by Mercedes Lackey; Cody Martin; Dennis Lee; Veronica Giguere
“Ferrari,” said a quiet voice in her ear, startling her. She had forgotten she was still “wired” to Overwatch. “How much dirt do you want me to find on this janitor? I can tell you already he’s deep in something that’s Mil Black Budget.”
“Mountains,” Ramona muttered. Tesla hadn’t heard, as he sat shaking, his hands over his face.
“Roger that. I got a suspicion he’s planning on skimming Echo Ops and making them disappear into some military meta program or other, but that’s just me, and I’m paranoid.”
“He’s no janitor, that’s for sure.” Ramona sighed and looked over at her boss, who had heard the last comment and simply nodded in agreement.
“Uh, ‘cleaner’ is agent-speak for someone who makes things go away. Just saying.”
This time she hummed what she hoped sounded like an affirmative. “Boss, when’s the last time you had breakfast?”
Tesla frowned at her, puzzled. “Breakfast? But I thought—”
It took every ounce of control that she had not to scream in frustration. Instead, she pinched the bridge of her nose and took a long breath. “According to you, mop-man works for the government and we know he’s not on the up-and-up. How about we take a page from my book and go off-campus so we get a head start and have a chat? No spooks, no metas, just you and me having a professional discussion. You can’t tell me that you like staying in this box.”
“You, him, and the blue canary.” A fragment of music played before Ramona could react to that nonsensical sentence. “Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch/ Who watches over you. Make a little birdhouse in your soul . . .”
“Well, no. But I thought—”
“When you scare the crap out of someone by bringing in the heavy, you usually follow up by offering them food. Standard Echo detective protocol.” She smirked, hoping that he wouldn’t ask for a policy number. “Besides, I’m hungry and I’m going to bet that you don’t have a functional coffeemaker in this box.”
“He does, but it’s hidden behind a few boxes, and he only has decaf. Proof positive he’s a sick man.”
That sealed it. Ramona gathered up her files and tucked them under her arm. “Let’s go, boss. Before the janitor comes back and tries to take out the trash.”
* * *
With the help of Overwatch, Ramona had found a little family-owned diner located a few miles away from the destruction corridor. The diner served breakfast all day and advertised a bottomless cup of coffee. They sat in a back booth with Ramona facing the door, an insulated pot of coffee between them.
“I’ve never understood the logic in calling it a bottomless cup of coffee,” Vickie said in her ear. “If it was bottomless, you wouldn’t get any coffee at all.”
Ramona smiled at the comment. Alex glanced up, then quickly looked behind him to see what she had found amusing. “What? Did you see something? What’s so funny?”
“Bottomless cups. Nobody’s after us, boss. Pride was kind enough to engage the janitor in a routine assessment of the dumpster outside of your office so we could leave.” She pushed her folder to the side and poured each of them a cup of coffee.
Vickie’s analysis had clearly raced ahead. “I’m thinking that if Pride is going to stop acting like a rules jockey and start acting like his old man, I need to get him wired in too. I mean, come on! Interracial romance? In 1942? Rebel, dude! If Pride can just get some of that moxie going, I want him on our team.”
The detective nodded and reached for her coffee. “Pride’s a good man, boss. There aren’t many of them left in Echo. If I were you, I’d be using that resource a lot more often.”
Tesla drew his shoulders up, hands around his coffee mug as he bowed his head. “There isn’t much that’s left of Echo, I’m afraid. The government wants a bigger part of our research, calling it a question of national security. And with all of the lawsuits following the Invasion, getting that involvement may be the only thing that keeps us functioning.”
“And this is what he pays expensive lawyers to tell him?” Vickie made a rude noise. “Betcha with twenty-four hours of searches I can find enough precedents to get all those cases tossed out of court. Well, the frivolous ones anyway. It’s not like Echo asked the Kriegers to come calling.”
Ramona kept her voice as even as possible. She hadn’t brought the man here to skewer him with logic and reason. She needed to keep him talking to figure out just what was going on. “So, if the government wants a bigger part of the research—”
He waved his hand, almost knocking over the fake flowers on the table. “No government. My uncle would rather see Echo destroyed than fall under government control. Would have rather,” he quickly corrected.
