Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle

by Lackey, Mercedes

  He shrugged, pecking her on the cheek. “It was a good try.” He sighed heavily. “I figure we’ll just have to play it by ear. Bein’ mere mortals, we’ll do the best that we can.”

  They could hear Vickie talking in the next room, but not what she was saying; she was probably on private mode to Bella or Nat or one of the other ECHO or CCCP leads that were in Metis. Grey was nowhere in sight, which meant he was probably sitting on one of Vickie’s desks, kibbitzing. Herb was toddling across the floor with one of Vickie’s meals-in-a-can; John could swear it looked like the little rockman was bigger every time he saw him. How do you grow a pet rock?

  There wasn’t much of a view out the window; the living room window looked directly into the canopy of a huge live-oak tree. The tree’s proximity made coming in that way—at least for JM and Sera—a bit of a trick. It was a rare moment of peace, although John mistrusted it for that very reason. They were playing bodyguard to Vickie for a reason, after all. Just because her role as creator and implementer of Overwatch Two was only known by a handful of people, it was a bigger handful than John liked. So far as he was concerned they were long past the critical mass it would take for the secret to somehow leak. Three people could keep a secret if two of them were dead, as the old saying went; sometimes, he thought even that was too many with some secrets.

  The danger to Vickie wasn’t just from supposed “allies” or other interested parties. The Thulians—including at least Ubermensch and Valkyria—that got away from Ultima Thule were at the top of the list. They—and the huge technodragon that they rode out on—were still very much a threat. Taking out Vickie would, despite the backups and contingencies that she had in place, be a huge blow for the global resistance against the Kriegers; one that they couldn’t afford to risk.

  “Y’know, it’s ’bout time to start thinkin’ ’bout dinner. Vickie has those god-awful canned meals—havin’ eaten my fair share, I know how bad they can be—but I figure we need some real chow. What’re you feelin’ like, darlin’?” If they couldn’t decide, there was always little Thea; she always had something on the stove, hot and ready to be ladled out to hungry comrades after a shift.

  “Is there a food truck near?” she asked, with a note of longing. He chuckled. Atlanta had some very good food trucks, still running despite shortages and the odd Thulian- or gang-attack, and John had gotten Sera addicted to the variety.

  “I’ll ask Over—” he began. Then—

  —it felt like a bomb went off inside of his skull, while a dozen sledgehammers were pounding it in from the outside. Almost at the same time, he and Sera were both on the floor, frozen; he could barely see Sera’s face, and her eyes were almost completely rolled up in their sockets. He felt his own vision go dark, then stark white as something shot in like a lightning bolt through the pain. Dimly, he heard Vickie yelling—not at him or at Sera, but into her Overwatch gear.

  Something’s…bad…wrong.

  He knew—though he didn’t know how—that it wasn’t a dream, or a hallucination, but a vision of something that was actually happening, right then.

  Fire. Screaming and death. Explosions and people being crushed by falling rubble. Actinic beams of energy and the thunderous stomp of thousands of armored boots. And, finally, a gigantic dragon, roaring and glaring hatefully at everything below it.

  Metis was falling, and there was nothing that they could do about it.

  When he and Sera came to, again almost at the exact same time, he first noticed that his fingernails had dug deep, red furrows into his palms, and his jaw was sore; he must have been clenching it or grinding his teeth. Their cups of tea had shattered when they had hit the floor, and the couch had been kicked away; either by him or Sera, he didn’t know, but it was now very misshapen and piled against the far wall.

  “Johnny! Sera!” Vickie was shouting, not via his Overwatch rig, but physically from the other room. “Are you okay?” Without waiting for an answer, she continued. “The Thulians found Metis, and things just went nuclear FUBAR.”

