HOMER

  Tabitha’s dream washed over her in waves as warm as the sunbeam she had fallen asleep in. With the swell of warmth, the light of the ruined home office behind her eyelid faded into a dimly lit motel somewhere in the northeastern United States.

  In the memory, she was laid out in her twin bed, still dressed from the day, and trying to fall asleep. She had been too exhausted from the heat to go through her bedtime ritual. Now, laying in her sweat, on the motel’s overly soft mattress, she regretted it. After an hour of rolling back and forth, she still could not find a position that did not nag at her, before she could drift away.

  Agent Harris was sitting up in his bed, watching TV, and talking to himself, or Tabitha while not expecting her to respond. That was how he processed the day, and worked through its problems. And, while she normally cherished the white noise of his commentary, over whatever he happened to be watching on any given night, that night, in the throes of restlessness, her frustration found it an easy scapegoat.

  “…they say its a retelling of The Odyssey, but I just don’t see it.”

  He was watching O Brother, Where Art Thou? on one of the motel’s movie channels. Over an hour into it, he had taken so much offense to having heard it was based on Homer’s epic, that it completely derailed his recounting of the leads they still had to investigate.

  “Sure, there’s sirens, but these idiots are chasing treasure. Odysseus and his men were trying to get home from war, and the gods kept fucking with them. It’s about the cruelty of life—the randomness—the plight of man! It’s about overcoming adversity! This is just…I don’t even know…”

  Tabitha turned away from his chatter, and groaned into her pillow.

  “And Ulysses? This conman and his damn pomade? Does he even know what he’s really after? Does he know who he is, or what he wants? Odysseus was a goddamn war hero. He knows who he is, and why he does what he does.” He took a moment to breathe. “The guy’s a damn machine. Just keeps going, no matter what, outsmarting gods and kings and monsters. The brawn and the brain to overcome every possible obstacle between him and Penelope. He would outwit this treasure hunting hillbilly in a heartbeat. It’s like the Coens weren’t even trying!”

  At her limit, Tabitha rolled over with an exasperated sigh. Head still on her pillow, she chided him across the nightstand between them.

  “You said they’re gonna start letting us get separate rooms when exactly? Was it tonight?!” She made her voice uncharacteristically high, to sell the sarcastic excitement. “Tell me it’s tonight!”

  Agent Harris laughed her anger off. “You know it’s against protocol,” he said, shrugging at her. “‘An issue of safety,’ they say.”

  Tabitha let out another groan, rolling her eyes, and then her body, as she turned away from his mocking smile.

  “Sorry.” Lowering the volume of the TV and his voice, Agent Harris’s rambling eventually died off, once he fell asleep.

  Eventually, the heat of the day left her, and Tabitha’s eyes grew heavy enough to pull her further into her dream.

  Tabitha’s awareness crept back in with the sound of something on the TV. Without having to open her eyes, she knew she was still laying in the motel room. Rest had come and gone, leaving her wishing that keeping her eyes shut would trick it into returning.

  “…and flush the rat from its hole. It stands to reason it will use its variance.” Whatever Agent Harris was watching sounded like an Italian production. Not a spaghetti-western, but something more modern. “And these two gentlemen will wait here for it, and—”

  “BANG!”

  Tabitha’s eyes snapped open, just as Agent Harris muted the TV. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at her. Between them, on the nightstand, the antique flip-top lighter sat. When she noticed it, he noticed and picked it up to look at it.

  “They’re coming for ya, kid.”

  “What?”

  “I wanna help, but it might be one of those damned-if-you-do-type situations.”

  An iridescent heat, both sharp and bright, began to press into Tabitha’s left eye.

  “Ah—fuck…,” she tried to rub the pain away, “…what are you talking about?”

  “They’re expecting it,” he told her. Shaking the lighter between them, he frowned. “The ol’ 'haven' trick.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Not sure there’s much fuel left in the tank, anyway.”

  “Who’s expecting it?”

  He was quiet, for a moment, then turned to look at the TV.

  Static was building in the picture. Night had fallen in whatever show it was. A gray man in green was walking down a driveway, as the eye of a camera followed him.

