“An apt observation, I suppose, for one with a suspicious mind. Supposing that you are right about this, why ever would I need someone as yourself, miss? What, precisely, do you have to offer? If it is to be alliance, as opposed to let’s say…employment, then there needs to be something brought to the table in exchange, yes?”
She smiled a little. “To be as blunt as a white-eyed barbarian, the only things I need to ‘bring to the table’ are myself and Jade Emperor’s Whisper.” Verdigris inclined his head for her to explain. “But really, Dominic Verdigris, even a fool can tell you are stalling for time.”
It was at that moment that Khanjar chose to make her own dramatic entrance, stepping out of the shadows behind Verdigris. The difference between her and the intruder was that Khanjar already had her pistol drawn and trained on General Shen Xue, who was easily thirty feet away. “Move and you die.”
Verdigris almost didn’t see the woman move. He was used to metahuman swiftness, but this was something special. One moment she was in front of his desk. The next—Khanjar was staring in disbelief, the barrel and half of the action of her pistol had hit the floor, and the woman was pulling her sword back into the “ready” position. “I have moved,” the woman said in a conversational tone of voice. “And yet, I have not died. You, however, have been disarmed. Which would be less of a problem if you had four, like Shakti. Out of compassion I have not removed any of your limbs.”
Verdigris’ jaw dropped ever so slightly. He turned his head so that he could look at Khanjar; there was a thin rivulet of blood running down from her cheekbone, made by the single cut People’s Blade had used to destroy the pistol. Khanjar almost never misses…and yet, she didn’t even get a shot off. He faced the intruder again. And how in hell did that sword manage to cut her? “General Shen Xue? I think we just might have something more to discuss, after all.”
Again, the woman bowed, slightly. “Please to dismiss your bodyguard, then. What I have to say is not for her ears.” Verdigris waved his hand over his shoulder almost absent-mindedly; his eyes were completely transfixed on Shen Xue. Because of this, he completely missed seeing the storm of emotions that played over Khanjar’s face in a split-second; first shock, then disgust, and then she went completely stone-faced before turning abruptly and striding out of the room.
Shen Xue waited until Khanjar had left the room. Then she seated herself. “As you are a barbarian,” she said, “Tea will not be required. Now. Let us begin.”
Hole Hearted
Mercedes Lackey
I don’t know how Bella did it, but we all took our cues from her. She didn’t give up and lie down when Metis refused us help. She didn’t give up and lie down when Alex Tesla died. She only got tougher when Verdigris took over ECHO.
Somehow she decided that if no one else would lead the revolution and save ECHO, she would. And if she had to rebuild one person at a time, so be it.
Starting with Bulwark.
She stared at her own face on the “Hot Healers of ECHO” calendar on the wall of the Med team Locker Room. She was the only one in a white version of the spandex pseudo-ECHO uniform, in no small part because while the skin-tight blue spandex gave everyone else the illusion of being clothed, unfortunately when the day came for the shoot, it so perfectly matched her skin that it made her look totally naked. So Spin Doctor had sent people to ransack the supply rooms for something else, and the photographer had put her front and center of the group shot.
Which ended up making her the fanbois fave and looking like a brainless bimbo. She’d hated that at the time, but now that turned out to be a good thing. A very good thing. Now Dominic Verdigris III, ECHO’s lord and master and the man behind the assassination of Alex Tesla, thought she was a brainless bimbo. He had no idea that among herself, Yankee Pride, and Detective Ramona Ferrari, with the collusion of CCCP Commissar Red Saviour, there was a quiet revolution brewing in his ranks.
The actual head of ECHO Medical was…ineffective. She’d become the first go-to, and on the basis of “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than get permission,” she was making a lot of the decisions that the actual MDs couldn’t or shouldn’t be bothered with. And she and the actual MDs had quietly agreed that paperwork would be turned in without permission being granted. It was working. The bean-counter in the head office was just as happy to sign everything put in front of him without actually reading it.
Which was kind of making her…operating head of ECHO Medical, at least so far as the metahuman teams were concerned. On top of being one of the “Gang of Three.”
