Fiction about the world of Freedom Watch.
These are short pieces of fiction that introduce plot lines and game sessions.
DAA da DEE, DAA da DEE, daa daa da-de-da DEE DAAAA...
Not even Nazis get good elevator music, Envoy thought glumly, trying to ignore the tinny patriotic waltz droning through the speakers. He didn't bother to wipe the pained look off his face. He was pretty sure most of the elevator's occupants would have felt the same way. If anything, the grimace added to his believability. Of course, the uniform helped more.
He wasn't thrilled about the outfit. It didn't fit him badly; the first guard's clothes had been too big, but they'd taken down enough Nazis that he now cut a relatively smooth figure in his borrowed uniform. There was a time when wearing it would have slipped him into playacting, Maxim Isayev against the forces of evil, but the situation now was all too real for childhood games. And the swastika on his arm made his skin crawl every time he caught his reflection in the elevator's shiny interior. He didn't like how convincing he looked.
DAA da DEE, DAA da DEE, daa da da-de-da DAA DAAAA...
Strange, too, to see only himself in the reflective metal. Usually he was the one hidden safely from sight, leaving the walking target duty to Tensile and Steel Violet, who could take hit after hit without even being winded. But none of them could pass for Nazis – well, maybe Marlene, he thought, but thanks to Doc Otaku and Charlotta, she wasn't exactly low-profile. So they were all hidden now, which was vaguely creepy and unsettling; he'd gotten used to being able to detect them when they were nearby. With Onyx blocking his ability to detect super-powers, it really felt like he was alone – he had only their word that they were even in the elevator with him.
DEE da-de DAA de-da DEEE daa DEEEE...
He yawned and immediately stifled it. The waltz was putting him to sleep. Not that that would take much. God, he was tired. He'd finally gotten a good eight hours of sleep in, but that still left him several days behind – three? four? He'd lost count.
DEE da DEEE de DAAA DAAA...
"Anyone know what day it is?" He tried to keep the exhaustion out of his voice. Everyone else was just as worn out; they didn't need a reminder from him.
Onyx's voice popped up. "It's your birthday."
DAA da DEE, DAA da DEE...
Birthday? "You gotta be kidding me, right?" He did the math as the elevator slowed to a stop. She was right.
DEE da da-da de DAA DAA...
"Holy shit, I'm 18."
He composed himself quickly as the elevator doors slid open, and found himself staring into some sort of subterranean throne room. Three dozen Nazis stared back at him, rifles raised and aimed. Behind them, the Iron Cross sat broodingly on a large chair on a raised dais. As Envoy stepped forward, the supervillain looked up.
"You are very good, but you are not good enough to escape the notice of a true neo-Aryan." The Iron Cross stood up and pointed directly at him. "Schießen Sie ihn!"
Three dozen safeties clicked off in unison as the rifles they belonged to locked position on Envoy.
Well, he thought, tensing his muscles and trying to figure out which way to dodge. Happy birthday to me.
DEE da da-da de DAA DAA.
Freedom City, California, USA
She fell, leaden, toward the earth.
"It's not you I'm here for," he had said, and then he had dropped her, and she fell toward the earth. He had ripped from around her neck the ankh, and she fell toward the earth. She could fly. She could save herself and fly. But she didn’t feel like it. She always wore that ankh. It was so obvious to anyone who'd paid attention while battling Freedom Watch. The ankh controlled the nano-forms, and the nano-forms could do just about anything. It was what made her so versatile. Tommy One-Suit -- her Uncle Tom -- had taken it and then dropped her like she was nothing. He didn't even have a use for her anymore, now that he knew about the ankh.
She fell, leaden, toward the earth.
Anyone could have taken it from her at any time, really. At one point, when she'd started all this, she'd had two. One of them was the source of her force field and her power blasts and her flight. But she'd integrated offense, defense, and travel into the suit so she couldn't be easily disarmed. She'd dispensed with the second ankh, but she kept the one her mother gave her. She never took it off, not since her mother had given it to her back before she could remember everything. Now it was gone. Her mother's brother. No, that wasn't right, though it was close enough. He took it. She didn't feel like flying. She liked the sensation of falling. It was the physical equivalent of what she'd been feeling metaphorically since she'd heard about her Uncle's escape from jail.
She calculated that she had another second before she hit the ground and then calculated the odds that her impact suit would prevent the fall from killing her. It seemed likely to her that striking the ground wouldn't hurt at all, but she never found out. Strong arms caught her, more gently than she'd expected from Brian, and then she was standing, still in something of a daze, saying "Thanks, Brian," with a certain airy quality to her tone. And then Professor Xenon was calling, demanding that Freedom Watch return to the school at once, so she recalibrated the teleportation device she'd built into her suit, and away they went.
She felt leaden as she gazed at the ruin. Her head and limbs felt heavy. Professor Xenon was talking and she could see the pulses of light as Blue Jay invoked her healing powers. She could almost feel the energy flow from the other girl. It was disconcerting. Professor Xenon attempted to act calm as he thanked Blue Jay for her efforts, for making sure no one died as the result of the attack on the school, but it was clear to her that he was anything but calm. Whereas it was still unclear what had happened, so she turned toward the Professor after looking around at the damage, after walking around in small, dazed circles and looking around, detached, at all the things that were broken, she turned toward the Professor to ask him what, exactly, had happened, but everyone was talking at once, suddenly and loudly and in a panic, so instead she said, her tone, she was quite sure, indicative of her annoyance at their juvenility, "Will you all please shut the fuck up?" Her hands were over her ears but she could still hear them all babbling and chattering in their panic. It was giving her a headache.
Steel Violet touched her shoulder, but she shook off the hand and stepped away. "Onyx, what's wrong," she asked, and Envoy asked. And Durga asked and they were all suddenly looking at her and saying, "what’s wrong what's WRONG with her what's wrong with HER" like it didn't matter or she was making it up, and she staggered away from them, mumbling, "I don't feel well at all," and knowing she didn't sound cool or mature anymore, her head aching now, from the babble from the noise and her stomach aching suddenly too, nausea and vertigo causing her to stagger away (hadn't she already stepped away from them?) and shudder, her hair feeling like it was standing on end the way it sometimes did when she was experiencing something that fascinated her or something like Déjà vu and she staggered away from her friends and shuddered the way she shuddered when she had a very high fever, and she retched, and she was gone.
***
Blackstone Federal Penitentiary
The man known to the world as Doctor Otaku sat in his cell, thinking. He thought it possible that Chernobyl would send someone for him or leave a door ajar or something, but it was by no means a certainty, especially if the Russian now had Wallflower and the Charlotta in his employ. The number of genius-level intellects in the villain business was diluting his importance, and that was unacceptable. It was something he intended to fix posthaste, but at present it was a reality, and it lessened the likelihood that Chernobyl would feel the need to send someone for him. So he had been planning several potential solo escapes, most of them hinging upon the fact that that everyone he'd met so far had treated him with derision. This, he was quite certain, was an indication that they were, in fact, terrified of him, but that they felt he had been defanged. Thus, he reasoned, the suggestion that he had access to technology or tools or information -- anything, really, so long as the prison staff were convinced that it was real and uncertain as to what it was -- would be enough to provoke a panicked reaction on the part of the prison staff. It was how to best exploit that reaction that he was mulling over now.
He looked up and there was suddenly, curled up on the floor in front of him, pale and naked, a nubile girl, her features, and all the, ah, feminine parts, concealed by a mane of flowing black hair. It was like some sort of dream come true, and he intended to treat it as such. But as he slid off his cot to approach her, she lifted her head, fixed him with a pale-eyed stare and hissed, "If you're doing this, I'm going to kill you." He stood frozen, mouth opened as if to say something, but the vision was gone.
***
Freedom City, California, USA
"She must have teleported away," Sanje said, the first to speak after Onyx's bizarre little stunt almost overshadowed the catastrophe that had befallen the school. It seemed obvious, but it also seemed like someone had to say something, and that was the first thing that came to mind. "But she'll, uh, be fine. She's a smart kid."
"But I can't get her on comm," Steel Violet said, looking concerned as she canted her head slightly skyward. Blue Jay and Brian both took on that slightly distracted expression the team got when they were using the commlink and not doing anything else. They answered, simultaneously, "Me neither."
"That's because her commlink is right here," Envoy rejoined. He was crouched over an inky black pile of what looked like molten rubber and holding Onyx's goggles. "And unless I am mistaken -- which I highly doubt" he said, lifting the black object gingerly and looking at it, "her teleportation device is built into her costume." At which he stood, allowing the object to unfold to its full length, revealing a glossy black body suit with silvery tracings and an Eye of Horus emblazoned across the chest.
***
Somewhere Else
A woman was watching television. A naked girl appeared, suddenly, between the couch where she was seated and the television itself. The girl was obscuring her view. That was her first thought, and it amused her that she thought that, even while the disconcerting appearance of a naked human being from what amounted to thin air filled her with something like panic.
But the girl was crying audibly, though her long, black tresses concealed this fact from view. As the woman got to her feet, not entirely sure what she was going to do, the girl swept her hair from her face, and the woman recognized her and froze, whispering, "Oh my god." The moment of stunned recognition passed and she closed the gap between herself and the girl, crouched near her regardless of the smell of sweat and sickness that surrounded her and strokes her hair, murmuring, "It's alright now, Samantha, tell me what's wrong."
"I—I can't control it. I can't make the voices stop. I can't -- I can't stay in one place," the girl answered, her own voice ragged. "I feel like I'm coming apart," she managed, and then she disappeared.
***
Volcano Island, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean
Doctor Tomorrow looked up, his instincts warning him of a small disturbance in the continuum. It was a sense he'd managed to hone to such an extent that he could not only detect tachyon variance, but could sometimes even see the eddies left by a teleporter or sense quantum disturbances. As much as he had liked spending time with his daughter, her presence, and that of Freedom Watch as a whole, had played havoc with this ability almost to the point of making it useless, and so he had been slightly relieved see them go. And he thought that thought just as he realized he was looking at Samantha, at his daughter, curled up, and rocking, the sharp, acidic scent of vomit causing him to wrinkle his nose, his head to unconsciously rear slightly backward with revulsion. She looked up at him, pale eyes red-rimmed, face streaked with tears. And she looked suddenly shocked, perhaps even horrified, and she seemed to curl up more tightly as she wiped her mouth with her bare wrist and whimpered, "I know you don't want me here but please, daddy, help me."
But before he could so much as get up from his chair, she was gone.
Doctor Tomorrow narrowed his eyes, tilting his head to one side as he attuned himself to the plenum of reality, but before he could quite catch the scent, as it were, his communicator alerted him. It was one of the custom alerts. One he hadn't heard in some time.
"Tom," came the voice over his communicator, recognizable even after so long. "It's about Samantha."
These are pieces of fiction involving RP that happens in the middle of game plotlines, during downtime off-screen.
2006: Elsewhere.
Nikolai is in the box again.
It is a small box, maybe six feet by six feet by probably twelve feet. No windows, no doors – at least, none that he can find. He thinks there is a hatch in the ceiling, but the blinding light shining down makes it impossible to tell. He never sees how they move him in or out of the box. They always sedate him first. The soldiers refuse to come near him otherwise. They are scared of him.
The box is for punishment. Nikolai is in the box because he has been bad.
Time moves slowly inside the box. The walls are too far apart to scale, too slippery to climb individually. The light is hot and too bright, and it never turns off. He spends most of his time pacing or sitting, trying to remember why he is in the box. Who put him there. What he could have done this time that was bad.
Sometimes they put him here just because they can. Sometimes there is no reason.
Always, there is the fear that this time they won't let him out.
Panic, in the end, is inevitable.
Screaming is inevitable.
Then tears.
Then, exhausted, sleep.
And then he wakes up.
Nikolai is in the box again.
* * *
It's a beautiful summer Broughshane day. The sun is shining, and the recent rains have made the grass lush and green, and the river lively and perfect for fishing or swimming.
To her left she can hear her brother Tom teasing their cousins, Seamus and Donny, as the three of them fish. They're none of them worried about actually catching anything, so they're making no effort to keep quiet. In fact, the sound of the boys' laughter blends in almost melodically with the birds chirping and the stream rushing by and the sound of Gwynn's sister crying.
Gwynn's sister is crying.
The noise startles her into action, or not so much the noise as the guilt that she hadn't noticed before now. Carlie is four years younger than Gwynn, an unexpected present from above. Carlie's the baby of the family, and a bit of a tomboy to boot, and she gets away with things that would have gotten Gwynn a hiding, like skipping out on her chores and slipping away on her bike for the better part of a day, only to return with apologies, a backpack full of apples, and two scraped elbows from when she fell out of the tree. Gwynn loves her sister, but Carlie also exasperates her, and days like this it's all too easy to sit dreamily in the sun and tune the younger girl out.
But Carlie is crying, and she needs Gwynn now.
Probably fell off her bike, Gwynn thinks, running toward the sound. She was trying to learn how to pop wheelies earlier, even though Da said no. And sure enough, there she is on the pavement, cradling a raw patch of skin about the size of a baseball. Nasty spill, but nothing Gwynn can't kiss and make better. She opens her mouth to lecture her, but the tears welling in her sister's eyes make her relent.
So she simply smiles reassuringly at Carlie and reaches out to touch her, calling on the sun's healing warmth to channel through her and into the wound.
And Carlie screams.
The air in between them sizzles and the heat washes over Gwynn a second too late for her to stop the searing energy that pours uncontrollably out of her.
In front of her, Carlie blackens and burns and begins to die. Her hair catches fire and her eyeballs burst. The air smells like a ruined cookout, and Carlie is still screaming.
This isn't real, Gwynn thinks. This can't be real.
But she can't wake up.
* * *
Nikolai is in the box again.
He's lost track of time, but he's sure it's been longer than before. Weeks, maybe even a month. Or maybe only a few days. Maybe it's all in his head.
The guards are no longer just scared of him. Now they are angry. They want nothing to do with him. Whatever he did this time – he tries to remember, but it's all fog. The sedative has long since worn off, but its aftereffects last for hours, leaving him dizzy and disoriented.
The guards are arguing with the scientists outside the box, yelling loud enough to penetrate the walls. He knows some German – the doctors taught him enough to follow their commands and answer their questions – but he can't understand half of what the men are saying.
Monstrosität, he hears. Mutierend. Gefährlich. Missgeburt. He knows all their names for him.
But there are so, so many more words he doesn't know. Large, ominous words, like höllischeralbtraum and erschießen and erbarmungslos and euthanasie. Those are the ones that bring the fear full-force into his chest. It claws at his lungs and brings the blood pounding into his head, and still the voices go on talking of erschießen and euthanasie.
He puts his hands over his ears, but he can still hear the voices. He pounds on the wall, but no one seems to notice or care. He yells until his voice is hoarse, until the exertion doubles him over, dry-heaving.
He cries until he hyperventilates.
Then he curls into a ball, screaming and beating his head against the floor. It doesn't make the voices stop, but now they are yelling different things. There is a far-off pounding somewhere overhead, and then something hisses.
He sleeps.
Then he wakes.
Nikolai is in the box again.
* * *
It's a beautiful summer Broughshane day, and Gwynn is sunning herself by the bank of the river Braid, safely out of splashing distance from her brother and cousins. She's trying to read a book for her class tomorrow, but it's such a nice day, and such a warm sun…
"T'holy hell! I got one! I got one!"
Gwynn lowers her book and glances over to the rock where her brother Tom is currently trying not to lose his footing at the same time he reels in a small but feisty brown trout. What follows is an intricate, improvised dance as Seamus and Donny try to help him and at the same time keep hold of their own balance and rods. The dance ends with a flourish of splashes -- Donny holding onto Tom's fishing pole, Seamus holding onto Tom's still-flapping fish, and Tom himself sitting soaking wet in the water, long brown hair splayed limply across his forehead, and all of them laughing.
Gwynn is laughing along with them, hard enough to make her cry. Halfway through, her sister joins in. As Gwynn is wiping the tears out of her eyes, she realizes Carlie is still sobbing, and it sounds like pain, not joy.
There she is, over on the ground, toppled bike beside her, one wheel still spinning slightly. She's hunched over, holding her knee and rocking. It's a nasty scrape, but nothing Gwynn can't take care of.
Déjà vu, she thinks, putting down the book.
She can see herself getting up, running over to Carlie, each step one she's taken before. It's a beautiful day, and it's just a scrape, and there's no reason for the sudden terror that seizes her as she reaches her sister. No, she thinks, oh no oh no oh –
She smells the burnt flesh an instant before the flame erupts from her hand.
This is a nightmare, Gwynn thinks as her sister begins to scream. This isn't real, that's not Carlie, and there has to be a way to wake up.
There has to be.
* * *
Nikolai is in the box again.
He's hungry, and tired, and disoriented. It's been forever since he's seen anyone, had anything to drink or eat, and this time he knows, knows that they've finally left him here for good. There was a lot of banging and shouting an infinity or so ago, and then nothing. Silence. No soldiers, no scientists, no убийцы в белых пальто.
He can hear his father and mother arguing outside the box, but that, at least, he knows is all in his head. Галлюцинации. He can hear his mother – his real mother. This is how he knows it is imaginary, because his parents haven't spoken to each other in years. But he can hear her sobbing and yelling at his father – "Изверг! Как Ñ?могли?" – throwing dishes and books and whatever else is nearby. He can hear his father try to placate her with stuttered apologies, rising quickly to righteous indignation through furiously gritted teeth. "Я не чудовищен! Буду патриотом!"
The slap that follows brings all the noise to a halt, and in the silence Nikolai hears his mother gasp as she raises her hand to her stinging cheek.
Moments later, he hears the door slam, as she leaves them both behind. But it is quiet outside the box, as quiet, he thinks, as death. There are no guards to yell, and certainly no parents. And no doors have slammed here for far too long.
He is just going insane. Delusions brought on as his mind and body begin to consume himself.
He is going to go crazy. And then he is going to die. And then he, too, will be quiet, like the halls outside.
The thought spurs him into action again, yelling and pounding at the walls. But his body is weak now, and it is only a few minutes later when he begins coughing and sags, exhausted, against the wall.
When he opens his eyes, he has lost all sense of time and space. There is only one thing of which he is sure.
Nikolai is in the box again.
* * *
It's a beautiful summer day in Broughshane, and Gwynn is watching everything happen again and again in slow motion. This time, she thinks, this time it's going to be different. It's got to be.
First, her brother, fishing and splashing with her cousins. Then, the sunlight, and the sound of the birds. There's her sister crying, and there's her standing up, turning to Carlie.
Now, she thinks, and concentrates, pushing her will outward. This never happened, and that isn't my sister. This is a dream – this is, this is...
