Ramona felt her entire body shudder. Anxiety welled up and she couldn’t control the trembling, her heels knocking hard against the end of the bed. As if she had been waiting for the shakes to come, Bella reached for Ramona’s hands. Weak waves of calm moved over them both. “Our priority was to keep you alive. During the first fifteen minutes, it took everything to keep you from fading out. If it hadn’t been for…for the evac, you’d be a smear underneath metal and concrete. When JM brought you in, we did everything we could, but…”
“Am I still me?” Ramona gripped Bella’s hand tightly. The blue woman gasped in pain and Ramona quickly let go, apology on her lips and fear in her eyes. Instinctively, the detective searched for a mirror, any kind of reflective surface. Fingers flew to her face as she tried to reassure herself that ‘extreme measures’ didn’t mean some self-contained suit or some full-body transplant.
Bella flexed her fingers. “Yes, you’re you. But I had to trigger something in your cells to help you to repair the damage. You came in burned, and flooded with toxin from the inside out and broken all over. Anyone normal wouldn’t have survived to make it here.” She took a deep breath, steeling herself to meet Ramona’s eyes. “You had a latent meta factor. I don’t know if it’s always been there, but I saw it and used it. After that, you…”
“You healed yourself.” Jadwiga laid a gentle hand on Ramona’s shoulder. “With help from others, but you healed yourself.”
“A latent meta factor? As in metahuman-meta?” The queasiness increased, although the trembling and anxiety didn’t return. “So I’m like you? I can regenerate and heal other people?”
The two women shared a worried glance. “No,” Bella finally admitted. “You’re a metahuman, by all definitions, but healing isn’t what we’d call the origin power. From what we saw, you’re one of those who’s able to manipulate inorganic material and incorporate it into your cellular structure. It’s not uncommon, but it’s one of the harder ones to manage.”
“Inorganic…cellular…what?” Ramona pulled her hand away and threw back the sheets. She started to move her legs, but she screamed when she saw the mottled metal around her ankles and calves. With no concern for modesty, she pulled away the top of the hospital gown. Where she had felt burning wire around her torso, swaths of surgical steel covered her skin, the edges pink and tender. She pushed back against the pillows, futilely trying to distance herself from the injury. Instead, the bed groaned with the stress and weight. The two women grabbed her arms, keeping her from getting up as Ramona thrashed and cried.
“Ramona! Stop! You’re not…please, we can’t give you anything!” Bella grimaced as she fought with the detective. “Calm down, or I’ll have to—”
Ramona struggled for half a minute more, fear and anger giving way to despair and loss as she didn’t wake up from some horrible dream on her way home from ECHO. She felt Bella’s attempt at consolation, but she finally gave in as the Russian woman put both arms around her shoulders and drew the blankets up around her chest. With nothing left to do, Ramona gave into her grief and sobbed, exhausted and full of questions that neither of them were able to answer.
* * *
“Well?” Red Saviour stood outside the room, arms folded across her chest. Bella slipped out the door, rubbing at her face.“Is nyet accident that caused this, I am certain.”
“As am I. Miss Victrix confirmed that from the cameras around the station. This was planned.” Yankee Pride’s gauntlets glowed with energy, his mouth drawn tight. “And for us to succeed, Verdigris has to think he won this round.”
Bella nodded once. “Then we tell him nothing. Let him draw his own conclusions. Keep her here to recover in the meantime. Everything surrounding the ceremony goes as planned. And Pride…”
“I know, Miss Parker. Miss Victrix says she can supply some convincing remains. Officially, Detective Ramona Ferrari is dead.”
Save Me
Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin
All I can say is that in the middle of all the hell we were going through…there was still time to be human.
Even for those of us who weren’t.
It had been another long day for John Murdock. So much of what he did on a day-to-day basis was what a neighborhood cop would have been doing, if there had actually been any neighborhood cops left; police forces all over the world had been decimated, and they were scrambling for recruits. Hard to get them when merc organizations like the cheaper versions of Blacksnake were offering more money than any police department could offer. The rich in their gated communities were getting protection from gangs, thieves and Thulians alike; as ever, the poor were left hanging in the wind. Until the cops could get their numbers up, most beat cops were kept to high priority areas; John’s neighborhood didn’t qualify, so they rarely saw so much as a patrol car.
