“It gets worse,” he said, and I could sense him slumping lower even though I couldn’t see him because my head was down.
“Because getting better would be completely unacceptable right now,” I muttered. “How?”
“You’re not just going to have to answer to Congress,” Foreman said. I looked up and saw a ragged weariness on his face that seemed to be all too common in every ally I had lately. “Part of what we think was leaked was a complete profile on our present response to this crisis.” His lips formed a thin line as he paused. “Including a full profile of you, naming you the head of Agency operations. So you’re not just going to have to answer to Congress when the storm comes.” He drew himself up to his full height, and suddenly I felt very small indeed. “You’re going to be a household name when this breaks, and that means you’re going to be in the full spotlight and scrutiny of every single American watching, in addition to the rest of the world.”
Chapter 22
There’s a reason the phrase “the shit hits the fan” is such a popular way to express a complete and total mess. Because really, what other image could you conjure up that encapsulates the absolute, disgusting mess you’re dealing with when feces hits a dispersal machine like that?
I didn’t really know until that moment, but it seemed likely that “Nineteen year old shut-in and murderer has fate of the world handed to her by United States Government” might actually trump “the shit hit the fan.”
Foreman had parted ways with me after leaving me with that lovely tidbit. He’d promised to stay around campus for a little longer afterward, which I might have been more enthused about had I not felt like he’d just informed me that someone had dropped a pickup truck from orbit and that it was going to land on me sometime in the next week or two. No, don’t worry about it because you can’t do anything to stop it. Go perform brain surgery, and try not to think about that inevitable doom that’s heading your way. No pressure.
I dressed in silence in my quarters. I cast aside the bloodstained hospital robe and realized I’d been in more of those than most nineteen year olds. When it came to physical wounds, I’d probably had more than most people on the planet. Not that that would matter when the press came calling for me. I kind of had a feeling about how this was all going to play out, and it reminded me of that time I’d been cuffed and perp-walked out of the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport customs area.
Except with a wider circle of judgment this time. Like “everyone on Earth” wider.
Being hated isn’t so hard, Little Doll, Wolfe said. You get used to it after a while.
“However hated you are, I doubt you’ve had seven billion people despising you at once, Wolfe,” I said.
Perhaps not, he said. But everyone in the ancient world did hate me at one point. He let out a soft growl. Wolfe and his brothers were not gentle spirits, and there was so much anger …
The old gods knew the power of vitriol, Bjorn chimed in. Your lessers will always resent you. That is the curse of power, and it takes a strong person to wield it—
“It takes someone who has power to wield it,” I said, cutting him off as I buttoned my blouse. It felt vaguely silky, and I suspected it was one of the ones Kat had bought for me with a company credit card. At some point I’d had to distract her from Janus’s comatose state when he’d been down for all those months and sending her shopping had worked pretty well for a day or two. I’d had to send her back to get bigger sizes after the first trip, but once she’d figured that out, she’d done a decent job. I had stuff in my closet that I’d never even worn.
Which would probably come back to bite me in the ass if they ever held a budgetary hearing, now that I thought about it.
“Wielding power for the sake of it, just to whip it out and swing it around, is the least impressive thing,” I said then hesitated, realizing what I’d just said. “You know what I mean. This is the type of thing Century probably sits around and talks about. ‘When we’re in charge and all-powerful, bwahaha, things will be different.’” I finished buttoning my blouse. “Yeah, congrats, you’ve got power. Why not try using it responsibly? Why not try using it for actual good instead of running over everyone who disagrees with you?” I shook my head as I started to pull on my slacks. “All these maniacal egos, I swear. It’s like being a meta breeds a thirst for power that rivals any Evil Overlord stereotype.”
Power is a need in and of itself, Gavrikov said, sounding sullen. Those who drink from its chalice become intoxicated by its sensation and want more and more. Think about those … what do they call them? Wildfire metas? They commit a crime, then another, and escalate from there as they test their limits. They use their power in ever-increasing ways, asserting it and drinking deeper from the cup.
It’s man’s way of making himself a god, Roberto Bastian weighed in. Think about it. You use your power to shape the world in the direction you want it to go. Like the Russian said, wildfire metas are a great example. They use it for personal enrichment, for robberies, to kill someone who pisses them off. They set themselves up and create their own direction from life, writing over the plan other people have for themselves with force and violence. They play god by taking away the choices of others.
This is how it has always been, Little Doll, Wolfe said. Killing is man’s way to manifest their own reality by removing the elements they don’t care for—by force. This is what the old gods did, bending wills to their aims by threat and coercion, by killing when necessary. They shaped and built their world in the image they desired. This is what power offers you—the ability to bring your vision to life.
“With force,” I said, sliding a boot on over the holster and gun I habitually kept strapped to my ankle. I had lost more guns than I could count at this point. Probably another budgetary hearing for those. “By pushing their will on others through force.”
There were democracies back then, weren’t there? Zack asked. He’d been quiet up to now.