  “Listen, Tabitha. If you’re gonna keep going—gonna keep fighting—and I definitely hope you do, kid—you gotta figure out why you’re doing it. Eventually, the whole surviving just to survive thing is gonna catch up to you. Eventually, life’s gonna ask for a little more than that, and you’ll have to decide how much you wanna give. You don’t want to have to figure that kind of shit out on the fly.” He smiled sadly. “I can promise you that.”

  It was a speech reminiscent of one he had tried to give her, when he was alive. One she walked away from, but was now a captive audience to. Tabitha tried to breathe through the encroaching tears. Suddenly, she was a child, again. She barely recognized her own tiny, cracking voice. “You’re not leaving me, too, are you?”

  “Nah—no—nothing like that.” Agent Harris chuckled at her as he shook his head. “It’s not that kind of speech, I promise. But, sometimes, we’ve just gotta hear something—really sit down and listen—even if we don’t think we need to. I just—just know that, it might not always feel like it, but I’m with ya, kid.” Tossing his thumb in the direction of the TV, his sad smile turned hopeful. “And I’m rootin’ for ya.”

  Something sharp in her eye made her blink instinctively. “Wait!”

  The iridescent pain began to dominate Tabitha’s vision. She screamed out against it, screamed out for Agent Harris, for anyone, and just when she thought it would be too much, her eye snapped open.

  As the pain receded back into her skull, reality returned to her.

  Eye to eye with the enormous hole in the roof, Tabitha laid there on her back, staring at the night sky. She took a moment to catch her breath, and let her heart stop racing. The dream was still fresh. Laying there, she thought she could still sense Agent Harris sitting there, staring at her. Even the smell of cigarette smoke lingered.

  Tabitha tried her best to distract herself from it. It did not take much to bring the pain of the present to the forefront of her mind. Besides the constant throbbing in the left side of her head, the ringing in her ear was back. It reminded her of the ring’s song, but it was too dull, too off sounding, more a nagging buzz, than a pleasant hum.

  And, while the burning in her arm had retreated to her hand, where it still smoldered, any relief offered to her more grievous injuries meant more ground for the ache of exhaustion to dominate. Resting had done nothing but give agony a second chance to envelop her. She let herself wallow in it just long enough to distance herself from the persistent past.

  When she had enough, a deep breath brought Tabitha’s head out of the fog. If it’s not helping, then you don’t to feel it, she reminded herself. The pain would be there, waiting, on the other side of the night. Right now, it was doing nothing but pinning her in place. She took another deep breath, pulling herself further out of her spiral.

  As clarity returned, Tabitha noticed the sky she was looking at through the roof appeared to have no stars in it. The longer she squinted at it, the more she realized it was not cloud cover. Not only was it void of stars, it was somehow darker than the room was. What little moonlight entered through the windows only made the hole above her appear darker.

  Curiosity pulled her to her feet, its sudden blossoming doing most of the work to push her through the pain. She was getting used to feeling of the unvarite on her arm, but her shoulder joint felt like it was being ground to dust. Craning her neck up at the hole in the ceiling, a jolt of pain shot down her back. She gasped at the shock of it, and pulled her attention back down into the room, to avoid further punishment.

  Across from her, a window highlighted by the moon outside promised a less painful angle to look up from. She crouched over to it, unvarite arm dragging against the floor, and hoped no one had already spotted her. The fact the place was not already crawling with a containment team told her the two agents were likely taking a more subtle, reciprocal approach.

  For all she knew, though, staring out into the dark countryside, through the bottom of the window, there could have been a hundred SecCon looking back at her. What she could see, despite the low light, were the stars floating above the silhouette of the treeline.

  Turning around to crane her neck more gently than before, she tried to get a pain free look into the hole. Pressed into the window, she got just got the right angle to confirm to herself that it did look like starless nothingness on the other side of the ceiling. No attic, or anything. What little light there was just stopped at the void. She let the success of verification push aside the question of what she was seeing. Whatever it was, it was more than ten feet above her, and safely out of reach of her reach.

  A floorboard creaking somewhere downstairs tugged at her ears. Her breath caught, as her head swiveled toward the office door. She stood there, frozen, listening for the next sound, and hoping she would not hear one. Floors creak, she told herself, though, she wanted to argue. But without someone stepping on them?

  Something from the dream beneath a dream crossed her mind. The man on the driveway, she remembered. The gray and green smudge of static she saw started to make sense, now. That advisor from the containment site. It was not a tactical team, but something potentially worse: an unknown. Learning about each individual advisor no longer seemed like something only her brother would do.

