by Mercedes Lackey; Cody Martin; Dennis Lee; Veronica Giguere
“How would that work?” John didn’t turn his head to look at her, instead focusing on the stars above. He had never been able to stare at Sera, except for the first time he ever saw her.
“I can look as I please. This is not my true form, but no one mortal could bear that.” She tossed her head, and between one moment and the next, she . . . changed. Changed to a red-haired woman, in a gown that looked like the representation of fire, rather than fire itself.
He risked a look at her. “Cute trick. I’d rather that you look like whatever you’re comfortable with.” He shifted where he sat, obviously uncomfortable with her effortless power. “Whaddya think of this bunch below us?”
Her eyes were the same. She blinked slowly. “They are . . . important. Very important. For so few, they have the potential to do so much, and they are not fettered by the self-doubt and constraint of those who could do as much, were they not bound by things that, in this confrontation, are meaningless.”
“So, what you’re saying is, that they’d be good sorts to stick around with?”
She blinked again. “I believe it is important that you do so. For your sake, and for theirs. You are the keys to each others’ locks.”
He looked at her sideways. “Never a straight answer with you, is there?” John shook his head, sipping at his beer again. “I figure I’ll stick with them. My neighborhood is going to need all the help it can get, and a mutual support network will keep my ass out of the fire if things get hectic. Plus, their uniforms don’t look that bad.”
“A straight answer . . . I can give you some. First: there are more things I am not permitted to tell you than there are things that I may. And there is a reason for this. The Infinite . . . it does not, as Einstein said, ‘play at dice with the universe.’ It does not ‘play’ at all. All those beings that think . . . they are not toys, nor slaves, nor”—she winced a little, hardly more than a flicker—“things of entertainment.”
John chuckled. “I seem to entertain ya a fair bit.”
She tilted her head to the side, quizzically. “I am sorry if I gave you that impression.” She stared at him a moment more. “The creatures that think are . . . possessed of Free Will. The Infinite rarely meddles in their lives. It took . . . a great violation, a great peril, for me to be permitted to be an instrument here. You are in a moment where . . . Free Will and all the right choices may not save you.”
He looked at her soberly. “Even if we play our cards right, you think we can beat something like this?” His hand swept over the ruined metropolis. Over the destruction corridors, the scattered lights, and the smoldering remains of buildings in the distance.
Her lips parted a moment. A single tear, like a bead of crystal, moved slowly down one cheek. John’s hand twitched to wipe it away, but he kept it at his side. “Insofar as I can do what I am permitted to do . . . I am trying, John Murdock. I am trying.” The tear splashed to the tarpaper roof.
John nodded. “I think that that’s more important than actually winning. The fact that we are fighting. It’s all in the struggle.” He sighed. “Besides, if it were easy, where would the fun be?”
She smiled wanly. “I had rather you all did not join my Siblings too soon. Life . . . is a vast blessing, when there is joy.” She was silent a moment. “This, I am permitted to say. There is not one future. There are many, many. Threads and threads and threads, weaving, reweaving, being broken and knotted up again. More than you can possibly imagine. Something . . . happened. Something terrible grew and grew and began to change the endings of many, now most, of those threads.”
“Y’know, if you were really trying to cheer me up . . . well, that sucked.” He grinned, flashing his teeth.
Unexpectedly, she gave him a real, dazzling smile. “But that is why I am an instrument here, now, John. I am trying to find the way to the bright-ended threads. That is why it must be me, and not one of you—you can see only what you know, but I can see it all, and not go mad.” She paused. “And I must weave my own way through Free Will, show a little here, do a little there, save a life, guide a very, very little . . . a touch here, a touch there. Do . . . do you understand?” She lost the smile, and a look of unbearable sadness came over her. “So many . . . do not. They cry for miracles. They do not understand that for a miracle to occur, something equally miraculous must be sacrificed. Those who would make that sacrifice are not always the ones that should, and seldom the ones who can.”
He sighed. “I stopped praying years ago. Too many prayers, not enough to show for it. I think I understand what you’re saying, but I—I’m not sure I’m ready to commit an’ subscribe to your magazine, if you get my drift. I’ve been making my own way for most of my life; all the good that’s ever happened to me has been because of me . . . for the most part.” His eyes glazed over slightly, staring out across the empty space again. His eyes lost their spark, looking like they belonged to a corpse more than a breathing man.
Without him noticing, she had moved closer; she could be preternaturally graceful, and didn’t move so much as glide next to him. The lightest touch of a finger on the back of his hand, the first time she had actually touched him, punctuated her next words. “All the good that happens does so because we reach out to each other, John. The more we connect, the more we achieve.”
He started, almost recoiling from her. After a moment, his eyes took on their normal sheen, animated and ablaze with life again. He whispered, “And the bad?”
Her eyes blazed. “I make no apology for evil. It is the choice of those who seek it. Were I given a free hand . . .” The fires died in her eyes. “But I am not. That must be the choice of the good, to oppose the evil, to battle it, to succor those who have suffered from it. To reach out.” There was a small, grim smile on her face. “But in the here and now, I have been given some small ability to fight it directly, and where I can, I do, and I will.”
