"I'm not going to like you, am I?"

You never do.

Rain pelted their miserable walk. The stairs in particular were difficult given the restraints on her ankles. Was the information that Alpha had worth the risk of getting into a car with him? Before she could think twice about it, before he had a chance to read her thoughts about it, Noel acted.

She yanked back against her lead and dropped to a knee so that she presented her shoulder to the soft part of Alpha’s belly.

Her hands went to his neck, but she didn’t waste her effort on choking him. She used his neck as a pivot for his body and turned him beneath her so that he sputtered face down into a puddle on the sidewalk. She grabbed for an arm, turned his wrist upward, and her cuffs caught at their maximum distance.

A blinding white pain swept from the crown of her head down through her spine and into her fingers and toes as if someone had cracked an egg on her head and the runny insides seeped pain inside her.

I see now, you’ve picked up some poor habits.

Noel’s hands slipped on Alpha’s rain-wet skin when she tried and ultimately failed again to get a submission hold. The length of chain between her restraints prevented her from getting the angle she needed. The psychic in her head made her body feel electrified.

That’s right. You’re a collection of electrical impulses. Hardly even a person anymore. Look at what you’ve become.

Car doors slammed and she was dislodged. It was a struggle and she didn’t give it to them easily, but ultimately Noel ended up as the one face down on the sidewalk.

And she still couldn’t see more than a sliver of world beneath a sopping wet necktie.

“I forgot what it was like with you around.” The fondness in Alpha’s voice made the statement unnerving. Your power is quite intimate for a psychic who knows what he’s doing. “Never a dull moment.”

The narrative he was providing to those around them did not match what he whispered into her head. But even worse, Noel wasn’t trying to do anything with her power. She always got a low buzz from the mutation cuffs that sometimes spiked when others spoke around her. It was hardly fair. She wasn’t the one controlling the use of her power.

You are in control of your abilities, child.

But not my life. She thought back testily, knowing that he would hear. Alpha only chuckled.

Noel’s restraints were adjusted so that her hands were no longer in front of her and she was hustled into the back of a vehicle between two walls of flesh who she assumed to be sentient based on the fact that they were wearing loafers. METAbots didn’t wear shoes.

The drive took forever.

Or maybe it was just boring because she couldn’t see and she couldn’t move and she was sandwiched between two living furnaces. Either way, despite the danger, Noel fell asleep in a car and woke up somewhere else entirely.

Noel awoke first with an intense feeling of claustrophobia. She craned her neck to see beneath the eye covering that her environment was less than inviting.

Shhh. Be still. It won’t take much longer.

The room had hardly more space than Noel was long. She could tell because she was reclined in what appeared to be a dentist’s chair and if her hands were not secured, she was sure that she could stretch to touch all four concrete walls.

One exit. Noel started to struggling. The same eerie egg shell crack of pain started at her head and oozed downward quickly followed by another and another. By the fourth wave, she was struggling from the pain rather than any hope of escape. She tried to form a coherent thought, a plan, a hope, something.

Shhh. Be still.

Noel felt her body lock of its own accord and then grow still. It was almost like it wasn’t hers. Her flesh was a glove and she was the hand inside. She should have been the one moving it, she wanted to fight and fight and fight, but somehow she wasn’t. A neoprene gloved hand smoothed strands of hair from the nape of Noel’s neck and turned her head to look at the concrete wall away from the other occupants of the room.

It won’t take much longer.

A mechanical whirring started up. Maybe a vacuum? Or hair clippers? A drill?

Something jarred her from oblivious to half-awake.

“Sterman. The door?”

She felt the words rumble through her shoulder, but they got caught in a throbbing wad of cotton near her ear. Was this a dream or a memory?

“Sorry.”

A click and light filtered in through her closed eyes which made everything red. She wanted to move, but felt no urgency. She was just so heavy.

“I just don’t get why this is necessary. Put her back in the chair and get answers the way you usually do.”

“Her mind is fragile, damaged.” Her shoulder rumbled again. “If we bulldoze in, the information we want might not survive.”

She couldn’t move an inch. The thought wasn’t disturbing, just a distant observation.

