In the Balance

by C. Gockel

  Beatrice sighs. Voice sad and faraway, Beatrice says, “Warrior cultures tend to look down on their conquests. It’s easier to kill those you see as lesser beings.”

  Amy straightens. Of course, Beatrice would know; she survived the Soviet takeover of the Ukraine. Beatrice lost her family, her life. It’s humbling to realize in comparison, even if the worst happens, Amy has lost very little.

  She picks at the sleeve of her ridiculously luxurious coat. It had felt nice to be adored by that other Loki but her Loki had given more. He’d saved her world—even if the ‘saving’ had been painful.

  She takes a breath. She’s seen the extremes of Loki now, let loose to destroy, and tied by oath to be a tool to sustain cruel order. A tool just bristling to break free, bitter and angry, ready to wreak havoc.

  Maybe her Loki hadn’t loved Amy, but he was right, when he came back she would never turn him, or her, or it, away. Maybe it wasn’t a conscious thought to make her the bearer of his memories...but in a way, that was even more of an honor. He trusted Amy—instinctively.

  Beside her, Beatrice stands and holds out her hand for Amy to take...but it’s Mr. Squeakers who hops up first and scampers up Beatrice’s arm. Without letting her eyes leave Amy, Beatrice slips Mr. Squeakers into her pocket with her other hand. “We should go inside—it looks like Steve has sent out the cavalry.”

  Bohdi suddenly appears beside her grandmother and Amy knows what her grandmother meant.

  Shivering, hands tucked in his pockets, Bohdi says, “Steve sent me out to make sure you’re okay.”

  Amy nods at him and then turns to her grandmother, still holding out a hand. Amy’s eyes go to Beatrice’s pocket where Mr. Squeakers’ nose is peeking out, whiskers twitching. Fenrir squirms on her lap. She’s only distantly aware of Bohdi, hopping up and down now, teeth chattering audibly. Her eyes return to Beatrice, silhouetted by the city lights. Everything Amy loves is with her here in this moment.

  In another universe, Amy hadn’t met Loki and Beatrice had a stroke anyway. In this universe, Beatrice had a stroke—but she was healed by whomever healed Amy’s wounds after she was shot by the SWAT team. Amy knows Loki couldn’t have done it—healing anyone other than himself wasn’t one of his powers. But she does know, somehow that small personal miracle was connected to her knowing Loki, her Loki, the Loki that transformed Cera and saved the Nine realms.

  Amy remembers Loki’s words in those last minutes before he sacrificed himself. “Don’t let me forget.”

  Of course Amy won’t turn away from the next incarnation of chaos. She won’t let her, him or it forget they have a choice—to be a destroyer, a mindless tool, or a transformer.

  Pulling Fenrir close, she takes Beatrice’s hand and stands, her stomach lurching at the movement just a little.

  “Are you okay?” says Bohdi, taking a step closer.

  “She’s fine,” says Beatrice briskly. Protectively, Amy realizes.

  Amy gives Bohdi a small smile. He’s lost his memory—his whole world. “I will be,” Amy says softly.

  Teeth chattering, he nods and looks away.

  Amy slips her free arm into Beatrice’s, and together they walk in silence with Bohdi, streetlights glowing warm overhead.

  With every step she takes, Amy becomes more certain. She won’t turn the next incarnation of chaos aside just because she is compassionate. Amy won’t turn the next Loki away because the fate of the Nine Realms, and everything Amy loves, hangs in the balance.

  Continued in Fates: I Bring the Fire Part V—Available Now!

  SNEAK PEEK AT FATES: I Bring the Fire Part IV

  Prologue

  Bohdi Patel shifts in his seat, eyes glued to the white door in front of him. The door leads to the familiar halls of the FBI’s Department of Anomalous Devices of Unknown Origins Chicago headquarters. It is locked. They locked him in. Like a criminal. Was it Hernandez who turned the bolt, or Steve? He bites his lip. Running his hand through his hair, he looks around the room. He sees thin, dirty, brown carpeting, and a single foldout table. The chair he’s sitting on creaks.

  The radiator in the room is ticking, and it’s probably too hot—must be too hot because there is the tiniest prickle of sweat on the back of his neck—still, he shivers.

  He turns. There is also a window. Standing up and walking over, he presses his hands to the cold glass and peers through the grime. He’s three stories up, facing an alley, but there is a fire escape a few feet to the left. He shakes the hand crank on the sill and feels it give a little.

  Bohdi swallows. With trembling hands, he pulls out his wallet and flips it open. He has $23.00. No credit cards. The only ID he has is his badge for HQ. “Bohdi Patel” it says below his picture. It’s a lie of course, just like the ID he had been found with—credit cards, driver’s license, social security card—were lies. He is not Bohdi Patel. Bohdi Patel was an American citizen who died twenty-six years ago at the age of six months. The only reason ADUO calls him Bohdi is because no one knows what else to call him.

