Sharing stories had been his idea. He could feel her bursting at the seams. It wasn’t a particularly cool night, but she was shivering. It seemed best to get her talking, and what better topic than what had scarred her, both physically and emotionally, so totally, all those years ago? Finally get her over that hump. Desensitization. She had been reluctant, at first, but once the floodgates were open she went on a tear. Red sat and listened, trying not to interrupt. She needed this.
“So that’s why I just don’t think of magic as something that causes me problems, since…I’ve been practicing discipline since I started. Now, it’s more like art. Magic is just…so elegant.” She was peering through her hands again. “Am I boring you? I’m probably boring you. You always say I talk too much.”
“Yes you do,” he said. “Keep going.”
“Math. I love the math. When you finally get everything lined up, it just…I dunno, it sings. It’s like Bach.” She paused. “I wish you could see it the way I do, but everybody sees magic differently. My Mom sees it as needlework, tatting or knitting or something. Dad doesn’t see it at all, he’s just a werewolf.” She giggled nervously. “There’s your drive-in flick. I Was A Werewolf For The FBI.” She paused again. “So…you can tell me to shove it and never ask again, but why is it you’ve got such a burr up your butt about magic? You obviously know a lot about it, and most people who’ve cracked past magic doesn’t exist can’t get enough of it.”
He considered that, and shrugged. “Let’s just say that the magicians I’ve known were not as fastidious in their approach as you are. They were junkies, of a sort, and I was along for the ride. How do these things always begin? We were young, cocky, and there just wasn’t enough of a rush to feel sated. I was the one who brought us together. I think I was on a losing streak at the time. I needed a new gang. The one I found was different. Not your usual group of metas, these guys were based in weird powers of the arcane and occult. Individually, they were small time. When I brought us together, they found a way to tap into each others’ potential, and as a group, they found a way to overcome each others’ vulnerabilities. As for me, well, you’ve channeled through me, you know how easy it is. I have no talent whatsoever, but as a medium I was like a sponge. I could hold power like a battery and they could direct it to do just about anything they wanted to. Together, we got stupidly strong, stupidly fast.”
“Oh…hell.” She sounded stricken. “We’d postulated that could happen, that kind of spontaneous synergy, but we’ve never seen it in the wild. I’d bet your ability to be a medium is meta in origin. I’ll let some people know. We need to keep an eye out from now on before things escalate.” She shook her head. “We’re kind of a chaotic bunch, but there are people who try and…cut that kind of trouble off at the pass. Not block it or burn it out! Not unless we are dealing with sociopaths. But…teach ’em before they get themselves in trouble, I guess.”
Red shrugged again. “I don’t think we would have listened to anyone outside. We were all caught up in our own cleverness. The closest we had to any kind of moral compass was Tomb, but even he was riding the wave of our successes…”
“Tomb?” Vickie interrupted. “Tomb Stone? That’s where you know him from?”
“The one and only.” Red grimaced behind his scarf. “Why do you think he only exploits part of his gift anymore? He could have kept going, but after what happened…he lost his taste for it. He leaves the heavy lifting to his brother now. Anyway, we got to a point where we rarely had to leave the safety of our den to pull jobs. Our typical nights were spent in our base. I’d be the focus, sitting dead center. The others would form a circle around me. Tomb could conjure spirits and wraiths. Martin was the geo. He could grant them substance and ground them to this plane for a while. Justine was the pyro, in case the summoned needed a little firepower. I was the medium, directing them with my will. Like I said, it was a rush. As far as we were concerned, we were perfectly safe. If things ever got hairy, Tomb would break the summoning and they would vanish in a flash of fire and exploding rock. No one ever traced anything back to us. We did a lot of smash and grabs that way.”
Vickie gestured to him to slow down. “Whoa, let me make a couple notes. That’s…wow, I’ve never heard of anyone working like that. I need to work on the math.” She tapped a couple of things on her PDA.
“Talk to Tomb sometime,” the Djinni said. “Just get him drunk, first. He doesn’t like talking about those days.”
