“I’d need a different name,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“This one doesn’t fit anymore.” I looked down. I could see all the little raw spots around her fingernails where she’d been picking nervously at the skin. Her shoulders were straight and strong, her body powerful and solid, but there was a remarkable vulnerability to her in that moment.
“Any thoughts about what you’d change to?”
“You don’t think it’s a bad idea?”
“No, not at all. Henches and kicks do it all the time when they cross the line.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “I did always like ‘Decoherence.’”
There was something in the name that seemed to take an almost physical shape as soon as she said it, like she’d breathed something into being. It settled around her.
I nodded. “That feels good. Spend some time with it, make sure it fits, before you take it on. But I like it a lot.”
“You think your Boss would let you work with me?”
“I am sure Leviathan would see the wisdom of such a collaboration,” I said. I wasn’t entirely sure if I was joking or not. She grinned at me, and I felt myself flush; it was the first time I’d spoken his name to her.
She was quiet for a minute, studying me, then said, “You’re in love with him.”
My chest was suddenly full of broken glass. I made an extremely unpleasant noise in place of answering. Delicate manipulation I had been prepared for, but this was a very different conversation.
She grimaced. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
I swallowed hard twice and tried to get my mouth under control. “Well, after that colossal failure to be casual, we might as well.”
“So I’m right.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“How so?”
“It’s more like you’re not wrong.”
“Auditor, what the fuck does that mean.”
“It means I don’t know!”
“It’s the only possible explanation.”
“For what?”
“Oh, sure, people raid supermax complexes and overthrow superheroes for their bosses all the time.”
“I’m a penal abolitionist, superheroes are a scourge, and he gives good benefits.”
“I wonder what else he gives good.”
“Quantum.”
“Don’t be such a prude, you’ve thought about it.”
“. . . I’ve thought about it.”
There was a very long pause. I kept wrapping cords together and securing them with velcro strips. I could feel Quantum getting more frustrated with each passing second. “And your thoughts are . . .” she said finally, exasperated.
“Well. It’d be weird.”
“No shit. What else.”
I changed tactics. “Have you ever met him, Quantum?”
She looked utterly startled. “Of course! We’ve fought—”
“No. Like when you were not trying to kill each other. Has he ever actually exchanged words with you.” She opened her mouth to speak. “Delivering a monologue in the third person does not count, nor do general threats.”
“Oh. No.” She pressed her lips together and frowned, furrowing her brow and trying to think. “We’ve never—no, I don’t think so. It’s all been battlefield shit and posturing and ransoms and whatever.”
I nodded. “That’s what I thought. When this is over, you should meet him.”
“Mmmm.” The idea was clearly making her uncomfortable, so I directed things back to my own emotional hellscape.
“Anyway. I’m not sure either of us is capable of the kind of relationship you’re talking about.”
She relaxed, and grinned at me. “So you’re not interested in how good he is with those pincers.”
“It’s not even about that! I’m academically curious, sure, but . . . Like . . . What does love with him look like? Are you asking me if I wanted to have romantic dinners alone with him, or fuck on his desk, or talk about our feelings?”
“If that’s what you think a relationship is.”
“Look. My point is, it’s irrelevant.”
“What is?”
“What my precise feelings are. I have a course of action and I am going through with it. The exact definition of my feelings doesn’t matter; what they compel me to do, that matters.”
She looked profoundly confused. “Okay. But even if the label on your own feelings doesn’t matter, wouldn’t you want to know how he felt about you?”
I tilted my head. “He pulled me off an operating table and rebuilt my brain. He killed people to get to me.
“What more could I possibly need to know?”
She couldn’t come up with anything to say after that, and I continued packing up. The simple physical task was pleasantly numbing. I got so distracted wiping several hard drives that I didn’t notice the precise moment she got up and left.
AS WE GOT into the last few Enforcement vehicles we had left, I asked everyone, individually, if they were certain that they wanted to come. A few of the Meat said they would rather stay behind with the noncombat henches, and serve as protection while they all fled to safety. All of the Meat who elected to come with us had to tell me, personally, that they were in. More than I expected decided to come. I tried to hold on to that as a thing to be proud of, to bolster my confidence, rather than making me guiltier for involving more people, more lives, in the gamble we were undertaking.
Keller was furious I even asked him, and I had to soothe him by reassuring him I was asking everyone. Ludmilla nodded, and curtly said, “Yes.” Melinda told me she didn’t trust anyone else to drive the slip car the way it needed to be driven. Vesper told me he would be my eyes.
Then Quantum was standing beside me. She didn’t have a costume anymore; she was wearing high-performance athletic gear, all in black. It was more modest than her superhero attire, and a lot more intimidating. She was wrapping her hands like a prizefighter; it added a comforting press and weight between her fingers, she explained, a holdover from childhood martial arts classes. It also made her powers easier to control. Her hair was tied back, emphasizing her cheekbones and dark eyes. She looked harder, more powerful, surer.
“They’re never going to forgive you for this,” I said.
She finished wrapping her hands and flexed her fingers. She made a tiny force field blossom between her hands and then popped it, a move like cracking her knuckles. She looked at me.