  It took John a few seconds to form words. It felt like his tongue couldn’t find purchase in his mouth, and he kept slurring and mumbling. He could see—and feel—Sera struggling just as he was. “We—we’re fine, Vickie. We’re feeling it happen.” John, much more slowly than he would have liked, pulled himself to his feet. He swayed for a moment, thinking he was going to pass out; it was like his blood pressure had just taken a dive, and he felt lightheaded. Then it passed, and he was steady again. He helped Sera to her feet; once he was sure that she was okay, they both started towards Vickie’s workroom. “We saw it, Vic. This isn’t just an attack; it’s extermination. They need to get as many people out as possible, and goddamned fast.”

  “On it,” she shouted tersely. They had staggered to the door of her Overwatch suite; there were camera feeds from Bella, Bulwark, Ramona, Pride, Nat, and Moji.

  “Is there any lala angel way you guys can get there?” she asked through gritted teeth, as her fingers flew over her keyboard.

  “Darlin’?” John looked to Sera. Even with how fast they could fly—which was pretty goddamned fast, all things considered—it’d still take them hours to get to Metis. Hours that Metis didn’t have. They both realized this, and John watched Sera confirm it when she shook her head gravely. “Negative, comrade. Unless you’ve got some sorta rabbit you can pull out of your hat and get us there like you got us outta the Himalayas, we’re not gettin’ to Metis before the show is over.”

  “Futui!” she swore. “No, there’s no landing pad and no time for anyone to put one down for me. They need you! I—”

  “Hey! You ain’t wrong. But! They also need us here. Covering you, so you can cover them. That’s our job right now, and it’s the one we’re in a position to do. We don’t know what else these shifty bastards have up their sleeves; if they start strikin’ anywhere else, we need to be ready to pounce on that shit. So keep on keepin’ on, comrade. Alright?” John didn’t mean to use the Command Voice, but it sort of came through. They needed Vickie to do what she did best, now more than ever. If she was distracted, it could mean someone died. Maybe a lotta someones. People they knew. People they all loved. And, as much as it hurt him to put it before all of that, people that mattered to the future.

  She nodded curtly, and kept her eyes on the monitors, her hands flying over the keyboard, muttering into her own microphone.

  Wordlessly, John and Sera both withdrew to the doorway. They both knew that they had to be extra vigilant, especially now. John was the first to speak. “I wasn’t lyin’ in there; she’s our first priority. We’re in the best position to protect her, and she’s important; Vic is a force multiplier, and having her active keeps more of our people alive.”

  Sera nodded, and glints of gold began to form deep in her eyes. “She cannot watch here and there at the same time. We must be the watchers here.”

  John held his hands out, palms up. “Tell me what to do, darlin’. I’m with you all the way.”

  “Remember how it felt, to know what our foes were about to do? Be that, again. Then stretch out your wings, and feel the wind of now uplift them, until you can see all of the city…” She placed her hands atop his, and he allowed her senses to guide his.

  John felt things go still around the two of them. Time slowed down, and the world around them became dim for a moment. Then it was as if the world was moving and they weren’t connected to it anymore; in a few instants, the seasons changed a thousand times, the sun and moon had risen and set in a strobe, and then everything snapped back like a rubber band to the Now. John watched as Vickie’s apartment was at first frozen, and then started to vibrate, like a film going off reel. It was jarring when it settled back, as if nothing had happened. Slowly, blurred and ghostly versions of himself and Sera started walking through the apartment, going in different directions. First, there were just two. Then four. Then eight. Then sixteen. The blurred copies kept multiplying until it looked like there were superfast streams of motion m
oving through the entire apartment.

  They are our possibilities. He knew without actually knowing that it was Sera’s voice, guiding him. Slowly, his comprehension of the scene expanded outward from the apartment; first to the floor they were on, then to the building, then the block, and so on until he had the entire city in his mind. He knew that Sera was seeing the same thing he was, in perfect clarity. It looked like rivers of golden and blue light running between the buildings and on the streets; he realized that those rivers were comprised of the lives and possible futures of everyone that lived in Atlanta. Very gradually, at certain intersections of the rivers and eddies, he saw…mires. Spots where Futures ended, cut short or drastically altered. With a gasp that took place in neither time nor space, he realized that those were people dying from violence or otherwise being harmed. Or, rather, that they would be.

