More than anything, John felt glad. He blew out all of his breath in one hard exhalation. Nothing he could gain would ever equal having Sera by his side. Having her wasn’t settling, or giving anything up; it was gaining everything that mattered. He knew that he had made the right choice…and she had helped him arrive at it.
“Thank you, darlin’. I got a bit lost there after Red…but you helped me get right again. Thank you.” He leaned in, kissing her with purpose for several long seconds.
“We can prevail together,” she said. “I will not allow myself to believe otherwise. And we will do so without sacrificing our humanity.” She rested her forehead on his chest. “Together we are stronger, and more clever, and better, than either of us could ever be apart.”
INTERLUDE
* * *
The Greatest
Mercedes Lackey and Dennis Lee
The Masters didn’t understand bowing or kneeling; their bodies weren’t really made for either. Their gesture of subservience was to lie facedown on the floor. So that is what Doppelgaenger was doing, facedown on the polished floor in front of Gero. The floor—whatever it was made of—was like cool silk on her skin. There wasn’t even a speck of dust to cause the least physical discomfort.
Mental discomfort, however, was another story entirely. Doppelgaenger was…in misery. Fury warred with grief, humiliation with an acute unease she couldn’t even pinpoint, and mixed in, there was a seething, bubbling mass of other emotions that were all as painful as they were unidentifiable.
“So. You failed.” Gero didn’t spit the words, his vocal apparatus wasn’t suited to that. “I picked you—I personally picked you—and you failed. You loser! You told me that eating that Djinni person was going to make you unstoppable, and you failed. You failed me! Sad! You are so overrated! What is wrong with you? How dare you fail me?”
Resentment bubbled to the top of her emotions. She was grateful that the Masters were singularly inept at reading the cues of emotion in human speech. “I am a loser, mighty Gero. I should have known better than to think I could obtain the Victrix without your personal guidance. I only hope that your personal greatness holds the generosity to forgive my unforgivable hubris.” Anger and sarcasm were so thick in the air it was a wonder they didn’t show up surrounding her as clouds of bile green and sullen red…but Gero, as usual, was oblivious to anything that wasn’t himself.
“Well…yes. You should have come to me for directions. I suppose my underlings must not have instructed you to do so. They’re even bigger losers than you are. Sad!” Gero’s feet moved a little on the floor in front of her, as he swayed back and forth. “I’ll have a word with them when I’m through with you.”
“Yes, Lord Gero,” she repeated. “You are absolutely right, as always.”
Suddenly Gero stopped swaying. She stiffened as she sensed him bending down over her even though she couldn’t see him. How could she know that? The sensation threw her into confusion for a moment. Then, suddenly, a whole new world of sensation burst on her, coming from…
…her skin. It was like skin radar. Or heat-sensing skin. Or pressure sensing. Or vibrational sensing. No, it was all of these. All of them at once. And this must have come from Red Djinni. She winced as her mind struggled to cope with what Red must have always had to deal with, a constant stream of information that bombarded her. She had a vague sense that Gero had resumed speaking, though it was drowned out by a massive overload of sensory data, enough that she couldn’t pick out anything over the din. And then…
She exhaled as her surroundings came back into focus, her mind growing accustomed to processing and mapping it all, and it was with a certain wonder that she took it all in. She saw it all, the entirety of his enormous throne room. She remembered the first time she had been brought here, a rare honor even among the elite. It had not met her expectations of grandeur then, and if anything, her extended senses amplified the sheer tackiness of it now. The Supreme Oberfuhrer Gero, in his infinite wisdom, had chosen flash over substance, excess over functionality. While each surface was maintained, kept bright, polished and immaculate, the furnishings defied any notion of style or elegance. To say the landscape was “busy” was a staggering understatement. No area was untouched by alien-looking trophies of war and countless monitors which hung from the walls, from the ceiling, angled towards a massive throne where Gero would sit and watch the constant stream of violence he had set in motion, from all around the Earth.
