Bastion: O-Men: Liege’s Legion

by Elaine Levine

  Guerre frowned. “You getting premonitions now?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Spill, Bastion,” Acier said. “You look scared shitless. With all that we’ve been through, I’ve never seen you like that.”

  “I saw her die. She was cut her from her throat to her gut.”

  Acier slumped to the bench beside him. Guerre looked away. Bastion opened his mind to his friends, letting them pull from him what he’d seen. It felt real. Like a memory. Like a knowing.

  “How much time do we have?” Acier asked.

  “Not much.” Tears pooled in his eyes. “I’ve only just found her, and now I’m going to lose her.”

  “Not necessarily,” Acier said.

  “You saw what I saw.”

  “Maybe it’s a warning,” Guerre said, “not foregone truth.”

  “It’s the Matchmaker’s curse.”

  Acier lurched off the bench and returned to the blades laid out on the folding table. “Don’t use that fiend as an excuse. We’ll train her. We’ll get her mind ready. We’re not going to be leaving her here alone. One of us will always be with her.”

  “She’s not a mutant. She’s no match for the ghouls. Or Flynn.”

  “Then turn her,” Acier said. “Bring her into our world. She’s a helluva fighter. That will put her out of commission for a bit while we go after Flynn.”

  Bastion scoffed. “You want me to nuke her neurology when we know Flynn’s coming for her?”

  “I don’t know a Legionnaire who didn’t come through the fire like that,” Acier said. “We didn’t.”

  Bastion shook his head. “I’m not doing it. Besides, we don’t even have access to the scientists who could do it. And if she chooses to go through that, I wouldn’t let her until we have Santo. He could pull her through the shift.”

  Acier nodded, slipping another blade into its sleeve. “We need Merc to keep his shit together long enough to find him.” Acier looked up. “I will protect your light with my life—you know that, Bastion.”

  “And I will as well,” Guerre said. “I think we need to change up her training—you’re a distraction. She looks to you for approval, and all she sees is your sadness. It says you don’t have faith in her, robbing her of her faith in herself. Without that, she is for sure dead.”

  Bastion nodded. Guerre was right. Watching the simulated ghouls ripping her up was shredding him.

  35

  Selena was almost too tired to join the group for dinner. And she was still seething about Bastion’s lack of faith in her. She hadn’t let him in her head since his comments earlier. Resisting him was bringing back the old headaches she’d had months earlier.

  She’d take a headache any day over a guy who didn’t believe in her.

  Bastion knocked on her door. Weird how she knew it was him. She yanked it open, but didn’t stand back to let him in. His dark eyes had that lost-puppy look in them. “I can feel your anger,” he said.

  Way to confront the situation head-on. “Sounds like a personal problem.”

  “It is. I’m sorry and not sorry that I’m terrified of losing you.”

  “That’s ‘sorry not sorry.’”

  He frowned, confused.

  “The idiom. That’s how you say it.”

  “But I am sorry. And also not sorry.” His brows lowered. “Not sorry that I’m not sorry. It’s different.”

  Selena couldn’t help cracking a smile. She stepped back so he could get out of the hallway. She didn’t want the rest of the team knowing he’d lost confidence in her.

  “I haven’t lost confidence in you,” Bastion said.

  He was in her head again. She must have dropped her blocks when she saw him.

  “I’ve gained a need for you that is both dark and light. If I could put you in a bottle and keep you safe, I would.”

  “I wouldn’t be safe in a bottle because being in one would kill me.”

  “I know. Which is why I must embrace both sides of you.”

  Selena stared into his big brown eyes. As much as he could, he was laying himself bare to her. “The dark—the curse you fear from the Matchmaker.”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t believe in curses.”

  “I don’t fear my own death; I fear yours. And how can you not believe when you saw the Matchmaker for yourself?”

  She put her hand on his hard chest, roughly over the area of his heart. “Because I’m not superstitious. I am going to die one day, but those motherfucking ghouls are not going to take me out.”

