couldn't teleport, the cops came in
right as I was ready for them
,
Bob was dead, Silvy was fucked,
the defibrillator wouldn't charge, I got put in a truc
k by myself when I wanted peace--
holy fuck
.

I threw the pack aside and shut my eyes. I didn't want a cigarette. No fucking cigarettes.

I opened my eyes, and the pack was gone.

God.

Dammit.