  For a moment, part of her wished he was there. She let herself feel their separation, before she bared her teeth at it. What little was known about the advisors probably did not include any weaknesses. And her brother was working with them, now. Even if he had any useful information, she would not trust it. She pictured him as a child, nose bloodied, and crying over his glasses. Useless.

  The next creak was from further in the house, somewhere in the foyer. It was followed by a thick Italian accent echoing through the halls.

  “If you are here, bella, come out, and we can discuss this.”

  His words carried a hot poker into Tabitha’s left eye.

  She had been hit by sucker punches she would have preferred, in that moment. It cut straight through the black in her vision, as an iridescent bolt. The suddenness of it caught her off guard, and sent her reeling backwards. Catching a piece of wood with her heel, she tripped, and just barely managed to stop herself from continuing into the floor.

  When she planted her feet, again, she froze to listen for their revelation.

  Hearing what sounded like bickering, Tabitha knew it was only a matter of time before they were on the stairs. Their breach into the room would not be long after that. She looked around the room, seeing nothing in the darkness, but broken silhouettes. Only the dim glow of the windows stood out to her.

  She saw the flicker of light from their flashlights coming from beneath the door, before she heard them on the stairs. At least two, she thought. What must have been halfway up them, each step turned into a creaking mine. The repetition of one step’s cry, twice, confirmed her theory. The advisor, and who? she wondered. Then the bloody nose pictured in her mind became her own. Sebastian?

  A part of Tabitha wanted to call out for him, as whoever it was got closer to the door.

  “Beeeelllllaaaa,” the advisor sang, “vieni fuori, vieni fuori, wherever you are.”

  Another bolt of iridescence struck, skewering whatever piece of her wanted to beg for help. She stifled her reaction, as best as she could, by putting her palm up to her eye, and applying relieving pressure.

  The closer they got, the more the flashlights crept under the door. Seeing a clear path, Tabitha made the last second decision to sneak over to it. Her plan was to hide behind the door, and wait until she knew who was with the advisor. If it was Sebastian, she would grab him, and take him to the other end of the driveway.

  All it would take is a word.

  At the door, the two men took their time bickering. They were both speaking in hushed tones, making the dueling Italian and American voices sound like nonsense to her. Still unable to tell who it was, or was not, Tabitha gritted her teeth, and waited for them to enter.

  When the doorknob clicked open, their flashlights spilled through the growing crack. They waited outside the room, for the door to be fully pushed to the side, before crossing the threshold.

  Hidden behind the open door, back pressed into the wall, Tabitha’s heart was racing. She had her head torqued completely to the side, trying to peer through the gap, and hoping to see anything, with her good eye.

  The only thing she could see was the movement of shapes against the light.

  “Hmm?” Something pulled the Italian’s attention away from entering. “Oh? After you, then.”

  The familiar click of the safety on an agent’s Glock reached Tabitha’s ears, causing her heart to sink.

  Then, before the agent entered the room, a digital beep preceded him.

  The sound was like a starter pistol shot point blank into her left eye. Tabitha’s head hit the wall, as she crumpled into the floor, trying to get away from the pain. It clung to her, though, the blazing iridescence quenching itself on every nerve between her left eye and hand. Try as she might, to grit her teeth and ride it out, there was no stifling her whimper, or the agony that produced it.

  Despite her desperate clawing at the unvarite eyepatch, Tabitha had the sense to attempt pushing the door closed. Using her left side, she put all her weight into it, expecting the agent to be in the way.

  Instead, she fell into the door, and, unimpeded, it flew shut before the agent could cross the frame. With no support and a failed grasp for the doorknob, then for anything between her and the floor, Tabitha toppled over.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  She hit the ground hard, landing on her unvarite covered arm in just the right way to knock the wind out of her. Even still, as she gasped painfully for breath, the worst of it was the railroad spike being driven into her eye.

  The black space in the left side of her vision was alight with iridescent explosions. There was a perpetual firework going off in her eye, and the sound it made was horrendous, as it bounced around her skull, searching for an exit.

  When she could no longer stand it, wanting nothing more than to dig her fingers into the eye socket, Tabitha ripped the unvarite eyepatch from her face.

  The relief was instantaneous.

