Limitless (32 page)

“Hm?” Janus looked as though he’d just been awakened. Probably had, Philip reflected; the poor sod had had a few very traumatic days, and they hadn’t included much in the way of sleep.

Which was how Philip had planned it, of course.

“No, I require nothing else,” Janus said in that peculiar, old-world accent of his. “Thank you, Mr. Glaser.”

Nothing he said so much as hinted at a negative probability in Philip’s analysis of his near future. Philip drained the last of his cup of tea—just perfect in the amount of milk and sugar—and set it back on Mr. Glaser’s desk before standing and placing a hand on Janus’s shoulder. The good son, giving his father an arm to stand up with. “Come on then. Let’s go conclude our other business.” Not even a subtle movement in the probabilities from Janus. He simply stood and shuffled out of Glaser’s office, utterly resigned to his fate.

Chapter 78

“She left her phone,” I said, staring at the black cell phone—mobile phone, over here—sitting on the desk next to the computer terminal. I crossed over to it and thumbed it on, and the first thing my eyes alighted on when the screen came up was a GPS tracking app.

“No way,” I muttered. “No chance.” No one could be this arrogant, could they?

I tapped it with a thumb and it came up with a map. I held my breath while it loaded, and it came up with a flashing indicator that said, “NO SIGNAL.”

Without even a backward glance toward Karthik, I flew out the door and up the stairs into the main room, hovering in the office and waiting for the screen to change.

The “NO SIGNAL” message disappeared, and the map reloaded, with a pin showing me exactly where I was on it, squarely in the middle of the block that I knew was Omega headquarters.

And then another pin appeared, with the name “Philip,” on it, and my question about who could be this arrogant was effectively answered.

A villain who not only thought he was smarter than everybody else but could see the future. Because why bother to hide what you’re doing from people whose future you know?

I guess he hadn’t seen this coming.

I studied the map and started to zoom in on Philip’s position when the screen lit up and the ringtone sounded, warning me that a call was coming in from—yep, you guessed it—Philip.

Chapter 79

“Dispose of Mr. Karthik,” Philip said as he rode the elevator down. He hadn’t waited for Liliana’s greeting, of course, because why would he? There were things to be done.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Philip,” came the female voice from the other end of the line.

Philip’s eyes widened, and he felt his stomach drop, his fingers clenching tighter on to the phone. How had he not seen this? He felt a swell of fear, replaced by the sickening sense of something forgotten in the scramble to get to the bank—

He’d forgotten to look into Liliana’s future.

This was exactly how he’d gotten caught at the Ministry. He’d gotten complacent, sloppy. He’d failed to do the basic checks, the probability watches on the people who were closest to him. Because it was always them that screwed up, always them that got rolled up first.

This was why he preferred to work alone.

“I suppose you’ve deprived Ms. Negrescu of her phone,” Philip said, smoothly, recovering quickly. He put a smile into his reply.

“I deprived her of her damned life,” came the answer, the voice hazy with static.

Philip felt his eyebrows rise as the lift doors opened. He glanced left and right and saw a staircase leading up the left side of the room, disappearing back up into the private bank. He checked the probabilities and saw it clear to the top. The roof seemed like the direction to go, but his mind was rabbiting so quickly, trying to track the staircase, the lobby and Janus, watching the probabilities for all three, that he felt his cheeks burn. Flustered. This was how it always went in the stressful situations. Too much to manage.

“What’s the matter, Philip?” her voice came again, taunting. “Surprised?”

“More than a little,” he admitted, talking without being able to filter due to his distraction. “I would have expected her to at least slow you down.”

“Like good cannon fodder, right?”

Philip felt a grin from the banter as he narrowed his focus to the stairs. Clear for the next minute, and that was what he needed. He tried to reach beyond but failed, needing to have eyes on it to see the future. He glimpsed back at Janus and saw the man doing nothing but slumping and falling over for the next twenty minutes, at least. He was useless. “Well, yes. What else are they good for? It’s not as though I kept them around for the dinner conversation.”

“That’s cold.”