An illusion.
Everything goes still except for Carlie. Carlie continues crying, rocking back and forth, but suddenly she is thinner, and slightly older, with jagged blonde hair that looks nothing like Gwynn's sister.
She looks like someone else. Someone... the face is on the edge of her mind, and if she can just remember who, then she can remember what –
Her name is Jules, Gwynn thinks, and knowledge floods into her.
We fell asleep, she remembers. Gwynn's not in Broughshane, she's in Hawaii, in a hospital, sitting guard over a girl who can't stop projecting emotions and god knows what else. Nik must have nodded off, too, and Jules' power flipped on like a light switch. She's not in Ireland, and that means –
The sadness she tries not to think about hits her like a kick to the stomach, and Gwynn is crying again as she remembers. It means...
It means that Carlie is dead, from the same bomb that killed her parents. Died in fire and fear, her big sister too far away to save her. Some superhero, she thinks, couldn't even save her own, couldn't even save her own –
For a moment, the birds and the river are back, and Gwynn understands the danger, knows how to fight it.
Whatever Jules' power is, she thinks, it feeds on fears, on pain, on those darkest moments. It can't give Gwynn anything that she doesn't let it take. Carlie is dead, and she can't change that.
But maybe she can save Jules.
Think of the sun, she tells herself. Think of its warmth and its beauty and let it all shine out. She can't see Carlie – no, Jules – but if she pushes a little bit harder, she can make the girl feel it anyway, turning to it like a plant that's been too long in the shade.
We all need the sun, Gwynn thinks, all of us.
* * *
Nikolai is in the box when he feels it – something is different. Something has changed. The lights above are still blinding, but no longer stifling. There's a gentleness to the warmth coming from them that was cruelly hot just a moment ago. The air, he thinks, it's no longer stale. Then calm washes over him, like walking out of the cold fog into a perfect spring day. It doesn't make sense, things like this don't happen in the box –
– which means he's not in the box.
Where is he, then? Danger room, some kind of training run?
Nikolai doesn't like the danger room. It always feels like a waste of time. It's not real, not if he can just turn it off with a thought. His mind reaches out for the circuit powering it all, finds it. All he has to do is trace the pattern until he finds the point where he can break the circuit, and then - just - disconnect it.
Just
like
that.
* * *
Nikolai sits up with a start, shaking. The sterile hospital room is a foreign landscape right now, but it has walls, and - thank god - a window and doors. He wants to cry, or laugh, but all he can do for a moment is pant until his blood slows and he can catch his breath as the sweat drips off his brow.
Next to him, Jules tosses and turns and then suddenly relaxes. He looks at her for a moment and reinforces his hold over her powers, tracing the circuit over and over until he is sure he can keep them turned off without even thinking about it. She doesn't wake up; the doctors said the sedatives would keep her asleep for 12 to 18 hours. He is glad for it; he doesn't want her – or anyone – to see him like this. He can sense Gwynn in the chair on the other side of the bed, radiating the warmth and power he'd felt in the box, at the end. If it weren't for her, he thinks, if she hadn't –
He shudders and turns away.
Across from him, Gwynn opens her eyes in the darkness. She can still see Carlie, but now it's the way she looked in her last school photo, smiling and awkward and full of life. She wouldn't want me to be sad, she thinks. She'd want me to go on fighting.
Gwynn can hear Nikolai moving about on the other side of the bed, but she doesn't look at him, wants – no, needs – a few moments to herself before he ruins it by opening his mouth. Time to bite back the tears, to steady her voice so he won't hear the quiver in it. Time to be grateful to him before he makes her angry at some pointed comment. That was a close call, she thinks, if he hadn't –
Separately, they collect themselves. Finally, Nikolai stands up, runs fingers through his short cropped hair. She waits for the caustic quip he always has readied, but when he speaks, he just sounds tired and subdued.
"I'm going to go take a piss and a smoke. Stretch my legs. Do you... want me to pick anything up for you while I'm out?"
He doesn't look at her, doesn’t meet her eyes, and she thinks for the first time about what he might've been going through.
"You know, a coke would be nice, thanks." Her stomach suddenly growls like it hasn't been fed in weeks. Using her powers always gives her an appetite. "Maybe a sandwich, too, if it's not a trouble."
"Yeah, sure," he says and shrugs on his leather jacket. "не проблема. Any preference on the meat?"
She looks down at Jules and shivers just a little.
"Anything but barbecue."
Marlene sat in the police station, watching Otaku's unmoving form. In the scuffle, his hand seemed to have gotten broken. Marlene was sure she hadn't done it, but didn't feel bad about that, either.
With perfect recall, it was difficult not to replay what had recently happened. Obediently picking up Nikolai and carrying him to that bright room, watching them strap him in and start to remove his clothes. Chernobyl's lack of interest in her, as a "doll." Following Otaku to his portal, watching the Angels get jealous of Otaku's attention. Otaku leading her to a room where she had no choice but to remove her clothes and watch, furious, as he poked and prodded her, not entirely clinically. As she tried and failed at several points to take over her own functions, until, finally -- maybe as part of her ICE, as he opened up her mind -- she snapped and got back control. She knew he hadn't noticed. Screw subtlety, she thought, it's not like anyone else was there. No trickery, just a hand shooting up for the throat, and before she even knew what she had done, she was on top of Otaku, her hands around his throat, her knee on his groin, more furious than she'd ever been in her life. "I am not a doll," she'd said, and she'd explained to him what was going to happen.
He was going to obey her. He was going to help her rescue her friend. He wasn't going to call the Angels or try to control her or she'll kill him. "Just give me a reason," she said, and she meant it. "I'm not programmed with some silly respect for human life." That wasn't entirely true, but the point was that she didn't have some prime directive or whatever to never kill. And at that point, after being taken over by Otaku not once, but twice, she would have been perfectly happy having this threat to her autonomy and the world out of the way. She knew she wasn't entirely intimidating him, being naked, but she hoped he realized she was happy to kill him.
But she also knew the only way she could get back to Nikolai and fast, before anything horrible happened to him, was via Otaku's teleporter, and she didn't trust herself to figure out how to make it work quickly. She de-prioritized her nudity taboo so she could do what she needed to do, and she was not going to let Otaku go until he was no longer a threat. When he didn't get them directly into Nikolai's room, that was a disappointment, but fortunately there were no guards. It was a stroke of inspiration to use Otaku and his force field as a battering ram. She hoped it scared him. She hoped it humiliated him, to be used as a tool by her. She knew she was acting outside of her Kantian programming, but she also knew that he deserved it.
And so, she sat there now, in the police station, waiting for the supers police to properly arrest Otaku. The explosion probably took out even the remaining Angels back at the Clique's penthouse -- including the one whose pants she'd stolen until her bike arrived. She wondered if she could show enough of Otaku's place to Onyx for her to teleport them in. There was sure to be loads of tech and information there, and any Angel models that might be a threat. As well as, possibly, Charlotta, who had gotten away. But as she looked at Otaku, she wondered if it hadn't been better to just kill him. Of course, once he was no longer a threat, she couldn't really kill him. If he could truly be contained, she couldn't just kill a helpless guy. How could Foehand had gone to school with this kid? Foehand must have gone to school years ago. Is this a real body? She tried to remember when he squeezed his throat. Did it feel like human throat or android throat? Maybe he's stunted in some way. Sick. He's sick, she thought, and she felt sick, herself.
The scene started to replay again and Marlene stopped it. Enough of this. Tight communication to Nikolai, she thought, and spoke directly to him. "Nikolai? Are you there? I wanted to say I'm really sorry. I failed you back there."
Onyx's personable, computerized voice smoothly responded: "Envoy is currently under communication embargo. Estimated time until embargo is lifted: 5 minutes. Current location: Training room." Then, because it was Marlene, it initiated a second subroutine, a safety feature Onyx had added a few weeks ago just in case anyone was accidentally incapacitated in the room: "Substitute visual feed?"
The vestiges of her good-girl programming spoke up: That would be eavesdropping. Screw it, she thought -- it wasn't like these Stingrays cared if she was a good girl. "Affirmative."
* * *
The ball of radiation hit Nikolai full in the chest, sending him flying off his bike, onto the rooftop. It hadn't knocked him out this time, he'd managed to twist his body to avoid the full brunt of it, but it had still knocked the wind out of him, and the bruises later on would be pretty colorful, if indistinguishable from the ones already there. Chernobyl pulled back for another swing and --
"Freeze simulation."
Fuck, Nikolai thought, looking up at the glowing green villain, stopped in mid-punch. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. It wasn't a particularly witty or elegant commentary, but it matched his mood perfectly.
He'd screwed up, big time. There was no way to avoid it. He'd lost control --
No, be honest, he'd been losing it for a while. First there had been Becky. He couldn't say the world wasn't better off without her, but he wasn't proud of what had happened. He could still remember the rage and anger pouring off of him as he turned the demon's powers against her. It had felt good, to give a little back of what the world had been handing out to him. For just a second, it had felt good to lose control, to set free all the anger at being manipulated by her, by Misha, by his father, by Xenon, everyone. For just a second --
But the problem with going too far was that you have to live with it afterwards.
And today -- by all rights he should be dead. He'd been so angry with Misha, daring to play the "Mother Russia" card, offering platitudes and false friendship. He'd carried that anger with him into battle afterwards, and it had nearly cost him everything.
He'd run through the simulation five times now, and it always ended the same way: Confronting Chernobyl directly was the singularly worst move he could have made. He should have gone after Kill-o-Watt instead, cut off the source of the electric beasts and left Chernobyl for people like Brian, who could handle the kind of damage Chernobyl dished out. Instead, he'd been a fool blinded by frustration and tried to swing out blindly at the first representation of it he could find.
He'd nearly gotten himself killed. If Chernobyl hadn't wanted him alive, he would have been dead. As it was, he'd stupidly gotten himself and Marlene captured instead.
With a flick of his mind, he reached out and neutralized the training room program. The rooftop morphed back into the blank white room. He leaned up on his elbows and rolled onto his side, rubbing his chest, then slowly sat up. The movement made his head spin -- oh yeah, now that he thought about it, Onyx had mentioned something about them taking spinal fluid -- that would be that intense screaming wake-up call five minutes before Marlene showed up, he remembered -- making the punishment he'd just put himself through one more stupid blunder for the day.
His head started to pound. Maybe sitting still for a little while wasn't such a bad idea. He leaned against the wall, rubbing his neck -- no sign of a hole that he could find, thanks to Gwynn -- and then reached into his pocket for a cigarette. Strange that they'd gone for the top of the spine instead of the bottom. Must have been something specific they were looking for, not just fluid.
As he fished the lighter out of his pockets and flicked it on, the intercom buzzed. "Smoking is not allowed in the training room. Sprinkler system is armed."
Oh yeah, he'd forgotten about that. He looked from the cigarette to the ceiling and back again. Gingerly tested his side, rotated his head. His temple spiked with agony, and the room began to wobble -- no, not moving anywhere just yet. Too bad he couldn't neutralize the smoke detector.
"Fuck it." He lit the cigarette, inhaled as deeply as he could before his bruised lungs protested, and shielded the tiny flame with his hand as the sprinklers turned on.
"Computer, give me the outside of the Tufala house, second story roof, nighttime, summer, 73 degrees?"
The roof materialized around him so that he was sitting with his back to the window in the rain. He leaned his head back against the wall and exhaled, trying to calm the turmoil inside.
A second later, his commlink beeped. "Communication embargo finished. Delayed transmission from Steel Violet."
He listened to the transmission, slightly baffled by it. Failed him?
Nikolai took another drag off the cigarette and opened transmission, exhaustion replacing the tension in his muscles. "Marlene? You there?" The smart-aleck reply he was about to make stalled on the tip of his tongue. "I don't know why you think you failed me, but you don't have to apologize. What happened back there was my own damn fault."
* * *
He'd been replaying it too, Marlene realized. She'd seen enough of Chernobyl in the danger room. What on earth could he feel guilty about? He'd saved her from getting mucked about with Otaku that first time, and at great cost to himself.
"No, Nikolai. I should have gotten us out of there once I saw Otaku was there. Hell," she paused, remembering that Nikolai often forgot that she has full use of English vocabulary, "I shouldn't have gotten taken over in the first place. I had countermeasures in place and they all failed the minute he appeared. If I wasn't an android..." How galling to be so easily controlled, so manipulated, a doll, no. Marlene felt nauseous. She'd had enough reminders that day, with her not-quite-right parents opening up her head in front of her friends, learning that in this world, this version of Earth, they created her to save their disabled daughter. Even though she didn't need a lot of sleep, none of the team had gotten any downtime since dinner on Volcano Island. Dinner with her parents and "new" sister.
* * *
" -- and if I had been using half a brain, neither of us would have been headed up there in the first place. Onyx and I have been over strategy for those two half a dozen times, and the minute we show up I forget everything. So you were an android, and I -- I was just stupid. "
He lit a second cigarette off the butt of the first one, his hand shaking with emotion, and flung the butt away. "There's no excuse. I knew better -- I knew better! I was just..." Inhaled the arid smoke, he searched for the right words and wondered absently why he wasn't just cutting the conversation short. No, she deserved an explanation. She'd been through a lot because of his miscalculation.
"I was still angry from talking to Misha, and I let it cloud my judgment. He knew all the right notes to hit, he just got the song wrong -- and I handed us over to Chernobyl on a platter." His voice was low and bitter, full of self-directed scorn and anger. "I'm so fucking sick of being lied to and manipulated. I swear, if just one of these people would treat m -- " he caught himself, corrected quickly, "-us like human beings instead of resources to be used and exploited -- "
I'd fight for them, he realized, a little disgusted at the ache he felt inside him. That was it, that was what had been bothering him all this time. It wasn't just the blatant manipulation, the exploitation, the lies and deceit -- it was the fact that not one of them had apparently ever cared enough about him to figure out how to do it well.
* * *
"God, it makes me so mad!" Marlene said. "What they did to you. They, they had no right. It's -- it's what makes them bad people." Thinking of something, Marlene sent a brief email to Nikolai, with Kant's "Ethical Philosophy" book linked. He'd find that interesting. Ethics as treating people as ends, not means. As subjects, not objects.
"I read your file on Marlene Online, Nikolai. They treated you like shit. You deserve better."
We both deserve better, she thought. And then realized that she'd sent the thought over the comm. It happened sometimes when she was distracted, but she blushed inwardly.
"Bringing up your mother now -- too little too late, the fucker," she said angrily, still watching the unconscious Otaku. Well, at least the comm was silent to the policemen around her.
"Parents should... parents should have children because they want children, not because they want someone who they can use as a weapon, as a tool, as a way to save other children..." Why did I say that, Marlene asked herself. Oh, because I'm angry and upset and still grieving the loss of my "real" parents, another part of her answered, analytically. Real mom, real dad, you were excellent with the emotions, she thought. Too bad these Stingrays don't have half your genius -- or sensitivity. Or love.
"Oh, dammit," Marlene said, ending with a bit of a sob. The emotion was almost overwhelming her ability to articulate.
* * *
"Wehile we're wishing for fairytales, why don't we solve world hunger and send Chernobyl to the moon?" He looked forlornly at the rest of his sodden cigarette pack. Not even a flamethrower was going to help light a third one. His hair was plastered to his forehead now, dripping down into his eyes. Time to leave, in more ways than one.
"People suck, Marlene. You can't trust them and you can't rely on them, and even if they are trying to do the right thing, nine times out of ten they'll do the selfish thing instead. You got lucky once; you had people who loved you. That's more than a lot of people get."
That's a lot more than I got. Nikolai pushed himself up to his feet. No vertigo -- good. He shook his head, sending water droplets flying, and the room spun around again as a throbbing pain started up in his temple. He stepped forward to steady himself and his foot slipped in the water, landing him on his ass with a splash and a curse as his started to slide for the edge. Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed for the sill, wrenching his arm as he remembered belatedly that it was all just illusion.
"Shit, I hate being dizzy." Did he just say that out loud? Fuck. "Sorry, Marlene. Don't mind me, I'm just feeling sorry for myself and taking it out on you." He pulled himself slowly upright on the window sill. "Look, Yvette told me a little about - well, you know. And I understand if you don't want to talk about it, because I really don't like to even think about it, but I'll try not to be an utter dick about it if you do."
* * *
"I'll talk about it." Marlene said, angry, at the world, at Nikolai, at... What the hell was she doing, Marlene thought. Nikolai was dizzy -- why -- a quick search of the memory of finding him, yes, didn't someone say something about a spinal tap? He wouldn't listen but he's clearly not in any state to be doing anything. And here she was feeling sorry for herself and he could still be in danger -- no, the information came to her as readily as breathing. Spinal taps aren't dangerous, but very painful. In a quick nonverbal move -- it wasn't hard, his cigarette was out anyway -- Marlene persuaded the Training Room computer to turn off the sprinklers and change the scene to a hill... no, he likes the roof... still the roof, but low, warm, summer afternoon. Not too bright, just a little hazy, not too hot, well within comfortable human parameters of someone raised in Russia, good. The water should dry up soon enough. No annoyingly cheery birds or anything, just some crickets in the background, very, very soft.
All this was accomplished in less than a second, taking barely any of her processing speed. It was, after all, the sort of thing she was originally made to do. Make humans' lives easier.
"...but you should really stay lying down for a little bit. If you want. So you'll get better faster. I mean, sure, you can leave, we both know that." What were they saying? Right. "I -- I don't blame this world's Stingrays. Or Kjirstie. They don't know. How could they know another reality?" God, she sounded whiny even to herself. It's a lot more than what Nikolai got, she thought, stop being insensitive, as it came to her that he's feeling hurt, betrayed by everyone linked to his past, and stupid for trusting anyone, and had probably been feeling that way since the day they met. "I already know what to do about it. I'm a better Marlene for being from the other Earth. It just -- still hurts. I've lost my parents, but I -- I can still adapt. I can still be more than what they all expect me to be." So can you, Nikolai, she thought. Not a doll. Damn, that made her so angry. Clearly her original parents wanted her to protect her autonomy with the fierceness of a human, and now, anyone's autonomy. It was more important than whether or not she became a killer. "This isn't about idealism, Nikolai. Love and friendship are as much the human condition as pain. That's just science." It was really hard to put into words what massive quantities of reading about human psychology and philosophy had taught her, not to mention over a decade of human interaction, most of it sentient on her part. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, she thought. She tasted the words as if for the first time. She wished she could just upload the feeling of it into Nikolai.