“Or I can ask his brother first.” Her voice softened a little. “Jacob is a really good man, Red. But…what did you do before all that? Nobody wakes up one morning and says, ‘Hey, think I’ll start a metahuman gang.’ Well…ok, nobody but Verd.”
Red favored her with a pitying look. “Really, Victrix? You’ve read my file, you can piece it together.”
She gave him back a skeptical one. “There’s next to nothing in your file, Red Djinni. At least, nothing before you got hooked into ECHO. You are the Great Enigma. Lots of conjecture, lots of rumors, damn little in the way of facts.”
“But enough,” he said. “I guess it’s obvious I was careful, by the lack of evidence, but it’s clear I ran with mercenary groups, your standard small-time gangs of thieves, even a meta group here and there. And solo, sure. What do people with those skills and abilities do, Victrix, if they’re not off saving the world?”
“Well…” she shrugged. “Making a living. I mean, I can give you a long list. You—you could have made a good living being a body-double or stand-in for just about any studio, you know. It wouldn’t have been the same adrenaline rush, I guess.”
“And the rush kept me going, most of the time,” he admitted. “Still does, if I’m going to be honest.”
She sucked on her lower lip. “Yeah…given the pain you’re in all the time…yeah, there’s no way you could keep going without a rush.”
“Back then, it kept us experimenting. We were pushing the limits, things started to get dangerous. We started leaving the base, doing open rituals without safety nets. Tomb was conjuring some pretty wild constructs. Martin was doing reversals with his protections, getting downright aggressive with offensive spells. And Justine was out of her mind, openly channeling fire. At the end, we were about ready to take on ECHO. We got hired to do a frame-up. It was trickier, since I needed to be out there doing the impersonation while the others were miles away in our base. Turns out it was our last job. We’d tried our luck one too many times, I suppose. It was the distance that did it. Justine just couldn’t hold it together. Her fire back-lashed, incinerated her body. And she was still mind-riding me…”
“…oh hell…” Her hands spasmed into fists. “…Red…” She shook her head wordlessly.
He paused to steady himself. “Yeah, I guess you know what happened next, since I’m still here and eyeballing the ladies and not the guys. It was over fast enough. Girl had power, just nothing approaching discipline. She tried, dammit, but I ended up smothering her. That’s how it ended. My will, wrapped around hers, and I felt her die.”
Tentatively, she put one gloved hand on his. But she didn’t say anything. Not “I’m sorry,” not “Shit happens,” and not “It wasn’t your fault.” All platitudes he might have lashed out at. He could feel her shivering, however; trembling with barely-controlled reaction. The image of Justine’s body burning away was probably pretty hard for her to take.
Wordlessly, he gripped her hand, and let it go as he came to his feet. There, in the warehouse, he had caught a flash of light.
“Showtime,” he said, grimly. “Start it up, Victrix.”
That instantly put some steel back in her. She did something on her PDA, drawing a diagram on the plate with her finger, and touching the center of it, then keying in a couple of numbers. They began to receive sounds of people walking inside a large, ECHOing building. Good. Her little arcane-powered bug was up and running, sending feed to her headset and his.
There was some grumbling, some cursing, and finally the footsteps
came to a halt.
“Can you zero the bug on their position?” he asked.
She nodded. “Give me a sec to bring up the vid-feed.” This seemed to involve some more complicated number-punching, but the little screen finally lit up with the POV from a warehouse shelf. “I don’t suppose you remember the raid on the ECHO Vault?” she asked, as the view rotated, and slowly moved.
“Christ, how could I forget?”
“Well, after you and I swapped places, we did some snatches there, like you said to in the planning stage, in order to cover up what we were really taking. I got a box of these little spy-balls that were one of Verd’s failures. He couldn’t make them fly, and he couldn’t come up with a compact enough power source to run them for long. I can power them, make them fly and make them invisible. This is my first live run, I’ve done…bunches…that weren’t on mish.”