“It’s not so bad, really.” She grinned at me and suddenly I could feel my face ache from the width of my smile. “I wasn’t planning to forgive them either.”
Molly had upgraded my cane for me one more time, despite limited resources. While the sensors were exciting, the fact that it had a concealed knife in the handle delighted me the most in a childish, James Bond kind of way. Ros, from R&D, hooked me up with a discreet little pendant I hung around my neck filled with nanotech that, if swallowed, would neatly liquefy me. It wasn’t quite as dramatic as a cyanide capsule hidden in a molar, but it would have to do. If I failed at this, I was not going to give anyone the chance to dissect me again.
I didn’t say goodbye to my team, or Greg. I watched discreetly on a security feed while Darla, Jav, and the rest climbed into an unremarkable passenger van, with a good driver behind the wheel and one of the Meat riding shotgun for a bit of extra protection. Greg glanced around briefly, frowning, before arranging his gangly limbs inside. Watching him made my stomach hurt. I didn’t want that to be the last moment I saw his confused face.
Then Melinda was in the doorway and Keller was on the comm in my ear. It was time to go.
Once everyone who was leaving had a good head start, the rest of us prepared to meet Supercollider’s wrath head-on. We all got into what was left of Leviathan’s fleet of vehicles—a slip car, a surveillance and command vehicle, and a couple of lightly armored transports—and started the long, tense drive toward Dovecote. Quantum, Ludmilla, Vesper, and I loaded into the slip
car, while Keller and the rest of the Meat loaded into the last command vehicle and some enhanced personnel-carrying cargo vans.
The plan was somewhere between direct and desperate. We were heading straight to the doors of Dovecote; Keller and the Meat would stay at a slight distance until Supercollider was defeated, and then together we’d storm the gates. We were counting on there being some collateral damage from the confrontation between Quantum and Supercollider to help us tear the place apart and make it easier for us to walk in.
“If you happened to knock him through a wall or two while protecting us,” I said cheerfully, “that would be remarkably helpful.”
“Blast a hole or four that we can widen,” Keller added over the comm.
Quantum nodded. “I think I can do that. He’s always been terrible at avoiding property damage.”
“Show her the fucking PowerPoints, Auditor,” Keller grumbled.
I ignored him, and started fiddling with the drink machine. “We’ll use all his bad habits against him. The less we have to tear down because he’s already done the work for us, the happier I will be.” I got the hot water working and fished through the drawers for a tea bag.
“Are you making a motherfucking tea right now?” Vesper’s face was so gray it was green, and his hands were locked on to his knees. Ludmilla was outwardly calm but whittling away at her cuticles with a butterfly knife.
I poured hot water into the small travel mug I’d unearthed from one of the storage areas under the seat. When the steam rose I could smell the fragrance of bergamot and citrus, and something a little floral—there were cornflowers in this particular Earl Grey. “I am.” I felt almost giddy. A sense of unreality had descended on me, as if I were watching myself from a small distance.
“Having a tea party in there?” I could hear Keller grinning. There was a crackle and a background bark of laughter. “Where are my goddamn crumpets?”
I actually giggled. It was probably mania, my brain finally gone sideways from the stress, but I hadn’t felt as light as I did then since Leviathan went away. “Let me have a moment of peace.”
“I feel like I am going to puke.” Vesper sounded almost offended.
“Then I won’t offer you a cookie.” I’d found some gingersnaps. They were a little stale but also they were perfect.
Quantum took a handful when I offered. “Are you always like this?”
I thought for a minute, then dropped, “Fear accompanies the possibility of death. Calm shepherds its certainty.”
Everyone stared at me.
“Did none of you watch Farscape? I’m disappointed.” They stopped talking to me after that.
We still had an hour to drive. Outside the slip car, we were surrounded by brittle, late-autumn farmland just beyond the city, all limp barbwire and fallow fields in the early-morning light. My phone buzzed in my lap and I glanced down; McKinnon’s article was live. I nodded toward the screen, as though it needed the acknowledgment, and turned the device off. I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. I trusted the team to document and manage the flow of data as best they could, to guide the conversation here and there, and generally do everything in their power to make the footprint of that piece as broad and terrible as possible.
An hour was not long enough for them to be able to come up with any kind of effective crisis comms response, but an hour was enough time that someone would have to tell him. An hour was just enough that his world would be narrowing to a terrible point. Enough that he would be on the verge of a meltdown, a towering monument to fury. He would have no time to think, to collect, to assess. I wanted him at his most uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Which also meant at his most uniquely dangerous.
The slip car was almost friction-free as it moved; I had very little sense of the road. The suspension was liquid smooth. Without the rattle and thrum of movement to distract me, I found myself becoming intimately aware of everything happening in and to my body. I could feel where the seams of all my clothes pressed in, the tag at the back of my collar scraping gently against my neck, the way the fabric folded and clung to the backs of my knees. I was aware of all the funny little aches and itches where my body had healed, or was forever healing. I could feel my heartbeat in all my pulse points, not a nervous flutter but a steady, defiant cadence. I felt a strange, overwhelming tenderness for my body all of a sudden. It had been through a lot.
