An overwhelming sense of righteous retribution.
John didn’t even register when the fires built up around his hands, then his arms, and finally his entire upper body. He tensed, his brow furrowing as he watched the energy cannons on the Death Spheres moving to track him again. Then he frowned, and whispered once, “Stop.”
The Spheres moved forward, and he said, “Die.”
It wasn’t a lance of fire, or a wave of plasma. It started as a tiny ball of Celestial energy, roiling fire…that grew, and grew, and grew. The power was cataclysmic, and all-encompassing. If John hadn’t controlled it, it would have been like a nuclear explosion: utterly devastating and all-destroying. But control it he did. He moved the energy, the fire, out from himself, feeding it with his anger. The sphere completely engulfed both lines of Thulian warships, vaporizing them almost instantly; John felt the life forces inside of the ships being snuffed out as the crest of the sphere reached the ships, and felt a surge of satisfaction with each death. Each murderer being erased from this world. The power was right there, if only he would take it. He could burn all of them, take control and keep anything like this from ever happening again. It would be absolute, and no one would be able to stand against that sort of power—
Then there was a twinge in John’s chest. He felt like he was on the cusp of something, something momentous. He had to ramp down, otherwise he would let the ball grow, his own energy pouring into it until there was nothing left. He couldn’t just release it, either. He had effectively created a small sun on the surface of the Earth; all of its energy, save for an extremely small fraction of its luminosity, contained. It obliterated whatever it touched, but nothing that it didn’t contact. He focused his will, forcing the energy to coalesce again, to come back to him. It shrank and reabsorbed into his outstretched hands. He had to fight hard to keep drawing the energy into himself; it threatened to explode again with every beat of his heart.
It was all too much. As soon as he had absorbed the last of the deadly Celestial sun that he had created, John felt his eyes begin to roll back in his head, and darkness cloud his vision. He was falling unconscious…and falling from the sky. He was going to die, smashed into the ground that he had foolishly thought he could escape.
I think not. Something caught him in midair, a small jolt, smaller than he would have thought; then the buffeting of immense wings beating the air frantically, until he was awash in cool movement. You will not fall, beloved, not while I am here to catch you.
There was a moment, as he hovered between darkness and awareness, that power surged into him, scorching him. Just the briefest of nanoseconds that forced a gasp into lungs that had forgotten how to work. He felt…rather than saw or heard…the touchdown on the earth, and the scorching sensation turned to cool and healing, and life flowed back into him—and something else, too. Something he couldn’t have put a name to unless…could emotions have an energy?
Of course they can. Open your eyes, beloved. You must see what you have wrought, some for ill, but mostly for good.
John opened his eyes, cautiously at first. Sera had placed John on the ground, cradling his head and shoulders. He smelled burnt ozone. The first thing he saw looked like snow. It took him a moment to realize that it was ash, falling from the sky in a constant rain. He brushed a covering of it from his face, shaking his head wearily; he still felt out of it, not entirely himself from the expenditure. Then he looked around.
His HUD told him that all of the civilians were safe. Whatever else he had done, he had limited the destruction to spare them. At least he had had enough sense to do that. But, for the rest of the campus, the devastation was…complete.
A bowl of blackened, smoking Georgia clay was all that was left of several thousand feet of the school’s campus. The outer crust had been vitrified, and the cracks the outer layer made as it cooled sounded like distant thunder or gunshots. Just outside of the zone of destruction, the trees and even the grass were utterly unharmed. John was simultaneously awed and sickened by the sheer power he had brought to bear against the Thulians.
“You very nearly burned yourself out, beloved,” Sera chided.
He nodded, swallowing back bile. “I felt it. I almost lost it, too. It took damn near all of me to reel it all back in.”
“Sweet suffering Christ,” said Vickie. “How the hell did you manage that?”
“I almost didn’t, Vic.” John noticed that he was shaking. He had felt the effects of an adrenaline dump before, and this wasn’t that. This was unmitigated fear. And strangely, euphoria. Because…it had been so…easy. What could he do? And…what would he do?
