Power

by Robert J. Crane

  “This is the world as it will be if you fail,” she said. “This is what will remain if Sovereign has his way.” She stretched out a hand to encompass everything around us. “This is his legacy, what he will forge should you surrender.”

  “My God, this is …” I looked at the nearest building, a structure where nothing remained but a half-foot wall with the occasional burnt wooden stud to mark what it had been. A massive maple had been turned utterly black in the yard beyond, and it took me a moment to realize what I was looking at. “This is my house.”

  “And so will be the rest of the world,” Adelaide said, sounding like some sort of oracle. “I have seen it, and now I give it to you to be its keeper. Remember this moment each time you wish to give up. Remember in darkest night. I said to you once before that I would be waiting for you in the darkness. This is the darkness in which I have dwelled. This is the vision that Adelaide—not Andromeda—lived to pass along to you.” She took my hands in hers, and they felt warm. “Andromeda was a broken creature of men.” There was a subtle shift in her appearance, and I saw a faint hint of a mohawk replacing her long hair. “Adelaide fought to the last in hopes of finding a kindred soul to carry on with what she saw, with what she knew.” The British accent came full-on, damned near Cockney to my ears.

  “I won’t forget,” I said, taking it all in once more. “I can’t … forget.”

  “Remember,” she said, and it was a word that reverberated through my soul, soaking up all the sensation—the charred smell, the hot, dead air, the feeling of my flesh prickling—and filling the word with its essence. “Remember, and ready yourself for the moment when you will need it. He is the most base and deceitful of liars, and he thinks his world will be bright and glowing, not filled with ash and death borne of his fury and impatience and wrath.”

  “I don’t think he’ll believe it,” I said. “But I’ll … keep it to myself”

  “Until the moment you need it,” Adelaide said. “No man wants to know they’ve unmade the world while they’re trying to build it anew in their own vision.”

  “I won’t let him see it,” I said. “I promise. And I will … remember.” The word send a stir through me, a sickening, rushing feeling that this was on me, that there was no one standing between the world I saw and the one I’d left outside the box before Frederick and Grihm had shut the door on me. “I won’t stop. Whatever it takes. I swear it.”

  “Then I have but one final thing to teach you, Sienna Nealon,” Adelaide said, with a ghost of a smile. “One last thing to show you, and then you must go back into the darkness, then take your light out into the world that awaits …”

  Chapter 57

  Sovereign’s hand was around my throat and I didn’t care for it. I punched him in his, hard enough that he noticed it, then smacked his arm with enough strength to deaden the nerves for the second it took me to slip free. I landed and kicked him in the chest with a boot, flinging him into the concrete block wall, which shattered, sending dust into the basement air.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said simply. I could feel the fury reverberate inside, though.

  “Still don’t know … how you knew,” Sovereign grunted as he got back to his feet, dusting himself off. “No one knew but … Weissman and Claire and me … and I had her scooping out those memories whenever he had even a chance of running into a telepath without her …”

  “I knew because a girl named Adelaide knew,” I said.

  “Who?” He shook his head, partly in rage, partly in disbelief, partly in sheer frustration and WTF.

  “She was a succubus,” I said, “who had a Cassandra-type shoved in her brain along with a ton of other metas so she could either be your bride or your worst enemy.” I sneered at him. “Care to guess which she turned out to be?”

  “Ohhh,” he said, and the rage just pooled off of him. “You look so cocky, so smug, standing there. Like you have a chance. Like this isn’t going to be the fight you can’t win.” He snorted. “You think you’re done already.”

  “Going by the numbers, I’d say I’m about ninety-nine percent done.” I cracked my knuckles. “One to go.”

  “Well, that last percentage point is gonna be murder,” he said, and there was no trace of Joshua Harding in his features now. He was scorned, plain and simple, and his rage had taken over. “I’m going to—”

  He came at me again, full on, and I kicked his ass right through the ceiling.

  The floorboards shattered as he changed course radically upward. I lost track of his progress as splinters and shards of wood showered down on me and I was forced to duck to cover my eyes. When I looked up again, I could see the blue sky above.

