by Mercedes Lackey; Cody Martin; Dennis Lee; Veronica Giguere
The last was because she saw it; saw how to convince the desk to make the unit come out. She needed to give the desk power in a form it could use, the DNA of the next in succession, and code phrases. Fortunately she had the next in succession right here.
Pride was just beginning to stand up and move. She got him and dragged him back to the desk, taking his right hand and and slapping it down onto the invisible—to everyone but her—DNA sampling and recognition scanner. She drew him closer and whispered in his ear. “Get your face close to your hand, whisper your name, Echo serial number, then say ‘Protocol Open Sesame,’” she hissed in his ear, as she fed the desk broadcast energy from the portable unit Mel had in her pack to run their tools.
Pride looked at her blankly, but finally nodded and did as he was told.
The desk considered these things for a moment, then there was a little pop of locking mechanisms springing open, and as Pride took his hand away, a panel in the middle of the desk slid back, and something rose up.
It wasn’t obviously the bizarre communication device Vickie had seen before—but she recognized parts of it, folded down flat, the whole of it making a transportable object about the size of the Oxford English Dictionary. The code words that the desk had revealed to her had made the desk prepare the communicator for transportation.
She hefted it; it didn’t weigh too much. Ramona could pack it out. She stowed it in the backpack they’d brought for that purpose and dropped it next to the detective, then scooped up a second pack—because they were going to have to make this look like they’d come after something else. She made a dash into the shelves, scooping up small things that looked valuable or dangerous. And then she saw something that made her heart race.
She knew what they were; little self-contained camera units in spheres about the size of a golf ball. But they were in a box marked “Antigrav self-propelled camera/sensor units, Verdigris Dynamics” with a sticker slapped next to the label that said NOT YET WORKING AS DESIGNED. Of course they weren’t. Only the Thulians had antigrav at the moment. But she had levitation.
She dumped the whole box in her pack and came sprinting back to the others.
They were all on their feet now, if a bit unsteady. “Come on, people,” she said in an urgent growl. “Get with the looting! Guns, experimental ammo, armor, whatever you can carry without compromising maneuverability. Next wave will be here any minute.”
Bella stared at her, slightly unfocused, then did a double take. “You’re not—”
Vickie made a shushing motion. “Explain later, move now.” She looked frantically around for a weapon. A nonlethal weapon.
And then she saw it. About the size and length of a broom handle, but Echo nanofiber. A little shorter than a quarterstaff, but that would make it easier to use in a corridor. And in her hands, lethal or nonlethal as she chose.
She seized it, and started herding the others out. Well, this should help confuse things. Red Djinni’s not a staff-fighting expert as far as I know . . .
* * *
Red stared at the monitors, and watched his team scramble to fill their pockets with anything small and important-looking. Through Bella’s cam, he saw Mel pause and pick up an energy rifle. From time to time, he glanced at the cat, Grey (as Victrix had called him), who stared back, his luminescent eyes fixed in an angry glare.
He had heard Vickie’s apology. “It was my own damn stupid fault, and no excuses. I said I wished I was you. I know better, I knew better and I’m not going to say it just slipped out. I screwed up, but we both got bit in the ass. Whatever it takes to make this right with you, I will do.” He had not answered.
The cat bared its fangs.
Red ignored him, and brought Vickie’s hand up, forcing himself not to cringe as he painfully balled up her fingers into a fist.
“She’s lived with this, for how long?” he asked.
“And this is what keeps her here, in this little room,” Red mused. “Of course, only four years . . .”
“Well, yeah, duh . . .”
Red reached down, picked up Vickie’s glove, and put it on.
“Jesus,” he said, finally. “I had no idea.”
“Yes, hiding, that would come first,” Red mused, closing his eyes and leaning back. “But not forever. She . . .” His eyes snapped open, and he turned to Grey. “Has she given up?”
“A wake-up call, yeah. Lot of that going around.”
The cat turned its attention to the monitors.
The team had gathered up the loot and gotten their behinds in motion while he and the cat had been staring at each other. And they had just run into the second wave of Echo guards. Vickie—Red—had jumped right into the middle of them, and was laying out the guards with some very pretty quarterstaff work.
“Yeah, yeah,” Red nodded, watching himself move on the monitors. “She’s good, plenty of training . . . experience . . . I see it. It’s all there. So why can’t she do that all the time?”
Red obliged, and rose to his feet. He felt the muscles scrape across themselves, her skin scream in protest at the slightest movement. He took a tentative step, then another, noting the fire that seemed to erupt from every limb. He arched his back, then bent forward. More pain. It was considerable, he had to admit, but familiar.
