It was a simple metal tube with a ladder opposite the hole in the wall. And Sera had not exaggerated; water was lapping at the rungs visibly as he shoved Zach inside—they both had wet feet before they climbed higher.
“You’ll feel an opening in front of you and the ladder will keep going up, slantwise,” Vickie said in his ear. “That’s where you need to go. Don’t reach up for the next part of the ladder, that’ll only take you where there’s a lot of Nazis.”
Sure enough, in roughly two stories, his hand encountered empty air. He ignited the fire on his hand and looked down at Zach below him.
“See the hole?” he said, sticking his hand in the place where a slantwise tube joined the vertical one. Zach nodded. “That’s where we’re goin’!”
Then he clambered up and in. The going was easier on the slant. “How much of this have we got, Vix?” he asked aloud.
“A lot. It leads out beyond the fence. Five hundred yards roughly.”
He caught up with the last of the kids, ignited a fire again, and looked back. Zach’s eyes reflected the flame; now that he wasn’t fighting like a demon, the meta teen looked very young, exhausted, and vulnerable. The kid in front of him squeaked, stopped, and looked back in a panic as she realized there was someone behind her. John tried to smile reassuringly. It must have worked; she kept going.
Finally, a hint of daylight ahead, with dark, moving shapes obscuring it. And he sensed Sera near. The light encouraged the other kids to move faster; as he reached it, he saw Sera’s arms reaching into the hole and helping to pull the little girl ahead of him out. He could not get out of that tunnel fast enough; too many memories. Ghosts of the past tended to suck up all the oxygen in a room if you let them.
He emerged to a thickly forested island and it was immediately apparent that most of the forest was artificial. A metal hatch had been flipped back onto what looked like long grass and was, in fact, plastic. The only real things were the drifts of dead leaves caught here and there.
“There’s a slightly submerged path; marked it on your HUDs,” Vickie said. “Holy shi—hit the dirt!”
He and Sera just reacted, automatically, going down to the ground and taking as many of the kids as they could with them. A Thulian Death Sphere, half on fire and canted sideways, flew overhead. It was clearly going down, and a minute or two later, the island shook and a fireball rose over the swamp to John’s left. Somethin’ nasty is fightin’ back against the Thulians. Guess the Program has some more tricks up its sleeve.
“Any interference on the way out?” John asked, still prone.
“Not at the moment. Wait too long and there will be. My advice is let the bad guys mow each other down and get the hell out of Dodge. Safe trail ends just outside of a little town called Bentis Bayou.” There was a pause. “Hey, hotshot, I think I can just barely port a lunchbox with enough cash in it for bus fare to Tallahassee for all those kids. You can’t fly ’em all out of there, y’know.”
“Yeah,” he said, a number of feelings, all of them bad, warring within him. “I know.” There was a sudden, powerful need inside of him to get all of the kids out, get them all to safety…to make up for when he had escaped. He knew what they would go through; alone, frightened…not even necessarily of dying…afraid of being taken back. He had been a man when the Program had dug its claws into him, and he had had a man’s knowledge, a man’s constitution. These…were children. If his own history was any yardstick, they would have more horror in their future. And there was damned little that John could do about it.
* * *
Vickie was as good as her word. John unfolded a little bit of cloth with a diagram on it on the ground as they all huddled in the bushes just outside of town. A few minutes later, a lunchbox appeared in the middle of it, stuffed with cash, with a map from the bus station to the ECHO building on it. “I’ve got an Overwatch One rep in there. He’s going to try and have someone meet the bus, and I’ve already put through the authorization of a pack of underagers to travel on the bus to Tallahassee. They’re orphans being evacuated from an attack on a school. Hence the uniforms. There’s enough in the box for fare and burgers and fries.”
Sera carefully explained this to the children. The three oldest were given the cash, the right code word to give the ticket agent to clear them buying all those tickets, and the map, just in case no one met them. “If you choose not to go to ECHO…I do not think that would be wise,” she said finally. “But if that is the case, run far, and long, and hard.”