  I shot straight upward, using the power of Gavrikov’s flight to take me after him.

  I kept going past the point where I suspected he’d stalled and started scanning the horizon with my eyes. I didn’t see him before I heard him coming, and he slammed into me around the midsection, howling his rage as he did so. He tried for a punch and I blocked it, but he kept coming for another one and I let him carry us with his momentum as I sped up into a frenzy of blocks to counter his maniacally fast strikes. He was untrained but operating on pure rage, while I was in a weaker position but relying on my training.

  Without ground to use for leverage, I knew I’d have a harder time getting him off of me. So I kicked the gravity back on and let myself fall, his speed still shooting us forward in a graceful arc. It took him a second to realize what I’d done as I started to slip away from him. He tried to use his legs to anchor himself to me but failed, and as I slipped out of his reach I turned the flight power back on and did an abrupt in-air flip that culminated in a kick to his groin.

  I heard the wind leave him in an “Oof!” and righted myself midair. He sailed on a little farther with the extra momentum my hit gave him. He started to come around slowly, and I shot at him, leading with a foot.

  I caught him in the face and the impact smashed him into a two-story brick building. Right through the wall, pieces of brick falling down around him. It was almost like in the cartoons when someone leaves a silhouette going through a wall, except his was really more just a gaping hole.

  He popped his head out a moment later, looking not quite fresh as a daisy, but close. There was still a rage in his eyes, but some caution had taken over. There was some blood, but I could tell he’d used Wolfe’s father’s power to heal up quickly. “Why?” he asked.

  “Because the building was there and I figured if it didn’t break open your thick skull it would at least make a decent backstop for your sorry ass.” I smiled meanly at him and could tell he took no amusement in my joke. “Why what?”

  “Why do you fight so hard for this?” He made a grandiose gesture with his arms, the wannabe dictator taking in the unworthy world around him. “Abuse, murder, violence, war, starvation—why would you fight so hard for a world that’s been so cold to you? That has such things in it? That let these things happen to you?”

  “Because I’m a shield,” I said. “I’m the shield.”

  “You know what a shield is? It’s a tool. You’re a tool of other people!” he taunted me.

  I just sat there, hovering, defensive, waiting for him to make his next move. “One of us is a tool, that’s for sure.”

  I watched him clench his jaw, baring his teeth inadvertently as he did so. “I thought you were the one.”

  “And I knew all along that I could do better than a maniac who set out to destroy our entire species.” I pointed at him. “Helpful hint—women actually do like nice guys. Or maybe a guy who’s confident, and only slightly dickish—not someone who got rejected as a villain from a James Bond movie.”

  “We could have done something great together,” he said.

  “I would never have signed on to be your Eva Braun,” I spat at him before I lunged forward and kicked him right back into the hole in the wall.

  The building was set up as a studio office of some sort, and I saw as I kicked him that
everyone had cleared out of the middle of the floor. Which was lucky, because there wasn’t much chance I could have stopped before hitting him.

  He blasted through furniture and out the other side of the building. I was after him in a flash, and just as he started to come down, I caught him and punched him in the face, sending him aloft again. I could see downtown ahead of us, looming a lot closer than I would have preferred. Beyond the damage I’d just done, this had the potential to get a lot worse for the city of Minneapolis.

  I caught him on the low arc again and hit him with an uppercut that mustered everything I had. He shot up into the air, propelled by the strength of my attack, and I followed after him. He made a grunting sound as I caught him and yanked him forward into a punch, grabbed him by the front of his shirt and punched him again, caught him by the back of his neck before he got away and slammed my elbow into his nose.

  He flipped through the air and righted himself, floating. I watched as his face went from deformed to normal in a matter of seconds. “Anything you can do, I can do better,” he said, and it came out as a spiteful gloat.

  “Try having a menstrual cycle,” I said and launched myself into his chest with another boot. He tried to dodge but he was a little too slow. I caught him on the arm and heard it snap as he flipped away from the impact.

