Avalanche: Book Five in the Secret World Chronicle

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Mel felt dazed as Gilead recounted the fall of Ultima Thule and the false-Mel’s part in it, then moved on to Red Djinni’s arrest, the murder of Dixie Bell and Verdigris’ attack on the memorial service.

  “Doppelgaenger couldn’t pass that distraction up, of course,” Gilead continued. “She had arranged for Vix to be kidnapped, certain that Djinni would follow, and must have just been waiting for the right opportunity to spring the trap, knowing that not even Top Hold could keep Red confined if he wanted to escape. He did escape, pulled off a rescue, and Doppelgaenger revealed herself. Vix got out with you and the kids, DG took the Djinni, and a couple days ago, killed him.” She licked her lips, and rested the clipboard on her knees. “That’s the short version. Any questions?”

  Mel sat back against her pillows. “Most of ’em would repeat yours. I guess that explains what led to the rescue. You got a team going through that location, of course. I don’t know how much help I can give you, considering how much I just wasn’t there most of the time.”

  “The children—Penny, specifically, said that he took pieces of them and ate them. Usually hair, but a few are missing digits, too. Do you have any idea why he kept…taking more of you than of them?” Gilead combined a strangely comforting pattern of empathy and dispassion in her question. Mel hadn’t ever quite seen the like.

  “Logically, I’m older. I’d be able to handle more—”

  Gilead shook her head. “I’m asking for instinct, not logic. The kids said that he could replicate physical powers, like Pike’s armor, but couldn’t replicate Penny’s mediumistic abilities, and they said they could always tell when it was him, because he ‘didn’t act right.’ So what does your instinct tell you?”

  Mel swallowed hard. The doctor wasn’t trying to make things more difficult or uncomfortable, but that didn’t lessen the anxiety that threatened to shake her from head to toe. “My documented abilities are illusions, which means I got a knack for convincing people that what they’re seeing is the actual truth, no matter what’s in front of them. So even if he couldn’t mimic it completely, he’d need it to make up for the times when he couldn’t completely act like the person he needed to be. If you already talk the talk and walk the walk, it only takes a little bit of effort to make somebody believe that you’re the real deal.” She exhaled and willed her fingers to release the bedsheets.

  Gilead consulted her clipboard. “Well, according to the report, Doppelgaenger was using the head wound you actually received and he copied as the reason for why your illusion powers no longer worked. Do you think he was hoping that…repeated applications of essence of Mel would give those powers to him? Or was he trying for your memories? Because, in retrospect, we are now seeing a distinct pattern of evasion whenever someone asked him about something you should have known, but he didn’t.” She took a deep breath. “I…don’t want to distress you further, but we want to know whether or not there’s a chance he’ll return in a convincing enough simulacrum of Red to fool Vix long enough for him to take or kill her, too.”

  Mel pushed her hair out of her face and grimaced. “I don’t think that’s likely, especially considering how well-known both of them are in those ECHO inner circles. I might have come in and worked with all of ’em on different operations, but we weren’t exactly drinking buddies. Someone who knows Red or Vickie—I mean, somebody who knows them in and out, warts and everything—they would be able to see the difference in a heartbeat ’cause he doesn’t have that headspace ‘sleight of hand’ anymore.”

  She shifted in bed, desperately trying to keep a level tone. “Instinct says that Doppelgaenger went for a target on the sidelines that gave him a relatively blank canvas. The fact that he got me was…” Mel felt her throat tighten and hot tears began to blur her vision. Rather than give in to self-pity, she growled through the next words. “Dumb luck. Maybe he’d needed a new face with some powers, but when he got a taste, he figured out what my abilities could add to everything that he could already do. He took the opportunity, and here we are.”

  Gilead nodded, made some notes on her clipboard, and made what might have been a very tiny sigh of relief. “All right, then. That corresponds very well with what the children said. As for Doppelgaenger’s Facility, we had a team scouring it down to the floorwax, and we’ve learned all we can from it. As you said, you were sedated most of the time, so there seems no particular need to debrief you.” She put both her hands on the clipboard and looked straight into Mel’s eyes. “So the only question now is, what do you want to do?”

  The simplicity of the question made the answer nearly impossible. She stared at Gilead, wondering if it was another kind of test. “What do I want to do? Could y’all be any more vague?”

  “We simply can’t devote a lot of resources to you, Mel,” Gilead continued frankly. “Since you were taken, things have turned into all-out war. We obviously can use you. Silent Knight has offered to make you a prosthetic that is ‘almost as good as the real thing’ with the help of one of the Russians who studied Petrograd’s armor. If you feel you need a few desensitization treatments of the sort Bell gave you, I can do that, now that we know how it works. We can even give you training under Bell to boost your abilities. But if what you want is to get the hell out…I can’t blame you, but I also absolutely cannot guarantee you’ll find anyplace safe to go to, and we can’t spare you anything but money.”

