Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle

by Lackey, Mercedes

  “I don’t…” she began, and then stopped. Because that would have been a lie. She did want to “fix” him. She wanted him to stop obsessing about this.

  She wanted him to forgive Red. She wanted everything to go back to the way it had been before Jensen found those damned tapes. That was a neat trick in itself. The day of the Invasion, so much of ECHO from its infrastructure, personnel, to unfathomable reservoirs of data had been so badly crippled, Bella wondered how Jensen had known to put so much of their resources in resurrecting this, the lost video feeds from the Vault. What had tipped him off? Something, or someone, had to have given him direction. Someone who knew about the Djinni’s whereabouts that day, a day which had ultimately taken him to the other side of the city with Howitzer, Amethist’s remaining trainee…

  “You do,” he continued. “I understand. I’m a trainer, and I know that urge to simply step in and fix mistakes myself. Most times, you just can’t. People have to work things out for themselves. You just need to be there in case they fall, or just so they know they’re not alone.”

  “And that’s the problem,” she said, the words escaping her before she could stop them. Oh, what the hell. Get it in the open. The Purple Elephant. “You are never alone. She’s always there, always at your back, always between you and anyone else. Always perfect, and yes, I get it, the dead are always perfect because that’s how we want to remember them, I understand that, but she’s always there and always perfect and always will be the one you couldn’t protect. She gets between you and me. And now she’s getting between you and Red.”

  Bull sighed. “You read Jensen’s report, I take it.”

  “Of course I did,” Bella snapped. “It’s practically burned into my brain. Your wife had a relationship with Red. Practically out of one of Vickie’s metahuman romance books, it was; first enemies, then partners, then more than partners, then poof, unexplained blowup, she drowns her sorrows in being a hero, he drowns his in becoming a master thief. They even fought again, years later, while you were married, and you never knew. She never told you, and neither did he.” She paused, as she felt a rare flash of pain escape his defenses.

  “You feel betrayed,” she said quietly. “By both of them.”

  Bull’s jaw tightened, then relaxed, and when he turned to her it was like he was barely there. “Amethist was far from perfect,” he said, his voice low and empty. “She was willful, stubborn and at times perhaps too self-sacrificing to be considered healthy. Some might argue that I look for that in a woman. But you’re wrong to think that you need to compete with her, that I draw parallels and compare and contrast your qualities with hers. I don’t do that, and I never will. You are not her, and she could never be you. But yes, I feel betrayed. She should have told me. That she felt the need to keep something from me, it hurts.”

  “And Red?” Bella asked.

  “Red Djinni is on the opposite end of the spectrum from perfect,” Bull replied.

  “You know what I mean,” Bella said. “Do you feel betrayed by him?”

  “Betrayal requires trust,” Bull said. “I don’t know if I have ever trusted him.”

  “Oh, what a load of crap,” she snapped. “You trusted him the day you went after him with Vickie and got him out of Doppelgaenger’s claws. If you hadn’t, you’d have coldcocked Vix and let DG have him. He didn’t know enough then to hurt us, and if you’d had the slightest doubt about where his loyalties were, you’d have sloughed him like dead weight, because at that point we couldn’t afford to keep anyone we couldn’t trust.”

  “He was a calculated risk…” Bull began.

  “You can shove that too,” Bella snarled. “You know I can’t read you, but you would be surprised how much I’ve picked up over the last few months. You can hide behind that ‘calculated risk’ speech all you want, but if that were true, then all your relationships would have to be calculated risks, wouldn’t they? Is that what I am? Are you really running the math in your beefy head when it comes to you and me?”

  “Of course not,” Bull answered. “There is no math for what we have. Either we work or we don’t, only time will tell.”

