“You think he’s still alive?”
“Yeah, that box he was in was all lights and wires. Some sort of stasis container, would be my guess. Pin him out of time and he can’t see the future to escape? I don’t know. Whatever they did, it worked.
“We’ll get him back. But until we do, I need you to say nothing about this. I’m gonna have a hard enough time faking his charisma even if no one has reason to suspect anything. If there’s any hint that things are wrong, it’ll all fall apart.”
“Silence it is,” said Mat. “Keep me in the loop, though, let me know if there does turn out to be anything I can do.”
“Right now, nothing. Actually, wait. Back my plays at LUAU? If Sight hadn’t just stepped up to be the president there, my life would be a lot easier right now.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” said Mat, thinking about the painful jolt his augment had given him the night Foresight had declared his intention to lead LUAU. Without that, he wouldn’t have implemented Moloch’s plan, and Judah’s life would undeniably be much easier.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Judah. “You’re getting that stare-into-the-distance look you get when you’re worrying about something.”
Mat shook his head. “Just thinking about LUAU, and about what you’ve got ahead of you in general. Gonna be a heck of a job, keeping everyone in the dark.”
“Good thing I’m the Mimic,” grinned Judah. “Adapting to every situation with the greatest of ease.”
“Glad to see you’re still able to joke about this.”
“When the only other option is to cry? I always choose to laugh. We’ll sort this out.”
“It’s been six weeks,” Keystone accused. “You’ve still found nothing?”
“I’m looking,” Golden said shortly.
“You say that! But I’m not seeing any evidence of it. Where are you looking? What are you doing?”
“Looking,” Golden repeated. Irritation flashed in her eyes. “It takes time. Especially to do it quietly. When I can’t let my reputation do the work for me, I have to work twice as hard.”
“What do you mean, you can’t let your reputation do the work for you? You’re the Golden Ruler! You’ve been in every picture next to Foresight for the last decade. You’re the other face of the team! Everyone knows you.”
“But they don’t know I’ve been looking. So they think I’m the first one they’ve asked, and they clam up. No one wants to be the first one to roll over. So every night, I have to first convince them that they’re simply the latest in a long string of inquiries, then squeeze them for information. It takes time. And so far, it hasn’t had results. But it will.”
From the couch, Asclepius spoke up. “I’m surprised that you’ve managed to keep it completely quiet, going out every night. These guys must have some kind of network.”
“I know how to get around networks,” said Golden. “All I have to do is make sure that they fear me more than they fear anyone else. For that, I have the mask, the spear, and yes, my reputation. And with that said: I’m off to work. I’ll let you know when I find something.”
Golden donned her mask, took up her spear and strode out of the apartment, an avenging angel going to war. Keystone watched the door close behind her, then wheeled on Asclepius.
“And what have you been doing?”
“The same as you. Pretty much nothing.”
Keystone’s mouth dropped open. “How dare you?”
Asclepius shrugged, still relaxed on the couch. “What? It’s true. We’re support. We back up the main guys. So since one’s gone solo and one’s just gone, we support them by hanging out at home and pretending everything’s fine.”
“That is not what I’m doing!”
“Yeah? Then tell me where I’m wrong.”
“I’m doing things! It’s just hard to ask for leads on a problem no one knows exists.”
“The only thing you’re doing that I’m not doing,” said Asclepius, “is deluding yourself.”
“Grow up,” said Keystone in disgust.
Asclepius chuckled, gesturing to himself. “Can’t.”
“You could grow up mentally. Or does your brain constantly reset to seventeen as well?”
“Neurologically, it’s an interesting question,” said Asclepius.
Keystone snorted and left the room. Asclepius watched her leave, shrugged, and poured himself another glass of scotch.
Golden stood in a stockroom lit by fluorescent lights, towering over a burly, bearded man. The man was seated in an office chair, his hands cuffed to the back of it by zip ties. The left side of his face was swelling into a massive bruise, and his top and bottom lip on that side were split and oozing blood. He glared up at her, unafraid.