  Six weeks ago, Loki, so-called God of Mischief, Chaos, and Lies, attacked Chicago, let loose trolls and wyrms and other nasties, killed thousands of people, displaced hundreds of thousands more, and in a comparatively trivial bit of mischief, wiped Bohdi’s memory. All Bohdi knows about the time before Loki comes from Steve, and even that’s not much. Apparently, during the chaos, Bohdi had shown up at HQ, given his name as “Bohdi Patel,” and volunteered to help ferry people out of the city, in what later turned out to be a stolen cab. Kind of heroic. According to some people in the office, kind of criminal.

  Bohdi is probably Indian, but he doesn’t have a passport. He shivers. The only reason he wasn’t deported was because no one knew where to deport him to. He frowns. He also suspects that Steve had wanted to keep an eye on him—after the accident his brain had briefly hummed with magical energy.

  Bohdi flips past the ADUO badge. There is only one piece of authentic identification in his wallet. It is a photo of a dark-skinned man in white shirtsleeves and a woman with slightly fairer skin in traditional Indian attire punctuated by a bright orange sari. Both are smiling widely, all their attention on a chubby baby balanced on the man’s knee. The baby has a lopsided baby smile and is looking toward the camera, oblivious to the rapt attention but obviously thriving under it.

  The photo isn’t labeled. Bohdi’s not sure if he is the child, or even if the couple is his parents, but usually he likes to think that they are. Not so much today. They look so clean, happy, and so good—what would they think of him if they knew what he’d done?

  He had done it with the best of intentions. The security loophole was glaring and dangerous, even if it was only on the intranet, and behind firewalls and logins. After weeks of alerting ADUO and nothing being done, he’d proven it.

  A true criminal would have put the personal details of all of ADUO’s personnel on the Internet. Bohdi just changed all the names to Pig Latin—a silly language he had learned from Claire, Steve’s eight-year-old daughter.

  A true criminal’s hands wouldn’t tremble at the memory of the confrontation with Steve afterward.

  “Do you think this is funny?” Steve had demanded, hovering above Bohdi’s desk.

  Unable to suppress a smile, Bohdi had replied, “Esyay?” He’d meant to launch into a defense, an explanation of how easy it would be to change the names back, and how now Steve could get funding for more tech support. He’d never gotten the chance.

  “Don’t you understand we’re busy protecting people out there,” Steve had shouted, pointing to the ruins of LaSalle Street where magical beasties still had a habit of popping up.

  “Of course,” Bohdi responded. “But this is about protection, too…protecting your employees’ identities from espionage and blackmail!”

  Face going a shade darker, Steve snapped, “You acted unilaterally—without respect for authority. You made this department look bad, and me look bad, at the worst possible time.”

  Bohdi’s skin h
eated. That was what Steve thought this was about? Trying to make him look bad? His vision had gone red around the edges.

  “There’s no ‘I’ in the word team, Bohdi!” Steve shouted.

  Bohdi’s lips curled into a snarl. “But there’s a ‘U’ in fuck.” As soon as he had said the words, he regretted them.

  Steve’s face melted into a look of such unmitigated rage that Bohdi shrank in his chair, all his own anger vanishing. “I’m sorry,” was on his lips, but Agent Hernandez had interrupted him. “You do realize, you are now a felon?”

  Bohdi hadn’t even realized Hernandez was there. Chin tilted low, eyes glinting in Bohdi’s direction, Hernandez said, “You’re not an American citizen. Do you know what we could do with you?” Hernandez shook his head, his fists tight at his sides. When Steve had fought to keep Bohdi at ADUO, Hernandez had argued he should be deported—or even sent to Guantanamo.

  Fear twisted so violently in his stomach, Bohdi felt like throwing up.

  “Get up,” Steve said, jaw tight. Bohdi just barely managed to stand. His legs felt like rubber.

  Hernandez and Steve had led him to this room. Steve ordered him to sit; then they left and shut the door. He heard the lock click.

  Bohdi looks down at the picture in his hands. The man, woman, and baby are seated outside, behind them rises dark green vegetation. The sunlight makes flecks of dust glimmer in the camera’s eye and burnishes his parents’ shoulders. He imagines that is how the sun is in India, a warm hand on your shoulder all the time. Not like the sun in Chicago in winter. He looks out the window. The sun’s position is impossible to know behind the gray of the clouds and smog.

  He imagines what the smiling woman would say to him. “You had a good thing, with good people, and now you’ve ruined it!” He wipes his face with his hand. He did have a good thing. Steve looked out for him. He’d gotten him a job—and okay, even if it is just as a glorified receptionist, it’s probably better than driving a cab—and set him up with his parents in their enormous greystone out west near Garfield Park. Ruth and Henry Rogers fuss over him like a second son.