“You mean she won’t survive. You should quit playing favorites, old man.”

“Possibly—” His words sounded as if he was smiling. Some voices carried emotion so well. “—I won’t waste too much time here. If it comes to that, I will. I want to pursue a more ambitious picture first.”

That sounded important, but the heaviness was inviting and so much easier.

The first thing she noticed was that the tie that had served as her eye covering was gone.

A pile of yellow hardhats leaned toward a door that couldn’t possibly belong to a permanent structure. Everything felt cheap and beige. Paperwork littered most surfaces and an annotated diagram hung on the wall. Noel didn’t have a good angle to see the paper from her chair, but no one seemed to be around.

Zip ties kept her hands secured to the arms of her chair and her legs were restrained tightly together. So tight that her toes were tingling for lack of blood.

If she had to guess where she was, Noel was betting on a foreman’s office at a construction site. It felt vaguely familiar somehow. That was not at all what she’d been expecting.

Also, how sloppy were they?

Noel worked quickly to slide her arms down along the wooden structure of the chair. Its old fashioned arms connected all the way down to the legs which made each side of the chair one continuous square. Not easy to detach her restraints from, but she moved back and forth, up and down, and over and over until the plastic stretched. The zipties worried at her skin, leaving angry red lines on her wrists—

On her wrists. Where there were no tattoos.

Noel had the overwhelming feeling that she was being watched and that made her hesitate even though she had the space now to just barely slip one of her hands through its restraint. Instead she twisted in her chair to try to see the desk behind her.

There was someone there. There was someone at the desk. She was sure of it! She felt it. She felt a presence. There was someone there!

“Get out of my files.”

Her files? Yes! Her files! She whipped around to see the diagram. This was her head!

An attempt was made. Yes, but it’s hardly organized.

The view changed like a viewfinder sliding a new scene into place. She’d been here before.

Noel looked into the gray and soulful eyes of a man, an older man.

It was Hades, but he was not Hades.

“I’m lost. Help me.” His voice was somehow like razor blade in her ear canals and brain. She started to reach up to shield her ears, but he’d already stopped talking.

Noel looked around, but nothing was quite right. No wine— before she’d articulated the thought it was there. Hadn’t it always been there? The painting— was black and white which was abstract and spoke of movement. It somehow reminded her of horses. Horses were… there was something… something she needed to remember.

Noel looked back at Hades. She didn’t trust him. That’s the memory that she’d tried to lead herself to with this painting before. It was violent. He was violent.

He smiled at her. That wasn’t right. She did trust Hades. She just didn’t want to open up to him even after she’d learned his secrets. She’d seen his wife— Noel blinked in order to halt ther out of control thoughts.

”Stop.”

Noel grabbed at her head to hold her ears shut, but something still wasn’t right. She got the impression of another room, another reality, before Hades’ safehouse snapped firmly back into place.

”Stop. Alpha, I know it’s you and you’re digging.” Well. Sort of. It was an educated guess and a bluff which was pretty much how Noel operated all the time. Her memory was faulty; she’d learned to look for the context clues.

“I’m trying to help you.” Not Hades spoke again with a cacophony of pressure in her head. There was the runny egg yolk of pain sliding down her spine, but she stopped it. It stopped. It wasn’t there. This was inside her head; she had some power here. Eyes. She had to look him dead in the eyes. It might work.

”I will nuke both our autonomic functions. See who wakes up afterward: me or an old man.” Noel turned to face Hades, but it was Alpha standing where the facsimile of Hades had been.

He smiled and clutched his chest.

Old? His lips didn’t move, but she heard him all the same. The pain didn’t echo around when he was talking mind to mind.

”How do you know me?”

We were colleagues.

Cryptic. “Were?”

The program was discontinued.

She felt something feather light like the flapping of birds wings. Or maybe she saw it…

”Are you distracting me so you can sift through my memories?”

His smile was bland and his non-answer was telling. Limited time for limited answers. She wasn’t even sure what to ask at this point.

I don’t want to forget everything. She only thought it, but he was there. There was no hiding what she’d put together as an articulate thought in her head when he was in it.