  He stared into her eyes for the longest moment. “Will you sit next to me at dinner?”

  Whelp, apparently her blocks hadn’t been working at all—she’d been planning to give him the cold shoulder tonight. Instead, she looped her arms around his neck. She had to stand on her tiptoes to do that, stretching her whole body against his rock-solid one. Maybe they shouldn’t bother with the meal—he felt so damned delicious.

  “I agree,” he said, his mouth pressed against her hair. “Let’s not waste the time.”

  “No, we aren’t staying here. And yes, I will sit next to you. Owen has called for a meeting tonight in billiards room. We need to be there. Did Liege talk to him?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe he’s upset we scared Addy.”

  She looked at Bastion’s mouth. He’d trimmed his beard neatly, baring the soft contours of his lips, curves she wanted to run her tongue over.

  “Do it.”

  She stepped away from him. “Later.” She took his hand and led him out into the hall.

  I want to be on top…later.

  She shot a look at him. Maybe I’m not ready for that.

  I think you are. You do trust me, non?

  She didn’t answer that. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of trusting him but whether she could trust herself to not freak out.

  After supper, after the kids were in bed and the household was settled for the evening, Bastion and Selena, Guerre and Acier, Russ and Jim, her entire team and their civilian partners gathered in the billiards room.

  Bastion checked the energy signatures of the women. They were no fools. They knew something of the nature of mutants, from Addy’s short stint being changed, as well as from the Ratcliffs and Owen’s dad. Now, having a team of mutant fighters come visiting, it was obvious something was up. Bastion was glad that Owen had called them together. It was time to bring them in.

  No one played pool or cards tonight. Some held small glasses of digestifs or mugs of coffee. The tension in the room was palpable.

  Owen stood in front of the pool table and looked over the gathering of his team and their better halves. No children were in the room, not even the wild boys.

  Bastion was glad he wasn’t Owen, having to break the news to the women that monsters were real.

  When Bastion first came out to them, Owen hadn’t wanted to reveal any of this to anyone without a direct need to know. The Legion could have suppressed their memories of any interactions with the ghouls, but doing so wouldn’t have stopped the nightmares as those memories fought to surface. And it would have left the most vulnerable among them ill-prepared for what Bastion thought was a certainty: the ghouls were coming. Fear always led to chaos, and chaos in a fight led to disaster.

  It was time the civilians were told; he didn’t want any of them to be unprepared.

  He shut the double doors to the room.

  Owen nodded at him. “I asked all of you to meet here tonight because I have some news that I wish I didn’t have to share.” He looked over at his wife’s steady gaze, taking strength.

  It amazed Bastion that as fragile as women often seemed on the outside, inside they had the heart of a Roman general. Humankind—and mutant-kind—would be lost without them.

  “As you all know, we’ve been working with a security team from Colorado. They, like Addy once was and my dad still is, are mutants. We share a common enemy, and we’ve agreed to assist each other as we move forward in our fight against the Omni World
Order.

  “The OWO hasn’t yet gone public with their mutant agenda. Fortunately for us, they prefer to work behind the scenes. I believe they’re hoping to clinch their power before revealing themselves to the wider world. Their reticence is an opportunity we need if we’re to stop them.

  “Most of you were with us when the Ratcliffs explained how these human mutations could cause major shifts in power dynamics, destroying societies as we know them today.” Owen checked Addy, seemingly to make sure she was up to hearing what he was about to say. “Humans aren’t the only beings the Omnis are modifying. They’ve found a way to merge human and animal DNA, creating monsters capable of terrorizing and destroying any human or animal they encounter.”

  Eden, Blade’s wife, frowned. “I don’t understand. They’ve made a new species?”

  “Not exactly,” Owen said. “More like they’ve made monsters. These beings they’ve created are chimeras, an unsustainable mix of species, created to kill. I wanted to keep this knowledge from you. I never wanted you to see them or know about them or ever have your reality shattered by accepting their existence. But Addy convinced me that foreknowledge may be the only thing that can actually save your lives, should you have an encounter that we can’t prevent. Bastion will tell you more about them, and then Kit and I will talk about what we’re doing to protect you, the town, and all regular humans from them.”

