19.
I slammed the phone down almost hard enough to break it. I didn’t need to hear any more.
No taunts.
No laughter.
No further conversation.
I drew a ragged breath in the darkness of the automotive shop, and rested a hand on the farm truck sitting at its center as I wobbled away from the phone. That money was mine, my ace card, the thing I kept in reserve as a surprise and a hedge against all the troubles I’d faced the last few years.
It felt like someone had yanked the rug from beneath my feet, and without Gavrikov’s power of flight to save me, I had come crashing down to the hard concrete floor of life.
“Oh no,” I gasped, feeling like maybe I was having a heart attack. Or a panic attack. Or just death coming straight for me like a Hades reaching out with his powers and ripping at my soul.
Sure, I was technically immune to that power, but still…it felt like someone was tearing at me.
My brain was wheeling, whirring, again speeding at a thousand miles per second. I grabbed the Irn Bru I’d left open and chugged it, taking it down swiftly, then tossing the can in the garbage. I looked at the window high above the workbench at the back of the shop. It faced away from the farmhouse, which was good, because I’d heard the mechanic lock the door, and I didn’t need to deal with him looking out later and seeing it open.
I jumped up, grabbed the window ledge with my fingers and hoisted myself up, tugging with my baseline succubus meta strength. It was easy enough, and once there, I unlatched the window and popped it open, sliding out and landing in the tall grass behind the building.
Rose had been on the other end of the phone from me, and could easily have gotten caller ID on the landline I’d just used. It would have been simple, presuming somehow she’d co-opted Nils. And I had to assume that, because how else would she have locked my account?
This was her manifestation of control again, this power she had over others. I was thankful I’d hung up on her, thinking again of her possible Siren abilities. She could have talked me into surrendering myself, maybe, if I’d kept chatting.
And even if she couldn’t do that, she could damned sure have dispatched most of Police Scotland to the origin of the phone number I’d called her from, which meant I needed to put some serious distance between myself and this auto shop, and quickly.
The sky was still an unrelenting grey as I sprinted toward the nearest fence, on a hilltop about three hundred yards away. I kept the auto shop between me and the farmhouse, just in case the couple within had come up for air from Stranger Things, I’d best not accelerate the process of getting the cops on my ass.
Once I reached the fence I hopped it, trying to control my breathing, and scouted the land on the other side. No buildings in sight. I started forward again, heading west along the fence line. I’d just run using this cover until I found another obstacle.
I did that all the way to the intersection of the fence, some two miles down the way. There, I found myself steeped in a wood, weary and breathing heavily again. I crept through, crunching a few stray, fallen leaves, shivering, less from cold than from constant exertion and fear creeping in. My heart was hammering and I was exhausted. My eyelids were trying to creep down on me. I hadn’t gotten a lot of restful sleep last night, I’d run and swam for miles and miles today, and had been kicked in the ass by adrenaline more times than I could count.
Mopping my sotted brow, I tried to figure out what to do next. There was another farm below, this one with just a barn, a farmhouse, and one outbuilding. The farmhouse looked abandoned, but that was hardly a guarantee. The grounds were overgrown, which was another mark in their favor, but again, no certainty that this was empty.
There was no sound of helicopters overhead or in the distance. I felt certain that Rose would have tracked back my call by now. I definitely hadn’t known how to block the caller ID, not here in the UK. Hell, I could barely figure out how to dial their phones. It would have been a smart skill to learn before coming over here, or during the months I’d spent in London, but you couldn’t anticipate every possibility. Brushing up on the telecom systems of the places you visited? Ranked somewhere below daily cardio and martial arts practice.
I couldn’t stop at this farm, but I did decide to make a break right through the middle of it. It was a risk, but a calculated one. If I stuck to fence lines, I’d have to really take the long way around, and I needed to put a ton of distance between me and that automotive shop before I did hear the helos overhead.
That in mind, I sprinted out of the trees and bolted over the field, heading for the stone fence that waited on the other side of the farm.
I covered the ground in a matter of sixty seconds or less, which seemed considerably longer since I was in the middle of open fields, not an ounce of concealment anywhere nearby save for a couple of scraggly bushes not far from the farmhouse. I kept my distance from the buildings, a plan I was willing to change if I heard a helicopter’s buzzing.
It didn’t come though, and I made it to the other side of the property without incident.
The longer I stayed out in the open and the more time elapsed between when I’d hung up with Rose and now, the more likely it got to be caught out in the open. My breathing was coming furiously, my already exhausted body having reached the point of quitting. There was exertion—say, running a marathon, or a triathlon, both of which I’d kinda done already today—at a human pace, and then there was doing all the above at a metahuman pace.