“And what happens if you overstep? If you take things into your own hands?” There was a hint of something else in his voice, but Seraphym couldn’t place it. He was guarding something.
“For myself alone . . . I am bound by stricter laws than any mortal.” Her grim smile turned wry. “With great power comes . . . great restrictions. I must be a surgeon with a . . . weapons-grade laser. But for mortals?” She looked away, and up, at the stars. Each word came slowly, as if it was being chosen with infinite care from a hundred thousand dictionaries. “Mortals are not granted infinite knowledge. They can only act on what they know. Mistakes are made. Terrible things are done—sometimes, nay, oftentimes, under the pressure of terrible things done to them. Much, much can be forgiven.”
John shook his head, stifling a deep cough as he did so. “Not everything.” Again, more that was being hidden. More that he was keeping from her specifically.
Again, she lightly touched his hand. “Look at me, John Murdock. Please.” With what looked like monumental effort, John raised his eyes to meet her unearthly eyes. This time the fires that burned there were not of anger, nor sadness, nor the reflection of whatever place she had come from. There was within them, not a fire, but a glow. If he could have put a name to it, it would have been compassion. Not pity, which he would have rejected. It was something raw, unadulterated, and primal. “John, I pledge to you on my very existence. Forgiveness is always possible. There must also come acceptance of that forgiveness, and repentance, and sometimes reparation. Repayment. Atonement. But the forgiveness itself? It is there, as the air you breathe is there.”
John stared in her eyes for several long moments, and opened his mouth to speak. There was pain in his eyes, and Sera knew that something important to John was about to be said. Before he could speak, however, the door access for the roof swung open, bathing the entire rooftop in a wide swath of amber light.
“Comrade Murdock. You are not to be moving from your bed.” Jadwiga, the CCCP’s doctor, also known by the callsign of Soviette, stood in the open doorway with her fists planted on her hips. “All over, I have been
looking for you.”
John looked to where Seraphym had been sitting. The only thing left was a golden-red feather, resting peacefully next to him. “I hear ya, Nurse Hearse. Gimme a second.” He smiled to himself, and then finished his beer, setting the empty bottle on the ledge. “Back to the salt mines, huh?”
“You should not joke about salt mines,” Soviette scolded. “Some of the comrades were sent there by Stalin.” She shooed him down the stairs as if she was herding a chicken. And then looked back. “In bed with you. And . . . where are you getting beer?”
CHAPTER FOUR
__________
Every Breath You Take
DENNIS LEE AND MERCEDES LACKEY
. . . and some of us were spurred to find new resources.
Victoria Victrix Nagy felt as if someone had hit her in the head with a brick; the revelation was so sudden, and yet, so logical.
It had struck her as she closed herself up in her office and began tickling the firewalls of the various networked Echo computers to see what she could get into. Their systems, of course, were severely compromised, as were most of the computer systems of the world. Great damage had been done in cyberspace by the Thulians. Inadvertent, but nonetheless, real. Security systems were offline or damaged, there hadn’t been new security updates for most software in weeks, and Echo was actually in better shape than many.
But they were still compromised, which was why she had been able to hack into Tesla’s datebook and personal scheduler as fast as she had, a few days ago.
Vickie’s secret vice was hacking, and of course, because of her talents and training, she had a few more tools at her disposal than even the most sophisticated geek, be he white-hat or black. She was a techno-mage, which was a very rara avis indeed; she was one of only a handful that she knew of, and the only one who specialized in computers and computerized systems. A great many mages had a lot of trouble with technology, some to the point where things stopped working catastrophically around them.
Not Vickie. She could do things that were not technically hacking to get in, should she need to.
And it was clear that if she put her mind to it, she could get as deep into the Echo system as she wanted right now. Or rather, as deep in as she had patience for, given the limits of her own system. Why, at this very moment, without much trouble, she could pull up the feeds for every single security camera they had, and if she worked at it, she could empty their personnel files—it would take a lot of work, though, and more storage space than she actually had. She had thought to herself that it was a pity she couldn’t do this to other people, instead of getting dragged out into the field—
And that was when it hit her. The revelation of how she could be of real use to Echo, and not end up so sick with agoraphobia and panic attacks that she couldn’t eat for days. More than that. The way she could—or so she hoped—prove to Red Saviour that she was worth trusting.
She scooted out of the Echo system, leaving herself a back door, and went shopping.
* * *
She was under the desk with a flashlight in her mouth and her hands full of tools when she heard Bella’s key in the lock. She knew it was Bell, because she knew the sounds of all three deadbolts on her door, and she had only left the one Bella had a key to in the locked position.
She dropped the flashlight and called out, “I’m in here!”
Bella’s footsteps marked her path to the office, then the sounds stopped at the doorway.
“Holy mother-of-pearl—”
Vickie finished making the last of her connections and emerged from beneath the desk, hair messed, nose smudged. She put the tools back where they belonged in the correct drawer in desk number four, and surveyed her new kingdom.
