World Divided: Book Two of the Secret World Chronicle-ARC

by Mercedes Lackey; Steve Libby; Cody Martin

  “He’s out; a meta ambushed us in the cellar. We need to neutralize the package, at all costs.” Her mind was already running through ways to spin this. Best was that Singh was protecting the man, and the intruders killed him. So tragic, someone important must have wanted him dead before he revealed whatever it was he was going to spill…

  But that was for later, after he was safely neutralized.

  She’d let Dominic worry about it. Right now, she had to focus on what she did best: killing. She leaned around their cover, shooting two more of the attackers. They were wearing armor; she noted this and adjusted her aim, finishing the two off with a controlled pair to each of their craniums. Satisfied, she began to scan the courtyard. Couldn’t have gotten far; the attackers are holding the courtyard, so the package didn’t get out through the back. There! The target crouched behind a large planter. She couldn’t get a clear shot at either the meta or the target…but the man’s leg was partially exposed. Taking careful aim, she fired off a single round from her pistol. It tore messily through the man’s calf, causing him to scream loud enough to be heard over the cacophony. He wouldn’t be running anywhere now. The metahuman spotted Khanjar, and then blinked out of existence.

  Knowing what was coming next, she threw herself backwards, doing her best to stay concealed from the other attackers. The metahuman sprang from the shadow cast by the wall she had been hiding behind, where it was deepest in the afternoon sun. He kicked the pistol from her hand, flowing gracefully as he moved. Before she could react, her legs were swept out from under her; she rolled with it as best as she could, but she was still vulnerable. The meta shot one of her men before he was tackled by the injured one; he fell backwards willingly, falling through a shadow. The security operative hit the ground hard, gasping for breath, holding nothing. Khanjar scrambled for her pistol. The air around her was suddenly filled with bullets; the meta had come out of the darkness in the house. Rounds pinged off of her skin; it still hurt, but none of them penetrated. Her team wasn’t as lucky, all of them dying from the precise shots. She aimed to return fire, but the meta had already disappeared again.

  Khanjar knew where he’d be going; as expected, the meta appeared next to the target. She’d accomplished this much; he couldn’t walk, much less run, unassisted. The attackers were pulling back in an orderly retreat, still firing on her position. She was able to see the gate; four of her people remained, fighting as best as they could with the cover that was left after the furious gun battle. She controlled her shock as a lithe female figure leaped over the wall and landed soundlessly among the last security operatives.

  The two who turned to face the newcomer immediately froze; the woman’s eyes were unobscured by goggles, unlike the rest of the attacking force, and were fixated on the two men. She swept her arm behind her, discharging a short assault rifle point-blank into the backs of the other two men. The two men that had been transfixed in the woman’s gaze were now on the ground, writhing uncontrollably and bleeding from their eyes and ears. This is it. They’re going to get away unless I can stop them. They’ve killed everyone else.

  The meta who could jump between shadows appeared from a corner near the gate. He spoke briefly into a shoulder-mounted comm unit. The door opened, revealing two up-armored Hummers, all-black. But Khanjar spotted the telltale, the one thing they had forgotten: a small grill-mounted insignia.

  Blacksnake. Dom is going to have a cat.

  The male Blacksnake meta looked back to the package, gesturing. Khanjar had a quick flash of inspiration. She felt for the belt of one of her downed ops, pulling off a flashbang grenade. Flashbangs produced an intense flash of light and an extremely high-decibel bang without any fragmentation, making them ideal for hostage rescue situations. Khanjar wanted to use this one for a very different purpose. Taking a chance, she stood up to get a better throwing stance. Gauging the distance, she pulled the pin and did her best fastball throw for where the hostage was lying. Her timing was perfect; the meta was mid blink when the flashbang went off mere inches from his intended destination. Every shadow in the surrounding area was blasted away for a fraction of a second by the blinding light the grenade produced. It was enough; when she could see again, Khanjar smiled, grimly, when she saw that only the upper half of the Blacksnake soldier was there.