She was off-and-on uncomfortable in this position, but…Johnny Murdock had put it best. “Ain’t necessarily ’bout bein’ the ‘right one’ so much as it is bein’ the one that’s there an’ willin’.” As she had said, there were four people who could do this. Yankee Pride, Ramona, Bulwark and herself. Yank was being watched day and night, Ramona wasn’t a meta, and Bulwark…
She pounded her fist into the wall beside the calendar and swore. Bulwark. Bulwark was still in a coma, the coma that bitch Harmony had put him into. And then she had murdered Tesla. But it was what had happened to Gairdner that really hit Bella hard; of all the wretched things that had happened since the Invasion, this was the one that made her heart twist up into a tight knot and hurt as if she was the one that had been on the wrong side of a gun. She’d only been to see him once, and she’d left feeling furious and helpless and—
—and her comm went off. Swearing again under her breath, she thumbed it on. “Belladonna Blue.”
It was Ramona. “Bell, we’ve got a crisis in sickbay. Einhorn’s having a meltdown, and you seem to be the only one that can handle her.”
Of course Einhorn was having a meltdown. What else was new? “On it,” she replied. Fortunately, she was only a few yards from the source of the crisis du jour.…
* * *
“I can’t!” Einhorn wept, ringing her hands and tossing her head so that the little pearly unicorn horn that gave her that callsign cut through the air. “I just can’t! I’ve tried and tried and he’s not getting any better!” Her voice spiraled up into a wail, and Ramona waved her hands placatingly at her. The rest of the ECHO DCOs had left the room; Einhorn was a projective empath and not even remotely under control at the moment. Stay too close to her in this mood and you’d be throwing yourself out a window in short order.
But Ramona was right. Bella knew how to handle her, in no small part because Bella was a much more powerful—and much more controlled—empath than she was. So the question was—comfort or confront? What Mary Ann Booker wanted was comfort, and she usually got it. And in this case, she might just be due a little comfort, because Einhorn was the one in charge of Bulwark and Bella could understand and absolutely sympathize with her despair.
She had been trying. For once, she’d put aside a lot of her selfishness and had been spending hours beside the comatose meta. Maybe that was out of guilt, because Bull had treated her with respect and care. Bella wasn’t going to argue motives; all she wanted was results.
But if Bella was going to successfully run this revolution, she had to have respect. And she wasn’t going to get that by acting like a greeting-card angel and going “There, there, sweetie, it’ll be all right.”
So she marched right into the ready-room, stood just inside the doorway with arms folded over her chest, and barked into the first moment of silence. “Shut the hell up, Mary Ann!”
Einhorn froze and fixed Bella with a deer-in-the-headlights stare.
Now Bella moved into the room, one slow, deliberate step at a time. “That’s enough, girl,” she said, quietly now. “You aren’t doing Gairdner any good by having a fit, and you’re doing everyone around you a lot of damage. I’ve warned you about projecting. Shut it off, or I’ll shut it off for you, and you won’t like that.”
Einhorn immediately throttled down on the despair rolling out from her in waves. Ramona sighed with relief, and eased out of the room. Bella nodded. “Good girl. That’s more l
ike it.”
Einhorn blinked, and tears welled up out of her limpid blue eyes, coursing down her cheeks. She was the only person outside of Hollywood that Bella knew who could look beautiful when crying. This time, however, Bella could tell the tears were genuine, born of real frustration and real desperation. Einhorn liked Gairdner, a lot. She might even have been one of his protégés; she’d certainly been the DCO for him plenty of times. And despite being one of ECHO’s strongest psionic healers, she hadn’t been able to do a thing for him. “I can’t bring him out of it,” she sobbed. “I can’t even get him to heal! I’ve tried and I’ve tried and—”
All right. Now is the time to comfort. Bella let her expression soften, dialed up her own projective empathy into what she called the “Momma Fix” mode, and let it wash over the girl. “I know, kiddo,” she said. “Hell, everyone knows. You’ve been a trooper, and it’s not your fault you’re getting no results. We need to try a different approach. Boss says you need off the case. I’ll take over from here. You’re back on street duty.”
Einhorn’s eyes widened and the tears stopped. “You are?” she said incredulously. “I am?”
