Harold’s eyes narrowed as he helped Ms. Pavlovich exit the elevator.
She walked with a stiffness Daniel did not like.
Daniel’s present-seer—his present-seer no matter what Dunn said—pinged off the tunnel’s rough, evenly-spaced bore marks. His visual optimizers may have kicked back on, but their acuity had decreased below what they’d shown before Eric downloaded the software upgrade, and his seers still did a better job of distinguishing any important details lurking in the shadows.
A closed door waited a brisk walk away. Behind it, nothing. No hints from his seers. No shadows from the optimizers. A mystery waited behind that door.
They did not need another mystery.
Dunn placed her hand on Ms. Pavlovich’s forehead. “Here, honey,” she said. To Hadrian: “Speak. Trajan is in Portland?”
The information connected to Trajan’s video said that he was at the Praesagio Industries campus in Portland. All the news organizations were saying that he was, right now, in conferences to help with the “Burner Scourge” and to work out a plan for aiding those among the Fates and Shifters who wished to “make their presence known.”
Trajan had taken the visible, civilian point. Hadrian and Pavlovich, it seemed, were a two-pronged invisible military and security detail.
Hadrian motioned for them to walk down the tunnel. “Come,” he said. “All of you. Ms. Pavlovich opened the door, after all.”
He held out his palm. “Trajan carries two splinters of the talisman glass Aiden Blake took with him into new-space.”
Daniel watched the video on the copter. Trajan liked to show off his stigmata wounds.
Trajan always did have flair, and of the two emperors, the strongest—if barely—personal presence.
Hadrian closed his fingers over where, if he’d had the wounds, he would have bled. “Trajan says that the glass has facilitated communication between him and his future self. Selves.” He visibly shook and raised his hands to air-quote his words. “The fog is because ‘the odds of many possible futures are equal.’”
Abandoned by fate, Daniel thought.
Hadrian motioned for them to continue along the tunnel. “The discrepancies between the different versions of the what-will-be Trajan is seeing are significant enough that he is hedging his bets. Dissemination of the truth is limited to only a few people.” He sniffed. “I argued. I wanted him to fully alert the world, but he says we cannot chance the resulting panic.”
Hadrian held up his hand again. “Trajan’s seers tell him that Pavlovich also carries a splinter. Dmitri was surprised by this. He shows no physical, real-world signs beyond an increased throbbing in his damaged hand. No indication that he also had been touched by knowledge of what is coming, beyond his Russian pragmatism and his willingness to take up a leadership role.”
Ms. Pavlovich shuffled along, thumping her hand over the tunnel’s ridges. “Gavin has a splinter in his rib.”
Hadrian nodded. “His sliver did not go into new-space, nor did the splinter in the neck of the Burner named William Barston.”
“Billy,” Daniel said. Billy Bare, the only Burner with a heart that hadn’t completely turned to ash.
Hadrian waved them forward. “Mr. Barston is in Italy fetching his Progenitor. They should return shortly.”
Dunn stopped walking. “What?” She poked Hadrian’s shoulder. “Why? You know how dangerous the Maker of Burners is! He can’t be controlled, much less contained.”
Hadrian tugged at the hem of his sleeve. “Unlike you, ma’am, or you, Daniel Drake, no one speaks to us from new-space.” He tugged again. “We work with the information we have, and that information indicated that the Burner Progenitor needs to make his way here, to America.” He lifted his chin. “To this base, to be precise.”
He held out his hand, palm up again, as if showing them his surrogate stigmata were enough to convince them of his sincerity. “The prophesied burning of the world is upon us.”
Dunn ran her fingers over Hadrian’s palm. “Yes.”
Hadrian shook his hands as if they hurt. “Four people carry splinters. Each is manifesting different effects, but then again, they are different breeds, yet they cross.”
Marcus’s seer rang through the small room. “Trajan is Fate. The Burner is Fire. Pavlovich is Shifter.”