“This is why you have me,” Sera replied calmly. “You have all the power that I once had…correction, I believe I had more, though never as a mortal.” She knelt down next to him and cupped his face in both her hands. He shook even more fiercely, and had to force himself to meet her eyes. “You will never exceed your moral limits. I know this. Think on yourself. You exceeded those limits only once in all your life, and having done so, you have made it the deepest part of yourself never to do so again. Never to shed innocent blood. Had you not done this, nor you nor I would be here now, today, as we are. I should never have saved you, nor wished to. You would never have come to Atlanta…nor wished to. It is one strong, unbroken strand of the past that brings us to this moment.”
John felt his shoulders heave, fighting back a sob. He couldn’t break away from Sera’s gaze. Since she had become corporeal—human, in oh so many wonderful and mundane ways—her once-molten-gold eyes had turned to the deepest blue. Except when he and she fought together. Then her eyes became fiery and gold again. Now, as they looked into his, they were—halfway, deep blue under a veil of Celestial gold. As she found her old self through him, he found his better self through her.
“Darlin’…it was so easy. I—”
“Seductive.” She nodded with understanding, and took his hands in hers.
“Yes!” he cried, almost pleading. “Everything that I could do, with that power! Thrown everything I believed away, and just…just done things!”
“And you did not. Without even thinking about it, as if it were instinct, the deepest part of you reined it back in.” She nodded at the undamaged part of the campus…the part where the students and teachers were now emerging to see what he had wrought. “You kept them safe. Even while the power sang in your veins, you kept them safe, to your own cost.” One eyebrow rose, and her mouth curved in a half smile. “You would have done better, however, had I been here to help you with control. But perhaps they can make a pond.”
John fell into an embrace with Sera, holding her tightly. “Darlin’, those were the worst two minutes of my life. I don’t want to be far from you ever again. An’ we’ll figure out how to get both of us ‘up to speed,’ as it were.” He pulled away from her, taking her by the shoulders for a moment. “This is a game changer. You know that, right? If we can get to hot spots before the Thulians can withdraw, or arrive before they even show up…”
“And we will learn to do this. But now, there must be rest.”
* * *
The next few days turned out to be…interesting. After returning to Atlanta, John and Sera had immediately been recalled to CCCP HQ. Several of the comrades were gathered on the rooftop to welcome them and escort them to the briefing room. Thea, as pale as usual but definitely looking like she hadn’t been sleeping much—probably due to round-the-clock shifts—filled the couple in on what had happened during their flight back. First, there was the mild rebuke from the FAA for breaking the sound barrier and many windows. So far, there hadn’t been any news reports that had featured the couple as the cause of the destruction at the academy’s campus; since all of the survivors had been hunkered down in the Civil Defense shelters and basements, there hadn’t been the usual cell phone footage of the battle. Spin Doctor had been working overtime to suppress reports that the couple had even been there, explaining away the monumental destruction as an experimental
Thulian “suicide switch” that had been activated when they were met with force. What that “force” was had been intentionally left unsaid, as well. Of course, that was only what the public was told. Even Spin Doctor couldn’t keep the authorities out of the loop. The military…expressed concerns. As did the representatives of the US and other worldwide governments. Enough people in the right places had put two and two together about John and Sera to make the jump that they had been at the campus. Most of them went along the lines of demanding access to the “resources”—John did not enjoy being referred to in such a way—and a full briefing on the capabilities that the couple possessed. Several nations, in addition to wanting access to John and Sera, wanted to know what fail-safes were in place; the Mountain hadn’t left their memories, and another pair of high Op-level metahumans only brought those fears back to the surface. So far, the Commissar had been stonewalling them all with the couple’s diplomatic immunity through the CCCP, but even she couldn’t withstand the pressure indefinitely. Especially from Russia.
“…and that is where thinks being stand, tovarischii,” Thea told them. “This is classic Western tactic. It is obvious they can beink do nothink about you. It is obvious they cannot beink do without you; you are beink too useful a weapon. Yet they must be makink posture.” She shrugged. “How useful a weapon you are beink, is obvious. Attacks are down almost to pre-Metis-attack level in this area, and stopped for some distance around Atlanta. But Chonny, cannot beink expect this to last, you must know this.”
