Page 59 of Gates of Tartarus

Walker hovers anxiously near me, and Jonah sits beside me, almost pressed against me, evidently taking Hideo’s warning very seriously.

“What’s happening here, Kai?” Maddox asks, concern pushing against me, crowding me with an almost tangible weight. “What do we need to prepare for?”

“Nothing,” I say sadly, sighing. “Nothing.”

Walker and Maddox watch me through doubting eyes, and I roll my own in response, burying my face in my hands.

“Christ,” I mumble into my palms, then look up. “You know, before this fucking task force everything was fine. I was fine. Ever since you pulled me into this mess it’s been like you’re skinning me alive, bit by bit, so everyone can see what’s underneath. It’s been nothing but pain since I met you all.” Desperation enters my voice before I can stop it. “You’re tearing my secrets from me like teeth. When will itstop?” There’s a long pause, filled with the heavy words that are taking up too much space in the suddenly small room.

Sighing, I look at some point over Madds’ shoulder. “The Prices adopted me when I was a kid. There’s really nothing there, honestly. It’s just opening old wounds. I’d been in the group home for a year after my parents took off. They don’t like to call them orphanages anymore – too Dickensian I guess – but that’s what it was. It wasn’t a bad place. The Prices – Lucian and Marian – came four or five times to visit the kids. Each time they came we spent a little more time together. Marian and I laughed together a lot. She had a kind of chaotic happiness about her. It fed into me, and I was so young I didn’t know anything about shielding or anything. So I just let it push right on back into her. We were almost manic with laughter sometimes, but I didn’t know. Just seemed like I’d found someone who liked me.”

Taking a deep breath, voice carefully steady, hiding the hurt and fear that still existed from years ago, I continue. “So they adopted me. It was really easy at the time. Everyone could see how well we got along, a natural fit, they said, and things went really quickly. They’d passed the home check ages before, were just waiting for the right kid. And then I showed up. Ha.” I laugh bitterly, thinking back on it, but keep going. “Everything was fine for a little while. Lucian was a great dad. Taught me to catch, ride a bike... all that Hallmark shit. Marian… she was really nice most of the time, but also a little... I don’t know. Off, I guess. But still, everything was cool ‘til one day she just nose-dived. Just BAM. Sat in the corner the whole day, sobbing. And… you know... I couldn’t shield. I was too young. So I’m sitting there sobbing with her, and the emotion was like a loop we got stuck in, feeding off each other, getting darker and darker every time it circled back. By the time Lucian got home we were both hollow from sadness. He was so worried. Got upset with Marian for going off her meds, which obviously I didn’t know about. She argued with him that she didn’t need them now that I was here. That I made her happy. Normal. It was just this once; she was okay. And it seemed okay. And he believed her. Until the next time.”

The guys are shifting uncomfortably at this point, unsure of where I’m going with it, and I try to move it along, voice growing more clinical as the story continues. “The next time it happened he threatened to call someone if she didn’t get back on her meds. But she’d already started figuring out thatsomethingwas different about me. Just wasn’t sure what. So the next time she was feeling the sadness come, she gave me something to make me sleep. And when I fell asleep, she fell asleep. So she thought… Look, she didn’t feel right on the medication. It messed with her. It wasn’t really her fault. But she thought maybe if she gave me small, just small doses of the ‘happy pills’, as she called them, that maybe that would solve the problem. So she started dosing me. Just little bits. Pills to make me happy. Pills to make me sleep. But it didn’t work that way with me. Not how she thought it would. It just messed with what little natural shielding Ididhave. Things got... they weren’t good. So she tried increasing them. Changing it up a little.” The next words get caught in my throat, but I force them out. “Trying... trying different… tactics.”

The guys’ faces are thunderous, and I shake my head a little. “It’s not... it’s… she was sick, you guys. She just had real mental health problems, and then I came in the mix and fucked it all up even more. She had it under control until I came along. Then Lucian came home one day early... He began to suspect something, I think, because I was always so tired by the time he got home. And it all came out. She told him everything. And that night he called Second Chance Adoption. Had me up on their website like a puppy they were trying to return to the pound. All my ‘stats’ and everything. ‘Well behaved. Healthy appetite. Likes to go for walks.Obedient’.” I swallow hard, keeping my face and voice blank.

“He thought it was safer if he kept me away from Marian. Which set her off. He had to take a full month off work to keep us apart. And he wouldn’t look at me. He, uh, kept me in my room the whole time. I had to eat up there. Had some… kind of, uh, uncomfortable... weeks coming off the stuff she’d given me. Got an hour outside in the morning and evening by myself. No… no other people. I was 8.”

