“Would you kindly answer any and all inquiries Reed—or any of the rest of us—have for ye, darlin’?” Eilish asked.

  “Yes,” Andy said.

  “Okay, he’s Andrew Custis. That takes care of ‘who,’” Augustus muttered. He still looked like he’d rather bust Andy in the head than talk to him.

  “Let’s move down the list to ‘what,’” I said. “What were you doing here, Andy?”

  Here Andy evinced some strain, cringing as he answered. “Following orders … purging our backup here.”

  “Who told you to do that?” I asked.

  “My dad,” he said. “Charles.”

  “He’s kinda the boss of you, ain’t he?” Augustus asked. “Runs your family like the Corleones?”

  “He’s in charge, yeah,” Andy said. The strain increased a little bit. I guessed he was answering some things he’d have preferred not to.

  “You’re doing marvelous,” Eilish said, and Andy relaxed a hair. “Why did your father want you to delete this stuff? And what was it?”

  “Data,” Andy said, but his face was ratcheting tighter again. “I don’t know exactly what was in all of it.”

  “Why here?” Augustus asked. “And what did you know about?”

  “We accumulate a lot of data in our activities,” Andy said, face reddening a shade. “Surveillance camera footage. Databases. It has to go somewhere. It’s sensitive. We set this place up so it requires one of us to be here for anyone to access it.” He pointed at a bunch of … servers, I assumed, in the corner, protected behind a steel barrier. My tornado hadn’t uprooted a one of them, though they had some dings on the surfaces. “With one of us here, we can bridge an electronic connection between the internet at large and the servers, which are self-contained and offline, allowing the rest of the family to connect to whatever data they need via their powers.”

  “That’s … genius,” Jamal said. “These servers don’t touch the internet—at all—unless one of the Custis fam is sitting here, holding an electrical current between the data port and a wall socket. Using themselves as the bridge allows them to make sure that whoever is reaching out to get data is one of their family members, or someone coming from a trusted computer.” He shook his head. “No one was going to be able to access this data online unless one of them was here. It’s a SCIF—Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, like the government uses to secure classified data, with a perfect moat to keep anyone outside the family out of it.”

  “You have a surveillance video I want a copy of,” I said. “You know which one I’m talking about?”

  Andy reddened a little more. I was starting to wonder about his blood pressure. “You want … the video of Sienna in Eden Prairie. The night she … exploded.”

  “Would you kindly get that for us, darlin’?” Eilish asked.

  Andy nodded. “But … your electric guy over there could download it just as easily as I can.”

  Jamal pushed to his feet, still holding his head. “You got any safeguards on this?”

  Andy shook his head. He looked almost ready to explode. “Didn’t need ’em. Not with a paid army watching this place and one of us keeping tabs at all time.”

  Jamal paused. “How much of the data did you erase?”

  Andy closed his eyes for a second. “Not much. I was still downloading to my dad when you showed up. Managed to erase … maybe forty percent. The most … critical forty percent.”

  “But that didn’t include Sienna’s video?” I asked, feeling my stomach drop.

  He shook his head. “That’s not even in the top seventy percent, priority-wise.”

  I traded a look with Augustus.

  “Yo, what else you got that might be of interest?” Augustus asked.

  “Blackmail material,” Andy said, “on everyone you could imagine. Secrets. Dirty little lies of the powerful.” He shook slightly. “We didn’t … get the info on your sister because we were targeting her. The people who wanted it blacked out … they came along later. After … Harmon … was out of the picture.”

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Andy said, shaking his head, beads of sweat rolling down his temples and nose. “Dad never told me. Said he wanted to keep us out of it.” His eyes flashed. “Said it was … too dangerous.”

  “You have anything to do with framing us for murder?” Augustus asked.

  Andy shook his head. “Dad was in on that. None of us were. He kept it … tight. We only found out afterward. That was his … employer, though. They paid … really well.”

