Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle

by Mercedes Lackey

  It was fine with the spleen, fine with the kidneys, fine with the lungs and the heart—everything was moving along just as she had pictured, and then she moved on to the stomach and that was when suddenly, everything went pear-shaped. One moment, everything was proceeding exactly as she expected it to. Nice, steady, predictable growth.

  The next, there was a runaway process that was exploding in all directions, the way the triggering of the healing factor had. And it wasn’t doing anything she had expected.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, in the part that wasn’t screaming with hysteria, she realized she must have triggered something else, something new, some factor she had never seen before. And it triggered explosively, an entirely different sort of cell rocketing out from her first point of contact, enveloping and changing the “silverskin,” making it tougher, which would have been fine, but making it thicker, picking up some sort of fibrous texture that seemed to have metal or something in it, and threatening to choke off the organs from their own blood supply! Frantically she sent her mind and her talent racing after it, diverting it just in the nick of time, over and over again, but it kept getting away from her and racing off in a different direction.

  Omigodomigodomigod I just killed him!

  When it hit the heart she completely panicked and sent a raw jolt of energy at it, throwing it into the rib cage—

  It liked the ribs . . . it dove after the calcified tissue like a hummingbird on nectar, and she panicked all over again until in the next instant she realized that all of the cellular “cats” she’d been chasing seemed to have picked up on that, and were also leaping for the nearest bone.

  And it wasn’t hurting him. In fact . . . in fact, as the stuff made its replicating race over his skeletal mass, it was strengthening that, toughening it, actually penetrating into the surface, making his bones as strong as Untermensch’s were, with a sort of nanotube reinforcing structure of something that definitely was metal, maybe silica. Had she inadvertently triggered that in him? Untermensch’s power?

  Where’s he getting the extra mass—

  She dared to open her eyes, just as the coffee table fell over, half of its steel-and-glass expanse eaten away. Of course. He’d been resting one hand on it . . .

  Omigod, this is . . . this has to be the factor that La Faucon Blanc had, the one that made her meld with her plane. The World War II French meta had long since vanished with the others of the Ghost Squadron, in that last fight over the Bermuda Triangle. The same fight that Eisenfaust had vanished in . . . only to turn up in Atlanta just before the Invasion, trying to warn them.

  And then . . . it was over. At least, she thought it was. She came in closer and laid her head on his chest. She had to be sure. Yes, she felt the last remnants of the multiplying silverskin begin to revert into a quiescent state. It was remarkable, as if the ravenous tissue had instantly been sated. She probed deeper, and realized with some alarm that Bull’s bones were almost completely interlaced with metal, and were now as much metal as calcium. They were lined and meshed with something else, an organic alloy of iron and carbon . . . steel? If so, it was severely modified steel. With a kind of cellular sigh, everything settled happily into place and began humming healthily along. Terrified of what she would find anyway—afraid to see that his organs were half siliconized—she began a layer by layer check.

  He was fine. He was more than fine.

  It was the calcified bone, she decided. It had somehow served as both a catalyst and fuel for the silverskin, and when it was depleted, the silverskin had simply reverted to a basal state bent on simple maintenance. The osseous tissue was partly replaced by the organic metal stuff, whatever it was, while still somehow being able to store calcium and keep the bone marrow. It was a little like the titanium matrices injected as a foam that were being used as bone grafts. He certainly wasn’t going to have to worry about buildings falling on him now. At least, not unless they were bigger than four stories. Maybe not even then. And God help anyone who threw a punch at him; the fool would end up with broken fist and arm.

  Note to self; no right crosses to his chin. Oh my God, that was lucky, so very lucky . . .

  She opened her eyes and burst into exhausted tears, throwing herself at his neck impulsively. “Gairdner! Gairdner, oh God, I almost killed you! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—I was stupid, I should never have tried that—” She couldn’t say anything more; she just choked on sobs.