So John and CCCP were taking up the slack. Lots of walking, talking to the neighbors, showing the colors. Sometimes rousting out a dealer, or a thief, or a bully. Domestic disputes. Sometimes a genuine bad guy. Not a lot of action today. After his patrol with Georgi and Bear he had made sure to stop in at Jonah’s shop to see how the neighborhood was doing socially, get the low-down on how things were shaking out that didn’t involve busting a head or three; there were a few minor chores that he had to take care of, all of them adding time to his already long shift. Tired as he was—and damn if it seemed like he could never get enough sleep these days—he was happy to take care of the tasks. The last was to check up on the community garden; it was a sight different from when he’d first helped the neighborhood start it up. Vegetables, some dwarf fruit trees and raspberry and blackberry bushes donated by the Hog Farmers, herbs and flowers all sprouted and grew where there had once been a lot strewn with rubble and broken glass. Kids were encouraged to play carefully between the rows of plants and pull up weeds while they played. There were a lot of “weed houses” and “rock forts” in the shade of the taller plants. Action figures and dolls salvaged from the destruction corridors acted out high drama under the tomatoes. People in this neighborhood were still “shopping” in the rubble, and who could blame them? Anything that had belonged to someone still living had been claimed.
John was inspecting a short row of corn stalks when he heard someone working on the far side of the garden. Quietly he made his way around the side until he saw Upyr diligently cultivating around the roots of some bean bushes. Well, they looked like bushes, anyway; they were certainly waist-high and didn’t look as if they were going to stop growing any time soon. At the same time she was instructing a little girl who was squatting next to her with a completely absorbed expression on her tiny face. John leaned against a post and watched the exchange.
“So, plants are beink like little girls with growink feets. You must to give them room for toes to wiggle in dirt, da?” The little girl giggled, and nodded. “But you do nyet want to tear up shoe or scratch feets at same time, so you must to beink careful.” She looked up and spotted Murdock. “Privyet, Chonny.”
“Evenin’, Thea. Burnin’ the midnight oil?”
She shrugged, and tossed her snow-white hair out of her eyes. “Is only sunset. And is beink too hot for pale devushka to vork garden in afternoon.” She stood up and handed the little girl a kind of basket or bucket carefully folded out of newspaper. It was full of beans. “Now, beink take home to mama. Tellink her kale be ready for pickink tomorrow.” The little girl dashed off, both arms wrapped around her bundle. Upyr picked up her gardening tools. “Are you hungry for beans, Chonny?” she said, with her Mona Lisa smile.
He held up his hands, smiling. “Naw, but thanks, comrade. Not feeling too hungry at the moment; just a bit under the weather, lately.”
“Too much Amerikanski fasting food, not enough wegetables,” she scolded. “You are to beink look pale, like me! People vill to be sayink you are my twin brat.”
“I ought to be so lucky as to be so pretty.” He grinned at her. “Now, git. I know for a fact that there’s gonna be a long line
up at the soup kitchen. I’m gonna take a shift tomorrow morning.”
“And you vill to be eatink my good borscht,” she said, with a look. She was very proud of her borscht. She’d even gotten some of the die-hard Southerners who wouldn’t eat anything that wasn’t deep-fried or covered in bacon grease to slurp it down.
John just winked at her. Nothing wrong with her borscht that a little ol’ tabasco can’t fix.
She put the tools in the common storage box at the side of the garden. They were safe enough there; it wasn’t as if people were likely to be stealing the garden tools they all needed when a two-by-four was a better weapon anyway, and the more dangerous implements, like the big shears, were kept locked in the lower half with one of those school-locker combination padlocks. Anyone who would properly need one of those had the combination.
