Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Khanjar scratched at her bar napkin. “We—or you? Present company makes that line very blurry.” She glanced around the room. It was bare with the exception of a few old wooden tables and chairs, unadorned with anything even remotely resembling decoration, with hardwood floors and muffled sound off cushioned walls that screamed of high-end sound proofing. A single lightbulb with a simple shade hung low over the center table, illuminating a small area while keeping the rest of the room dark. When he had led her in, her first thought had been of interrogation. But he had simply motioned her to sit, and had leaned against a wall and waited for her to speak first. It was eerie; the room was so stark that it seemed to defy having any purpose at all. The rest of the place wasn’t much different. It was the strangest bar she had ever been in.

  “We’re quite alone,” her companion said. “I promised you that, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” she agreed dryly. “Pardon my shock at seeing it come through.”

  “You never did like me, babe.” She heard him chuckle softly. “But I always kept up my end of any bargain, you have to give me that.”

  “Sooner or later.” Khanjar leaned back and studied the shadow. “So, you’ve been waiting for something since when? This recent onslaught of fighting that’s got half of the world running scared? Or before then?”

  The knife of a smile that came from across the table reminded her of the Cheshire cat. “Verdigris wouldn’t have a dumb bunny at his side. Think, darlin’.”

  She despised this verbal chess, the nuances and simpering dependence upon half-truths and clever phrases. If she didn’t need such alliances, she would have put a blade through his gallbladder just to hear him squeal. “Before. Before the fighting, but not since…”

  Khanjar stopped and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. The simplest and obvious reasons were always the ones that Verd had avoided, and she had brushed them aside. But the truth had been staring her in the face since the day that he had singlehandedly united ECHO. Unintentionally, and at the cost of his well-polished and carefully tended ego.

  “It was only a matter of time,” her companion said. “You’ve watched him more than anyone, even me, and for years. He’s always a step ahead. He’s always ten steps ahead. But things have gone sour for him this last year. He probably saw some of it coming, as a remote possibility, but even he can’t hedge his bets all the time. And now, for once, he’s got to catch up. And he’s worried. He’s scared. He’s in a place he never thought he’d be.”

  She nodded, understanding. “He doesn’t know what will happen, does he?”

  “Nope,” he said. “One thing that Verd never was very good at, was faking confidence. You just saw the cracks in his armor, sweet thing. He’s flying by the seat of his pants. Which means, for once, he’s not seeing outside his immediate plans. Which means…”

  “He won’t see us coming,” Khanjar said, a slow smile spreading across her lips.

  “More than that, he still trusts you,” he said. “Gotta admit, that was something I wasn’t sure we could bank on. I think this will play out just fine. Tell me again, what does he expect you to do?”

  “Everything, and nothing. Wait to be surprised.” She thought for a moment. “When all hell breaks loose, I’m supposed to get into Top Hold, and take care of one of his loose threads.”

  “Harmony,” he said. “He’s finally going after her. About time. These mental movies are really tiring to watch, y’know. I’m sure our friends are getting antsy for some answers too. Well, one of them, anyway.”

  “Yes,” Khanjar said. “She’s a liability he hasn’t had an opportunity to eliminate, until now. Apparently, all eyes will be elsewhere. Skeleton crew. He’s not wrong, I should be able to get in there without much difficulty.”

  She watched as he lowered his head in thought. Finally, he chuckled, lifted himself off the wall and slowly approached the light.

  “The Djinni’s in there, too, isn’t he?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Our intel isn’t too solid on his case, but apparently the evidence against him is tight. They expect him to hang, eventually. Or however one can dispose of a meta. Locking him in an escape-proof cell in a sub-sub-subbasement perhaps.”

  She watched as the shadows slid away from his face as he bent down, his knuckles resting lightly on the solid tabletop.