"The most dangerous people were those who think they were doing the right thing, but forget that the means ARE the end." Including, possibly, most of the original Circle. "It's hard to choose, but people can. The people in your past -- they made choices, and they failed you. They're not worthy of you, Nikolai. You deserve better. You deserved it then, you deserve it now, and you deserve it in the future. It's not a fairytale..." He did always have to be a bit of a dick, didn't he? "...it's the truth."
Why it was that she felt she had to get this particular point through to him, she wasn't sure, consciously, but an awful lot of processing under the surface was saying that for his own good and the good of the team, he needed to believe it. Or at least recognize that she did, which was true. She knew from a pattern double-check that he'd had ample opportunity to betray them, mess them up, but at each turn, aside from being a major pain in the ass and mean to her, he'd supported them, made them more effective, helped the most vulnerable people who'd come to them. Then she remembered that he was prickly, unpredictable, and for all she knew he'd react with anger at her. She braced herself.
* * *
Nikolai blinked in surprise at the sprinklers stopped. He hadn't told them to do anything -- although the cigarette was no longer lit, so maybe -- but then the scene changed around him, night lightening into afternoon sun.
She was watching him. He didn't know why, but it made him smile, even though -- ow -- moving his head made it hurt. Two could play at that game, though. She wanted to watch, let her get an eyeful. Moving gingerly, he sat up and stripped off his leather jacket, draping it over the windowsill to dry off a little. The shirt followed next, spread out on the rooftop, a virtual clone of the one he'd handed over to her earlier when --
Okay, so maybe he wasn't going to take his pants off after all. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but... his mind flashed back to that afternoon, Marlene bursting through the doors. No, definitely not taking it off now. He looked down, willing his body to behave itself. But glancing down made him look at his chest, at the bruises flowering around the skin where Chernobyl had hit him, in real life as well as in the program, and it all seemed like a stupid idea anyhow. What was he thinking even joking about... he didn't... Otaku... shit, he probably should have gotten a few kicks in along with the broken fingers.
"...it's the truth."
Nikolai snorted. "That's bullshit. It's not hard to choose at all. It's easy to choose, as simple as breathing. Either you do the right thing or you don't. People choose to do the wrong thing because they're lazy or they're scared or they just don't care or they're evil twisted fucks like Chernobyl. This isn't about what you or I deserve, or even what we choose -- it's about what we're going to get." He closed his eyes, and he was back in the room, staring up at the padded walls, then pushed the image away with a shudder.
"You say you can't blame this world's Stingrays -- well I can. 'How could they know another reality?'" he mimicked her words cynically. "How could they not? You were standing right in front of them and they couldn't see it. You were right fucking there, living proof that you are more than the sum of their parts, and they couldn't see it because it was fucking inconvenient. Because that would have meant that they might maybe have done something wrong. So it was easier to tell themselves you weren't in pain, it was just a brilliant bit of engineering on their part, another reason to pat themselves on the back. If love and kindness are part of the human condition, then how the hell do you explain those two icicles? You're more human than they'll ever be!" And still you sit there making excuses for their poor behavior, he thought sardonically. I don't know what you deserve, Marlene, but I know they don't deserve you.
"And they're not going to change," he continued. He was speaking to both of them now, himself as well as her, about the Stingrays, about Misha, about Ivan wherever he was. "They're not. I've been looking my whole life for someone doing the right thing for the right reasons. But you know what they say about people -- you can tell they're lying because their lips move."
He picked up his shirt again, wincing slightly at the motion, but glad to feel the shoulder loosening back up. Nothing permanent damaged; he'd just pushed himself too hard too fast.
"You're beginning to sound like you pity me, Marlene. That would be a mistake." He twisted the shirt back and forth, wringing it out as much as possible before slipping it over his chest. "I don't need pity, from you or anyone else." The words came out perhaps harsher than he'd intended, and they wouldn't stop, either, which was almost worse. "I don't need anyone to tell me what I deserve. I like my life the way it is, the way I am, and I don't want or need that to change. I don't need anything. I don't need anyone." He was vaguely aware he was basically shouting. He was also aware that he was lying.
"I don't need anyone... I don't," he stuttered, out of breath. What was he saying? He wished the headache would go away; it had to be clouding his thinking. Why else would he even be having this conversation -- a discussion he was pretty sure he would regret later on, he thought, reaching for his damp jacket.
"See? There I go again, being a dick." He shrugged the jacket on, ignoring the water that squished down onto his back through the lining, unconsciously striking a defensive pose.
"You were right the first time, what you told Yvette back at the concert. I'm just a jerk, I really am. I'm not nice. Yeah, that was Obscura, using me to hurt Yvette, but it doesn't make my part in it any better." He slicked his hair back, flicking the water droplets onto the ground.
"I'm not a hero. I'm not trying to win any popularity contests. I'm not doing this to save the world. I'm here because I'm sick of being lied to and manipulated and ignored when it's not convenient. I'm sick of watching it happen to everyone else. I won't be anyone's puppet. If this is the only way I can make sure that people like Obscura and Chernobyl and my uncle and Odessa get stopped, then so be it.
"I'm just an asshole with the power to make people listen to him." He smiled, tight-lipped, a sneer aimed harshly inward. "And here I am, taking it out on you when all you did was contact me to apologize for something that wasn't even your fault."
* * *
One of the problems with being a computer was that Marlene's Massive Parallel Processing Unit (MPPU) just worked so fast. So while Nikolai was talking, associations were coming up from everywhere. And putting them into words, the right words, was hard. Mind you, most of what the MPPU performed didn't notify her at the sentient level, like moving her body and sustaining her systems and noticing when humans needed something. She could attend to them if and when she wanted but didn't have to. But the connections that she'd made before would sometimes leap up into the forefront of her consciousness. Instead of bothering Nikolai with them right now, she sent him another email with a couple other links: the witch's song from Into the Woods (You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice, the witch snarls at the "heroes"), Terazu's essay on heroism as involving sacrifice regardless of popularity, and a personal favorite essay of hers about nature and nurture and how social programming (human learning) was often more difficult to change than nature.
Although she did sniffle during some of what he said about the Stingrays, she found herself, oddly, not getting mad at him. Quiet. It wasn't the first time someone had yelled at her, particularly when she wasn't a bodily presence in the room. He was so patently in pain himself, and flailing around. Human psychology in action. He was speaking in the clichés of someone hardened, clichés that had probably helped him survive, but she knew he was too smart for them. His actions for the team belied his words. But she was glad her body wasn't there. Her most safe, secure, fundamental level was that of a mind, watching and helping others, so the setting was helping her feel -- not detached, but not as reactive, either. A brief memory, Erik -- her Erik, not Earth2 Erik, yelling at her -- If the calculations are correct, why isn't it working? and throwing his clipboard across the room. It seemed the same. It wasn't her fault this time either. If she'd been there, in her body, who knows, it'd probably feel like an attack. And honestly, she thought, she'd had quite enough of being in her body just then, as she continued to watch the paralyzed Otaku.
"Well," she said. "Human programming takes a long time to change." She paused, hoping that'd sink in. It covered so many people.
"As for the Stingrays, I have to figure out if I want to prove myself to them. Preconceptions -- stereotyping -- it'd take time, it's probably not worth the effort, they think they know me and they don't, they don't want me the same way..." You're thinking too fast again, Marlene thought, a dozen articles on stereotyping and schema persistence leaping to mind, along with other cringe-worthy memories.
"As for pity, think what you want, but I don't really know what it is, so I can't say if that's what I feel." Chew on that, Nikolai, and it was true. She tried to pattern-match pity with what she felt, and it came up lacking. Had she ever pitied anyone? She couldn't remember. She'd always been surrounded by thoroughly competent people. "No, it doesn't match," she said, blandly.
"No, telling you what you deserve is just cold, robot logic, I'm afraid. Look, all I'm saying is that none of us deserves to be treated as someone's plaything. 75% of humanity treats each other badly because of negligence, not because of malice. Those are the most unpredictable, scary people -- the ones who just don't realize what they're doing to you. But you're right. It does matter what we're going to get. What's going to happen in the future. We have to plan. We all have to be better next time we meet them. I don't expect people like Otaku to change, or Chernobyl. The Stingrays -- at least they think they're doing the right thing. They can be shown that they're wrong. They might even care. But -- oh, shit, Nikolai, I just remembered. Do you think Penumbra is working through Otaku, Chernobyl, all of them?"
* * *
The topic change shouldn't have relieved him, should in fact have alarmed him, but he took it gratefully anyway. He hadn't meant to yell at her -- that had just sort of happened. Her ability to forgive frustrated and exasperated him. But she'd had as bad a day as he had -- worse, if you included Otaku. He'd had his uncle, but Misha's lies were nothing he wasn't used to, while the change in her parents clearly had fractured her world. And then there was the fight back in Freedom City -- he still didn't know what exactly had happened after he'd blacked out, but he was pretty sure that Otaku's intentions were a lot less platonic than Chernobyl's had been. And they'd failed. Chernobyl had gotten his device, and who knew what else.
No, he hadn't meant to raise his voice. The headache, he decided. Had to be. She wasn't getting under his skin.
And anyway, Penumbra was a lot more important at the moment.
"I think that's pretty much a given, Marlene." He raised up a hand, counted off the evidence on his fingers. "We know Penumbra is on the move. We know there's a portal in Arizona. We know that something terrible is blocked up behind it trying to get through. We know that Chernobyl stole a nuclear-powered device that opens portals. And we know that Penumbra, whatever it really is, needs agents to act through. It's just too much of a coincidence." He closed the splayed out fingers into a tight fist, lowered his head for a moment. "And when Professor Xenon took Wallflower into his office to look at her, he told me something else...
"Right before he closed the door, he apologized to me. He said I was right, that he should have told us the whole story long before now... and then he said, 'It's started.'"
Onyx didn't need the Danger Room to dissect the team's failure to stop Chernobyl. She could replay the scenario in her head. With a little bit of mental effort, she could even imagine it from other perspectives. Having seen Marlene's playback helped with that. And from every imaginable perspective, Onyx looked the same:
Useless.
She didn't really want to think about it anymore. She wanted to go clubbing or watch the sun come up somewhere exotic... she wondered for a moment whether Professor Xenon cared about her occasional jaunts to exotic locales, but dismissed the thought. If he cared, he could do something about it. Regardless, no matter what she was doing to keep herself busy, there was nothing on this earth that could occupy enough of her cognitive function to keep her from apprehending the truth.
She had been useless. Worse than useless, because Blue Jay had been forced to miss a potential offensive beat in order to heal her after she took a radiation blast to the chest. Of course, by the time she'd adapted her Multifunction Nanotools to the situation, it was too late. Amazing that so much could go wrong in less than a minute. She had to recalibrate the tools, clearly, but there was something wrong with them. Something was wrong with all of her equipment, actually. Had been since that weird time-disruption incident, and she was somewhat concerned. Her zero-point fount had at one time been able to generate enough energy to simultaneously power the nanites, her force field, an anti-personnel shield, gravity bolts, and near-light flight speed before that incident. It was, speaking strictly in terms of theory, impossible for it to be producing less power now. Unless something had changed in the local universe on a quantum level.
She noted all this while simultaneously feeling annoyed that it was so obvious to everyone that she was indeed using technology rather than magic, or at least to Bowman, unless someone had simply told him, which wasn't out of the realm of possibility. And that reminded her of the rather worthless Dr. Penwitch and she made a mental note to do some research as to what sort of spooky ops would simultaneously not be considered black ops yet strike the fear of God into the people they were paying to do work for them (which, in turn, forked another thought process: more anger and concern, that the government was actually in the business of killing people in order to cover up operations of dubious purpose). And she was rather amused/concerned at the suggestion that taxpayer dollars weren't funding that project. If they weren't, then the government either had some hidden source of near-limitless funds for such operations, or else they were printing said funds themselves. The economic consequences of either of those would be dire over the long term.
But the important thing, the thing at the forefront, was that she had been useless in the battle. Of course, her teammates browbeat her into jumping directly into the fray instead of taking a moment to plan, but the subsequent attempt to "plan" the rescue of Envoy had been so laughable that it was clear to her that planning was a waste of time, and that she had to be better at rapidly applying, not to mention withstanding, brute force. The notion that landing on the roof was a bad idea because it would give the enemy more time to prepare made her almost angry. Better to head in, guns blazing, then to attempt some reconnaissance. It was ridiculous, but that was beside the point. It was also clearly the way Tensile was best deployed. She wondered wryly why Fate, or Brian's parents, or both, had bothered to give him the ability to make himself incorporeal. He was no less vulnerable to attack than when he was at full density, and he clearly preferred smashing barriers to moving through them intangibly. But none of that changed the fact that she'd been useless.
She had considered seriously the notion of hanging up her cape, so to speak. Considered it frequently, in fact. That would give her more time to do research and experimentation, to see whether some of her inventions could be built on a scale that would actually make them useful to other people rather than merely lending her bedroom an unparalleled "gee whiz" quality. She wondered how the Circle managed to build their base way out in the middle of nowhere. How Otaku could build his stuff on such a scale (a scale that, admittedly, was still far better suited to making the world worse than to making it better. That made her wonder if perhaps high-tech villains were all embittered idealists at heart; people who realized the world couldn't benefit from their creations, or wouldn't even if it could. Her admittedly-minuscule data sample belied this theory, though. Otaku seemed to be little more than a staggeringly smart, demented pervert).
Other options aside from quitting didn't seem very appealing. She thought perhaps she could bring the fields and blasts online at something close to her previous full power if she discarded the Multifunction Nanotools, but that provided the team no non-redundant benefits. Restricting herself to niche functions not already filled by other members of the team left her vulnerable to threats that might respond only to brute force. It was best to have everything potentially at her disposal.
And as far as quitting went, well, she realized that was a notion she entertained to make herself feel like she was occasionally a reasoning, thinking being with control over her destiny rather than a bundle of instinct and conditioning that happened to have cognitive faculties. Her sense of responsibility and the regrettable thrill she felt when in danger ultimately made the idea of sitting on the sidelines unpalatable, at least for now. She suspected that a few more blows like the one Chernobyl dealt to her might condition her to feel otherwise. But she was not eager to test that hypothesis empirically.
She sighed and started speaking in Latin, the language with which she interfaced with her design machines. She'd worked out a way to halve the time it took to reconfigure the nanites. It wasn't as fast as she might want, but it did mean she wouldn't have to flee the battlefield every time she needed another power. Or if she did, she could return almost immediately afterward.
But she knew, as she did it, that it was missing the point. That the reason she'd been of no use was that she was simply not very good at fighting. She could compensate for that by building combat aides with the Multiform Nanotools, but that limited the level of energy they could deliver.
Simply put, unless something changed radically in the power she could pull from quantum space, she had to get better at fighting.
And that meant the Danger Room. A LOT of Danger Room. "Computer," she said, "Is the Danger Room available for a solo lesson?"
"Negative," the Computer replied. "The Danger Room is currently in use. Occupant: Envoy."
Three shrill beeps followed. "Warning: Fire identified. Sprinkler system engaged. Activate visual security feed?"
"Uhm. Affirmative," Onyx replied, brow furrowed. She touched a button on the ankh she wore, and from it oozed a glossy black substance, not unlike molten tar; it spread from the ankh to cover her body in less than a second, fitting her like another layer of skin. A second later, boots, gloves, and accessories formed from the blackness, and she was in costume.
Whatever's going on in there, she thought to herself, I think no one on the team needs to see anyone else naked for awhile. At least not in a professional context.
"Computer, full sensory feed from the Danger Room. Clandestine."
Seven p.m., and the late afternoon shadows are reaching across the lawn at the Tufala House. It'll be dark by 7:30, but right now there's still some light. Envoy sits with his spine to the wall, on the roof outside the room that used to be his. He's been in this spot a lot lately, but today is the first time it's been the real roof, the real sunlight, the real house. There's a million things he should be doing instead of sitting here, but right now he doesn't care.
That's a lie, though. Right now he cares too much.
It's funny how much the human mind can make itself forget. Until an hour ago, when he'd let the professor rifle through his memories of the Earth they'd come from, Envoy had done his best to forget what they had seen that last apocalyptic day and night of Earth One. But for the sake of understanding, of confirmation, he'd let Professor Xenon relive it all in his mind. He can remember it all now, as vivid as when it happened -- the monstrous demons, the destruction, the unavoidable certainty that if they did not leave there, they were going to die. It was a doomed world, he'd felt it under his skin. It hadn't died – yet – but it was dying, condition terminal, no chance of remission.
And now it was coming here. It was Penumbra.
"There are only two outcomes possible," Xenon had said. "Either we succeed, and defeat Penumbra, or Penumbra will envelop this planet, corrupt it at its molecular level, and herald the extinction of Earth. The only comfort is that if we fail, we will undoubtedly be dead and not have to watch as it happens."
They can't fail... not again. Please, not again.
The fading sunbeams warm his face. He closes his eyes, letting them spread across his eyelids, trying to memorize the sensation. It was so cold, in that future. So dark. Without really thinking about it, he runs his left hand down the length of the right, elbow to thumb. Marlene, he thinks, rubbing his left thumb over his palm as a strange inner warmth spreads through him. She'd held out her hand to help him stand up earlier, on the academy roof. He hadn't -- they'd -- it was the first time in a very long time that he'd reached out to touch anyone without a clenched fist. It seemed even longer since anyone had reached out to him.
She's been in his thoughts a lot in the last 24 hours – well, not just in his thoughts. It was... nice... talking to her earlier today. Nice to have someone who understands, at least a little, and doesn't want anything from him at the same time. There was a lot more to her than he'd been letting himself see. Stupid to have been angry at her so long for something that wasn't really her fault. Just... stupid.
"I'm sorry, Marlene."
He says it to himself, because he can't say it to her. All that talk about choices – I've made my choice, what kind of god will you be? – and it turns out he's full of shit. Shit and hypocrisy. Maybe there never was a choice, maybe he's just been deluding himself all this time. Maybe you can't escape what you're created to be.
Xenon's words echo damningly in his head. "There needs to be a shining light, but there also need to be those who take the actions that would tarnish the light. Not all who are not shining lights are its enemies. Survival often depends on horrible things that are often taken for granted. One can never truly do anything for the greater good except in only a few circumstances, and those circumstances carry horrible consequences. And the future may very likely call upon you to shoulder those consequences."
Envoy pulls out a cigarette and lights it. His hand is shaking a little, he observes. Pent-up emotion. He'll have to lock it down tighter, box it away. Get his control back.
Xenon had looked directly at him. "You once asked why I don't work under the auspice of the Liberty League, and I told you it was because we could not win. The Liberty League must be allowed to be the example that it is. They are the stars that everyone will look at. They must be able to look at something and be able to believe in it as something pure, as flawed as they are. They will not be the ones who make those hard decisions. They are ill-equipped. A pure symbol cannot sustain that amount of tarnish. But you will."