“Ohmigod,” Vickie said, suddenly. “Moles. Sleepers. Look, no matter what the storm troopers look like, they didn’t just beam down from outer space, not with the Nazi connection. They’ve got to have plants, sleepers, moles all over. Like, in the military, in the government. They’re trying to get at Echo and get their hands on that Metis connection!”
“Right now, I’ve got a few others in the organization who are seeking out private investors. Forward-thinking progressives who would want to invest in the technology and the humanitarian side of things.” He lifted his head, and Ramona could see the dark circles under his eyes. “But you can imagine that’s hard to find these days.”
Vickie snorted. “He’s better off asking the Twins about how to get out from under the lawsuits. They’re better at that than I am. Also faster.”
Ramona sipped her coffee, digesting both conversations as naturally as she could. “Well, what about the Twins? That’s a great resource you’ve got, completely separate from any government influence.”
“The Twins?” he repeated, looking puzzled. “What would I use them for?”
“Bitch-slap him for being a moron, would you?”
She did the next best thing and rolled her eyes. “Research. Problem-solving. Figuring out how to haul your ass out of the fire so that this doesn’t become a government operation or someone else’s pet project.” She set her coffee down and leaned forward on her elbows. “Honestly, you’ve got people that you’ve barely tapped. The life preserver is next to you in the water, and you’re saying that you can’t reach over and get it. You’re in charge of a worldwide organization of metahumans, Mr. Tesla. Think about it.”
He shook his head and looked away. His hands slipped away from his coffee mug, and Ramona could see them shaking as they moved to his lap. “There’s no organization. It’s closer to a network, with people and information being pooled and shared and stretched too thin. When those war machines opened up on us, they opened up on everyone. You can’t begin to understand the sort of loss that Echo incurred, Detective.”
“I can’t?” She gritted her teeth. “Let me remind you that I was on the campus the day things happened, and that most of my civilian coworkers were buried in the rubble. Don’t you dare get all high and mighty about loss, Tesla.” Ramona stood up and took a deep breath. “Now, before I do something I’ll regret, I’m going to the little detective’s room. And when I come back, we’re going to keep talking about this ‘private investor’ idea you mentioned.”
He slumped in the corner of the booth and Ramona quick-stepped to the bathroom before she could say something even more scathing. She shut the door, locked it, and pushed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “It’s like dealing with a teenager,” she muttered.
“An emo teenager,” Vickie said sourly. “I swear to all the gods there are, I never thought I would say that it’s easier handling the Commissar than Tesla.”
“I don’t like this private investor bit, but the government alternative is worse. They’d have him boxed and buried in hours, and probably blame one of ours for it.” Ramona moved to the sink and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Like Tesla, she had her own dark patches under her eyes, but at least she still had some fight left in her. The man she’d left in the booth was a shadow of the legend who had
carried on the Echo legacy once Nikola Tesla had died. “Shit. Seriously, what’s the likelihood of a private investor buying out Echo?”
“Dunno. Haven’t researched it. Been busy doing little things like finding the Goldman Catacombs. I’d say that’s a problem for the Twins. I’m not real good at weaving my way through offshore accounts and shell companies.”
“Then I’ll find a way to tag them. I don’t think they’re on Tesla’s radar these days. Of course,” she added, shaking her head, “I don’t think he’s able to do much at all.”
Ramona’s reflection nodded wisely back at her.
“If you’re asking me, rather than telling me, I have to say he spends more time staring at his computer than he does actually accomplishing anything. My keystroke logger is dying of boredom.”
“Can you tell what he’s staring at?”
“Is the bear Catholic? I bloody well own his computer,” Vickie said with confidence. “Apocalypse websites. He’s got his mind firmly grooved in that this is the end of the world and nothing we can do will change it. I’d suggest a Prozac enema, but who’d administer it?”
“And to think, I’d have been happy if you’d said porn.” Ramona moved to unlock the door, but the metal hummed under her fingers. In fact, the entire building seemed to shiver, as if someone had decided it was a tuning fork and they wanted the proper tone. “Hey, that’s not—”
“HOLY CRAP! INCOMING!”
