There wasn’t a click to say when the connection died. He didn’t bother to tap the com. He sat, like he’d been told, in a void of snow, bleeding cold through his jeans and fire through his brain.
Yoink climbed up on his lap. He stroked her fur and, in the words of Zeke Medina, he got his shit together.
• • •
Because the universe has impeccable timing, he had just finished telling Angela about his long night by the road, petting Yoink and thinking, when back behind him, all the air on the mall moved. Swirled. At first Angela thought the disturbance might be her helicopter leaving, but that should have happened some minutes ago. And this flurry was bigger. A lot bigger.
Closer, too, right up in the face of the capitol building, forcing the security line to move the hell aside, Heron Farad’s spaceplane landed. VTOL jets blistered the fake grass, ears popped beneath its roar, and eyes blinked against its landing lights.
It was fucking beautiful.
Fez, Rafa, and the media mavens circled, must have gotten a megawatt shot of what came down the ramp. First Yoink, then Mari in a slinky orange dress, followed by Garrett and Chloe, who had done herself up as a cross between the Malawian pop goddess Diva Berenice and Dolly Parton and was doing a fantastic job approximating a real person, and last but sort of least, Damon Vallejo, whose hair had recovered all the swank.
Angela swallowed back a really uncomfortable wad of emotion. Her instinct was to cover it, fix it, but fuck that. No secrets, no lies—wasn’t that what she’d been telling herself? She was transmitting. Live and balls-out, just like Rafa said.
Fine, world, this is me. I feel things. I feel sad sometimes. I feel shitty lots of times. I get angry, I get wild. Tonight I feel…cared for. Backed up. Part of something. A vanguard of the storm.
Liberated. Loved. And I’m not sorry for any of it.
She skipped back down the stairs and approached them, thanked them. When she got to Mari, she whispered to the taller woman, “Is Dr. Farad all right? Back in the plane or taking care of Mama Adele, or…?”
Something shifted in Mari’s face. It was slight, but Angela knew faces, knew what bone-deep sadness looked like, even when somebody was trying very hard to stop it. “Nah, not him.”
“Your aunt Boo?” she asked. Impulsively she reached out and touched Mari’s upper arm and didn’t even cringe from the touch. It was okay.
Connection. Family. The opportunity to be a part of something that mattered. Kellen and his people had given her so much. And Angela, her government, everything she stood for, worked for, had only ever taken.
Well, she was going to balance out the scales tonight.
Mari pressed her lips together and swallowed. “We got a lot to talk about, but right now, I’m supposed to tell you that Chloe’s completed your checklist, and my daddy’s been cooking up a little extra something with Dan-Dan.”
Angela leaned forward, and Mari filled her in. Just two sentences, but holy shit. Angela was going to have to hug that crazy little genius fucker, Vallejo.
Yoink trotted down the ramp just as Mari was done laying down the details. The wee cinnamon-striped kitty slipped past the rest of them because she had to be first. As she approached Angela, she peered up, laid one ear back, and strutted onward, leading the way.
Back up the stairs, back to Kellen, and then through the wide, three-story doors. There was a reception line, but Angela gave zero fucks. There was a podium, too, and that’s where she headed, followed by her people. Her team. Crew. Family. The language really needed a better word for what she had, what surrounded her and made her feel mighty. A support structure human halo of awesomeness? Yeah. Something like that.
At the far end of a massive ballroom packed to the rafters, Mari, Garrett, and Chloe fanned out, settling into the suffocating press of expensively garbed human flesh. Free-fae lights gleamed like tiny blue-white stars, illuminating a similarly glittering guest list. Angela spotted several faces she knew, several she loathed.
Zeke wasn’t out of his prep chamber yet, but Angela pushed through the curtains, stared down the security guards behind the stage. When they scanned her, all of her data was in order. She lived. They might have heard the rumor of her demise, but they couldn’t very well argue with the fact that she was standing right in front of them. And her security clearance was active and up-to-date. They passed her through, and Kellen, too, though she had no idea what his cover identity was. She didn’t even know whether this particular magic, the security clearances, were the work of Heron or Fez. Regardless, they were slick.