She had maintained her male form then, as she did now, for even the Masters were not above prejudice. If anything, Gero was the worst of them, gauging first one’s sex and appearance, placing value on experience and merit almost as an afterthought. What did it matter to him? Everyone who served him did so with the disturbing knowledge that if they displayed so much as the slightest degree of disrespect, their death would be quick and merciless. Such incidents were rare, rare enough that Gero would opt to deliver judgment by his own hand. It was said that there was no one the Supreme Oberfuhrer couldn’t dispense of with a nod of his head, even Barron if it came to that. Doppelgaenger could only guess at the power he possessed; it was all buried in legend.
If he really was that powerful, he hid it well.
Like all of the Masters, he stood well over the usual height for human: eight, perhaps nine feet tall, more than enough to tower over them. Like all of the Masters, he had an oddly feminine face, broad at the top, narrowing to a pointed chin, with a mere slit for a mouth, twin slits for a nose, and enormous, jewellike eyes, Like all of them, he had six arms and two legs; the two largest ending in powerful pincer-claws, the other four kept folded against his torso, ending in tiny, delicate hands. This part was not usual; most, though not all, Masters’ manipulative arms ended in some combination of two-to-six thin but muscular tentacles. Like all of them except Barron, he wore mostly decorative armor completely covering his torso, and his head was covered in what looked like feathers. Unlike most Masters, his head feathers were not silky; in fact, they looked stiff and bristly, almost strawlike. Every Master she had ever seen was a different color. Gero was a sort of brass color. Too orange to be gold. And yet, despite his arrogant manner, he seemed almost frail. He moved with a delicate precision, as if his tired body could bear only so much exertion, hiding away whatever great power lay within.
Gero continued to bend over her, and Doppelgaenger came to attention as he folded his arms behind his back. He was about to ask her something.
“Do you know why we ally ourselves with some members of a race we intend to conquer?” he said softly. “We always do this. Sometimes we even accept some of them into our world, like the ones you call the Thulians. But have you ever guessed why?”
“No,” she replied, so wrapped up in her own internal struggle that it was all the reply she could manage.
“Not just because it’s entertaining, which it is, of course. But because you all bring something new and intriguing to the party. Sometimes—most times, really—you can’t integrate with our society in your proper place, and we let you die off when we conquer your world and burn it to the ground. But sometimes you prove useful, entertaining, and adaptive, and we keep selected members of you with us. Even fodder has its purpose. Those fools in Ultima Thule were particularly useful. Gladly did we give up that pathetic collection of rebellious upstarts, knowing full well that the humans would at last feel safe, safe enough to betray the location of Metis.” She sensed Gero’s head plumes moving, slicking back. “So the question in your mind should be, How do I make myself so indispensable to Lord Gero that he keeps me with him when he blows this planet up? And that, really, is the only consideration you should have right now.” He stood up. “Because unless things change, we’re close to that moment. And so far, there are not too many of your kind that seem worth the trouble of holding onto.”
“I will double my efforts, Supreme Oberfuhrer,” Doppelgaenger replied. “You will have the Victrix woman, I swear this to you.”
“Yes, I suppo
se we will,” Gero chuckled. “A pity that Tesla and Marconi were lost, and Arthur Chang, but no matter. With Verdigris in hand, Victrix will surely complete whatever intelligence is left to be salvaged from this pitiful ape planet. Their combined imagination and expertise should be enough to catapult our AI matrix to a desirable plateau, perhaps even enough to solve that most damnable puzzle that has plagued us since the beginning.”
For the upteenth time, Doppelgaenger almost asked what this ultimate mystery was, and quickly silenced herself by gritting her teeth. It was death for any mere human to even ask.
“Tell me something good then, Doppelgaenger,” Gero sighed, returning to his throne and planting himself down on it with a grandiose flourish. “I feel an itch, and I suspect snuffing out your worthless life might go a far way to scratching it. Tell me something. Save yourself.”