“Stay away from cities if you can help it, stay with other kids when you can’t. Don’t go home, don’t go anywhere you’ve ever known. These bastards go after you through your memories, the love y’have for others. It’s how their minds work. You’ll have to cut ties. Maybe forever.” The words tasted like acid in John’s mouth, and he felt like a hypocrite. He knew what they had to do; Zach was their mission. But he still felt sick to his stomach, Futures be damned.
“Aren’t you coming with us?” asked one of the younger girls in dismay, although the older children tried to put a brave face on things.
Sera shook her head. “We cannot,” she admitted. “What we did to get you out was not…authorized.”
Zach pushed to the front of the group; it was plain that the others treated him like a leader. They weren’t scared of him, and he didn’t seem to need to bark orders or bully them to get them to do what needed to be done. “What’s that even mean?”
Sera looked at John, helplessly.
“We had to kick over a hornet’s nest to get you out. As y’can probably tell, other…‘people’ wanted the Facility, too. This is goin’ to attract attention, an’ not the good kind. We came for you an’ you alone, Zach. You were our mission, an’ we need to get you outta here safely. No matter what. Even if it means we bite it in the process.” The other kids were staring at Zach now, waiting to see what he would do.
“To hell with that! I’m not leaving everyone here! We’re getting out of here together. There’s a frigging war going on out there—”
“You don’t even know the half of it, kid. We’ve been fightin’ a war for the last few years. We’ve lost friends and family. We’ve had our asses kicked more times than I can count. But we’re still fightin’ back. The world is ready to get turned into a cinder. If we fail…we’ve only got one plan to keep that from happenin’. An’ you’re a part of it.”
Zach opened his mouth—just as Sera placed her hand on his forehead, her face a mask. “Be still,” she said—and the young meta slumped bonelessly to the ground. “I have not harmed him,” she told the others before they could react in alarm, and a wave of reassurance came from her. “But we must go, and we must take him with us.”
“You’ve got money for food an’ bus tickets. It’ll be okay; the guy sellin’ the tickets knows yer comin’, an’ it all comes with ECHO credentials an’ stuff to get ya to Tallahassee. Get some lunch, an’ get on that bus. Stay low, move fast, an’ once you’re clear, keep your heads on a swivel. With any luck, we’ll see some of y’all soon enough. We’ve gotta get Zach out of here, now. Okay?”
The kids all looked at each other, then all eyes went to the oldest girl, who took a deep, long breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and firmed her chin. She opened her eyes again. “Can you promise we’ll be all right with ECHO? We’ll believe you.”
“No more hurting!” one of the younger ones cried, then clapped both hands over his mouth.
“If they go with the ECHO guy, he’s gonna get them all to a big safe house for meta kids.” Vickie said that with conviction. “They won’t be separated.”
“You will be safe, and together, and no one will hurt you,” Sera promised.
“There’s one last thing, kids. You’ve gotta keep quiet ’bout Zach, here. ’Bout the facility. A lot’s ridin’ on it.”
“You gonna keep our Gremlin safe?” It was the same young child that had spoken up before.
“We will.” John paused before picking up Zach and pu
tting him over his shoulder. “Why do you call him Gremlin?”
The oldest girl spoke up. “It was a young Russian guy. A friend of Zach’s…they had been in the Program the longest. It was his nickname, and he gave it to Zach.”
“John, we must go.” Sera had started flipping her wings, a sure sign of nerves. “We are running out of time.”
John knew that his wife was right. That didn’t make it any easier, for either of them. “Be safe. Be smart. Y’all are tough; you wouldn’t have made it this long if you weren’t. See the sign with the dog on it?” He pointed through the brush down the street, to a storefront with a Greyhound sign—and also one for KITTY’S CAFÉ. “Run there, a couple at a time, until yer all inside. Get yer tickets, an’ get some lunch. Don’ leave until the bus shows up, and get straight on there. Sit together. Get off at Tallahassee. Look for a guy in a black uniform with a white triangle on the front. That’s the ECHO guy. Safe journeys, kids.”