What had been a Spartan spare office—she had three bedrooms and she used the biggest for her writing office—with just the desk, a chair, and her admittedly very good hacking/gaming PC, now looked like something out of a TV producer’s idea of a CSI or CIA computer room. There were twelve identical flat-screen monitors, a server that would make a geek weep with desire, the kind of storage rack most big law offices would envy and four of the best multi-core computers not available on the market. They were not available, because the friend of a friend who had made them for her did not make these for money, only trading favor for favor. He was currently very happy with the favor he had gotten in return. He’d always wanted to see and verify with his own eyes real magic. Not metapowers. Real magic. Now he had. For most of his life he had lived with the haunting fear that the only thing that had made his hellish childhood bearable had been nothing more than a hallucination. Now he knew it had been real, he was not crazy, and suddenly there was a suppurating wound in his soul that could heal.
But that was another story.
“Romances must pay well,” Bella said dryly.
Vickie shrugged. “Well enough. When you never leave the house, there’s not a lot to spend money on.” She sat down in the brand new zero-gravity chair. Since she was likely going to be in this thing for long stretches at a time, she had gotten the best. She put on the feather-light Echo-tech headset and microphone, took a deep breath, and hit the switch.
All twelve monitors came to life, and the room filled with the hum of computer equipment coming online and testing itself.
Quickly. Very quickly.
The plain blue screens began to switch to other things as her systems booted up, but right now, there was only one picture she wanted to see. Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she used her back door into the Echo systems. She got to the sysadmin screen, which asked for a password. Now she moved her right hand to the Ouija-board planchette, next to the keyboard, mentally detached her hand from her own control, triggered the spell, and picked out the word with her left hand as her right spelled it out. Techno-magecraft. The system “knew” which password it “wanted.” The screen image “knew” which password worked, as a combination of letters and numbers which was the one most often tried. The one most often tried would be the right one, because the ones that failed, due to mistyping or other hacking attempts, would not be tried again, or at least not with the frequency that the correct one was. Her spell linked her to the screen image, to the system behind the screen image, and let her hand pick out the right sequence on the Ouija board. This was the Law of Contamination at work; it would be even faster if she had some personal object belonging to the sysadmin.
As it was, it was no more than a minute. And she was in.
As Bella watched in utter fascination, Vickie worked her way through directories and subsystems until she found the one she wanted—the feed to Alex Tesla’s desktop. Once again, the planchette gave her the password, and she was in. This time it was faster; she had Alex’s hair.
And she took his computer over.
A few keystrokes, and his camera was activated. A few more, and so was hers. He stared at her—or rather at his monitor, with startled eyes. In the monitor to the right of the central one, Vickie’s solemn face appeared, a reflection of what he was seeing.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Tesla,” she said, and smiled. Behind her, Bella stifled a chuckle as he jumped.
“Who—who the hell are you?” he asked hoarsely. “And what are you doing in my computer?”
“My name is Victoria Victrix Nagy, and I am one of your Echo Ops,” she replied, keying up her own file and causing it to appear in a new window in the bottom left of his screen, “as you can see there. That’s my file. You met me with Red Saviour and Belladonna Blue in your office a few days ago. I was the one with all the papers and the information.”
Strange. Now that she was here, physically here in her safe place, the place where she was in control, she felt as assured, as cocky even, as her old long-ago self had been. Small wonder he hadn’t recognized her. “As to what I am doing—I am giving you a little demonstration. Not just of how I can get into the Echo computers, but how I can get into a great many other places as well. Name a place. Any place.”
“U
h—New Orleans. Cafe du Monde.”
Her fingers flew. A new window opened, while one of the left-hand monitors came to life. In the new window, a grainy black and white feed of the Cafe du Monde appeared from an odd angle. “Traffic cam at the stoplight,” she said, as the same feed appeared in her new monitor. Then the scene changed to directly across the street from the famous home of beignets. “Security cam in the ATM across the street.” Last of all, a view from inside the cafe, partly blocked by a large young man frowning at something. “Camera in the laptop of Daniel Soleil, a stockbroker, currently on his lunch break and using the wifi hotspot. Silly man, doesn’t even have a firewall. I’ll show you what he’s surfing if you like—”
“No, no!” Tesla exclaimed, and she slid out of Daniel’s PC as easily as a fish swimming through a kelp bed. “That’s fine.” He took a deep and visible breath. “You’re one of my people, which means you’ve passed a lot of rigorous security checks. I realize that especially at the moment the Echo systems aren’t as secure as we’d like. Is that what you’re trying to prove to me? Or is it something else you want? Did you want to be moved to the computer systems group? Why are you showing me this?”
“What I want . . .” She hesitated a moment. “Let’s take the last question first. I am showing you this to prove to you that I can do what I say I can. And what I want—” She gazed solemnly into her own camera. “What I want is to be Echo’s all-seeing eye for select teams, not the ones patrolling or handling calls, but the ones doing special ops or covert work. Your guardian angel. Your invisible guardian angel.” She managed something that was not quite a laugh, but would pass for one. “I can be with your chosen field team, assisting them, feeding them information, warnings, accesses—”