  The remaining Blacksnake meta took in the situation instantly; she fired a barrage of rounds at Khanjar, forcing her back behind cover. When the gunfire ended, she saw the meta dragging the target into one of the waiting Hummers. Time seemed to slow down for Khanjar as her adrenaline spiked. She vaulted over the wall, all of her muscles taut. She saw an HK91 on the ground, its owner dead. In one deft motion, she scooped it up and slid into a kneeling position. The target was being hauled into the vehicle, and the door was just starting to close. She indexed the trigger, lined up the sites and, exhaling, pulled the trigger. A splatter of blood blossomed on the target’s back, right in the eight-inch box that indicated most of his vital organs. Time flooded back to regular speed; the door slammed shut as the Hummers sped off, leaving Khanjar alone in a silent courtyard populated only by the dead.

  ***

  Verdigris listened in silence as Khanjar concluded her report, then turned to regard the semiconscious body of their “host” propped in the limousine next to Khanjar. “I must admit I was a bit puzzled why you drugged his drink,” he said.

  “After the ‘complications’ we suffered during the errand, I felt it prudent not to allow any further factors to potentially cause problems for you, Dominic.” She glared harshly at the unconscious form of Mr. Singh. “The sorts of problems that cost the lives of seven of your employees. Almost eight.” She glanced back to Dom’s eyes, briefly.

  “Spin, spin. Well, we have the computer-sampled handwriting, so I’ll change the letter. Make it a whistle-blowing document that names Singh, but not us. Despite our patsy’s altruism, he wasn’t a terribly inspiring man.” Verdigris paused for a moment. “Kill Singh, plant him somewhere with a Blacksnake bullet in him. I’d like to find out who hired Blacksnake for the extraction, so I’ll get my intel on it. For the families of the security personnel lost, make sure that they all receive the standard benefits along with the cashed stock options that were saved up for each of them. One of our standard letters should suffice; if not, have one of the paralegals draft something and forward it to me for review before it goes out.”

  Khanjar made the error of allowing her jaw to drop for a single moment before clamping it shut again. “Of course,” she said, steeling herself. “I’ll personally make sure it’s handled.”

  “Also, we’re going to start the process of buying out all of the assets of Blacksnake, until Blacksnake itself is just a shell. I like their work; they gave us a little bit of a run for our money, as it were. They’ve got some spunk. Besides, buying out rivals is always so much simpler than destroying them, especially when they still have some usefulness.” He actually twinkled at her. “Don’t you agree, m’dear?”

  She gulped hard, trying her best to keep her emotions suppressed. “I’ll see to it as soon as we’re back at the island, Dom.” It wasn’t often that Khanjar wondered why she worked for Dominic Verdigris. The money, the protection, the luxury—they were all the obvious draws. He was wealthy and intelligent beyond anyone else that she could possibly come under the employ of. But it was times like these when she wondered if she would survive her employment long enough to enjoy the fortune she was amassing while working for him.

  INTERLUDE

  The Ides of March

  Mercedes Lackey

  The document left by autistic precognitive Matthew March had been a nightmare to transcribe. The poor man’s handwriting and spelling had been erratic at best—he was the next thing to illiterate, given his condition, and all of his visions up until the final ones had been transcribed by Echo psions.

  But now, here it was, in legible form in Alex Tesla’s email, and it was…devastating. Fata Morgana, the head of Echo in Chicago, had dubbed
it “The Ides of March,” and it more than lived up to the name.

  It wasn’t so much a document as a long, long list. Names and places, and initially it had made no sense. Not until more time had passed, and Fata had a leap of intuition and began correlating those names and places with dates.

  Then it became clear. The places were all places of Thulian attacks. Or “Kriegers,” as the media had dubbed them now, for “Blitzkrieg.” Why “Nazi” wasn’t good enough for them…but then they weren’t Nazis, exactly.…

  Alex pulled his attention back to the annotated, utterly devastating document. This was an accurate list of Thulian targets and deaths—almost every death, not just of important people or metahumans. That was what had confused the issue and had seemingly made no sense; some people were still listed as missing, for instance, and why would Matthew have bothered to count civilians in his death tolls?