  Even with the bandages still covering her left eye, just removing the unvarite was like someone poured an orgasm directly into her skull. It radiated out from there into her entire body. No longer a cacophonous mess, the iridescent warmth lapped at the edges of her vision, like a shimmering ocean.

  And, as quickly as it had found her, the moment of tranquility passed.

  The door burst open, crashing into the wall with a thud, as pieces of the frame peppered the room. Following his foot in, the camera-wielding agent rounded the corner, gun drawn. The flashlight on the underside of his weapon found Tabitha, immediately, and he began yelling at her.

  “Stop! Hands! Show me your hands! Don’t you fucking move!!”

  The light coming off of his gun cut through the darkness, blinding Tabitha’s good eye. She put her right hand up, trying to block it. Still trying her best to keep her eye on the silhouette, she squinted against the brightness. When the beam reached through the bandages, and found the gleam there, the iridescent glint reached out into it.

  As her left eye refracted into the flashlight, the bulb burst.

  Suddenly, it was pitch black, again.

  “Fuck!”

  A single pop rang out, with a flash from the mouth of the gun. Illuminated briefly, the face behind it was terrified. “Oh god! Shit! Rewind—rewind!”

  Tabitha watched, wide-eyed, while the shape in front of her fumbled with the camcorder. Ears ringing, she tried to assess two things: if any of the pain in her body was new, and what her exit was. She had been shot before. And while half of her body’s aching felt like burns, it was not accompanied by the punch of a bullet. Only the sound and hot gas of the muzzle struck her. The next gasping breath filled her nose with the sting of burnt gunpowder.

  Once her eye readjusted to the darkness, the moonlight framing the window painted it nearly imperceptibly into the dark wall. It was freedom, but two stories up, and the fall would only mean more pain, if it didn’t cripple her.

  She was reaching her limit for punishment. Eventually, the exhaustion would be too much, and her body would crumble completely, even if she wanted to keep going. Her stint in containment, though, brief as it was, had been enough to solidify in her resolve around one simple thought: I’m not going back. They would have to drag her back, body in utter ruins, dust even, before she returned to that place. She would not be something only meant for poking and prodding and studying through glass.

  “Sh—sorry!”

  Another beep and everything the agent had done began rewinding.

  As the agent began unapologizing and unfumbling through the last five seconds, the buzzing iridescence in Tabitha’s head was singing to her, like a swarm of crystal bees.

  Then, there was a tugging on Tabitha’s arm, as something lodged in the unvarite cast attempted to free itself. For a moment, the rewind lagged, and she watched the agent shake violently in place. The crystalline bees were screaming furiously in her ear, building louder and louder to a crescendo.

  Finally, with a thunderous crack, the bullet exploded out of her arm, when it finally dislodged itself.

  ~~~

  “Sh-shoot—sorry! Started it too soon!” Sebastian interrupted, his voice cracking into a stifled sneer. “My finger slipped.”

  “Again, back straight,” Tabitha's mother yelled down at her. “Reset!”

  The moment she heard the digital beep of the stopwatch, she collapsed into the ground, her entire body shaking.

  “Hurry up, Tabitha.” The tone in her mother’s voice was disinterested scorn. It was the voice of Advisory Board Member-01. She had a way of speaking, to almost everyone, that sounded like they were intentionally wasting her time. It was always on, always pointed and hurtful. “It’s three minutes, not thirty. Keep your back straight, like I told you. Up, up! Off your knees! Back straight! No! Reset!”

  Every time she said reset, Tabitha was forced to lay flat on the ground, perform a push up, then reset into plank position.

  Lowering herself back onto her forearms and toes, she carefully went through the motions, hoping she did not hear the word. Each attempt past the fourth had been hell, and her shoulders and back were taking the worst of the fire.

  Now, the entire time she held herself up, tremors permeated her tired body. When she managed to get her back straight, and shaking legs locked, again, AB1 finally walked over to check her posture.

  “Start,” the advisor said to Sebastian.

  A beep from the stopwatch started her next try for three minutes.

  Not long after, the toe of her shoe slipped, causing her knee to hit the ground.

  “Reset!”

  Tabitha wished so much that it was that simple. That every time the button was pressed, she got to reset. That every beep rewound the punishment her body was being put through nonstop. That her brother did not stifle a laugh each time he pressed it.

  After resetting so many times she lost count, Tabitha shakily put herself back into position, and waited for the beep. Rather than try to keep track of the time, she did her best to leave herself behind. Locking her body into a bar, and holding it, she resolved to be anywhere else, anyone else. She lost what could have been forever, pretending to be someone who reset at the press of a button. That person would not be forced to try over and over. They would really only have to try once.

  And, just when she thought three minutes had finally passed into success, she heard the stopwatch clatter off the floor with a beep.

  “Oh—ah—ooops!” Sebastian bent over and snatched the timer off the ground. “Sorry.”

  AB1 let out a heavy sigh. “Stop!”

  Tabitha crashed back into the ground, panting heavily. Her body was vibrating with the pain of overexertion.

  “Reset!”

