I shook my head. “No.” I spoke deliberately softly. “There is nothing about this that is going to be quiet.”
“Why leave now?”
“He feels like he needs to do it himself.”
Vesper swore and drank angrily. “He has every advantage and resource right here and instead he’s run the fuck off like a goddamn hero.”
“This room is definitely bugged,” I reminded him.
“Whatever, he’s definitely not listening and even if he was, good. I am sure your plan was good. Better than good. And it was working. It seems like folly to abandon it now.” It was so rare to get a rise out of Vesper; I realized he was angry on my behalf.
I was suddenly terrified that I might cry; a sourness crept into my throat and I coughed. “I thought it was going well.”
“It was going more than well.” He stood up and was gesticulating now. He was going to make a fine villain himself one day soon, I thought. “You were going to bring him down.” He paused. “Maybe that was it. Maybe he couldn’t let it be your plan that worked, it had to be his.”
I found I disliked that idea intensely, mostly because it was plausible. The tears that threatened began to transmute into my own anger. “There’s a lot between them I don’t understand,” I said, which sounded vague even to me. I wondered what the strange tightness in my chest was. I wondered if I was jealous. I wished suddenly that I could see my own feelings with as much clarity as I now saw the ultraviolet spectrum.
Vesper was quiet a long moment, clenching and unclenching one of his hands. “We should be there,” he said finally. “This is ours too.” He suddenly looked over at me, the apertures of his eyes focusing sharply. “This is yours most of all.” He gently tapped the side of my head, where the edges of my scars were visible.
I felt my jaw tighten. “I can’t possibly pretend that I hate Supercollider as much as Leviathan does.”
“It doesn’t make your hate less valid. You deserve a piece of him too.”
“I’ve carved out some pieces.” I looked at my hands.
“But do you feel avenged? Do you think you’ve balanced the scales?”
I thought hard and ran the numbers. The imbalance added kindling to my rising anger.
“No.”
Something in Vesper’s face hummed. “You deserve to destroy him too.”
I couldn’t bear to agree with him aloud. The more I thought about it, the more miserable and cheated and furious I felt.
Vesper kept pressing forward. “What are you actually upset about—that Leviathan might be frozen in carbonite, or that we aren’t at his right and left hands when that physics-defying jackass gets blasted out of the sky?”
“Stop.” It was an ugly, furious word. I stared daggers at my monitor for a while. Vesper sat quietly, not pushing any harder than he already had. I wanted to apologize for no good reason, but fought down the impulse.
“What do you think is going to happen,” he said finally. There was just enough deference in his voice that I felt like he earned my attention again.
I took a couple of calming breaths before answering. “What I am worried about”—I found the words slowly, turning each of them over in my mouth—“is that he’s springing the trap too soon. I wanted more time—needed more time—to run Supercollider down. I don’t know if he’s badly wounded enough. I’m worried he’s hurt just enough to be vicious.”
“You think the Boss has a chance?”
I smiled a little. “He’s got a lot more than a chance. But not enough of one for me to be entirely comfortable, you know?”
“I do.”
“Stupidly, I wish he’d let me do a better job. I would have that bastard ground down to paste for him.”
Vesper curled a mechanical hand around my shoulder. It didn’t fill me with blissful terror, but there was a small flutter of something, like a night bird alighting on a branch. “You would have eviscerated him, and it would have been glorious.”
I rested my hand on his. “Thanks.”
THE NEXT DAY, there was a fire at a retirement home.
The Hadron was not your typical facility. Sure, there was shuffleboard and genial orderlies carrying tiny paper cups filled with arthritis medication, enduring the flirting of lecherous old ladies. The inhabitants were anything but ordinary, however, despite the expected incontinence issues. The Hadron was where aging heroes went, when they were finally too old or ill or unsound to get by in their neglected headquarters with doting assistants.
It was an incredibly dangerous place to work, despite the relative frailty of the residents. An old man capable of psychic manipulation was infinitely more dangerous to himself and anyone around him when touched by dementia; a venerable woman whose hands shook badly and could no longer control a powerful acid attack was a disaster waiting to happen.
Despite the advanced training and exceptional security, accidents here were commonplace, and sometimes a little thing could get out of hand. This was one such cascade of events, when an older fellow’s pyrotechnic abilities started a small fire. It would have been rote, except a nearby oxygen tank got overheated and shot through a wall, which allowed the fire to spread farther than it should have, and suddenly what should have been contained by a small spray from an extinguisher required the evacuation of one full wing.
It wasn’t until the flames were put out and the staff were doing head counts that anyone realized Doc Proton was missing. It took a lot longer—well, after almost everyone was settled back into their lead-lined, nonreactive suites and all of the security measures were triple-checked—before anyone started to worry.
I was staring at the press release announcing his disappearance and turning everything I knew about Doc over in my head when my phone buzzed in my hand.
Greg
We’re placing bets
Melinda
$20
Vesper
How long til the ransom demand
Greg
I say 24 hours
Vesper
I say 12
Melinda
I say 48, when they can declare him missing
Greg
That only counts on tv
Melinda
People believe it though
Vesper
Keller has dibs on 72 hrs
An hour
Greg
What
Vesper
Ballsy
Melinda
oh shit
It’s going to be fast. It has to be.