John watched her leave, but remained. It was rare to get quiet moments like these where he could just be still and not have to think. Everyone would be at dinner now, some trying to get some sort of picture out of their jury-rigged TV antennas. Cable wasn’t even pretending to make an effort to restore service out here, they knew damn well that no more than a third of the households had money to spare for even basic service. That was all right with John, it meant that things were quieter; how much time had people used to waste in front of televisions? He felt it was better all around that they now had to actually get out in the sun and do something. There were benches cobbled up out of debris placed all around the garden; he walked over to one and sat down heavily, watching the sunset turn into twilight.
He felt, more than heard, the sound of wings, and a warm breath of air scented with vanilla and sandalwood wafted over him. Sera alighted on the back of the bench, and stepped from there lightly down to the ground. “I brought you food,” she said, her hands cupped around a bag.
“Not borscht?” he asked.
She laughed musically. “Not borscht. Peaches.” She handed him the bag, which held fragrant peaches still warm with sunshine. “The farmer told me to take them.”
“Did y’scare him half to death by showing up looking like that?” He chuckled, removing a peach from the bag and taking a bite out of it.
“Noooo, he thought I should have a reward,” she replied, although she didn’t specify why the farmer had thought that. Just another one of her mysterious, ambiguous statements that implied a story she never got around to telling. She took a peach herself and nibbled it. “Oh!” she said in surprise. “They are just as good as they smell! So many things are not.”
John took another bite, then chewed and swallowed. “You’re an angel, Sera.” He tilted his head to the side. “I only now realize how ridiculous and redundant that is for me t’say.”
“Well…yes. But I take your meaning.” She smiled at him, peach held in both hands. “Perhaps you might come to actually believe it, if you say it often enough.”
He pointed a finger at her, peach still in hand. “Don’t get any ideas about convertin’ me just yet.” He sighed, putting his elbows on his knees. “Still too much to do, an’ not enough time or energy for it.”
As if on cue, his CCCP-issue comm device beeped. John held up a finger for silence apologetically, then keyed the comm device. “Murdock, here. Go.”
It was Jadwiga on duty, this time. “Comrade Murdock. We are needing you to be reporting for another shift; cannot be helped, as we are short-handed. Report to HQ in all haste. HQ, out.”
John sighed again. “No rest for the wicked, nor any for the bone-tired.”
“You are weary,” she said, sympathetically. And there it was, another evidence of how alien she was. A human woman, meeting at last with her—what was he to her? Not a lover…
Not yet, but…
Well, a human woman would have been unhappy at the least, angry or annoyed or petulant at the worst, at having the meeting cut so short, and would have voiced a complaint, or a demand for him to tell HQ to find someone else. But Sera—Sera just looked at him with sympathy and understanding, and spoke of his weariness.
“That could be said of the whole world, darlin’.” He shrugged, but…that attitude, that understanding, was unbelievably liberating. Her regard lifted him, rather than putting him in chains.
His neighborhood was a standout from many areas; here the people actively tried to help each other. In a lot of other places, especially in countries without an ECHO presence or an organization like the CCCP to bolster security forces, everyone was forced to look over their shoulders. Things were downright medieval in some areas. Still, Sera’s attitude and presence did more for him than he could adequately express to her.
“Oh, you are all weary, but you are particularly weary. I believe I can help. Remember?” She tilted her head charmingly to one side.
“Tryin’ to fish for another kiss, Sera? First you bribe me with peaches…” He flashed her a lop-sided grin, nudging her shoulder with his own.
“I like kisses,” she said thoughtfully. “Very much. But I do not need to kiss you to help you, only touch your hand.”
“Heh. I almost forgot that you can do that.” In truth, he had not forgotten. But it just wasn’t John’s way to ask for help any more than absolutely needed. He did want Sera to help him…and more than just help him. But he’d never ask for it.
“You are a very stubborn man, John Murdock,” she said, severely. “If you do not learn to ask, very often you will not get.”
“Others with more of a need than mine, Sera. Just the way it is; anyways, I’m tough.” He smiled again, leaning closer to her. “I’ll manage.”
“You are stubborn and foolish,” she replied.
“Funny, Ma said the same thing ’bout me all the time.”
“Your Ma was right. Be quiet and be kissed.” She put her peach pit aside, and put her arms around his neck, and suited her actions to her words.