For a time, Wolfe said, almost shrugging. Then … empires. Tentacles that grew within them to make them easier to move in one swift motion. Threats around, threats abound, and all the while the strings get tighter and tighter. The unity made it easier for the gods to rule from behind the curtain. He made a little contented sigh. It was fun to watch.
“It doesn’t look the U.S. Government means to let Sovereign rule from behind a curtain,” I said, staring at myself in the mirror in my room. I slipped on my jacket over the holster I carried. I looked tired, bags under my eyes, which fit well with my assumption that no one around me was getting much sleep at the moment. “Somebody is going to rip the curtain right off.”
Don’t fret, Little Doll. There’s always a way out.
“Oh, yeah?” I considered myself in the mirror, tried to make sure I hadn’t missed a button. I may have had meta speed, but I still had to fasten buttons as slowly as a human. “What’s that?”
Power, of course, Wolfe said, and I could see his Cheshire grin in the darkness of my head. The Little Doll is so strong that almost no one could restrain her at this point. No one could catch her, if she didn’t want them to.
I stared at myself in the mirror and realized what was implicit in Wolfe’s statement. That if someone tried to hold me accountability for my less-than-legal actions, I could fight back—and probably win. I looked into my own eyes, the blue with the green flecked in them, and realized I hadn’t stared into my own eyes in a while.
If they came after me, would I have the nerve to pick up a gun and start shooting at some poor FBI agent who was tasked with apprehending me? Or some soldier lined up with his brothers, M-16 in hand, with orders to have me surrender or take me down? Because it might have to come to that.
I watched my hand, hovering just above the holster on my belt, and I let it drift down to stroke the leather covering my new Sig Sauer. I was faster now. I was stronger. I could take more damage and shrug it off, assuming it wasn’t a fatal blow. Put in the same situation Li had forced me into a few months ag
o, now I might have been able to survive his firing squad if I fought back.
But would I?
I felt my palm drift over the rough grip of my pistol, and then jerked my hand away as if I’d been burned, just for considering the idea. Killing people who were sent to apprehend me in the name of the law was …
It was murder.
It was wrong.
And yet that had never stopped me before.
I let my eyes fall from the mirror, not liking what I saw there, and felt my hand go right back to resting above my holster as I left the room, as naturally as if it were coming home.
Chapter 23
“We got problems,” I said as I strode into the conference room. Everybody was assembled and waiting, and no one bothered to get up to meet me as I came in.
“What else is new?” Reed said from his place down the table.
“Well, Li is down with that arm wound,” I said, “and most of Century appears to have decided it’s now okay to kill me, to hell with Sovereign’s wishes to the contrary.” I stopped at my place at the head of the table and sunk my knuckles down onto the flat, cool surface. I could hear the air conditioning churning overtime above me, that faint humming noise that I usually didn’t even notice. “So, that’s new. Oh, and the entire meta world is probably going to get outed in the press in the next few weeks.”
“Wait, what?” Scott said, blinking a little. He’d looked so relaxed a moment earlier.
“The president’s plans for countering Sovereign include briefing a much wider group of people than has previously been aware of metas,” I said. My gaze slid over Ariadne, who looked a little stunned, then to Janus, whose jaw had clenched. “They think it’s going to break soon.”
“Yay, our secret war is about to get exposed,” Reed said without any humor. “Maybe now we can get some soldiers on our side and start fighting it like it’s a real one.”
“The freeway thing felt pretty real to me,” Kat said. I glanced at her, sitting next to Janus. She looked pale. Which meant she’d probably used her powers to heal someone. I doubted it was me, since I’d still been a physical wreck missing skin when I’d woken up, so that probably meant she’d triaged and helped someone else. Maybe J.J. “But I haven’t been in many wars, I guess.”
“This changes things somewhat,” Zollers said, staring at me with cool eyes.
“Not really.” I shook my head. “I want to find a way to win this war before the word gets out.”
“Sure, killing eighty or so more metas, including the most powerful one in the world in the next few days with just us? Easy peasy,” Reed said. “And for my next trick, I’m going to make the entire Rocky Mountain range disappear.”
“That could work,” Scott said with a semi-serious expression. “Get enough pot smoke floating around in Colorado and—”
“Century,” I said. “They’re going to come at us. We need to flatten them, and do it now.”
There was an uncomfortable exchange of looks around the table. “Sienna,” Reed said, stepping up to break the news for me. “We don’t know what they’re planning. We don’t know where they’re planning to do it. All the hidey-holes we had for them have dried up—”
“Where is Weissman’s computer?” I asked, cutting him off. “We were on our way to the airfield to pick it up when we got hit. Where is it now?”
“J.J. has it,” Ariadne said. “Li got the FBI to send it over. We found some interesting things too, things that might explain your attack.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“Century has a bunch of civilian drones buzzing around here,” Reed said with a sour look. “They’ve been keeping us under surveillance.”
I frowned. “Like … Predator drones?”
“Much smaller,” Reed said. “I took a few of them out; they’re only about the size of a manhole cover, and they sell them on the internet or in retailers. They’re supposed to be for fun—” He paused. “Because I can’t think of anything more fun than spying on your neighbors.”