  He stopped a short distance away, watching me with those heavily lidded eyes, breathing heavy. “I don’t understand you.”

  “Clearly.”

  He started to ramble on, but I tuned him out. Little Doll, this isn’t working.

  Tell me something I don’t know.

  He beat me, Wolfe said. He can beat you if you hold back and let him. If you play his game.

  He is fast, Bjorn said.

  I’m as fast or faster.

  He can heal from your every attack, Wolfe said.

  I flung a blast of flame straight from the core of Gavrikov’s power at him and he stopped monologuing long enough to throw up a hand and absorb it. “You can’t beat me,” he said, eyes flaring.

  “Beat you? I just wanted to shut you up for a minute. Can’t even hear myself think over your yammering—”

  He came at me with a roar of anger and I rolled at the last second. I got the feeling he wasn’t used to dealing with someone who operated at his speed and, like anyone who’s been sitting at the top of the food chain for too long, it had made him weak. He grazed my jaw and I laid into his. The impact of the traded blows threw us a good thirty feet apart, staring at each other across open sky, the city of Minneapolis’s skyline hanging behind him in the distance.

  “You can’t stop me,” he said. “You know why I was trying to lock you up in the stasis chamber?” He sounded tired, almost defeated. “Because I was going to use my Ares power to destroy every army in the world.”

  “But you didn’t,” I shot back at him. “And you can’t just crate me up like a dog because you want a servile bride—”

  “I wasn’t doing it because of that,” he said. His weariness made way for a slow smile. “Do you know why we were killing the metas first?” I waited, waited for this maniac to just spit it out already. He was drunk on the sound of his own voice, clearly. “Because the power of an Ares doesn’t work unless you’re carrying an instrument of war—and most metas don’t.” His smile made way for a grin. “Tell me, Sienna … are you carrying a gun?”

  I felt something take over my body, something run through my mind like I’d lost control over all my muscles. Whatever Zollers had done to block him from entering my mind was completely useless against this power. My hand went to my hip and drew my pistol. I felt it rise in my own grip, my arm unable to stop moving, to fight against it, to do anything—

  The barrel of the pistol pushed tight against my skull, and I knew not even the power of Wolfe would be able to stop the bullet from sending my brains out the other side of my head. With a last breath, I just held on against my will and felt my finger start to pull the trigger.

  Chapter 58

  Nyet! Gavrikov’s voice rang in my ear, and suddenly the air grew hot around me. I felt something in my hand burn, dimly, like the first hints of a sunburn on a clear day.

  “No!” Sovereign yelled, and my head started to clear. I looked toward the pistol and saw the weapon melting to slag before my eyes. My hand was on fire and I tossed the remains of the weapon clear. It fell down, down below me toward a pond in a park.

  I lunged at him and he was a hair too slow to react, his eyes still following the downward path of the gun I’d just tossed. I bloodied his lip with the first punch, opened it with the second, smashed his teeth out with the third—

  He threw me off with a counterpunch that rocked my head back and sent me flying. My t-shirt was partially burned through on the right shoulder and I heard it tear as I twisted from the hit. I managed to come around and ready myself for a counterblow, but he was just standing off from me again.

  “It shouldn’t have been like this,” he said, almost like he was talking to himself. The frustration was rising with every syllable. “I’ve waited … for thousands of years for you. I planned everything … everything!” he screamed.

  “I’ve been manipulated by the best,” I said. “Compared to Winter and Omega, you’re an amateur. Probably that whole ‘apart from mankind’ thing. It’s hard to get good at pulling peoples’ strings when you’re not around people—”

  “You’re just sitting there mocking me,” he said, and turned hateful eyes toward me. No gentleness, no puppy dog, no googly, not even stalker eyes. This was just raw fury, the breath of hell.

  I’d seen worse.

  “You open yourself up to it,” I said. “Or to coin a popular phrase … ‘you were asking for it.’” I let that sizzle on him for a minute.

  He screamed and came at me again, bull on a charge. This time I didn’t bother to veer off, I came right back at him. I hit him so hard I heard his jaw break, teeth crack, nose shatter, face smash—he flew at the earth and cratered it like he’d dug his own grave.