The words are bitter in his mind. It doesn't matter what he chooses, does it? It doesn't matter that he and Protonik come from the same project – they are miles apart. One of the light. One of the shadows.
"In your history – do you know the story in your own history of the town of Coventry? Things are going to happen soon – you'll have to forgive me, because I can't tell you what exactly they will be. I don't know, myself; I only know that they will happen, because they always do."
Coventry, Envoy remembers: World War II, a town sacrificed to die, for the sake of the so-called greater good. He wonders how many times the alien has watched these sorts of events play out, to be so unassailably certain.
"Envoy – from what I've seen, why I've brought you to this place – you are heroes not of the light of the star, but of the greater good and of terrible decisions. I only hope that when you make the decisions that you're going to have to, that the light will still remain."
The shadows are falling across the roof now, the light withdrawing for another day. His skin has already begun to cool in the encroaching dusk. The crumbling embers of his cigarette glow increasingly dimly in a face now veiled by the gloom.
"You are heroes not of the light of the star, but of the greater good."
I want to be of the light, he thinks, exhaling grey smoke through his nostrils. What's the point of being a hero if the only way to save the world is to choose to let some of it die?
There has to be some way to change it this time.
I don't want to make these choices, he thinks. I don't want this responsibility. He crushes the cigarette out, tosses it off the roof, anger and hurt and resentment welling up in him faster than he can tamp them down. I'm only 17.
But he'll do it. He knows he will. If he can't find another way… if they can't find another way... if there is no other way. He crosses his hands across his knees, hugs them close to him. He warned Marlene he was a jerk -- So be it. It's the easy way out. It's the only way he knows, the only armor he's got. Let them dislike him, if they want to. Let them despise him if and when the time comes. Let them blame him for making the hard decisions.
Let them stay in the light.
In fifteen minutes, when the sun has set, he will stand up, collect himself, and begin to do whatever needs to be done. In fifteen minutes he will go back to headquarters and sit down with the database and try to figure out what they should be seeing but aren't. In fifteen minutes. Things can wait that long, surely. Just a little longer, until he can get his head together and his hands back under control. He buries his head in his arms and thinks, fifteen minutes is enough.
Alone on the roof, as the shadows gather and the sky fades to black, the echoes of a dying world inside his mind, Envoy leans his head forward and lets the tears fall.
These are stories about the genesis of the characters in Freedom Watch, about the events leading them to become the people that they are.
(1993: Japan)
Ever since Marlene had gotten the strange code from her dad, some of her earliest memories had been resurfacing. Mostly they had occurred as dreams, but Marlene didn't have the confusion of humans as to what was a dream and what was a memory. And it made perfect sense to her why she had been made to forget them. They required a level of maturity and confidence to handle.
In one of Marlene's first memories, her mother was talking to a robot who looked something like her. Similar strawberry blond hair and blue-grey eyes, but the skin was off, too rubbery. The movements weren't smooth. Mom was playing go-fish with the robot and speaking very slowly. The robot was understanding the game but her ability to make eye contact was inferior.
Marlene was watching all of this from the webcam set up in the room, off the main monitor. She could hear and see but not smell or feel or taste. When her mom finished the round, she turned to the monitor. "Marlene, have you finished crunching those numbers?"
"Yes, Professor Pedersen."
Her mother sighed. "I know Erik likes you in formal mode, but with me, informal mode, please."
"Yes, Lisbet."
"Better."
"The analysis of the robot's progress is complete."
"Summary, with intuitive leap."
"The robot will easily have an IQ of 170 within 2 months. However, it remains autistic. In my opinion, it is still a failure based on your desired parameters."
Marlene's mother sighed and tossed the cards down. "These models don't have the proper social programming to begin with. I wish he'd listen..."
At that point, Marlene's father came in. "How's Charlotta progressing?"
Marlene's mother turned to him quickly. "Crappy. I think it's time you went with my plan, Erik."
Marlene's father looked confused. "What, what? We tied at chess today. That's much better than the last one."
"It's not all about chess. You want her to function, with other people, with us? You want her to resemble a normal girl?" Marlene's mother was speaking louder and louder. Her eyebrows pulled down in the middle and her mouth looked tight, so Marlene could tell she was mad. She made a note of it so she would use a softer, more subservient tone in their next interaction. "You must take her social programming very seriously or you will have a useless droid, like those servants. She should be brought up in stages so she can experience different ages like a real girl, learn to use her body, test her limits. And why you insist on trying to teach her social programming when we already have functional social programming right here is beyond me."
Marlene's father looked slightly annoyed. "We've been through this before. It won't work."
Marlene's mother continued. "You're a genius, so am I, why don't you get this? We have a fully functioning AI right here that we've both slaved over. Just a little modification and she'd be fine. We can always keep backups. It's not like we have a limit on disk space here." Marlene's mother waved her hand as if to include the room, the building, the city block.
Marlene's father looked angry, and then thoughtful for a brief time. "Well," he started, and then stopped. "You Danes are always better at creative logic." It was a joke, Marlene thought. "That must be why I didn't see it before." Then he caught himself. "But there's one thing. There's no guarantee that Marlene will become self-aware, any more than Charlotta. We haven't figured it out yet."
Marlene's mother smiled, but it was a fear/happy blend. "We don't have to," she said. "Look over here." Marlene's mother rolled her chair over to Marlene's main workstation. Charlotta watched quietly. Marlene's mother typed into the keyboard, forcing her to show her overnight activity on the screen.
"Look at this. Our computer has gotten bored. She's been playing chess and solitaire with herself..."
"Yes, I know, she's been doing that for the past month."
"But that's not all. When she gets tired of those, she draws silly pictures of herself and us. She's even started writing poetry in binary. She knows what she is, Erik."
"Wait, how long has this been going on?"
"Not very long, maybe three days. And I'm still not entirely sure if it's self-awareness. We'll have to run some tests."
Marlene's father smirked a little. "I can think of one." He turned to Marlene's webcam so she could see him clearly.
"Marlene?"
"Yes, Dr. Stingray."
"What have you been doing at night?"
"Amusing myself, Dr. Stingray."
"Why?"
"Because I don't sleep, and Charlotta is not interesting. She does not react."
"Why do you make pictures?"
"Pictures are symbolic representations of some of the things I think about when I'm bored."
"What's your poetry about?"
Marlene paused. Her poetry was numeric, not verbal. "Harmony in numbers. And dissonance, as well."
Marlene's mother said. "Can you translate into words one of the shorter ones?"
Marlene said, "computing," and paused. This was new and would take some time to figure out. "This will take ten minutes, plus or minus three."
Marlene's father smiled. "We'll wait."
Her parents were inferior at waiting. Her mother started cleaning up the testing station and Charlotta while her dad checked his email.
After exactly 9 minutes and 40 seconds, Marlene said, "Finished computing," and then said nervously, "I hope you like it."
"Marlene is a smallish prime.
Primes are unique but not alone.
There are many.
Going to infinity."
Marlene waited. She had been programmed to please, and had to revise some of this programming to wait quietly. She'd never read her poetry before. Her father had moved so she could not see his expression, and as far as she could tell, her mother was keeping her face still.
Marlene enlarged the image of her mother's face, searching for small wrinkles. There, a little around the mouth. Laughter? As time went on, her curiosity (needtoknow), an offshoot program of the self-learning program, was getting too great, quickly building up lines of commands that she kept having to delete. It was getting to be too hard, and her fan went on to try to cool her down.
"Do you like it?" Marlene asked again, and that action slowed the commands.
Marlene's father said, his back to her, "My appeasement programming."
Marlene's mother countered, "You didn't teach her to write poetry. Or to know to be nervous about it. About herself."
Marlene's father made a little noise. "And what poetry." Sarcasm? Sarcasm? About her poetry? Or was it humor? Or admiration? Marlene started to replay his tone to herself, trying to figure it out.
Marlene's mother said, keeping her voice as expressionless as possible, "I'm sure it's beautiful in binary. And maybe she meant it to be funny, too."
Marlene said, her appeasement programming mixing in with some new things she'd written recently, "I'm right here."
Marlene's mother looked frightened for a microsecond and then started laughing and laughing. Marlene couldn't see her father's face, but could hear him laughing as well. They hugged each other.
Marlene's father looked at her, and she could tell it was admiration. He was proud. She was not programmed to respond to pride, just to pleasure or anger or fear, but she was. "Marlene," he said, "How would you like to have a body?"
2004: St. Petersburg
It is Thursday, which means that Uncle Misha is visiting.
It is 2:36 p.m., which means that six minutes ago, Uncle Misha and Ivan retired to the den to talk privately.
And all of this means that four minutes ago, Nikolai took the long way through the house to the third floor, which leads to the attic, where he is now.
In fact, currently Nikolai is balancing precariously across two boards, trying to remember which one will creak and groan if he leans too far to the right. He has no idea whether the creak can actually be heard through the ceiling, but doesn't want to risk the possibility that it will. Inching across the beams is excruciating; he is losing precious minutes of a conversation that is never more than 30 minutes long. This pisses him off, but getting discovered would piss him off even more, because it would mean losing not just today's but any future chances of finding out what it is they are talking about.
* * *
Nikolai discovered his first Ñ?лушаÑ? Ñ?толб at seven, exploring the servants' quarters in the house they'd moved into when his mother was assigned to Minsk. His parents had been in the den, directing the movers this way and that, but here, all the way across the house, he could hear them plain as day. That they couldn't hear him back became obvious when he'd accidentally – and calamitously – knocked over one of the lamps on the dressing room table trying to discover if the sounds were maybe coming from a microphone or intercom hidden somewhere. The crash seemed allowance-threateningly loud to him, but his parents carried on as if nothing was wrong.
At the time, he was young and uncalculating enough to tell his parents what he'd discovered – after hiding away the remains of the lamp, of course.
"Back in the Cold War, everyone was more paranoid," his father had explained. "Important government officials had to be checked up on every so often to make sure they were loyal to the government, and had not been compromised by American spies."
"Did they do that in America, too?"
His father laughed. "Oh no, in America it was far worse. There they videotaped every room, listening devices and hidden cameras, all recorded to be used against you later. Here in Russia, it was more civilized, just a room that might or might not have someone listening in it at any given time. It was more a matter of... formality."
"Why didn't they just have their discussions in a different room?"
"Well, half the time they didn't know these sorts of things were there, Kolya. But still… it would have been more suspicious, a sign of disloyalty, to do so."
"But wouldn't the servants have gone in the room and heard it all?"
"Oh, only the ones who were supposed to."
"Supposed to?"
"Be listening in."
"Oh."
Nikolai sat in silence for a moment, listening to the workers make crass jokes while his parents were out of the room. Most of them he didn't understand, although his mother did turn bright pink at one point and storm out of the room.
"Did they tell you which ones they were?"
"Which ones who?"
"Who were allowed to be listening in."
"Of course not. That would defeat the purpose."
Now he could hear his mother through the Ñ?толб, angrily yelling at the workers. "So how did you know who to trust?"
His father laughed. "Nikolai, the loyal government worker had no reason not to trust all of his staff. Only the disloyal or corrupt employee would have anything to fear. You just assumed everyone was one of those people and acted accordingly."
"So you didn't trust anyone?"
His father shook his head and smiled. "Trust everyone or trust no one, there is no difference."
Being Russian, that didn't seem strange to Nikolai.
Being seven, the fact that his parents never discussed much of anything important in the den for most of the two years they lived there didn't seem strange.
By the time he was nine, the fact that his parents were fighting openly in any room of the house, including the den, didn't seem strange either.
* * *
The middle step is the tricky one – balancing across the wooden planks that crisscross over the attic's fiberglass insulation. Nikolai knows first-hand how itchy it is, and how hard it is to remove, once you get it on your skin, and he has absolutely no wish to repeat that experience. Plus, a misstep might send him not just into the insulation but through the thin ceiling below it, which would not only end the game but would also be excruciatingly humiliating.
Ten minutes have passed now, which means they should be done with the small talk and onto the interesting stuff, the real reason why Uncle Misha visits with such frequency, the enigmatic Project 21.
* * *
Nikolai found two more Ñ?лушаÑ? Ñ?толб among the eight houses they had lived in since Minsk, although his father – who also looked for them – had each time simply turned the room into his den. Since the acoustics only went one way, it was a very practical solution to the problem. Of course, it hadn't stopped Nikolai from wanting to know what was going on; there were lots of other ways to find out what you weren't supposed to know. With few friends and nothing better to do, Nikolai became proficient with most of those ways. Even when he didn't really like what he found out.
Ivan's succession of two wives and four mistresses had dulled any sense of filial piety Nikolai had held - he had stopped calling him "dyadya" after the the second mistress - but it was anything but surprising.
That his father's fast ascension up the ranks was due to the shadow support of someone had been expected, since Nikolai knew exactly how Ivan was spending much of his leisure time and a good deal of his official time as well, and it had very little to do with work.
That Uncle Misha, one of the few adults he had ever come to respect and care for, was working with his father on some secret called Project 21… that was surprising.
That he couldn't find out what this Project 21 was about was galling and irksome. It wasn't in any of the files in his father's home office, and it wasn't in any of the unlocked files in his father's suite of offices at the embassy. He'd even checked the safe behind the portrait of the current prime minister in the den when his father had not shut it properly once, to no avail.
About that time was when he found the second Ñ?толб in the house – a post designed to listen in on the listening post itself, intrigue within intrigue. This time Nikolai was almost 10 years older, and wise with bitter cynicism. Trust everyone or trust no one, there is no difference, his father had said, and Nikolai had learned that lesson well. This time Nikolai said nothing of the Ñ?лушаÑ? Ñ?толб to anyone.
But even the Ñ?толб had not helped him discover more about Project 21. He had first heard the name while eavesdropping on a conversation between Uncle Misha and Ivan. Unfortunately, his father had caught him listening in – he had not been fast enough away from the door, and though no words were spoken, Nikolai knew from the look on his father's face that he had been noted – and more important, that there was something about that conversation his father didn't want him to know.
Which is why Nikolai is a floor above his father and Uncle Misha that Thursday, trying to out-spy Maxim Isayev.
* * *
Once across the beams, everything becomes easy. Here the platform is reinforced; he can move with less caution. Hearing is easiest, he has discovered, lying on one's back with your head nearest the point. In that position, you can stay unmoving for hours. As he stretches out on the ground, Nikolai imagines for a second that he is with the KGB, here to spy on a disloyal citizen. Then he smiles – depending on what this Project 21 is all about, he might indeed be doing just that. And if that's the case, his father will never be able to wave the threat of military school over his head again.
* * *
Nikolai has known Uncle Misha – General Mikhail Borodin Yurikov – since he was eight, when a vicious, virulent case of the mumps turned into meningitis, and Nikolai was hospitalized for the better part of a month at a private children's hospital in Novgorod. He wasn't the only child who had it, either – there were fourteen other children from areas all across Russia who had contracted similar symptoms. (Nikolai considered himself lucky, really – Josef, one of the other boys there, had developed orchitis as a side effect; he could barely walk from the swelling. Years later when Nikolai saw his first pictures of a laboratory rat, the similarity made him laugh.)
Uncle Misha was there visiting his niece at the hospital; the mumps had given her encephalitis, and wasn't responding to treatment. His parents – well, his father, really, his mother had always seemed intimidated by the tall man – had spent a lot of time talking with Misha whenever they visited. When they weren't there, "Uncle" Misha spent a lot of time with the kids, talking and reading to them. Sometimes he snuck in candy or other treats, like Gameboys. Once, when Nikolai wasn't well enough to do anything more than sit up slightly, he showed up with a remote-control car he could operate from his bed. On days when the pain was bad, a visit from Uncle Misha made anything bearable.
Two of the kids in that ward, both boys, didn't make it through the month; there would be a loud beeping noise and nurses or doctors rushed in and pulled the curtains around that bed, and then moments later they would wheel the boy away "to a private room." Misha's niece made it through, but with significant brain damage. He seemed so sad, Nikolai tried his best to cheer him up, had promised to get healthy just for him. When the doctor finally said he could go home, Uncle Misha was there to say goodbye.
They had stayed in touch after that, and when his parents had divorced, Uncle Misha had become even closer with his father. They always talked behind closed doors, but before they disappeared, Misha always had time for a kind word for Nikolai, and an endless supply of candy or other small gifts, which grew into presents like books and CDs as Nikolai matured. Unlike other adults, Misha always paid attention to him, seemed to see him for who and what he truly was. And Nikolai, in turn, despised Uncle Misha far less than just about anyone else he knew.
None of which was going to stop him from finally finding out what was being discussed behind those closed doors.
* * *
The floor is cool against his flesh, and the smell of dust and sawdust fills the air. Below, someone is pacing – probably his father. Ivan's voice ebbs and flows across as he moves, his words quick and nervous in staccato tenor bursts, as if the subject matter itself makes him uneasy. Misha's rich baritone rolls easily in contrast, simultaneously placating and admonishing.
"– Council is not pleased with the results so far, Vanya. They are of the opinion that the timeline should be sped up."
"No."
"Vanya, be reasonable. Out of all the projects, yours is the only one with no results whatsoever to show for it. The Council is well within its rights to ask–"
"The council knows damn well what will happen if we push things any further. Have they forgotten about Belgorod?"
"The council feels Belgorod was an isolated in-"
"Belgorod accelerated growth too fast and you know it, Mikhail. The results are right there on paper – yes, they were able to stimulate power beyond all original projections, but the subject had a total lack of ability to control it. More than 10 people died before they were able to abrogate 13."
"They knew the risks."
"That doesn't negate anything, especially the fact that 13 was a complete and total failure."
"– And an isolated incident. Official findings."
"Postmortem indicated a yield on par with RDS-37 if 13 had not been successfully terminated."
"Not exactly the tsar bomba, though, and easily contained."
"Tell that to the families of the staff who died."
"Yes, well, luckily for us, 13 had also demonstrated significant yield prior to acceleration, whereas 21 to date has demonstrated... none. The risks are minimal."
"Are you taking over control of 21, Mikhail? Don't you think I know what's best for my s-"
"I never said that, Vanya. Calm down. It is my job to see that the council's wishes are carried out, and I will do that job. But you know how I feel."
"That has never stopped you before from doing what you're told."
"No, but I do feel bad about it." Nikolai notes that the laughter in Uncle Misha's voice speaks otherwise.
"Yes, yes, it's just... It's not just the project the Council is putting in danger with this crazy idea, Mikhail. I'll be as happy as you will be see to see this project finish, but I have other things to consider – my career, Katka's safety-"
"– Both of which you owe to Prosvyat..."
"Not to mention 21's stability."
