I turned. Only Rush still stood there, and he'd grabbed the Anarchist when his restraints failed with mine. His eyes were wide, but he wasn't standing down.
"I can kill him before you blink," he said.
I looked down at Dark A, hanging from my grip on his wrist and gasping through gritted teeth.
"I can live with that."
"So can I," the Anarchist said. He touched Rush's forearm with the index finger of his free hand and shot him with a flash of light from his fingertip. Rush folded up, screaming over a charred stump.
He pointed at the twin I held and his finger flashed again. Dark A's neck instantly charred into chunky ash and I felt the wash of heat. The room filled with the smell of burned meat.
Dropping him, I gagged on rising bile. He fell limply. Please God let him be unconscious.
The Anarchist looked at his smoking and glowing finger-blaster. Its disguising skin sheath had blackened and split. He shrugged.
"I'll be dead in a couple of minutes anyway as brain death sets in over there," he said calmly.
"How could you—"
"I don't have much time, so please listen." He pushed Rush over with his foot and stepped away.
"If he's still at all like me then ten minutes after we die a micro-nuke in the basement is going to go off and erase all the evidence. Just take Rush when you go, and Euphoria if she's still alive. The blocked entrance is through that door and at the end of the hall. I was awake when Ripper brought us inside and you should be able to punch your way through, but don't wait around."
I nodded.
He sighed. "I'm sorry I lied about almost everything. Shelly is my apology. I knew that sooner or later my twin here would move to capture me, and you were only one of the traps I set." He smiled grimly and wiggled his lethal finger. "I don't think he ever went as far ahead as I did—it took practice and he got too focused on the close-to-now. Still, I'm glad it worked out this way." He carefully lowered himself to the floor, feet straight in front of him.
"Most of all," he said, "I'm sorry I ever looked. Humanity's destiny is beautiful, but getting there will be rough on everyone. You'll just have to do what you can. Shelly will help."
"You don't deserve this," I whispered.
He laughed, a strangely happy sound.
"Oh yes, I do. It was my interference that started this, and he is, after all, me. Fifty thousand dead is enough, and it is more than past time for me to explain myself to God. Goodbye Astra, and thank you."
He lay back and folded his hands over his stomach.
What can you do? A thousand words broke on the impossibility of the moment, another ending I couldn't stop or look away from. I sat down beside him and took his unburned hand.
He smiled and returned my grip but didn't open his eyes, and I found myself counting heartbeats. Once he opened his mouth to say something, but reconsidered.
And then he died, between one heartbeat and the next, in a single released breath. I said the litany for him, asked God to be kind.
Then I just needed to beat a nuclear bomb.
Euphoria still breathed and Rush had slipped into shock, so I put both of them over my shoulders. Down the hall and up the stairs at the end I found a cement wall and dropped both of them to punch my way through. It turned out to be a double-wall with heavy insulation between the layers, and above that the dirt took a couple of minutes to dig through since I didn't want to bury my companions. I broke through to find helicopters circling overhead and soldiers on the old runway.
Oh my God.
The instant I emerged spotlights lit me up. I waved and then ducked back down to heave Rush and Euphoria out.
"Shelly!" I yelled. She appeared.
"You're safe!" she crowed.
"No, I'm not!" Fully loaded again I launched myself into the air. "Tell everybody to bug out! Now! There's a micro-nuke right under us and it's going to blow in maybe two minutes!"
She disappeared.
I flew west against the wind, hugging the snow-covered hills, racing to get as much ground between me and the blast as I could. Behind me I heard shouts, and the helicopters peeled away. I agonized.
"Shelly, are you in the military net? Is anyone still on the ground back there?
She popped back in. "I'm listening in through Artemis' connection to Dispatch, and she passed the warning. Wow, can they move!"
Yes! She's alive!
At maybe five miles distance I dropped us into a ditch. A moment later the ground thumped like the surface of a drum. It felt like one of the earthquake aftershocks, but that was it. I quickly checked Rush and Euphoria: they were both still alive. I fell back against the side of the ditch, staring at the stars coming out above the thinning clouds. I don't know how many minutes later a familiar head in a hood poked over the side of the ditch, followed by another familiar head wearing a black beret.
"Are you still sure you won't enlist?" Lieutenant Dahmer said. "I think it's less risky."