  “What’s the going rate for a soul these days?” Angel asked under her breath.

  “I don’t … know,” Andy said. “But they paid us like … ten million. Just for dad to set up that reporter. None of us liked him anyway.”

  “Fool, you have digital access to the world,” Jamal said, fingers touching the server bank, little flecks of blue discharge running out into the machine. “You could rob a bank of ten billion tomorrow over the internet. What are you playing all this cloak and dagger for?”

  Andy seemed to relax. “It’s … the thrill of it, man.” He turned to look at Jamal with dazed eyes. “You know. Beating the encryptions. Being so good, so quick … they don’t know what hit ’em. Messing with people …” He broke out into a smile. “The lulz. You know.”

  Jamal looked a little uncomfortable. “Okay. Maybe I do.”

  “If you’re doing this for fun,” I said, “how do you not know who your dad’s working for? Wouldn’t that be a kick you couldn’t resist?”

  Andy shook his head. “Dad … would have known if we’d gone after them, but …” He smiled again. “Okay. I did a little digging, maybe. But they’re a tough nut to crack. Beyond top-shelf encryption. Bespoke, meta-made.”

  I felt a little fuming coming on, looked to Jamal. “Cassidy?”

  Jamal shrugged. “Could be.”

  “Could be his girlfriend, Arche,” Augustus said, a little tightly.

  “There are a decent number of metas who have the brainpower and capacity to tailor-make encryption that conventional hackers would have problems with,” Jamal said, still putzing with the servers. “I’m gonna need something to download all this into, because my phone is not going to be able to accommodate all this.”

  “Video first,” I said. “Then worry about the other dirt.”

  Jamal nodded, squinting. “I think I got it … whew, y’all need a better index system.”

  “It’s … state of the art,” Andy said.

  “I got the video,” Jamal said. “Putting it up on the cloud now … propagating it to several different … yeah, we’re backed up. And all set.”

  “Good,” Andy said, and his face was blood red.

  “Eilish,” I said, feeling the tingle, “he’s—”

  Andy let loose a bolt of lightning of the sort he’d damned near fried Jamal with, and it arced into the server farm, which proceeded to fritz and fry on an epic level. Panels blew out, bright blue bolts grounded in every direction within, and when it was done …

  “I am pretty sure … whatever he wanted torched … it got torched,” Augustus said, holding a ring of rock around Andy’s neck like a collar, choking the bastard as he coated a bunch more rock around Andy’s body. Andy’s eyes stared out, relaxed, completely and utterly, all the strain now gone.

  “Why would you go and do that, now?” Eilish asked, sounding vaguely disappointed in him.

  “I’m sorry,” Andy said, almost dreamlike. “I had to … I’m sorry … you didn’t tell me not to …”

  “Don’t do anything else unless I tell you—except breathe,” she said, shaking her head at him.

  “His next bathroom trip’s gonna be awkward,” Jamal said, dusting himself off from his last-second jump out of the way.

  “Is this … salvageable?” I asked, looking at the server farm.

  Jamal looked over his shoulder and shrugged. “Some of it, maybe. Electricity in that quantity is generally not great for the chips we store data on, though. I’ll pull the hard drives and bring ’em with us.”

  “I’m sorry,” Andy said, low and pitiful, to Eilish. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Is there anything you want to—or don’t want to—tell me?” she asked, brushing a hand against his cheek.

  “I gave you the video because I knew you wanted it,” Andy said, sounding like he was about to drift off. “And because we don’t really care about it. It was never our thing. It was—whoever my dad was working for. They wanted Sienna buried. We told him—there were other ways. She’s done … loads of stuff.” He was just shaking his head. “Dad handed all that over, too, but … this … Eden Prairie … it was the big one. A lie already in place, thanks to Harmon. The big lie that stuck. Everything else we had was more subtle. Would have required work to sell. And it was overkill, he said, since she was already toast.”