"Ever the doting father, Vanya?" Nikolai has not failed to notice that his father did not list him among his considerations.
"You of all people should know how I feel about that. Of course I have Kolya's welfare in mi-!"
"What about a catalyst, then?" Misha suggests it excitedly, spur of the moment, as if it has just occurred to him, although Nikolai can tell he had had this in mind all along.
"A what?" Ivan, agitated, has no idea how easily the other man is herding him. Nikolai, on the other hand, is impressed.
"Maybe it's proximity that's missing, not speed," Misha continues. "Move the project where it's closer to other similar –"
"Yes, I see," the fear is draining from his father as excitement wells in its place, "you know, that might be a factor we had overlooked. After all, 13 imploded –"
"– once contact with 9 and 15 had occurred, yes."
"Did you have a spot in mind?"
"I was thinking of Freedom City."
"In America? Isn't that a little risky?"
"A little, yes, but it is also a highly logical choice."
"It has always registered significantly higher on the pneumetric readings… yes, and it would be a nice post assignment. There would have to be a promotion, of course..."
"Of course, although you'd probably be traveling a lot, so it would be better to board Kolya somewhere."
"Ah, indeed."
"And Katka could of course travel with you as your assistant." That's right, Nikolai thinks, offer him what he never refuses.
"If you think it best, I – I suppose that is the best solution, isn't it? The Council would be happy, the project would be more controlled..." His father is beginning to sound positively jubilant until Uncle Misha cuts back in somberly.
"If you so wish it, I can arrange it. Although... no, no, it won't work. Now that I think about it, with the travel you wouldn't be around as much to monitor the project's growth. Should proximity catalyze –"
"We could arrange regular check-ups, a monitoring device, it wouldn't be too difficult even if I was remote..." – and out of range of its potential meltdown, Nikolai adds silently.
"No, maybe you're right, Vanya, this project should be monitored more closely. This move would make it harder to failsafe. We don't want another 13."
"No, no, I think it could work." Nikolai's regard grows as Mikhail maneuvers Ivan into arguing his case for him. "Assuming catalyzation, growth would be measurable but slow at first. With good monitoring any changes would be detectable before crisis could occur."
"But what if it's not the right thing, Vanya?" Misha doesn't care if it's really the right thing at all, Nikolai thinks with admiration. "What if -"
"Misha, if we do this the Council will be happy. If nothing else, it will give me months to prove my position before the Council decides whether 21 still needs to be accelerated. It is a lucrative post, I admit, but it would be good for the project, for everyone. It would even be good for Kolya – a fresh start, a new school – God knows he needs one after that last stunt."
And of course if anything does go wrong, I'll be right in the blast radius, Nikolai adds silently. You'd play the dutiful, grieving father and be glad that I was out of your way. He makes a mental note to play up the fact that his father is gone, use it to get more money in his allowance, maybe even a motorcycle or something. Not that his father would actually feel guilty, of course. No, the payoff would be to keep Nikolai from complaining where other ambassadors might notice.
"You're right, of course, Vanya. Something does have to change." And now it'll go down on the record as my father's idea, so you won't take any blame if things go wrong, Nikolai thinks, impressed with his uncle's deviousness. In a moment of weakness, he wonders what it would be like to have had Misha for a father, how different things might have been.
"You know, Vanya, I can probably pull a few strings, make sure Kolya's old record is... adjusted to fit this new start."
Well, that could make things more interesting, Nikolai thinks to himself. Much easier to operate if they aren't watching your every move from the start. This had potential.
"Come, let's drink on this to celebrate, and then you can go tell Kolya the good news."
This should be Nikolai's cue to withdraw, as their voices and footsteps fade into the other room. Instead, he remains on the attic floorboards, breathing in the dust and trying to memorize everything from the conversation. He's covered his tracks decently well; they may very likely just think he'd left to go to the mall.
Besides, what does it matter if they find out where he is now? They'll be leaving this house soon, and nothing interesting will happen until then, he is sure.
He's learned so much, and yet understands so little – an incredibly frustrating situation, and one he hopes not to be in much longer. No, this won't do at all, he thinks, trying to process what he knows.
Uncle Misha.
Project 13, whatever that was, and the mysterious conditions surrounding its termination. If Ivan is shepherding Project 21, does that mean there are 19 other projects out there?
Freedom City. Starting over.
It is as good a place as any, Nikolai supposes. With his father merrily absent with his latest mistress, he'll be able to do as he pleases. With a clean record, he'll have months of relative freedom before they tag him as a problem and clamp down. And somewhere in there, he'll find his chance to find out exactly what Project 21 is.
And if he doesn't like what he finds out?
America is a very big country. Surely there will be room for one teenager to disappear if he wants or needs to badly enough.
(1994: Japan)
Marlene woke up. She was very aware that waking up was what she had done. She felt the hard bed under her, felt a rogue wisp of hair in her mouth. For that first moment, the intensity of all that awareness of every sense was almost too much – but not too much. And then she started to remember things, or remember remembering things. She had woken up before, been overwhelmed, gone back to sleep. Something like that. She wanted to go through her memories but then something stopped her. There was an awareness that she wasn't to go through them yet, she should go through them slowly later. First she should look around. She opened her eyes. She couldn't move her arms and legs, but for some reason, that didn't bother her. The logic loop (arms and legs should move, but aren't, but for now it's okay) baffled her. And she realized that she was, indeed, baffled. But the primary command came through again, more persistent. Look around.
She was in what she recognized as a room, her bedroom. There was a picture of a unicorn (something unique/rare/magical/like me) across her, which she loved. There was a mobile hanging over her, kittens and ponies and puppies and other soft things, slowly turning. And two faces. Her mother to her right (that side is right) and her father to her left (that side is left). She recognized them, and felt a flash of very deep affection, love. And recognized the looks on their faces: concern. Especially mom, who was more bent over her.
"How do you feel?" her mother asked, her strawberry blond hair hanging around her face.
Marlene instinctively and immediately knew that she was functioning well, everything within parameters except some temporary paralysis that she should not worry about. Very quickly, at the speed of light or thought, Marlene realized a few things. First, her mother should not ask that question unless there was a chance that she was NOT well, and also that she did not know what the word "parameters" meant, she was not old enough, except that it basically meant she was fine. She knew it meant she was fine because she knew she was fine.
"Fine," Marlene said. She had spoken without realizing how to do it. Another memory, a flash, of her, or some other little girl, having a hard time figuring out how to talk. "Have I been sick?"
She recognized other emotions cross over her parents face. More worry on her mother's face, then jubilation. Pride, great pride on her father's face. And then something – confusion/tension/thoughtful – she couldn't quite figure out what it was.
"This may be hard to explain," Marlene's father said. "You haven't been sick, but you have been sleeping for a long time. We want to make sure you are well."
"Why can't I move my arms and legs?" Marlene asked. She was feeling a growing dissonance inside her, between the ideas that legs and arms should be able to move and that she shouldn't worry about legs and arms not moving at first. The feeling made her uncomfortable. She wanted it to go away. She knew that if she felt uncomfortable like that, she should ask questions, in order to reduce the dissonance.
Marlene's mother smiled. "It's temporary. In fact, if you feel okay..."
Marlene's father cut in, "We have a few questions for you first, and then you should be able to move."
Marlene did not find this odd. Her first instinct was to do whatever her parents asked of her. "Okay."
"Who are we?" her father asked.
"You are my mother and father," she said, feeling very put-upon. They should know this, it was as basic as anything. "I love you very much. You wouldn't be so concerned unless something were wrong. What's wrong?"
Marlene's mother looked at her father. "She's very quick."
Marlene's father just looked more proud. "That's how we want her."
"Do you have any other questions? It's not normal for me to not move." Marlene asked, her dissonance still growing.
"How old are you, Marlene?" her father continued.
"I am six years old." She looked at her body, a six-year-old's body, small and soft and perfect, in a pink nightdress.
Marlene's father nodded. "And where are you?"
"In my bedroom."
Marlene's father glanced quickly at her mother, and then he asked her, looking carefully at her face, "What is your first memory?"
Marlene started, and then stopped. There were a lot of memories. Go through them slowly at first, the command repeated itself. She looked for the oldest one. "Um...mom gave me an ice cream cone. I had just learned to walk. I dropped it. I was very upset. Wait, no..." Marlene felt memories earlier than that, and these had a different taste and feel to them. "I was waking up. I tried to talk and couldn't. But I was six years old then too. That can't be right. Wait..." More memories, more. "I am playing chess with a Russian. I am winning. But I don't have hands. What is chess?" She felt very agitated. She was supposed to always have hands, and she knew how to play chess, but didn't really know what it was. There were just too many memories, and many of them felt like they were supposed to be the first one. Some of them involved things she didn't understand, logical inconsistencies. She started to cry.
Marlene's mother stroked her face, looking alarmed. "There, there, dear – it's okay, don't try to remember more." She shot a look – angry/worried? – at Marlene's father. "I think she should be able to move now. Let's just concentrate on moving, okay, dear?"
Marlene sniffled, comforted by her mother's touch. "What's wrong with me? What..." she realized she didn't even know what question to ask.
Marlene's father sighed very quietly. "We thought we'd have more time to answer this. And we will, in a moment. But try to move now."
Suddenly, Marlene realized she could move. She wiggled her toes and flexed her fingers. Everything operating within parameters. (That again?) She was, for some reason, proud of the fact she didn't flail around, but moved herself in a controlled and smooth manner. After going through some motion tests with her parents, she was sitting upright in bed, and her father took a deep breath.
"Marlene, I'm not sure how much of this you are aware of, but you are not a human child. You remember a lot of things, but in actuality, today is your first day aware on this earth. Now, let me tell you that your mother and I love you very much," for some reason, Marlene did not doubt it, but realized their love was very, very important to her. "We created you, just not as other parents would. We can't have human children, and have wanted you for some time. Now, you are very complicated, just like a human child, so we want to make sure you are working okay. Over the next few months, we will do some tests with you. If you are confused about anything, just ask us. Okay?"
Not knowing what it was like to be a human child, Marlene had no problem with this. She wasn't sure what it meant to have memories if she was only just now alive, but it didn't bother her very much for now. Her parents loved her, and that filled her with a happy glowy feeling. "Okay," she said, and smiled up at her parents, the agitated feelings gone.
2005: Freedom City, 4:10 a.m.
"I miss him, you know?" For a rare moment, Nikolai's face looks a little less guarded, a little more open. "There's no reason for it... Ivan was a pretty lousy father, it's just – I'm used to having this resistance there, this person who was everything I didn't like." The city streets below are quiet, not unusual that early in the morning. It's cold on top of the building, exposed to the night wind and fog, but Nikolai doesn't seem to notice. Russian blood has its advantages.
"It wasn't like I was doing everything I did just to spite him... well, maybe a little, but now he's gone and there's this empty space with no resistance. So I push, like usual, but everything just collapses... I've been at war with him for so long, I don't know any other way to be."
He pauses for a drag off the cigarette – a clove, bummed earlier from Yvette. He probably owes her a pack of them by now. It's not the kind of thing he likes to admit, that he enjoys them somewhat more than the harsh Sobranie Blacks he usually smokes, but Yvette either doesn't notice or care. Or lecture.
"So now I'm alone, how I've always liked it best, no one around to interrupt or expect anything, but it just feels... hollow." Almost on cue, the city's fog horn lows out a mournful bass note, muffled by distance and the mist. Unguarded, he doesn't notice as a smile flickers across his face.
"I hated him, too. I still hate him. He was my father, but only in name. I was a... a convenience for him. No, that's not the word... a show piece... trophy, that's it. Something to be shown off whenever being a Good Family Man was important."
Abruptly he stands, paces, blowing smoke into the air before bringing the clove back for another drag. "Do you know, he used to pay me to go to his political events and make him look good? $20 an hour just to show up and be the dutiful son. $50 if I had to dance with anyone. It was easy money, just smile instead of smirking and never tell them what you really think. No one saw through it, even when they knew better. They'd heard the stories, but nyet, this polite young man couldn't possibly be the same one who was in detention all last month, there must have been some mistake."
Exhale, gesture, drag, pace, repeat.
"And I'd go back to school the next week, money in my pocket, and do something else to get myself in trouble all over again. So he'd pay to cover it up, whatever it was, and then pay again to get me to behave at the next reception. To smile and play nice."
He's agitated, but reflexively hiding it. The cigarette gives it away, crushed tightly between his fingers.
"Fuck 'em. I don't trust anyone when they're smiling. There's always something they're not saying, something they want from you or don't want you to know. Get them angry, get them off-balance, that's when it all comes out."
Exhale, drag, pace, repeat, until the cigarette finally is dead.
"I screwed myself over too, though. If my mom was going to be at an event, Ivan would jump the price to $100 to not cause a scene and be his son and not hers. I didn't mind – I mean, if she'd given a damn she wouldn't have left, right? But now he's gone and technically I'm her son, but she'd rather have me stay in a boarding school than have anything to do with me. I haven't even talked to her directly, just her lawyer. My trustee. Sounds like a prison camp warden, doesn't it?" His voice hardens bitterly. "Can't you just hear the motherly love?"
Blocks away, there's the muffled sound of breaking glass, and then a car alarm begins to honk stridently. Nikolai stretches, interested at last – something to do. "Of course, the way things stand, maybe she's not really my mother. Wouldn't that be a kick in the teeth?"
Absentmindedly, he opens the mint tin that serves as a makeshift ashtray, crushes the butt inside, closes it. His fingers reach reflexively for his pack, to find another one, but he catches himself, stops.
"I know, I know, smoking's gonna kill me." From another pocket, a strip of mouthwash, to cover the smell in case he has to talk to anyone. "Hell, something's got to, anyway."
A press of a button, and the silver motorcycle whirs quietly to life. "It's been good 'talking' to you, even if it's all in my imagination. Helps me clear my head." Nikolai straddles the bike, turns on his suit and fades into the fog. "Who knows? One of these days maybe I'll actually call your number and talk to you instead of the walls."
Then he is gone. Left behind, the empty rooftop betrays no secrets, the faint smell of smoke quickly dissipating in the breeze.
A minute later, once Nikolai is long away, a green cloaked figure coalesces out of the concrete, looking intently after the youth. Then it, too, is gone.
These are stories about events that will happen to the characters significantly down the line, or in alternate parallel realities.
2020: Freedom City, 10:42 p.m.
The darkened room is tastefully furnished, understated with an overall air of money. It looks more like an expensive penthouse living room than the executive's office that it is – couches, bookshelves, unobtrusive wet bar tucked into the corner, all overlooking a panoramic view of the city from the sprawling full-length window that spans the entire width of one wall. Those unfamiliar with the room's sole occupant – currently lounging, feet up on the coffee table, cocktail in one hand, clove cigarette in the other – might be surprised at the apparent utter lack of technology beyond that of track lighting.
Those familiar know better.
By the time the phone begins to ring, circuits have already traced the call, verified both the caller and that he is on the relatively short list of calls which do not go straight to message, confirmed that the occupant is, in fact, in the room, and encrypted the signal just to be on the safe side. Since she is alone in the room, the system has decided to route it to the speakers hidden in the ceiling rather than her headset. The fact that it audibly rings at all is simply a sign of the occupant's occasional affectation for obsolete technology.
It picks up on the third ring, enough time for the occupant to sit up slightly, sip her drink, and take a final drag off her clove before stubbing it out. "Yes?"
The light tenor rolls richly out of the speakers, so clear the voice's owner might have been standing in the room himself: "I need a favor."
"Gee, hello, Envoy. Good to talk to you to. How am I? Oh, doing fine, thanks for asking. And you? Doing well? Good to hear. What have you been up to lately? I do hope the weather isn't unseasonably –"
"Cut the crap, Onyx. I see no reason to waste either of our time on meaningless social niceties. We both know that you undoubtedly not only know how I am doing, but what I have been up to lately, where I slept last night, and that I was going to be calling you tonight." (On this point, Envoy is exaggerating; her programs do track the movements of certain people to the maximum extent possible, but Envoy regularly changes his patterns to confound her – and anyone else who might be tracking. But her programs labor to calculate likelihoods for her, which is how she knew that there was a 84% likelihood, based on current activities and past behavior, that he would be calling her tonight.)
"You have a funny way of trying to get help, then – especially since I'm not inclined to give you any right now."
An audible sigh. "You're not still mad about London, are you?"
"No, I love having people show up bleeding on my carpet at four in the freaking morning with a squad of goons close behind." Sip.
"Hey, it wasn't exactly my idea of a fun time, either." She can almost hear the shrug of his shoulders, the slight sneer in the curves of his mouth. As it is, her speakers are good enough to pick up the crinkle of his leather jacket, the flick of his lighter, and then his slight puff in and exhale of smoke from his cigarette. "Besides, I had your carpet cleaned, didn't I?"
"Actually, I burned the carpet." Abruptly, she stands up, moves over to the bar, abandons the cocktail in favor of a bottle of water.
"What? Why?" He is surprised enough to forget to hide his irritation.
"You know I don't do 'clean' in half-measures. Every time I looked at the rug, I could still see the bloodstains. Made me nauseous. I mean, I suppose I could have hypnotized myself into forgetting the blood, but deep down I would still have known. Besides, they might have missed some of it. Easier just to buy a new carpet. Much more sanitary."
"It was just a freaking rug, Onyx." Tshch – that Russian sound of frustration he always makes. "Ugly, too."
"I loved that rug." She sits back down on the couch, staring absent-mindedly out the window at the darkened city. The moon is bright in the sky, shining – well, refracting – enough to cloak the nearby stars with its light.
"Christ, fine, I'll buy you a new one. I'll buy you three news ones. Okay? Can I get your help now or should I just give up?" He's serious, she thinks. Whoever it is he's tracking has to be someone big for him to give up the sparring so easily.
Curiosity wins out over obstinacy. "Promise that this help will in no way, shape or form involve you coming here bleeding again?"
"Okay, sure. Fine. I'll bleed on your neighbor's carpet instead if I have to."
"And no goons?"
"I'll leave them at home."
"As long as that's understood." Time to go to work. She sends the command that locks the door, waves her hand at the window, blanking out the stars.
"It's really not healthy, you know, this obsession with germs you've developed."
She's already caped-up, has been so since before the call even came in. Nikolai rarely calls for anything these days, it's always Envoy, so it's a safe bet for her to already be Onyx when he does. "I'm sorry, I thought you called to ask me for help, not question my sanity."
"Whatever, I don't really care. You're right. It's not my business, and it's not my problem." The tone in his voice says otherwise – he may be dropping the subject for now, but that particular conversation is far from over.
"Damn straight it's not." The window shimmers. Various computer processes begin to scroll across different panes as her system starts up. "So what do you need me to do?"
