Tom crossed the parking lot, heading towards Luke who was busy loading our gear into the new car. Luke had stripped off his disguise while we were dealing with the previous car and had bundled his clothes up into a bag. As we approached, he held it out,
“Liz suggested that we change as quickly as possible. Said the cops were probably out looking for people with our description.”
“Liz is a smart lady,” I agreed, removing my wig and glasses and dropping them into the open bag.
Tom hesitated,
“Where is Liz?” he asked, his eyes darted anxiously.
“She was here a second ago. She just ducked over there to change, I think,” Luke pointed to a small stand of bushes a short distance from the car.
“And you let her go off alone?” he snapped.
“Yeah? She just wanted a bit of privacy, what’s the big deal?”
Tom snorted and took a step towards the bushes, slipping his hand into his coat as he did. I grabbed his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Stop wasting time. Get your disguise off and into the bag before someone spots us. I am sure Liz will be back any second.”
He rounded on me, suspicion clouding his face,
“Will she?” he sneered.
“What? Of course,” I furrowed my brow in feigned confusion. “We are her ride, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know, are we?” he scowled and pulled away from me, stalking around the car and towards the brush.
Just as he stepped around the bumper, Liz emerged, now wearing jeans, a baggy hoodie and sneakers. Her dress clothes were folded over her arm and the sample case dangled from one shoulder.
“Everything alright?” she asked, raising a curious eyebrow.
Tom stopped, briefly taken aback,
“No, everything is fine,” he paused, and I could see him visibly reformulating his plan. “Just hurry up and put your case into the car, we need to get out of her before we are spotted.”
“Right, of course,” Liz jogged back to the car.
She dropped her clothes into the bag, then bent to place her sample case into the trunk. Before she placed it down, though, she seemed to think better of it and instead she placed it back on the ground.
“What’s the hold up?” Tom stepped closer to her.
“Well, it occurs to me that this case has been jostled around quite a lot on the way here. It would probably be best to open it and make sure everything is intact.”
Hearing that, I turned, one arm still in my blazer, to see her kneeling in front of the case, pulling open the zipper.
“Wait, I don’t think you should…” I began, but the warning came too late.
Liz flung the bag open, and a puff of fine, white powder filled the air around her. She gasped in surprise, then realizing her mistake she slammed the case shut, but the damage was already done.
“Luke, grab me one of those naloxone kits. Hurry!” I shouted.
Normally there would be plenty of time, but as a succubus she was much more sensitive, and it would probably only take a minute or two for her to collapse. Especially with this particular drug, which was said to be more potent and faster acting than standard fentanyl. Luke turned and pulled on the car door, to retrieve the kits from the back seat, but the door didn’t open. He tugged on the handle a few more times before we both realized that the door was locked. I turned to Tom, still holding the key fob in his hand.
“There’s no need for that,” he explained.
“What do you mean, no need?” I gestured to Liz, whose breathing was already becoming more labored, her lips turning slightly blue. “Stop fucking around.”
“Come on, Ray,” he met my eyes. “You knew it was going to end this way no matter what, surely.”
“What are you saying, Tom?”
He removed his hand from his pocket, studying the gun contemplatively as he did. I wasn’t sure if he intended it to intimidate me or to reveal his true intentions. Perhaps a bit of both.
“Don’t be stupid. We couldn’t have let her walk away after this. She knows too much,” he said calmly.
“You can’t be serious! Liz helped us. She doesn’t know anything! You want to leave her to die?”
“Yes. And honestly, this is even better than what I had originally planned. It muddies the heist for investigators, might even make it look like the drugs were stolen for… recreational use. And she isn’t connected to our organization, so they shouldn’t be able to trace her back to us,” Tom smiled. “Basically, this resolves our problem, and acts as a little field test on top of it.”
“A field test?” I asked incredulously.
“Come on, Ray, you knew what we were doing here. Don’t pretend you didn’t. I know you don’t like it, but this is what has to happen. Are you still unwilling to admit that to yourself?”
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I returned his gaze for a long moment, looking into his eyes for any hint of doubt, hesitation or regret. It wasn’t there. I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Couldn’t we just take her into custody? Hold her in the facility?”
Why? Until when?” Tom shook his head. “It would just be postponing the inevitable. She may be one of the first, but she certainly won’t be the last.”
I looked down at Liz. She had collapsed to the ground by this point, her breathing slow and irregular. It was unclear if she was still conscious. Tom knelt and checked her pulse, then he pulled open her eyelid and checked her pupils. He smiled.
“She won’t survive much longer. Leave her and let’s get out of here. Luke, grab the case and get in the car.”
Luke looked down at the sample case, then at Liz, clearly hesitant to touch it.
“Relax,” Tom reassured him. “Just don’t open it again and everything will be fine. Even if a bit of dust is still on the outside, you aren’t ubarae, the effect won’t be as severe.”
Luke swallowed, then gingerly picked up the bag with two fingers. Tom walked to the driver’s door, before pausing to look back at me.
“Coming, Rayna?” he prompted.
I took a deep breath,
“Yeah, alright. Just let me put her body in those bushes, it’ll delay discovery. We don’t want them finding the other car too quickly.”
“Fine. Hurry up.”
He watched me carefully as I dragged her over to the shrubbery by the edge of the lot and shoved her inside, obscuring the body from view. She didn’t stir, even as branches caught in her hair, and I manhandled her arms and legs to tuck them inside.
“That’s good enough,” Tom shouted. “Let’s go.”