“Naw, I don’t figure it will, Thea. The Thulians are takin’ a breather, figurin’ things out. They weren’t countin’ on Sera an’ me to be able to reach ’em as fast as we just did. If I were a bettin’ man, I’d wager they’re gonna try to feel out our new range, our new response time.” He ran a hand through his hair, sighed, and looked at Sera. “Things are gonna get a lot more interestin’ in the near future, darlin’.”
Sera nodded silently. They had arrived at the door to the briefing room. Inside, John could hear what sounded like intense discussion. Thea held up a hand, stopping the couple from entering. “Watch carefully, Chonny. Do not beink promise too much. Commissar has hungry look in eyes. She is beink desperate.” Then she nodded. John took a deep breath, met Sera’s eyes, and then knocked on the door.
“Enter!”
John pushed the door open. Natalya and Bella were seated next to each other at one end of the long and battered table that was at the front of the briefing room. Unter was standing behind them, arms crossed in front of his chest. He nodded curtly to John once before switching his gaze to Sera. The table was scattered with maps, reports, crumpled packs of Nat’s favorite cigarettes, empty cups of coffee and tea, and several communication devices.
He realized from the looks that both Bella and Natalya fastened on them that it was not just the Commissar who was desperate and hungry. So was the head of ECHO. Everyone had been stretched thin the last few weeks, but none more so than ECHO. Every meta was activated and on deck, even the lowliest OpOne’s and Support Ops. If someone had a heartbeat and the ability to hold a weapon, they were on call.
Bella was the first to speak. “So…was that a one-shot, or can you do that again?” she asked.
John shrugged. “Which part? Turning into a one-man ICBM, or damn near creatin’ a sun on the surface of the Earth?”
“Yes,” said Bella, at the same time that the Commissar said, “Da, to both.”
The next three hours were filled with arguments, pleading, quite a bit of shouting, and probably too much caffeine. The Commissar and Bella both wanted John and Sera to become the go-to solution for an attack. Show up before the Thulians could leave, blast the hell out of them, and then move on to the next attack. John understood where they were coming from; an effective counter to the “just out of reach” attacks was needed. Some countries had been using the ECHO-developed high-thermite missiles, others were trying to be everywhere at once with their security forces. Thankfully, no one had had the bright idea to try to use tactical nukes; all of the bigwigs agreed that the last thing they needed was to trade a few dead Thulians for irradiated land. It all amounted to the same: more people getting hurt or killed—civilians and much-needed soldiers—and the Thulians adapting and changing their operational range. After Ultima Thule, it had taken nearly everything that Bella and Natalya collectively had to keep the governments of the world from trying to snatch up John and Sera. They used up the rest of that capital to protect the Metisian refugees from getting flung to the four corners of the planet, doing heaven knew what for individual governments. Now the governments were hungry for John and Sera again.
The logic that Bella and Natalya offered was that if they utilized the couple, they could persuade all of the governments to liaison with them. They pitched it as a way for John and Sera to stay relatively independent, but the implied argument wasn’t hard to see: “work for us…or have them fight over you, and have to work for them in the end.” There didn’t seem to be a choice. Or, actually, there was a choice, but it left the two of them out there, unsupported, on their own. They could strike out on their own and continue the fight on their own terms. Granted, Vickie could help them with Overwatch, but she couldn’t feed them, house them, clothe them…at least, not easily. They would have to be on the run from the world while at the same time defending the world from the Thulians. A lose-lose situation.
“We’re only metahuman,” Sera said, finally. “We need to rest, eat, sleep. We cannot be everywhere. We cannot mystically transport ourselves across the globe in a blink. Not even the Siblings, in the Invasion, could do that indefinitely—and we are much less than the Siblings.”
“Sera’s right. As much as folks want us to be, we’re not the Seraphim…well, for the most part.” John looked over at Sera; she shrugged. “Overextend us, and you got nothin’. Waste us on somethin’ small, an’ when the big hit comes, we’re useless.” Of all things, he did not want them to know just how close he had come to losing control in that fight; not of the actual power, like before, but of himself and what he could do with it. And if he and Sera were overused, tired…he wondered if his self-control would break down in the heat of the moment, and if he wouldn’t want to ramp down.