“I am businessman,” he said. He spat to one side, a glob of blood staining the industrial carpet. His teeth shone red as he spoke. “Private citizen. You have made mistake.”
“No mistake, Andrei. I know about your work with the Spetsnaz. I know a lot about who you are, and who you were. And the fact that I know all of that and came here anyway should tell you a lot about who I am.”
“Know you. Golden eye candy. Big figurehead to scare small fish into quiet.” He spat again. “Am unimpressed.”
“I don’t need your approval. I just need your information.” Golden leaned in ominously. “Tell me what you know about Foresight.”
Andrei shrugged as best he could with his hands tied behind him. “What everyone knows. Calmed city. Organized power council. Sees future. What do you want from me?”
“Good. Now tell me what the Russian state department knows.”
“Am busin—” Andrei began, and Golden drove the butt of her spear into his stomach. He folded forward, vomiting into his own lap. His eyes bulged and his mouth moved soundlessly as he struggled for breath, finally managing to take in air in a great heaving gasp. Blood and vomit intermingled on his chin, hanging off his face in viscous strands as he stared back up at Golden with hate in his eyes.
“Enough lies,” Golden said. She put the point of her spear into a spot just above his armpit and began to slowly lean forward into it. Andrei gritted his teeth as blood began to flow from the wound.
“There’s a nerve cluster here,” said Golden. “Deep inside the armpit. Hitting someone in it will deaden their arm for minutes, sometimes as much as an hour. The direction I’m going, I’ll have to cut through a bunch of muscle and tendons first, but I’ll get there. And when I do, I’m going to sever it. Slowly, painfully, and completely. You’re right-handed, aren’t you, Andrei?”
Sweat broke out on Andrei’s face from the pain, and fear was written across his features, but he said nothing.
Golden continued. “When I’ve done that, I’ll shatter your arm. If you’re lucky, I’ll have completely severed the nerve, so you won’t really feel that. Then I’ll move on to your left arm. And after that—well, the nerve clusters for the legs gather in the groin, Andrei.”
“Nothing!” he spat. “Is said he is mellowed, losing direction. Anticipated LUAU becoming a sword, but is instead sinecure. Useless. Discussion of reestablishing minor operations in city as test to see how much he will allow, or let slip.”
Golden withdrew the spear, and Andrei slumped in the chair, trembling. His posture was defeated, but his eyes still burned with fury. “Why? Why do you care what we say about your team?”
Leaning on her spear, Golden looked at him curiously. “How badly do you want to know, Andrei? Do you really want me to tell you?”
Suddenly, Andrei exploded upward from the chair, his hands bleeding freely from great stripes along the thumbs and pinkies where he had ripped them free of the plastic cuffs. He had a knife in his right hand, pulled from somewhere on his person, and he held it threateningly in front of him.
“You will tell, yes!” he snarled as he lunged for Golden, attempting to stab the knife into her neck. She twisted and blocked with her spear, though, sending the attack off to the side. Andrei slashed downward a
s he pulled back, scoring a long, bloody hit along her left forearm—then shouted in pain as blood splashed from an identical mark along his own arm.
“Stupid,” Golden said, her voice made hollow by the mask. She struck out with the spear, driving Andrei backwards with short, rapid strikes to the torso. He ducked and parried with the knife, but was forced to fall back a step at a time.
In a desperate move, he leapt to one side, attempting to dodge past and strike her in the flank. Graceful as a tiger, Golden spun the spear in a deadly arc, sweeping Andrei’s legs out from under him and then driving the point deep into his back as he crashed face-first to the floor. Bone popped as the spear severed his spine, and Andrei moaned briefly into the carpet before falling still.
