Bring It On

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “You going to come by after the Moot?” His voice was casual, almost deadpan, and she couldn’t tell if he wanted her to come by, or wished she wouldn’t. The parade of model-types he used to date flashed through her memory, impossible to banish.

  “You want me to?”

  His face gentled somehow, and he leaned back in the sofa to stare up at her face. It unnerved her a little, the way he always looked her directly in the face. Most people looked indirectly at her, if they noticed her at all. If she hadn’t honed that skill so much as a teenager, to avoid notice, and then as an adult, to enhance her Retrieval skills, would her life have been very different? Or would she always still be the overlooked one, the easily forgotten one?

  Sergei didn’t overlook her. Sergei never forgot her. Sergei, she was starting to realize, scared the hell out of her.

  She didn’t want to love someone who saw her so thoroughly.

  “I’ll be here tonight, if you want company. If you don’t, just let me know you got home okay, and I’ll catch up on all the details later.”

  “Right.” She shoved the paperwork back into her bag, then bent over to grab her shoes from under the counter and slid them back on her feet, thankful for the hair coming out of her braid and hiding her face from view. “Have fun with the paperwork.”

  He grunted, having already gone back to the newspaper. She let herself out, leaning against the elevator wall as it descended, letting herself feel the hum of the building at her back like a soothing waterfall. Even without drawing down any of the current residing in the man-made electricity, she was comforted by it. She might not rely on filtered current—her mentor would have had a fit, if she were to get that lazy—but it was nice to know that it was there, if she needed it.

  Of course, the people she might need it against—her target, the Council goons, her fellow lonejack idiots at the Moot tonight—also had access to it. That thought was less comforting.

  Which was why, rather than go back to her apartment and fling paperwork the way she’d told Sergei she was planning, she was going to do something about stacking the deck in her favor.

  Half an hour and a downtown subway ride later, Wren came out in Alphabet City and drew a breath of relatively fresh air into her lungs. She wasn’t smelling the slightly chilled breeze off the East River, or the exhaust rising off the street in front of her, however, but the intoxicating hum of power rising off the nearby East River Generation Station. Always there, always producing—always tempting, just to take a little bit, just a bit, first pull-down’s free, little girl…

  There was a café on the corner that made excellent perogies, and didn’t mind if you lingered over the newspaper and coffee, afterward. She went in and ordered a dish, grabbed a newspaper, and sat down in a prime corner table. Perogies—heavy Eastern European dumplings—weren’t something she indulged in often: they sat too heavy in her stomach for comfort, but she was going to need something solid to focus on, with what she was about to do.

  Every lonejack—hell, every Talent—knew how to draw down power from man-made and natural sources alike, but everyone had favorites which they used more often than not. Urban Talents, which was the majority of them, drew down from man-made sources by preference, and power stations were the most common target. In fact, in any given population sampling, there were proportionately more active Talents in cities than in the ’burbs, and almost none in the rural areas.

  Wren, unlike many of her peers, preferred natural, or “wild” sources, when she could get it. It wasn’t any kind of “back to nature” kick—a thunderstorm, or a natural underground ley line, gave her a buzz that was missing in artificially channeled current. Too much of that, though, and she ended up like a kitten on catnip: too buzzed to focus her eyes properly, much less her magic.

  Something told her that she was going to need to be full-up and focused for whatever was coming at her tonight. Walking into a room filled with pissed-off Talents who probably also had recharged just for the event…yeah, not the kind of thing you went in half-empty and expected to win. Or even come out unscathed.

  You’re assuming there’s going to be a battle.

  She rolled mental eyes at the voice, which sounded suspiciously this time like her mother. You think there won’t?

  The voice fell silent.

  Potato and cheese sitting warm and comforting in her stomach, Wren unfolded the newspaper in front of her, to give a reason to stay at the table, took a last sip of her overbrewed and undercaffeinated coffee, and let herself sink into a working fugue state.

  Five…four…three…two…hello, baby…

  If her inner core of current manifested as virtual snakes, sparking vibrant reds, blues, and greens, then the current gathered around the electricity generated by the power plant were sea serpents, ropy with steroid-enhanced muscles, glistening with sweat and dripping power from their fangs. Terrifying. Dangerous. Seductive.

  Come to me. Feel my strength. Feel the appeal of my strength. Come to me.

  You lifted current by being stronger than it. Control. Current responded to control. Without control, current ran insane, like lightning strikes sparking wildfires; like electricity burning flesh. The first lesson every Talent learned was focus. Failure was death.

  Feel me. Come to me. Let me tame you, use you…

  The current slowed in its restless stew, several jeweled heads turning in her direction. Their eyes flashed pit-black, lidless, and unblinking, and even knowing that they weren’t really snakes, weren’t really sliding toward her in such an unnervingly boneless manner, didn’t stop the shudder from sliding down Wren’s spine. She controlled it, controlled her revulsion and fear, and opened herself up, welcoming them. Enfolding them into her own core, and melting their outer skins down into a form that her snakes could consume.

  I am in control. I control. I am control.