“It’s necessary,” he said, letting truth spill out. “You let others get close, it gives them the ability to be a weakness for you. You should know all about that.”

“So should you,” she said. “What with Clarice and all.”

Philip felt his blood run cold, the fury pump anger into his face. “So you found out about her.”

“Yeah,” her voice came back. “You did all that spying for Omega and they went and used your sister as a sacrifice while trying to beef up Andromeda. She was the Cassandra they fed to Adelaide in order to make her more powerful. That was how she saw the future. Because of Clarice—”

“Do not say her name again,” Philip said, his voice dripping with a menace he did not often employ. The fact that this tart would talk about Clarice—sweet, dear Clarice, betrayed by the damned legion of Omega, by
him
—

“Or what? You’ll do a tarot card reading and tell me that the King of Cups is going to whoop my ass?”

Philip forced himself to relax at the landing, looking up. The staircase curved at the corner of the square bank building, stretching up past the private bank. From there, he’d be able to get to the roof, to start crossing from building to building and go underground. His head was spinning with the emotion, the thrills. The fear. This was beyond his ability to track, and with the frustration came a certain element of heady freedom. “You’d need to be a lot closer for me to read your future, but I will say that the little I delved into when last I left you did not leave me hopeful that you were going to live to a ripe old age.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Oh, yeah,” Philip said mockingly, trotting out his American accent. “Your future is blood and pain, trial and turmoil.” He hadn’t gone too deep, just a surface level reading of it, afraid to see it in detail. Still, he’d looked closer at her probabilities than he did with most people, and it was a frustrating muddle of a million branched possibilities. The only thing they had in common was a shocking level of violence.

“You might know my future,” she replied, “but you don’t have a clue about my past beyond what you’ve read in someone else’s report. I’ve fought impotent weasels like you—” he felt his jaw clench at her goad, “—people who would take whole cities hostage in order to make me curl up and surrender. I’ve sacrificed myself before to save people. It’s what I do. I have no life so other people can live a normal one—and so I can put the fist and the foot to assholes who want to shape the future in their own perverted image.”

“And here I was, betting on you not having enough self left to sacrifice,” Philip replied, scraping the truth out as he concentrated on the door ahead. It led to the roof, and try as he might he could not reach past the steel. Janus was little help, ready to curl into a fetal position at the sound of a loud noise. A door slammed and Janus wobbled as if he were going to collapse. Philip grabbed him by the lapel and shoved him onward on unsteady legs. “Even I can see there’s little enough left of you to quibble over. You may be a hero for now, but your fall is imminent. If you somehow manage to survive that death wish you’ve been carrying around, then the press will eventually latch onto your past and feed on your carcass until you do the job yourself.” He grinned. “You came close enough to giving them a body in that last interview, after all. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Too bad you’re not going to be around to see it,” she said, static-y again.

“Oh, don’t be a fool,” Philip said. “Bluster will do you little good. I think we both know that you can’t find me unless you’re left a trail of breadcrumbs or unless I hide somewhere in plain sight. Well, newsflash—I don’t care about you now that my business is done. You were the last bit of leverage that I kept alive to break Janus with in case all else failed. All else did not fail, and now I’ve got what I wanted, so you’ll never see me again. And of course you’ll never catch me,” he said with a delirious sort of triumph, “because while you’re playing checkers, barely surviving your own desire to die one day at a time, I play chess. I’ve set everything in motion to lead to this, drawn you along with an offensive strategy that’s kept you exactly where I wanted you until I needed you elsewhere, and I’ve been holding you up this entire time. Well, it’s endgame, now, my dear, and I have no desire to play any longer. I would wish you au revoir, but I think in this case it’s better if I just—” He shoved the door open with his free hand, pushing Janus out onto the rooftop, the light rain coming down around him—

And he saw the probability of a punch coming at him just in time to duck and roll, the rooftop gravel crunching under his shoulder as he dodged out of the way and came up to see Sienna Nealon standing before him, hovering a foot off the ground, her complexion flushed red with anger and her clothing shredded and hanging loose in the breeze.