  She pulled back and watched as waves of intense pain began to subside from his features. He drew in a long breath and finally his head fell back on the cushions. She hadn’t even realized the agony she had just put him through, having been so focused on fighting back the sudden attack. He never made a sound, there was nothing to reveal the hell he had just gone through. Now, he just lay back, his chest rising and falling in a rhythmic pattern of relief.

  “Did it work?” he said, finally. His eyes were still closed, his body limp and vulnerable.

  “It did . . . but I kicked off something else. I had no fricking clue I could trigger anything besides the healing factor. I didn’t when I set off the healing factor in Corbie and Knight.” She choked on another sob. “I am never doing that again. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Well, at least we know now,” he grunted, pulling himself up and sitting gingerly with his head in his hands. The couch creaked ominously.

  “You . . . ate half my coffee table,” she said tentatively, still trying to stop the tears of remorse and guilt.

  He nodded. “So, guess I don’t have to worry about eating more fiber today.”

  He startled her into a nervous laugh. “It’s—whatever I triggered off started a runaway reaction in the silverskin I was creating, then jumped to your bones. So . . . you kind of have steel and silica bones now. And very tough guts. No thanks to me.” She started crying again. “Gairdner, I almost killed you!”

  He patted her gently. “It was a risk; no matter how sure you were it was safe, these things often are. We got lucky, it seems, but I can live with that.” He tested himself, flexing his arms and lifting his legs with tentative gestures. The couch creaked some more. “Feels a little strange, a little stiff. I suppose I have a lot to get used to now.”

  I’m going to have to keep a close watch on him, Bella thought. Make sure there aren’t any bad side effects out of this. At least his smile was normal. She’d stopped it before it got to his teeth. She looked down, and realized her hands were still pressed to his chest. She covered for it and ran them up to his head and back down his arms, probing what she had done to him in a calmer state of mind. It seemed complete. All the old bone had been completely altered, and the tendons and ligaments strengthened so he wouldn’t tear himself apart trying to move. She wondered how it would heal when broken—how it was going to keep growing back and replenishing. And what about the marrow? Closer watch. Daily checkups at least. Oh god, what have I done?

  Finally she grabbed a tissue from the wreckage of the coffee table and wiped her eyes, and looked into his face, into those intelligent, kind eyes, eyes she desperately wanted to see warming with something other than friendship. And that was when it hit her. Competing with a dead woman or not, stupid or not, he’d almost ended up dead, and she’d never—

  She thought about every stupid rom-dram she’d ever seen, every television show that had this sort of situation, and how she had always cursed the stupid writers for doing the same damn cliché over and over. One or both of the leads were in love, never said anything, and then they ended up wasting time until the last reel, time that they could have been spending together. Or at least, wasted time in not knowing, dithering around, never just saying something and getting rejected—or not. They were always saying “they were afraid of losing what they had,” which was just moronic. She could handle rejection, and Gairdner wasn’t the kind of guy to panic and run away if she bared her soul to him, given everything else that absolutely required his partnership with her.

  “Gairdner . . . I don’t kn
ow what you’re going to think when I say this, but don’t interrupt me till I get done blurting all this out, okay?” she said, leaping into the wind again. “I’m crazy nuts about you. I don’t know for sure if it’s love, I’ve never been in love—it’s the telempathy thing, when you know exactly what a guy is thinking once he touches you, it kind of kills romance. Now, I can’t read you, and maybe that’s all this is, but I don’t think so. All I do know is I’d give an arm and a leg to be with you, and that I can’t just bottle this up anymore, and I sure as hell don’t want to find myself staring into that Khanjar bitch’s gun tomorrow and find the last thing I’m thinking is regret that I never said anything. And I sure as hell don’t want to find out something happened to you and end up with the same regret for the rest of my life, though the way things are going that might not be all that long.” She let it all out in a rush, and almost ran out of breath at the end of it. “There. I’m done now. Now you get to be Captain Perfect Control and pat me on the head and tell me that a leader can’t afford to feel that way and we pretend I never said this and move on.”