  The heavy, impossible weight of lifted current settled into her core, weighting her down, making her feel as though she were nine months pregnant, impossibly queasy, bursting from her own skin…and then the sensations faded as her own current absorbed the power, reformatted it to her own body, sent it coursing into every cell. Her eyes felt brighter, her teeth sharper, her skin tighter and more sensitive. If failure was death, or burning out, then success was glorious. She enjoyed it for a moment, then tamped it down. This was business.

  Five…four…three…two…

  Wren came out of fugue state and stared at the wall opposite her, looking at the posted menu without actually seeing it as her eyes refocused and she reintegrated back into the world, the current changing from ugly outsiders to beloved enhancements.

  Her coffee had gone cold while she worked, but she drank it anyway, watching the colorfully bizarre East Village crowd walk down the street outside and letting herself simply enjoy the moment, a New Yorker in New York.

  The rest of the day, Wren virtuously spent in her apartment, doing as she had told Sergei she would: organizing her files and getting them back to her usual standard of compulsive organization. The Nescanni case had been hard for a lot of reasons, not only because the Silence did not give them anything close to the whole story about what they were supposed to Retrieve. It had required her to travel overseas for the first time—by plane, not a mode of transport she was entirely thrilled with. And the object Retrieved had turned out to be semisentient and vicious, the end result of old magic performed by a half-mad, entirely vindictive Mage.

  She had almost lost Sergei to that old magic; only the bond they had, the knowing she had of him, had been enough to fend off the old magic’s hunger.

  They’d also become lovers during that job, finally. Just the thought made her smile. Even now, trying to figure out what fit how into each others’ lives, rearranging the baggage of adult lives to coexist happily; even with the tensions they had to face daily, it still made her smile to think of him, warm in her arms.

  But thinking of how they had finally hooked up led back to thoughts of the two teenage boys who
had been their introduction to the Italian branch of the Cosa Nostradamus. That had been sobering: she had spent so much of her life working at being unobserved; discovering that her reputation as “the Talent who stood up to the Council” had spread beyond the city and overseas had given her considerable pause. Sergei could talk all he wanted about “the best PR” and “free advertising” but it wasn’t his self-image that was being screwed with.

  Wren stopped and stared at the papers she had been stapling, paper clipping, and sorting. Receipts and notecards, printouts and photocopies, newspaper clippings and scribbled sticky-tags. It seemed like so little, in retrospect, to have covered so many changes in her life.

  “What, because you expected a marching band and media coverage? Grow up, Valere.”

  After the Nescanni files were in order, she did a once-over of the rest of the year, just to reassure herself that everything was as it should be. Like a wolf patrolling the confines of her den, Wren was uneasy in ways she couldn’t quite put her paw on. Which was ridiculous. Being told by a Seer that you were going to do something was unnerving enough; add to that the fact that the entire Cosa was itching to do something stupid…

  Giving it up as a bad job, Wren shoved the file drawer shut and grabbed her exercise bag, heading out to the gym to work some of the stress off on inanimate machines.

  By the time she got back, sweaty and calmer, there was only enough time to shower and change before she had to head out again.

  Getting out of the shower took an extreme act of will, and the water going cold at a pivotal moment—she wasn’t normally a linger-in-the-shower type, but it was so much nicer than what was waiting for her. Wrapping a towel around her head to dry her hair, and knotting another around her body, she padded down to her bedroom and stared into her closet.

  “Dress for impact,” she said, her gaze skimming over the hangers filled with basic blacks and grays, an occasional red or blue jumping out at her. She needed something that would stand up to the chill air outside, but not stifle her in the doubtless-overheated meeting place. Finally she settled on a black T-shirt and black jeans, with a long black jacket over it. The look was classic Manhattan Yuppie gunslinger, wanting only a silver-tooled gun belt and boots.

  She opted for black leather lace-up shin-kickers, instead, dragged out from the back of the closet and quickly spit-shined. Makeup was pointless, even assuming she had more than lipstick and a stick of eye shadow to her name; she wasn’t there to look pretty, anyway. Hair half-dried, she braided it into a complicated knot at the back of her head, turning the edge under and clipping it with a jeweled pin she found under the dresser.

  “You’re no beauty, no,” she told her reflection. “But you’ll do.”

  Still staring in the mirror, she reached down into her overfed core with one virtual hand and coaxed one of the smaller snakes up into her “palm.” The power surged through her, waiting for direction.

  “Because I need it—

  Strength and power to my voice

  So I may be heard.”

  Intent was everything, when directing current. Intent, and focus. She said the words thinking not about her actual physical voice, but rather how that voice was heard by others, how she was—or wasn’t—seen by others. The spell therefore directed the power not to increase her voice in any specific way, but to affect others so that they would actually register that she was there, and hear what she said. Not quite charisma, it was the magical equivalent of boosting speaker power, only specific to her memorability, if that was a word.

  When she spoke now, nobody would talk over her, or look through her, or not notice that she was there at all. It was cheating, yeah, and more than borderline rude to screw with people’s perceptions so blatantly—but this wasn’t just about ego. The need was real.

  Need trumped manners. Even her mother would agree to that.