Scott pursed his lips. “It could be fun, depending on your neighbors.”
“Gross,” Kat said.
“Try and imagine how it is for those of us who get a full psychic blast of those sort of events, whether we want them or not,” Zollers said, giving her a glance full of deep and yucky, yucky, yucky meaning.
Probably in an effort to not think about what he’d just said, I suddenly remembered something I had to ask Dr. Zollers. “When Claire attacked me, you said she didn’t read my mind?” I watched him, and he centered his look on me. “Are you sure about that?”
“I’m sure.” He gave me a nod, and his placid expression was soothing in its way.
“So what if she had?” Reed asked, frowning at me. “It’s not like we’ve got plans aplenty of how to deal with Century right now. The worst she could have learned was that we were going for Weissman’s computer, which they probably already knew since she left it behind when she fled the scene of his death.”
“I wouldn’t want anyone else in my head, either,” Kat said, and I could tell she was trying to be supportive. “I mean, that’s a real violation of privacy, the thought that someone might see your most intimate thoughts and moments—”
“Okay, let’s just use our ten-foot pole to push away from the shoals that Kat is guiding us toward,” I said. “We still need ideas.”
“We still need some clue about how they’re going to execute this ‘phase two,’” Reed said. “I mean, it’s not like world domination comes in three easy steps—‘Step one, kill all metas, step three, world conquest’!”
“You skipped step two,” Kat pointed out helpfully.
Reed slumped in his seat. “That was the point.”
“So,” Scott glanced around the table, “if you were going to take over the world with your meta powers, how would you do it?”
“I wouldn’t,” Reed said acidly, “because unless the world’s staunchest defenders were windmills and their destruction cowed the human race into instant submission, I wouldn’t have a chance. Which brings us to another unknown—how many different kinds of meta powers does Sovereign have access to?”
“More than you would care to count,” Janus said, breaking his silence. I looked over at him and felt an immediate sense of discomfort at the look on his face. He was stern. “There are only rumors as to the exact number, but he could have absorbed hundreds or thousands of metas in his life. He could have countless powers at his disposal.”
“He can fly,” I said, ticking them off, “he’s a telepath, can create flame the way Gavrikov can, is nearly invulnerable—”
“He absorbed Wolfe’s father,” Janus said.
I watched Janus carefully for a moment. “Did you know him?”
Janus shook his head. “I do not know Sovereign.” I caught something in his expression that hinted at more.
“What about before he was Sovereign?” I asked, not letting up.
Janus’s face was almost impassive. “Before he was Sovereign? Yes, I knew him before he was Sovereign,” he said at last, letting it out like a great rush of air.
“What the hell?” Reed slapped the table and leaned forward. “God, you are just determined not to give us an ounce of help unless we drag it from you forcibly, are you?”
“It is more or less irrelevant at this point,” Janus said with what amounted to a shrug. “He is not who he once was. He is not the man I knew—when I knew him.”
I let the silence hold for a second before breaking it myself, before Reed could do it with an apoplectic rant that would make him seem like the Omega-hating fanatic that he was. “If I’m going to fight him, I need to know everything I can about him.” Janus did not stir in his seat. “Do you understand me?”
“There are elements of my involvement with him that I am not proud of,” Janus said, glancing up at me. “They are personal and bring me no pride and more than a little shame. I have no desire to root through them so that I may wallow in the particular bit of fece
s that was my life at the point when I met him.”
“You’re still keeping secrets,” I said, pre-empting Reed again. His dark face was twisted with rage looking for a moment to explode from him, pressure in search of a release valve. “I don’t care about your past. The whole world is on the line and the truth needs to come out, right now.”
“And yet I sense you are holding more than a few things back yourself,” Janus said with a resigned air. It was not accusing at all, just a statement of fact.
It still caught me off guard, and everyone’s attention turned to me. “You’re speculating.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Your response confirms my speculation.”
I took a breath and glanced, just for a second at Zollers. He shook his head in the negative. “If I am, I have a good reason for it, I promise.” I placed my palms flat on the table. “What’s yours?”
“Shame,” Janus said, unflinching. “Shame is motivator in this matter. What is yours?”
I didn’t dare draw a breath. “Fear.” I caught more than a few stray looks at that and ignored them all. “Janus … Sovereign is still at the head of this rodeo they call Century. He’s still a threat to humanity. If there’s anything you know about him that you can tell me … please.” I actually pleaded, raising my voice to a tone as close to begging as I ever tread. “Please, Janus.”
I was expecting another denial. Or quiet resignation. Or anger. Anything, really, but what I got.
Because what I got … was a hard blink of the eyes, and then two tears ran down his cheeks. The lines of his face were so pronounced that I wondered how I forgot on a near-constant basis that he was thousands of years old and had all the attendant pain that life had delivered over that time.
The old man—I couldn’t think of him any other way after that—let out a choked noise and spoke once more. “I will tell you … what I know. And afterward … I hope you will all find it in yourselves to forgive me.”
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