  Except, of course, I did, so now there’s a whole new Elephant in the Room. Still, there was some relief in finally getting the Elephant out of her heart and into the open.

  “Bella, I . . .” he paused, as if unsure of what to say.

  Oh god, she thought. I knew it. She steeled herself for the inevitable “Let’s just be friends and colleagues” speech.

  Instead, she let out a shrill cry as the couch collapsed under Bull’s augmented weight. Well, that would be where the rest of the metal had come from . . . the reinforcements on the wooden couch frame. They crashed to the floor, thrown together, and Bella found herself staring into Bull’s blue eyes in shock.

  “Overwatch to Bull and Bella. You two all right? Do I need to get paramedics or the fire department, or were you just breaking furniture for the fun of it?”

  Bella was mortified, and looked at Bull helplessly. Bull’s face cracked, his lips twitched, and he broke into helpless gales of deep, rumbling laughter. She felt her expression melt, from horrified embarrassment to mirth, and she joined Bull, hooting wildly until her sides ached. She became very aware of his arms, which had slipped around her.

  “We’re fine, Vickie!” she managed, finally. “Just fine!”

  “If you say so,” Vickie answered. “And I’ll let the office pool know I won. You do break things when you’re doing it. What were you doing, swinging from the chandelier?” There was a pause. “You guys do realize everyone in Echo Med is sure you’re boffing like bunnies, right?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  You Have to Believe We Are Magic

  MERCEDES LACKEY AND VERONICA GIGUERE

  It took some serious research on the charter, pretty much all of which I did under such tight security a nanobot couldn’t have gotten into my place, but I finally got all the ducks in a row.

  There was just one, teensy, tiny little problem . . .

  But hey, for that, I had Ramona.

  * * *

  The streets of downtown Atlanta buzzed with the usual sights and sounds of a Sunday afternoon. People still dressed in their finer clothes to go to worship services, while others lounged at tables outside coffee shops with newspapers and casual conversation. With less than a year having passed since the day of the Invasion, many of the smaller establishments had managed to return to some semblance of normal. Orange construction netting provided a reminder of the damage to some of the larger buildings, and the boarded-up windows of other restaurants and businesses offered proof that not everyone would make it through these hard times.

  Ramona Ferrari folded back a page of the Atlanta Journal Constitution and took another sip of coffee. The editorial section burned with the wrath of angry readers who demanded that the city do more about the Kriegers and that Echo step in and solve the problem, and that the inability of either to solve the problem meant that there were issues with the leadership in both. One particularly amusing article blamed the recurring wrath on the apparent heathenism of metahumans, while a rebuttal from a prominent Atlanta minister attributed the remaining Echo personnel as proof that greater powers had not forsaken the God-fearing people of Georgia in these dark times. Ramona shook her head and scanned the page, decided that nothing important remained in the newspaper but sports scores and coupons, and set it neatly on the table. As she did, the familiar Echo insignia caught her eye. She scowled, picked up the page, and scanned the small ad.

  “To remember those who sacrificed their lives in duty to the citizens of Atlanta, Echo plans to dedicate a memorial on the one-year anniversary of the Invasion. Chief Executive Officer Dominic Verdigris will present the plaque and statue at the event, which will be open to the public.”

  Ramona reached for her phone and snapped a picture of the ad, tagging it for later viewing with the hope that Victrix had already seen it in one of her many data-mining passes through the Atlanta media. A sick feeling lurched in her stomach as she reread the paragraph. A public event with Verdigris in charge of metahumans, cementing his image in the minds and hearts of everyone attending, everyone watching. He would own controlling shares of Echo alongside the gratitude of the people of Atlanta, and there would be little that anyone could do about it.

  She shifted in her seat, fingertip brushing the side of the earpiece as she hummed. “Overwatch? I know you read more than I do, but what I’m seeing doesn’t look right.”