The anger levels in the room are off the charts, but I push ahead anyways. In for a dime, in for a dollar. “There were no hits on the website for me, and I think he just didn’t know what to do between his wife of like a million years and this kid they’d just brought home. I think he tried. I mean, I... anyways. Marian snuck up one night when he fell asleep and was kind of… she just wasn’t in touch with reality at that time. He heard her trying to get in – she wasn’t going to hurt me or anything. She just wanted to feel happy again. It was just a little scary, and I’d been alone in the room for so long… Well, it felt like so long, because I was young. And she was banging on the door, begging me to open it... So he gave up completely and took me back to the group home. Packed my bags and dropped me off in the middle of the night. Literally left me with the night guard. Said I wasn’t... I don’t know. Said it wasn’t my fault, but I couldn’t be around them. That it wasn’t good for anyone. ThatIwasn’t good for anyone, maybe. And then they just disappeared. And I went into the foster system. For a time, anyway. Families tended to return me pretty quickly. I’d go somewhere for a month, then be sent back. I, uh, yeah. I had a lot of temporary placements. Alot. Eventually they stopped trying to farm me out to people, after a couple of really rough homes. The last home… they wouldn’t place kids there anymore after…” The memories are pressing in hard now, suffocating, and I have to remind myself to breathe, rushing to finish. “And I just stayed at the group home from 11 until I graduated at 17 and moved out on my own. I graduated early so they let me emancipate. Kind of took me off their plate, so they didn’t really argue at all.”

The room is silent. “A little while back Lucian saw an article on me in the paper and tried reaching out. Deo blocked it. He’s tried a couple times since but... yeah. I can’t. So. Nothing bad. Nothing there that would affect me, like expose me or anything. Or cause problems for the team. Just… uncomfortable.”

Still silent. I try to inject some levity into the situation. “The media will probably try to play some Cinderella angle with Tennireef and me. Actually, it could be worse. They’ll probably try to spin some fairy-tale aspect or something. So... guys? Guys?”

Walker’s staring at his hands, and Jonah is a blank wall, but Maddox surges to his feet. “Can you run with that?” he says shortly, nodding towards my arm. “Let’s go for a run, okay?”

“Me?” I ask, somewhat surprised. Deo’s usually the only one I run with. We typically do 3–5 miles every other day. Today’s an off day for us. “Uh…”

“I just think – look, Reed.” He rubs his hand over his head, biceps flexed, fingers white with tension. “I need to take a fucking run. Do you want to come with me or not?”

“Yeah,” I say slowly. “Yeah, I think I do.”

He nods. “Meet me out front in five.”

Getting changed as quickly as I can with my sore shoulder, I meet Madds, who’s waiting silently for me and starts moving as soon as I reach him. We do the first mile slowly, warming up, but by the second are hustling, and by the third I’m running hard, fueled by buried emotion. Every time I start to lag a little, Madds shoots me a look that kicks me into gear again, and soon it’s like we’re trying to outrun something, lungs hurting from the cold, shoulder throbbing, eyes watering from the wind that’s burning our faces. There’s no room for emotion in the steady slapping of our feet on the pavement – I can’t even think beyond the forced inhale and exhale. When Deo and I run, it’s not slow, but we still manage to speak to each other, our regular pace somewherejuston the edge of what is easy and comfortable. This is not the same. This is desperate movement, like someone or something is chasing us, Maddox pushing us to keep moving, keep moving, lest we be caught in the teeth of the animals behind us.

By the time we get back to the station, my brain is completely empty. It’s in survival mode. I’m guessing we ran maybe seven miles, the last few were nothing but pure thoughtless motion. When we reach the stairs, I collapse down, muscles trembling, head thrown back, gulping air. Maddox isn’t faring much better; although he’s still standing, his muscles are quivering.

“Christ, Reed,” he says, voice coming in short gasps. “You lasted longer than I thought you would. Jesus, I’m out of shape.” He raises his arms to grasp his hands behind his head, muscles trembling slightly, eyes staring somewhere over my head. I can’t catch enough breath to respond, but he looks at me through knowing eyes. “Hard to fit anything else into space that’s occupied by the need to survive. You’ll be okay, Reed. We’ll protect you from this.” Reaching down, he pulls on one of my braids affectionately. “Go get cleaned up and meet me back in the conference room. Good run.”

Face red from exhaustion, it takes me a minute to process Maddox’s words, but when I do I smile up at him, voice suffused with gratefulness. “Good run,” I say back, and, for a long moment, we just look at each other in complete understanding. “Thanks, Madds.”

???

By the time I’m showered and changed, Maddox has evidently had words with the rest of the team, and when I get to the room, we focus completely on work and nothing else. He fills us in on what’s happening with Cole and the British team, and we start running down the list of names that Tennireef had referenced, organizing them in order of importance and running basic checks on them.

“Oh, you little bastard!” I blurt out suddenly while looking over some balding senator’s profile. “You fucker!”

The rest of the guys look at me curiously, and I say, “I’m so freaking slow on the uptake. Jesus.Thisis why he was so persistent about dinner.” Maddox makes a motion for me to continue. “I’m handicapped now. I had no public profile at all. The only news story ever done on me didn’t include photos, so no one really knew my name or what I look like or anything. I don’t like being in the public eye at all. But after the date with Tennireef…”

“Now you’re well known,” Maddox says slowly. “And people are going to look into you, find the article about your supposed abilities... That’s more of a story even than the date with Tennireef. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

Walker groans. “You’re going to draw attention anywhere you go for the next month or so, until this all dies down.”

Frowning, I say, “You think Tennireef is going to let this die down until he’s ready to?” As if by magic, there’s a knock on the door, and a slightly disgruntled-looking officer peers out from behind a fucking forest of roses. “Reed,” he says grumpily. “I’m evidently a delivery boy now.”

I grab the card off the top of the bouquet and read it, then pitch it. “Thanks for a lovely night– James”

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