“The process to have Verdigris transferred to the matrix proceeds smoothly, Supreme Oberfuhrer,” Doppelgaenger said. “The technicians report none of the complications experienced previously with other subjects. It would seem that Verdigris had prepared himself for this; it’s almost as if he had foreseen he would inevitably be in this position, though probably in a more voluntary state of mind. They expect his consciousness will reach saturation in the temporary stasis field soon. Then it will be a simple matter of eliminating his more troublesome traits, like his essentially rebellious and contentious nature, before full transfer to the matrix.”
“I suppose that is something,” Gero said. “It makes me feel better.” Abruptly, he waved at the air, like a child on the verge on a tantrum. “But not enough! I desire more!” He sat up and glared at her, and though she lay flat and prostrate, Doppelgaenger’s radial awareness detailed a rather frightening revelation. Gero’s eyes had begun to glow, and then burn with a great light.
She remained still, awaiting the end.
It didn’t come, and she fought to remain calm as the light faded from Gero’s eyes. She sensed a slight cock of his head, a gesture that often betrayed a sudden moment of rare inspiration for the Masters. For them, inspiration was often the prelude to violence; but this was Gero, who savored playing with his food.
“Tell me, Doppelgaenger,” Gero purred. “You pursued the Djinni with a fervent ardor, one I have not seen in quite some time. And here you are, victorious over your adversary, claiming his very body as your prize. Speak the truth, did you achieve your heart’s desire?”
“No, Supreme Oberfuhrer, I did not,” Doppelgaenger moaned, and shuddered as she failed to quell her sorrow.
“Then your quest for immortality has eluded you,” Gero snarled. “Again, you fail. I tire of you now, Doppelgaenger. Go. Go and serve, and be mindful of how close you came to extinction today.”
“Thank you, Supreme Oberfuhrer. I live but to serve.”
Doppelgaenger rose slowly to her feet and carefully backed away out of Gero’s throne room. When she had reached the corridor, and the door to his throne room slid shut, she did not allow herself to feel anything. It still wasn’t safe. Gero always knew when one was lying, and she had come dangerously close to revealing herself. Only when she was half the ship away, did she stop.
Was she immortal? She simply didn’t know, though she had her suspicions about it. When Gero had asked if she had achieved her heart’s desire, he thought her sorrow came from the utter disappointment of a long, failed experiment. But she had answered him with truth. No, her heart’s desire eluded her, but it wasn’t that old burning ambition for power, for immortality. Her heart had died when she had destroyed the only thing she had ever loved, the only thing she had ever truly desired. She supposed that might have saved her life. If she had answered yes, what might Gero have done then? If she truly was immortal, would that not be worth more to the Supreme Oberfuhrer than all of her past service? She imagined herself seized on his command, bound and neutralized and taken to the research facilities to be dissected, studied, in the hopes of unraveling the secrets held within her new, undying form. It might have frightened her once, but with the death of her love, she struggled to find meaning in anything. The only thing she felt these days was an overwhelming sense of fatigue. Ever since she’d integrated Red Djinni, in fact. She’d been alarmed the first time it happened; this had never been the case with anyone else she’d devoured. But…well, Red was different. So very different. It stood to reason that his integration would be different from every other experience she’d had.
Bed, she thought, and hurried towards her quarters. Gero would know, of course, but he’d probably assume she’d been momentarily overcome by the glory of his presence and needed a bit of a lie-down.
Whatever. The thought of the oblivion she would surrender to for the next few hours was more inviting than anything else she could think of at this moment. Yes, bed. The mere prospect gave enough strength that she hurried away to her quarters; she could not taste that sweet, sweet darkness soon enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
* * *
The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore
Mercedes Lackey
I thought I knew and understood my creator perfectly.
Well, even I can be wrong.