  She felt her cheeks flushing with—rage? Frustration? Well, if he wouldn’t admit it, she’d shove it right out in the middle of the room and make him stare at it. “It’d take a blind man not to see what you’re doing. You keep looking at those tapes. You can’t help yourself. You’re looking for something you think maybe you saw, and are afraid you saw. You’re looking for something Jensen wants you to see, because that would detonate a big fat nuke in your emotions that will give Jensen everything he wants.”

  She reached down to the monitor controls and sped through the playback until a grainy feed appeared. It was a heavily damaged account of the final battle within the Vault, Kriegers versus metas, including Red Djinni and Amethist. Bella watched as Red dove to a fallen, headless body and began rummaging through pockets. Amethist leapt after him, shouting something. And there, as it always did, the screen fuzzed out for a few seconds. When the stream returned, the Djinni stood over a pile of ash where Amethist should have been, barking orders to the remaining metas. It was only a few seconds of lost visual, but they were precious seconds.

  “Did Red do it, did Red push her into the line of fire?” Bella demanded. “Did she jump in to shield him, and if so, why? Or was it just shitty luck? You know which of those things Jensen wants you to see! He wants you to see the man you trusted as your ultimate betrayer. And you, you keep watching this, trying to find clues that just aren’t there. You’re not a psychic, Gairdner. You’re not going to pull answers off that tape. But you will convince yourself you have, if you keep doing this!”

  She took a hasty breath and continued. “You know what you have to do, who you have to ask. So why don’t you? Why don’t you just go to him and find out? Talk to him, and find out what you really want to know. Don’t let Amethist stand between you. And for God’s sake, don’t let Jensen.”

  He opened his mouth. She ran over the top of him. “Go. Find out the answer for yourself and don’t let anyone, not Jensen, not me, keep you from the truth. Is Red your friend?” And she turned on her heel and stalked out.

  * * *

  “I can barely remember a time I understood this need to honor the dead.”

  Harmony shifted slightly on her bed, drawing her knees closer to her as she gave Scope a lifeless smile. Scope gave her an impatient nod, and leaned back against the wall of the cell.

  “Don’t much see the point?” Scope asked. “What, with you being…you?”

  Her visits to Harmony’s cell had been growing more frequent of late. She found herself increasingly irritable, jittery, sometimes even bordering on pain. This wasn’t exactly new, but the emptiness she felt before was superficial by comparison. She recognized it for what it was—she needed a fix. Again, nothing new, but instead of reaching for a bottle of booze or pills, she found her legs carrying her again and again to Harmony’s cell. She realized with a start that she hadn’t popped a pill in weeks. No pills, no whiskey, nothing that dulled the pain. Antidepressants were a thing of the past. She had found something new, and what Harmony offered made her brief but immemorable descent into pharmaceutical bliss seem stale and cheap. Here, she felt alive. She danced through memories and was infused with a pure energy that held stirrings of hope, of love and innocence. At least for a little while. Dimly, she recognized how far she had fallen, how much of her soul Harmony now claimed. She didn’t care. She wanted Harmony to suffer; she wanted Harmony dead, but not as much as she wanted what Harmony had to offer. A touch of life, of the old Scope, a connection with a time when she was whole.

  “Oh, I do understand rituals and the need for them,” Harmony said, her lips curling into a smirk. “But this emotional attachment, it’s something like a dream. The more I try to truly comprehend it, it slips away. I try to remember, and it’s like I’m closing my fist around water. But I should never worry about such things, hmmm? Not with you here, my dear
Scope. I can always dream, and feel, and live, through you. All I need to do, is let you remember…”

