Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle

by Mercedes Lackey

“You had no intention of letting Blacksnake take you, did ya?”

  Pike’s smile vanished. “If not for your fortuitous intervention, I would have slaughtered them all. What a waste of time that would have been. I would have had to start all over.” The depraved and hungry smile returned. “Ah, but the good universe in its wisdom stepped in. It does that, you know. It provides for those in need.”

  “Tell me what you want, Pike,” Red repeated, making it clear that he was getting fed up with the runaround.

  “Really, Red Djinni! You have not figured it out? We are brothers, you and I.”

  “So you keep saying,” Red replied. It was getting hard to hold still; he wasn’t well-balanced, and there were sharp edges sticking into him. But every time he moved even a little, he got warning shocks from the shackles. And the crap ton of dust in here was threatening to make him sneeze, which was going to make life uncomfortable as the shackles reacted. “I’m really going to have to go through the trouble of tracking down my dad one of these days, get a fix on what other mongrel blood I’m sharing.”

  “Oh, not by blood!” Pike exclaimed in disgust. “Truly you must see our bond transcends that!” He sighed. “Perhaps you are not as intelligent as I have observed you to be. And I was so sure. A shame. No matter. You will still give me what I desire.”

  “Something tells me it’s not the autograph.” Red wondered how long he could keep this maniac talking.

  “Given the realization of your stupidity, your curiosity will not, I fear, be sated. I have much to do, and you will simply have to live without the knowledge of why, exactly, you must die screaming.”

  “Well, that’s just not going to cut it,” Red snarled. “I’m going to need a lot more if you’re going to get anything from me.”

  “Have I not made it clear? Unglaubliche schweinhund, verdammten arschloch, you really are an imbecile. I do not need for you to be willing, Djinni, I simply need for you to be breathing. On your feet, mein freund idiot, let us not tempt the fates any more than we have to.”

  Pike motioned for Red to stand, and was rewarded with a scornful look.

  “Well, like my old Uncle Sparky used to say, ‘pot, kettle, black, asshole.’” Red looked meaningfully down at his hands and feet. “I try and stand up and you’re going to have to carry me, Hoss. I do any more, and you might as well leave my carcass here as fertilizer.”

  “Oh, of course!” Pike laughed. “You will excuse my carelessness, I’m sure. I am simply impatient, you see! Impatient to begin what promises to be a glorious future! I can decrease the output, if you wish, just enough for you to move . . . slowly. Or I can, if you prefer, simply knock you out. My men can lay you on a litter and carry you out on their shoulders. Like the funeral of Siegfried! Fitting, don’t you think?”

  “Just do it,” Red said, slowly lifting his arms and presenting his wrist shackles to Pike. “This place looks depressingly like Detroit on a bad day. If I’m going to have to listen to you, I want better scenery.”

  Pike played with his chin for a moment, like a villain in a B-movie. “Hmm. Make you walk, and watch you dance while you do so, yet suffer delays while you thrash, or watch my subhuman flunkies struggle to carry you? Decisions, decisions . . .”

  Red could feel Pike’s glee, his hunger, fueling his need to taunt his prey. It wasn’t enough that he had won. He reveled in his dominance, and his eyes bore into Red’s, excavating madly for as much misery as he could find. Red returned the maniac’s look with disdain.

  “Oh yeah,” Red nodded. “Look at you, big man. You got me all tied up, helpless, probably hoping I’ll do a little begging right now, huh?”

  “Oh, would you?” Pike asked, his grin spreading even wider. “That would be so thoughtful!”

  “Please, please,” Red obliged, rolling his eyes. “I’ve got so much to live for. I’ve got kids . . . probably. I never learned to knit, and winter’s coming. My DVR is full of Communitys I haven’t watched yet, and I’ll be damned if I miss another Inspector Spacetime clip. And I still haven’t . . .”

  “Stop,” Pike interrupted, his eyes narrowing, his smile fading away. “You’re stalling. Why are you stalling?”

  “PUNCH IT, VIX!” Red shouted, and with a brilliant flash of light the shackles fell from his wrists and ankles.

  * * *

  She heard voices, but not close enough to make out what they were saying. Okay, screaming is going to get me nowhere, and someone might have meta-hearing and pick up on me screaming into his ear. She settled for a jittery, “Red. Red. Red. Say something. Red. Say something,” repeated ad infinitum, but with pauses for him to, well, actually respond.