  “I’m not a mind reader, I only live next door to one. What page of the paper are you looking at? The cam in the coffee shop only shows you from the front.” There was a pause. “Scratch that, bring the paper and come by my apartment. I’m getting you rewired, you’re too important for the old rig.”

  “Okay.” Being a civilian with Echo meant not asking questions about tech when confronted by those who breathed it, and Ramona knew she could trust Vickie. “You want anything? This place is really good, it’s a shame they don’t do delivery.”

  “Pick me up one of those gigantor things that’s all espresso with a double shot of cream and sweet, and yeah, a couple something or others from the case. Use that as your excuse to come visit the poor phobic shut-in. I like their coffee, I just don’t like going out for it.”

  * * *

  As instructed, Ramona appeared at the apartment with not one but two coffee disasters and a box of cinnamon coffee cake. She shifted a bit as if to knock, but realized that Vickie likely heard her breathing, let alone knew she was there.

  To prove the point, she heard the sound of five locks being thrown, and Vickie opened the door for her. The young woman looked . . . surprisingly well. Better than Ramona had ever seen her look, in fact. No more dark circles under her eyes. She actually smiled a little as she waved Ramona inside. “Now, what did I ask you to bring me, exactly? I forget.”

  “This.” She thrust one of the coffees at Vickie. “Gigantor, which they call ‘venti’ over there, all espresso with a double shot of cream and sweet. The ‘couple something or others’ from the case are cinnamon. Oh, ye poor phobic shut-in,” Ramona finished.

  Vickie sighed with relief, and unburdened her. “Once I get you wired I won’t have to make with the passwords, thank god, but now that we know Doppelgaenger was inside Echo and we presume has had access to all sorts of people, I’m not letting anyone in without a check.” She shut and locked the door.

  “Makes sense to me.” She deposited the rest of her wares on the counter. “So, wired? I get to be the FerrariBot 9000?”

  Vickie put the cup down on the coffee table and picked up three tiny plastic boxes. “Okay, first things first, off with the old, and before we stuff ourselves, on with the new. I’ve got these running on Bella, me, Red, Saviour, Untermensch, Sovie, I’m about to grab Bull after I get you, and Pride after I get Bull. These”—she held up the boxes, which each contained a tiny beadlike capsule—“are the new, improved, techno-magic Overwatch. You could be on the other side of the galaxy, and I’ll pick you up; no one
can use it but you, no one will know you have it but you, and no one can pick up the signals but me unless they happen to be as good a techno-mage as I am and break in here to twin my rig.” She grinned. “Impressed yet?”

  Ramona grinned back. “I haven’t stopped being impressed with what you can do since I met you. This is amazing. They work on every variation of metahuman? Even Red Djinni?”

  “Like a charm. Better on him, actually. I didn’t really need to worry about rejection with him. Okay, first we do what we replace the earpiece with. Just hold still.” Vickie picked up one of the “beads” on the end of her finger, touched it to the back of Ramona’s ear, and muttered something that sounded like “Apport.” As far as Ramona could tell, nothing happened, but Vickie seemed content.

  “Now the pickup mic.” She picked up another “bead.” “Open wide.”

  So far as Ramona could tell, Vickie just touched the top of her soft palate.

  “And now my pride and joy, and this is going to be a little creepy. Don’t move till I say so, and don’t touch your eye.” This time the “bead” went in the corner of her eye, and Vickie actually grabbed both her wrists.

  Staying still was a challenge, and Ramona could sense something smaller than an eyelash but larger than a grain of sand shifting around and behind her field of vision. The gritty sensation went away, but the barest touch of pressure someplace behind her eye resembled the beginning of a migraine and she tensed. “How long does this last?”

  “Not long. Maybe another minute, just hang in there. It’ll flatten out once it’s seated.”

  True to her word, the pressure subsided and Ramona could feel herself relax. “Better, I think. Now what?”