DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) (23 page)

The door burst open, and gunfire flared, as my forcefield flashed. I raised my hand, put a particle beam through the door at wide burst, and charred chunks of meat blew through the opposite wall.

“LAST TIME. WHERE IS ANYA!”

“Downstairs!” He yelled. “In the nursery! Downstairs!”

I dragged him with me, stomping so hard I left dents in the floor, uncaring that the gravitics would get me there more quietly. I wanted to take my time. I wanted him to scream and thrash and sob in his nakedness, tortoise-like old wrinkled face bawling as pain worse than any he’d suffered in his pampered, perverted life filled him and became the whole of his being.

And also, I wanted to draw his guardians to me before I got downstairs. That way I could kill them all without accidentally hurting Anya.

They came and they died, and a minute later, after a quick thermal sweep, I was breaking down the locked door of a downstairs room.

A child huddled in the corner, under a mass of blankets as round little eyes stared at me. “ANYA.” I said, turning on the lights.

A pause, then the blankets rippled, and a blonde-haired girl crawled out, clad in a fuzzy pink onesie. She walked up to me, stared up at my mask. “Dia?”

“YES.”

“Where mommy?”

“THAT’S A GOOD QUESTION. LET’S ASK YOUR DADDY.” I hurled him into the corner and he shrieked.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“WHERE IS MINNA?”

“I... She’s gone, okay? She ran away!”

“WHERE IS MINNA?”

“She’s gone! Your mommy’s gone. I loved her and she’s gone.” he wept.

“LOVE.” I hunkered down over him, glared down into his face as he tried to crawl back, screamed as he put weight on his maimed hand, and collapsed.

“YOU HAVE A FUNNY DEFINITION OF LOVE.”

“I loved her! She couldn’t see it. Wouldn’t see it. I loved her... and I love my daughter.”

I looked to Anya. Anya was still, watching him without any expression on her face. Slowly a thumb came up to her mouth and she chewed on it.

“YOU LOVED MINNA.”

“I did. God help me I did. I wanted to marry her. I wanted to protect her. I offered her everything. Everything!”

“YOU RAPED HER.”

“She liked it.”

I stepped on his foot and he screamed, as I brought the weight of my armor down, pulverizing flesh and bone. “YOU KIDNAPPED HER.”

“She— I— she— oh god.”

“YOU HELD HER HERE.”

“Oh god oh god oh god— please. Please, I have money. I have power.”

“YOU BEAT HER.”

“She... she kept trying to escape. Kept trying to— ungrateful. I couldn’t— I—” He sobbed.

“YOU RAPED HER.”

“Once! Only once when I got her back! I gave her a week to adjust, a whole week, and she tried to kill me!” He screamed as I ground my foot, and piss stained the floor as he gave in to his fear and pain.

“AND YOU TOOK HER DAUGHTER.”

“Look... the Color Guard. My people will have called them. They’ll be here...”

“YOUR PEOPLE ARE DEAD.” They probably
had
called in the Color Guard. That was a problem. Those heroes were out of my league with my current level of technology. But I had a plan for that, and two minutes before their fastest member could make it here.

“Please... not in front of my daughter.”

“YOU THOUGHT SHE’D BE A BARGAINING CHIP, PERHAPS. THOUGHT WITH HER DAUGHTER HERE, MINNA WOULD STOP TRYING TO ESCAPE.”

“She— I would have given her everything,” he whispered. “Everything.”

“EXCEPT FREEDOM.”

He sobbed, weaker now. “Like she had it better somewhere else? She could have lived in luxury for the rest of her life.”

“WITH HER RAPIST.”

He shuddered. “Please. God... take the kid and go. Just... please.”

“SHE WILL. BUT ONE MORE QUESTION, FIRST.”

“Anything. Anything.”

“YOUR MEN. WHEN THEY GRABBED MINNA, DID THEY TAKE HER DIRECTLY HERE?”

“Yes.”

“IMMEDIATELY AFTER.”