  “Did that suggest to anyone else that … they’ve got more material that could ruin Sienna?” Greg asked, zipping back to full size after a quick jaunt inside a server. He tossed something to Jamal, who caught it. Presumably a hard drive.

  “Do you know what this other stuff is?” I asked, looking Andy right in the eyes.

  “More circumstantial,” Andy said. “Radar records for the night that Nadine Griffin’s estate on Long Island got burned down. Surveillance footage of some of the … less easily justifiable kills she’s done. Nothing like this.” He shook his head. “This video proves … she didn’t do the Eden Prairie thing … it wasn’t murder.” He let out a slow breath. “Those prisoners weren’t peaceful protestors. They were a mob, trying to kill her.” His eyes were glazed. “It was self-defense.”

  Jamal nodded. “I watched it just now as I was transferring it. It’s what he says.”

  “Start uploading it,” I said, “I want this everywhere. And we’re taking this guy with us.” I smiled. “We’ll deal with whatever comes after with his help, but for now … we got it.” There was a feeling like the sun had come out after a long, long night. “We got it.”

  We had the proof.

  We were going to show the world my sister was innocent.

  48.

  Sienna

  “Have I mentioned my life just kinda … sucks?” I asked as Gert loomed, taking up pretty much the whole hallway. Assuming I could have run—which I couldn’t; I hurt way too much to move at more than a slouched hobble—I wasn’t going forward, and she was big enough that she could have run me down if I’d tried retreating.

  “I guess me squeezing you till your head pops off like a zit is going to be a sort of relief, then,” Gert said, taking a hobbling step forward. Owens shuffled back behind me, probably anticipating Gert making a swift motion.

  “If I end up with you in my head, Gert,” I said, not flinching, cuz there was no point, “I’ll pop it off myself.”

  Her eyes flashed as she reached for me. She’d need to make this fast if she was going to avoid getting her soul ripped out. Or toppling over.

  I figured, given our history of mutual antipathy, she’d want to pummel me before bursting my skull.

  She did not disappoint.

  Gert raised a fist and threw it at me.

  I threw one back, twice as hard.

  Well … maybe as hard. Or half as hard.

  But it was broken, and clenched, and completely numb.

  My fist slammed into hers as she threw everything into it, and boy did I feel the shock up my arm. My fist may have been numb, but my elbow wasn’t, and it screamed its disapproval at being sledgehammered.

  I didn’t let out much of a noise, probably because I’d exhaled as hard I as I could throwing the punch.

  Gert made some noise, though.

  “Ahhhhhhhh!” she shouted and banged her head against the ceiling as she swung her hand up. It was not a gentle bump, either. She was really big, and she was bent near double, and when I’d smashed my hand into hers, I’d heard bones break. Not mine, cuz they were already broken. Hers. Big noise.

  I recovered, which is to say I managed to fall over.

  Gert was not so lucky.

  She went to all fours on the metal floor, trying to keep her injured hand off it. She raised it, shook it—it made a noise like a bag of magical dust or something.

  While she was focusing on that, I launched forward and raised a knee.

  I clocked her in the face with my kneecap, and she lost some teeth, the structural integrity of her jaw, and probably an eye, though I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t spare the effort on that one, but man did I hurt when I came crashing down on top of her.

  “You’re … gonna pop … my head off?” I asked, draped across her back as she let out a whimper. She’d slumped to the ground, face down. I slammed my good hand into the side of her head. This time, the only broken bones that resulted were all her. I raised my fist and clocked her again, behind the ear.

  And again.

  And again.

  I should really have killed her after the first two hits, but she was still somewhat grown, and as such her bones and muscles were a little larger than usual. And I was probably a little off my game, to be honest. I collapsed over her, jerking my abs and knocking her in the side of the face with a knee as I did so. “Pop my head off … I don’t think so, you … oversized … ass clown …” The second knee to her skull had jacked up my ribs again. Speaking was becoming difficult, and I was gasping for breath.