“Oh,” he said. “Right. That ECHO Vault.”
“And no, I won’t send one into the ladies locker room at ECHO Med.” She looked up briefly, with a raised eyebrow. “But if you ask nicely, I might send one to Lady Godiva’s Gentlemen’s Club.”
“Don’t bother,” he replied. “I’ve got backstage privileges.”
They watched the vid feed as the spy cam took to flight. Vickie piloted with her tongue stuck in the corner of her mouth, which looked oddly childlike and endearing. The view rotated a lot as she checked her positioning so she didn’t run into anything. Finally it settled on an overhead shot of two groups converging.
“Looks like we’ve got an arms deal,” the Djinni said, grimly. “Odd, I don’t see any of them carrying any cases.”
She boosted the volume; the voices came in clearer.
“…thought you said he was a meta?”
One man, clad in typical Blacksnake armor, had stepped forward, his hand resting gently on his sidearm. He watched as the opposing Rebs looked to their leader, a heavily tattooed thug in a mullet who flashed him a near-toothless grin.
“Wha’ make you think he ain’t?” The Reb leader scoffed, beckoning another to come forward. From the shadows a scrawny boy crept up. He was nervous, his eyes darting back and forth between the Blacksnake goons and the Rebs. He held himself with his arms, his breathing shallow and stuttering.
“Oh lord,” the Blacksnake Op said, dropping his guard as he rubbed at his eyes. “I think I understand your desire to trade. I take it this one isn’t up to your standards?”
“Kid don’t have what it takes to be one of us, do you Pike?” The Reb leader leered at the boy, who shied away. “Still, we heerd y’all want metas, and y’all got good spendin’ cash. We don’ hear ’bout how picky y’all are about ’em.”
The Op ignored that, and began to size the boy up. “That your name, kid? Pike?”
The boy nodded, and stammered a “Yessir.”
“Well, at least you can talk. Not like that last mute idiot we took off your friends’ hands.” The Op sneered at the Reb in the mullet, who just shrugged as if he didn’t care. He probably didn’t. Why should he? Cash talked bigger than words. “So, Pike, what is it you do?”
Pike looked up at him. He was obviously confused.
“He mean what yer power, boy,” the Reb leader laughed. “He wants‘ta see it.”
Pike nodded, a bit foolishly, and closed his eyes. His skin began to darken, then swell, and with a noisy crunch, his now bulbous flesh collapsed on itself to form a scaly carapace. His face contorted in apparent agony and he fell to his knees from the effort of transformation. He took a few deep breaths, and stood up. He looked as nervous as ever.
The Op looked genuinely pleased. “Not bad, not bad at all. Looks like he’s gained some muscle from it. That shell looks like it’ll be tough to penetrate. I’m almost surprised. You Rebs could use someone like this. Why you letting him go?”
The Reb leader laughed again, and motioned to strike the boy. Pike shrieked, his hands flying up to guard against the incoming blow. When nothing happened he lowered his arms, though not completely.
“Oh,” the Op said. “You people really are morons. A few sessions with a good deprogramming shrink and we’ll have him—never mind. Let’s talk price then, shall we?”
From their perch across the street, Red and Vickie watched and listened. Red felt a tide of disgust rising in him. He rose to his feet with a grunt. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve heard enough.”
“Red,” Vickie said, her voice rising with alarm. “What are you—”
“You were right, this isn’t a standard arms deal. They’re trafficking in people, Victrix. I don’t think we can really let that go on do you?”
“So I call for backup!” She held her hand up to her ear, shielding her implanted rig. “ECHO Dispatch, this is One Dog Victor. We need backup yesterday. Double trouble and human trafficking, A and D.”
The reply was prompt, but not what they needed. “Roger that, One Dog Victor. Backup in fifteen.”
She switched to rapid-fire Russian—Red figured she must have switched frequencies to her special Overwatch setup. He didn’t understand all of it, but nyet, tovarisch in tones of sympathy were clear enough. He turned away, straining as he listened to the deal unfold. Finally, he shook his head. “Forget it, Victrix. Backup won’t be here soon enough. They’re about to wrap it up. We need to buy some time.”