“I... I... I can’t remember exact...”

“THINK HARD OR DIE NOW!”

“It took a day! They called me that day, and then, and then they had to get her quietly through the blockades, and... they brought her home the day after that.”

“HOME. WHERE YOU KILLED HER.”

Anya was still as a statue.

“Yes.” He said, closing his eyes. “She tried to escape with Anya. She got to the outer gate. They didn’t know her, didn’t know she was living here. They, they thought she was an intruder. She died.”

He opened his eyes, stared at me, no, not at me. At Anya. “And you know what? She didn’t cry. Not a bit.” He sounded both freaked out and proud, simultaneously. “Daddy’s little girl.” He smiled, raising a shaking, bloody hand. “Daddy’s little girl.”

“ONE LAST QUESTION.”

“Hah? Hah.... uh...” He was going into shock. I slapped his face.

“ONE LAST QUESTION. WHERE WAS HER ROOM? WHERE WAS MINNA’S ROOM?”

“The... the large one at the end of the hall. Up-upstairs.”

The sound of whirring filled the air. Color Guard’s first responders. The senator glanced up, smiled. “Now you’ll ha-have to let me go. You’ll—”

I shot him with a particle beam at full charge and spread. When I was done, there was a smoking hole through every room left in the floor in a direct line west, several burning trees beyond, and a pair of feet with smoking stumps of legs attached. The rest of the senator was sprayed over the scenery to my west.

Anya hugged my leg, and I gathered her up. Forty seconds until the Color Guard reached me. Ten more than I needed.

“HOLD ON TIGHT,” I told Anya.

And I set the date for two days after Minna’s capture, and activated my time machine.

I’d wondered why my future self had given this to me. But after Arachne told me of how Minna had died, I didn’t wonder at all.

Purple sparks rose about me, flaring more and more as the room seemed to shiver. I watched, fascinated, as a pattern built itself out of tachyon flare and photons bent in ways they were never meant to go. I watched, my mind spinning as I pondered the effects I was seeing, glorying in the sheer
science
of it.

I doubted I could duplicate this just from the visual effects and readings I was getting. But given time, a budget, and enough experimentation, I rather thought I might be able to learn a few more things about chronological physics if I applied myself.

Time for that later. Literally if it worked out. Now was the time for killing, and saving. I’d get one shot at this.

I warped into a quiet sunroom, with nobody in sight. It was still the middle of the night. Good.

I triggered my thermal vision, peered through the walls, then peered up. The room at the end of the hall should be the one. Sure enough, there was someone sleeping there. A tall someone. I curled into a ball around Anya, who hugged me harder.

WHAM!

Through the ceiling.

WHAM!

Through the wall.

WHAM!

Through a surprised guard, sent crashing against the far wall in a spray of blood with bonebreaking force.

WHAM!

And through the last wall, into a large bedroom. And there, sitting bolt upright in a large bed, literally held to it with handcuffs, was a blonde figure with a hard look in her eyes.

“Mommy!” Anya yelled. I tossed her on the bed, and whirled around. Nodded as I recalibrated my thermal vision, and tied it to my targeting systems.

Ten searing blasts of gold light later, the structural integrity of the mansion was slightly compromised, and everyone else in the other rooms was a shredded pile of meat.

Everyone else, save for one person.

“MINNA.” I said, reaching over and snapping the handcuffs.

“Dire. Thank you!” She said, rolling out of bed. “We have to leave. Quickly.”

“NOT YET.” I said. “FIRST SHE HAS TO KILL A MAN FOR THE SECOND TIME.”

“What is this you say?” She asked, but I was already in motion, shoulder-checking the door, bursting it from its hinges. Across the way the bedroom door opened, and the senator peered, looking like an aged turtle in his fright and shock, as I charged down the hall at him.

“SHE IS YOUR END!” I roared, and grabbed him, as he struggled and screamed. “WE’LL MAKE THIS QUICK—“

“No.” Minna’s voice echoed through the hall.

We stopped. Looked to her.

