Day's End (14 page)

Until I felt so much pain I wanted to die.

The injection, whatever it was, was the easiest part of it.

Once that was finished, Lorne attached some contraption to my face that forced my eyelids open. I couldn’t blink, and my eyes started stinging almost immediately. A mask was placed over my eyes, and it started showing me a series of images. I didn’t know what they were. Meaningless flashes of things, shown almost too quickly for me to even try to understand them. And, as it happened, it felt like my mind was exploding. Names, places, situations, fights… all of it came to me, and soon, the things I remembered started to mesh with the images I was seeing. Mostly, they were of a group of men and women in black and gray costumes, and I came to know their names.

Portia.

Beta.

Jenson.

Caine.

Steel.

Screamer.

Toxxin.

My mother. My mother dying when StrikeForce should have been protecting her.

Me, beaten, damaged permanently, nobody on StrikeForce lifting a hand to help me.

Me killing a man, rage filling me.

Me, trusting Connor, meeting with him in dark places, confiding in him when I had nobody else.

I knew what it felt like to have murder in my heart, to want to hurt somebody so badly I could practically taste it.

Over and over, I watched myself murder until it didn’t feel strange, until it didn’t feel like anything. I watched myself beat men senseless, carry Zambonis through the air, destroy buildings with nothing but my fists. I watched myself steal, and cheat, and lie, and con my way through life.

After a while, it all stopped hurting. After a while, I knew that my one and only goal in life was to destroy the faces that kept flashing across the screen. StrikeForce. I would take the world away from them and I would watch them burn.

After a while, I knew exactly what I was: I was what angry, desperate trailer trash becomes when they get powers. I was the best there was at getting into places nobody wanted me to get into. I was good at causing pain. I was unstoppable.

I was cold. I was focused. I was ready.

And I would make sure everyone came to fear my name.

I don’t know how long I sat there, those images flashing across my vision, words I hadn’t even noticed being whispered in my ears, over and over again, those memories from whatever they’d injected me with crashing across my mind. Time stopped mattering.

Eventually, the images and sounds stopped. The world went black. I was aware that my eyes were still forced open, but the darkness was so complete they may as well have been tightly closed. I wondered, idly, if this was another part of my programming or whatever Connor, who I also now knew was called Killjoy, had called it. Sensory deprivation or something like that.

I felt strange. There was rage there, purpose, but over everything I still felt numb, empty. Maybe this was what made me so good at what I did, the fact that I seemed to feel nothing at all.

I became so used to the darkness, the silence, that when footsteps rang out, crossing the linoleum floor, I had to try to remember where I was. The mask was pulled off of my face, and I wanted to close my eyes against the glaring white light that replaced the darkness, but my eyelids were still being held open, my eyes dry and painful.

“We’ll get those off of you. Hold on,” Lorne said quietly. I waited patiently while he removed the things holding my eyes open, and then I moved my arm, jerking it hard, and I heard the shackle snap. I grabbed him by the front of his checked shirt.

“That fucking hurt,” I snarled at him, and he whimpered. I wrenched my other arm out of the shackle.

“Help!” Lorne screamed. I picked him up higher, hoisting him above my head, then I drew my arm back to throw him.

“Jolene, no,” I heard Connor say.

“Jolene, yes,” I hissed, and I threw Lorne. “He hurt me.” I watched with more than a little satisfaction as Lorne crashed into the cabinets on the other side of the room, sending bottles and vials and other medical-looking paraphernalia flying. Connor went to him, and Lorne waved him off with a grimace.

“Well, you got what you wanted, boss,” Lorne said.

“Almost,” Connor said. Then he looked at me. “When I tell you to do something, or not to do something, I expect you to fucking listen.”

“This isn’t on her. Aftereffects of the conditioning. I should have waited for you before I undid the shackles. I forgot how strong she is,” Lorne said, rubbing the back of his head. “She couldn’t have listened just now even if she wanted to. Her mind is raw, her emotions are a mess, she’s in pain and her senses are still new to her. I know you expect compliance, but believe me when I say that this isn’t the time. She needs to adjust.”

Connor nodded and patted Lorne on the back. “Okay. That makes sense.” Then he looked at me. “But in the future, when I tell you something, I mean it.”

“Yes, sir,” I snarled.

“You can’t show her all of that and expect her not to be super violent when she comes out of it,” Lorne said. “She needs an outlet.”

“Well, good,” Connor said, eyes still on me. “Because now that the mental part of this shit is done, we have other kinds of training to do.”

“What kind?” I asked him, rubbing the back of my neck, which was still sore from the injection Lorne had given me.

Connor grinned. “The kind that will make you everything you ever should have been. You’re a weapon. You’re a blade and a hand grenade. You’re death, Jolene. Like any blade, you need to be honed, sharpened.” He laughed, then, a strange light in his eyes. “We have so many good times ahead of us, sweetheart.”

All I could do was nod, and say the one word that made sense anymore.

“Okay.”

Part Two
Control

Chapter Eight

Jolene

Three Months Later…

I stood under the searing heat of my shower, running through all of it in my mind, running a play-by-play of how I’d handle this mission.