Hadrian nodded. “Young Mr. Bower now has a wholly new take on dragon language.”
The pieces on the board. The levers and levels of the universe.
Hadrian looked up at the ceiling. “The glass was meant to collect what the talisman shed.” He stopped in front of the closed door at the end of the tunnel. “Everything in this universe sheds.”
Hadrian gripped the door’s handle. “I found that shard you stole, ma’am, about a century after the mountain exploded. I handed it over to Trajan because it told me to.”
Harold wrapped his arm around Ms. Pavlovich’s waist to help her toward the door. “Will you open the door, please?”
Hadrian complied, then waved them into the room. “We believe the Burner is overhearing telemetry. From whom, though, we do not know.” He looked down at the floor. “He denies any special voices. I did not press the matter when I saw him off with his team, feeling that securing his cooperation in his duties was more important than understanding any chatter he might be hearing.”
“And Gavin?” Ms. Pavlovich asked. Harold helped her into the room.
Hadrian turned fully toward her. “We have not gleaned any new insights, Ms. Pavlovich. Nothing beyond his future-importance.”
Marcus rubbed at his own hand. “Because of the fog?”
Hadrian entered last. “The fog. The proximity of Burners.” He pointed as he closed the door. “Proximity to that.”
The conference room was as gray as the tunnel. A credenza sat to one side. Another, closed door waited opposite the one through which they’d just entered. In the middle, a large conference table that was surrounded by utilitarian chairs.
And in the middle of the table, with its point aimed at their door and its hilt aimed at the other, sat the spread-out pieces of what used to be a midnight blade.
Daniel knew immediately what it was, as did Marcus. They all did. Dunn groaned. Ms. Pavlovich touched her lips. Harold backed away.
They stood only feet from Janus’s talisman.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Ghost Progenitor, the Mother of New, the Whispering One, the Forgotten One… she was with them here, in the conference room with the talisman inside a place called “the base,” the unnamed location for Trajan’s semi-unnamed army.
The Whispering One whispered now, and Dunn listened.
The room looked more like a prison cell than a conference space, even with the expensive, sleek, modern orb lighting hanging from the high ceiling. Significant walking space surrounded the large conference table in the middle, but the concrete walls pressed inward anyway. Between the obvious drill-marks texturing and the slight curvature to the outer wall, there was no way to forget where they were.
Guard influence wafted through the air here on thin, unseen curlicues of classic Roman military structure. They protected the Emperor—they protected the true core of the Empire—as they had since their inception. But Empire meant something different now than it did during their time in Rome.
Empire now meant human. Empire now meant Earth. Empire now meant corporation and country, faction and function.
“Empire” for Harold, for Trajan—and for Hadrian, and for Pavlovich in Moscow—meant the golden green orb of a planet they had sworn to protect.
We are Legion, Whispering One said into Dunn’s ear. We protect our own.
Dunn splayed her fingers over the mirror-hard veneer of the room’s grand, modern table. She moved her head slightly, first to the left, then to the right, to give her brain rotational information about the shards spread out like a jigsaw puzzle on the table.
“You found them all.” Not all—a section of the hilt guard and the top of the blade was st
ill missing. The piece that had been inside the glass her son Trajan wore in his palms sat in its slot along the side of the blade.
Eleven pieces in total; twelve if she included the still-missing section.
“Pavlovich left his shard here because he understood the importance of this moment.” Hadrian pointed at the still-missing section. “We are lucky the blade did not shatter more.” He grinned. “Volcanoes are formidable.”
Dunn grunted. “Perhaps we can chalk it up to quality manufacturing?”
Behind her, the boys of the Draki Prime watched but did not speak or interfere. Their seers hummed. They gathered intel. And they let her do her job.
Hadrian squared his body to his guests. “The midnight blades are poured, not honed. They require a very specific series of steps and an even more specific combination of ceramic and metallic glass components.”
The blades kept their unimaginably sharp edges, and beyond the broken one on the table, were unbreakable.