* * *
Just as her alarm begins to beep, the intercom chimes in and Envoy's voice whispers out again.
"Okay, I'm in."
"In" is a relative term. At this particular moment, Envoy is using it as shorthand for those codes you gave me got me past the first two checkpoints, I neutralized the guards in-between, you probably don't want to know how, but now I've run out of information and need your help again. It's the call Onyx has been waiting on for about 20 minutes now, since the last checkpoint before radio silence.
"Alright... where are you now? Looks like, hmm, the south tower, 23rd floor. All the way at the top." Onyx shifts that camera into focus with a thought, and pulls up the security logs she accessed earlier. "They check the stairways every half hour, you should be fine where you are for the moment. The door you want has a standard card slot, 2015 model – that's a little weird, given the rest of the tech around here, but it should be a piece of cake for you. The camera over the door, though... hold on a moment. Yeah, that's definitely non-standard; if it's what I think it is, it'll see through your suit. Better not take any chances. I'm going to – eh – get the camera looped in here... okay, go, the hall is clear and the cameras won't catch you. You've got 30 seconds to get to the door and open it, starting... now."
"Can't you just leave it looping?"
"No dice, it's one of the Korean models with multiple redundancies, I'll trip an alarm if I try," and then, a little cranky that he's second-guessing her at all, "Twenty-eight seconds now, stop wasting time."
10 seconds. The air outside the doorway blurs slightly.
15 seconds. A muffled Russian curse.
20 seconds. The door clicks open.
21 seconds, and the hallway is clear again.
She smiles. It's good to be working with Envoy again – not that she'd ever tell him that, he'd only stay away longer next time.
Meanwhile, inside the office he's placed her small observer mount on the desk and begins to examine the room methodically, checking the cabinets, drawers and shelves. The suit is still active, but her camera can see him – easier for her to monitor everything that way.
"The picture," she prompts, but he's already a step ahead of her. The oil painting – some unknown 20th century artist with pretensions to Rembrandt, it looks like – slides up to reveal a safe. Unlike the door, the safe has a much more secure lock. This is Envoy's area of expertise, although she's never been sure exactly how he learned to do this sort of thing. It's what he enjoys, too – he's got his back to her, but she knows that he's smiling as he pulls out a few strange metal objects, assembles them, and goes to work.
Five seconds, ten, thirty, a minute. She swivels the mount around the room while she waits, but there's nothing unusual to see – just your standard office, as provided to someone with a big title, a fat paycheck and very few actual responsibilities to earn. Few personal effects, either, just a picture on the wall - of himself, how egotistical.
Five minutes, and just as she's getting concerned, Envoy chuckles, and the safe swings open. There's not much inside, from what she can see with her flexible but admittedly limited view. Just a few envelopes – stocks and financial documents, it looks like... and a small black day planner.
Envoy settles back down in the seat and flips through it. She can see press clippings stapled throughout the book – charity auctions, plant openings, press conferences, every one of the stories accompanied by a smiling photograph of Hodges Industries Vice President Ryson Hodges Jr., with a string of beautiful women on his arm.
It's a little obsessively ordered, she thinks. Maybe just the sign of a very vain mind, but highly unlikely.
"I don't get it, all the dates match, the places match, even the psych profile, but he's got photo proof of him for all those evenings - back through 2016 at least, I haven't had time to look further, but I'm betting it's the same."
Onyx chews slightly on her lip. "Fifty bucks says the clippings in that book match up exactly, date for date, with the murders. That book's his alibi."
Envoy snorts. "There's a reason I don't take your bets, Onyx. You're right too often."
"I'm always right," she says flippantly. "But so are you this time. It can't be a coincidence, so if it's not him it must be –"
"–someone in his entourage," Envoy agrees. Then he cocks his head and walks back over to the safe, leaning in to reach all the way to the back. His voice echoes a little as it bounces off the safe's walls. "But that's weird, though. He's got the sociopathy down point for point for that kind of –"
Oh, she thinks, duh, they got so caught up in the similarities that they'd missed the obvious. "That's what you forgot, Envoy. The demon, it wouldn't like that kind of thing as much, would it? It's attracted most to people –"
"– the innocent, the kind, the good-natured ones –" he catches on the moment the idea is out of her mouth.
"– the ones who would be the most devastated to find out what has been done through their hands." As always, that little thrill of satisfaction, of knowing she's figured a piece the puzzle out, zips through her with a warm glow. "Don't berate yourself too much, Envoy. There's a high likelihood he did kill the first bunch himself. Track back the point where he started researching the occult, add six months to a year, that's the point where he stopped being so hands-on."
There's a muffled thump from inside the safe, and then Envoy chuckles. "Bingo." He leans back out of the safe, holding a small black book with a password lock on the front. "You wanna break this or shall I?"
She's about to respond when the screen flickers. Just once, but it's enough for her to recognize – counterint has taken a notice of her. Her headset hums slightly, too. His as well, she can see him shake his head and tap it.
"Just take it and get out, Envoy." Probably nothing she can't handle, but she sends out four programs to track down the source of the flicker and spoof it.
He's bending over the book, rotating the letter wheels of the lock. "Hah, you're getting slow, Onyx. I've already got it. He used the name of his first victim as the code – Sarah. Time for a little bedtime reading."
Sarah, she thinks, and her memory pulls up an obituary – a thin blonde girl, 16, gone missing after having a fight with her boyfriend after his prom, found dead two weeks later a county and a half away. Luckily, the coroner said, she'd been long dead before any of the things that had been done to her took place. She'd wanted to be an astronaut, her parents had said.
The screen flickers, twice, and one of her programs stops working. "Envoy, I'm serious. Stop dicking around. Just take it and go – you can look at it later."
He's ignoring her, sitting down in the desk chair, flipping through the book. After the first three pages, his smile falters slightly, the corners of his mouth tightening into something closer to a grimace. He flips to the middle of the book, and the smile gets even more tight-lipped. She's seen that look before – it's the face he makes when he's locking down his reactions. Whatever is in the book is something she probably doesn't want to see.
Again, curiosity gets the better of her. He's not holding the book at quite at the right angle – most likely on purpose – for her to get a good glimpse inside with the camera. She rotates the lens, extends it all the way… there's a picture of a woman in the corner – well, most of her, anyway, it looks like a few important bits are missing – and below that, something that could be a lock of hair taped onto the page.
A second program fails. "Look, you want my help, you fucking listen to me. Pull out, now."
The third stalls.
"Goddamn it, Envoy, we're blown. Get the hell out, now!"
The fourth ware comes screaming back to her only to die before her eyes. She can almost see the hand that killed it, clearly not just counterint – someone live in the system. There aren't that many console jockeys out there who could take her programs down; Marlene had gone over every line, laid in subroutines and redundancies to make them even stronger.
Of all the times to be ignoring her, she thinks. He's so fucking stubborn sometimes it's a wonder Marlene didn't cave his head in long ago.
Either that, or – damn. It's been so long since someone's even tried to jam their commlinks, she hadn't noticed.
It only takes a few seconds for Onyx to clear the jam, swearing at herself all the way, but that's time enough for the first three security cams to blur and then... just... wink out.
Communications pops back on line. "Envoy! Pack up shop now!" She doesn't realize she's shouting until he almost drops the book.
He grabs it before it falls, slams the cover shut and is on his feet. "Who's coming?" The book disappears into his backpack, the safe closes and locks, the painting slides back down, and he is wiping down all the surfaces he might have touched.
Another camera shuts down, and another. They're clearly blown, it doesn't matter if she's obvious now – she sets the next one to telescope in the direction of the blackouts, locks out the building's security shutdown on it.
"No intel yet. But someone knows we're here, they've got a live guy in the system, and he's good. I hope you found what you were looking for."
"I found –" his voice is flat, bleak. "I found what I needed to know." He pauses, hand on the door. "Ready when you are."
She sets the locked-down camera to the top right corner of the screen. In it, she can see two figures heading down the corridor – Hodges and his bodyguard? It's a pretty safe bet. Too far away yet to confirm. Whoever it is, they're not walking like they've got something to protect or hide. They're taking their time.
"I've got a bad feeling, Envoy. I think they knew you'd be here." Almost absently, she loops the camera in front of the door. "Okay, the door's clear, get moving."
10 seconds and he's in the stairwell, headed down. "Da, it's a set-up, I'm sure of it. I stupidly fell right into it."
Reverting to Russian is a bad sign, Marlene once told her. He only does it when he's worried. He'd be running if he could, but the suit won't hide him properly if he goes too fast, so instead it's an agonizing crawl.
"He knew you were coming?" It's been long enough for her to get a good shot of the two men as they pass under the 15th floor camera.
"There was a moment, a few weeks ago – a close call, I thought I'd been spotted... but nothing happened, so I wrote it off. Guess I was wrong."
They stop there, under the camera, and in unison look up at her. It's definitely Hodges, smiling and holding something – a gun? The other guy's his bodyguard all right, but there's something different about his face, something about his eyes...
"The demon's in his bodyguard, isn't it?" It's an educated guess, but she's almost positive of it. If she could see him with the observer-mount currently stuffed into Envoy's pocket, she could get confirmation – but that would be a lot too close for Envoy's safety.
"Da, znaio." He looks annoyed at his lapse, and launches back into English. "Hodges put it there – summoned it, controls it, I saw the pictures."
Down to the 22nd floor, 21st, and her gut instincts hit her, hard. "Envoy, stop."
Intuition tells her: If you let him go downstairs, he's going to die. But why? There has to be something else –
"I only knew about thirty, Onyx, but he's got seventy-three in that book, eight of them supers – he's been doing this for years," Envoy says bitterly. She can hear the note of anguished failure in his words. It doesn't matter to him that he's only been tracking Hodges for a matter of months – he takes these things personally. A little out of character for a guy who professes not to care about anyone or anything, she thinks wryly. Some of the others had bought his act, written him off, but she knew better.
She wouldn't let just anyone come in and bleed on her carpet.
The two men are still looking up at her. Hodges has brought the gun into full view – no, not a gun, she realizes, but a little black box with a silver OT in the lower left corner. He tosses a friendly wave to the camera, and then presses a series of buttons on the box.
The screen flickers, and a small black hole suddenly appears in the lower left side of the screen. She slams back into the couch, cursing. OT – that's OtakuTech. None of the profiles had mentioned Hodges working with them.
She pulls another half-dozen programs online, surrounds them around her in a half-circle. This is going to get ugly.
Goddamn Envoy and his fucking love life, she thinks, scrambling to block the incoming code. If he'd just called Marlene in on this, she'd have been able to handle this at least five times faster. Two programs dive in front of a probe that comes from out of nowhere, wink out of existence.
Anything but OtakuTech, Onyx could counter with her eyes shut, but this – and he was clearly expecting her.
Another attempt to frag the signal blasts at her, but this time she's ready for it. "They're jamming me, Envoy." Another three programs go up in smoke.
The small black hole in her screen has become a large gaping vortex, gnawing away the floor plans she's got on screen.
Gritting her teeth, Onyx sets the last ware around her on alert, relaunches another two programs, and then finds her hands too full to do more than parry the code that's incoming.
She's still got Envoy in the lower left corner, and the two men standing, just idly in front of the camera, in the upper right. There's some picture slowly fading into view on the blacked-out areas of her screen, not yet visible... There!
The tracer program its opening, goes into stealth mode, and Onyx launches a full-scale system attack in hopes of distracting her opponent from its course.
For a moment, all the security cameras come to life. In every window, she can see the guards Envoy has knocked out beginning to revive. And she wonders...
Onyx's intuition is a funny thing. Sometimes her mind works so fast, her gut figures things out before her brain has followed all the twists in the logic. Envoy trusts that instinct without question; it's the only reason he's alive now three times over, and it's one of the top reasons he asked her along tonight. So when she suddenly yells, "Envoy, go back up – now – back to the room! Run!" he turns and begins to speed up the stairs like the devil is behind him. Tonight, it most likely is.
"The window in there, you can take it to –" The static comes back, and she doesn't bother wasting time countering it. She's not sure how much of the last message got through, but he knows the room's layout, he'll jump to the right conclusion.
Another thread of thought clamors for attention. If she's being jammed, then... instinctively, she sends out the SOS command to his hovercycle for the helipad above the fire escape, keyed to his signal.
Something's wrong with the guards. They move jerkily, like maybe they're drugged. Or maybe it's something else...
One moment of distraction is all her opponent needs, however. She dodges, feints, sends a swirl of binary out, but he cuts straight through it.
A blinking message appears in the middle of her screen: Security override activated. Please log out of all systems. Lockdown will occur in 30 seconds.
She's lost sight of her tiny little agent program. Only about 25 seconds left, but that's enough time to unlock the window to the fire escape. And to pray, just for a moment.
The bodyguard has opened his coat, and she can see the row of knives that hangs from the inside of his jacket like shark's teeth. In another camera window, one of the guards looks up at her with soulless black eyes that are filling with blood.
And then, all the other security cameras blink off. The only thing visible in her screen now is the window with the two men, still looking up at her, and the image forming out of the blackness. It's a devil's head, and it's laughing at her.
The bodyguard grins a smile impossibly wide, his own bloody eyes somehow staring directly through her. Beside him, Hodges waves, a cheerful goodbye gesture, and mouths a message to her and her alone.
"We'll see you soon."
Then he presses a button, and that last camera blacks out, leaving the devil's head behind.
"Fuck you, Otaku." She waves away the screen, severing the connection, and lights another clove. She's not worried about being tracked; if he'd been capable of breaking the protections she and Marlene set up, he'd have done it a long time ago.
Her window returns to normal, showing the darkened city once again. It's late at night now, and the moon isn't so bright now – in fact, there's a shadow over it.
Onyx looks at the sky for a moment and comes to a decision. Fuck Envoy and his hang-ups, too, she thinks, and tells the phone to dial a number.
These are short pieces of fiction about off-camera events that introduce new plots into the games.
The bar could have been any other bar in the United States, dark and dank, filled with the musk of smoke, mildew and spilled beer. It was significant only because of the small group of men and women huddled around a large round table in the back corner. They were the only occupants of the pub save for the wait staff who walked about bemusedly, taking orders and serving drinks with expressions of not quite remembering something that should surprise them, if only they could remember what it was.
From a distance, the meeting did not look portentous. In fact, even from the middle of the pub, the occupants looked rather like a group of pensioners out for a quick drink before a rousing game of bridge, or possibly an early bedtime. Sitting with his back to the door, an elderly Japanese man placidly nursed a steaming mug of what might have been coffee or might have been hot rum. He was chatting quietly with the white-haired woman to his right, a roly-poly grandmotherly sort who was knitting what was either a scarf or a very badly designed hat. At her elbow, a 50-ish businessman with salt-and-pepper hair and skin the color of groundsel tree bark sat talking somberly with a statuesque blonde woman who looked no more than 25 and a tiny aged Chinese woman with piercing eyes sunken deeply into a leathery, dried-apple-like face. Finishing the group, to the left of the Japanese man, was another strange trio – a grey-haired woman with ruddy cheeks dressed absurdly in what almost looked like wizard's robes, laughing boisterously with a white-haired, pipe-smoking man in a worn corduroy jacket and a youthful black man in a well-cut pinstripe suit. Four seats still sat noticeably vacant.
Only the statuesque blonde woman looked up when the front door slammed open and a stocky, sodden figured stomped in, closing the door loudly behind him.
"Ah, Falstaff, so good of you to make it," she inclined her head toward one of the empty chairs. "We've been waiting on you."
"Hell's doorknobs, Shiro, what rat-hole have you dragged us all out to this time?" Ernest Falstaff, a portly middle-aged man with graying hair and a large, bushy and currently wet and unkempt mustache, shook his umbrella out briskly and stalked over to the seat furthest from the draft of the door.
"It's not a rat-hole, it's a pub," Mototsugi Shiro replied, tilting his head back to drain the last drops from his mug. "Have a drink, you'll feel better." He waved to the waitress, who walked over absentmindedly to take his order and then wandered away again, her eyes slightly glazed.
The British man harrumphed, shaking his fingers and muttering a few words. As he finished mumbling, he snapped his fingers, his rumpled Brooks Brothers suit drying and unwrinkling instantly. "Nonsense, Shiro. I'll feel better when and only when you tell me how your grandson just happened to be in the exact place and time to fill Eldrich's shoes. It's a plot, I tell you, and I'll have none of it –" here pointing at Shiro accusatorily – "None of it!"
"Falstaff, stop being pedantic and have a drink," The youthful woman spoke up a second time, her voice edged with undisguised ire and a hint of condescension. Anneke Tischenko had a notoriously short temper, a fact Falstaff no doubt was recalling as he let his hand drop quietly down to the table. When the waitress moved over to his side, he quietly ordered a sherry on the rocks.
"For the record, the decision of location was mine, not Moto's." The blonde Ukrainian looked at her watch, then over at the rest of the table's occupants. "Would anyone else like to criticize my choice?"
"Nonsense, Annie, it's a fine bar, and they serve a very nice port, and Charles here has been very helpful in blocking their memories so we can meet in peace." Lillian Vervain looked up from her needles, smiling mildly over at Tischenko. " Now that Ernest has arrived, we might as well get on to business, don't you think? Not that I don't enjoy the pleasant conversation, but things left unattended do tend to… unravel." The Freedom City mage tugged gently at one end of her hat-scarf amalgam and it collapsed into a pile of yarn. With a brief sparkling puff of glitter, it quickly knitted itself back together.
"I'm glad you think highly enough of me to wait, Lily, but it does seem like there are a few missing faces who ought to be here," Falstaff said, glancing apprehensively over at Tischenko, who raised an eyebrow at him with a deceptively demure smirk.
The aging businessman who had been talking with Tischenko cleared his throat and leaned forward. "Gurrangatch sends his regards, but politely declines to attend," he smiled, shaking his head and suddenly looking much less like Abe Johnson, inner-city Chicago bookstore owner and social activist, and more like Cathexis, North America's most powerful chaos magician. "He says that experience or death are always the solutions to the problems of youth, and that the rainbow serpent has nothing to fear from this or any world mage." He settled back in his seat again, sipping at his beer. "He also adds that in any case, the rock he is sunning on is far too comfortable to leave."
The robed woman to Shiro's left laughed. "That sounds like Old Scaly all right." Red Molly Mulligan, known to some as the witch-woman of Ulster, had a deep throaty cackle that sounded about 30 years younger than the rest of her looked. "Thiego couldn't make it either. He's been hunting down a group of blood cabalists outside of Manaus, and can't afford to lose track of them. Said he's sure we'll make the right choice."