The backstage room was small, and Angela slipped soundlessly inside. Yoink followed, then Kellen.
Zeke had been meditating or something opposite the door. He liked to center himself before a major in-person. He was seated in a backless tufted chair in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror that was also probably smartsurface wired. He hadn’t put his public “face” on, and his skin was splotchy, his eyes murky and narrow. Nice suit, though. Red and white, the only two colors all the original member states’ flags shared. Savvy Zeke, being savvy.
“All pieces are in place. Would you like to play a game?” said a voice from her com. Yoink, but Zeke wouldn’t necessarily know that.
He looked up, clearly surprised to see anyone else in his prep chamber, least of all her. Probably. Good.
“Do we have confirmation of the entire cabinet’s attendance?” Kellen asked.
“Yes.”
“Key members of both congressional houses?”
“Yes.”
“Other guests of note?”
“Official delegations from seven nations, two multinational zones, ZaneCorp, the Holy See, the Jam’iya al-Ikhwan. Headmaster from Mustaqbal. Ofelia Ortega y Mars de la Madrid. Frederic Limontour. There are others.”
Angela could feel Kellen more than see him. He loomed at her back, taut, a crossbow wound and waiting. Across the room, she met Zeke’s gaze. “Good. Lock us in.”
“Now you just wait a second, kiddo, you can’t—” Zeke started, but the noise cut him off.
A one-note clang sounded through the building as every exit closed. Locked. Sealed. A building like this, possibly the most secure structure on the face of the planet, had a shitload of locks.
Zeke stood up, but Angela cricked a smartglove finger. The wall mirrors turned to monitors, blurred to life, and he sat back down. One screen showed the senate chamber, empty of power players. As they watched, the lights in the chamber went off, and it filled with haunts and shadows. Another showed blocky buildings, stalwart things with that fuzzy glow of multiple shells of shielding. Which, with another crick, disappeared, replaced on the live feed by stark piles of rubble.
“I have disbanded the senate,” Angela informed him coolly, “and either destroyed or assumed control of all UNAN data centers. I have changed the command codes for all remote-operated vehicles in the military databases. No more bombs. No more death. If you disbelieve, you have only to attempt login. Your profiles no longer work.”
Chloe had been busy, and so had Heron. Angela flushed with confidence in her team. She hoped they were getting this vid feed back on the plane.
She approached Zeke, one foot in front of the other. Some sliver inside her was still a little girl, waiting for his approval, trying to meet his expectations. Wishing she could shine just a little brighter because that would make her good. Best. And she was not allowed to be less than that.
But the bigger part of her, the grown-up part, realized that was all bullshit. His version of winning sucked, and he could no longer hurt her. She knew her own power. She inhabited her own self now. Owned it, past included.
“You will go out to the podium. Your speech will be broadcast live and worldwide. You will confess that you conspired to start a war against Texas. You will admit that you ordered the drone strikes of the last few days. You will apologize and resign eff
ective immediately. Not to worry—a special congressional session will convene tomorrow to appoint your replacement, all according to Article 84 of the Continental Unification Charter.”
She was less than a foot from him, could smell his cardamom cologne and hair pomade. He still sat, and she towered above him. Looked down on him. Wondered what it would feel like to squash the fuck out of him. “And if you do all these things, exactly as I have told you, I will protect you from the consortium’s wrath. Just as you protected me, mentor.”
He stood, straightened his paisley waistcoat, tucked one hand into his pocket like goddamned Napoleon, and adjusted their relative height. One side of his top lip quivered in an almost sneer. “Little girl, I have resources you know nothing about. Go home, play house with your broken mech and the dumb-hick academy dropout by the door. You say nothing more of this, and I might even let you live.”