Chapter Forty Five
I have a rendezvous with Death at some disputed barricade,
when spring comes back with rustling shade and apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death when spring brings back blue days and fair.
Adam Seegler, 1915
* * *
The funeral procession moved up Michigan Avenue to the mournful wail of bagpipes and the sharp staccato of drums. The day had dawned bright and clear, and the horses pulling the glass-sided hearses blew great clouds in the winter air. The procession began at the Dome, moving down Monroe Street to Michigan Avenue before turning north. Chicagoans in black armbands blazoned with the Sentinels' crest lined the streets every foot of the way, and they watched in silence as we led the teams drawing the flower-draped hearses, the arrhythmic clopping beat of hooves the only sound besides the pipes and drums.
It had been three days.
Three days ago in Reno the Army team moved with a speed I couldn't believe. Within minutes they'd determined that the blast that vaporized the base under the runway had remained impossibly contained—a good thing for Reno, which could have gotten dangerous levels of fallout. Support units arrived and cordoned off the site, which had slumped into a crater, and a medical team attended to Rush and Euphoria, checking me over while they debriefed us. I stopped far short of full disclosure. I'd learned then that I owed Andrew a big wet sloppy kiss; his daysuit design had held, and as soon as Artemis recovered from meeting the ground at far too many feet per second she'd called the base through Dispatch and yelled for reinforcements.
She'd told them we'd gone in pursuit of the Teatime Anarchist and I'd been caught by his minions. The State of Emergency still in effect, S Corp got permission to sortie into Nevada in minutes.
The storm passed during the night and we flew back to Whittier Base the next morning through clear skies. Lieutenant Dahmer flew with us and Quin met me with a replacement costume so I could change (it was scary how naked I felt without a mask now). There we found Blackstone awake and briefed. Between Chakra and the same psychic surgeon that worked on me, he'd even been fit to travel and we brought our people home. Al met us at the airport to take custody of his brother's body. I hadn't warmed to him in the months since we'd met, but I've never seen someone so lost.
Now we wore black versions of our uniforms. Andrew had assembled mine using the formal skirted pattern as soon as the news broke, and the others already had funeral uniforms of their own. Artemis hadn't had to change a thing, just put on an armband.
Following the pipes and drums, she and I walked ahead of the team and hearse bearing Atlas. On our left Blackstone walked with Chakra, completely against doctor's orders, his face set and lined as they led Ajax' team. On our other side Quin and Rush led the hearse bearing Nimbus' empty casket.
Rush wore a temporary prosthetic under his right gauntlet, and seemed as lost as the rest of us. He swore he'd thought he was working for the good guys, that he hadn't known who his boss was, let alone that he'd be
en the one who'd caused the earthquake until the Anarchist had dropped that bomb into the conversation. Veritas conducted the interrogation so we'd had no choice but believe him, but they'd still lo-jacked him, only releasing him for the funeral.
The rest of the city's heroes followed behind.
The procession seemed to last forever, but finally we turned onto Huron Street and then onto State Street to arrive outside Holy Name Cathedral. None of them would be buried there; the Dome had its own chapel, where they would be interred after cremation in a later, private service. This ceremony was for the city.
The pipes and drums fell silent when we reached the cathedral steps. A trumpet played the heartbreaking notes of Taps, and then the cathedral bells began to toll in long and measured cadences as we fell in to carry the caskets up the stairs and through the bronze doors. I took the right lead for Atlas, Blackstone behind me since he couldn't take any real weight. The others took positions, three on a side, the extra spaces filled by Sentinel reservists and CAI heroes (Dad stood behind Blackstone, as Iron Jack). President Touches Clouds and her reconstituted detail waited for us inside. As the organ played we proceeded up the aisle to place our burdens on the stands waiting for them before the altar, and took our seats.
* * *
That night Blackstone found me back in the chapel, where I'd come to pray and say a more private goodbye to John. I'd met John's family, but hadn't told them of our engagement. They'd at least know that we went away together soon enough, and the hounds of the media would be unleashed. But not yet, not today.
The crypt occupied a recessed and marble-tiled section of the east wall, set with plaque-covered niches marking the resting places of our fallen teammates. The central nook had been occupied by a carved angel, but now it held the beautiful Quan Yin, Mary of the Pagans. Mom and Dad had secretly bought her as another gift for when I graduated from training. Father Nolan, who turned out to be the Sentinels' unofficial chaplain, had performed the private service.