“How—?” she gulped, standing up and bracing herself against the wall, as if taking some scant comfort from having it at her back.
“We’re going in,” he said. “We’re going to give this kid another option.”
He expected her to protest. She didn’t. Though she was visibly shaking, she didn’t. Instead, with what looked like extraordinary effort, she pushed herself away from the wall, and managed the couple of steps to his side.
“I’m…not packing,” she squeaked. “Just…armored.” She was wearing standard ECHO nanoweave; so armored, but not armed. Except for magic. Would that be enough? It would have to be. And the Djinni, sometimes it felt like he could read her mind.
“You’re never unarmed,” he said. “You can do this. C’mon.”
He favored her with a long look of encouragement. Finally, she nodded. Drawing a short crossbow, Red took aim and fired a zip line across the street. He turned and fired the anchor at his feet.
“After you,” he said, gesturing.
You picked a fine time to go all heroic on me, Red Djinni.
* * *
It had taken the better part of a month, but Christian was finally going to make his quota. Pickings were getting slim, what with ECHO ramping up their efforts to recruit every last meta they could get their hands on. As far as he could tell, Blacksnake and ECHO were neck-and-neck in the meta arms race. He almost grimaced as he haggled with the Reb over the price of this reptile boy, but managed to keep his poker-face on. It was a formality, really. He would have paid ten times the going rate for this find, just to put this all to bed. This Pike boy would make his ten, and he could go back to doing his real job at Blacksnake—shadow ops, assassinations, all the good, meaty, wetwork stuff. Not crap that any two-bit pencil-pusher could do. He would haul this boy back to the barracks, drop him off with personnel to mind-wipe and reprogram into something useful, and get back to work. He was very much looking forward to it. Hey, who knew? Maybe he and the kid would be working together someday. Once reprogrammed, the kid could be a great asset.
The Reb was grinning, enjoying the haggling a little too much. Christian fought down an urge to pop him with a solid right, or better yet, gut him where he stood. He restrained himself, although, personally, this was not to his taste. From his own perspective, that would throw them all into a bit of welcome violence. He could have used the exercise, and he suspected his boys felt the same.
But that was counter to his orders. Giving in to his own impulse would end any future dealings with the Rebs, and he really wasn’t in the mood to deal with the higher-ups on that score. Best to play the game, come to fair terms and leave. He hated Atlanta anyway.
“Look, if you’re not going to take this seriously, we can always walk,” Christian said. “The deal was for twenty even. And don’t even bring up the bikes again. They’re too easily traced back to us.”
“Hey Christian,” Mullet-head said, spreading his hands wide. “You came to us, remember? The fifty’s negotiable, but you gotta throw in ’dem bikes! They’re too cherry. We can paint ’em, grind off the numbers, no one’ll ever know they’re Blacksnake!”
Christian rolled his eyes. “Paint them…you think some cheap paint job is going to hide the fact that you have hoverbikes?”
“Hoverbikes aren’t their speed, anyway,” a new voice said. “Give ’em a short bus.”
“Who the hell—” Christian began, and did a double-take. “George Clooney?”
“Evening, boys,” Red said amiably, looking rather at ease as he emerged from the shadows. “Tell me…can someone direct me to the nearest Waffle House? It’s late, I know, but don’t you ever get that hankering for a big plate of fat-soaked carbs and bacon by the pound?”
Christian was still staring at him. Evidently the sight of a bare-chested George Clooney ambling up out of the darkness had put him into some sort of fugue state. He managed to shake himself out of it. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, realizing that, of course, it could not possibly be the world famous actor…
For one thing, the Cloon wasn’t quite so tall.
For another, he might be shirtless, but those were ECHO nanoweave pants. Something jostled in Christian’s memory, something recent. ECHO had managed to find themselves a shifter, none-other than…
Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 17