He slid into the old dance of hand-to-hand with the ease of long practice, and a freshly painless body. He cracked another in the shoulder with the baton, hard enough to send him staggering, and ripped the man’s gun from its holster in the process.
Another took a swing that he ducked, and he heard the crack of a gunshot that he prayed didn’t find a mark. He didn’t know where Ash was, but didn’t have time to check. He grabbed a man by the wrist, tugged him close, and pressed the muzzle of his stolen gun under his arm, fired off a shot that sent a jolt up his own arm. The man screamed and went down.
Rooster couldn’t risk a wild shot. He moved in close, and tight, baton in one hand, gun in the other. Muzzle to skin, to fabric, close shots that burned.
There were more screams than he could account for, and always fire, leaping and dancing at his periphery. Was the house burning? Why weren’t the smoke alarms going off?
Rooster dropped a body to the floor and suddenly, they were all bodies. No one was left standing but him…
And the girl, fire rippling around her like a shroud.
Slowly, she turned to face him, and the fire winked out. He expected her to be a blackened and ruined version of herself, but not even her clothes or hair were singed. Her skin glowed a faint pink, almost like a sunburn, but she appeared otherwise whole.
Rooster cast a glance around the room, the bodies slumped on the floor, and, in one case, across the breakfast bar. They all bore that particular limpness that comes with death. Some of them were burned, skin red, and black, and blistered.
“Holy shit,” Ashley said behind him, creeping back in on tiptoes.
Rooster shot a look to the girl that he couldn’t manage to make stern.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Her eyes rolled up in her head and she fainted for the second time that night.
*
They had to call someone. Mike Cartwright, Ashley suggested, an old service buddy long-since retired and now working as a vice detective.
“You can’t stay,” Ashley told him, voice heavy with sadness, and he knew she was right. The house was full of his fingerprints and DNA, and there would be no choice for her but to tell the cops what had happened. It was the only way to keep her and Desiree safe.
“I can’t leave you,” he protested, though, gesturing to the bodies.
“What about her?” They stood over the redheaded girl, again laid out on the couch. “I can look after myself, but what about her?”
Because turning her over to someone, after what had just happened, wasn’t an option, not for either of them. So Rooster stuffed his meager belongings in his duffle bag, crammed a hat down on top of his head, and told Ashley how sorry he was.
She shook her head, firm. “What woulda happened if you hadn’t been here?”
“They wouldn’t have shown up at all.”
She tilted her head to a stubborn angle. “That poor girl needs someone looking out for her.”
So.
Here he sat, the sunrise molted beyond the fogged-up glass of a diner window on the way to Connecticut. He sipped his coffee slowly, enjoying the warmth of the mug against both his hands, watching the girl seated across from him.
Ashley had tucked her bright hair beneath one of Deshawn’s old winter stocking caps, but little pieces kept working their way free, bold as flame down her neck and shoulders. She wore dark smudges beneath both eyes, signs of exhaustion, but she shoveled pancakes into her mouth with almost frantic energy, hand unsteady on the fork.
“Not too fast, kid, or you’ll be sick,” he cautioned.
She grunted a response, but did slow the movement of her fork, actually swallowing before she brought the next bite to her lips.
Rooster let her eat – he knew well the look of someone who’d gone hungry for a long time – and planned a route in his head. They needed to get out of the state and lay low, probably for a long time. Ashley could work miracles, but Rooster knew it would take nothing short to clear him of multiple murder charges. He had no idea which branch of law enforcement those guys had answered to, but someone would want retribution.
Worse, someone would want the girl back. Their pursuit proved that she was valuable. Her little fire routine proved she was dangerous.
Rooster entertained ideas of dropping her off at a hospital, or a children’s home. Even a school. Putting some cash in her palm, spinning her around in the parking lot, and telling her to go find someone else to look after her until she was old enough to go be homeless on her own.
But she acted like she’d never tasted pancakes before.
And she was just a little thing.
And she’d touched him, and suddenly he was sitting in a booth and his hip wasn’t caught in a bind; blinding pain wasn’t shooting down his leg, and arm, and spine.
The waitress stopped by and topped up his coffee, asked if they needed anything else.
“Two breakfast plates to go,” he requested, because he didn’t know when they’d have another chance to stop for food.
When she was gone, the girl finally pushed her plate away, wiped her sticky mouth with the too-long sleeve of her borrowed sweatshirt, and met his gaze with a level one of her own.
“I’m sorry,” she said, solemnly.
“That’s alright.” He set his coffee down. Kept his voice low, so the old man two booths over couldn’t hear them. “Who were those guys?”
She took a big, shuddery breath. “They’re from the Institute, they…I’m sorry.” She blinked hard.
“What were they gonna do if they took you back there?”
“They…Dr. Fowler said…” Her narrow shoulders jerked up and down as she breathed. Color bloomed in her pale cheeks, and not in a good way. “It was time…I was ready…for breeding.”
Rooster’s breakfast turned to lead in his stomach. “Breeding?”
“I started bleeding, which means I’m a woman now, and they need more of us, and the best way is to…” She babbled, twisting her napkin between her hands until her knuckles turned white.
“Hey,” Rooster said, and she looked at him gratefully. “That’s not gonna happen, okay?” Inwardly, his heart pounded. Breeding? What in the ever-loving shit were those people doing over there? “We’ll figure something else out.”
“Thank you.” She blinked some more, but the tears were determined, and a few slipped down her cheeks. She brushed them away with her sleeve. “I know it’s my – my responsibility.” They sounded like repeated words, something an adult had told her that had never set right; a little line appeared between her brows as she frowned. “I was made for this, and I should be grateful for the chance to help, and–”
“Hey,” he said again, and this time, reached across the table to cover her little hand with his own.
She jumped at first, and then settled, her expression a miserable blend of guilt and exhaustion.
He decided on a different line of questioning. “Do you know how old you are?”
“Fifteen.”
Older than he’d thought. “Okay, so, you’re fifteen. And I think it’s fair to say you like pancakes.”
A shy little smile touched one corner of her mouth.
“And you don’t have a name.”
She shook her head, and another ribbon of red hair slid from beneath the cap, unraveling down the length of her throat.
“How about Red? At least until we figure out something better.” He’d never been good at naming things, and really, Red was stupid. Red was what kids named dogs.
But her smile stretched, wide and sweet. He heard the heels of her borrowed sneakers thump the booth as she swung her legs in a little circle. “I like that.”
“Okay. Red it is.” He held his hand out to her across the table. A formal introduction. “Hi, Red. I’m Roger, but all my friends call me Rooster.”
She slid her little hand against his, her skin warmer than it should have been. “Hi.”
“So,” he said, reaching for his coffee again. “You can set stuff on fire, huh? What’s that like?”
2
Manhattan, New York
Present Day
A phone was ringing. The gentle chiming of the iPhone’s alert was far preferable to the shrill call of the landline it had replaced, but it was still an unwanted disturbance at – Nikita cracked his eyes open a crusty millimeter and read the dial on the bedside clock – four-thirty in the morning. As Sasha would say: ugh.