John didn’t wait to say anything more. He readjusted Zach on his shoulder, took a running start, and fired off his flying “rockets.” Sera was right behind him. He spared a single glance back; the kids were already moving. He hoped they would be all right. And he hoped that Zach would forgive them.
CHAPTER NINE
* * *
Ebb Tide
Mercedes Lackey
Amphitrite was pleased. Bill (she really did not like that name) was proving to be more and more congenial as he climbed out of his Melancholia. The investment in the physician of the mind had been wise—but then, she was a goddess, and goddesses are always wise.
Finally she decided that it was time for the next stage of her cure. At least once a day, he told her, his eyes full of admiration, how beautiful she was. But she heard what was unspoken beneath the compliment. And I am so ugly. He did not think he was worthy of her.
(But at least he had ceased to speak of the wife who had deserted him when he needed her most.)
“You are so beautiful,” he said on the very day she had made her decision. But this time he went further. “Your skin is like the inside of a shell. Your eyes are as blue as the ocean. Your body is more perfect than Miss America. Your hair is like…” and there his imagination failed him, but at least he had finally emerged enough from Melancholia to have an imagination. “And…I am not worthy to—”
“Ah—” she chided, holding up an admonishing finger. “I decide who is worthy to be in my company. And your heart and spirit certainly are. As for your outer self…would you have me change it?”
His glowing eyes widened in shock. “You mean, that’s an option?” he gasped.
“Am I not a goddess?” she replied. “Come with me.”
Obediently, he followed.
She brought him to one of the little “desert” islands, too small to even support much in the way of plant growth. There she made him sit, and she studied him from every angle. “Yes,” she said finally. “I can do this.” And she took up a handful of sand, and began to shape him.
It was, after all, the power of water and sand that smoothed and shaped rock the world over—and she was a goddess and could command the water and sand to work exponentially faster than they would otherwise have done. She had in mind a statue by the great sculptor Praxiteles, the Apollo Lyceus, and she kept that sculpture firmly in mind as she worked, starting with Bill’s head.
She really did not like that name.
Sculpting in stone, after all, is a matter of subtraction, and although Bill considered himself ugly, he really just was more of a roughed-out copy of a human than he was a monster. So over the course of seven days, she subtracted, and smoothed, and followed the copy in her mind. He was patient while she worked on his head and shoulders. He became excited when the work moved to his arm, since now he could actually see what she was doing. His pleasure at seeing his chest muscles—modeled more on a Hercules than an Apollo—emerge from the rough stone that had been there made her smile. But when her hands went to work below his waist, he almost stopped her.
“Ah…you’re a lady…” he said, showing an astonishing amount of shyness, given that she had not draped so much as an inch of her body in anything concealing for as long as they had been together.
“I am a goddess,” she corrected. “And I am making you a god. Would you be only a half god?”
Since he had no good answer for this—as she had intended—he let go her hand and stared up into the sky as she worked. She had the distinct feeling that if he could have been blushing, he would have been. Quite redly, in fact.
But at least he was not interfering with her. So she sculpted him to please herself, and then went on to his legs.
And when she was done, she made the water to be glassy smooth, and invited him to look.
Elegant brows rose, and the eyes beneath them glowed. “I never looked like that!” he said, putting one hand to his cheek, as if to reassure himself that this really was his reflection, and not some illusion.
“You were never a god before,” she pointed out. “Now you are.” She tilted her head to look at him critically. “You have been liberated from your burden of mortality and melancholy, as Atlas was liberated of his burden of the sky by Heracles. I do not like this name, ‘Bill,’ not at all. It did not suit you before, and it suits you even less, now. I shall call you Atlas.”