  Scope gasped as Harmony began. It always began the same way. A gentle caress along the periphery of thought; a whisper, a chuckle, and then Harmony plunged in. A part of Scope cried out, every time, at what was a complete violation of herself. The first touch was always gentle, but it was a thin veil covering the vicious nature of the beast, and once the beast was sure of its prey, it was merciless. The first time had been different, of course. You made the first time easy on the mark, any pusher would tell you that. She remembered feeling bewildered, as if lost in a dream, with an odd curiosity pulling her forward to watch, breathless, what would happen next. And she had reveled in it, in the way it fed her joy, how it gave her power and a fierce kind of hope that she could again feel something akin to purpose and drive. It was in that moment that Scope had fallen. Ever since, Harmony had felt little need to be gentle. The heartless witch could have torn her mind to tatters, rendered her memories down to a pasty sludge, with little resistance. After the first time, Scope hardly cared. It wasn’t so long ago that she would have rather died than be the spineless meat puppet, caught so helplessly in Harmony’s grasp. Now, none of that mattered. Here, there was comfort, happiness, and even occasional bliss. So what if she gave up anything and everything she had once held so dear, had fought for with a resolute pride that had once stared down an entire town of bigoted, ignorant hillbillies determined to put her skinny, orphaned ass in its place? That had been a lifetime ago. That was another person. She had nothing now, and this…this was something. It was all she had left.

  And Harmony knew it, of course. There was little need to ease her thrall into the process, not anymore. For Scope, there was almost comfort in the cold certainty of the ritual. These days, there was no appetizer before the main course, no need for utensils or table manners, there was only the brutal hunger and the mindless feast. By the time Scope had truly realized what Harmony was doing, it had been far too late. Something in the act had numbed her to anything remotely resembling the horror one might have felt on being fed upon. It left her open to anything, completely vulnerable, and yet she had lost the ability to care. She had a vague sense of something terrible waiting in the wings, something stark and vile, ravenous, muttering dreadful thoughts and urges that she could almost hear. Yet, despite the poisonous nature of the seductive murmurs in the back of her mind, there was something almost childlike, even pitiable, about them. They cried out for something lost, something vital, with words that seemed alien yet strangely familiar. Was this Harmony, then? Was this who she really was, so lost in the hunger to bare her true self to her victim? Again, Scope was past caring, yearning instead for the light, to shroud herself in memory, of her past, of him…

  With a cry, she felt it all fall away and Harmony turned away from her.

  “No!” Scope screamed. “Not yet! Bring it back! I…nuh…need it…”

  She collapsed, sobbing, as it left her, again just an empty shell.

  “Soon enough,” Harmony said, rising up from her bed. “I’ve had my fill, and I think it’s just about that time.”

  Scope rubbed at her eyes with shaking hands, and peered helplessly up at Harmony.

  “Time for what?” she muttered, and cringed as her nails drew blood from her cheek.

  “I believe I’ve had my fill of this place,” Harmony said. “I’ve paid my dues, wouldn’t you say, dear?”

  * * *

  They had all been trying to get into his head, of course. Who was he, really? Someone who had fought at their side this long, and they were just realizing they didn’t really know him. He was a chameleon, was it so odd?

  Red Djinni looked around at the confines of his new cell. It was bare, of course. Nothing but the minimal necessities would do in Top Hold. Just enough to keep the inmates alive. At least he didn’t have meta abilities they had to compensate for. No chilled, scorch-proof environment to stave off fire damage. Nothing in the way of excessive shielding for energy blasts or superstrength. Just a man and his faces. Throw in some high-security tech to permit the passage of only key personnel and guards and voila, Djinni-proof. They knew he was a thief. Standard locks were out of the question, easily picked by someone with enough time, skill and patience. Sitting here in a bare cell with nothing but a simple touchscreen by the door and the remains of his breakfast atop a cold metal tray, Red had nothing but time.

  Bella had been by, of course. She had asked him, straight out, if he was guilty of the charges. Scope had come by, once, and had said nothing. She had simply stood there, staring at him, as if waiting for a confession. Mel’s visits were somewhat more cordial, if strained. None of them came inside. Why would they? They didn’t know him, after all, not if any of those horrific things they said he had done were true. He barely acknowledged any of them, even Mel. Was he guilty? Yes he was, of all of it, but he wasn’t ready to volunteer that information, not yet. He was steeling himself, readying himself for that inevitable day when he would be dragged in shackles into a court of law and shown the evidence. When he would look out at a sea of comrades and feel it from each of them…how he had betrayed them.