Red turned to look at Grey, his stance relaxed and still. The next moment, he held the cat by its throat. Vickie’s body erupted in pain, but more than that, it didn’t move as he would have expected, and he grunted from the shock.
Grey hissed, wriggled free and leapt away.
Red returned to his seat, deep in thought.
“Sure,” he said, finally. “Nothing that can’t be compensated for, eventually. It’s still all there. She’s got the goods. She needs to see that.”
Red pointed to the monitors. “Look at her. You can’t see it, you walking set of fiddle strings, but she’s still in pain. That’s my skin she’s wearing now, and it’s not a picnic. But look at her .
. .”
He motioned as Vickie delivered a devastating roundhouse kick, transitioning to a smooth leg sweep, felling two more guards.
“. . . She’s still got it. It’s not the body. There’s something else in her way.”
Red glanced at Grey, then turned back to the monitors and watched.
CHAPTER TWENTY
__________
Illusion
MERCEDES LACKEY AND DENNIS LEE
The rest of the team was at CCCP HQ in Sovie’s medical bay, being checked up on. Obviously the last place any of them wanted to go was the Echo base hospital. They were all still showing the effects of a gas overdose. If Bell hadn’t been loaded with a shot of power from the Seraphym, she probably would have died; as it was, they were tying her down to a bed, despite her protests.
Vickie managed to fob them off, aping Red’s habitual rudeness, and escaped. She had to get back, give Red his body back. That was not an option.
The apartment looked strange through his eyes. Different angle, he was nearly twice her height. And his vision . . . she thought he might see a bit further into both ends of the spectrum than she did. She dropped the pack of camera spheres and other intriguing tech just inside the door, and Bella’s med pack beside it, staggering with weariness. She could return Bella’s pack later. Too much; too much for too long, and she was drained, not only of physical stamina but of magical energy. She had to go face Red, once she had stuffed this body full of fast-burn calories, and beg him for the time to recharge.
She stumbled over to the kitchen. Now that she wasn’t fighting and running on adrenaline, control was a little more problematic, He was much, much taller than she was and had longer arms; she kept overshooting when she reached for things.
Magicians burn a lot of calories, and what with her stomach almost always being in nervous revolt, she stockpiled protein shakes and glucose drinks in the fridge. She reached for one of each, then pulled off his trademark scarf to drink them.
And caught a distorted glimpse of his face in the reflective glass door of the microwave.
She looked away, quickly. So that was the rest of it, besides the pain and the disorientation of his skin-sense. No wonder he kept his face hidden. He wasn’t in this skin now, she was; she didn’t know how to control it, and what she had just seen was the real Djinni. She brought his hands up to touch his face. He should have had a chiseled profile; the bones under the skin were good. Strong and, well, manly. But the skin hung off those bones like the jowels and sagging hide of a Shar-Pei. He was all scars and wrinkles and pendulous folds. Tight in places, bizarre and loose in others. He looked as if some sort of monstrous sfx makeup had been applied to him. It was as ugly as her own scarred body, enough to disgust anyone who might have caught a glimpse. But she knew, she understood, and again, like his pain, she was surprised at how familiar it all was. For all he could do in this powerful body, he was trapped in it. Just like she was. And like her, she knew damn well he would never show it to anyone . . . except, maybe . . .
Maybe that other Victoria.
She gulped down the shake and the glucose quickly, then picked up the scarf and carefully did not think about what to do when putting it back on. She relied on his muscle memory, so it would be tied correctly, and with luck he wouldn’t know it had ever been off. Right. Time to face the music. She steeled herself, and walked his body into the Overwatch room.
Two sets of eyes glared at her; her own, and Grey’s. She felt the glare as if it was a body blow; braced herself for anger. “I need ten more minutes, Red,” she said quietly, and sat right down on the floor, bracing herself against the wall. “I’m not stalling. I actually have got to take a rest. I’m running on empty and I can’t put you back right this second.”
The truth was, she needed that ten minutes for something else as well. She had to convince herself that she wanted her own body back. That was harder than it sounded; despite the pain of his skin, the weirdness of being in a male body, the disorientation of his skin radar, she’d had, for the last hour or so, more physical freedom than she’d had in five years. She’d wanted the body to do something, and it did it, without hesitation.
She convinced herself—bone deep conviction—by the only means that worked. Keeping his body was wrong. It was his, not hers. And though she cried inside for losing it, that didn’t matter. She was steeped in ethics, perhaps more so now than when she had been whole. What mattered, what always mattered, was doing the right thing.