Vesper
You think Doc’s gonna turn into a pumpkin?
He’ll be sick in just a few hours now
Greg
I hate playing w u
I’ll donate it to charity
My phone blew up with a string of texted expletives and I grinned. It was a brief but extremely welcome distraction. I’d done my homework, as usual, and I knew the enhancements Doc had undergone in his youth had caught up to him. I didn’t know the specifics of his condition but I had enough hard facts: He was rarely away from the facility for more than six hours, and typically needed about twenty minutes of treatment every four. He never left the compound without a pair of doctors, one with a medical bag shackled to her. He had a permanent picc line in his left arm, which he sometimes concealed with a tensor bandage, making jokes about his “tennis elbow.”
I had precious few minutes to enjoy my small victory before a different alert lit up the screen in my hand, and I was suddenly issuing an all-hands-on-deck call to my team. Leviathan had released a ransom video.
In a few minutes, we were all huddled together in my office: Darla, Jav, and Tamara monitoring feeds with me, tracking search terms, social media feeds, and news reports. Greg brought a coffee for me and hovered just behind my left shoulder, biting his lip. Melinda didn’t need to be in the room, but her on-call was suspended in Leviathan’s absence and she was deeply stressed out without a task, so I told her to be there in case I needed her. Vesper came and stood in the d
oorway, silently leaning against the frame. Everyone was as still as they could be while the video played.
Doc Proton was squinting. The room was dark and there was a bright light swinging about his face, making it hard to make out where he was.
“He’s in the Observation Tower,” I said.
Greg squawked and sputtered. “He’s here?”
Vesper stood straight. “You sure?”
“Positive. That’s the utility closet in the comm room.” I’d hidden there once when the building had been raided, a minor heroic infestation. “Can you check to see if he landed?” I didn’t take my eyes off the screen.
I heard Vesper nod; or, perhaps, a better way to explain it is I felt a burst of affirmative energy, and he left the room. Greg drew closer to me, hovering at the back of my chair. Jav twisted his hands together nervously. Tamara had her hands over her mouth, like a surprised little kid. Darla bit their nails. Melinda started pacing.
Doc lifted a hand to his face for a moment to shield his eyes from the brightness. “Is this really necessary?” He was trying to sound bored, but mostly his voice was tense and wary. It had been a while since he’d been held anywhere.
“Forgive the disturbance,” Leviathan said off-screen. “I will do my best not to take up too much of your time.”
Doc Proton scowled at Leviathan, who was clearly behind the camera. “What is this about, son?”
There was a shocking amount of familiarity in that word.
“The second law of thermodynamics.”
“What the ever-loving fuck does that mean?” Greg exploded.
“No idea,” I said quietly. I hated not knowing.
Doc Proton looked confused for a moment, then his strong face fell, the smile lines sliding into misery, his eyes going wet. I might not have understood, but he did.
“Son, I know it doesn’t matter, but I am so, so sorry—”
“This is not about an apology.” Leviathan’s voice was even more mechanical than usual, carefully robotic. “Certainly not from you, sir.”
“Please—”
“I believe you have something to say.”
Doc’s head dropped down to his chest for a moment, then he looked up square at the camera. For the first time, he appeared frail. “Supercollider.” He paused a second. “My boy, don’t come after me. There’s a score to settle here, a scale that needs balancing. And I am happy to pay it.”
“Noble. I wish she had such a choice.”
“‘She’?” Jav frowned.
I shook my head.
Doc swallowed hard, looked stricken.
“The universe will be set right today, all systems returned to equilibrium.” Leviathan’s voice was almost serene. “Do you acknowledge that all is as it should be?”
Doc nodded gravely. “I knew this day would come.”
“I hope your protégé learns something from your shouldering of this responsibility, sir. I thank you for it.”
Doc continued to stare directly into the camera for a long moment, and the live feed cut out.
My comm buzzed. Vesper texted:
he’s here
And then:
Collision inbound
At that moment, I became aware of a weird hum that I felt more than I heard, something that set my bones vibrating and made the walls around me whine in protest. My leg ached; I thought I could feel every single once-broken edge of bone, every healed bit of calcium. Despite the pain, I stood.
A moment later, alarms went off, and the entire compound went on lockdown. I made a dash for the door, swearing, but the blast door at the front of our interlinked offices slammed down like a portcullis. I punched it in impotent anger, splitting my knuckles, and started to claw at the override panel.
The building was shaking more intensely now, throbbing like an arrhythmic heart. I should have been terrified, but the emotion was buried under the towering fury that I was going to be locked in my office while Supercollider blew the compound apart. That there would be nothing I could do.
I inhaled to scream, but let the breath out instead in an awkward, gulping squawk when the door slid open. Dressed in more body armor than a riot cop, one of the finer cuts of Meat stood there, plasma torch already unsheathed.
“Auditor. Keller ordered me to bring you to him.”