  “What the hell is this?” A voice came from beyond the intersection.

  I only had the presence of mind to think, Man, I hope that’s not a vicious criminal.

  I rolled.

  It was Dr. Helen Slaughter, wearing a lab coat that seemed to be a little … stained red … around the sleeves.

  “Oh good,” I said. “You managed … to be okay. Yay.” I waved my broken hand. “I was just coming to see you.”

  She just stared at me from a little past the intersection, holding her ground. “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to sit up and failing miserably. I collapsed back onto Gert, who grunted. She was mostly out, moaning under her breath in pain. “I think … I need a doctor. And Gert probably does, too. But mostly me, because … to hell with this bitch.” I elbowed Gert in the head again. Just to make sure she stayed out, since killing her was more or less out of the question at this point.

  “Looks like you came through okay,” Owens said, looking at the doctor as she stepped through the intersection toward us. She was even still wearing her heels. Dayum.

  “No thanks to a group of prisoners who seemed to think my infirmary held vast quantities of morphine and maybe some sorts of other good times for them,” she said, kneeling next to me.

  “How’d that work out for them?” I asked, pretty much as relaxed as I could get without being asleep. All muscle control was just gone.

  “About as well as it has for Gert,” the doctor said, looking me over. Her sleeves were definitely red. Blood.

  “Well, Gert’s still alive, so …” I said.

  The doctor brought a fist down so fast I barely saw it. It slammed into Gert’s head like an overripe watermelon, with all the attendant gore. Man, I wish I’d been wearing a poncho. “Is she?” the doctor asked coolly.

  “Pretty sure you just violated the hell out of the Hippocratic Oath there, doc,” I said, trying to mop a strain of gore out of my right eye. Apparently, I also lacked fine motor control, because I failed, the back of my hand just smearing it.

  “I never took it,” she said, standing up, giving me the once over. “You’ll live.”

  “That’s … amazing bedside manner,” I said. “Exactly what I’ve come to expect from you, really. Just stellar work.”

  “Come on,” she said, motioning to Owens. They each grabbed me under an armpit and hoisted me up, giving me a lovely view of the inside of Gert’s head as they pulled me up. “Let’s go.” And they started to drag me away, back toward the infirmary.

  49.

  I passed in and out of consciousness over the next few minutes as Owens and the doctor dragged me along the ringed tunnel that circled the prison. I dipped back in just in time to see us passing the intersection that led to the infirmary without actually stopping.

  “Heyyy,” I said. “I think medical care is back that way.”

  “You don’t need medical care,” the doctor said, her left arm firmly locking mine into place above my head. I couldn’t reach out and touch her, or Owens.

  I tried to decide whether this pronouncement was ominous or not. “Like, ‘You don’t need medical care—you’ll heal in hours’? Or ‘you don’t need medical care because we’re about to dash your brains out like Gert’s’?”

  “If I wanted your brains smashed out, I would have done it at the same time I emptied Gert’s,” the doctor said. She sounded utterly indifferent, in an almost familiar way. Always a familiar way. I thought that maybe, if I hadn’t finally just succumbed to all the various pains running through my body, maybe, just maybe, I could have pieced together where from that tone sounded so damned familiar.

  “—this is it,” Owens said, pushing through a darkened doorway off the main corridor. I blinked, looking around.

  Hey. This was …

  “This is the storage room,” Owens said, pulling me in along with the doctor. She was at my right shoulder. If I wanted to, I could have … done absolutely nothing. She had a good grip on me, too. Incredibly solid, actually.

  Damn. I was helpless against their …

  What … were they doing? Other than dragging me around?

  “It’s behind the wall,” the doctor said, taking up my weight as Owens let loose. She managed it easily, and I started to get the feeling she hadn’t hauled me all by herself before more because it was just easier having help dragging me around rather than trying to single-hand me over her shoulder.

 

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