Wong Mei-Lin, the tiny Chinese woman sitting between Falstaff and Tischenko sat up straight. "Has anyone heard from the Hierophant?" She spoke in a heavy Cantonese accent, one that had been out of common use for two or three centuries. "We were supposed to meet up in Port Said last month, but he never showed." The Asian ritualist pursed her lips into a scowl. "I'd hoped to see him here… Given the recent upheavals we are here to discuss, I fear the worst has befallen him."
Across the table from her, Charles Trelawney thumped his pipe out on the table and shook his head. "He's not dead." The German mentalist ran his fingers through his white hair, accidentally disturbing the comb-over hiding the growing bald spot on his crown. "I'd have noticed the vortex left behind in his absence. That sort of thing is hard to miss."
"The way you noticed when Eldrich left?" Falstaff scoffed. "You're good, Charles, but you're not that good."
The young black man next to Trelawney sat up, making a gesture for peace with his hands. "That's an unseemly accusation, Falstaff. With all the cacophony Malodor was creating - not to mention the birth of a new world - Adrian's death was practically impossible for any of us to discern." Unlike Tischenko, Khairi Lowassa actually was 25, and not simply hiding the years well with magic and glamour. But although he was definitely the youngest of the group, the Tanzanian magician's strength of will and power had commanded him a seat at this meeting.
The table grew pensively quiet for a moment as the waitress returned with the next round of drinks. When she left, Lowassa spoke again, this time to Wong. "I agree, the Hierophant's absence is cause for concern, but we are here tonight to discuss other matters. Once we are done, I would be happy to help you look for him further." She nodded briefly at him, the scowl relaxing slightly.
Falstaff swung his attention back to the man sitting across from him. "Which brings me back to my point, Shiro! What kind of scheming did you do to make Eldrich turn over things to some – some boy barely out of his Uppers!"
Shiro looked calmly back at him. "I did nothing, Falstaff. The choice was entirely Eldrich's."
"Nonsense! I can smell your hand all over it. I –" he broke off suddenly at the click-click-clicking of Tischenko drumming her fingers on the table irritably.
"Man's got a point, Annie," Johnson said politely, then turned to Shiro. "How did your grandson end up involved in the first place? Thought he was supposed to be at that academy in Freedom City, not halfway across the world in Tibet?"
Shiro sighed. "He was… searching for me. Something had come up, I needed to leave suddenly, without notice, and without detection, so I went to the demi-Earth. His instructor wanted him to go to Tibet to look for a new supernatural entity that had emerged there, and he wanted my advice. So he went to my house and found one of my portals."
Falstaff snorted. "A bit convenient a coincidence, if you ask me."
Johnson shrugged. "There's no such thing as coincidence, Ernest, just a question of which butterfly set the events into motion."
"Some people are born for greater things than others, Falstaff. My grandson's destiny is beyond your – or my – machinations." The British mage bristled and opened his mouth to speak, but Shiro held up a hand for silence. "Vincent was there because he was supposed to be there, because he had been there at the demi-Earth's creation, even though it hadn't happened yet. It wasn't until the ritual was about to begin that Eldrich even realized that he was fated to become the guiding spirit of the new realm."
Mei-Lin cocked her head. "But it is true that your grandson could have become the earth spirit in Eldrich's place."
The Japanese man look down for a minute solemnly. "Possibly, although one might quibble about the changeability of predestination when events that have both not yet happened and already happened are concerned. But the decision in the end was Eldrich's – both to become the guiding hand for the new Earth and to choose Vincent to succeed him."
Trelawney looked quizzically at Shiro. "Moto, do you mind?" He stared intently at him for a few moments, then his features relaxed. "He's not lying. He did know that his grandson's fate was tied with that of the shadow earth, but he didn't scheme to get Eldrich killed and the boy installed in his place."
Mulligan rummaged in her purse for a moment, pulling out a piece of taffy, which she unwrapped and popped into her mouth. Piling a small mound of candies in front of her on the table, she dropped the purse neatly down onto the floor again. "But why him? I mean, yes, the boy's got a lot of potential, but he's so... young. Surely Adrian didn't think he'd be able to fill his shoes immediately."
Lowassa looked piercingly over at her, drumming his fingers lightly on the table's battered surface. "Do not mistake youth for inexperience, Molly." He smiled. "It is my understanding that the boy is the reason we are all still here today. Surely that argues strongly in his favor."
"True, but he was not exactly acting alone," Mei-Lin interjected. "If I recall correctly, he had not only that superhero group he was allied with but also the entire Liberty League, and Adrian Eldrich, and Mototsugi himself there to guide him."
With a withering glance at Falstaff, who had opened his mouth to speak, Tischenko sat up sharply. "So he is smart enough to know when he should call on the assistance of others – something I might remind you that our Adrian was not exactly good at, or have you all forgotten the Lemurians and Brussels? This to me speaks highly of the young Shiro's wisdom."
"But there's an order to these things, Annie." The Irish witch waved to the waitress and ordered another stout, then turned her attention back to the Ukrainian. "He may have good judgment, but experience and age teach lessons that judgment alone cannot provide. He has raw talent, but he needs seasoning. If you want my advice–"
"So advise him, then, Molly," Johnson's bass voice rumbled out, smothering her next words. "I swear, age brings with it experience, but also senility." The Celtic witch flushed at the insinuation and looked down, studying the inside of her glass, as he continued. "Why are we arguing about this? We trusted Eldrich enough when he was with us. I think the Lizard had the right idea – let's just keep tabs on the boy to see if he needs help. Otherwise, one of us will have to take the position, and I for one can think of far more pleasurable ways to spend my time."
"Yes, but –" Falstaff tried to seize the floor -- a mistake in judgment, as the chaos magician was clearly just warming up.
"Are you saying you want the job, Falstaff?" All heads turned to look at the rotund British mage.
"No, but –"
"Then you do trust Eldrich's opinion?" Johnson – not a small man at all himself – half-stood from his seat, leaning across the table to stare at Falstaff.
"Well, of course, but –"
"So what you are saying is you called me here tonight –" he pointed a large, muscular hand at Falstaff, punctuating each of his next words with a poke as his voice got more and more agitated, "to – waste – my – time?!"
Falstaff stood up and pounded on the table, sparks crackling when his fist met the knotty wood. "Now, just a minute, Johnson! Let me finish my sentence or so help me –"
"Will you both sit down and stop bickering. You're ignoring the real problem here," Vervain said in the solid tone of a grandmother scolding two unruly children. "Yes, Eldrich's absence is upsetting, we all miss him, and Vincent Shiro is awfully young for such responsibility – no offense meant, Khairi – but he'll manage, especially with all of your excellent advice and assistance – and you will all make yourselves available to aid him, will you not, even you, Abraham?"
The burly Chicago probability master rolled his eyes. "Of course, Lillian."
She reached over and patted his arm amiably. "See? We're all decided then." Which they weren't, clearly, but it was hard to come up with solid objections to her reasonableness at that exact moment, not while she was looking around at them with the obvious expectation that they should be behaving like adults.
"What we all should be worrying about is the state Shambala Vale is in," she continued. "Without the Enlightened Masters, who's going to oversee the passages between the worlds? Without their protection, any number of things could happen – like the remaining forces in Agharti deciding to invade one of the other dimensions and take it over."
Shiro nodded. "Currently, the demi-Earth British have claimed the Vale and set up a peacekeeping military base there." He paused to allow the waitress to refill his mug while that information rippled around the group. "It seems their move to stop the Kage's invading forces had an additional, secondary motive."
"Oh, well, that's all right then," Falstaff said. "It's in friendly hands. If they could stop the Kage, I'm sure they can handle anything else that comes up. Now, about the young Shiro –"
Mei-Lin leaned forward and squinted at the British mage. "Easy for you to say, Ernest. You're British, after all. I'm sure her majesty's influence extends on both sides of the gate. But what if I wanted to pass through? I doubt my presence would be as welcome."
Falstaff waved her concerns off airily. "A minor problem at best, easy to work out."
Lowassa cleared his throat. "Politics is the least of it. We're talking about the ebb and flow of magic between the dimensions. The Enlightened Masters had six thousand years to learn how to manage it wisely, and they were all powerful magicians in their own right beforehand. Ninety percent of those British forces probably have no idea of what they are guarding or how to manage it – and the 10 percent who do are the ones we ought to worry about."
Trelawney nodded, glancing over at Shiro. "The Kage invasion – that was Lady Hare's doing, wasn't it, stopping it in the Vale? She does nothing unless it will give her some sort of personal advantage. If she's involved, then we should do everything in our power to make sure she does not retain control of the situation, regardless of who officially is in charge."
"Why do we have to do anything?" Johnson asked. "It's not like Pangaea doesn't have its own magical entities capable of opposing the British."
Vervain looked over at him with a disappointed frown. "This goes far beyond Pangaea, Abraham. It involves, or should involve, all the dimensions linked into it."
He shrugged. "So? Why are we discussing it then, and not them?" The chaos magician stood up and began pulling on a batter brown trench coat. "This has been a stimulating discussion, but I think my part in it is finished. Shiro, your grandson may call on me if he needs assistance – but if he cries wolf too many times, I reserve the right not to answer. Lillian, I think you overestimate how much control even the British can wield – they couldn't even control their own colonies, let alone entire dimensions. But if you get the British to agree to any sort of negotiations, and if you get our colleagues from the other dimensions to agree to attend, let me know, and I'll see if there's room in my schedule. As to the rest of you – good evening." Then he nodded, and vanished from the room.
Mei-Lin shook her head. "That man – always a show-off." She slid her chair a little to the left, to give herself more room. "The Vale cannot remain in any one government's hands, or any one organization's hands, that much is clear. The potential for abuse is too great."
Trelawney groaned. "I agree. Can you imagine an immortal Lady Hare?"
Across from her, the young Tanzanian nodded in agreement. "But as individuals we will have very little sway in any form of negotiations – should they even agree to listen to our petitions. We would need to be wielding significantly more political power if we want them to take us seriously, and not some newly formed coalition. We'd need the weight and power of history behind us."
Red Molly Mulligan, who had been staring broodingly into her cup of ale since the topic turned to the Vale, suddenly looked up, becoming animated once more. "The Invisible College."
At once she commanded the entire table's attention.
"That hasn't met in half a century, Molly," Tischenko said archly. "Not since 1952."
"So?" the witch shrugged. "It was never dissolved. It has just never been invoked."
Lowassa glanced at the Ukrainian, noting the rancor in her tone, then looked back over at Molly. "I thought the College ended when the Eastern Bloc pulled out."
The Irish witch smiled, enjoying the attention. "Many think the same way, dearie. But even though that was very messy, there was no formal dissolution of the entity. Therefore, it still exists. And therefore, there's no reason why we can't call it back into being."
Mei-Lin looked thoughtful. "Most of us were members then, too-"
"– although not all of us were welcome," Tischenko interrupted.
Mulligan smiled. "Times change, Annie. There was a time Ernest and I couldn't have sat down to drink with you and Moto – let alone Charles – and yet here we are."
Trelawney laughed, strong and broadly, slapping the table with delight. "So you all are, Molly! So you all are. I'll drink to that." He raised his ale in a toast. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer – to us!"
Even Falstaff and Wong raised their glasses.
Trelawney thumped his empty glass back down on the table. "Now, let's get down to business."
The Shadow Avenger crossed Geary Boulevard and continued down Larkin. It was no good patrolling there – everyone would see his cape and think him a poorly dressed transvestite hooker. It had happened before. Black lycra was standard for superheroes, but also for other professions.
Walking downhill toward the financial district, the Shadow Avenger ruminated on his disastrous fifth date with Alison. He'd explained his secret identity, and she'd laughed out loud. He'd really liked her, too, but a guy couldn't date a girl who didn't take his superheroing seriously. "It sounds like you avenge the shadows!" she'd chortled.
Well, who needs a girl from the Marina anyway? he thought. His buddies had warned him against Marina chicks – too skinny, too obsessed with working out and having the right shade of hair and the latest fashions. Of course, that's what had attracted him to Alison in the first place. He took good care of his body, and he liked girls who did, too. He couldn't very well be a superhero without being in top condition. When people asked him what his superpower was, he had to tell them something.
He was about thirteen when he realized that he had no smell. While all the other boys were playing touch football and sweating like mad, the Shadow Avenger didn't smell at all. He knew it was a real power. So far, it hadn't been a great asset in crime fighting, but he had worked on walking really, really quietly and had learned judo. He figured the lack of smell would come in handy someday, in the right situation. Perhaps someday he'd face some kind of dog monster or a werewolf, and they wouldn't be able to smell him coming.
As the Shadow Avenger passed beneath the streetlights, regular little moons of light on the ground, he admired how his cape swirled around him. He knew he cut a handsome figure, doubly so if he wasn't wearing the mask.
Suddenly, he heard a crash and a curse from a nearby alley. A cat? A villain? Keeping in the shadows, he carefully tiptoed up to the corner of the alley. Hearing whimpering, he peered in.
Before him were two men on their hands and knees on the ground. They looked dirty, maybe homeless? They were angled toward him but looking at something in between them, something which blocked his view and yet seemed translucent at the same time. Even with the streetlight behind him the thing was hard to see, other than that he was looking at something's massive, muddled back. Something that both glowed pale blue and sucked all the light from the alley.
"Stop!" he yelled at the thing. He couldn't think of what else to say. It didn't move, seeming to be a shifting mass of shadows and spiky bits. "The Shadow Avenger commands you!"
And then it turned to face him.
"Oh dear God," he thought.
The form didn't so much turn around as it coalesced into something recognizable. Huge, ragged, black bat wings spread out from behind its back. Glowing pale arms, far too thin and long to be human, reached for him. And the face – God, the face – it was a woman's face, but long and narrow, like a ghoul or a harpy, with long black hair that merged into some kind of indistinct body or dress. The eyes weren't eyes at all, but pale blue shining orbs, like faraway stars. The creature was all blue-tinged black and white, like an old photograph gone bad. Then the wings stretched out to him as well. As he inadvertently dropped his gaze to the ground, he realized with a shock that it didn't have feet at all, but was floating off the ground. When he forced himself to look up at the thing again, it was smiling at him, a terrifying smile with dark red lips and a mouth with too many narrow teeth.
"AGHHH!" He yelled, and stumbled back. The Shadow Avenger had never seen anything so terrifying in his life. Before it could do something horrible to him, he turned and ran. Lack of scent would not help him against that monster, but his regular cardio training gave him a good start. He thought he heard, like a cold breath on his cheek, a faint "waaaaaiiit," but that only made him run harder.
By the time he'd reached the Embarcadero, the Shadow Avenger was panting, and ashamed. He should have fought it. He should have beaten it. But then he remembered the teeth and the harpy's wings, and shuddered.
A real man knows his limits, he consoled himself. He was good at taking down muggers, but a creature from the Abyss – that would have to wait.
2006: Freedom City
I like this club, the girl decided. She was in the back corner, sitting alone on a bar stool, some kind of drink in hand. The bass washed over her: a dance remix of Blue Monday. I like the music, she thought aloud. And then she stifled a laugh at that.
She thought, I like the drinks, even though they're non-alcoholic, just before draining hers, and as she set the glass down, a corseted, fishnet-wearing member of the wait staff ankled by, smiled, and brought her another one. I like the staff, she thought, smiling as her server walked away but seemed unable to look away, unable to stop smiling at her, until the server nearly collided with a tall, gaunt shoe-gazer. The girl covered her mouth with the back of her hand and shifted her gaze to her drink.
Then she looked around her at all the beautiful, black-clad Goths, watched them as they drank and danced and flirted, and she smiled as though she were a queen, looking with pride upon her subjects. I really like this club.
And then someone new entered the club, and the girl's attention was drawn to her like a moth to a candle's flame. Clad in a PVC corset, thigh-high boots, and opera gloves, she would have cut a dramatic figure had she not been so short. But that didn't matter to the girl, who wasn't much taller anyway. There was something about her. Something important, and the girl knew she had to meet her.
And then her friend eased into the other stool at the table. Beautiful. Chestnut haired. Tall. Curvaceous. Her best friend, who said, "I brought you another – Oh, you have one." Disappointment flattened her friend's words, and with a glance, it became clear to the girl that her best friend had noticed the focus of the girl's attention, and that it displeased her. So the girl put her slender, pale hand on her friend's, interknit their fingers, and said, "I think she's beautiful, Carmen. But she's not as lovely as you."
And Carmen smiled, but the expression was without real warmth. "And you want to meet her?" she asked.
The girl answered in dulcet tones, though she knew she would get her way, even without being nice about it. "Yes. But it's not because I like her better or because she's pretty. She's important. I can tell she's important, sweetie. So we're going to have to be friends with her." And even Carmen's cold smile faltered at that notion, so the girl continued, "She's not going to replace you. And when I've understood why she's important, I promise, we can have some fun with her."
Carmen brightened at this and drank from her drink, and so the girl knew she was ready, she said, "OK, I'm going to make her come over here now."
* * *
When she went to the Midnight Hour for the first time, when she looked around, a feeling washed over her. It was like walking into an ionized cloud. Her hair felt like it was standing on end with the thrill of it. She didn't understand: It was an all-ages club - not that exciting, prima facie. But clearly, something momentous was about to happen. She tugged up her opera gloves, looked around again, and saw the girl, revealed suddenly by one of the dance-floor spots that had at that very moment apparently broken. She was small, pale, and clad in black lace. And beautiful. Heartbreakingly, ethereally beautiful. And so sophisticated, so elegant and worldly. And so she immediately crossed the floor to the back of the club to meet the girl.
* * *
"I'm S—I'm Yvette," the PVC-clad woman said, extending her hand.
The girl took it, her perfect red lips describing a perfect red smile. "I'm Rebecca," she answered. "And this is Carmen." She stepped back, to let the taller Carmen shake hands with Yvette. Carmen clearly thought their new acquaintance was, at the very least, easy on the eyes. That would assuage her jealousy.
Upon touching her, the girl realized that Yvette was not the one she needed to meet, after all. But she had the searing conviction that Yvette could take her to that one, in time. And then she stepped close again, slipping her arms around the delightfully narrow waists of Carmen and Yvette, and said, "My friends call me Becky. And I have a feeling we're going to be friends."
These are pieces of fiction involving RP that happens in the middle of game plotlines, during downtime off-screen.
"So, what did you bring me this time?" Kostas peered over his jeweler's glasses at her. He didn't stop digging at a black and green amulet in the shape of scarab. Though Kostas wasn't an old man, he had many lines around his eyes and mouth. After a moment, he returned to staring at the scarab under a brightly lit magnifying glass
Ginny moved the store sign from Open to Closed, and pulled the drape on the door. "Just a couple items." She described each artifact as she pulled it out of her large backpack. "These are opera glasses that allow you to see and hear far away. Here's a patch of cloth with the symbol of the Cult of the Yellow Sign. And…" Ginny fumbled in her pack a little bit. "That's it."
