All things serve the Beam

They knocked on the car window and I went for my shotgun. But it wasn't the police and they weren't wearing any uniforms. I'd run across guys from the Tet Corporation enough times in the last ten years to know the look. My first instinct was to fight, but I knew that if I started shooting that they would shoot and if that happened it'd be a miracle if Penny didn't get killed.

I didn't just betray my ka-tet and kill my only friend to save her, only to get her gunned down before all the blood was dry.

I got out of the car and let them take my guns. They turned me around and shoved me against the car, cuffing my hands behind my back roughly.

"Don't kill this one, they said he's going to be useful," a hard voice said from behind me. "But sweep the area for the rest of his ka-tet."

On the other side of the car I heard Penny begin to cry. I tried to look up from the hood of the car but I couldn't see where she was. She struggled, then I heard her running around the front of the car. She shoved her way between me and whoever was behind me, holding me against the car. She threw her arms around my waist and clung to my hip.

They pulled her away and kept me shoved against the car. I tried to turn around but a hand slammed my face against the hood. I could hear Penny kicking and struggling. My jaw clenched and my heart pounded. Throughout the whole hunt for Penny and the gunfight with my 'tet, I kept my cool. But these guys were making me angry.

"I just killed the last five people who tried to hurt that little girl. You touch her wrong and you'll die in a pool of your children's blood!"

I was cuffed and pinned down but I meant every fucking word and they knew it. The pressure on my back lessened and the sounds of Penny struggling quieted.

"He's a fucking vampire!" A voice growled. "It's all over him... Christ, what are they thinking telling us to leave him alive?"

They pulled me away from the car I'd stolen and pushed me towards two vans. They opened the door of the first and lifted Penny inside, but marched me past it towards the second. Penny tried to jump out of the van but they caught her and started pushing her back inside.

"It's okay, Penny! It's okay..." I shouted over my shoulder as they propelled me along. I went into the van willingly enough. I didn't much care what happened to me. I was just a vampire, a blood-drinking parasite and the bitch of Richard P. Sayre. I'd squandered my life and spent the last ten years fucking other people's lives. They said they weren't going to kill me and I was a little disappointed.

But I couldn't help wondering if Penny was okay in that other van. Were they treating her alright? She'd just lost her parents and watched five people (well, things) die. That's hard on anyone, let alone a little kid.

"You thinking of getting out?"

I turned towards the voice, a man sitting on the bench across from me in the back of the van. He was just past fifty, maybe a little olderand his face was so lined by wrinkles and scars that I couldn't tell them apart. He wore military-style fatigues and held a colt python in his lap. He looked ready to use it. Eagar to use it.

"You just try it, blood-sucker. I'll burn you down." He tapped his temple with his free hand. "Yeah, I'm a psychic. What you're kind calls Breakers. You didn't get me, but I'll fucking break you, mosquito."

"Easy, Bryce..." The driver threw over his shoulder. The older guys sat back but didn't take his eyes off me. He seemed to relax a little as the vans slowed down, though.

I felt something, then. It wasn't a noise, but I heard it. Shit, there aren't words for it. It was like those chimes that I heard when I was around low men, that sound of insanity - but its opposite. I wanted to see the source of this sound/feeling more than anything. But the realization came crashing down on me that I could never see this thing. I was a vampire, an unclean spirit. This song I heard was everything that I was not, and I knew that if ever came face to face with it that it would destroy me.

I started to wonder again if they'd kill me and I started to hope they would.

They took us out of the vans right in front of the building and walked us inside. The closer we got the more I drug my feet. They were taking me to the source of the song/feeling. For s second I considered just braking free and running for it. They'd shoot me in the back and it would all be over. But Penny was walking right next to me and I knew that she'd be upset by that.

Why? What did this little girl see in me? I didn't really even save her life. I mean, who I saved her from was my friends. She wouldn't have needed saving if we hadn't come after her.

They marched me through the front doors of the huge black skyscraper. There was a beautiful receptionist waiting in the lobby, the kind of girl I'd have set my sights on in my human days. But she wasn't there to greet me. She smiled at Penny as if I wasn't even there.

The source of the... (the White, something told me) ....the White was getting closer and I struggled more. But I was relieved/disappointed when they turned me away from it and towards a service door to the side of the lobby. They opened it and started moving me down a hallway.

"James Cain!" Penny cried. I looked over my shoulder and saw her running towards me with the pretty, surprised looking, receptionist trotting after her. I twisted around to face her, fighting against the guys holding me. I lifted my knee into the crotch of the black man on my left arm and put my shoulder in the middle of the other guy's chest and slammed him into the wall.

I starting running towards Penny, knowing that I didn't have long before they shot me or grabbed me again. I went down on one knee so she could hug me. I wished my arms were free so I could put them around her. I leaned my head against hers and inhaled her Johnson & Johnsons shampoo scent. Then the hands were on me again, prying me away.