Bella nodded. The girl burst into tears again, but this time of gratitude and relief. Bella had come prepared, since there was very little that Einhorn did that didn’t involve tears at some stage or other. She handed over a packet of tissues. “Go on, blow your nose, wipe your eyes and suit up. Check your comm for assignment. Shoo.”
And here I am…not the boss in name of ECHO’s DCOs, but the boss in fact. Ramona defers to me. Everyone defers to me, where the healers are concerned. Jesus Cluny Frog…I have the healers. If I can keep this up, if, if, if…can I get everyone?
The girl took the packet, stammered something, and hurried out. Bella took a deep breath, steeled herself, and headed for the ICU where Gairdner—aka ECHO Op 3 Bulwark—was hooked up to far too many machines.
And she wondered what the hell she was going to do now.
* * *
“Dammit, Jarhead,” she murmured to the unconscious man. “What is wrong with you? You’re like some kind of black hole.”
It was horrible to see this man she knew, she admired, she (admit it!) more than admired, lying there like some sort of special effects dummy hooked up to so many machines he had to have the room to himself. No wonder Einhorn was in despair. Bella had been sitting here trying to pour energy into him, to kick-start his metahuman body into healing itself, for the last hour. And everything she poured into him vanished, as if he was a bottomless pit, as if there was a hole where his heart should have been. She’d never seen anything like it before. And for the last ten minutes, she had debated trying to find The Seraphym and hope to persuade her to help—
But The Seraphym had her own priorities and her own agenda, and if fixing Gairdner was part of that, she’d have already been here. If it wasn’t, Bella could hunt Atlanta until she was old and gray and never find her. Or…more likely…if this was something Bella could do on her own, the Seraphym would not appear until after Bella had figured out how.
She reached out and smoothed a strand of his white hair back in place. “This has to be something Harmony did,” she said, thinking out loud, as her heart ached to see him this way, and she repressed the urge to cry like Einhorn. “But how in hell did she do it? If I knew that, I’d know where to start to fix it.” Only four people had been there when Harmony had planted Bulwark; one was Bulwark himself, one was dead, and the other two weren’t exactly going to come forward and make confessions. Tapes didn’t show her anything useful.
All right. Tapes showed her nothing. Her own psi wasn’t helping. The docs hadn’t come up with anything. That left a miracle or—
Magic.
She pulled out her comm, and scrolled through until she got the right callsign and gave it a ping. After no more than a couple of seconds, a sleepy voice answered. “Victrix.”
“Vix, are you on duty?” That was a loaded question; in a sense, Vickie was always on duty, but that wasn’t evident on the ECHO duty roster, because only a handful of people were aware that Vickie was also Overwatch, running a very clandestine operation out of her own apartment for both select ECHO personnel and CCCP.
“Clear for the next few. Why?” came the reply.
“I’d like you to come over to the ECHO ICU and run an eye over Gairdner. And round up Sovie and see if she’s free to do the same.” Sovie was callsign Soviette, Jadwiga, the CCCP’s chief MD and psionic healer. “He’s not improving, he should, and I don’t know why. I don’t know what Harmony did to him. It’s exactly as if he has a—an energy drain somewhere, but I can’t figure out how, and I can’t figure out how to plug it. I need more experienced eyes over here. Different ones, anyway.”
There was a pause. “But that wasn’t magic—” Vickie said uncertainly. “At least, not that I know. Harm wasn’t a magician.”
“No. But magic might tell me something that science and psionics isn’t. And Sovie might have seen something like this before. Marx knows the Russkies have more than their share of weird metas.” She described as well as she could Gairdner’s situation while Vickie listened. There was another pause.
“All right, I’ll come with a kit and give it a shot. Be there in half an hour.”
“Thanks.” Bella settled back on her chair, and resisted the urge to take one of Gairdner’s hands in hers.
* * *
Vickie brought two people with her, both CCCP. One was Soviette, but the other was the black-clad, porcelain-white-faced meta called Upyr. Althea Vladislava, was her given name, but even she rarely used it or answered to it.
“Why—” Bella began, when Upyr waved a gloved hand at her to cut off the question.