“Anya, go inside the room,” she said, and pushed Anya through a door... but Anya wouldn’t let go. Anya was crying.

“What... what is this?” The senator blustered. “Who are you?”

“AH, YOUR MEN DIDN’T BRIEF YOU YET. OOPS.” I said. “THEIR BAD.”

“This is crazy! Leave at once, and let my family be.”

“Family.” Minna said, and there was such venom in her tone that we both fell silent. We watched as she shut Anya into a bathroom, and locked it behind her. Then she moved down the hall, face a mask of coldness.

The senator stared at her, and trembled as she approached. “Minna, please. This is crazy.”

Minna paused before she got to him, turned and vanished into one of the upstairs rooms.

“And you! You know that Color Guard will be here in minutes. There’s no escape. I don’t know what you were thinking.”

Minna came out of the doorway, with a golf club in her hand.

“A GOLF CLUB?” I asked. “DIRE WOULD HAVE GONE WITH A BASEBALL BAT, BUT HEY, YOUR CHOICE.”

“Minna!” He said. “Go back to your room! It’s not too late!”

Minna moved in, stopped a few feet away. Looked up to my mask, towering above. “Hold him?” She said.

I nodded.

“Minna! No! For the love of god!”

I used the time to hack into the mansion’s network and erase their security logs. Best to avoid paradoxes, I thought.

By the time she was done, we were both splattered in blood, and she was crying. She wanted to keep going past his death, but I heard the whirring in the air, and knew it was time to go. It took seconds to retrieve Anya, seconds more to leave the estate and find a quiet patch of road and hug them tight, and no time at all to set my time machine to return to the present day.

I wondered what I would find? Would I arrive to find myself in a prison cell? My friends dead? All my hard work undone?

I doubted it, but I couldn’t be sure. Time travel was a risk, but after what Arachne had told me about Minna’s capture, torture, and death, well... I had to try.

I wondered if this was what heroes felt like.

Then I remembered the sound of the golf club as Minna killed her tormentor, and I grinned a vicious smile. No, no this wasn’t at all what heroes felt like.

This was better.

This was right.

The road was as empty six months later as it had been when we left, and the van was in the same place. In the wee hours of the morning we departed, driving back east. I checked the news feeds as we went, and was heartened to see that nothing had really changed, as far as I could see. It had been tempting to do more, but not while Minna and Anya’s lives were on the line.

I stopped at an All-Mart along the way, got them some clothing that wasn’t nightgowns and a week’s worth of food. While they changed, I poked around with a burner phone, found what I was looking for.

“What now?” Minna asked when I returned to the van.

“Arbor Haven Vacation Cabins.” I showed her the image on the phone’s tiny screen. “Icon City’s finest vacation getaways. You’ve got Cabin Sixteen, all by itself on the northern end of Lake Silence.”

“We are to live there?”

“For now. Dire’s in the middle of an operation. If it goes well, she’ll show back up for you. If it doesn’t, then you’ll want to move on after a few weeks.” I peeled a wad of bills out of my pocket. “This should cover unexpected expenses.”

Minna studied me, her face as blank and cold as it had ever been. But her eyes told stories that the casual observer wouldn’t see. “I want to help.”

“Help Anya.” I said. “Keep yourself safe. That is how you’ll help.” I drew a shuddering breath, held back the tears that threatened at the corner of my eyes. “Dire won’t lose either of you, ever again.”

And then she was hugging me, and I was crying into her flannel shirt, and it was a messy scene for a while as Anya hugged the both of us and wailed.

After a few hours I dropped them off at the cabin, and found my way back to the power station. Martin and Vorpal were waiting.

“There you are!” He seemed upset. “The hell you mean, back in a day or two?”

I raised a hand as he started in on me. “Minna.” I watched Martin’s objections die on his lips.

Vorpal crossed her arms. “What?”

“Friend of ours. You found her? She okay?”

“Yes. Now, anyway. She died. Used the time machine to bring her back, grabbed Anya at the same time.”