I giggled, then got serious. "How did you feel about the bombings?"
"He told me a copycat read his manifesto and stole his name. I believed him—a mad bomber doesn't go around saving vampires from themselves. I was working for him when I ran into you at the convention, too. I wish I could have told you about him."
"Well, since we both kept our secrets..."
I told her everything I knew. She was stunned to learn I'd seen his face and she'd accidentally fingered him—well, the twin she'd known nothing about. I only held back the beacon I'd swallowed and the Anarchist's plan to trap his other half. Obviously the reverse had occurred. I felt sick remembering how.
"So he was here," she said when I finished. "Why, if you didn't call for him? And the wall exploded. What happened?"
I swallowed. "It was Rush." I tried to pull the pieces together.
"The Anarchist told me his twin helped trigger the earthquake, that he manipulated a borderline psychotic A-class terrakinetic, a guy who, before he'd interfered, would have snapped a couple of years from now, tried and failed to destroy San Francisco. Rush appeared when the wall blew in. He stunned him, stunned me. Future stuff I suppose—he had a 'phaser set on stun,' like TA used on me the first time. Then he must have locked up my memory of the last few hours with another gadget. At ten-to-one speed he had plenty of time to stun both of us and go back over the wall into Hypertime with the Anarchist before the bits of wall stopped bouncing. No trace."
Artemis swore and I nodded.
"He has to be working for the other one. The wrong Anarchist just won."
I really felt sick, right down in my still-healing guts. Now nobody could stop DA from playing any game he wanted with our future.
We couldn’t do anything. Atlas, Nimbus, and Ajax were dead, Blackstone incapacitated, Rush a traitor. The active team was down to a worn-out mystic, a bouncy acrobat, a vampire, and half-healed me.
And who could we tell that a supposed terrorist was actually a good guy, that he'd been captured by one of our own working for the real master villain? Rook... Probably Rook could be trusted, but just as possibly the Hollywood Knights had been penetrated as well. For one second I considered calling Veritas and the DSA. But tell them I'd been working with a terrorist on the DSA's Most-Wanted Dead or Alive list? And that he was really a nice guy in need of rescue? Veritas would have to believe that I believed—but would anyone think it was true?
Artemis finally told me to get some rest while she thought about it, and I agreed. Left alone, I sank down on the bed, put my hands over my eyes.
Bits of TA's revelations kept bubbling up in my head. The attack on Whittier Base had been an unexpected bonus for DA—The Ring would have made their attempt a few months down the road anyway, an attack on the White House. He'd been planning on intervening to short-stop it, but the earthquake and the hole it blew in national security gave them an early opening they had to take. He hadn't seen them coming for the same reason he hadn't foreseen the quake.
I remembered that much, dragging pieces of memory together. And how sorry he'd been. It felt very weird. Some memories felt like they'd happened years ago, others felt five minutes old. They all felt incomplete.
And a piece of memory kept poking at me, unattached to the rest of the explanation TA had given me. Just one word, in his voice, and the feeling of my world turning over.
Shelly. Shelly. Why? He knew my life story, but he couldn't change any of it any more than he could have gone back and saved Jacky's parents or prevented the earthquake once it happened.
But.
Even with everything else, I kept circling back. I finally assumed the lotus position in the middle of the bed, tried to meditate the way Chakra's book called for (the way that didn't require a partner, anyway). Focusing on my breathing, holding the memory gently, I tried to distance myself from it, peek around its edges.
"Shelly." I tested her name, saying it like a mantra.
"Hi," she said. I screamed and fell backwards off the bed.
PART TEN
Chapter Forty Two
You can't cheat death, but sometimes you get encores.
Astra Interview, 2017
* * *
My best friend, dead for three years, was standing by the door. She looked as real as life, with flying red hair, freckles, faded jeans, and the same black t-shirt she'd worn in my dream the night before, under a checkered flannel shirt with the cuffs rolled up.
"Jeez Hope," she said, rolling her eyes. "You're one of the strongest people in the world now—how can you still be so jumpy?"
I pulled myself up, ignoring the too-true comment, and walked over to stand in front of her. She watched, cross-eyed, as I poked her in the forehead. Which wasn't there. She was an illusion.
"If I ever find out who’s doing this I'm going to break the bone of their choice." My voice shook.
She sighed.
"Too late, his double already grabbed him. We don't have time, so let's get this out of the way." She flipped her hair back, tucking strands behind her ears.
"I'm Shelly but I'm not. The Anarchist has been planning his end-game for years, and he figured there was a good chance that both of them would get taken out. He wanted to leave some kind of guide to past secrets and future ifs and might-be’s—even some way of predicting the likelihood of coming stuff without him—so he put together a database on a 22nd century quantum computer to leave behind as a resource."
