Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  “What?”

  “His blood,” Harmony said, her movements becoming frantic. “I still feel Bruno’s blood on my hands.”

  “Well, that would be the nasty side effect of digging your claws into his chest!” Scope screamed, and turned away from the monitor. She let out the faintest of sobs, and clamped her hand to her mouth. After a few silent breaths, she steadied herself, and spoke without grief. “You’re a killer, Harm. It’s what you do. Why would it bother you now?”

  “This was different,” Harmony said. “I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass, Scope. I’ve also been a predator for a long time. And at that moment I was nothing but the predator. I had my prey in my hands and I was crazy with pain and starvation. I literally was not thinking. At all. All I was—was need. That was it. Need and hunger and pain and anger and at the end, I was desperate. You and Bull were too fast. Bruno won that fight, but not with his fists. It was something to he said, near the end. He reminded me of something, something I haven’t felt in a long time.”

  She paused, as if lost in thought, and looked at the camera again.

  “Here, let me show you.”

  Scope gasped as her mind exploded with images. The Goldman Catacombs, and the sight of Acrobat diving off the ledge to catch her in mid-fall, before she went tumbling down into the pit of spikes. On the training field, dodging mechanical zombies as Bulwark and the Djinni rained down advice and criticism in equal measure. One of their first recruitment missions, and a mirthful sight of all of them, Bella and the Djinni included, doubled over in laughter and covered head-to-toe in mud, with Bulwark standing high above them at the edge of the pit, his face in his palm. A vast field of hay, and the odd spectacle of Bruno and Harmony prancing about in badger costumes, much to Red Djinni’s dismay. Each mental picture told a story, a story she yearned to experience all over again. Each invoked a sense of friendship, trust… love? And it wasn’t just images. She could feel them, and they all spoke of family. It came off of Harmony in empathic waves, powerful and enough to overwhelm her. She couldn’t be lying, not about this. It felt too pure. It was enough to bring Scope to her knees.

  “That’s what he reminded me of,” Harmony said as the images faded away, and the waves of love with them. “Before…”

  “Before you ripped into him,” Scope said.

  “Before you and Bull showed up,” Harmony said. “That cornered me, and I felt something else I haven’t in a long, long while. Fear. Worse than that. Terror and panic. I had to escape, and the only way I was going to do that, was…”

  “To rip into him.”

  “Yes,” Harmony admitted. “I needed what he had. Desperately. Enough that it didn’t matter that it would kill him. And I took it all, Paris. I took all of him. You ask why it bothers me? Because what I want now, is to give him back.”

  Scope rose to her feet, and struggled for the words. Finally, all she could manage was…

  “Then show me again.”

  Harmony closed her eyes, and padded back to her cot.

  “I will, later. All you need to do is return.” She lay down beneath the covers, and turned her back to the camera. “And you will return, won’t you?”

  “Yes,” Scope muttered, and left the room.

  Bulwark was waiting outside. He held a couple of tablets, and handed one to her. Scope took one, grimly, and began the text conversation.

  You get what you needed? she asked.

  We managed to get a cursory sweep in place, Bull wrote. But no, nothing registered above background noise.

  You overhear any of that?

  Most of it.

  And? You buy it?

  I just don’t know. I can’t trust my instincts about her. She’s proven more than adept at hiding the truth, even for years on end. What about you? Do you believe her?

  Bull watched as Scope lowered her tablet. She was confused, her cheeks were flushed, with just a slight tremble in her fingertips.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, and rubbed at her eyes.

  Bull watched her for a moment, then began typing on his tablet again.

  She’s speaking to you, he wrote. She hasn’t spoken a word to anyone until today. We want you to talk to her again. As long as she keeps talking, we want you to listen. Each time, we’ll have the full array of sweeps and recorders up. Even if they pick up nothing, we’re hoping she’ll let something slip, some detail, anything. We’ve got nothing right now.

  Scope read the words as they flew across the screen.

  Will you do it? he asked.

  Yeah, she wrote. I’ll do it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Holding On

  Mercedes Lackey and Veronica Giguere

  What had once been a sparse Zen garden now bloomed with a wealth of flowers. Even in the slight chill of the Atlanta night air, moonflowers and jasmine lined the path that led from the door to the edge. When Ramona couldn’t sleep, she stole up the stairs and sat on one of the small benches. On a clear night, she could see almost all the way to Stone Mountain.

  This evening, someone else sat on the small bench at the edge of the garden. Ramona paused, watching the slender shoulders tremble and the feather wings droop. The red and gold stood in sharp contrast to the darkness. Although she couldn’t hear a sound from the bench, Ramona knew that the woman now called Sera was crying. Sera. Everyone had taken to shortening the Seraphym’s name now. It was as if they had diminished her name to fit the diminished reality.

  She considered turning around, but Ramona couldn’t think to just leave her there in the dark without saying something. The Russians didn’t have a middle ground when it came to dealing with people. If you were hurt, they smothered you with attention until you were better. After that, you were expected to hold your own. Ramona had been out of the infirmary for more than a week, and her contribution had consisted of paperwork. Considering the Seraphym’s strange background, she couldn’t conceive what the Commissar could have found for her to do.

  Then again, Ramona thought as Sera passed a hand over her eyes, the Commissar probably doesn’t have any idea what to do with her.

  With a sigh and a quick check in her pocket for tissues, Ramona walked up to the edge of the roof. She made enough noise in the hope she wouldn’t startle the woman, and she stood a few feet back rather than take a seat on the bench.

  “I hear you, Ramona Ferrari,” came the soft voice. “If you wish privacy I shall depart.”

