Zera looked at the carnage. “Well, she was right. She is a very good shot. She might have gotten more dates at first if that was on her escort profile.”
Kolij grinned. “I would have gone for it.”
Bothin nudged his arm. “Eleven is a wonderful woman. She deserves more humanity than folks accord her. She’s sweet and shy and very generous.”
“And she’s now exclusive to Salat, so be extra sure he isn’t around if you are discussing her attributes.”
Bothin smiled. “She got rid of my allergies.”
Zera looked at the giant hulk of a man, and she smiled. “Yeah, that seems like the kind of thing she would do.”
Torun wrapped her in his arms, and he asked her, “What are you going to do now?”
“Ah. Me? I am going to kill Mentor, the doll maker, and anyone else who had a hand in Susara’s death.”
She turned to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, smiling. “Care to join me, purple pretty?”
He kissed her, and their tongues tangled and slid against each other while he lifted her up. When they came up for air, he whispered, “I can’t directly help you if you are breaking the law, vigilante-style.”
“Can you watch my back in case I fail?”
He grinned. “That I can do. Where are you going?”
“Kit got the coordinates from them while they were torturing her. Salat just sent the conversation to my com with an order not to put his kitten in danger again.”
He smiled slowly. “You know where Mentor is?”
“I do.”
“Why are you still here?”
“Because I need a hug before I go do what I have to do.”
He hugged her carefully. “Go do what you have to do.”
She laughed. “I will. Give me a five-minute head start. I am wearing heels.”
“Fine. Ping me when you get there.”
“Will do.”
She turned when he caught her arm. “What?”
“You are going to have to pay for this.”
Zera shrugged. “I know. I am willing to pay. This guy has to go.”
He kissed her once more, and then, he followed her as she walked outside. Time to blow her cover.
Chapter Seventeen
Zera bent forward on the street, focused on her destination, and shot forward. Superspeed was hard to manage, but it got her where she needed to go in under two minutes. Running through the unpopulated areas made her less likely to hit someone, but she ended up where she had found Susa’s body, her chest heaving, and her funeral clothes smouldering gently.
She walked to the nearest building and opened the door to the coffee shop, walking through and into the janitor’s closet. The staircase that shouldn’t be there was exactly where the man who had been cutting Kit said it was.
Kit worked fast, and she had no problem doing what had to be done at the drop of a hat. From the time she had been captured, she had offered her torturer invulnerability but given him truth serum. The address had been easy to obtain, and that is when Kit started shooting. The precise location was the one thing Zera hadn’t found, and Kit got it for her. She was getting a fruit basket if Salat let her surface again.
Zera headed down the steps, and she sent out a stun wave that knocked most of the men and women out cold. She continued producing those waves in a pulse as she walked into the throne room where Mentor was seated.
“Now, this is what I expected. Where is the doll maker?”
He smiled slightly. “To your right, in that pile you just made. I thought you would be more careful.”
“You thought wrong.”
She walked up to him, and his eyes intensified. “Where are you sending them?”
“To the tops of buildings. You can’t save them all.”
She raised her hand and said, “Mother would have been so disappointed in you.”
He stood up. “I could say the same.”
Deadly disk was not something she would ever use in a normal room, but it severed Mentor in half. Anyone in a fifty-foot radius from her would have been sliced in two.
He slid to the floor, and she cut his skull in half with a blade pulse. The active that had given her that power had died years earlier, but it was very effective.
Zera scraped the pieces of him together and burned them in a DNA-eradicating fire. No one could be allowed to investigate him.
People around the room started to sit up.
She wandered around the room, and when she found the active she was looking for, she smiled. “Hello, doll maker.”
He looked at her in surprise. “How do you know who I am?”
“I have seen you. I have seen you with Mentor. I have seen you with escort Two. I have seen you drawing the souls out of your victims and laugh as their bodies dropped to be used as vessels for Mentor. Why did you attack Two?”
“I... I was just following orders.”
She leaned in and whispered, “You laughed when she fell. You let her soul fly free, and they dumped her dying body for me to find.”
He stepped back. “He wanted to get your attention. He realized he had chosen the wrong escort.”
She smiled slightly. “Yeah, he was an idiot.”
“Was?”
“Yeah. He’s dead. You’re next.”
“What? You can’t.”
She grinned. “Who says I can’t? I am not a team member, I am a researcher, and you are my experiment. Let’s see how you feel with your soul ripped out of your body. I haven’t done this before, so it’s going to hurt.”
She reached into his head and grabbed his consciousness, emotional register, and spirit of creativity, and then, she pulled it out of his skull while he screamed.
The team members burst into the lair a moment later, and she smiled and let the soul go. “Oops. I could probably have done that more neatly.”
She knelt with her hands behind her head as Torun cuffed her, and he sighed. “You should have killed him before we arrived, Zera.”
She chuckled. “There were a lot of things I should have done, but now, I don’t