  “Well then,” Jack said. “Why don’t we pay both of them a visit?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  * * *

  Lost Cause

  Mercedes Lackey and Dennis Lee

  I have learned that it is very difficult to watch one’s friends suffer when there is little to nothing one can (or is allowed to) do to help them. And of course, I was handicapped by the fact that I could not reach into the world to affect anything. All I could do was watch and gather information through the limited channels I had.

  I have gathered much, much more since, as I am sure you have seen in these narratives, oh putative Reader. But at that time, there was oh so very little I could do.

  Was it possible to feel more helpless than this? Vickie stared at the feed from Red’s cell, (because, of course, no one on this planet would be able to keep her out) and thought, Maybe. Maybe Mel feels more helpless. I dunno.

  But the screen showing Djinni’s cell was only one of too many gone live with feeds from Krieger fights, and she couldn’t spend more than a few seconds at a time staring at it. Her fingers danced among the five keyboards she had spread out around her workstation, and it was her voice—commanding, reassuring, warning, coordinating—that was the one people on the now-extensive Overwatch Command Network listened for. There was a fight over Lyon in France that had just turned in their favor, and she let Overwatch Paris know it a few seconds before they would have seen it themselves, so Noelle in Paris could get the French Air Force to press the advantage. Overwatch Hamburg was bracing for an incoming wave, and she quickly fed all the data she could scrape off the net to Joachim’s feeds. The Colts were handling three fights, one over Chicago, one over Indianapolis, and one over Albuquerque, but they were doing just fine on their own and she didn’t jiggle their elbows. Overwatch Bombay was quiet, but Eight-Ball alerted on them, and she widened the radar in time to catch the weird flickering pattern that preceded a wave of Death Spheres, out in the Indian Ocean. “Vishwathika, you’ve got incoming!” she pinged the operator. “Vector nine-eight-nine, they’ll be on your radar in thirty seconds!”

  “Roger that,” Vishwathika responded, and then the radar cleared and there were the Spheres, and ECHO Bombay went hot.

  She lost track of time, lost herself in the work, and only when the last of the fights ended, and ECHO and the various armed forces of the planet retreated to lick their wounds, did she look back at the screen that held the Djinni. She rubbed eyes gone sore and tired…but she wasn’t exhausted enough yet to sleep. And there was no point in trying to sleep before she was seconds from getting keyboard face, because she’d only lie there, staring up into the dark, her hands clasped over the claw she wore around her neck. His claw. All she had of him. All she dared have of him. Because he was not for her. Even if, especially if he were still free, he was not for her.

  She didn’t have the sound on, but he was pacing, pacing like an animal in a cage. She tore her eyes away from the screen and dove under her desk. She started installing cables to Eight-Ball…another problem to tackle while she had a moment, but at least a positive one. She hadn’t hooked Eight-Ball up to the full real world, or to her Overwatch rigs yet. She was stalling on it, really.

  Like I’m stalling on talking to Red.

  But at least she could get all the cabling in place so when she finally decided to bite the bullet, it could be done in five minutes. Eight had a camera of his own in the upper corner of the Overwatch room now, and it was under his complete control. She could hear it whirring as she worked, watching what she was doing, watching all the monitors. Sipping the analog information stream that he probably wanted to gulp d
own in huge, digital swallows.

  Not yet. Not until I’m sure…

  She came out from under the desk satisfied that everything was in place, all neatly color-coded. Tiny victory. Go me.

  And another thing occurred to her. Add…talismanic-type preset spells. Something Eight can trigger when I have my hands full. The easiest one for that would be a “location” spell based on the Laws of Contamination and Unity. Just to see if it was possible, she spent a few minutes putting one together, and tucked it in a kind of memory module in Eight’s m-space. Once she plugged Eight in, he’d have access to all the CCCP and ECHO spell packets that were wired to her Overwatch rig, so he’d be able to trace anyone in that bank of packets. Then to see if she could really make this practical, she did the same thing a half dozen times. It seemed to work. It would be ready to test when she was ready to pull Eight’s trigger. She knew he could see everything she did in m-space. He was probably itching to try these things.