  She froze when she finally heard a clear voice. It wasn’t Red’s, but a young man. Pike. Only . . . it had a faint accent that sure as hell wasn’t Southern. It wasn’t just the accent. Pike spoke with confidence, a smarmy drawl that drifted back and forth between disdain and respect. And German. She definitely heard German in there.

  She watched as one of Red’s communicators went offline, the standard issue one from Echo. Pike, it seemed, did not want anyone listening in or pinpointing Red’s location. He obviously didn’t know about the secret Overwatch communicator or the throat mic, both buried under Red’s skin, since his arrogant voice was still coming in loud and clear.

  When Red did speak, it wasn’t to her. “Right, I’m your Huckleberry. You know me, so I can skip my life story and you can get right to telling me what you want.” They’d worked out a code a couple runs ago, half in jest, half in earnest. “You know, I’m a writer . . . and if I was writing this, it’d be about time for a kidnapping scene.” He laughed, but they both agreed that there was some justifiable paranoia here. “Huckleberry” meant he was starting code-speak and “life story” told her he was captured, a hostage or both.

  “Roger capture,” she breathed. “Running VR program to see if I can ID anyone.” She had a great voice recognition program, it worked on accents and speech patterns too. “I ID Kriegers obviously. What’s your status?”

  She listened carefully for the next code words while her programs ran, and was rewarded with the heavy crackle of feedback. She winced as the crackling subsided, and held her breath as Red spoke again.

  “Nice bling. You didn’t have to give me presents, you know.”

  Restraints, and given they knew it was the Djinni, probably shackles and cuffs. But what kind? If he could pick them, all she needed to do was make a distraction.

  It was his captor, not Red, who gave her the answer. His taunting told her, after a few moments of racing thought, that they were some fancy high-tech, and they could kill him, possibly with shocks. That would explain the feedback. English was not sufficient for her response to that. “Kutyafasza,” she swore. She was reasonably certain Red did not know Hungarian. “Okay. Okay. Give me a minute, I’ll figure out if I can do something about your bracelets.”

  “. . . I feel like a brain-dead badger right now. And spare me the schadenfreude, okay? You’re holding all the cards here.”

  The badger reference. Code red, in Djinni-speak. At least five Thulians; they’d agreed to use poker talk for counting things. Then, when he said that his captor had both hands—that was ten. And—

  Vickie felt a shock of panic. Schadenfreude? But that was Echo’s code name for . . .

  The answer came to her, a mere second before her voice recognition program flashed the name up on her monitor.

  “Good God!” Vickie screamed. “It’s Doppelgaenger!”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Red muttered.

  Not good. So not good.

  “Bazd szájba a jó kurva anyád . . .” Vickie swore, and slammed Bull’s panic button. Hopefully he was wearing his Overwatch ear. Not a good time to get Bella on this, and Vickie needed a tactical brain. Bull would get a steady alarm on his Overwatch freq until he answered her. And in the meantime . . . what? Red was being held by Doppelgaenger! He was helpless against a man that, by all accounts, was the most sadistic Krieger they had
come up against to date. What could she do? What could she . . .

  “Red!” she shouted. “Keep him talking! I’ve called for backup!”

  “Well that’s just not going to cut it,” Red answered. Vickie frowned. Was he talking to her or to Doppelgaenger? Her mind raced with possibilities. She didn’t have time for anything fancy—time or accuracy. No cam, no good way to read what was on him or around him, only the crude location and what he was feeding to her via the headset. Damn him and his refusal to go fully wired! It wasn’t as if he couldn’t just hide a button cam and grow some skin over it! All she’d need would be a pinhole—

  Concentrate, bitch! “There’s not a lot I can do at this range and shooting blind, Red,” she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “I can’t do the tech-magic, it’ll all have to be witchery and geomancy. That’s not exactly needle surgery we’re talking about.” Nevertheless, she sketched in diagrams over his spot on the map, laying in prep work she hoped she wouldn’t have to use. “It’s like hitting bugs with the Oxford Unabridged, and I don’t want you to be the bug.” Her heart raced and her mouth was dry.