“Well, damn,” was all that came to Philip’s mind, and consequently, his lips, as he stood there while the rain continued to fall.

Chapter 80

“What’s the matter?” I asked as he stood there, staring at me with his mouth slightly open. “Magic eight ball a little cloudy? Maybe you should ask again later.”

Janus was prone, lying on his belly between us. I’d never seen the old guy in quite such a state. He looked like he was unconscious, but I hadn’t seen any reason for him to be. I caught a glimpse of an eye, open beneath his glasses, which were askew on his face.

I thought about waiting for Philip to monologue, but I wrote that off as stupid before the thought even bubbled up, throwing myself at him in a kick that sent him scrambling. He dodged, avoiding my attack and giving himself room to maneuver.

“You realize you’re fighting a man who can see every move you’re going to make before you make it?” He smiled, smoothing the lapels of his suit. I shot a fist out at him and he dodged expertly, perfectly, only inches before I was going to make contact.

“You don’t even have to be that fast when you know where it’s coming from, do you?” I launched into a series of attacks from memory, running off a martial arts form of pre-sequenced moves in my head. I’d done it thousands of times, simply modifying the direction of my attacks to keep constantly on him, not bothering to vary anything but the direction it was pointed in. It gave me the brain space to just let go, flowing into a sequence as natural to me as the motions required for swimming or walking.

“I don’t have to be fast, no,” he said with that grin, “but I am.” He moved fluidly but with a little bit of a stutter as I pushed him left, then right, driving him backward. His lack of experience was clear, but so was the fact that he knew every single attack before I launched it. “Keep going until your arms wear out and the strength fades from your legs.” His grin widened. “This is what they call a stalemate.”

Chapter 81

She kept coming, admirably enough, not letting up even though it would have been obvious to anyone with half a brain that her attacks were doing little to nothing. He wasn’t even breathing hard, evading her every move with greatest ease, his hands tucked neatly behind him just to infuriate her more. He wasn’t under too many illusions; she was fast, fast enough to see any counter attacks he might launch before he could finish them. She wasn’t making any bold moves, anything that would leave her exposed. He cursed his lack of practice in these arts; were he a little more experienced, it might have been possible for him to exploit her trifling weaknesses. As it was, he would simply have to wear her out.

“I think you see the limits of your incredible speed and strength now,” he said, dodging again, this time to the left. “They’re all very impressive, but if you can’t land a hit on your target, what’s the point?”

“I guess I just can’t play the game like you can,” she said, nearly breathless from the speed of her maneuvers. Still, she came at him, hands and fists a blur. At least she had stopped trying to kick him; those had become clumsy to look at. “I just can’t give up.”

“It’s a matter of patience,” Philip said, the answer just slipping out as he ducked a high swing. “You watch. You learn. You analyze your opponent. You see them for who they are, underneath it all. You prepare yourself for their best attacks, and when they come at you…” he sidestepped, “… you’ve anticipated your way out of their path. Patience. Good things come to those who wait, after all.”

“You know what else comes to those who wait?” Her breaths were coming fast. She was tiring herself out, the fool. He wondered if she would realize it before it happened, if she’d even slow down. He was watching seconds into her future, could see every move in definites, not probabilities. She was attacking with a surety that left no doubt. Her course was certain, and though he didn’t care to admit it, it was taking all he had to avoid her furious assault. “Death. Excuse me if I don’t wait patiently for it.”

Her blue eyes were tinged with green, and the anger had them ice cold. She grunted with every exertion, and he had to concede she was pretty enough, her pale cheeks flaring red from her efforts—or possibly her emotions. Frustration was evident in the twist of her lips.

He started to reply as he made his last dodge, and his foot slipped, just slightly. He caught himself and looked back, the edge of the rooftop waiting for him. The next building over was a solid jump away, but he couldn’t make it without a moment to prepare—

He narrowly dodged the next attack, only centimeters between him and her hammerblow. He escaped by instinct alone, and the follow-on attack he avoided by only a little more. This time he felt the edge before he slipped, and knew that his left foot was on the very corner of the building. A glance back left him with no doubt—