I lunged through the door. I heard Greg make a strangled noise behind me as the reinforced alloy panel resealed. The Meat handed me a bulletproof vest.
“This way,” he said, already marching down the corridor. I strapped myself into the vest as I hurried after him. There was an earpiece in his ear that was clearly directing him, and twice he changed direction as we hustled through the halls. Once he stopped so suddenly I slammed into his back and bit nearly through my lower lip when my chin made hard contact with his armor.
When we reached a pair of exterior doors leading to the largest courtyard at the north end of the compound, there were two other Meat there waiting. They took up positions on either side of me and the three of them escorted me over to the vehicle functioning as the Enforcement Mobile Command Unit. It looked like an armored car mated with a surveillance van.
I barely got to glance around the courtyard before being respectfully shoved inside the Enforcement van, but I saw what looked like every piece of Meat in the entire compound wearing as much gear as they could find, more armored vehicles, and even some foam-based restraint artillery cannons. Keller had rolled out everything he could.
I also caught a glimpse of Supercollider. He stood at the farthest end of the courtyard, just a sketch of a figure in a red suit, a blood moon, hands clenched at his sides. Although I was unable to see his face, his anger was still palpable, coming off him like a heat haze. The air around him blurred, seemed to shiver.
“Get her in,” Keller barked from inside the van, reaching toward me. I hopped forward and the door slammed shut behind me, while the Meat ran off to join the rest of the enforcers.
“He’s alone,” I said, groping toward the empty seat next to Keller.
Keller muted his headset. “For now.”
“What’s he done?”
“Nothing. He’s standing there and waiting. I’m not starting anything till he does.”
I nodded. “Smart.”
The inside of the van bristled with screens and surveillance feeds, every scanner and dish pointed toward Supercollider. Bent over keyboards and frantically processing the information, two other Enforcement commanders tried to make sense of what they were seeing and transformed that data into a steady stream of orders. So far, all those orders were some variation of: “Be prepared and keep steady. Wait.”
I tried to keep my voice even. “Where is he?”
Keller didn’t need to ask who. “No idea. But the Observation Tower is empty.” Keller had clearly been able to figure out where the ransom video was shot too.
“Does Supercollider know he was there?”
“It’s still standing; I don’t think so.”
One of the panels started beeping anxiously, and outside I could hear a hum gathering momentum.
Keller slapped his comm to life. “Power down! Power down! No one fires so much as a rubber bullet before Supercollider makes a move.”
The humming gradually wound down, and one of the commanders flicked the alarm off.
Keller sighed and sucked his teeth. “What do you make of this?”
I paused. “The Boss wanted a showdown. He sure is going to get one.”
“He got a plan?”
“None he shared with me.”
Keller looked over at me. “That doesn’t mean anything, you know.”
“I know.” It was a little harsher than I meant it.
Keller nodded and handed me a headset. “Whatever is about to happen you deserve a good seat.”
I smiled thinly at him, and we both turned our attention to the largest screen, the main video feed pointed at Supercollider. I tapped a button on my headphones and the external audio feed suddenly blared to
chaotic life. Over the engines and the voices and the weird tech being activated, I could hear Supercollider screaming Leviathan’s name, over and over. It was thin and far away, but unmistakable, a study pulse in the background.
“Come and face me!” he said, his powerful voice worn to a rasp. “Come and face me, you coward!”
I clenched my jaw.
I became aware of a feeling that started at the base of my neck, sliding up the back of my skull like a shivering caress. I couldn’t see or smell the cloaking device, couldn’t hear the vehicle it shrouded (a near-silent slip car, if I had to guess), but I suddenly knew something else had arrived on the field. It didn’t show up on any of Keller’s devices, but I felt it, the spatial wrongness of it, with the dead certainty of a dog detecting an imminent volcanic eruption.
“He’s here,” I said.
Keller frantically scanned the devices around him, frowning.
“Trust me.”
He looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. He tapped his comm back to life. “Pay attention. Boss is cloaked and on the field.”
“Do we go for the hostile?” one of the field commanders asked, her voice raw. She was clearly starting to fray around the edges.
Keller’s frown lines deepened. “No. Stay frosty.”
I reached toward my temple, gritting my teeth. There was so much data. Between all the readouts in the van, everything happening outside, Supercollider’s threatening violence, and the dreadful hum of Leviathan’s presence, I was getting an ice pick of a headache. I tried to filter, to pay attention to the most important pieces in motion, as Vesper taught me. I looked at Supercollider on the screen, his red suit a wound. I let in the peculiar resonance of Leviathan’s presence, let the sonar in my bones echo-locate him. There was a weird shiver on the screen, a convulsive bit of snow. I stabbed toward it with my finger. “There he is.”
Keller hit the comm to speak, but before he could get a word out the emergency override crackled on and Leviathan spoke. He’d taken over all of the channels; he wanted to be sure that, before he saw him, Supercollider heard him.
“My old friend.” The venom that he conveyed in those three words, digitized and distorted though it was, made me flinch. “You aren’t needed here.”
Hench Page 24