  Her heart sank as she heard Doppelgaenger mention transports. They were running out of time.

  “Well, like my old Uncle Sparky used to say . . .”

  Sparky? He can’t be serious . . . She was a techno-mage yes, but for the gods’ sake, that required finesse and a lot of data, this situation was absolutely blind and . . .

  “Have you lost your mind?” she demanded, leaping to her feet. “What’s electrocuting you going to do other than leave you helpless and fried?”

  “Just do it,” she heard Red say defiantly. “This place looks depressingly like Detroit on a bad day. If I’m going to have to listen to you, I want better scenery.”

  Detroit. He wanted her to fry his cuffs . . . she’d read about how he had goaded that electric-powered meta into an uncontrolled surge to fry off his monitoring bracelet. Great. Just great. Who does he think I am? David Copperfield? It would be one thing if she could at least see what the damn things were, but she was operating completely in the dark and under time pressure. And there was only one way to do it. The nasty, dirty, primitive, and ugly way. Which was inherently the dangerous way.

  She began to draw the crudest, clumsiest diagrams and equations she’d done since her high school days . . . no, earlier . . . and berated the Djinni while she did it.

  “Right, shit-for-brains, have it your way. I am going to try to spring the cuffs but I don’t know what they are so I have to do this the old-fashioned way, which means fry the tech. All I have is that piece of your claw so I have to use you as a channel, but I can’t risk hurting you, so . . . szar napom van, this is going to have to be kibaszott medieval. I hate medieval magic, hate, hate, hate . . .”

  This was horrid stuff, worse than hitting bugs with books, this was going after a gnat with a sledgehammer, and Red had to be just outside of where the sledgehammer came down. Reverse Law of Unity, with the piece of claw as the target. Magic to be confined to what once belonged to this. Fry if you are not part of what this was part of. Like nested Venn diagrams. So many ways to go wrong. So little time to set it up. So much at stake. Was Bull going to answer? Who to call next if he didn’t? Call Echo and risk exposing the Overwatch program to Verd? Maybe call Corbie, or the Samoans?

  Medieval was as good as it was going to get. “Okay, Red, we are a go. I don’t like this. I’m having to sacrifice your Overwatch gear along with the cuffs. I kind of have you protected but I still could fry you; my odds are”—she glanced at her Prognosticator and blanched—“about fifty-fifty. I can trip this if I have to, but there has to be a better . . .”

  “PUNCH IT, VIX!”

  She punched it, unleashing Mother Earth’s own electricity into him in a terrible surge. The spell, massive and unwieldy, fed off her own energy. Vickie gasped as everything literally drained out of her, and the world went black.

  * * *

  She woke up. A frantic glimpse at the time on one of the monitors told her she’d passed out for maybe thirty seconds. Another check showed her, as she expected, that all of the Djinni’s reads were as dead as last year’s leaves. Whatever was going on now . . .

  I just hope the Kriegers near him got a dose of that too . . .

  Feeling as if someone had been beating her with bags of sand, she punched back into Bull’s Overwatch freq, interrupting the alarm. “Bulwark. Bulwark, this is an emergency.” If I can’t raise him, it’ll have to be Bella; she’s the only one I can think of that knows who I should try for next. Then what? Go out on her own? Bad idea, she couldn’t call anyone from out there. “Operative Bulwark, this is a Code Screaming Freaking Red emergency!”

  “Bulwark here,” Bull’s voiced rumbled in her headset. “Apologies, Miss Victrix, I was in the shower.”

  “Bull, the Djinni’s in trouble. As in ‘ass-deep in aligators and pteradactyls descending’ trouble. He’s at grid 32-101-12 in that East Atlanta des—”

  “Roger that, Overwatch. I will dispatch a squad to his location immediately.”

  She felt her mouth falling open with astonishment. “Are you even listening to me? Your freaking squad is gonna get squashed like bugs on a semi! Assuming Verd even lets them go without intercepting them! It’s Doppelgaenger and at least ten Kriegers, and they’re trying to take him alive! I’ve lost signal on him on Echo and Overwatch both, I had to—”

  “Doppelgaenger?” Bull sounded confused. “What would Doppelgaenger want with Red Djinni?”