Golden studied her fallen foe for a moment before withdrawing the spear, then stabbing it into the side of his neck. Blood pooled forth, spreading slowly as the carpet hungrily drank it in. Only once she was certain that he was truly dead did Golden kneel down beside Andrei. Taking up his knife, she inserted it into the wound the spear had made in his neck and began to saw.
As she worked, she made a call on her wave.
“Asclepius here. You good to get yourself home this time?”
“I’m functional. Minor damage only. Broken rib, I think, and I swallowed a tooth.”
“Get anything for it?”
“No one knows he’s gone. None of the major players, public or private. I’m telling you, it’s us. It’s our government.”
Asclepius sounded worried. “You sure you want to get into that? That’s a lot of resources after us if they catch you.”
“I want to find him.” Golden spoke grimly as she severed Andrei’s head and began to work on the left hand. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Then I’ll back your play.” Asclepius sounded resigned. “Meeting you at your place?”
“I’ll be there in a bit. Muddling my tracks here. See you shortly.”
“See you.”
Asclepius disconnected and stared at the ceiling. He set down his glass and rose from the couch.
“So, we’re going after the government,” he muttered to himself as he pulled on socks and shoes. “Probably without letting Mimic know what’s going on, since he’s still got contacts and friends there. And definitely without any sort of reliable backing, because even if we did want to let people know Sight is gone, no one else is suicidal enough to participate in something like this.
“Can’t stop her; she’d just do it without me, get busted up and not get fixed, and eventually get caught. And then we’d all go down with her anyway, because no one would believe she was working alone.
“And of course, there’s still no proof that they actually took Foresight, so this may all be a wild goose chase. Where the geese have rocket launchers.
“It sucks being support.”
URGENT, said the message from Raul. Mat regarded it with confusion before brushing it away.
“What’s up?” he called, looking across the control center to where Raul was standing up from behind his computer.
Raul crossed the room in a few quick strides. “Come walk with me,” he said, motioning for Mat to join him. The two exited the busy room, drawing a few curious looks, but no questions. The agents were all used to compartmentalization, and knew that whatever information was relevant to them would be provided.
The two men entered a small conference room, and Raul closed the door. “What’s this about?” asked Mat.
“This,” said Raul, waving him a link to a security video. As Mat played the video, Raul explained further. “So one of our squads went missing last week. Not on mission, just overnight. All four of them vanished from their homes. Signs of fights, but no evidence of who took them.”
“So why are you telling me and not Alyssa?” The video was the exterior of a standard suburban home, a faraway shot that showed the front of the house. It was nighttime, and a van had just pulled into the driveway. So far, nothing else had happened.
“She knows the team’s missing. But Cannon’s home security cam is the first information on what actually happened. Her response is going to be to go in hard, and if you want to temper that, you’d better think fast.”
On the video, the front passenger door of the van opened. A woman wearing golden armor stepped out, gleaming even in the dim glow from the porchlight.
“Jesus. That’s the Golden Ruler,” said Mat.
“I picked her,” said Raul, sounding distressed. “I’m the one who put her on the list that you gave to Foresight. She was supposed to be the balancing force, the one who made sure he never went off the rails. So what is this?”
On the video, Golden smashed a window with the butt of her spear and climbed into the house. Once she vanished from the picture, all was still again, so Mat skipped ahead several minutes, where the front door opened. Golden exited, dragging a body behind her. She was leaning heavily on her spear and blood was running freely from several deep gouges on her right leg, but she moved with slow determination toward the car.
“That’s our guy she’s got?” asked Mat.
“Cannon, yeah. That’s his house. She got him at night, away from the team. Took all four down that way.”
“The same night?” asked Mat. On the video, Golden bundled the limp body into the back of the van and climbed in after. The van reversed out of the driveway, leaving a small pool of blood shining on the asphalt where Golden and her victim had stood. “She looks pretty torn up. She was in good shape going in. Was he the last one?”
“From the timestamp, probably the first. But you can see she wasn’t driving the van, and you know who else is on her team. Asclepius probably healed her before they ever made it out of that driveway.”