  He also started to feel all of the emotions of those people, their lives, their Futures. Even the emotions of those that would die. John felt all of it welling up in him, threatening to spill over; he felt like a kettle, ready to boil over, like the top of his head was going to pop off—it was too much. He felt his own panic behind it all, all the love, pain, death, life, hate, joy, anger, jealousy, sadness, it was everything and all at once—

  Peace, be still, he heard in his heart, and it was as if there was a “volume” control and she had turned it down. He could still feel all these things, but now they were like a sort of dissonant music playing in the background. He settled, and felt himself calming down. He felt shaken; it was like brushing too close with madness, losing his sense of self and succumbing to…whatever all of that had been. Breathing without breathing, he regained his composure. Now he could see the potentials, without being drawn in with them, focusing on the individual threads. It wasn’t quite omniscience; he imagined, offhandedly in the back of his mind, that it must be somewhat like what Gamayun could do. He also knew that they couldn’t do this forever; it was taxing, extending their senses out this far, and they wouldn’t be able to maintain it forever.

  I could, once. But he didn’t sense regret or loss behind Sera’s thought, only a feeling of that was then, this is now. He felt her doing something he could only think of as…sorting. Like someone going through a basket of colored threads and looking for the ones that ended in a particular color. And sensed then that she was not finding what she was looking for.

  I am looking for great danger, she answered the unspoken question. It is not here, not now, not here soon, but—

  John felt himself returning to a certain point, a certain place…it was there in Vickie’s apartment, and now. Not something soon to come, but something happening. It was as if he and Sera had returned from a fugue state. Their heads snapped as one to stare at one of Vickie’s monitors; it was glowing brightly in gold and blue, standing out against everything else. Then the effect ended, and they were fully back in the present.

  “Somethin’ is happenin’, right now, Vic.” He and Sera both strode towards Vickie’s battle station, on either side of her chair.

  “There,” Sera said, pointing at the monitor. It was the one with Molotok’s Overwatch feed. He had just run out from a hallway that terminated onto the entrance to a landing pad, cantilevered over empty space. The view was beautiful…save for over a dozen Supernauts in their bulky armor, armed with arm-mounted machine guns and flamethrowers. At the very end of the landing pad stood Worker’s Champion, cradling a box. As one, they all seemed to turn to face Molotok. There were a few tense seconds of silence.

  Moji called something out in Russian. What came in John’s ears was the usual Russian gibberish—but somehow, through his connection with Sera, he understood the sense of it. “You have blood-crimes to repay, Uncle. If you surrender, I’ll make sure you don’t suffer. It is better than what anyone else will offer you for betraying your family, country, your world…your very comrades. I will not make the offer a second time, as it is more than you deserve already.”

  “It is an offer you cannot deliver, boy.” Worker’s Champion’s face was utterly devoid of anything approaching emotion; even his delivery was carefully modulated, betraying not the slightest hint of what he might be really thinking or feeling. “If only you understood—”

  “Fuck you! Understand? Others may want to understand why you are a traitor. I do not. I only see an enemy of my people. I kill my people’s enemies; it is what good soldiers do, you swine. Spare me your words, and die like a goddamned Russian!”

  Worker’s Champion nodded once, still stony-faced and cold. “So be it.” With that, all of the Supernauts raised their weapons. They would have been better off if they had turned their machine guns, grenade launchers, and flamethrowers on themselves. Molotok didn’t even bother to dodge their attacks; he marched determinedly from one Supernaut soldier to another. Explosions went off around and even on his body, detonating harmlessly. Bullets bounced away and ricocheted in oblique angles from his body, sometimes going back towards the Supernauts that had fired the rounds. And the superheated napalm that struck Molotok simply dripped off of him. Looking through the Overwatch camera that was from his point of view, and from the ones that were hovering in the vicinity, he looked like a wrathful god come to exact vengeance.