  Well, because he was Matthew.

  What had also made no sense was that some deaths that had occurred well after an attack had been listed with that attack, like the Mountain, for instance. But, as Morgana had said, if you used autistic cause-and-effect reasoning, things like the Mountain’s suicide were actually attributable to the Invasion; if he hadn’t come out of his self-imposed exile to help, he would certainly still be alive and inside Stone Mountain at this very minute.

  And the list went on, and on, and on. No dates, only targets and deaths. No way to plan, no way to warn. There were just too many of them. It only said what the media idiots were saying, that everywhere was a target.

  And then, at the end, the final words. Fire and death, fire and death. Nothing left. No one. The end.

  Alex Tesla could only stare at those words as despair crushed him into the earth.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Thunder Road

  Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin

  Meanwhile…I was proving myself to Saviour. Now she was going to give me a trial by fire. Only I wasn’t the one with my feet in the fire.

  John had been called into the Commissar’s office earlier than usual. On most days, it took Natalya until after lunch (did she eat?—he wasn’t convinced that she even slept) to call him in to review whatever policy transgressions he’d committed during his patrol earlier in the week. All usually minor, and all certainly written off. But it was important that he still be called to task to answer and maintain the standard that the Commissar had set. She often wrote it off, sans the souvenir busts of Lee and his generals taking flight, as a product of his American individualism clashing with the “bolshoi efficiency” of her Russian command structure.

  He’d become used to it, finally, after butting heads with the Commissar subtly. Resigned to his fate of being lectured sternly on regulations and standards for a spell, John knocked on the office door.

  “In!” Saviour bellowed. “Davay, davay, Comrade Murdock, you are holding up boat!”

  How the hell did she know it was him? John opened the door, strode in, and saluted after coming to attention. “Comrade Murdock, reportin’ as ordered, Commissar.” She didn’t deign to rise from her chair, but she did look up from her computer monitor, casually saluting him.

  “Nagy sorceress is being on bottle cap,” she said with satisfaction. She took a box from a pile on her desk and shoved it across to him after checking the name. “Daughter of Rasputin is computer wizard. Comm is tracking all comrades in HQ. Very efficient. She is to be your overwatch, whenever not on patrol. Da? You are to be receiving assignments once acclimation has been accomplished.” She put her hand up to her ear and adjusted something there, then stood up. “Sorceress has Blue devushka convinced, and we gave this system trial, myself, Ubermensch, and Blue Girl. Most satisfactory. Now all comrades will be on overwatch for special assignments.” As John snapped to attention, she reached over the desk and ripped out a slender tuft of his hair. “You are giving sample for magics voluntarily, Da?”

  “Jesus, shit! Um, I mean, yes. I do, Commissar.” John had enough discipline not to reach up and rub his scalp while at attention.

  “Good. You are dismissed. Be taking package and becoming briefed on system.” She sat back down, put the hair in a labeled plastic bag, and tossed it in another box. There were about a dozen more in there like it.

  It wasn’t a large package, but then, if this was spyware electronics, it wouldn’t be. He headed to the locker room, opting to change out of his issue coveralls for his patrol uniform so that he could get to work. He set the box on the bench in front of his locker, and began to strip out of the jumpsuit.

  His comm buzzed. He keyed it, pulling up his fatigue pants. “This is Murdock, go.”

  “Nice ass. Open the box, comrade Amerikanski.”

  John hesitated for a moment, looking around. “Who is this?” He bent to flip open the cardboard top of the box, revealing several manilla envelopes. “The box is open. Who is this, and how are you on this frequency?”

  “Put on the earpiece please. Nice pecs, too.”

  Too weird. John opened and shook out the contents of the first envelope. A small, clear earpiece like the Secret Service and spies use, minus the cord that hooks behind the ear. He wiggled the earpiece into position. “Now what? And you still haven’t answered my questions.”

  “Welcome to CCCP Overwatch, Comrade Murdock. I’m Vickie.” The voice came from the earpiece, and not his comm unit, which went LOS. No service.