  Mel’s eyes narrowed. She sat up and brought the bandaged end of her arm up to show the fresh cap of cotton and nanoweave. “The funny thing about illusions is that you can do ’em with no arms and a whole lot of angry. If you got all of your files right, then you already know that the odds of me running are pretty much nothing. I had my team murdered in front of me, one by one, and I was pissed as hell that no one thought to ask me what I wanted.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “But you, you ask me what I want, after that poor kid led Riley to me and let me know that he was all right…”

  Her voice cracked and she struggled to keep that professional distance between her and the doctor. “I want to do whatever it takes to get some justice for those kids, especially Penny. I want to be part of the team that brings all of our assets home. And, even though my commanding officers might have frowned upon revenge, I want to make sure that sick skin-shifting cannibal gets every bit of lead and fire that he deserves before he goes straight to hell—” she sat back and exhaled, venom dissipating with the whoosh of breath—“ma’am.”

  Gilead smiled thinly. “Lessons with Bell, or new hand first? You can do either or both on bed rest.”

  “Lessons first. Might help her with any remaining issues over my evil twin. Besides, l might need some of those to practice to work through the new hand process.”

  “Good. Consider yourself back on limited duty, Reverie,” Gilead replied. “Welcome back to ECHO.”

  INTERLUDE

  * * *

  Taps

  Mercedes Lackey and Dennis Lee

  There wasn’t a reliable way to get a hold of Jack. We had cut off communications for a reason. His last message was vague enough, but reading between the lines, it seemed like he was deep in enemy territory, and Jack was afraid our clandestine activities would be compromised. I risked it anyway, hours after Red was taken. I couldn’t go after the Djinni, but someone had to, so I messaged him, hoping he would answer. He didn’t. And now Red was…

  He had to know. Someone had to tell him. He had been Red’s best friend.

  I was, of course, still a freaking wreck, and I needed to time this so I wouldn’t break down on Jack. Like I had to time just about everything these days, so I wouldn’t break down in public. So I waited until I was in one of those brief periods of emotional exhaustion where I was bottomed out and able to think for five seconds, and tried a contact. But I knew the brief stability wouldn’t last more than a few minutes, so I had to do it while I could still talk without choking up.

  I gripped the armrests so hard I thought they were going to crack. “Overwatch: Open
: Jack private, encrypted.” I took a deep breath, ribs stabbing me. Or maybe it was…something else. “Jack. Come in. Please.”

  And breathed a painful sigh of relief when he answered.

  “Risky, lady. Very risky. You’re lucky I’m reasonably secure from prying ears right now. Still, this better be good. And quick.”

  Say it. Just say it. Not saying it won’t make it any less real. “Red’s…dead.” And with those words it somehow became more real, and I had to fight for breath.

  “Confirmation?” he asked, his voice barely above a low growl. “I’ll need that. I once saw him take two full magazines of ammo and fall into a pool of his own blood, so I’ll need proof.”

  Somehow I explained everything that had happened, up to the moment that the blood samples that JM had come back with had tested out as his. And then I sat there, reminding myself that I had to be frozen, I had to lock down my emotions, because this was Jack, and anyway, crying wasn’t going to bring Red back. But maybe Jack could do something else about it, something I couldn’t. Something I knew Jack had a solid line on. Revenge.

  “She took him during your rescue,” Jack said finally. “But that means…” There was a long drawn-out pause, interrupted by an odd muffled sound, like something had caught in his throat. Then he was all business, as I knew he’d be.

  “Let me make this quick; we’re already pushing our luck here. The plan…the plans…are proceeding. I’ve procured your whatsits doodad. And you were right. Wasn’t easy. And I’ve almost got the location. I’ll proceed when I do, and you better be ready when I send it, ’cause I don’t like the odds of me taking them all on by my lonesome. I’ll be in position.”

  “If I drop out of contact…it’s probably Doppelgaenger. I’ll have Eight contact you and take over for me.”

  “You let me worry about Doppelgaenger. I get wind of her coming for you, I’ll send word, somehow. I figure I’ll be getting close to her soon enough anyway. Keep to the plan. You’ll hear from me when you need to. When the time comes, I’ve got her. The last thing she’ll hear is Red’s name. I’m out.”

  I lay limply in my chair, wrung out. And brain on fire with doubts. Could I really depend on him? He had plans of his own to complete. I meant nothing to him. What he had promised…that depended entirely on how close he had been to Red, not me. I had only the little that Red had told me to go on. So…I know what he was to Red. What was Red to him?

  A strange, choking sound escaped me, a cross between a moan and a sob, both of them held back by strength of will.

  And that was when I realized I had just heard a sound like that, minutes before. But not out of my throat.

  Out of Jack’s.

  My five seconds were up, and as much as I wanted to just wallow in my own morass—mental…physical…take your pick—and deal with it, I had to push all those gut-wrenching thoughts away and get back to work. There was too much to deal with at the moment. I had been gone for less than a day, and the backlog just from that had required some nifty reorganization of my priorities, on top of the fallout from Verd’s attack, and on top of the sudden state of emergency DG’s infiltration had left of our security measures, both locally and worldwide.