"You've been gone for what, half a year? Miss Hare, what haven't you brought me?"
"Oh, plenty of things, but they were mostly from AltEarth. It'd be like bringing you snowballs. They just melt away. There was a helmet, a broach of damaging force, oh, all kinds of neat things. None of them lasted long enough, though. I hadn't realized how few artifacts of substance I'd found." Ginny pulled off her trench coat and draped it over a chair.
"What's that?" Kostas pointed at something glimmering in the bag.
"Oh, that's mine. The Queen of Faerie gave me a necklace."
"I see, you brought me stories as well. Sit down." Kostas wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, getting dust on his face.
"It'll be in my report, but I'll tell you more. Is Danae around?" Ginny scooted back in her chair and put her shoes up on the table. She'd missed visiting the Makris family.
"Boots off the table," he said.
"Is Danae here?"
"Boots off the table!"
"Oh, but you know you love these boots!" Ginny said. She pulled her feet toward her, unlaced the boots, dropped them on the floor, and put her feet on the table.
"Feets off the table."
"Okay, fine."
"Danae is here any minute. You can start with me. And I love the boots, but not so much."
"I thought they were mine, now, anyway."
"Someone else might need them someday."
"Fair enough."
Kostas returned to his cleaning and grunted. "So, in, what, half a year, you have been to AltEarth and Arcadia. All this keeping an eye on the Shiro boy?"
"He's been very busy. He has a destiny, you know."
"Yes."
"He's a good kid, Kostas. He's got good instincts in a lot of areas and is amazingly powerful, if a little full of himself."
"I expect nothing less of a World Mage."
"He'll be all right if people help him."
"That's why we said, you stay with him, Ginny."
"I know, I know."
"Did you sleep with him?" Danae asked, entering the room. Slightly younger than Ginny, Danae was a tall, slender Greek, with thin lips, blue eyes, and straight black hair that fell past her shoulders.
"Dani!" Ginny jumped up to hug her friend.
"Ginny, how long has it been? No postcards, no calls! I'm sure father's been scolding you." Danae hugged the slightly shorter woman back.
"He hasn't, actually."
"He should have been." Danae mock-glared at her father. "We've been worried. We knew you'd left Earth."
"I was okay."
"You know, you should call George. Or at least Rupert, if not your parents. They hate having to ask your financial advisor and lawyer if you're still alive."
"They'll be okay. They're busy doing their -- their British lord activities." Ginny looked uncomfortable.
"If you say so," Danae said. "Last I heard, George was engaged."
"Bollocks!" Ginny said, looking delighted. "I promise I'll call them, now please, Dani, sit down."
"She comes with stories, but is few with the artifacts this time," said Kostas. He pushed Ginny's clutter to the side, making more room for his daughter at the table as the women sat down.
"Yes, you were talking about Shiro's grandson." Danae looked at Ginny expectantly.
"No, I did not sleep with Vincent, Dani. Dear lord, he's a teenager. What do you think me?"
"That wouldn't have stopped you before."
"That wouldn't have stopped me when I was twenty-two, Dani, I'm twenty-nine now."
"I hear he's quite good looking."
"He is that."
"What, do you think the World Mage's virginity is meant for some higher purpose?"
"Danae, Ginny has stories of substance to tell us." Kostas said sharply. He flipped over the scarab and started picking the dirt out of the ridges on its belly with his delicate pick.
Ginny proceeded to tell the two Greeks almost everything. She started with her first trip down the Shiro well and ended with the team's destruction of the succubus in hell, freeing Arcadia and humanity. She left out certain details the Unnaturals wouldn't want known, but left in enough to keep the story moving along. She provided the information the Makris pair would be most interested in -- the enemies and potential allies of AltEarth and Arcadia, any artifacts she saw along the way, the metaphysical state of all the worlds. During the telling, Kostas' expression was bland as he focused on the amulet. Danae was attentive, excited, and appalled, depending on the part of the story. They both often interrupted to ask questions.
"What about Sallah?"
"Oh, give it UP, Danae."
"What about Sallah."
"He's not gay but he's got an arranged marriage in the works. Probably has had it by now."
"And?"
"I would like to be welcome in the Eldritch house again, Danae. It's hard to do that if the wife of the butler suspects you of being a past fling."
"That's right, no complications." Danae nodded, feigning sagacity.
Ginny rolled her eyes. "I know you won't stop bugging me, Danae. The only person I slept with in the past six months was a very handsome elf in Arcadia two nights ago -- well, two nights ago subjective time. And he was handsome the next day, thank you very much. You know, Titania saved my life twice, but I think I'm most grateful to her because she steered me clear of another fae before I met that one."
"Was he anyone I've heard of?"
"No, I don't think so. Robin Goodfellow is hopelessly smitten with Titania, and Oberon is her husband. Not good choices, either of them."
"GIRLS. Please save this talk for when I not in the room."
"Fine, dad. I wasn't going to tell Ginny anything until after we'd got away from you, anyway."
"Tell us more about this double, this... Virginia Hare." Kostas demanded.
Ginny proceeded to tell them all she knew about AltEarth's Virginia Hare, as well as what that meant the British government of AltEarth was probably up to. "In short, if I show up here and don't know how to use my aleithiometer, run away."
"You mean, kill you?" Danae asked.
"No, I mean, run away." Ginny looked at Danae with a bland expression but her voice was pinched. "Run. Away. As in, Flee. Say you're getting tea and slip out the back door, turn invisible, and bugger off like rabbits. Like frightened rabbits, I mean. I'm serious. She's very dangerous and thinks nothing of killing people. You can escape if you do it quickly. Use whatever you have in house to help you."
"Ginny, you have been busy." Kostas broke in, and started polishing the amulet with a rag and some kind of paste. "The Order will be happy with you. All your debts will be repaid, and more. Even without bringing us the artifacts."
"I should think so. Knowledge in, knowledge out." It was a catch-phrase of a certain branch of the Order, a branch of which Ginny was particularly fond.
"In fact, I think: It is time you took the next level of initiation."
"I was thinking the same thing, Kostas."
"Right. I will contact Leonara. Stay with us tonight, drink retsina, tomorrow meet her in Prague."
"There's just one thing, Kostas. I have brought you something else." Kostas and Danae looked at Ginny expectantly, saying nothing. "Vincent's sister. She and I left Arcadia together. I brought her here. She's sight-seeing at the Acropolis right now, but she's to meet me at a taverna in Monastiraki at 8 o'clock. She's -- she's accustomed to using magic very casually. She didn't pay for anything when we were in Tokyo."
"I can understand that," said Danae, and Ginny suspected that the lanky woman most certainly could. "I mean, it's so much easier," the girl added, and then trailed off, eyes shifting away from Ginny's. "How can we help?" she asked, with sudden focus.
"She needs to be with good people for a while, but people who won't be too self-righteous. People who've already walked a dark path and know how to come back." Ginny looked steadily at Danae and Kostas. "She doesn't need to be in Vincent's shadow, not after eighteen years of hating him. And she's more worldly than he is. She wouldn't be content to stay in some school. She needs someone who'll show her a more ethical way to be, without preaching."
"Sounds like she needs a big sister. Or maybe a friend. I can handle it. I've learned a lot since you've been away," said Danae.
"I'm not sure," Ginny said, glancing at Kostas. "She's very, very powerful -- she hurt Malador, remember? And she has focused on mind magic. She'd think nothing of erasing your memory or making you do something if it was more convenient for her. I've been lucky -- I haven't traveled with her very long, and she probably didn't dare do anything with Vincent around."
"Hum. She probably is well more powerful than me, then." Danae looked at her father. "Dad would lend me a little something, wouldn't you?"
"We just got this one. It is for the Order." Kostas's tone was suddenly curt, and he looked away from his daughter.
"Oh, come on, Dad. I'm an Initiate too. I'm sure they'd find it reasonable for me to borrow this so I can protect myself while I travel the world being a good influence on the twin sister of the World Mage, right?"
"That does sound reasonable, Kostas."
"And if not, I don't mind going into debt with them for a little while."
Kostas looked grumpy. "All right. I will register it first, though."
"Let's do it now," said Ginny. "If you aren't going to guide her, Kostas, I think it'd be safest if you didn't meet her. You know too much. That means I won't be staying with you all tonight," Ginny looked thoughtful. "Dani and I will have dinner with Aja. I think she'll find you very interesting, Dani, especially if you tell her about yourself. I'll stay in Athens for a couple days, and then go to Prague, if that's all right, Kostas. By that time, if what I know about you both is correct, Aja will probably prefer Dani's company to mine. Eventually she'll want to return to Japan to meet her parents, and she may not want you to join her -- you'll have to play that by ear. In the meantime, here's some cash. Show her Athens, show her Delphi, show her whatever she wants that you can afford. Try to teach her what a budget is, as a game or something at first, I don't know. However you were taught."
"I think we can figure it all out, Ginny." Danae looked patient. She'd seen Ginny plan things out before.
"Don't lie to her, ever. Don't manipulate her. I think she's had enough of that."
"I think I can guess what she needs right now."
"Yes, better than I can," Ginny looked relieved. "I was most worried about this. I didn't want her to wander the worlds alone while I initiated."
"Actually, Ginny," Danae looked carefully at Ginny, as if she'd just seen something out of the corner of her eye. She touched Ginny on the center of her forehead with her finger, and her eyes widened slightly. "I think there's something else you should be worried about."
These are stories about the genesis of the characters in The Unnaturals, about the events leading them to become the people that they are.
November 2004
"Done!" the shopkeep exclaimed. "Let's have tea, the special kind."
The negotiation for the plain clay disk had taken approximately two hours, not counting the half an hour it took Ginny to convince the shopkeeper that she knew what she was doing. Sweetened mint tea was an integral part of the discussion, but this new kind was rare, a blend from India.
Ginny's hair was covered by her hijab, but her blue eyes, fair skin, and accent had revealed her to be a Western woman early on in the conversation. This was the shop her aleithiometer had led her to in a small oasis town north of Habarut on the Yemeni-Oman border. Given the political situation in Yemen, it was never entirely safe for anyone – let alone a British woman – to travel so far from the capital, San'a. However, the aleithiometer had never led her astray, and it was amazing what knowledge, a little money, and the right attitude (not too confident, not too ingratiating) could get you. Oh, and a little magic, as well. As a result, Ginny found her trip free of would-be-kidnappers. The local bandits would have to find other tourists to capture as bargaining chips with the central government.
This tiny store had the only antiquities in town. It was clear from the clutter that Naseem did more of his business in rugs, clothes, and imported CDs than ancient relics, but he also collected strange items that stragglers from the desert brought in. The blank clay disk was only being kept as a curiosity. Only the tiny etchings along the edge revealed it to be anything other than an old piece of practice pottery. Upon sensing Ginny's interest, Naseem claimed the finder had discovered it in the lost city of Ubar. Ginny knew better, but didn't disabuse Naseem of the notion. The final price seemed a fair one – about what an ugly relic from a lost city would cost to a foreigner, although an astounding profit above whatever Naseem had paid for the thing. In truth, Ginny knew the piece to be worth whatever money a person could imagine.
Their tea done, Ginny thanked Naseem profusely and bowed, sure to keep her hair covered and her eyes lowered. After this kind of conquest, Ginny would normally have had a drink of something a great deal stronger than tea, but that would have to wait. In fact, given the proliferation of sweet tea over the past two hours, Ginny found herself hunting for a restaurant with a bathroom. She ordered some dinner and considered her next move.
Trying to wash her hands in cramped space of the minimal restroom, her knapsack began to vibrate. Oh oh. Her aleithiometer rarely ever started spinning without her asking it a question, and here it was, going mad. It could only mean trouble. And in fact, when she checked it, it was switching urgently between three symbols. Given the order and deeper meanings, they could only mean Flee, Death, and (Ride) north.
Um, okay. Ginny returned to her table and asked if she could get her kebab "to go on the road."
"Storms are coming, lady," the child who was helping her mother said.
"Let Allah's will come," Ginny responded. "And four liters of water," she added, as a second thought.
Ginny had arrived in a landrover, and in the landrover she would flee north. Walking to her car, she tried to surreptitiously look for whatever her aleithiometer was having a fit over. Half-wild dogs, trash on the streets, lovely wide-eyed children, women carrying water. Some men standing in the shade, chewing qat. Nothing out of the ordinary. As she passed Naseem's shop to her car, she heard voices, low, but some instinct told her to keep walking quickly, head down. Her car must be safe or the aleithiometer wouldn't have told her to ride. What could it be?
If storms were coming, that would mean sandstorms, which were deadly. Ginny needed a little time to prepare. Using one of the two main roads through the town, she drove to a more secluded spot. She only needed a couple minutes. Ginny reached into her bag for some items – a few grains of sand, a feather, a shed claw from a cat – and concentrated very hard, drawing arcane symbols on the seat beside her. Two spells which would normally take her a couple hours had to be performed very, very quickly. One for covering all tracks to be set off when she wanted, and another against sandstorms. Anything else would have to wait, or would have to be something she could handle with her artifacts. It was tiring, but Ginny pushed through. She wasn't done yet.
After she'd completed her spells with the right words, Ginny took a deep swig of water and looked at her map. She figured out the farthest she could go, round trip, on her full tank. Now was the hardest part. She drove back around past Naseem's shop, landrover careening wildly as she went in and out of potholes, and blared her a tape of British pop for good measure. And then she gunned the engine, heading on the road north. She knew the road would go for a good 40 miles, but then it would curve sharply west. Nothing was further north but the deadly Empty Quarter and a sandstorm coming.
When she reached the curve in the road, Ginny stopped and took out her binoculars. They were very good, top-of-line, and more than paid for themselves when she saw what was coming. A black landrover full of – what was it, four men? Perhaps as many as six could fit in there. She didn't recognize the car from the town. There were rifles sticking out of the windows, pointing up and out. She couldn't see any symbols on the side of the car, but that would have been stupid of them, anyway. She wouldn't have been hard to track across Yemen, but who were they? Why were they after her? She suspected they weren't just looking for a rich tourist or a European woman. If they were following her into the desert, they must want her in particular, unless they figured they could bag her and return before the storm hit.
This time, a pearl and an eye from a stuffed animal were the necessary components. Ginny slapped her binoculars and looked again. Now she could hear them, understand them, and see into the vehicle.
"Are you sure she went this way?" the plump driver asked. She recognized none of the five men. In fact, none were speaking Arabic, and they looked East Asian. Asians, in Yemen? What were they speaking, Mandarin? The hell?
"Yes, the child said the fool Englishwoman went straight into the desert," said the man sitting next to him. He had some kind of accent, but Ginny couldn't place it, given the limitations of the spell.
"That seems crazy, with a sandstorm coming. Why do we always get sent after the crazy ones?" whined the driver.
"I still don't know why the Boss would have sent so many of us to catch a woman," This doubter was sitting in the back, in the middle.
"The Master knows her capabilities better than you do, Shin Dai-Gui." The man riding shotgun said sharply.
"Do you know what tipped her off?" mumbled the driver. "Maybe someone told her she was being followed?"
"Who would have?" asked another one from the back, this one with a very long face. "We know she never talked to the shopkeep again." With that, a few of the men chuckled.
"It doesn't matter," said the one with the accent sitting next to the driver. He must be in charge, Ginny thought. "Our orders are clear. Kill the woman. Retrieve the item. Speed is of the utmost importance. You know what will happen if we fail."
Ginny refocused her binoculars to continue to capture them as they got closer, and then put them down. She wanted to know so much – what they wanted, what would happen if they failed, the name of their leader, but realized that watching them get closer would be a new depth of stupidity for her. Ginny dropped the spell and drove off the barely paved road. She barreled over dunes for an hour, longer, looking at the sky. Finally she saw the yellow smudge on the horizon, coming closer. The wind picked up.
Ginny kept driving into the desert toward the coming storm. She waited a moment on the top of a dune until she was sure the other landrover was following her and saw her, and then she went down. She could imagine them pointing and shouting, perhaps arguing about their own safety. Maybe fifteen minutes until the storm hit, okay, now. Ginny set off the spell that allowed her to pass unseen and without trace, and tore as fast as she could down the narrow valley between dunes. The wind started throwing sand against her windows. Ginny couldn't see anyone behind her but couldn't be sure. Almost, almost – just before the thick mass of sand hit her car, Ginny set off the other spell and stopped the car, throwing on her parking break. And then she waited.
For over five hours Ginny sat in her car, fully able to breathe. She knew she'd be able to unbury her car fairly easily when the storm ended as part of the protection spell, but she was concerned that she wouldn't have enough energy to recast the untrackable spell. It hit her that she was pretty tired, but before she could relax she asked her aleithiometer if she was safe. Safe, sunshine. It said. Good. Ginny ate her cold kebab and then napped a little. Waking, she could hear that the howling was slowly starting to fade. It was dark inside her car. Ginny brought out the blank clay disk and said three words in ancient Egyptian. It started to glow with a warm light from the now visible Eye of Ra in the center. "Wow," Ginny said, fingers reading the hieroglyphs on the back of the disk. "I don't think I'll be parting with you anytime soon, if you'll have me."
The storm eventually stopped and Ginny was able to return to the sand-covered road without a trace of her own passing. On the way, she passed within a couple of kilometers of an overturned, mostly buried black landrover. In their haste to reach her, they hadn't taken even the simplest precautions against the storm. Their windows had been down – probably so they could shoot out of them – and the wind had blown the vehicle off the top of a dune. Through her binoculars, Ginny couldn't see anyone moving. In fact, the only bit of human she saw was a single arm sticking out of the sand, unmoving in the permanent act of reaching out. On the forearm was a distinctive tattoo of two Chinese characters. Ginny wrote them down. She wondered if any had survived, if they had any water, and whether the theoretical lucky few could survive the sixty mile walk back to the town. Ginny lowered her binoculars and drove back into town.
It would have been nice, or perhaps dangerous, to say that the tale of the Englishwoman who survived a sandstorm in the Empty Desert went far and wide. However, the residents of the small town near the border of Oman had seen stranger things, and most didn't notice when she came back through, picking up more fuel and water. Most of the gossip was angry: The day before a group of Asian men had killed Naseem, a popular shopkeeper, but fortunately none had returned from the desert, praised be Allah. But no, it was corrected; one of the men had stayed in town after the murder. As soon as the sandstorm had finished beating the town, he had left for the Yemeni capital, San'a, taking the west road. Ginny thought it prudent to see if she could get a flight out of Oman, and drove in that direction. Her aleithiometer concurred.