Fists jabbed my kidneys as they hauled me up and pain shot across my lower back, making my legs almost buckle. I'd have fallen if they hadn't been holding me up. A man had come up behind Penny to help the receptionist and he picked her up. "He saved my life!"

They drug me back into the hallway and closed the door. We were making one hell of a scene. I end up in a basement room and realize that I'm about to be in the shoes of more than one poor soul that the Top Hat Cats had gotten their hands on. It's just a little storage room with a single florescent light overhead and a cement floor. They set up a folding chair in the middle of the room, right over the little drain and they cuff me to it.

To their credit they send a doctor first. We wouldn't have done that unless we were worried we'd loose our prisoner before we got what we needed. The fanatic guy called Bryce stays in the room, watching from the corner while they cut away my coat and shirt and pull out the bullet in my arm. They stitch up my face too and I think of Penny, dabbing at the blood with my handkerchief.

"What the hell happened?" Bryce asks me. "We found two dead low men, the remains of two dead mosquitos and a dead taheen next door. Did someone beat us to the pleasure?" He walked right in front of me and pulled a cigar out of shirt pocket. He bit off the end and spat it at me, then stuck it in his mouth. Flame flared at the tip and he began to puff.

"Huh?" He insisted.

Why the hell should I cooperate? I was a monster and a traitor. When was this blowhard going to get around to killing me? He was a pyrokenetic, it would be so easy.

"You gonna talk? You'd better," he growled. "Everything in your head about Sombra, North Central, the Breakers, the Crimson King... you're gonna tell us everything you know. And when we've hollowed you out like a gourd I'm gonna torch you."

I didn't feel like talking and nothing was going to make me. I didn't care what he was going to do to me. But if I found out they did something to Penny, I was going to show this guy how the Crimson King deals with his enemies.

He blows hot smoke in my face and when I don't cough or blink he punches me in the solar plexus. He beats me until he's tired, his cigar long since burned down. Finally he spits at my feet and leaves the room promising that if I won't talk they'll get someone to pry what they need out of my head. I smile, knowing that Lex armed me against telepaths well. They'd do better sticking to the beatings.

Two minutes after Bryce takes his leave, massaging his callused old hands, I hear a voice behind me. "They aren't treating you very well are they?" It was Penny. "Are you okay?"

I blinked in surprise before I remember that she's a teleporter. Shit, no wonder the powers at Blue Haven are afraid of them. She sounds annoyed, as if these men had been charged with my care and had done a poor job of it. I push myself straighter as she walks around to the front of the chair. I try to look okay, but there's nothing I can do about the bruises and the blood.

She covers her mouth with her hands and gasps. Her eyes (pretty, dark eyes, already bloodshot from crying) fill up with tears. "What did they do to you?"

"I'm okay," I tell her, though I don't know why. I'm not okay. I'm tired and I hurt and I hate what I am and want to die.

"I'm getting you out of here!" Penny exclaimed, giving me a reassuring nod. She ran around behind me again and I felt her tugging at the handcuffs. She might have even been able to get me out of them and away from here with her powers, but the door opened.

Looking over my shoulder I saw Penny fling her arms wide and place herself between me and Bryce and the men coming in with him. "You said you weren't going to kill him! I heard you!"

"What the fuck is she doing in here!?" Bryce grunted.

I couldn't see Penny's face, but her shoulders straightened. She was probably glaring up a little storm. "Don't use that kind of language in front of kids! I may be thirteen in three months, but it still isn't nice!"

Her non-sequiter caught them of guard and gave them pause. It made them hesitate long enough that they didn't rush to pull her away, I didn't struggle out of the chair, and thins didn't go to hell.

"I'll talk," I threw over my shoulder. "I'll tell you everything I know. You can even prog me. But if you touch her you get nothing."

The man with Bryce, the black guy with sore nuts, walked slowly around to my side, nodding. "I understand. But you know we can't leave her down here with you." I looked around the room and had to agree.

"Then you point a camera at her and you put a monitor in here. When I can see that she's safe, then I talk." My demands were reasonable, I hoped. Penny was still between me and Bryce, probably sensing that he meants me harm. Good thing bad cop brought along good cop this time.

"It's a deal."

When I'd told them all I knew, which really wasn't much, about the Crimson King, Sombra and their dealings (at least my business experience helped me out here. I had been following their trends and maneuvers since the day I was bitten), Blue Haven and everything. They brought in a telepath and sifted through my head for all the details.

But it also earned me a little trust. Not from Bryce, I think I wound up on his permanent bad side. But with whoever had given the order not to have me killed, and the information I gave them, they named me Penny's protector. Even gave me my guns back.

Not like they had a choice. Penny visited whenever she wanted and there wasn't anything they could do to stop her.

The Rose is here, the source of the White. I wanted to see it, but I never could. But at least I had Penny. Whenever I was on the edge, about ready to end it all it seemed, she was there. I thought that if I were able to see the Rose that it must have been something like her smile.