  Armor on, internal and external, she grabbed her battered leather jacket and her pocketbook, and headed out the door before she crawled into bed and pulled the covers over her head until it was all over.

  The last Moot she had attended—the only Moot she had ever attended, as the last one before that was decades ago, in 1973—had been held in a basement room out on Brooklyn. This time, they were set up in Manhattan proper, in an apartment up near the George Washington Bridge. It was a nice enough neighborhood, if not one that Wren spent much time in. A lot of bodegas, dry cleaners and liquor stores, but not as many nail salons as you found downtown. And a lot more people sitting on their front stoops, gossiping and yelling to their neighbors. Wren wasn’t sure if they were just naturally friendly, if the TV on tonight was really that boring, or if some of them were lonejack lookouts, passing word if anyone who stank of the Council came by.

  She found the building listed on the invite without too much trouble, and stood outside, looking up at the third floor. She could feel the bodies gathering in there; at least a dozen, possibly more, all oozing current.

  Her own core rose in response, sensing a threat, and she shoved it down. Not now, she told it. There’s no reason to react…yet. She touched the spell for reassurance, and walked up the three steps to the double front doors, and was greeted by a guy who looked like every geek ever created, from the too intense look behind too thick glasses to the black socks worn with dirty white sneakers. Wren didn’t actually know any geeks; even in high school the geeks—along with everyone else—had looked right through her. But Talent didn’t discriminate, and it didn’t automatically bestow any sort of coolness factor.

  “You got a reason to be here?” He managed a reasonable toughness, for a geek.

  “I got an invite.”

  “Name?” There was no clipboard or list in sight, but not everyone relied on writing information down the way she did.

  “Valere.”

  That got the door opened for her. Fast. Hoo whee.

  No elevator. Of course. She took the stairs at a slow and steady pace, not rushing. The apartment was empty of anything except people and folding chairs. There were more people than chairs. The chairs were all in the main room. The people were all milling about the three rooms, walking through the galley kitchen to get between two rooms and the third, where a narrow table was set up with bottles of soda and plastic cups. A large bowl was filled with ice that was slowly melting. A small plastic trash can under the table was filled halfway with used cups, indicating that people had been here for a while, but probably not more than an hour or so in any great number.

  She touched the spell inside her again, feeling it hum as it waited for activation. After a moment, she noticed that people were actually looking at her, their gaze resting on her for a moment rather than sliding by without contact, so she knew her usual no-see’um wasn’t kicking in under the presence of so many people and making her unnoticeable. That was a nice change. Maybe she wasn’t going to need the spell, after all?

  Dream on, Valere, she thought. They could see her now, in passive mode, sure. The moment she actually tried to do anything, she’d lay even higher odds than before that the no-see’um would kick into overdrive. It was an instinctive, responsive reaction she had learned to use actively as needed, not the other way around. Nature or whatever hadn’t bothered to install an off switch, to make her life simpler. Of course not.

  She got a cup of lukewarm soda, added a handful of ice to it and moved on. She didn’t recognize anyone here. That didn’t mean anything—her relationships within the community were more of a professional than a personal nature, for the most part. The fact that she had a partnership with a Null had pissed some lonejacks off; the fact that she was friends with fatae unnerved others, and the rest (including a lot of folk who used to at least acknowledge her) now seemed to think that her conflict with the Council made her walking bad karma and to be avoided entirely.

  Of the three, she preferred the last attitude, which had the advantage of being refreshingly and reassuringly selfish.

  It also made her invitation to this Moot even stranger,
and made her more suspicious. What were they up to?

  “All right. All right, people, can we get our shit together, maybe, and not be here all night?” The speaker was a tall, skinny black man in chinos and T-shirt, standing on one of the folding chairs and looking like he was about to start clapping his hands for order.

  He clapped his hands to get their attention, and Wren mentally paid herself ten dollars.

  “People! Let’s not waste time!”

  Wren found a seat in the back of the room with chairs. She might have to be there, according to her friendly neighborhood drunken Seer, but she didn’t have to stand.

  “We’ve already wasted too much time,” a tiny woman with shocking orange dandelion hair called from the front of the room. “Sitting here yakking like a bunch of politicians.”

  “If you’ve got any brilliant ideas, Clara, now’s the time to share them. That’s what this is supposed to be all about.” The black man got down off his chair, turned it around, and straddled it. Wren hated him immediately.

  “Ideas? I’ve got one idea. We do something! Our people are being boxed in, cut down, curtailed—did you hear about that psi-bomb down in the Village? Tell me that wasn’t an attack. Go on, tell me!”

  Wren might have spoken up then, but something held her back, whispering, “Not yet, not yet” in her ear. It wasn’t the usual echo of Sergei’s voice, or even the memory of her long-ago-wizzed mentor, but she trusted it anyway.

  “You’re assuming that psi-bomb was meant for us. Who’s to say one of us didn’t sic it on a Councilite?” That was from a bored-looking man in a brown velour jogging suit, whose bald spot gave his otherwise ordinary face the look of a tonsured monk’s, and causing Wren’s heart to stutter a beat when she glanced over at him.