  Her eyes went to Red’s monitor, as faithful as a compass needle. Red had stopped pacing, and was back to sitting on his bunk. She reached absently for a meal can, and rested her chin on one hand, and stared at him while she sipped. Because this isn’t stalkerish and weird at all…

  Had he done everything Jensen claimed he had? Killed that poor kid of a guard? No doubt. Shot down the rest? Certainly helped. Stolen stuff out of the Vault? Absolutely. Pushed Amethist into that energy weapon? Not a chance.

  She’d slowly dug up quite a bit of that past with Amethist that Jensen had pulled up like an evil rabbit out of a hat. And…no. There was nothing in that past that said to her that Red would have done anything other than throw himself between that fatal weapon and the ECHO Op if he’d known what was about to happen. I saw his face when that thing in New Orleans tried to impersonate her. It wasn’t Red that broke things off between them, it was her, and he was still carrying a candle, if not a torch, for her. She sighed. She probably figured out she’d never change him until he wanted to change. And she wouldn’t settle for a Bad Boy. Which is why she fell for Bulwark. Lots of practice writing romance novels got you pretty good at analyzing relationships. Well, as long as they didn’t involve angels. Then all bets were off.

  And there was something else she was sure of—as sure as Bella was, in fact. The Djinni in that cell was not the same man who’d killed those guards. The man who’d killed those guards was someone she wouldn’t have allowed near her door.

  The man who’d kept her from killing herself that horrible night was one she would trust with her soul.

  After all, he already had her heart, even if he didn’t know it.

  She just wished he’d talk to her. Ask her for something. Anything.

  Including, truth to tell…help in breaking him out. She sighed, and her eyes stung, and she wiped at them with the back of her scarred hand. It’s going to be a long night.

  * * *

  In the bare confines of his cell, Red Djinni was putting on a show. This was Top Hold, a rather nice step up from the last time he had been incarcerated in an ECHO jail. While the cell was just as bare, the security here was considerably higher than the simple concrete and steel accommodations of the last, with reinforced, gleaming white walls of some unknown indestructible polymer and heavy security measures humming through high-tech sliding doors.

  At least the solid platform that served as his bed was padded.

  Red had spent the last couple of days doing calisthenics, eating subpar meals that a guard would slide through a small slot in the door, sleeping and generally pacing about, as if terribly concerned over whatever the fates had in store for him. It was the sort of behavior one would expect from an inmate who had just been charged with multiple counts of breaking and entering, theft, assault and murder. At the mercy of a military and peacekeeping organization like ECHO, especially during wartime, the future looked bleak to put it mildly. Red was fairly sure the death penalty would be on the table. And, really, who could blame them? The destruction of the Vault on the day of the Invasion was one of many heavy losses to the once vast ECHO armory, and the loss of one of their most celebrated officers, Callsign Amethist, had struck a major blow to the already devastated morale of the inhabitants of Atlanta. Here, in seclusion, Red could only speculate on what was happening beyond the walls of his simple cell, but he had a good idea.

  One of ECHO’s new heroes, the elusive Red Djinni, a man with a mysterious past who had changed his ways and was now a fighter for the people, was responsible for the death of Amethist. The Amethist. The poster girl for all that was good and pure in meta-powered law enforcement. The girl who had never in her entire decorated career forgotten the plight of the common man, woman, and child. The girl who came from a poor upbringing in Hell’s Kitchen, battled countless villains first in Manhattan and then across the breadth of the vast expanse of America and even the world. The girl who had humbly come to make Atlanta her home, had chaired numerous charity organizations that fought everything from poverty to disease to breaking down social boundaries of race, creed and sexuality.

  Yes, that Amethist. And Red Djinni had killed her.

  People would be screaming for his blood, right about now. He figured it probably would save everyone a lot of time and effort to just let him out, drop him on some busy corner in downtown Atlanta and let the populace tear him to pieces. They could even televise it, make a few sponsorship bucks.