The silence built for an awfully long time. Finally she broke it. “It would help if you’d say something. At least I would know whether I need to break out the radiation shield after I put you back. You know, for when you nuke me.” More silence; she felt her spirits sinking. “Hello? Earth to Djinni?”
“Put us back,” was all he said. Actually, he growled. Vickie ignored the oddity of his intonation and inflection overlaid on her light soprano.
She hauled herself to her feet. A quick internal check said she just—barely—had enough to pull it off. “This won’t take long. Just let me check a few things first.”
The swap back was mathemagically a lot more complicated than the swap out—because, as she said, she was an ethical mage and had to be sure she left nothing of herself behind. She went to the computer to double- and triple-check her computations and diagrams, ran a few simulations to make sure she had the best probability that Heisenberg wasn’t going to kick in and Murphy was going to leave her alone. Then she knelt next to him. Herself. Remember, that’s me. I need to be in there. I need to be in there. She looked herself in the eyes, stared into her own eyes and let the power build. When it felt as if it was going to explode, she powered through the calculations. “Fiat reverto,” she croaked, wanting with every fiber to be back where she belonged.
There came that feeling of falling through the universe, where there was no up or down. Then, with a mingled sense of triumph and bitter disappointment, she felt all the old pains, the old aches, the all-too-familiar tightness and cramping and she knew before she opened her eyes that she was back.
But she opened her eyes anyway to make sure that he was, too.
The glare alone told her. She swallowed. “Grey? Bugger off. I’m back.”
The cat sniffed, stuck its tail and nose in the air, jumped down off the desk and stalked out the door.
“So should I get to my fallout shelter?” she asked in a small voice.
Red stood up and moved about the room, testing his limbs and stretching. He craned his neck and grunted as he felt his vertebrae strain and pop. He sank down, resting on the balls of his feet and bowed his head.
“It seems you can move after all,” he said, finally.
She got up. Slowly. As usual, she had to catch herself a little and as usual, her right side tightened up in a cramp. “As long as I’m not piloting this thing,” she said, trying to make it sound . . . well, less than bitter.
“It’s more than that,” he replied. “You might have noticed this body isn’t much fun either.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “If I’d known . . . but it was . . . amazing.” She bit her lip. “It was so good. I mean—I haven’t moved like that except in dreams for a long time. Your body . . . it moves right. No, more than that, it moves brilliantly. Like driving a perfectly balanced, perfectly tuned sportscar.”
“Yours could too,” Djinni said. His face shifted beneath his scarf, and she saw the hint of laugh lines creep into view around his eyes. “Just ask Grey.”
“You’re . . . you’re not angry?” She could hardly believe it. He wasn’t mad?
“I’m trying not to be,” was all he could manage. “It was an accident, Victrix. You don’t think I get that? Hell, if you knew the shit I’ve pulled . . . well. I was watching you, and you can move. Now you just have to move . . .”
He pointed to her body.
“. . . in there.”
She bit back every angry reply she w
anted to make, swallowed down a sob, and tried very, very hard to only say the truth. “I try. I . . . don’t know how. Everything I try seems to make things worse.”
“You’re fighting yourself, you know. I was just in there. I think you can get past this.”
She shook her head violently. “It’s all been broken and put together wrong. It’s like trying to hold water in a cup you glued back together.”
“But it can be done. You can fix it. I’m not saying it won’t take time, but as much as you need to heal here”—he leaned forward, and gently took her arm—“my guess is you’ve a lot more to deal with up here . . .”
He reached up, and laid his hand softly on her head.
This was, literally, the first time a man had touched her, physically, since the healers had finished with her and said there was nothing more they could do. And it wasn’t—professional. It wasn’t hesitant. Her eyes stung for a moment.
Then her mind raced after possibilities. If he was right . . . maybe . . . “Maybe I can figure out some sort of . . . if I could channel magic energy on a microlevel like I do with the tech . . .”
And then he was up, his hands withdrawn and his back turned angrily to her.
“For god’s sake . . . magic? Again with the magic? When will you learn? Haven’t you seen enough yet? Haven’t you felt enough? Look at you! Your hands, your whole body . . . Wake up! That’s magic, Vickie!”
She felt as if he had dumped a barrel of ice water on her. “You . . . you saw?” She froze, every muscle seizing up. “You saw?”
Then anger flooded her. “And . . . and how is that different from you? Okay, it wasn’t magic that melted your face, it was your own damn powers! So haven’t you seen enough, felt enough? How is that different?”
He turned, and she felt the heat blaze from his eyes. He came at her, but there was no gentleness this time. He was shaking with rage, and with rough hands he grabbed at her arms and brought her to her feet.