  And a few seconds later, he rose right back out, face rearranged and back to normal.

  “Son of a bitch,” I breathed.

  Not working, Little Doll.

  “That’s a real talent for news flashes you’ve got there, Wolfe. You could have a wonderful career in broadcast journalism.”

  “I’m not going to stop,” Sovereign said, coming back toward me slowly. His eyes were glowing with malice. “I’m gonna break you, little girl, break your will, and then I’m going to fix this world—”

  “First of all, it’s not your world to fix,” I said. “Again, with the living apart from humanity, you lose the right to make changes in people when you don’t like what they’re doing. Second, you said it yourself—my mother used to lock me in a metal casket until … do you know when she’d let me out?” I waited to see if he’d answer, but he just hung there, all malevolence and anger. “Until my will to resist her broke. Except it never did,” I spat at him. “Not really, anyway. I just learned to do and say whatever it took to get out.” I glared down at him, resolute. “So if you think you can break me, good luck, jackass. Because I stayed behind to beat you when I could have run. I’m here to knock your ass flat, and I walked into that room knowing that was my task at hand. Whatever it takes, no matter what. That’s my motto.”

  “You could live for thousands of years,” he said in a low rumble laced with fury. “As near to forever as your nineteen year-old mind can imagine. In a perfect world, free from all the sins of humanity that plague us.”

  “I’d rather die right now than listen to you go on and on and on—” I said, shaking my head and rolling my eyes at him. “God, do you even listen to yourself? You’ve gone round the bend, dumbass. You’re so drunk on your own damned glory you probably can’t hear how crazy you sound.”

  “It’s not crazy if I can make it happen,” he said in a low grunt. “It’s not crazy when we have the power to do it.”

  “And all for the low, low pric
e of annihilating the whole world,” I said. “Zollers, you can stop now.” I looked down at Sovereign. “Take a glimpse into my mind. See what Adelaide showed me. It’s your future, if you live and get your way. Take a look at your perfect world—”

  He shook his head, left to right, so rapidly that I thought he’d been afflicted with some sort of nerve malady at first. “You’re a liar. She’s a liar. You’re trying to trick me, you deceitful—” He shuddered, full body.

  “Don’t go all Gollum on me,” I said. “You really do it. You bring about the end of the world if you keep trying to go down this road.” I figured by this point he was beyond reason, but since I was skeptical that just beating his ass was going to produce the desired result, I gave it a try anyway.

  “SHE’S A DECEIVER.” His voice had changed, grown fuller, like someone had taken over behind the eyes. He looked a little wild, too, and I got the feeling not for the first time that Sovereign was a man whose engine had thrown a piston a long time ago. Or whatever it means in car talk when someone loses their shit. Breaks a belt? Something like that.

  He threw a bolt of lightning at me and I barely dodged it. I tossed a blast of fire back at him as large as a boulder and he stopped tossing lightning long enough to absorb it and throw it back. I caught it and pulled it in with one palm, dragging it behind me as I drank it back in. Lightning lanced after me again, and I sped away at full tilt, remembering Janus’s cautionary tale about how his parents had been immolated by Zeus’s lightning.

  This running away thing was not going to work, either, and I knew it.

  Lost his mind, he has, Wolfe said.

  “Keen observation, Yoda,” I said. Downtown loomed in front of me, and I tried to think about what I could do. I shot upward, not stopping for a thousand feet or more. The city shrank beneath me, but I could still see him back there.

  I paused in flight and held fast. Sovereign thundered at me, flying full force.

  I waited until he closed and pulled Bjorn to the front of my mind. I hit him with the War Mind, and it looked like he’d had to shrug off a punch to the face. That lasted about a second, and then he had to contend with an actual punch to the face from me. His right hand glowed blue and I knocked it aside with my left, which was covered in flame. I wondered if he could channel two powers down the same arm and a moment later my question was answered as he absorbed the fire and then shot electricity into the sky above.