  Welcome to Justice in Atlanta, the execution of Red Djinni! Brought to you by Sharpett, the closest shave a man can get without slitting his own goddamn throat! And by Dry-Zee-Pads, when a gal just needs to be sure!

  But, knowing ECHO, Red Djinni was certain he was in for some prolonged time in isolation, perhaps an even longer trial where the prosecution would present some extremely damning and bloody evidence, and they would hang him, figuratively speaking, following their usually quick and efficient protocols. Even now, with the world in the balance against a renewed onslaught of Krieger attacks, ECHO would make an example out of him. They really didn’t have any choice. And for his part, he would let them. He had known this day would come, eventually. He had hoped it would come later, y’know, perhaps after a time when humanity wasn’t fighting for its very existence. At that point, they would either be standing victorious and he couldn’t say he really cared what happened to him at that point, or they would be defeated, defenseless, and it wouldn’t really matter then, would it?

  They were going to come after him with everything they had, and he would let them. He would play the part, he would wring his hands and plead, and in dark public moments he would show flashes of something sinister that bubbled beneath the surface. He would give them their villain, and let them reach closure when they ended him. They needed it, and he needed her memory to live on—pristine, heroic, because that’s who she truly was.

  So he moped, he paced around his cell, and he brooded, because that’s what they needed to see. What they didn’t see was the preparation, the mental exercises and silent mantras that played over and over again in his head. He was preparing for the role of a lifetime, because he really wasn’t that guy anymore, if he ever really had been. And it wasn’t just about fooling the public, that was the easy part. He had been careless. He had let a few people in, he had let a precious few see glimpses of himself. Distancing himself from them was going to prove a bit more challenging. One of them was a freakin’ empath. Her boyfriend had some truly frightening abilities to read the truth from people just by observation. Another had shared his bed for months, and things had a way of slipping by the old defenses when that happened. He had ideas in place for all of them—what to do, say, vague ideas of slimy conduct that might convince them he was a genuine sociopathic mastermind.

  It was Victrix that he was drawing a blank on.

  Of all of them, she had seen the most. They had shared some truly spectacular, even intimate, moments that had forged a surprisingly strong bond between them. Red had not seen that coming. With the others, he could formulate pla
ns, backups, contingencies and the like to build a strong case that he wasn’t the man they had thought he was. With Vix, it was going to take more than just a barrage of insults and cold truths to sway her. She would see past all of it, and eventually figure out his game. She really was too smart for her own good. And what would she do then? Would she back his play? He doubted it. For now, he did the only thing he could: stall…for as long as he could. She was watching him, he was sure of it, but she had not attempted contact yet. This was a good thing. But eventually, she would try talking to him.

  And he had no idea what he was going to say to her. Well, at least there was one small thing he could do right now. “Overwatch,” he muttered under his breath. “Reset privacy timer.”

  * * *

  Vickie fed another data dump into the standalone server for Eight-Ball and watched as Eight sucked it dry in minutes. She suspected he’d have done it in seconds, but he was doing what humans did; considering what he was absorbing/observing. I’m going to have to make a decision about him pretty soon. If I keep him in isolation much longer, he might get resentful.

  Her eyes went to Red’s screen. Two days, almost three, and still nothing from him. No idea what was going through his head. She knew what was going through Jensen’s though, because the bastard was stupid enough to gloat where she had microphones. A show trial, and a big one—as if they could afford to take the time and resources for a show trial! And after that, Red was going to some special “Program.” Now, Jensen didn’t know what Vickie knew about Murdock’s past. The word “Program” combined with “metas” meant the same thing they’d just rescued a couple dozen kids from, and that meant they’d make him into a weapon. An expendable one.

  I can’t take this anymore, she decided. “Overwatch: Open Red: Private,” she said, and cleared her throat awkwardly. “So,” she said, and stopped.

  She was greeted with the barely audible hiss of the open channel, and then…