Unlikely. He must really think she was stupid. Or at least malleable. Sadly, she had reinforced the latter assessment of herself over the years. She hadn’t bucked the system, not once. Not until she had up and killed Daniel. That must have surprised the fuck out of some people.
It smarted, what he’d called Kellen just now, though. She transmitted that feeling, too, through her psych-emitter.
“Oh, you mean, resources like the data center offshore backups? Oops.” She tapped a smartglove pattern against her thigh, and a monitor showed satellite imaging of an unlabeled building off the coast of Vancouver. It had been evacuated during strikes two days ago, but Zeke wouldn’t know that. As they watched, the installation crumbled and fell into the sea. Gone.
He looked a tiny bit startled but recovered quickly. “Look, you are wasting my time. Even as we speak, Damon Vallejo is building a population of impersonator mech-clones, which will serve the consortium’s purposes, but mine first. Any time I want, I can replace you, and no one would ever know you were gone. Some of those mechs are here in this hall tonight, and on my signal—”
“Well, see, I know that’s a lie,” she said. Inside, a shout surged through her chest. She didn’t let it out, but she did appreciate the thrill of calling him, to his face, on one of his straight-up untruths. He’d been lying for so long, and every fib had grated on her conscience, but she’d never challenged him.
It felt good to speak up. It would feel even better to roar.
A monitor showed live footage of the ballroom outside. Where, incidentally, her own conversation was also being cast to the guests. On a delay, though; Rafa understood the importance of timing, and he’d asked for producer-level control of the “show” in case he needed to—or wanted to—break in with an inspirational montage or something emotive. Whatever. He was the artist here. She trusted him to build her story.
On the vid feed, Vallejo stood very near the presidential podium, being talked up by some fans. He looked comfy, in his element, happy. Most importantly, not a prisoner. Definitely not under Zeke’s thumb anymore.
Mari wasn’t right next to him. Best guess, she’d waited in the corridor outside the dressing room, in a generally badass way.
“We can do this without blood,” Angela told her former mentor. “Without violence.”
Something odd flashed across Zeke’s face. Compassion? Care? She knew the expression well, but she’d never completely figured out what it meant. It should have occurred to her years ago that as skilled as she was at altering her expression and emotion, he’d probably had similar lessons. If not the exact same ones. He almost smiled, gentle-eyed, when he said, “No victory is won without blood. I only did what was necessary for the future of our species, and how dare you threaten me. You know nothing about this world, kiddo.”
Zeke drew his hand away from his waistcoat, and Angela felt the simultaneous grip of one hand on her arm, above the glove, and the push of metal against her velvet gown.
Chapter 20
It wasn’t easy to still his muscles, not when he could see a gun pressed against the midsection of the woman he loved. But Kellen had a surgeon’s knack for holding steady, sticking to the plan. Maybe discipline more than knack.
“Whatever you’re thinkin’ about doing, don’t.”
Of course, Medina ignored him at first pass. All them power-hungry diva elite folks did. They looked right over him. Kellen had always thought someday their blind certainty that they ran the world was going to come back and bite one of them on the ass. Today was that day.
And his were the teeth.
Kellen stretched out a hand to the long table crammed with cosmetics and tiny boxes. Yoink leapt up, settling her head beneath his palm. The metal horns on either side of her skull lit up, and the blip board unfurled before her, stretching in all its holographic glory until the edges of light brushed Zeke Medina’s sleeve.
Lights appeared in the wire-frame representation of the ballroom. One. Two. Three. Medina’s gaze flashed to the vid feed on the walls, then back to Yoink’s dance of lights.
“You’re counting the stars, ain’t ya? And then looking at faces. Bet you can guess what all those shiny little suckers are. So go on then. Guess.”
Medina’s gaze cycled twice more. A sheen appeared at his hairline, one that he couldn’t blame on the hot lights alone. “They are guests.”
“And what kind of guests?”
“Invited ones,” Medina said. He might be scared shitless, but he could still rub some haughty sarcasm into his voice.