  ~~~

  All at once, there was an unflash, followed by an unpop, an unbursting of a bulb, and then the agent’s foot was following him back out of the door. Tabitha heard the splinters of wood unexplode themselves back into the frame, and then the unthud of the agent’s kick finished the reset.

  Taking her chance to stand, she scrambled to her feet, while the men on the other side of the door argued.

  “Shit,” the cameraman said, surprise pushing his hushed tone through the door. “What happened?”

  “What?” The advisor flung Italian at the man, like a potent hex, before returning to English. “You don’t know?!”

  “No—it doesn’t—shit!”

  Tabitha was already halfway to the window, before the agent hit play on his reentry. This time, it was her and not the room that was peppered by splinters from the door frame.

  Either the surprise of it brought clarity, or simply clarified her flight response. Half a step from leaping through the window, she pictured the fall, and then remembered she had other ways of escaping.

  Unable to process the impulse of speaking in time, two actions overlapped and crashed into one another, causing Tabitha to continue into the window, with a hesitant leap. Glittering glass exploded all around her, as the agent’s flashlight chased her out.

  Tabitha gasped, inhaling sharply, not automatically from fear, but for air enough to scream.

  “HAVEN!”

  Suddenly, the darkness she was falling through became a brilliantly lit patch of driveway for her to slam into. Hitting the dirt, shoulder-first, the air in her lungs immediately left her as a groan, only to be quickly replaced by compounding agony. Dazed and blind, she writhed in the light, gasping for air, while trying to understand what was happening.

  Fighting the urge to shut her eye to the piercing white beams, she swung her head around to see it was only on one side of her. On every other side of her, contrasting night pressed in against the headlights. Behind the high beams, the tall shadow of a Blackwell Foundation issued SUV lorded over her.

  They’re expecting it, the phantom had said. The fading dream slowly remade itself.

  Did that happen? she wondered, her adrenaline bolstered by curiosity.

  You’ve gotta get up, Tabitha screamed internally. The buzz in her ear joined in to drive her. She gritted her teeth, and resolved to rise. Get up!

  Spitting foam through her locked jaw, Tabitha pushed herself off the ground with one hand. Everything ached as the last fall still clattered through her skeleton. Having only one usable arm made for painful work getting her legs beneath her. Once she was on three of all fours, she dragged her unvarite limb around in the dirt, nearly face planting when she tried to get it in front of her.

  Just when she was about to give in to gravity’s pull, a foundation issued Chelsea boot scraped across the driveway. Tabitha’s ears twitched in the direction it came from. He was behind her, somewhere off in the darkness, at the edge of the white headlights. Loud as he was, she could tell by the pace of his footsteps that he was blitzing her.

  Startled, Tabitha used the dose of adrenaline to push past her howling injuries and stand. Before she could turn around to face her attacker, three sharp honks of the SUV’s horn distracted her. She hesitated, only for a second, trying to see through the windshield into the cab of the vehicle. It took only that brief moment for the agent to finish closing the distance. The shadow of her distraction, hidden behind the high beams, sat there and watched it all unfold.

  Her turn came too late.

  His swing came too fast.

  The agent had learned from his mistake, and aimed for her unprotected right arm. Practiced as he was, the Louieville Sunder whistled as it bit into the meat just beneath her shoulder. The speed of the swing drove the force right through the muscle, and deep into the bone.

  Preceding the pain, the sound of a stadium full of people booing filled her mind. The thrumming cacophony carried through her body, pulling a chariot of torment behind it.

  Tabitha’s arm let out a sickening wet crunch, as it gave way. Agony cracked through her, like a whip, becoming a bolt of lightning across her vision to drown out every other sensation.