  Looking back, I think that’s the worst I’ve ever been, and don’t forget we’re talking about a girl that once got scorched by a relative over someone I thought I was deeply in love with to the point where I was left in the emotional and physical state of a panophobic lump of charred chicken meat. For years. I admit, the next few hours were a blur. Somehow, I forced myself to go on, until…

  The last thing I had time for was email. I’d been ignoring email since Red was taken. Really, anything urgent enough was delivered by Overwatch, and I had plenty of those messages to attend to. So when my browser popped up, again, with another annoying beep to remind me I had new messages, I almost silenced the monitor with my fist before I saw the message which topped the list, a message that must have been sent just after he came for me.

  To: Victoria Victrix

  From: That Red Bastard

  You asked if there was something else you can do for me. There is. You can keep this somewhere safe, and I leave it to you to do with it what you think best…

  I don’t know how long I spent reading Red’s final confession. It was long enough, and he didn’t hold back. Lord, and he used to say I was long-winded. It answered some questions though and cleared up a few things I had already guessed, but really, so soon after losing him, he was talking to me again, and for a brief moment, it was like he was still there.

  …stared at each other through the settling dust. I could tell what was on his mind. This was the infamous Red Djinni. And any other day, if I hadn’t been on the Ten Most Wanted List before, after blowing into the Vault, I would have been.

  On the other hand, compared to what had been in here with us, and what was plainly still out there now, I was a pretty pitiful minnow among the piranha. The world as we both knew it had just done a complete one-eighty. And I knew what Vic would have done…would have asked me to do.

  “Look,” I said hoarsely. “Let me help you save whoever we can. Arrest me after. Okay?”

  Wordlessly, he nodded, got to his feet, and offered me a hand up.

  I think you know the rest, it’s all fairly well documented. So why am I telling you all this? Here’s the thing—I trust you like I have never trusted anyone before, not even Amethist. I can see you rolling your eyes right now. Yes, this is me, I know it doesn’t sound like me but…gah. The truth of it is, I’ve realized you are the most important person I know, the smartest, the most resilient…stubborn…and at the same time, the dumbest…

  Sorry.

  You are the most important person I know. It kills me sometimes how much you don’t know that. In a lifetime, we meet countless people. We forget most of them, but a few really stick in your gut and with good reason. These are those precious few who are everything you admire and nothing you despise. You will forever be that person for me, like it or not. You still don’t know how important you are? Figure it out, woman! You need to call the shots, and we need to make sure you’re around to call them. So this is my truth, and I trust you with it completely. Make the call, do what you know is best with it. Trust yourself.

  I do.

  Love,

  That Red Bastard.

  The words on the screen began to blur, then vanish as the screen…the monitor…the desk…everything vanished and that well of grief and loss inside me didn’t open up, it erupted. I curled up in my chair, and let it go. There was no one here. I was alone. I didn’t have to be brave for anyone. Not even Red. I cried until there was nothing left, and then I dry-sobbed for…I don’t know. Hours, I think. At least two. Enough that the messages had piled up all over all of my screens, and Eight finally said apologetically, “Vickie? We…need you.”

  I took a deep breath, intending to tell Eight and everyone else to go to hell, but with that breath came a pure and sure certainty.

  I did have to be brave. For Red. And not because of the geas. I knew in that moment I could break the damn thing if I wanted to. I needed to be brave because if I wasn’t, he would have died for nothing.

  And that would not stand. I would not let that be.

  Whether or not I had been that mythical person he’d seen, it was what I was going to have to become.

  Now. Because there was no time for anything but a transformation, phoenixlike, out of my own ashes.

  I sat up. I blew my nose. “Right,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  * * *

  Left Behind

  Mercedes Lackey and Dennis Lee

  This was an exciting time for me. I was learning so many new things, and Vickie was giving me so many new capabilities! And yet…it felt as if I was somehow betraying her by enjoying myself when she was in such despair.

  Vickie let out her breath in a long, tired sigh. Eight’s m-space ho
me and the ability to make more storage was the first thing she’d managed to get self-powered, and that had been relatively easy. Unfortunately, nothing that she had tried had been able to turn Eight into any kind of a mage.

  When she had first realized he was self-aware and had come up with the idea that he could be her partner—or someone that could act as a replacement if she was incapacitated—she’d started trying to figure out how to make a magician out of him. When she was healed enough to work on him again, she began giving him one-shot “spell-capsules” that he could use until she could turn him into a technomancer at least.

  That hadn’t happened. The best she could do was continue to create single-use, self-powered versions of the most common things she did with technomancy, and store them—like talismans that contained single-use spells. But unlike physical talismans, these were only in m-space and attached to Eight, and able to be used at Eight’s discretion, just as any non-magician could use a talisman. She could keep adding to the store as long as she was alive…but that was the rub, wasn’t it?

  And now she knew that not even Mom, as good as she was, would be able to replace Vickie, because Vickie was…unique. That was what Bella had discovered. She was a mage and a metahuman. Not just the only techno-shaman she knew, but probably the only techno-shaman, ever.

  The goal now was to get Eight self-sufficient, able to do as much as Vickie could, but without inherent magic. Able to run Overwatch One and Overwatch Two, at least for as long as anyone with implants and headsets survived. If it came to that, Eight would be the all-seeing guardian able to help the last dregs of resistance down to the final battle.