Hadrian leaned against the table. “Those components like to migrate toward the copper and palladium Trajan added to the glass he used to encase the shard.”
He inhaled. “We don’t understand why, though we suspect a hidden, self-replicating actor. One not unlike what is floating around inside all your blood.”
He paused, to let that info sink in.
“You use nanobots to hinder enthraller abilities,” Harold said.
Hadrian nodded. “Yes. The self-replicating actor does not like its telemetry measured.” He pointed at Janus’s blade. “There is a system at work here. One we cannot fully see.”
He held out his palm. “One I believe straddles new- and real-space.” He closed his hand. “One that is to our current understanding of technology what a modern smart phone is to a clay tablet.”
Magic and science, the two sides of the same shiny coin.
Hadrian ran his hand over the tabletop. “Praesagio has not, nor will they, test the sniffer-bots on this blade. Too much rides on it functioning correctly.”
Behind her Daniel nodded. “Don’t interfere with the magic.”
Hadrian grinned. “It’s not magic, young Ulpi man.”
Marcus sniffed and crossed his arms, but thankfully did not respond to the taunt. The Draki Prime were Ulpi by blood. If Dunn remembered correctly, they were also Jani and Palatini. They were, in many ways, the perfect recombination of Janus’s power.
Hadrian looked down at his hand, then at the talisman. “Trajan casts the blades in a magnetic containment bottle. They are, each of them, a genie released.”
Dunn rolled her eyes.
Hadrian ignored her. “They are difficult to make. The power requirements alone would shut down Vancouver for three hours if we drew off the grid. We’ve only been able to make the two gladii, the two daggers, and the six bullets for Mr. Sisto’s new-killing gun.”
She’d sent Andreas to fetch the blades. She hadn’t thought to have him fetch the bullets, too.
“Trajan would have made more, if we could have figured out how to gear up production. But the system requires two triads—six Fates—working in tandem to control the pours and the bottle.” He shook his head. “We need descendants of the First Fate in order to make the talisman that honed the man’s power.” He looked up at his guests. “Now how’s that for a paradox?”
Daniel’s two seers flowed toward the talisman first and were followed closely by Marcus’s past-seer. Both men stiffened.
Hadrian swirled a finger at the pommel. “It’s marked.” His brow knitted. “754-A Property of Praesagio Industries. Patent Pending.”
“Shit,” Harold breathed.
Hadrian reached to touch the sword, but stopped and pulled back his hand. “Janus’s talisman is the property of Trajan’s corporate empire.”
Marcus took a step forward. “How…?”
Hadrian stared directly at Dunn. “New-space obviously allows time manipulation.”
“Obviously,” Daniel said.
Time manipulation. Why was Dunn not surprised? Probably because at this point in her very long life, nothing ever came as a surprise. Or because she’d felt out of place—and time—since the moment she and her fellow Progenitors woke under that Roman olive tree.
Dunn pointed at the pieces on the table. “Which is it then? Poke or Stab?” Janus’s talisman was neither Poke nor Stab. Dunn also knew that bit of information deep in her bones. The Whispering One agreed. But it would be nice to hear Hadrian say it.
He sat down on the edge of the table. “Neither.” He tapped the table. “754-A cracked during pouring.”
“But…” Marcus said. “That means…”
It means that the echoes and the curlicues of the universe defied simplicity. It meant that paradoxes were abundant. And it meant that the new was considerably more vicious than any of them wanted to admit.
“It means I was right,” Dunn said. She was correct. Trajan was correct. “It means that fate has forsaken us.”
Hadrian closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“No!” Daniel pointed at the talisman. “It means…” He threw his hands into the air. “It means…”
Dunn knew what he wanted to say: A desperate future had resorted to desperate measures. Desperate people did—would do—desperate things in order to save the world and her peoples. And she’d end up under a tree in the middle of the Roman Empire with no memories in her head and magic in her blood.