  “Will you stop asking questions and move already?” she shrilled, unable to keep her voice from spiraling up. “I’m calling Bella. If you won’t move your bloody broad ass, maybe Pride will!” Her hands were flying over the keyboard. She knew she could use text-to-speak to Bella, Ramona, and Yankee Pride. “Then I—”

  “Victrix, cease and desist,” Bulwark said. “You’re about to cause an enormous uproar, and you know certain parties would have to be deaf and dumb not to overhear it.”

  “You’re not the boss of me!” she shouted back. “Bella and Pride are!”

  “Stop and think, woman. If you start blaring an emergency on all your frequencies, you run the risk of compromising our network.”

  “Goddammit, Jarhead, it’s Red!” She choked on the last word.

  “Breathe, Victrix. Don’t go rushing into this; you know it’s a mistake, you’re too good not to. Get your head back in the game, keep your heart out of it, at least until the crisis is over.”

  “While you’re blathering they’re taking him.” Keep your heart out of it, he had said. He knew. He knew how she felt about Red, but she didn’t care. “Fuck this. If you won’t let me call anyone, I’m going in.” Somehow. How the hell was she—

  Apport. I can apport to the closest pad and—something. All she knew was she couldn’t let Doppelgaenger take him. Not after what she’d been listening to. “I’m going after him. Nobody gives a shit about me,” she said bitterly, without even thinking about it. “I’m expendable.”

  And then, Bulwark was shouting at her. She had never heard him raise his voice any more than he needed to, and certainly with nothing even approaching anger. It was like a verbal slap in the face, and though he was miles away she felt herself flinch away from her keyboard, as if he could somehow reach right through her monitor and shake some sense into her.

  “WILL YOU STOP ACTING LIKE A SCARED, LOVE-SICK TEENAGER AND THINK BEFORE YOU LEAP!”

  Whatever he intended, the effect was to make her freeze, scarcely even able to breathe with the hammer blow of panic and fear that hit her. All that came out of her mouth was a strangled sob as tears leaked down her face.

  “Now listen,” he said, resuming his usual rumble. “You will not fix the situation by performing some ridiculous kamikaze charge. You need a plan—a plan that does not compromise Overwatch, that does not compromise you. We do not have the time to assemble our covert operatives. You will have to come up with something, right now, that wil
l work with the limited resources you have. And when this is over, you and I are going to have a long talk about your incredibly pointless lack of self-worth. It’s shameful and counterproductive.”

  “Please,” she whispered. “We have to go. Now. He knows all about Overwatch and . . . and . . . if they . . .” Why was he stalling on this? Hell, give him a more urgent asset to safeguard, if he thought she was worth so much. “If you won’t save him, then save me. They’ll red-light me as soon as they know I exist and it’ll be game over.”

  “Go and do what?” Bull asked. “What is your plan?”

  Vickie cringed. What did they have? She took a breath and fought to control her fear. They didn’t have access to Echo personnel, not without endangering all they had worked for. They didn’t have firepower, not unless the Seraphym suddenly decided to show up . . . not likely. The big thing was those ten armored Kriegers; Doppelgaenger by himself wasn’t so bad. Only fire made the outside of those things brittle, but where would she find a force large enough to break—

  “Plan. Got one,” she said, and briefly filled him in. “. . . but unless you’re there, nobody’s getting out alive.”

  “That’s a risky bit of business,” Bull said. “I can think of a hundred things that can go wrong with . . .”

  “Bull!” Vickie shouted. What was wrong with him? This was Red, a member of his own team! What was possibly going through this man’s head to make him hesitate? “I! Am! Going! Are you coming or not?”

  He didn’t answer, not right away. She strained to listen, gritting her teeth, the beads of sweat falling down her face, while his rhythmic breathing betrayed his indecision.

  * * *

  Red cringed as sparks flew from the shackles, and he winced as mild shocks erupted from his throat and right ear. The shackles fell away as he clutched at his head. Vix had done it, she had freed him, but the surge had also overloaded his Overwatch communications tech. He was quite alone now, alone with—

  Pike gripped Red by the neck, but he wasn’t Pike anymore. He had discarded his disguise, and Red flailed helplessly as the man known only as Doppelgaenger lifted him high above the ground. Red gagged as he fought to release himself from Doppelgaenger’s choke hold. He groped at the huge fingers, which held him like a vice, to no avail.