Then don’t.

There were exclamation points in his eyes.

She’d taken out his language centers first, cut him off from communication before she went for vital functions. He was right. Noel didn’t have to forget everything; she just had to forget some choice things that he knew. That left everything that Alpha did not know in tact.

Alpha knew English. Emphasis on knew. Now neither of them did. Noel only spoke Finnish now.

Another thing Alpha did not know?

101 ways to kill a man.

Noel turned her hand in its restraint and caught Alpha’s belt buckle. She slipped her thumb beneath the tongue of the belt and hitched the prong free from its hole. As he struggled to find his breath, Noel wrenched his belt and pulled him toward her. Alpha’s knees buckled and he collapsed downward. She kept a tight grip on the belt buckle so that as he fell, it slipped free of his belt loops.

“-my God!”
“What happened?”
“I-I don’t know. He just collapsed.”

It felt like taking the first breath after diving too deep; a pressure in her chest, a burning undeniable need. Noel gasped and took a moment to relearn how to breathe. They were scrambling to get Alpha into position for CPR, but Noel heard Alpha’s body gasp out a desperate breath moments before they began.

People were shouting and there were more people coming and going from the room, but no one was saying anything she could understand. That made them considerably easier to ignore when she stood up from her chair. Her hands were only attached to each other. Her feet were free. They hadn’t been expecting her to break Alpha’s hold.

SNAP! Noel used the belt like a whip, buckle side out, to catch the main attendant to Alpha in the throat and flicked the improvised whip in between a woman’s feet as she approached with soothing words and palms out. She hit the ground har, chin first. The door clicked closed as someone left.

The room was small like a police interrogation room and brightly lit. Noel pulled several wires and monitoring nodes from her temples and the rolling cart of equipment went from recording data to flat lines all around.

Her time was limited. She had to get out. Noel grabbed the woman by the back of her smart suit jacket and hoisted her up to one stockinged foot and one high heel.

<<Walk.>> Noel growled in Finnish and hustled her forward before the woman could make sense of what she wanted to say. The memorymancer aimed a kick for Alpha’s eye as she passed. Just for good measure.

She opened the door and shoved the woman out first. A bullet pinged wide and her human shield squealed something obnoxious sounding enough to make Noel shake her roughly. The woman’s busted chin seemed to be healing before Noel’s very eyes like a fast motion video of a plant growing.

Not so human after all.

No time!

Back in the room, Noel flicked the lights off and pulled her hostage back inside and into a tight embrace. Hip to hip, chest to chest, and lip to lip.

This woman was a classic and powerful Healer. They were on the second floor. Handcuffs could be removed if she could get to the right person’s pocket. Protocol would be to lock the building down ASAP. There really wasn’t any time left.

Noel shoved the woman away before she saw much more and dipped beneath her to scoop her onto her shoulders.

Okay. Okay. Okay. This was going to suck, but she wouldn’t die at least. She hoped.

The woman continued to fight as Noel burst into the hallway. She used the belt to take out the light above them and with swift and brutal efficiency flung the woman from her shoulders into the group. Noel stomped through a knee, took a bullet to the upper chest, grabbed the healer and kicked a man’s nose until it was concave.

That. Hurt.

Noel coughed up something thick and immediately began to burn with a flare of healing when she grabbed the Healer back. The woman fought more feebly this time, though she continued shouting at Noel until the moment when the memorymancer used her head as a battering ram to bash in a fire extinguisher’s glass case. Two bullets popped free from the Healer and the woman sank to the floor of the dim hallway with blood on her scalp. A single bullet popped out of Noel’s shirt and she pulled the extinguisher canister free from its housing.

At least it squirmed less.

The first security camera she saw, Noel hosed with white powder. A metallic slam sounded down the hall signaling the end of an option. No! She reversed her direction and tried another way until she found an exterior wall.

Tired, Noel followed the wall until she found a window which she jammed the extinguisher through. The security grate fell down and clanged into the metal cannister, denting it, but unable to close fully. Good enough.

Noel slipped through, shimmied out onto the window ledge and dropped down into the shrubbery.