She held up a hand and ticked off points on her fingers.
"Fact: the brain is a biological quantum computer. The mind is a quantum field generated by the brain. Fact: the science-guys never managed to create a sentient artificial intelligence in the future." She unfocused her eyes, as if quoting from memory. "'True sentience emerges organically, as part of the whole evolved organism.'
"But, fact: a living mind can be copied through its quantum field, run as a dual system until the original mind stops functioning. The mirroring mind stays around as a 'ghost system.' Think of it as identical twins, or the Anarchist; once they were the same person, then they weren't.
"Fact: when you showed up, the Anarchist looked into your futures and decided that you should be the keeper of the system, and it would be easiest if it was a ghost system of either you or someone you trusted.
"Fact: he figured having a new, spectral you around would be just too woogy for words, duh. So he went back in time and dropped a neural net bioseed in my soda instead of yours. By the time I took my first and last flight, my quantum mirror was up and running and I'd been doing my thinking with two brains for years.
"So when First Me kissed the sidewalk and her quantum field dissipated, became one with the universe, reincarnated, got a harp and wings, take your pick, Second Me stuck around. The Anarchist brought me back to the present and plugged me in. Got it?"
I sat with a plop when my legs hit the bed. It was Shelly; whenever she'd wanted to talk me into some stupid stunt she always started by burying me in facts and then dodging while I tried to pick at them.
"Last night," I whispered.
She rolled her eyes again. "I snuck into your cerebellum, duh. When he found out, he locked me out—I couldn't come back until you called my name. I've been waiting for hours."
"But how?"
She grinned. "How many times did Momma Corrigan tell us not to take candy from strangers? Other than Halloween, of course. That pill he gave you was more than a beacon. It was also a bioseed for a neural receiver—part of it went to your brain to grow and attach itself to your ocular and aural nerves and other bits. It's not telepathy, really; it just lets me appear like this so only you can see and hear me—he used it himself to give you that warning when you were flying into the fight before. It took awhile to grow, which is why he only used it then."
The floating ghostly Anarchist I'd seen. I'd just shrugged it off as fancy future-tech, and it had been. Shelly walked up to lean over me, hands resting on knees.
"I can't affect your thoughts," she
said. "Just your senses. Like this." When she ran a finger down my nose I felt it and scrambled back. Rolling her eyes again she sat beside me.
"I'm sorry, Hope," she said quietly. "I really, really am."
She looked forlorn. "I must have been bug-nuts crazy to jump. I just got so impatient. When I splatted the Anarchist explained that I was still me and we had to go, but I wanted so bad to stay and try and make it up to you. But he can't change the past, only work in it."
I couldn't believe it. Everything she said seemed in line with the Anarchist I knew, but Too Good To Be True was far too mild a statement for it. Between the shocks of wild hope and fear I felt like the top of my head was going to fly off.
But Shelly had lost everything, not just her best friend. What could I say? You left me alone? Don't do it again? I forgive you? She had that without asking.
"Have you told your mom yet?"
She shook her head.
"How can I? I can only interact with people electronically or through neural reception. Can you imagine what would happen if I called her up or sent her an email? I hurt her so bad she had to move out of the neighborhood, leave all her friends behind. I think about it every day, but what would I say?"
I realized I'd reached for her hand.
"You've got to tell her. I'll help, I promise."
She nodded and took a deep breath. "Okay. So let's talk about next."
And just like that we'd moved on to another topic. Like always.
"Right," I said, trying to think. "The Anarchist's support network. There's got to be lots more than just you and Artemis and me. Can you reach them?"
"Easy peezy. Why?"
"Because if the Dark Anarchist interrogates his twin he'll learn all about his network."
Shelly shook her head.
"You're forgetting about their quantum superimposition thingy; you know those stories about identical twins feeling each other's pain? I'll bet his evil twin won't hurt him. Well, maybe not." She looked young and uncertain and I suddenly realized that she was still fifteen. She'd always been the leader, but now I had three big years of experience on her. I was the grownup in the situation.
"If only we could mount a rescue," I said, frustrated. "But they could be anywhere in time now."
Wait, that's not right. Something he'd said...
"Shelly, does DA's power work the same way?"
She nodded.
"Then he can't have taken the Anarchist out of the present, can he? He can't take anything nearly as large as a person with him! That's why he sent Rush instead of popping in himself!"
"But I can't hear him anymore," Shelly said plaintively. "It feels like it always does when he goes traveling."
"But he could simply be shielded, couldn't he?"
"I suppose..."
I jumped up and circled the room, picking things up and putting them down as I thought.
The Anarchist was still (probably) in the present, which meant we could mount a rescue if only we knew where he was. He was shielded so we couldn't find him, but...