Hadrian walked toward Dunn. “You were sent back for a reason.” He stopped close enough to touch her elbow if he wished. “You, Janus, the Dracae, the Burner.” He paused and leaned toward her ear. “The Whispering One.”
She closed her eyes. I’m a traveler from a time where 754-A became Poke.
A sense of Maybe whispered through her mind. A slight touch. A nudge…
“We need to access the system embedded in Janus’s talisman.” Hadrian said. “We need clarity about what’s coming. Clarity which our current weak access points is not supplying.”
Dunn looked up at Hadrian. “Then ask Janus.” That son of a bitch could read it better than anyone else.
“No one has seen Janus for a thousand years.” Hadrian extended his hand again.
One thousand years that bastard had managed to stay hidden from his own spawn even without his talisman, which meant that either he was dead, or he’d figured out how to stitch talisman-free.
Or he had the final, missing piece of his sword.
“No contact with Janus? No cryptic messages or supposed sightings? Because he’s enough of an asshole to play games even at the end of the world.”
Hadrian shook his head. “Trajan has picked up nothing of Janus.”
A glint popped off one of the shards, and for a second Dunn saw a rainbow halo floating free above the eleven pieces of time-traveling magic tech.
Daisy closed her eyes. Dunn’s daughter was doing her damnedest to hold her activation fever at bay. She was trying as hard as she could to save the pre-life in her belly. Babies never survived activation fevers, the same way Shifters never survived Burner venom.
It never happened.
Yet her daughter held her body, her power, her will. Daisy, a young woman whom Dunn had named after a flower, was as much a First, as formidable, as strong, as Severo and Andreas, and in his own psychotic way, Vivicus.
Maybe more.
Hopefully, more.
“Trajan told himself that the original Draki Prime would bring you. He told himself to bring me in, and to kill me, and to assassinate Pavlovich. He told himself to send Pavlovich to Moscow. He told himself to out the Burners, and not to out the Burners, and to send the Burners to the mountain, and to send Ms. Torres.”
Hadrian tapped the tabletop again. “Many versions of the future have been talking to him.”
“No fate,” Harold said.
Hadrian nodded. “But he has faith.” He pointed at Dunn. “In you. In Ms. Pavlovich.” He sighed. “And ultimately, in Ms. Torres and the Dracae.”
Marcus n
odded his agreement.
“But Trajan has no faith Janus will come. He believes that saving the world is up to us.”
Dunn stared at the midnight gleam of the shards on the table. “What do you need?”
“We need access to the system.” Hadrian waved his hand at the shards. “Not Janus’s interpretations. Not our limited connections via the glass. Not the Burner’s hearing of voices and most certainly not Pavlovich’s inert, unhealed—”
His phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket.
He held it out. Dunn took it.
“Parent,” Trajan said. “The versions of the future I am able to access collapsed.”
In other words, the possibilities of what needed doing just narrowed.
“The Burner is in the air. He will arrive shortly. He will need to be controlled.”
Because the world was about to end. Because something terrible was coming. Death raining from the sky. Fire. Cities burning. “Do you see the cause?”
Trajan sniffed. “The Fates—myself included—have long thought the Dracae would destroy the world.” He paused. “I no longer believe they will be the cause.”
Dunn sighed. “I could have told you that.” She awoke with them under the olive tree. She knew them as well as the Brothers Draki did. “You’ve kept them out of your operations so far, to safely hedge your bets, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“No more.” Like Daniel, Trajan had his personally-motivated blind spots. As did she. They all did. But that needed to stop. Trajan needed to include all of his best fighters.
Trajan semi-growled. He obviously did not approve of her admonishing him. “The true threat is coming at us through new-space via a rip in the universe.” He paused. “How were the Fates supposed to understand visions of something we did not even know existed until less than a month ago? We had no context.”
So like the vindictive Fates they were, they went after the most alien thing they knew—and forced desperate people in the future to resort to desperate measures.
The Burning World Page 20