“So she took him? Took all of them?”
“Looks like, yeah,” said Raul. “So what the hell happened? What made her flip?”
Problems, came a message from Alyssa, along with a video attachment. Mat pulled it up. It was the same video.
Seen it, he wrote back. Talking with Raul about it.
“Alyssa’s going to want to take her down, take the whole team down,” said Raul. “And I’m not saying she’s wrong. But with Foresight as the leader of LUAU and the whole team as the paragon of perfection in the public eye, this could turn ugly for us fast if we do it wrong. Not to mention that we’d be going up against a guy who can pick his own future, so there’s that, too.”
“Alyssa’s messaging me now,” said Mat. “She’s got the video.”
Don’t tell Raul anything, Alyssa sent. We keep this between us.
“You’ve got to talk her down,” Raul told him. “We can’t go in hot on this.”
We’ve got to do this quietly, read Alyssa’s next message. She may suspect, but can’t possibly know anything yet. Can’t let that spread.
“Yeah, agreed. Alyssa’s in agreement, too.”
“She is?” asked Raul, surprised.
“Why wouldn’t she be? She’s always been a long-term planner.”
“Yeah, but she’s also always been very defensive about what’s hers. And this is one of her squads. I figured that with a target known, she’d already be after them.”
“Guess she agrees with you on the need for caution.”
“I suppose so.” Raul paused as if he was about to add to that statement, then shrugged. “So, that said: we’ve got to bring her in. Whatever she’s doing, whatever motivated her, we can sort that out once we’ve got her in custody. But this video’s already more than a week old, and we need to find out what she’s done with our team before it’s too late.”
Seeing the look on Mat’s face, Raul continued, “C’mon, man. There’s no way she killed them. Kidnap, assault, even torture: fine, whatever. She’s got a kinorg on hand who can fix all that, so I can see how she’d justify it. But murder? I know her. We know her. She’s one of the good guys. Nothing could have flipped her that hard.”
The image of Foresight sleeping in his metal coffin poppe
d into Mat’s head, and for a moment he thought it was simply an exceptionally vivid memory before he realized that he’d subconsciously brought up the video feed. He dismissed it with a shake of his head, though not before checking the vitals to make sure that Foresight was still safely subdued.
“I hope you’re right,” he told Raul. “About their safety, I mean. You’re definitely right about the first part. We’ve got to bring her in, and fast.”
The door smashed open and Asclepius leapt to his feet, his drink flying out of his hands to splash on the wall. Keystone shrieked as the first of the black-clad men charged into the apartment, dropping the portable ram as they came. She jumped onto the couch and swept out with her shields, knocking one man aside with a vicious crack to the head, but the two behind him ducked low, rolled and kept running, making a beeline for her. They tackled her from both sides, knocking her from the couch and crashing into a wooden coffee table, shattering it.
The attack was over in seconds. Keystone was bound, her arms cuffed behind her and enclosed in a large plastic globe to prevent the extension of her walls of force. Asclepius stood in a corner with his hands up, his expression somewhere between fear and amusement, with one soldier pointing a gun at him. Three others swept the apartment, checking each room before calling back.
“Clear!” “Clear!”
They returned to the main room, and one approached Asclepius.
“Hands down, turn around, put your wrists together behind your back.”
Asclepius complied, a slight grin on his face. As the soldier reached out with the cuffs, Asclepius grabbed him by the wrists. The man let out a startled shout which choked off in a gargle, and his body suddenly stretched, growing taller and leaner.
“Down! Now!” commanded the soldier with the gun trained on Asclepius, and Asclepius dropped. The soldier who had attempted to cuff him, however, turned to face his comrade. He now stood several inches taller, his hair had lengthened significantly, and the right side of his face was covered in ancient, disfiguring scars. The features beneath this were cold, determined and clearly female, the spitting image of the Golden Ruler. She swept a knife from her belt and leapt at the man with the gun.
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