Flanking her, each plaque bore a name and inscription. Most of the inscriptions had been prearranged.
My fingers traced Ajax's plaque. Ego non somnus—I do not sleep. When I talked to his mother after the ceremony, she told me he was a man of deep faith though he hadn't made a show of it. She also told me only half of his ashes were here; tomorrow their family would take the rest home to the family plot where his grandparents were waiting.
Part of John was returning to Texas, too. The inscription on his plaque was much longer, a verse from a poem.
"'I have a rendezvous with Death,'" I read aloud when Blackstone laid his hands on my shoulders. "Was he that sure he was going to die?"
"Yes. It's one of the reasons that, after his divorce, he just didn't do relationships.
"He thought that way, Hope," he continued gently, "because the Teatime Anarchist told him he would."
My breath caught and I twisted around to stare up at him. Grief sharpened the planes of his face, and for the first time his eyes looked old.
"John left me a video-file in case of his death. I’d had no idea of any of it, but apparently the Anarchist showed up in that coat and mask of his six years ago, warned John of a massacre planned by Villains Inc. that would have killed all of us. He even showed him a recording of the attack. I can't tell you how disturbing it is to watch your own death."
He smiled sadly. Taking my hands, he held them tight.
"He kept in touch after that," he said gently. "Apparently in most of the futures he saw, John didn't make it to retirement."
"Then why? Why did he stay? Oh, God." I shook my head, denying it all, but Blackstone wasn’t finished.
"John said the Anarchist dropped by on the day of your breakthrough. He told him you would be recruited into the US Marshals Service. That you would be in DC for training when the Ring hit the capital. That you would be killed by their leader."
"Seif-al-Din," I whispered. He nodded.
"The Anarchist didn't know if he'd still be in play when the time came to shut that one down, so he asked John to... keep you in town. Make you an offer you couldn't refuse. I suppose he felt a special responsibility since it was his twin who made you."
He smiled sadly. "It almost makes you believe in fate; John pulled you into the team to keep you out of the DC fight, and we wind up meeting them ourselves, ahead of schedule."
From the first day the Anarchist had been bending my destiny. In another future I'd died, but the time war spared the little sidekick, taking our greatest hero instead.
Taking John.
"It's not fair," I said.
And then I broke.
I'd been strong since waking up in the base hospital, knowing from experience what would happen when I let go. Now my knees hit the cold marble floor. Blackstone, still holding my hands, knelt stiffly and pulled me into his arms as I fought for control.
"I'm sorry Hope," he said. "John called us the night you left for his cabin. I was happy for my friend, happy for both of you."
Tomorrow I would help the others rebuild the team. Tomorrow I would tell my family everything, face the media circus my life was about to become. I would be strong tomorrow.
But there in the chapel, held by John's mentor and brother-in-arms, I wailed like a lost child.
Epilogue
Spring has returned with rustling shade and the cherry trees that ring the Dome are blooming. I found and memorized the poem John chose his memorial verse from, especially the lines about it being much better to be "deep-pillowed in silk and scented down..." My best dreams are of the cabin.
Doctor Mendel thinks memorizing a poem written by an English soldier who absolutely believed he wasn't going to survive a war is a morbid exercise, but I have reasons. Shelly and I spent weeks looking at all the ifs and maybes in the Anarchist's files, and I understand why he told John he probably wasn't going to make it. A storm is coming. Its gust-front is already here, and when it breaks the only question is whether it's Armageddon or Ragnarok, the world's end or the beginning of a new one.
The only thing I'm certain of, is that I know the answer to my question the day of the funeral. I know why John stayed. The Sentinels didn't choose their motto, We Stand Ready, until after John met the Anarchist. Then it quietly went on their seal. Quin once called John the Last Cowboy, and it fit. A Son of Texas, if there was going to be a last stand at some Alamo somewhere the only place he could be was on the wall. So I no longer wish that I could wish that September morning away, and I'm not going to Hollywood or becoming a part-time reservist cape like Dad. When the storm comes I'll be ready.
When you wear the cape you do the job. And I'm a Sentinel, after all. It's what we do.
From the journal of Hope Corrigan.
Continue reading Astra’s adventures in
Villains Inc., Episode One: Preemption,
now available on Amazon.com.
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