I made the decision that just about finished us all; grabbing my earbug, I called Artemis.
Chapter Forty Three
I love a well-planned mission, and a lot of the actions we take part in are planned—or at least come with chapters of procedures and training specific to the situation. But sometimes the need for an action comes at you cold, no preparation, no precedence, no protocols. Then you can only act from your gut and explain yourself later. If you survive to explain.
Astra Interview, 2023
* * *
Artemis brought the laptop from her gear. Her daysuit goggles included a fancy Heads Up Display like Ajax' helmet, and Shelly hacked both goggles and earbug to project an image and talk to her. I was very grateful not to have to try and convince her I'd acquired an invisible but very real friend, and kept the introductions short. Artemis didn't have much problem believing that the Anarchist had left us a backup. She'd been Blackstone's apprentice for only a month, but apparently he was big on contingency planning.
"Absolutely," she answered my question. "I can access our internal security—most of it anyway. The really sensitive stuff I'd need Blackstone for."
I sighed, relieved. I barely remembered my visit to him this morning but he wasn't in any shape for anything.
"What I want you to do is backtrack the telemetry for Rush's gear. His earbug is part of his helmet, which he had on when he blew his way in. Even if he had it turned off, I remember from my orientation that it should still have been linked to our system."
Artemis laughed. "Yes! We can start with the time of the explosion and follow his trail till it disappears!"
"Not when he's over the Wall," I hedged, "but every second he traveled in realtime, no matter how fast, his gear should be traceable. Can you—"
She already had her laptop open and as Shelly and I watched she initiated a secured connection and began opening functions.
"Got it!" she exulted. "Got a trace lasting less than five seconds here on the base at the time of the explosion." She kept searching.
"He pops up again outside the base, which must be where he left his bike." She snickered. "It must have been a bitch hoofing it out with the Anarchist over his shoulder. He shows up again in Barstow—he probably stopped to refuel. Then... again just outside of Reno Nevada." She pulled up a satellite image. "He dropped back into realtime to open a gate to this dirt road." She scrolled the image along. "And... the only building at the end of the road is this old airport hangar. It's got to be a safehouse. Reno's north and over the mountains, so I can't imagine it felt the quake much."
"Anything since?"
She scanned ahead. "No, that's his last signal."
Then he couldn't have caught a plane from there—he'd have had to do it in realtime. I was willing to bet that we couldn't pinpoint him now for the same reason Shelly couldn't find the Anarchist; they were both in a shielded place. So we knew his location, probably. Now what? Reno had to have at least one CAI team, but what could we tell them? That one of our own had kidnapped a wanted terrorist and we needed to rescue him? No.
Artemis watched me, not saying anything. It wasn't fair. I wasn't a leader; I'd followed Shelly and then the Bees as a willing accomplice, worked for my mom, apprenticed under Atlas. I was good at following. At least I knew what Atlas would do.
I put my mask back on.
"Okay, I'm gone. Don't tell anyone about this till I get back—we don't know who else is playing for the other team."
"Hell with that," Artemis said. "I'm coming with you."
"I can't—" But of course I could carry her. She didn't breathe and could easily take a full-speed flight with me.
I didn't bother to check out, just informed base security that I was going flying so they wouldn't shoot us down. We stopped at the barracks to collect gear, and back outside Artemis wrapped her arms around my neck and we were off. I held my acceleration down so she could hang on, but LA dropped out of sight behind us in minutes.
"But why so fast?" Shelly asked as she floated along beside us. "And shouldn't we get some of the others in on this? From the Anarchist's other contacts, I mean?"
"No time," I shouted over the wind, not that I really had to raise my voice since she heard me through my own head.
"We're dealing with a time traveler, and the moment he steps back into the future he'll be able see us coming—or where we've been, it's confusing. We just have to hope that he hasn't traveled forward again since telling Rush to make the grab. If he has, we're hosed. I'm hoping he just told Rush what to do, dropped back a few weeks for the trip to the safe house, then came back to the present to meet him there. That was less than two hours ago, so we may have a chance at surprise!"
"So there's a plan?"
"Bust the Anarchist loose, maybe capture the bad guy! We don't have time for a plan, but you do! I want you to put together an information package—everything that's happened. If we don't— I want you to send it to B
lackstone and work with him. Can you do that?"
"No! You're going to get yourself killed!"
She had a point. No plan, no backup, no real intel. This wasn't the comics, where the heroes flew to the rescue and busted through the wall of the Master Villain's secret base to take down his unprepared henchmen, stop him from pushing the Big Button. If they were at all ready for us we were probably toast. It wasn't fair.
I focused on my flying.
"I know," I finally said. "But when you wear the cape you do the job. I'm sorry."
Wearing the Cape Page 28