* * *
For once, Bella was not having to go toe-to-toe with Yankee Pride about another rule she’d broken. In fact, all he really seemed to want to talk to her about was . . . Tesla.
Okay. It’s not the first time. Even before Seraphym started with me, people seemed to think I was Counselor Parker of Starship Las Vegas. So she put on her interested and sympathetic face and listened until he ran out of mad.
“I never thought I would ever say this, but damn it, YP, it’s easier dealing with the Commissar than it is the boss right now. At least with the Commissar she’s all about doing something rather than sitting around.” Bella made a face. “Even if her idea of doing something is to go out and smash things until an answer falls out.”
“But she’s doing something, Parker. The lady acts like a leader, and her people still respect her in that position, from what you’ve said. I simply can’t respect a coward who hides behind a computer at his desk while telling us that his hands are tied.” Pride looked angry, frustrated and defeated. And now that he wasn’t yelling at her . . . she was really getting to like him.
Should she? Should she tell him how much she knew? If she did, would he flip into Captain by the Book? “He acts like someone who knows something horrible that he’s not telling the rest of us,” she offered tentatively. “Less coward and more broken. I mean, look, this is a guy who has never had anything bad happen to him in his life, and this gets dropped on him. And money won’t fix it, favors won’t fix it, and there’s nothing in the management handbook that’s telling him a way out of it. He’s drowning, YP. He’s just a CEO, and he’s gotten dropped into quicksand full of alligators and piranhas.”
“Then he should be asking someone to throw him a rope, instead of giving up.” Pride looked pointedly at Bella. “The least he could do is ask for some help.”
Bella was about to reply when her PDA shrilled an alarm, and Vickie broke in. “All hands on deck! Anyone wired in and listening, we have Kriegers, I repeat, we have Kriegers and they’re targeting Tesla. One Death Sphere, six troopers. Four Points, 405 Catalpa, Mama Lou’s Diner, your nav is up and running, go, go, GO!” There was a slightly muffled burst of Russian, then Vickie came back on channel. “Sound off so I can coordinate you!”
“Scope here!” “Acrobat, I’m with Scope, we grabbed a bike and we’re accelerating down Foster.”
“Bella Blue,” Bella said. “I have Yankee Pride, I’ll brief him on the way. He’s not wired.”
“Wired for what?” Pride shot Bella a frown. “Just what exactly is going on here, Parker? And what unofficial channels are you using to communicate?”
“Is being Upyr. Have commandeered Ural, and am being halfway there.”
Bella grabbed Pride’s shoulder. “Project Overwatch. What we were using in the Catacombs. There’s Kriegers at Four Points and they’re homing in on Ramona and Tesla. Oh shite, Ramona—”
“Got her on a separate channel for now, Bell; she’s too busy yelling at Tesla. Can Pride fly?”
“I dunno—” She shook Yankee Pride’s shoulder. “Can you fly? Can you carry me? Otherwise we’ve got to get something that’s fast.”
Pride shook his head. “Can’t fly, but our janitor’s parked behind that trailer and has been watching us. I think it’s time to use Echo protocol Yankee two-zero-niner and commandeer his vehicle.”
“Get a move on!” Vickie said tensely. “I’m throwing up rock barriers but I can’t keep it up forever.”
The meta broke into a run towards the trailer, badge out as he nearly tore the door off the hinges. Bella couldn’t hear the janitor’s protest, but Pride’s rumble invited no argument. In seconds, the car pulled up next to her and the back door to the sedan opened. “I’ll have you know, there is no record of an Echo protocol for stealing a government-issued vehicle,” the janitor sneered from the passenger seat.
“Bell, lean over the seat and touch his GPS quick!”
Bella did so, bracing against the acceleration as Pride threw the car towards Peachtree-Dunwoody. Then she yelped as a spark jumped from her finger into the screen, which suddenly lit up with the nav already plotted for them.
“Goddamn, I wish JM was wired up today,” Vickie muttered. “We need a fire power . . . or JM or Zmey, even.”