Surprisingly, Unter spoke up for John and Sera. “The overuse of strategic assets, while tempting…is unwise, Commissar. To expose the pair overly would invite a response from the enemy. Allow them to study them, and eventually anticipate their movements. Better to hold in reserve for proper use, keep enemy guessing. Also, possibility that they could be killed.” He looked to John, tilting his head to the side. “As your wife said, you are being only metahuman.”
Sera bowed her head to him, a little. “That, too, is a consideration. If you come to rely too much on us…and we are removed…”
After a glance at Untermensch, Natalya narrowed her eyes, turning her head to look at John. “Is…unexpected, Murdock, for you to be advising caution. Given your treatment of Urals, and willingness to persecute targets in the past.” Her English is getting better, that’s for sure. Still the same stone-cold bitch when she wants to be, though; you can take the Russian out of Russia, but…
John met her gaze, and replied evenly. “Things change, Commissar. That much oughta be plain. We can’t expect t’keep doin’ things the same way an’ have it work out.”
“Hmph,” Natalya said. “Repetition is fatal. If you repeat, the enemy can predict you. Better to be unpredictable. Unexpected wisdom from you, Murdock.” She raised an eyebrow. “So. In order to deploy you unpredictably, we are needing to know your limits. What are your limits?”
“At the moment, however fast Sera can get to an attack site,” he said without hesitating. “Without her there, I can’t predict the fight, an’ I run out of steam too fast.” It was only a lie by omission, but he still felt dirty saying it. He didn’t like playing things close to his vest when dealing with people that were his comrades. “I can get to the fights, but there’s a better chance of
me gettin’ taken out unless she’s there with me. We can only pull off what we did in Ultima Thule if we’re together. An’ that oughta be somethin’ we don’t let the Thulians know.”
“Unacceptable,” the Commissar declared. “Why can you not carry her? That way you can both be at top speed.”
“Commissar,” Bella interjected. “Remember, they’re just flesh and blood, not a missile and a payload.”
Natalya huffed, then shook her head while pinching the bridge of her nose. “Da, da, annoying fact of life. Well, you must be finding way!”
“Easier said than done, Commissar. We haven’t tried anythin’ like that. An’…we don’t know if this new ability works like that. Not yet,” he added.
“Then what are you waiting for?” Natalya demanded. “Go! Find out!”
“Is that a dismissal, Commissar?” Sera asked mildly. Nat snorted.
“Cannot make plans without data. Bring me data!” she demanded, and made a shooing motion with her hands. John was not about to linger and give her another chance to think of something else to interrogate them about. He got up, held out his hand to Sera, who took it and did the same.
“Roger, Commissar. We’ll see what we can do.” And with that, they made a hasty retreat.
* * *
The next few days were lucky, to say the least. There weren’t any major attacks, and what few skirmishes did happen were small and easily handled by either ECHO or the military. The Thulians were definitely being a little more cautious, at least for the moment. That gave John and Sera time to try to figure out a way to get Sera flying as fast as he did. They consulted with Vickie and determined that doing their tests over the ocean would work the best for their purposes. Trying to get Sera “up to speed” over Atlanta would result in a whole mess of busted windows and another angry call from the FAA, not to mention what would probably be crowds of onlookers. And the inevitable cell phone footage. The Everglades or some of Georgia’s national forests were an option, but that still left the chance that they’d be observed by civilians…not to mention all of the wildlife they’d likely panic. The Atlantic was their best bet; far enough out from the coast and they’d have no people to worry about—especially if Vickie guided them to get clear of any fishing boats or container ships—and the wildlife similarly wasn’t a concern. If they needed to do an emergency landing, the water would be marginally better than solid earth. Lastly, and definitely something that John was thinking more and more about…if the Thulians or anyone else decided to target them specifically, there wouldn’t be any collateral damage. Like it or not, he and Sera were on the world’s radar in a big way. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that someone might try to nab them or just kill them outright.
Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle Page 12