  “Victrix. The sorceress, right?”

  “One and the same. You have in your ear a nice little item of Echo tech, which Echo does not know you have, and which for the moment, we will not let Echo know you have. Runs on kinetic and heat energy from your body and a much more secure signal than your comm.”

  “All right, I follow so far.” He shrugged on the rest of his uniform, strapping the bullet-resistant vest last. Attaching the comm unit to his belt and snugging up his boots, he was completely ready now. “So, this is the part where you lead me through what all of this junk that the Commissar gave me does, right?”

  “Actually the stuff is pretty much plug and play. I’m not ‘Q’—you’re smarter than James Bond—and what I need to demonstrate is what I can do for you so you aren’t tempted to ditch the stuff on the first job. So, call it a hands on demonstration.”

  He nodded, patting his sidearm in its holster. “Walk me through it as we go; I’m on patrol.” He strolled out of the locker room and towards the garage. There, he signed out one of the Urals minus a sidecar. Bear and Georgi were busy arguing in Russian, buried elbow deep in the engine of one of the CCCP’s vans. The Ural came to life underneath him, and he eased it out of the garage and out into the shining sun.

  “For starters, until I get your sample, I know where you are by a complicated triangulation system off the earpiece. Much more secure than GPS, which I do not like for that reason. Tracers work both ways, and only I and the programmer know about the system I’m using.”

  “Okay. So you have my position locked in at all times, so long as I keep the earpiece. What’s this about the sample? Is that why the Commissar damn near took a chunk of my scalp out?” He couldn’t help but notice the personality difference between this Vickie and the terrified, silent, white-faced thing in Saviour’s office. He liked this one better. This one had moxie. He had to wonder just what it was that turned her into the rabbit when she was out with people. Whatever it was, it had to have been bad.

  “When I get that, I can loc you by magic. No one can follow that protocol but me. No one can see where you are unless I send them the feed.”

  “Not even other witches and warlocks?” Or goblins or faeries? Does the Commissar really buy this magic crap?

  “Warlock means ‘oathbreaker,’ by the way. And no. It’s secure and heavily shielded, plus encrypted. Now since I know where you are, I can hack into security cams, traffic cams, even some ATM cams in your area, and tell you…that 150 feet from you right now and closing, someone is going to blow through the intersection without stopping in a POS green Honda Accord.
So you might wanta slow down a touch, or speed up.” John, willing to indulge her for the sake of an experiment, sped up. Just as he got to the intersection, a green blur accelerated at him at close range on the right. Reflexively, he gave the Ural more gas and the car narrowly missed his rear wheel.

  “Dumb jackasses!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Kids play in this neighborhood!” A collision while riding the motorcycle, even with his armor and helmet, would’ve ruined his day. Maybe ended it, permanently.

  “Something’s hinky…he didn’t even try to brake.”

  “Let’s get back to it. What’s the rest of this stuff y’gave me?”

  “Cams. mostly. Buttonhole, helmet and one on a stick that I’m dubious about, but which Echo seems to like to use to poke around corners and in through holes. I suppose it could be useful in a rescue sitch. The rest is various dingus…” She paused momentarily. “Heads-up.”

  John’s comm came to life. “This is Gamayun, HQ Control. Patrol Unit Troika, do you copy?”

  He activated the comm, keeping a hand on the accelerator. “This is Unit Three—uh, Troika, heading south on Whistler and Fifth. Whatcha need, Control?”

  “Metahuman break-in last seen moving south on Whistler in vehicle.”

  “Control, vehicle wouldn’t happen to have been a green Honda Accord, would it?”

  Gamayun paused, and John knew the CCCP metahuman was using her own powers to check. “Da. Affirmative.”

  “This is Unit Troika, in pursuit of suspects. Feed me more information as you can, Control.” John keyed off his comm, hitting the handbrake and slidding the bike to a stop. He gunned the engine, revving after the Honda. “That goes for you, too, Vic. Consider this your trial by fire.”