  She lost a moment to white hot pain.

  The clink of a flip-top lighter rang out in her ear. Somewhere on the edges of her iridescent perception, Agent Harris leaned up against the back of the Crown Vic. He was flicking the flint of the Ciga-Redux lighter repeatedly, trying to light the cigarette in his mouth.

  “Tellin’ you, Hale,” he said, continuing to chck chck chck the flint, “this thing is doneskies.” Grimacing at it, he brought the lighter to his ear, and began shaking it violently. His face softened at what he heard. “Maybe?” Bringing it back to the cigarette, he started trying it again. Chck chck chck. “Come on…let there be one—,” finally, the lighter ignited, illuminating Agent Harris’s joy, “—there it is.” He sheltered the flame with his hand, then carefully touched it to the end of his smoke. “Don’t wanna waste it.”

  Agent Harris inhaled smoke, and exhaled relief. “Yeah, don’t wanna waste this.”

  Something dawned on his face. “Oh!” He pushed off of the car, and turned around to blow smoke at the trunk.

  Tabitha followed the cloud down to the lock. Agent Harris’s key was already in place, and the second-stage lock was waiting for her own.

  “Waitin’ on you, madam,” he said, bowing sarcastically.

  As her breath caught, again, the driveway returned to Tabitha.

  Halfway into a stumbling step as she came back, she just barely managed to recover from it. Feet planted, her eye dropped down to the impossible knot of pressure in her right arm.

  I have a second elbow? Tabitha’s brain struggled to process what she was looking at. She had the elbow she arrived with, and then halfway between it and her shoulder, there was a second crux in it. As she tried to lift it, it pivoted and flopped around at the new joint. Reality struck with the second wave of pain.

  She could not stifle her cry of pained exasperation. “Oh fuck—oh shit—f-fuck—”

  A gag ripped through Tabitha’s body.

  “What in the…,” the agent stood there, staring in utter disbelief, “…why aren’t you fuckin’ paste, huh?” He shook the bat at her. “Why aren’t you paste?! What the fuck is with you?” Taking the bat with both hands, he turned his fury on it. “The fuck is with this thing? You broken, you goddamn—goddamn fuckin’ thing? You—”

  He lifted the bat over his head, then, with a scream, swung it at the ground.

  “YOU FUCKIN’ SHIT!”

  Crashing into the driveway in front of the SUV with a calamitous explosion, the bat sent out a shock wave that blew past Tabitha with enough force to push her back a step. It rippled through the ground beneath her, like an earthquake. At its epicenter, a cloud of dirt erupted, choking the air with dust and light from the high beams.

  The agent burst with coughing, maniacal laughter.

  “Wooo! That’s what I thought, baby! That’s what I fuckin’ thought!”

  Tabitha watched his head swiveling back and forth, as he searched the shining dust cloud for her.

  “Let’s try this one more time,” he growled, when his eyes landed on her.

  Trying to process everything going on through the fog of pain and dirt, Tabitha froze in place.

  There would be no outrunning him. His pace had quickened with his fury, and her stubborn will to live would not carry her broken body much further. With one arm uselessly rigid and the other uselessly slack, a direct attack seemed unlikely to work. Her best bet was playing defense, but getting her inflexible arm between them, to act as a shield, was easier said than done.

  Luckily for Tabitha, the anger-driven followup was sloppy. The agent swung too early, allowing her easily avoid it by stepping backwards. Cutting right to left, hoping to catch her in her unarmored arm, again, the heavy swing put him off balance, and the bat on her protected side.

  Judgment clouded by his growing rage, rather than reset, the agent switched stances, and angrily brought the bat back to chop at her from the other direction. This time it connected.

  Landing on the unvarite shell, in just the right place, the strike caused a cacophonous crack of wood and glass to ring out into the night. The rebound forced the bat from the agent’s hand, and it helicoptered off into SUV, busting one of its headlights, before clattering onto the ground.

  Somewhere, a stadium’s cheers soured to jeering.

  “Wha-—what the hell’s going on?!” The agent’s voice deflated, as his eyes chased after his weapon. His head swung back around to find the culprit. “That goddamn unvarite!”

  Realizing the damage done, his eyes widened with terror. The ruthless agent was reduced to breathlessly cursing, and whimpering, in the scramble for his bat.