John leaned in closer, wrapping his arms around her, and reciprocated with equal fervor. Instantly, he felt better; more alert, stronger, and nowhere near as tired as he had. His emotions lifted as well, the edge of depression that had been on everything faded. After what seemed like a long time, not long enough, and no time at all, he pulled away, the smile still on his face, the scent of peaches mingling with her sandalwood and cinnamon and vanilla, wreathing them both. “Like I said before, if’n you could bottle that, we’d make a fortune.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “Bella says the same. And no, I do not kiss her.”
“Well, shucks, there goes all my adolescent fantasies.” He touched the tip of her nose with his finger. “Don’t worry, angel; you’ll suit me fine all on yer own.”
She chuckled. “I hope so. I do not intend to indulge your adolescent fantasies. Bella would be horrified. And then she would hit you. You should ask the Djinni about her right hook.”
“Don’t need to ask him; she’s hit me before, for entirely different reasons.” He checked his comm device, which was blinking still. “A story for another time, I’m afraid. Duty calls. Again; it’s kinda like a bad ex-girlfriend that way. Always showin’ up at the wrong times.”
“I will meet you on the roof. I shall bring beer. You must bring some of that lovely floppy pizza-stuff. I too have duties, and I should be about them.”
“Sounds like a deal to me, darlin’.” He stood up, kissing her on her brow. “I’ll see ya in a few hours.” With that, John started jogging towards the CCCP HQ, feeling and looking much better than he had just a few minutes before. Turnin’ out to be a fine evening, if I do say so myself.
The Seraphym stared after him, with longing, and with a little unease. It had taken more energy to heal and fill him than she had thought it should. She wondered if there was something wrong; he had been getting sick and even injured often these past few months, but the work he did often had him becoming injured and stressed. Even a metahuman physiology could only contend against such a rigorous routine for so long.
She listened, but the Infinite offered no hints. She shrugged and touch
ed her lips, smiling again, thinking of the kiss. There was much to be said for being material. Mortal memories of such things were no match for experiencing them first hand. She sat there for a little longer, before the sound of a soft footstep made her look up.
There was a little girl standing there, looking at her expectantly. It was one of the ones she had told stories to. She smiled, and beckoned the child to her, and put the rest of the bag of peaches in her hands. “Take those to your mama, love,” she said. The child peeked inside, gave a squeal of glee, and ran off.
Then she picked up the two peach seeds, hers and Johns, and took them to an empty spot in the garden where a rose bush had failed to thrive and been taken up. She put them gently into the earth, and patted the soil over the top.
“Grow,” she whispered, and felt them respond.
But then she felt the calling. It was time for her to return to the work, as well. And with a flash of flame, she was gone, another life to save.
Descent
Mercedes Lackey, Dennis Lee, Cody Martin
“The best-laid plans of mice and men aft gang a-glay.…” Robert Burns said that. Truer words were never spoken. For both sides.
The ECHO locker room was packed. Bulwark’s full team of trainees was suiting up for duty for a fairly routine and very dull escort mission for the retirees of ECHO. There weren’t a lot of them, enough to take up about two cars of the MARTA red line train from the airport. About two or three retirees per escort.
One of those escorts was…very loud. Loud out of all proportion to his size. “I am telling you, Bulwark and the blue chick, the CMO, are totally getting it on. I heard it all over in ECHO Med. He’s over there practically every night, and what else would you be doing with a gal that’s that smokin’ hot?”
Frank—who had taken the callsign of “Frankentrain”—had been a member of ECHO two years before the Invasion in, of all places, Providence Rhode Island. His power was that his skin was nearly granite-tough, and he was, as he put it “pretty hard to kill.” He and the only other Op 2 in Providence had both been steam locomotive hobbyists, and had been at an antique rail museum working on one of their “babies” when the Invasion began. His friend who, unfortunately, had been stronger but not nearly as hard to kill, had squeezed boilerplate into makeshift armor for both of them before they answered the red alert. Frank had kept the armor, now worn over a nanoweave suit, and kept the nickname he’d picked up that day as his callsign.
Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 46