My first mission. Connor had told me the night before, after my strength training session and evening injection, that he was satisfied with the way my training had progressed, and that it was time to re-introduce me to the world. I was ready. I was strong, much stronger, physically, than I’d been the day I’d come to in Lorne’s lab. My arms, legs, and shoulders all showed definition they lacked before, and Connor had personally trained me in the art of death.

Knives, ice picks, garrotes, swords… Connor had taught me how to wield them all with deadly efficiency. But those were not my favorite methods. No, killing with my bare hands, a lethal punch to exactly the right place… there was something so simple and easy about that. It felt right.

Connor didn’t like it, though. He preferred blades. And because this was his show, I did things the way he told me to. There was nothing to think about. Just follow the commands, just obey my programming. It was good. Easy. I didn’t care enough to think about it either way, and the only thing I knew for sure was that my primary objective was compliance. Do what Connor says.

I was ready to move forward. I was ready to see the world beyond the stark white walls of Connor’s compound. I was ready to use my powers, my skills, for real. And I knew Connor needed me to.

Connor was primarily interested in money, at least for now. And I would make sure he got plenty.

That was my job.

I turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. I toweled off, glancing every once in a while at the black and red uniform hanging on the back of my bathroom door. This would be my first time wearing it. A glimmer of… something, stirred just below the surface of my thoughts, and I shook it away as I started pulling the stretchy armor on over my legs, then up the rest of my body.

I swiped my hand across the mirror over the sink, clearing away the condensation. I combed my hair, pulled it up and back, clipped away from my face. This felt familiar. It was the first thing that had felt real in weeks. Even the injuries I sustained in my sparring with Connor — the bruises, the bumps, the cuts… none of it really felt real. But this, these steps, these were things it felt like I’d done a thousand times before.

I glanced at the digital clock on the counter. I was expected in fifteen minutes. I’d have my evening injection when we got back. I thought I’d tire of the endless injections, but I looked forward to them. By the time Lorne came to inject me, I always began feeling at odds. Stressed, afraid, angry, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know where the feelings came from. All I knew was that the shots made them better. They wrapped me in that warm numbness again, and that was all I really wanted. I’d considered, more than once, mentioning to Lorne that I’d like them sooner, but it wasn’t my place to tell Connor or his people anything. So I didn’t. I dealt with the weirdness until I got my fix, my relief. I just did my job. Just like the rest of Connor’s team.

Connor’s team. I’d finally met them a couple of weeks ago. For the first three months or so that I’d been here, it had just been me, Connor, and Lorne. When he’d been satisfied that I’d be ready to use soon, Connor had called the rest of his team back in.

I did my best to steer clear of them, because they were utter assholes.

He had a few guys with the same accents he had, which he finally told me was Scottish. They all had different powers, mostly the types of powers useful in causing destruction. Michael, the bulkiest, tallest of the three, was a fire starter. James, the chubby one, had some kind of electrical zap thing he did. Kieron, who was actually quite good looking (and knew it) had powers a bit like mine in that he could use a gesture, and whatever was standing in his way would be smashed as if with a giant’s fist.

I was stronger than him, though, and I could tell that he wasn’t happy about that.

Besides the three Scots, there was Eve. She was blond, perfect, and was pretty much glued to Connor’s side the first day she’d arrived. She’d seemed to be less and less enthusiastic the longer she’d been around, and most of the time the past couple of days, she either sat in stony silence or I could hear her screeching at Connor. Usually about me.

Yesterday, a chick around my age had arrived. Dark hair, dark eyes. She’d smirked at me and said we were already familiar with one another.

“Wasn’t this in her programming?” she’d asked Connor, and he shook his head.

“We had to be selective,” he said.

She’d told me that she was Chance, and that we’d both been undercover with StrikeForce, and that it was good to see me again.

Something in her tone had sent chills up my spine.

My mind wandered, losing whatever I’d been thinking about, and I went back to getting ready for the mission.

Once I had my hair pinned back, I picked up the black mask from the counter. I pulled it over my head, a balaclava-style mask that hid everything except my eyes.

I looked at my reflection in the full length mirror on the back of my bathroom door. A stranger stood in my place. If I hadn’t been able to see my eyes, I never would have guessed it was me. I’d become so used to having nothing between me and the rest of the world but a thin t-shirt, a pair of jeans. I’d grown used to my body not being my own, susceptible to the constant injections from Lorne, recipient of Connor’s fists and blades in training, the strange looks he gave me when he thought I wasn’t looking. Those looks made my stomach feel as if I’d swallowed acid, and usually made me want another injection.

But here, like this, clothed in black and red armor, I felt free. Safe. And that was bizarre, because I had nothing to fear.

No. Everyone else would fear me, according to Connor.

Did I even want to be feared? The whisper of a voice somewhere deep inside seemed to ask. I closed my eyes and willed it away. There was no place in my life for thoughts like that. They were meaningless. I had no idea what I’d do with them even if I wanted to, but the desire to even bother thinking about them, let alone the desire to actually act, just didn’t exist. My life was whatever Connor told me it was, and I was fine with that. I didn’t know what I’d do with myself otherwise.