  Out from the cracks growing along her unvarite arm, humming, iridescent steam burst forth. The billowing song filled Tabitha’s ears with magical, warm static. Drawn in, a piece of her waded out into its sound, taking with it tensions to be rid of. It was there she found relief. And not the kind that heals what ails you, but the kind that overwhelms it. The kind that does not release the pressure built up, but fills you to the brim with light, showing you just how much more you can withstand.

  Somewhere, in the warm gleam of her skewered eye, Agent Harris was leaned up against their Crown Vic, cigarette smoke hanging in the air.

  There, the second-stage lock on the trunk waited.

  “Waitin’ on you, madam.”

  Tabitha stared at the keyhole. There were no pockets on her orange hospital gown to keep one in. She patted the usual spots, anyway, out of habit.

  Finding nothing, she raised an eyebrow at Agent Harris. “Key?”

  He chuckled at her. “You know, not all keys are keys, Tabby.”

  She flinched at the name. It made anyone who used it sound like her brother. And anyone who sounded like him, slowly became him, in her mind.

  It did not help that what Agent Harris said was exactly the kind of obnoxious riddle Sebastian would come up with, when they were children.

  When is a key not a key? Tabitha wondered, gritting her teeth at it. The more simple the riddle sounded, the more easy they usually were, once you found the answer. That did not stop her from chasing her tail through the weeds of ambiguity, as she overthought it. Florida Keys? Key lime pie? Key & Peele? Her mind circled the question, over and over, until it became enormous.

  Right on the edge of missing her brother, if only for his often useless knowledge, Tabitha’s flailing stubbornness struck true. The answer was right under he nose.

  Sometimes a key is not a key, when it’s a word.

  And this particular word was a key she had been trained to turn.

  It was the key to utilizing the power absorbed by VIO-071, Kirk’s Sublime Ring.

  “Release.”

  With a heavy metallic click and clunk, then finally a hiss, the trunk popped open.

  Inside of the dazzling crystalline compartment, two objects resting in a shallow pool of liquid gold, waited for her.

  First, a replica Babe Ruth Louisville Slugger, misprinted Louieville Sunder.

  And second, a small, inconspicuous camcorder.

  Looking at the baseball bat, Tabitha’s mind wrapped around it like a left hand. Lifting it out of the trunk, she heard the murmur of anticipation from a stadium full of people. The buzz of the crowd was growing into a hum, as she approached the batter’s box.

  Someone was bringing the heat, pitching a fastball right down the middle.

  “…you fuckin' bitch!”

  Tabitha was ready for it. There would be no strikes or fouls, no bunts or pop-ups. She squared up in one-handed southpaw, anticipated the changeup, and waited for the ball to reach the pocket. Timing was everything.

  Just as the bat-wielding agent raised his weapon overhead, she launched her swing.

  Tabitha’s left arm still felt stiff, even as its binding crumbled away. It would not be enough.

  His attack was practiced, the swing came faster. The air cried as the bat cut through it.

  But Tabitha was a Hale, and even when backed into a corner, Hales only played games they won at.

  “HAVEN!”

  The world around her flickered, and, suddenly, she was behind the agent, just in time for her left arm to straighten out, and her glittering fist to connect flush with his back.

  It was a line drive, straight down the middle.

  BANG!

  Tabitha’s punch was practiced, by her and on her, driven into her by training. Driving into the agent, the force of her attack rippled through every part of the agent. It tore through each individual cell, breaking every membrane, bursting every vein in his body, and pulverizing every bit of bone.

  Somewhere, a stadium full of people exploded with cheers.

  Reduced to a smear of viscera, the bat-wielding agent rained down upon the driveway.

  A climbing roar in her ears sent shivers down Tabitha’s spine.

  It did not take long for the din of pain to creep back in. Her surroundings followed.

  She heard the door of the SUV behind her pop open.

  “Enough! Th-That’s enough, Tabby!” Sebastian’s commands trembled out from behind the high beams. “Stop! Don’t you—why did you—how—you ki—you killed him!”

  Turning to look at her brother, Tabitha found a Blackwell-issued Glock pointed at her from between the open passenger door and windshield.

  “Seb?” She took an automatic step toward him.

  The click of the Glock’s safety stung like a bullet.

  “I said, stop!”