“Try N-series ones,” Kellen said, and he loved the look of sick horror that settled over Medina’s face. “Four of Vallejo’s best, right here at your inauguration, so the folks they look like can rest safe back at home. Almost like those particular folks knew this shindig might get dangerous. Now who you think told them that?”
The gun slipped against Angela’s skirt. The angle was off now, oblique.
“You don’t even know what you’re—”
“Now, here’s where you’re wrong, with all due respect,” Kellen interrupted. “’Cause I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m showing you your allies, your consortium, and I’m telling you, straight-up, they have all played you like a fiddle.”
“Limontour isn’t here,” Angela said in a voice that was too small but gaining strength. “La Mars Madrid isn’t here. Daniel isn’t here. But all of their mech-clone impersonators are.”
“And they all have fresh, shiny, new back door access keys,” Kellen added. “Do you want to know the word?”
The word that would activate alternate programming. The word that would disconnect them from the whole-organic humans who controlled them. The word that would put all that power in Heron’s control. Or Chloe’s. Kellen wasn’t super clear on how those two were sharing tasks, but either way, whoever got control of those death-bots wasn’t somebody nurturing kind thoughts about Zeke Medina.
The hand that held the gun trembled, just slightly.
“You won’t do anything,” Zeke said. “You can’t. I know who you are, Hockley. You haven’t changed much since you slunk out of the MIST, disgraced, failing, exposed as a fraud. You weren’t good enough for her then, and you aren’t good enough to save her now.”
Not good enough. Lord, how many times had he heard those words? They didn’t hurt anymore, not when the speaker’s definition of “good” was shit like how fast he could ruin a person’s body or soul or hope. For himself, Kellen counted goodness differently. Goodness was keeping the faith, sticking to his rules, playing fair. Persisting. Not losing hope. He caught Angela looking at him, her dark eyes wide and lovely. Goodness was her, and being with her, and making those scared eyes dance with laughter.
If he could keep her safe and make her happy, he would be the most successful dude who ever lived.
“Guess it sucks for you then,” he told the president, “that all us dumb-ass failure sorts got the best death weapons.”
It was gone almost instantly, but he caught the spark in he
r eye, the veriest pull at the edge of her mouth. All you pacifists have the best death weapons.
I get you, he told her silently, even knowing she couldn’t hear. I got you.
“Athanatos,” he said.
On the blip board, the white stars pulsed.
Then moved, steady, heading for the podium. Heading for this room.
Medina’s hand went lax as he watched their advance from four parts of the ballroom. He moistened his lips but obviously couldn’t look away.
“What will they do?” he asked. “When they get here?”
“I really don’t know,” Kellen said, “but I’ve instructed them to neutralize the threat. Oh, and I painted a big red dot on your ugly head, designated you a target. So whatever ‘neutralize’ means to a four-hundred-pound mechanical death-bot with titanium hands and a detailed physiological understanding of how your joints all fit together, that’s probably what they’re planning. At least in part.”
“N-series are very creative,” Angela added. “And don’t forget, they have complete behavioral profiles of all your best friends…I mean psychopaths.”
When she spoke, Medina looked back to her. He was still holding the gun, but his arm had slackened, and the weapon now pointed at the floor. It would be easy for him to raise it up again and shoot her. His other hand still gripped her arm like a vise.
Kellen and Angela both had to be smart here, had to be patient. Much as he wanted to leap over there, place his body between her and any threat, he needed to resist. He had a sense sudden moves were bad in this situation.
“Call them off,” Zeke said, looking straight at Angela. “Call them off and I’ll tell you where to find it.”
“It?” Kellen echoed, and he saw Angela’s mouth open, close. Blood fled her face, and he knew what it was.
“Don’t you listen to him,” Kellen said. “Don’t you listen to that lying fuck. This is what he does. It’s his sick superpower. Our girl’s gone, princess. You saw the place. Don’t you let him hurt you.”
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