Chapter 24
Cass
Samuel followed us down from the helipad. Halliwell looked over at me, his eyes keen and appraising.
“You’re not going to do anything stupid,” he said. “Not with both myself and my operative holding exact copies of this remote. Am I right?”
“I won’t do anything stupid,” I said stiffly.
“Excellent. Samuel, leave us. We have a great deal to discuss. Come with me.”
Discuss, my ass. I had nothing to discuss with this man.
He was going to talk at me, and I would pretend to listen while I thought faster than I’d ever thought before.
Trying to figure out which answers might keep me and Reggie alive a little longer.
It was like having someone throw knives at you and calling it a friendly game.
We walked down the corridor of the top level, toward the Bridge. This place was usually bustling with activity, people desperately trying to be the best of the best in hopes that Halliwell would notice them. Maybe even offer a glimmer of approval.
Today, there was no one. The place was deserted. The computers were dark.
It was eerie. The place had always been unnerving, but now it seemed under a spell, like Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Everyone locked in a deep, enchanted sleep.
“Where is everyone?” I asked. “Did you give people a day off?”
“I suppose you could say that,” he murmured.
His tone made me nervous. “Wait… what? Meaning what?”
Halliwell made an impatient sound as he opened the door to his palatial office and beckoned for me to follow him in.
Lights flicked on, a subtle glow to augment the muted light from the gray, cloudy day that came in from the floor-to-ceiling picture windows.
“I told you I was doing some house-cleaning, remember? It was time to trim away the deadwood.”
I reluctantly followed him in. “Wait. You mean, your own children? You kicked them all out?” I was appalled at the idea.
That crew was so psychologically unstable after years spent under Halliwell’s thumb, there was no way they could function normally in the outside world.
It would be a disaster for everyone concerned.
He looked irritated. “It was time. I was so tired of all their fits and freaks and fatal flaws. After everything that I invested in them. I even tried some bold surgical and pharmacological interventions over the years. To liberate them, to boost their natural abilities, make them bolder, more fearless. But instead of taking off like eagles, they collapsed as if I had removed all of their spines. It’s so ironic that the only one of my offspring even remotely like me is you.
The only one that I couldn’t alter or mold, thanks to Laurel’s small-minded fears.
Oh, and Jana, too. I admit, she had more spunk than I thought.
Did I tell you that she tried to snoop around in the Coatesworth databanks?
I caught her, of course. She was digging for info on Regina’s implant, and she was actually trying to contact you when I put a stop to it.
Just in time.” He shook his head. “Bold of her, yes. Too bad that courage couldn’t have been in my service.
But no. The answer is always… no.” He huffed out an irritated breath.
“Where is Jana?” I demanded shrilly. “What did you do to her? An implant? Reggie has an implant? In her body? Where? What kind?”
“Never mind that,” he snapped. “You’re missing the point.
Forget the implant. Forget Jana. She’s the past, and you are the future of Halliwell Enterprises.
Which is yours to manage now, by the way.
With any staff you choose. Bring your Red Queen Consulting staff onboard, if you think you can control them.
They were an eccentric bunch, from what I remember. But it’s your call.”
It chilled me that he had observed my Red Queen staff so closely. Attention from him was not healthy for them. “I, ah… don’t see them doing well in this environment,” I hedged.
“But that’s the thing, my dear,” he said.
“It’s your environment now. Tabula rasa.
Entirely new, from the ground up. You will run Halliwell Enterprises for me, leaving me free for the next part of my life plans.
Which I can now begin in earnest, now that SmokeScreen is at my disposal. Thanks to Glow-worm. And to you.”
I tried not to flinch. “What plans do you mean? Like, world domination?”
My question had been pure mouthy snark, but to my horror, his smile widened.
“Right on the money, Cassandra,” he said softly.
I felt my blood pressure drop as I stared into his wide, tilted green eyes, just like my own. Halliwell’s toxic influence, that maimed or killed or poisoned everything it touched, magnified, spread out over the whole world?
He would turn it into a blasted hellscape.
“You’re kidding, right?” I pressed him. “Just fucking with my head. Right?”
“Language, Cassandra. You sound like a rebellious child when you talk like that. You’re in the bigtime now, so please, grow up. I am not kidding. It’s time to put my plans into motion. I’ll be like a god with SmokeScreen. And I want you by my side. My heir.”
“I don’t want to be your heir,” I blurted out.
“You haven’t tasted absolute power yet,” he said, with a gloating smile. “Trust me. You’ll like it. Once you get a taste, you don’t look back. You’ll see.”
I let out a slow breath, reminding myself that this guy did not get to dictate what I thought, what I wanted, who I was, what I cared about. He never would.
But I had to be careful. Rein in my big mouth. Keep myself alive. For Reggie.
I stared down at the Paleolithic goddess figure that adorned his desk, and focused on it, to keep my mind steady.
How typical, for that prick to use a priceless prehistoric representation of the divine feminine, painstakingly carved by some caveman or cavewoman untold tens of thousands of years ago, as a fucking paperweight. The guy didn’t even use paper.
“Is that an original?” I asked, gesturing at the goddess.
He looked amused. “What do you think, Cassandra?”
He pulled a phone from his pocket which I recognized as my own. “What the hell are you doing with that?” I demanded.
“Moderate your tone.” He tapped into it swiftly. “I’m sending a message to your ex-boyfriend. So that he understands the new order of things. It features you demonstrating your intention of working with me.”
“But I never—”
“I took the liberty of anticipating that you would change your mind when you saw the possibilities. You’re not a stupid woman.
There. Sent. Haley did the deepfake work for me.
She took the technology miles beyond where anyone else has.
Not even a forensic video expert would be able to tell that it wasn’t you in that video.
And I have plenty of video and audio of you, with all my eyes and ears in this place.
Haley did a beautiful job. She’s the best. Or… well. Was the best, I should say.”
“Was?” I demanded. “What do you mean? What did you do to her?”
He slid the phone back into his pocket. “There,” he said, with satisfaction. “Now everyone knows the score, and we can all move on.”
He looked at me expectantly. For a moment, I wished that I’d used my misspent youth studying abnormal psych instead of computer science. This guy was not just a psychopathic asshole. He was utterly deranged. He scared the shit out of me.
What had he done to Haley? Jana? And everyone else here?
“Listen,” I said, keeping my voice even and reasonable. “I’ll work for you. I like power, I admit. But I can’t function with this threat to Reggie hanging over my head. That just won’t work for me. You’ve got to cut her loose if you want me in top form.”
He looked irritated. “I thought from the very start that this might work better if I removed Regina from the picture before we even began. Sad and unpleasant, but it would be so much simpler for you and for me. You wouldn’t have your emotional energy divided.
And it would be a kindness to the poor girl, after all the suffering she’s gone through.
Besides, if she lives, she’ll be tormented by being compared to you, which isn’t fair to anyone.
I should’ve done this long before.” He pulled out the remote.
“No!” I yelled. “Don’t you dare! If you kill my sister, I will never, ever, ever work with you. Ever. I swear to God. I’d die first.”
He studied me, eyes narrowed. “And you will work with me if I spare her? Is that the corollary?”
I swallowed. “Yes,” I ground out, through my teeth.
“You do know that you won’t be able to see her again, right?” he warned. “I require one hundred percent commitment. Nothing left over for frivolous pursuits.”
“Fine. You want me, you got me. One hundred percent. So what’s the mechanism of this implant? How have you been making her get sick? Let me just make some calls so I can dismantle that, and then we can get right to work, okay?”
He laughed at me. “Do you think I got to this point in life being stupid and trusting? Leverage, Cassandra. Nothing ever happens without leverage.”
“But I can’t,” I wailed. “I can’t do this. Not with this thing hanging over my head like a guillotine!”
“Sorry,” he said. “You must. You will learn to live with the discomfort, the uncertainty. And it’ll make you stronger. You’ll see.”
He gave me an encouraging smile. As if my desire for my sister to stay alive was a regrettable personality trait, but possibly correctable. As if he would actually be doing me a favor by pushing that button. Hurting me in order to help me. It made me furious.
He came closer, bending to open a desk drawer. Without stopping to think, I lunged for the stone goddess. I grabbed her by the head, and spun the heavy, bulbous stone body around—thunk.
It whacked the side of his head.
He let out a startled grunt, stumbling down against the desk, and I swiftly hit him again on the back of the head. And again. I let out a feral, grunting cry with each blow.
Halliwell slid heavily to the ground. I backed away, panting heavily. I was on the verge of screaming. He just lay there, his white hair a bloody mess.
Now, Cass. Now. Move your ass. Do what you have to do.
What was that? What did I have to do? Fuck me. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t plan.
Killing him was the smartest, most practical thing to do, I supposed, but I couldn’t cold-bloodedly bash in the head of an unconscious man. Not even a monstrously evil man. I should, but I couldn’t. That would make me like him.
Besides, there was the explosive tooth thing. Who knew how many people who would die the same moment he did? All their deaths would be on my head.
I knelt beside Halliwell, searching through his pockets. I found the passcard, Reggie’s remote control, my phone, his phone. I swiftly turned Reggie’s dial down to zero, hoping desperately that Halliwell hadn’t been lying about that.
How was I going to find out more about Reggie’s implant? With that doctor up there, right near Reggie, with instructions to kill her if… if what? What was the catalyst? What was the signal? How could I know? How would the evil doctor know? I wanted to scream, with fear, frustration, desperation.
It was like being stuck in a maze, and every option ran me into an electrified wall.
But he’d said that Jana had been trying to figure out what he’d done to Reggie. She had probably paid the ultimate price for trying to help me. But Halliwell had been so coy about it. He had never said that he had killed her. Not in so many words.
If Jana was still alive, she was the only one who could tell me about this implant. Maybe she was alive, and still had that phone I’d left under her pillow, with Invisibility Cloak loaded on it. I had tagged all my secret phones, so I pulled up the app on my phone, and scanned for them.
There they were. Seven phones, all clustered in my old apartment, still hidden in the secret compartment of my suitcase, in my closet. And the eighth was… oh fuck.
The eighth one was down on Level Eight.