“Am beink to look for wolunteers for donations,” the young woman said. “Henergy donations, da? Ven donation is villink, is cleaner. Purer.”
“Oh…” said Bella doubtfully. Then. “Oh!” with realization of what Upyr was talking about. Upyr’s power was like nothing Bella had ever seen before, but it could be exactly what they needed to at least hold the line. “Lemme text Ramona.” Well that would solve one problem. Upyr was…well her name meant “vampire” in Russian, but rather than blood, she both took and gave some form of—Bella wasn’t sure what to call it. “Vital energy”? Whatever it was, it was the same thing she and Einhorn had been pouring into Bull to no real effect.
Ramona appeared in person in answer to Bella’s text, and went off with Upyr. After that, the girl came and went several times, arriving looking pink and nearly vibrating with vitality, leaving looking like her usual composed, white-faced self.
Meanwhile Sovie and Vickie both huddled over Gairdner, while Bella did her best to restrain her impatience, perched on an examination-room stool. The two of them muttered in rapid Russian; Bella was conversant, but not fluent enough to follow much of it. “Da” and “Nyet” and “Nechevo,” she got, but they were getting deeply technical in rapid-fire medical-Russian and she was not conversant in that. Vickie sketched signs in the air over Gairdner’s chest and studied them intently as they changed, then faded. Then she’d go to her laptop and tap a while, then go back to muttering to Jadwiga.
Then, after this had gone on for almost an hour, they stopped Upyr and muttered at her. There was a lot of nodding and further muttering before Upyr went back out again in search of more victims. Finally Sovie gave a determined nod and the two of them turned their attention to Bella.
“You are beink to haf good instincts, sestra,” the Russian doctor said warmly. “Comrade Victoria made postulate, Upyr and I confirm and agree. Harmony—created somethink like ve haf all three seen, but this—” she waved her hand at Bullwark’s prone body “—it goes beyond vat ve haf seen before.”
Before Bella could blurt that she wanted them to get to the goddamn point, Vickie stepped in. “Harm was something like Thea—Upyr. Her overt power was to amplify energy, but now we know she could take it too. Yes, I know you know that. But this wasn’t a standard
meta ability, obviously, and she hid it well. Until now, Upyr is the only one of her kind that Sovie’s ever seen…I’ve heard of something similar, but I’d never actually seen it until now. And she could do something Upyr can’t; just like you thought, she set up some sort of permanent drain on him, in the part of him that actually gives him his powers. It’s like she’s put a shunt in there. I don’t know where it’s going, Upyr can’t suss it out, and neither can Sovie. We only know it’s there, and though we’ve put a governor on it to slow the drain, neither of them can figure out how to shut it off.”
At this point Bella was about ready to explode with frustration, but again, Vickie held up a gloved hand. “Whoa, wait. Just because they can’t, that doesn’t mean that I can’t. Remember the almost-disaster with the comm-unit a few days ago?” Vickie waggled her eyebrows like a couple of semaphores, and briefly her fingers formed a shape like the Tesla device. “That was when I found out that magic works enough like psionics that I can probably cut the drain. For all intents and purposes, Harm was a vampire, and that’s one of the things my family specialized in for generations. I won’t lie to you, it’s magic, which means it’s risky, I can’t give you the odds on whether it will work or not right this minute, I can only tell you that if we don’t do this, he’s never going to come out of the coma, he’ll just keep draining down, and you can’t keep pouring energy down a hole. And you know this.”
Yes, dammit, she knew this. Her fist hit the concrete wall beside her in frustration, but she did know this.
“Is not just his best chance, sestra,” Jadwiga said solemnly. “Am tellink you as physician and healer, is his only chance.”
“All right,” she said, after weighing the alternatives as best she could, and coming up with nothing better. “Let’s do this.”
* * *
Vickie was in a hurry, and lugging an extremely heavy bag—an old-fashioned portmanteau that had been in her family since the 1800s in fact—and wasn’t watching where she was going. As a consequence, she nearly ran into a chest. A male chest, covered only by a very non-standard excuse for a t-shirt. Which meant that the chest could only belong to Red Djinni.…
Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 3