Now Bella’s PDA gave the Echo alert warble, as did Yankee Pride’s.
“We’ll do what we have to with what we’ve got, Vic,” Bella replied. “If I can get close enough, I can scramble their fascist brains.” She clutched Pride’s shoulder. “I’m pretty much wired into Overwatch 24/7. We also passed out some sets to our allies; one is wired up and on the way. Acrobat and Scope had theirs on for whatever reason. So your first response team is me, Acrobat, Scope and Upyr.”
Whatever was under the hood of this beast, it was big, and it was powerful. And Yankee Pride was driving it like he was Mario Andretti, and it was a rental someone else had paid for. The car dodged in and out of traffic, tearing through the midmorning rush. The closer they got to the coordinates, the fewer cars they encountered. From a half mile away, the Sphere rose above the buildings and plowed through the parking lot. Pride pulled up across the street in time to see the asphalt rise in front of them and provide some well-needed cover.
The two metas piled out of the car. As the dark-suited man moved to join them, Pride pointed a finger at him that was soon surrounded by a gold-tinged aura. Both of his gauntlets flared to life as he leaned over the seat. “Stay in the car. I wouldn’t recommend trying to follow.”
* * *
The front of the diner had collapsed under the troopers’ feet. While Vickie had put out the call, Ramona had run out of the bathroom and pulled Tesla from under their table and into the kitchen. She had heard most of Vickie’s alerts and had recognized some of the names for their first response team, but she couldn’t say any of that to Tesla. Besides, as he cowered against the side of a refrigerator, he wouldn’t have been too responsive anyway.
“Ramona, get in the walk-in freezer. We think they have some IR vision and, besides the armoring of the freezer itself, that’ll foil it.”
She looked around wildly. The door to her left looked like the same sort of freezer she’d seen during her summers working burger joints in her youth, so she wrenched it open. Ramona pulled Tesla inside, grabbing the heavy jackets on the hook next to the door and throwing them inside before she closed the door.
“Can I put you on team freq?” Vickie was panting, as if she’d been running.
“Yeah,” Ramona wheezed. “And we’re inside.”
; “Roger. Bell, tell Pride he’s Team Lead. I have Jamaican Blaze confirmed and en route fast—she’s got an Echo jet pack. She’ll be there any second. There’s your fire power you asked for.”
Ramona felt for the light switch. It should be just inside the door.
“Upyr on scene,” came the crisp Russian voice. “Am being to pass Scope and Acrobat, will to being no more than thirty seconds out.”
There it was. Ramona flipped it on.
“Ramona Ferrari and Tesla are in the walk-in freezer in the kitchen, safe for now. Anybody got a spare headset for Pride?” Vickie asked.
“Jamaican Blaze just touched down,” Bella reported.
Tesla was huddled on the floor, looking freaked out. She stuffed him into a jacket then pulled one on herself; her breath emerged in clouds of fog. The coat, amazingly, was too big, which was fine with her; she kept her hands inside the sleeves and sat down on a cardboard box marked MIXVEG.
“Well, get her out of that pack before you let her—DAMN IT—in combat,” Vickie warned. “If the energy beams hit those things, they go up like a bomb.”
“I grabbed Bull’s Overwatch gear from the rack at the door!” Acrobat said in triumph.
“Good job, Bruno,” Bella told him warmly. “Pass it over to Pride when you get there, let’s get him wired in.”
Ramona heard someone saying something; it sounded like Pride. “Okay, Tesla briefed you on Overwatch, yeah?” Bella said. “Upyr! By the dumpster! Vic Victrix runs it; it’s part cybermonitoring and part magic. She’s got all of us tagged magically so she can loc us on a map, and we’re wired with button cams, throat mics and earpieces, all the standard Echo tech you’re used to. There! See, she can do her geomancy remotely as long as we’re on something like ground or it’s a place she already knows. I stay wired all the time now, pretty much. We wired Ramona less than an hour ago. And—uh—I took the responsibility of wiring some of CCCP. They were really receptive to the idea.” Before Pride could say anything, Bella then shouted “Yo! Bruno! Here!”