  Except for Val, whose girlfriend Ace was in training with the team, all the guys reached over to hold the hands of their women. Bastion shut his eyes and sent a calm, centered feeling of strength to the civilians in the room before showing a life-sized illusion of one of the ghouls he’d fought. The women gasped in horror.

  Bastion had it turn in a slow circle so that everyone could get a good look at it. “This monster is part man, part dog, sometimes part other animals. The only cognitive function left to it is what comes from the primitive part of its once-human brain that deals with survival. As you might imagine, the non-complementary sets of DNA don’t let this ghoul live long. It has extraordinary strength but it cannot think or adapt. Being a mutant, it heals quickly, so killing it is somewhat difficult. It has extraordinary eyesight. Its olfactory senses are better than a bear’s. There’s absolutely no humanity left in these things, so killing or being killed is their only frame of mind.”

  Bastion sighed and looked at the ground, briefly avoiding the stricken faces of the women. “Remember when I disappeared Zavi and Troy?” He looked at their mothers. “I did so for a specific reason. These monsters cannot impose illusions or compulsions, but they do react to them. Even if they smell a target human, if they cannot see it, they ignore it. When these things come here, and I believe they will, hiding those of you not trained to fight will be our best defense against them.”

  Kit came up to stand next to Bastion. “We already run drills training you to get down to the bunker. We’re going to tweak those drills to accommodate this new threat.”

  Kit’s wife, Ivy, smoothed her hand over her distended belly. “Is it safe to be disappeared?”

  “Completely,” Bastion said. “Nothing actually happens to you. It affects anyone or anything observing you. They see the space where you are as it was before you were there. I will show you.” He looked at Kit. “I’m volunteering you for this demonstration.”

  Kit nodded.

  Bastion faced the group as he set the illusion over Kit, making it seem he’d disappeared. The women gasped.

  “Kit, jump up and down,” Bastion said.

  “Fuck you, Bastion. Not doing that.”

  Bastion laughed, knowing no one could see or hear Kit. “What do you see?” Bastion asked the group.

  “Nothing,” Ivy said, a little fear in her voice.

  “Tell us a secret,” Bastion told Kit.

  Kit let loose a string of cussing that would have made an Army sergeant blush. Midway through it, Bastion removed the illusion shielding him. The women gasped and his team members laughed. Kit actually turned red.

  Bastion grinned. “That was just the tail end of his invectives. You should have heard the start of them.”

  Kit gave him a warning growl before reaching for his throat. Bastion froze him, leaving him visible and aware of his surroundings, but unable to move or speak. “You see, nothing happens when a person is disappeared. And nothing happens to those who would observe a disappeared person, except for a little distorted reality that’s temporary.” Bastion freed Kit, who gave him a narrow-eyed death stare. Bastion grinned in response.

  “I know you have busy schedules,” Owen said, “but I need you to make time to train with us so that we can get you and the kids used to what to do if we are overtaken by ghouls.”

  “What about our animals?” Mandy asked. “My horses, Eddie’s dogs. Our pets here?”

  “We will hide them as well,” Bastion said.

  “I don’t mean to be morbid or anything,” Ace said, “but what happens if you die?”

  “That’s an excellent question,” Bastion said. “My protections will end with me. However, Liege and the others on my team will instantly replace them with their own.”

  “What if they’re in Colorado when it happens?” Eddie asked.

  “My team and I are always connected here.” Bastion tapped his head. “If I die, they will make their own connections to you. Protecting regulars is what we do.”

  A few of the team lingered after the meeting, though most retired for the night. Owen, Max, and Greer were there, as were Guerre and Acier. Selena was just about to head upstairs with Bastion when something pinged on Max’s phone. He hit a button.