I rubbed one of my thighs with the same long, reassuring stroke you might use to pet a big dog. If we get through this, body, I thought absently, I’m going to be better to you. If this is it, I’m sorry. You did your best, all the time, and I appreciate you.
“Auditor?”
I opened my eyes. Vesper was looking at me, the apertures of his eyes almost as wide as they went, making his face even more intense and owlish than usual.
“We’re almost there,” he said.
“We have some company,” Keller’s voice said at the same time, through the comm in my ear.
Just ahead of us there were several tactical vehicles waiting on the shoulder, cherries lit and motors running. As we drew nearer, I could see the logos emblazoned on the hoods and sides were the same concentric rings that Supercollider wore on his chest. When we were almost upon them, I could see there was a second logo, this one punched into the metal rather than painted on, much harder to see: a “D” for the Draft in a thick, brutalist font.
Two of the vehicles pulled out suddenly, quick enough to startle a less-skilled driver—Melinda sucked in a breath, but otherwise continued to handle the slip car with her usual, almost serene control. They didn’t stop in front of us, though, or form a barricade; they matched pace and drove in front of us. A moment later, after we’d passed all the vehicles completely, the other two fell in behind.
All the calm I’d felt had vanished. All the fear and anxiety that had left me, briefly, slammed back into my body. My chest felt like it was closing in on itself. I tried, as surreptitiously as I could, to breathe.
“An honor guard,” Keller said.
“Executioners,” Vesper muttered.
“How kind.” My voice sounded weirdly absent.
“They gonna fuck with us?” That was the most words I’d ever heard Ludmilla say all together.
I shook my head. “No. They’re making sure we don’t change our minds. They want us to be in the exact same place we want to be.”
“I don’t like it.” Vesper’s eyes were narrowed now, defensive pinpricks.
Then everyone was very quiet. I kept telling myself to breathe; after all, I might not be able to do that much longer.
“When we get there,” I said, “everyone else stay in the cars. Supercollider, Quantum, and I are going to have to have a conversation.” I tapped my ear. “That means you, Keller.”
“Bullshit.”
“That’s the plan, deal with it. Everyone else stays put until Supercollider is sufficiently occupied. You’re not dealing with him, you’re dealing with Dovecote.”
I locked eyes with Quantum.
She gave a sharp, definitive nod.
“Keep me alive.”
She didn’t say anything, but her mouth tightened. I chose to read that tightness as resolve. I chose to believe that she wasn’t presently questioning that resolve. Then we were slowing, coming up on Dovecote’s first set of security gates. I found myself wishing I could hear the ominous crunch of gravel under our car’s wheels, could feel the tactile difference as a moment later we drove over the smoother, newer pavement. Instead there was only the slightest, eerie elision, the impossibly easy movement of the slip car winding down. The armored Draft vans circled around us and parked, waiting.
I pulled my comm out of my ear. The slight weight of it, custom-folded to my ear canal, was usually comforting. But for the next few minutes, I needed to be free of any distracting background noise, anyone vying for my attention, anyone else’s worries or insecurities about the situation. I let the little earpiece dangle over my collar, still attached by a fine cabl
e.
Vesper said something to me, but I didn’t hear it. He reached out one of his hands, and for a moment I took it, returned the cold, jointed grip with a squeeze of my own. Ludmilla made a gesture to follow me out of the slip car, but when I definitively said no for the last time, she did not argue with me. Quantum and I shared a moment of eye contact. She was like a statue pulled out of the ashes of Pompeii.
Quantum and I got out of the car. The door and the cloaking devices seemed to close behind me together; the car didn’t become invisible, but all the scanning disrupters were activated, making it impossible to get any kind of a read on who else was inside. It was strange to move through, like breaking the surface of a pool, then watching it grow still again.
It took me a moment to feel confident in my balance. Then slowly, cane in hand, I started to calmly walk toward the first security gate, which was just a small checkpoint shed surrounded by high chain-link and razor wire. Quantum followed, just behind my left shoulder, hands cupped and ready. I could hear something in the space between her fingers, a fuzzy sort of tearing sound.
“Drop your weapon!” The disembodied voice came over a loudspeaker whose exact location I couldn’t pinpoint.
“What weapon?” I held up my free hand.
“Your cane, drop it.”
“Really?”
“This is the last time I’m asking, drop—”
Then, as so many times before, everything happened both very slowly and very, very fast.
Supercollider came at us like an artillery shell, hitting the ground hard enough to tear a chunk out of the concrete as he launched into a run. He was a blur; Accelerator had been impossibly fast, and defied friction at the atomic level. Supercollider was nothing like that, but he did have his preternatural strength to move him forward, and while he was at least confined by physics, he could move.
The blow he landed, backed by momentum and towering rage, did not fall on me. Instead, he pivoted back on his last step toward us and sucker punched Quantum Entanglement.
She didn’t even have time to make a sound. I saw her body fly backward as though thrown from an explosion. She hit one of the Draft vehicles that had parked around us to block our escape. The heavy armor crumpled and the van flipped on its side, making a terrible shearing noise as the metal folded in around the site of impact. Around her body.
Hench Page 31