In joy and gratitude, he embraced her. And something rose between them. He looked down at himself, and his mouth fell agape.
She laughed, for this was, of course, exactly as she had intended. “The rest of you moves freely,” she pointed out. “Why not that?”
In confusion, he drew away from her. Firmly, she drew him back. “I made it,” she pointed out. “May I not enjoy it?”
And, after some little time of persuasion, she did.
CHAPTER TEN
* * *
Keep Your Distance
Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin
Of all the miracles that Johnny and Sera worked, I think getting a teenager to listen to them was the biggest.
Leaving Zach was one of the hardest things that John had ever had to do. The teen had so many questions, and John wished he had all of the answers. He answered when he could, and was silent instead of lying when the truth in some of the questions was too hard to bear. Zach alternated between curious, relieved, angry, and scared. John and Sera could both feel the waves of emotion rolling off of the boy, crashing into them and through them. Sera was doing her best to comfort him; John hoped it would be enough, to keep him from spiraling down into a dark place that he knew all too well. He’s going through everything I went through when I got out of the Program. But he’s so damned young.
As much as John wanted to stay and help the young man navigate through the small hell he was going through, he couldn’t. They needed to keep Zach safe, but there was still a war to fight in the meantime. Hopefully, they would win, and then they could bring him back to Atlanta, or wherever he wanted to go. If they didn’t win…he was the world’s last chance, and was infinitely precious for that reason.
So John hid him in the best place that he knew of. After a very lengthy discussion, John, Sera, and Vickie had decided that they wouldn’t use any ECHO safe houses. For one, many of them were occupied off and on by Metisian scientists; they were working nearly around the clock in ECHO labs and offices around the world, though most of them were located in the USA. Keeping them in one particular place was an invitation for them to be attacked, so moving them—and their research data—constantly was a priority. As such, all of the safe houses were in use at one time or another; having one reserved without a damned good excuse would arouse…suspicion. While the trio could have gone up the chain of command with Zach, it was better for operational security if they kept the secret between themselves. With ECHO locations out—same with any of the locations that Vickie knew through her parents—they needed to come up with an alternative. Luckily, John had one ready.
It seemed like forever ago when he had first been on
the run. Six years…so much had changed, with him and the world, and at times he hardly believed that the past had actually happened. At least the way he remembered it. Those first days after he had escaped the Program had been chaotic. He hadn’t been able to trust anyone, and he had felt hunted wherever he went. One close call in a bus station had been enough for him; he had gone off the grid as much as he could. Still, back when he had been a Delta operator, he had set aside some…insurance, in case something ever happened. The special operations community and the intelligence world were inextricably linked. John had seen and heard of too many guys like him being left to twist in the wind when some intel weenie had screwed up; he had determined that he would never end up as a cautionary tale. So, he had prepared to disappear early on. A chunk of money, some weapons, and a full set of papers that he had sort of blackmailed a CIA spook into setting up for him; enough to start over somewhere, if he needed to. Once he had calmed down enough, he had used most of the money to buy a chunk of land out in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming; a small plot with its back to a state forest. It made for a nice backyard, and quiet, too. He had spent most of a sweltering hot summer building a cabin and stocking it. Situated at the edge of a small valley, he had privacy and a stream for water.
The cabin and the land were his bolt-hole, a place to run when he had nowhere else to go. It had served him well in those early days on the run. He had had a lot of things to deal with: grief over what he had lost, guilt over what he had done, and how to reconcile all of it with what he had become. No longer a soldier. A criminal, a fugitive. And also a metahuman. There had been a lot of time spent trying to get his new “gifts” under control; harnessing his heightened senses without being overwhelmed, keeping his new strength and reflexes in check, and controlling his ability to produce and manipulate fire. The last had proved the hardest to master; it had always been a matter of maintaining concentration and stopping himself from completely letting go.
Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle Page 18