I bit my lip, glancing briefly back at the bushes, then shook my head and strode over to the car. I had barely slammed the door before Tom peeled out of the parking lot.
Wallace studied us from behind his desk, hands tented against his chest, his face solemn. Finally, after a long moment, he smiled.
“Excellent work, all of you. I am more than pleased with the success of this operation.”
“Even though the vials were damaged?” Luke blurted.
Wallace smiled indulgently,
“That was unfortunate. But my scientific team has inspected the contents of the bag, and they assure me that aside from one cracked vial, everything else is intact and we actually lost very little of the product. A minor mishap, no more. There is still plenty to accomplish our goal. And more can always be obtained in the future.”
“You saw my report on the conclusion of the other issue?” Tom asked.
“Of course. Well done. Better than I hoped,” his eyes flicked to me as he spoke. “So well done, in fact, that I think the three of you deserve a couple of days off. Take some time to relax, and I will be in touch with your next assignment soon. Dismissed.”
We turned to go, but as I stepped towards the door, Wallace cleared his throat,
“Rayna, if you could stay behind for just a moment?”
Tom paused in the doorway,
“Would you like me to…”
“No, no. I just want to speak to Rayna alone, for a moment. I’ll talk with you later,” Wallace waved him away.
I watched Tom’s expression darken for just a moment, before he nodded sharply and left without a word. As the door shut behind them, Wallace gestured for me to sit.
“Do we have a problem?” I crossed my arms across my chest.
I was in no mood for Wallace’s shit, at the moment.
“Quite the opposite,” he assured me. “I actually wanted to tell you that I was wrong.”
“You?” I raised an eyebrow.
“It doesn’t happen often, so enjoy the moment while you can,” he smirked, unperturbed. “But it’s true. I didn’t think you could pull this off, and you proved me wrong today. This job was very neatly done. You even managed to test the product, in the end. I suppose I should commend you for being so efficient.”
“Don’t, Wallace. Not today.”
He sighed,
“I am disappointed that it still bothers you, so much. But this is a start. Truthfully, I expected you to protest more about the succubus’ fate.”
“Well, I can’t say I was happy about it. I’m still not.”
“No, but I am impressed that you did what was necessary, despite that. I didn’t think you still had that in you.”
“Neither did I, honestly. I’m not sure I am as pleased with this revelation as you are.”
“Well, regardless. This changes things. I might have more use for you, now that I know you can be counted on.”
“Hopefully you mean after the couple of days off you promised us. Because I could really use a bit of time to myself, right now.”
“Your care is wasted on them, you know. They are monsters. Nothing more.”
“Liz helped us purely out of kindness. Doesn’t sound like a monster to me.”
“Did she?” Wallace scoffed. “With their kind, who can say? They use us. Every interaction is just a play for control or an attempt to earn favor. Who knows what she was really planning.”
“That seems a bit paranoid, Wally.”
“You think? Perhaps if you had seen what I had, you would feel differently,” he bit his lip, considering something, before continuing. “You’ve heard about my sister, of course?”
This I hadn’t expected. This was not something Wallace spoke about often. I hadn’t thought he would ever talk about it with me.
“Rumors, no details.”
“Well, perhaps the full story would help you understand what they are really like,” he sighed. “Trish was my younger sister, you know. Only 17 at the time and still in high school. I was 19 and in college. She begged me for months to bring her to a ‘real’ college party. I finally caved and agreed. It is still the biggest regret of my life. The incubus, I won’t use his name because he doesn’t deserve one, he was a fraternity brother of mine, though I didn’t know what he was at the time. She was infatuated with him the moment she met him. Followed him around all night like a puppy. I thought it was just a crush. And why not? He was handsome and charming. All the girls liked him. I liked him, though not in that way. He was a brother, after all, and a friend. We hadn’t known each other for that long, but I thought he was a good guy. I trusted him.”
Wallace paused and took a deep breath.
“I shouldn’t have. Obviously. They are predators. They evolved and adapted to hunt humans. Like he hunted my sister. And like all predators, he split her off from the crowd, got her alone. It was late in the night when I just happened to catch sight of the two of them walking out into a little wooded area behind the fraternity house. I was pretty drunk, at the time, but something still seemed… wrong to me. I followed them. It took me a bit to catch up and by the time I got there, he had backed up against a tree. For a moment, I was embarrassed, having caught my sister… well you know. But as I turned to leave, I stepped on a branch. His head snapped up and he turned to me, with eyes like I had never seen before. And as he stepped away, I saw my sister fall, limp, to the ground.”
He rubbed his face with his hand.
“I ran to her, and he fled into the night. I should have gone for him, killed him myself. Trish was already gone, anyway. I tried to tell people what had happened, but no one believed me. I probably should have left out the detail about his eyes. Everyone thought I was crazy, until the people from the Organization turned up. They understood. And eventually, they helped me to understand, too.”
There was a long, heavy moment of silence between us.
“I’m sorry, Wallace,” I finally broke the silence. “That is… terrible.”
“It is terrible. It is terrible that there are predators like that among us. Monsters lurking in the dark. Until they are all exterminated, none of us are safe. I shouldn’t have waited so long to do things properly. But you can’t change the past. All I can do is try to make things right, now. And I will. For Trish,” he set his jaw. “So, take your time off. Think about what I just told you. Get your head on straight. And in two days, if you are ready to do what must be done, come find me and I will tell you about the next part of the plan. The plan to finally make this world safe for humanity.”