  He was an expert at Systema and several other martial arts; he didn’t use any of his expertise as he fought the Supernauts. He would just walk up to one, grab the armored soldier by his limbs, and rip him apart. Sometimes he would take the Supernaut’s head off with a backhanded strike, other times pulling an arm and a leg off and casting them aside casually, or splitting a soldier in half like a man pulling apart a wishbone. It was awful and awesome, in the unceremonious brutality of it all. The final Supernaut was quivering in place; he had expended all of his munitions, and his arm-mounted machine guns, grenade launchers, and flamethrowers all clicked and hissed empty. Pulling a bayonet from his boot, Molotok calmly walked up to the armored soldier, grabbing him by the back of his helmet before pulling his head onto the bayonet. The soldier gave a final startled shriek before falling to the ground, still twitching with the grip of the bayonet sticking out from his helmet’s eyeslit.

  Most of the napalm had gone out by that time; Molotok’s suit was ruined in several places, but the skin underneath was untouched. His chest heaved, not from exertion, but from unbridled rage. Worker’s Champion had stood, watching the entire gruesome slaughter. Now, he set down the box he had been carrying, and faced Molotok. There was a standoff that, while only a few seconds long, seemed to last an eternity, before Molotok screamed.

  “Fascista!”

  Now all of Molotok’s finesse as a fighter was evident. For metahumans with super strength and resilience—the two often seemed to manifest together, for obvious reasons that a meta that was super strong, but couldn’t withstand the stresses of what he was using it for, wouldn’t live very long—most of them relied on those abilities to simply power through their opponents. Molotok was not one of those metahumans. He had been taught and learned, from a young age, to fight as if he was weak, as if he was fragile. To marshall his strength, to protect himself from every strike as if it might be fatal. To strike where the enemy was weak, and defend from where he was strong.

  As he attacked Worker’s Champion, he did so with perfect form, graceful and blindingly fast, precise with every blow and measured with every defense.

  He was beautiful. And he was doomed.

  Worker’s Champion had none of his protégé’s flourish or artistry. But he did have power. He didn’t need to outmaneuver Molotok; even the most skillful strike, he simply cut through, using his own strength and nearly impervious skin to best the younger man. It was tragic. Molotok, no matter what injury he took, continued to attack. First, it was a split lip. Then, a mashed eye. A broken finger; a hand. An arm. His ankle. A dislocated shoulder. All the ribs on one side cracked. Teeth on the right side of his mouth, shattered to splinters.

  But still, Molotok fought. Mustering the very last of his strength,
he finally connected a solid blow to Worker’s Champion’s mouth. The sound of the impact was indescribable; like steel meeting steel with the force of a dynamite explosion. Molotok’s last good hand was ruined; bleeding bones jutting from skin and fingers turned all the wrong way. But…Worker’s Champion was bleeding. Three thin lines of blood crept down his lips; the blood was his own, and for a moment his eyes grew wide at the sight of it on the back of his hand as he wiped it away.

  With a flick of the back of his hand, Worker’s Champion shattered the bones in Molotok’s remaining arm, ensuring he couldn’t even lift it any more. Molotok fell to his knees, very obviously struggling to stay conscious.

  John felt so helpless, and it infuriated him. His fists were balled, his knuckles white in impotent fury. If only we were there!

  There was a sound like the rush of wind while manning the door gun on a helo, diving on an LZ. Suddenly, John found himself not looking at a monitor and seeing through a camera, but feeling through Molotok. There was so much pain; the physical was there, and almost blinding, but it wasn’t the worst pain. The worst of it was the feeling of no longer being able to continue, to pursue the fight, to finish his opponent, and the threat to his loved ones. Molotok felt failure surge through him, redoubling and making him sick with grief. His life was ebbing out, he knew that; even though he had never been injured in such a way, he knew that he was bleeding internally, and it would soon kill him.

  The despair in him was so terrible it completely overwhelmed the pain, and threatened to drown him before his body died. John shared that despair—hell, it was a reflection of the despair he had lived with for years—and without thinking, he “reached out” to his friend and comrade. He didn’t know what he would or could do, he only knew he could not allow Moji to die alone.