I was an impressive athlete among humans. I could win just about any event at the Olympics without putting much effort into it, solely on my natural gifts. (Which had become a problem the IOC was dealing with.)
But today I’d done far more than just a normal human run, or even a superhuman run conducted at a human pace.
I’d run a marathon at a meta pace, sprints, stopping and starting constantly.
I had gone for a swim that lasted less than an hour but covered something like ten or fifteen miles.
And I’d experienced more stress and adrenaline and fright and hell and trauma in the last twenty-four hours than I could recall facing—with the possible exception of that time I caught a bullet in the brain, and even that was debatable—maybe ever.
It felt like I was dying, like my legs were going to give out on me at any second, like my lungs were taking their last breaths. I was well conditioned for a human, maybe even for a meta, but my body had reached the wall and I was now being thrown back, hard. If I’d gotten a decent night of sleep last night, maybe—
No.
This was it.
I was crashing.
I’d had nothing to eat but what I’d raided from John’s fridge this morning and the sugary crap I’d taken out of the mechanic’s junk food stash since…hell, I’d been starving myself in Edinburgh yesterday, too. I probably hadn’t eaten a real meal since the day before, and exerting this many calories on a near-empty tank…
It was beyond unhealthy. It wouldn’t be fatal, because I didn’t think metas could die that way—I knew of high-level ones like me that had been asphyxiated and starved for years or even centuries that had somehow survived, albeit badly brain damaged—but it would mean the end of my run.
I had to rest. There was nothing else for it.
There was an agonizing stitch that had sprung to life in my side, screaming like someone had taken a knife and plunged it in. Rose sort of had, I guess, but that was more of a back wound, and not a literal one.
I scanned ahead, hoping for some sign of—
There.
In the distance was another farmhouse, this one well-kept and the fields growing sprouting, green crops that were about a foot out of the ground. I couldn’t tell what they were, and I didn’t care unless I could eat them as I went by. I might not even have had the energy to chew them at this point. There was a barn here, and it, too, was in good repair. And out from the barn a little bit…
Was a covered car port, with an old truck parked beneath it. There were no walls, and it was exposed to the elements, but the truck didn’t look like it had been moved in a long time. In fact, compared to the rest of the farm, it was in dismal shape, the hood all rusted and at least two of the tires flat as Iowa.
I belly-crawled over the distance between us, probably close to a mile, trying not to disturb the hay that hid me at first, and then keeping myself between the rows of the budding crops on the final approach. No helicopter sound echoed on the horizon, but my breaths were still coming furiously.
My hands were numb as I scraped along on my elbows and knees, like some sort of wounded dog. My brain had slipped into a twilight state, the corners of my vision blackening, a tunnel forming in my sight between me and my objective. My legs seemed to be seizing up, painfully, aches screaming at me as the muscles gave up the ghost.
I fought them back into action, always one more pull forward, always just one more elbow ahead. I swayed from side to side with each motion, always in danger of tipping over.
Somehow I made it out of the row of crops and onto the manicured lawn. There were only ten or fifteen yards between me and the old truck now, and I felt every single one of them. I tried to stand and failed, crumbling back to my hands and knees. Running had been a thing I took for granted this morning. Moving normally had been possible only an hour—had it only been that long since the call? I thought so—before.
Now I strained to get the last few feet. When I reached the concrete floor of the car port, I dragged myself across it, not caring that I was leaving a dirt trail, a blood trail. The next good rain would wash it all away, I hoped. Maybe that would even come tonight, if I was lucky.
Ha.
Me.
Lucky.
That was a good one.
I dragged myself beneath the truck, and just in time. My whole body quit as I did so, my neck muscles giving way and my face crumpling gently to the concrete. There was an oily smell lingering here too, but not as strongly as the automotive shop. The lingering orange, metallic flavor of Irn Bru was stuck on my tongue, and the pavement grain felt like it was burning at my brow.
I didn’t give a damn about any of that.
I was safe as I could be.
There were no choppers buzzing in the distance.
Every inch of me hurt, was sore, was tired, was shutting down from exhaustion.
I felt like I was forgetting something. To escape, maybe, but that was impossible now. I couldn’t have run any farther if I had to. My heart could have been pumping wildly—hell, it still was; I could hear it—and I couldn’t have traveled another inch right now.
I was in for the night. The grey horizon was barely visible beyond the shadow of the truck above me.
And as I lay there, mind almost blank from fatigue, from fear, from the complete and total mental exhaustion that went with the physical, a single thought came to me.
Reed.
And with that last, stray thought, I plunged into the darkness of sleep.