  Now they might deport him... If he’s lucky.

  He looks toward the fire escape. He thinks if he just opens the window, he can make it. And then where? He’d have to leave Chicago.

  His breath steams the glass. The only frame of reference he has for the country beyond Chicago is the child’s map in Steve’s boyhood bedroom. In Bohdi’s mind, each state is a different bright color, with some landmarks—the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty—drawn in friendly caricature. Beyond Chicago, nothing is real. He’d be no one in nowhere.

  Bohdi backs away from the window, nearly knocking over the chair.

  The door clicks and he drops quickly into the seat.

  Steve walks into the room, shutting the door behind him with a bang.

  Not meeting his eyes, Bohdi stammers, “I’m sorry.”

  Steve doesn’t respond until he’s sitting down on the table. “You’ve got to be more than sorry.”

  Bohdi looks up in alarm.

  Silhouetted against the cheap fluorescent lights, Steve’s skin looks so dark it is almost flat black. His expression is difficult to read. In low, clipped tones, Steve says, “It is not without precedent for the US government to hire talented pranksters with the idea it’s better you’re with us than against us.”

  Leaning forward in his chair, Bohdi feels a weight lifting off his chest.

  “But I can’t do that because you’re not even a goddamned citizen,” Steve says.

  Bohdi shrinks back in the seat. Shoving his hands in his pockets, his fingers go to his lighter. He begins to nervously play with the thumbwheel.

  “What do you want me to do?” Bohdi says.

  Without a word, Steve holds out a hand with a Post-It note. Taking it, Bohdi sees an address and phone number on it. “That is the nearest Marine Corps recruitment center,” Steve says. “I’ll hold off the filing of the charges…somehow. If you prove that you are willing to fight and die for this country, I’ll have something to tell the higher ups.”

  Bohdi stares at the handwritten scrawl. Die?

  Steve exhales sharply. “I’ll have to think of a way to get you out of the Corps later.”

  Bohdi looks up.

  Steve shakes his head. “You’re brain is too valuable to lose if you get shot.”

  Bohdi almost smiles.

  “But boot camp may teach you some discipline,” Steve says.

  Bohdi fiddles with the corner of the Post-it as Steve says, “Stodgill’s already working on the recruiter to deal with the paperwork that will result from your special situation…”

  Bohdi nods at the mention of the legal counsel’s name. He’s needed her help a lot. It seems like you need a social security number for just about everything in this country.

  “…all you’ll have to do is show up and sign the papers.”

  Blinking up at Steve, Bohdi nods again, hoping he looks sufficiently grateful.

  Raising an eyebrow, Steve says, “Just don’t wander off into the desert and die during boot camp. Someone always does that.”

  Bohdi’s eyes go wide. Beyond the door, shouts can be heard. Bohdi hears the words “troll” and “new gate.”

  Grumbling, Steve slides from the table and heads to the door.

  Standing shakily, Bohdi says, “Thank you.”

  Steve meets his eyes just before he leaves the room. “My mother would kill me if I let them send you to Gitmo.”

  Before Bohdi can respond, Steve’s gone. But he leaves the door open.

  Bohdi looks down at the address in his hand. He can picture it. Not the building, but the blue dot on the public transit map he’s memorized that marks the Blue “L” line stop nearby. He takes a shallow breath. What choice does he have?

  Crinkling the paper in his hand, he heads toward the door, the nearest “L” station, and the recruitment center.

  He almost makes it.

  Fates: I Bring the Fire Part V is available now at your favorite ebook retailer.

  All Stories By C. Gockel & Contact Info

  The I Bring the Fire Series:

  I Bring the Fire Part I: Wolves (free ebook)

  Monsters: I Bring the Fire Part II

  Chaos: I Bring the Fire Part III

  In the Balance: I Bring the Fire Part 3.5

  Fates: I Bring the Fire Part IV

  The Slip: a Short Story (mostly) from Sleipnir's Point of Smell

  Warriors: I Bring the Fire Part V

  Ragnarok: I Bring the Fire Part VI

  The Fire Bringers: An I Bring the Fire Short Story

  Atomic: a Short Story part of the Nightshade Anthology

  Other Works:

  Murphy's Star a short story about “first” contact

  Archangel Down: Book One of the Archangel Project (coming soon)

  Author’s Note:

  Thank you for taking a chance on this self-published novel and seeing it to the end. Because I self-publish, I depend on my readers to help me get the word out. If you enjoyed this story, please let people know on Facebook, Twitter, in your blogs, and when you talk books with your friends and family.

  Want to know about upcoming releases & get sneak peeks and exclusive content?

  Click Here to sign up for my newsletter.

  Follow me on Tumblr: ibringthefireodin.tumblr.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/CGockelWrites

  Or email me: cgockel.publishing@gmail.com

  Thank you again!

 

 

 
">share