  “Your dad and Jax are here,” Max said to Owen. “I just let them in.”

  Owen looked surprised. He crossed the room just as the two men came into the billiards room. He gave his dad a hug, then shook hands with Jax.

  “What’s brought you guys down from the wilds?” Owen asked.

  “We have news,” Jax said. His gaze made the rounds in the room, settling on the three men he didn’t know.

  “So do we. Have you met Liege’s men?” Owen asked.

  Jax shook his head.

  “Bastion, Guerre, Acier—this is my friend and brother-in-law, Wendell Jacobs,” Owen said. “We call him Jax. And over there’s my dad, Nick.”

  There was a tense exchange of handshakes. Nick came over to Selena and gave her a hug. He stood back and took a read of her energy. “The problem’s gone from your face.”

  She smiled. “And no more headaches.”

  “That’s great. I mean that. I was really worried about you.”

  “I was really worried about me too.”

  Nick looked at Bastion, who had stayed close to Selena. “As long as you make Selena happy, you make us happy.” The threat in that statement was barely veiled.

  Bastion smiled widely. “As long as you have her best interests at heart, I am happy.”

  Nick laughed then grabbed Bastion’s shoulder. “All right, then.”

  Owen went behind the bar and poured out three Balcones. He handed the newcomers their glasses, then took his. “What’s the big news you have that had to be delivered in person?”

  “We’re clear to talk here?” Jax asked.

  Max nodded. “We’re clear.”

  “Doc Beck has the results of his analysis back. He’ll be calling you in the morning,” Jax said.

  “But he told you first,” Owen said.

  “No. The Ratcliffs did. They helped him with the analysis. He sent over tissue slides and blood samples.”

  “And?” Greer asked, moving closer.

  “And it appears that some sophisticated gene splicing wove elements of common canine DNA into specific areas of a human host’s DNA, to the degree that the resultant being is its own new phylum.”

  “Can these things reproduce?” Greer asked.

  Jax shook his head. “No. By their very engineering, they’re incapable of creating their own offspring.”

  “We’ve been hearing urban
legends about these monsters,” Nick said. “It was too horrific to believe. Much of the news in the world of modifications is exaggerated, so we filed it away with other arcane and unverifiable discoveries.”

  “I guess this one’s true,” Max said.

  “The Ratcliffs want to come see for themselves,” Jax said.

  Selena felt Bastion’s relief and excitement. “They are welcome,” he said. “But it is a dangerous time for them to come. Our enemy, Brett Flynn, is looking for them. I would only move them if they were heavily protected.”

  “I can go with you,” Acier volunteered.

  Jax looked at Owen. “Are you good with this?”

  Owen didn’t answer right away. He looked at Bastion. “To be honest, I do still have my misgivings. We’ve been working with the Legion for less than two weeks. They’ve done everything they said they would. They’ve opened their fort and their staff to us. But they also spied on us for two months.”

  “We did what we were made to do,” Bastion said.

  “It’s natural to be cautious about forming alliances with those who come from stronger points of power,” Nick said, “a lesson learned by colonized people everywhere.”

  Selena looked at Bastion and his friends, worried they were being insulted in this conversation. They didn’t look concerned. They had deeper wells of patience than anyone she’d ever met.

  “Selena and I will accompany them,” Bastion said. “You trust your own staff, non?”

  Owen looked from him to her. She spared him answering. “He doesn’t. He thinks I’m under your control.”

  “Fair enough,” Bastion said, meeting Owen’s glare. “But I am not willing to lose these researchers. They’re the only ones in the Omni resistance that we know of so far. They’re key in any future we hope to build. Do what must be done to retrieve them safely.”

  At last, Owen nodded. To Jax, he said, “Stay for a day of training with us. I want you to see what these monsters are capable of. Then leave Nick here for training and take Acier with you to retrieve the doctors.”

  “I want to bring them to the fort,” Acier said. “Every time we move them, we put them at risk. And we have the facilities and corpses for them to study—everything’s already set up for them.”