  That wasn’t the worst of it, though. Victrix hadn’t stopped by. He couldn’t blame her, the lady was busy. Of all of them, she probably knew best that he wasn’t a saint, but he was forced to admit it bothered him. Did Vix think of him differently now, like they all did? You have a friend, you do your best by him, and then one day you learn there’s real, hard evidence that he’s a killer. How do you feel then? They had spoken a few times, he still had the implant after all, but he had heard something in her voice. He took it for doubt, and yes, it bothered him. A lot. He didn’t know quite what to make of that. Theirs had been such a messed-up relationship, right from the start. What they finally had, had been built over time. It was trust, fondness, sure, but a solid trust in a partner that had your back. He just wasn’t sure if he had that anymore, or even deserved it. He thought of what he had written for her, and how she might react to it. The email sat, saved and ready to send with a simple touch of a prompt on the touchscreen. He fought with the decision daily. He just wasn’t ready yet.

  “Red?”

  He glanced over at the touchscreen, and saw Mel’s earnest face looking back at him.

  “Go away, Mel,” he said. “Go on, get away from me. I’ve got nothing new to say.”

  “Ain’t no shame in reruns,” she drawled back. “They’re predictable. Besides, what else are you gonna do?”

  “Why are you even here?” Red asked angrily. “Haven’t you heard, it’s all over the feeds. They’ve got hard proof. I’m that guy. You didn’t sign on for this. I’m just going to drag you down.”

  “So now it’s about my reputation? Bullshit,” she snorted. “Try another reason for caring about my virtues, ’cause I ain’t buying that one.”

  “Well, this isn’t about you, darlin’,” Red chuckled. “This one’s all about me, and what I’m due. And lord…it’s finally happening. Fooled myself into thinking I was past it. Gave it another try, and I actually thought it would stick this time. I mean, it was working! I felt it. I was different. Hadn’t felt anything like it for a long, long time. But I guess I can’t escape certain things about myself, and I’m not talking about past crimes. I mean me. I was the guy, that guy, and then I wasn’t. But I guess you can’t run from your true self forever.”

  “But you think everyone else should run from you?” She looked away from the screen. “You want me to run? Or was being with me part of your running from yourself?”

  “You think you know me so well…” Red shrugged.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised, cher,” Mel said.

  “You don’t know shit!” Red snapped. “We’ve had our fun, haven’t we? You and I? Good tumble in the sack, shared some feelings, some history, had a few laughs. It was grand, but I think we both knew it would end this way.”

  Mel narrowed her eyes. “I knew some. I didn�
��t have any fantasies about you being some perfect knight in shining armor, ’cause hell, you’re far from perfect. But I’ve seen enough of you to know—”

  “You’ve seen the surface, and I think you know it.” Red turned and favored her with a pitying look. “You ever sink a weapon into someone for no other reason than the briefest glimpse of your true self? I have. And let me tell you, I felt nothing while I was doing it. Not a thing. I was ending a life. I didn’t care about who they were, I was focused on one thing. They saw my face, my real face. They now had something that was precious to me, and I couldn’t let that go. So I fixed it, and I felt nothing. No joy, no relief, no guilt. I felt nothing. I was nothing.”

  She stared at him, jaw clenched. Seconds ticked by in an eternity. “So, nothing,” she said in a hoarse voice. “All right, then. Nothing.”

  He gave her a wry smile. “Still love me, baby?”

  “I’m still here, ain’t I?” She didn’t smile back.

  “Your funeral,” Red shrugged. “I don’t know if the guy you think you knew is coming back. I think he’s…WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?”

  A Klaxon shattered the air in the cell; a similar one was going off inside his ear.

  “Attention all ECHO personnel. All nonessential personnel report to the briefing room…”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN