15. Fifteen
I’ve barely begun to calm down when she shows up. I’m staring off, letting my fingers tap a rhythmless beat on the table in front of me. My quiet, seething anger permeates the air, poisoning it, taking up every bit of available space. Tucker knows what he did, knows what he could have cost us for making such a stupid move.
Leaving a goddamn gun with her.
What the hell was he thinking? Ray could be dead right now. Who knows what she’s actually capable of? Who knows if she’s had any training, if she could have taken out every one of us with a fucking gun!
“Should I - Should I go back upstairs?” Madeline stammers, clearly tuned in to the energy in the room. She’s still on the stairs, looking like she’s ready to run at any moment. I suppress a groan that would definitely come out as a snarl. If I have to chase her down again, I’m going to lose my shit.
I grind my teeth, not wanting to start this conversation so angry but needing to get it done as soon as possible. I need to know what we’re working with. I take a deep breath and run my hands through my hair. I know it’s standing up in disarray, so I take a second to smooth it before speaking. I don’t need to look as crazed as I feel right now.
“No, sit. We need to talk.” Everything about her radiates apprehension, and I ready myself to run after her if she does make a break for it.
But she shocks me.
She squares her shoulders and raises her chin, looking for all intents and purposes like she’s walking into battle. All that nervousness vanishes, either wiped away entirely or buried deep beneath the hard exterior she’s fixed over her features.
She walks over to the table where we are sitting, refusing to break eye contact with me. I can feel it. She is coming to the table ready to face an opponent. God help me, that lick of fire in her eyes has me ready to meet her challenge. Eager to get her in line.
She sits at the table and takes up more than just physical space, each of us engulfed by the energy she’s throwing out at us. At me. I’m not sure who she was before we grabbed her, but the woman sitting at the table is a force to be reckoned with.
“What are we talking about?” There’s no placating smile, no false familiarity. I almost sigh with relief, I’m in no mood for pleasantries.
“You’re not in yet. I need to know what you can do.”
A crack, a small little fissure, forms in her resolve, and she cuts her eyes over to Tucker.
“He didn’t give you my records?”
“He gave me what he was able to pull, but I need more.”
She doesn’t immediately answer me, nor does she pull her eyes away from him. I spot the sympathetic look he gives her accompanied by a quick, nearly imperceptible nod. The silent interaction is there and gone in only a second. She seals up the crack, shoring up her defenses and turns her focus back to me. She doesn’t want sympathy.
Good.
She’s not going to get it from me.
“Fine. What do you want to know?” There’s a tick in her jaw, she might not be willing to back down, but she certainly doesn’t want to be having this conversation.
I pull the file in front of me, flipping through the few sheets of paper I found important enough to bring up tonight. Descriptions of some evaluations, her standard vitals, some blood work results. It’s all generic information anyone with a computer and enough knowledge would be able to steal. More than anything, I have questions. If Tucker was able to hold tight and gather more information, we might be in a better place. Instead, I have to piece everything together on my own.
“Let’s start with how Omni Biomedical found you. What tipped them off to-”
“No,” she says firmly.
I look up in shock. This is the second time today she’s told me no, and I sure as hell am not getting used to it.
“No?”
“No.”
The single word hangs heavily in the room. A full declaration. A line in the sand.
She’s meeting me with a glare of her own, wholly unrelenting. “I will tell you anything you want to know. You want to know about my fucking gift? Sure. You want to know how they killed me over and over again? I’ll give you all the gruesome details. But my life before the lab? No. Ask me something else.”
There might be something in her history with Omni, something that could help me, but I’m not willing to push on this. Not yet. I’ll learn eventually if it’s going to help us, but after everything from today, I don’t have the patience to convince her to share with the class. Gritting my teeth, I continue with my questions.
“Alright. What kinds of evaluations did you go through?”
“Everything they could think of. Any way you could imagine trying to kill a kid, they tried it.” I feel Silas tense beside me. He’s no stranger to death, but this is something else.
“Enlighten me. Give me some examples.”
Tucker shifts nervously in his chair, but she sits firm. He knows more about the testing than we do, knows about the Tanks, as she calls them, and he’s clearly unsettled about whatever she’s about to share. She’s not thrown or shaken, though. Not upset about being asked to outline the various tortures she’s endured.
“Freezing. Fire. Blood loss. Infection. Toxic gas. Radiation. You saw the wolves.” She rattles it all off like she’s going over a shopping list. “Starvation. Injections. Electric shock. Drowning. Do you want me to continue?”
She’s waiting for me to blanch, looking for some sort of reaction, but I don’t bend. There’s enough reaction coming from Rayner for all of us. He looks like he might pass out.
“Asphyxiation?”
Her eyebrows pinch together slightly, as if she was sure I would back down after hearing all that. That I might be as upset as Ray. When she doesn’t see pity, she finally answers. “Four times.”
I raise my eyebrows at that, somehow the repetition of the test shocks me more than the test itself. What kind of data could they be getting from subsequent tests that they weren’t able to get from the first?
“According to you, I was there for sixteen years. They must have run out of ideas.” She crosses her arms and leans back slightly in the chair, answering the unvoiced question hanging in the air.
“Did they run repeat testing on everything?”
“Most things.” Her voice is unnervingly even, like she’s withdrawn into herself and is running on autopilot.
“The wolves?”
“Those were new. A fun little surprise for me from John, but the conditions of that Tank were the same. Another freezing death.”
Silas tenses again, probably at the memory of me hauling her back to the van. He didn’t see her being torn apart, but he saw the aftermath and that’s more than enough to shake a person.
“What does your recovery time look like?”
“It depends on the Tank. Sometimes I’m up and moving in a day, sometimes it’s a couple weeks before my body can knit itself back together.”
“And it’s always death?”
“What?” she asks. Her brows are drawn together like she can’t fathom why I would ask this.
“You die. Your heart stops, and you’re dead?”
Why is this a question she doesn’t understand?
“Briefly. Again, depending on the event, everything can be shut down for hours. After one of the Tanks, it took six hours to regain any sign of life.”
“What was that?”
“Mustard gas. They thought they really got me with that one. Didn’t try it again.” She looks down at the table when she finishes, maybe reliving the memory. I don’t want to lose the momentum, so I move on, hoping she’s not about to get weepy and stop answering.
“How long before you die? I’m assuming you also hold out longer than the average person before succumbing.”
She rolls her eyes, evidently growing tired of the interaction. “It depends. Is there a specific condition you want to know about?”
“Let’s go with asphyxiation again.”
“I maintain consciousness for an average of 20 minutes in a completely anoxic environment. Three hours in low oxygen conditions. After that I’m not sure, unconsciousness and what not.”
I have to fight to keep from grinning. This can work.
“Why asphyxiation?”
“Because we’re shit at holding our breaths.” I let the smile creep onto my face. “You just made the team.”
That mask of challenge slips from her face. Her apprehension showing full force.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Hold your breath.”
It’s not fear that shows on her face, not necessarily. Sure, it’s there, likely from memories of the discomfort of her past, but that apprehension melts into a strange mix of resignation and determination. She doesn’t want to do this, but she will.
I have no doubt about that.
She’s going to do whatever it takes. All to get her ass as far away from Omni Biomedical as possible. Us too, since we’re not proving to be much better.
A deal is a deal, though. She does this, we pull it off as a team, and she’s out. Free to do whatever the hell she wants, and I’ll be free as well.
After this, I won’t be tied down to the agonizing need for revenge that’s eaten at me for the better part of three decades. I will finally dismantle the Giordano family. I’ll have everything I need to track each and every one of them down if I wanted to, but this isn’t about the family. I’m not him. I don’t need to go after the innocents. I won’t. I swore if it was the last thing I did, I would destroy Battiste Giordano. With Madeline, I finally have a shot at making good on my promise.
She’s watching me cautiously, but she doesn’t ask for more details. Smart.
While I’ve committed to bringing her on, I can’t trust she’ll be able to handle the plans, not while I’m still agonizing over every miniscule detail. The guys don’t even know the full scope of what we’re going to be doing. I’ve hoarded all the information close to me like a dragon protective of his trove.
I can trust them. I know I can. I’ll have to tell them soon, but this is mine. I can’t shake that possessiveness, the need to keep it all to myself. The only one who’s really pushed me is Rayner, so fucking eager to get his hands dirty. Tucker doesn’t care as long as Ray is in. And Silas? Silas never questions me. I’ve earned his trust and commitment long ago, even if I don’t deserve it.
I break away from my own eddying thoughts to focus back on the girl in front of me. I’m impressed so far, and not just by her apparent immortality or resiliency. She seems much stronger than she looks. Faster too. I was surprised she made it so far into the forest when I set her loose. By the time I’d caught up to her she’d made it five miles out in that difficult and unfamiliar terrain.
“Training?”
She looks at me, confused.
“Physical training. Exercise. Did they train you at Omni?” I’m still high on the realization we’re going to be able to pull this off, so I’m not too irritated I have to spell out such a simple question.
She nods. “I recover faster when my body is strong, so every day I was conscious they had me doing some sort of regimen.”
She has a basis at least. Good.
“Self defense?”
She raises an eyebrow at that, as if it’s the dumbest thing she’s ever heard anyone say. “What? So I could try and fight my way out?”
“Point taken.” I have to give it to her, that was too obvious for me to have missed.
I catch Ray snapping his wide eyes over to me, his face lit with disbelief. He’s clearly delighted by her snark and equally shocked at how easily I accepted her rebuttal.
“You’re not going to be in the thick of it, but you’re going to need to be able to hold your own when you’re with us.” I think for a second, figuring my next question might be as stupid as the last, but needing to know anyway. “Have you ever shot a gun?”
“My dad used to take me hunting, so I’ve shot a rifle. Once.”
“What kind?”
“Couldn’t tell you. I was barely nine.”
I nod, not needing more information than that.
Madeline is physically strong, has no fighting skill, and at least a base level of comfort around guns. She’s unsure of her surroundings, but she’s not timid.
She can handle this.
She has to.
“Alright, that’s enough for tonight.” I nod to her, and excuse myself, suddenly overwhelmed with everything I need to do to tie up any loose ends and figure out how the hell we’re going to get her ready.