When ECHO located their headquarters in Atlanta, they planned for the future. Quite a distance into the future, in fact. They knew they were going to eventually be the place of incarceration for meta-criminals. They knew there would be a lot of them. So they dug a hole.
A really, really deep hole. They turned it into a many-layered basement, reinforced to take on anything.
Then they put a building on top of it.
The building and the first two basements were normal ECHO facilities: offices, labs, research. The rest was Top Hold. And every time ECHO needed to add more space to Top Hold, they just developed the next floor further down. No one, except a handful of people with access to the plans, knew how many floors down the basement went.
It was, after all, a really, really deep hole.
When the Kriegers had come calling, they had wrecked what was on the surface—but not Top Hold. This was a place intended to keep meta-criminals, securely and indefinitely. ECHO not only had to plan for powered people trying to break out, they had to plan for powered people trying to break in. Plus, there had been the Cold War, the Soviet threat, the Chinese threat. Top Hold could survive a direct nuclear blast intact. Its power plant and facilities were stand-alone from the building above it. The prisoners—the ones that hadn’t escaped with Slick—didn’t even have to be relocated while the public floors were cleared and rebuilt.
And now the section had one new floor occupied, but not by a prisoner.
* * *
Back when she was about to graduate from Merlin College at Oxford, Vickie had daydreamed about finding an industrial loft and converting it to her new home. All that space…she’d have room to put in her very own salle for weapons practice, she could have a huge workroom, and the idea of a single, big, open space all to herself was very attractive to someone who’d spent the last four years in a room about half the size of the average American child’s bedroom, into which she’d crammed bed, desk, chair, bureau, and wardrobe, since none of those ancient chambers had such a thing as a closet. Granted, her room at Merlin had had a fireplace, but…that didn’t make up for the fact that it was so small that having four people in the room induced a state of acute claustrophobia in all of them.
Well, as with most things, daydreams and reality were rather different. Here she was in this huge, echoing space, and what she wanted was her apartment—or even that cramped little college room. There was too much space, and not nearly enough in it to make it seem remotely livable. But she wasn’t about to complain out loud; at least she was safer here than anyplace else.
Bull had arranged for the things she’d asked for, but there was only so much that could be done on short notice, with the result that the borrowed furniture, augmented by her desks and special chair from the Overwatch suite, made the place look like a furniture-store-displa
y floor three quarters through a bankruptcy sale. The walls were bare concrete, the floor covered with tobacco-brown industrial carpet. All the plumbing, HVAC wiring ducts and conduits were exposed. The overhead lights had been harsh and made it look even worse, so she’d opted for floor lamps, which gave little spots of light in the gloom. There was a shower, toilet, and sink behind a screen in the corner where the water came in and sewage exited. A cot with a memory-foam mattress was behind another screen in the next corner, her clothing in boxes next to it. A lone recliner stood in the third next to a lamp and a pile of her magic books, with the rest of the books in boxes nearby. There was a fridge full of meal drinks, and a cabinet with a coffeemaker, coffee, cat food, and booze next to the “bathroom.” The Overwatch suite, desks, computers, monitors, zero-g chair and all were shoved up against the wall with the most electrical outlets. And there was a stereo Bluetooth linked to her computer rig next to it. Everything was here, mostly still in the boxes it had been packed into. The middle of the room was divided into “magic work area” and exercise area. Grey’s catbox was in its own little “hut” in the bathroom; both Grey and Herb were sitting off to the side of the exercise area, watching her.
She’d hoped being out of her own place would cut back a little on the constant reminders of Red and the ensuing grief. All being here did was double up on the loneliness.
But she had something she didn’t have at home. A salle. Bulwark had looked puzzled with the specs she had stipulated for her “exercise area,” but there it was, a nice set of pells as pretty as anything back at Merlin. And if she couldn’t forget Red even for a second, at least now she could work herself into a white-hot fury against the pells with her weighted ironwood practice rapier and dagger.
Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle Page 53