  “No, that’s okay. I just couldn’t sleep, and staying inside just didn’t feel right.” She rubbed her hands together, the bits of metal that still covered the abrasions making an odd grating sound. “Did you want to be alone, or…”

  “Being alone is…not what I wish. No. If you are desirous of company…” The words came haltingly. “I no longer may see inside another’s heart. This is a handicap. Among others. You shall have to tell me what you want and need.”

  Ramona slid onto the concrete next to the woman who was hastily wiping tears from her face. “Well, I don’t want or need anything, other than not staying downstairs and listening to that old television playing reruns of COPS. Coming up here seemed like the best way to sort out everything that’s happened lately.” She looked out over the quiet Atlanta rooftops, the damage of the destruction corridors muted in darkness. “You see all that? That’s the world I had come to know, as sick and as twisted as that is. That was my reality, and I was dealing with it.” She pointed to various ruined landmarks. “As least those are the same. Sitting up here is as close as I can get to feeling like I did before everything changed.”

  “Change…I said once to John that all things must change or die. I did not understand then how change can be so terrible.” The woman let out a shuddering sigh. “I know it is wrong, but so many times I think, now, that death would have been…not so bad.”

  “Me too.” Ramona leaned forward and hung her head. “At least once a day, sometimes more. Sovie says that it’s normal, that any life-altering event resulting from an ac
cident or illness carries the potential for depression and anxiety. And on a professional level, I know that.”

  “You are no longer the you that you have known all your life.” Sera sighed. “Nor am I. And my life is—was—a little longer than yours.”

  “No one would take you for a day over twenty-nine.” Ramona tried to offer a smile, but it was difficult. Part of her knew she could never compare her experience to that of the Seraphym, and to do so would be an insult. “And no,” she agreed. “I’m not quite the same person, but there are still startling similarities. Changing the outside doesn’t mean that you change the inside.”

  “I am glad you still recognize yourself,” Sera said after a long pause. Left unspoken was the obvious corollary; that she did not. There was more silence. “The Commissar has sent me patrolling. ‘Air support,’ she calls it. But I do not know when to act. I do not know…what is…I have no guidance but that of the fallible mortal that commands the patrols! Is it right to act? These Russians are so…how do you live with such uncertainty?” The last had the tones of desperation.

  Ramona let out a sigh. “Part of it is trusting the person guiding you. When that’s not possible, you trust the people around you, and you trust your own judgment. As for what’s right, that’s…” She barked a short laugh. “I got into fights with the Jesuit priest teaching religion and philosophy in high school. That earned me a D, so I probably shouldn’t be giving you advice. I slugged my boss in a freezer when he was in hysterics, and I scream at authority figures. I don’t think those tendencies went away when I woke up.” She sat back, chewing on her next question while she studied Sera. “I’ve always worked in situations where I didn’t know if I would come back. I guess it’s living in spite of uncertainty.”

  “I see.” From the tone of Sera’s voice, it sounded as if she had left quite a bit unspoken. Probably something like well, that’s all right for you mortals but what about me? “I mean repercussions. To yourself and to the world. I have always known what was and was not Permitted to me. I have always been able to see outcomes of my actions. Now I do not and cannot. I cannot rely on I was just following orders to protect me and the world.”

  “So, before you had choices, and now you don’t?” Ramona struggled to understand the limitations of the woman’s new world. “Because you can’t see the result before the action, you can’t trust the action in the moment?” Spoken aloud, the conundrum seemed almost silly, but metas with telepathy or any shred of emotional reception had struggled when their abilities were compromised. It was as much a part of them as an arm or a leg; Ramona could only assume that Sera’s clairvoyant nature had similar qualities. “Well… how long have you been watching the Commissar? Like, really studying her and the way she treats her people here?”

  “It is not the way she treats her people. It is the way she treats those outside of her sphere. I believe she has phrased it kill them all and let Marx sort them out. That is…not acceptable.” The woman actually wrung her hands.

  “And has she actually carried out those orders? Has anyone in the CCCP refused to act on those orders because they thought she was a few beets short of a pot of borscht?”

  “I don’t know. I cannot see the past anymore!”

  Ramona sighed. There was a reason she’d chosen the detective route over the metahuman services counseling route. “You’ve said that her treatment of others isn’t acceptable. Even though you can’t see the past, you can still have an opinion based upon what you’ve observed before. You still have a choice. There are still things that are, uh, permitted, aren’t there?”

  “I do not know. I have never had Free Will.” Sera shook her head. “Some things are obvious but most are not. I could make things so, so much worse. You, you look at—oh, say rescuing a child. But you do not know that child will grow to murder his playmates if he lives…” her voice broke. “That is a choice I made, not so long ago!”

  She had no response to such an admission, other than to reach over and lay her metal-scarred hand over Sera’s arm. How many seemingly right decisions had she made in her time with ECHO that had led to a more terrible outcome? Something as insignificant as a different parking space or the choice of one interrogation room over another might have made a difference, somewhere down the line of choices and consequences. Had she chosen the spot for breakfast, or was that Alex’s decision? Why had she chosen the Varsity that day over NomKitteh, the sandwich shop by the ECHO campus? The possibilities were maddening. “And so… for every choice you ever made, you always knew the outcome? For every single person?”

  “It would drive a mortal mad. It did drive Mathew March mad. Faced with too many choices to sort through, he chose to do nothing.” She wiped away a tear. “And even that was too much for him, but at least he thought he minimized the damage.”

  “But you,” Ramona pressed. “Did you always know every outcome? Where everyone would end up at the end of things?” She hated the finality in her words, but there was no other way to describe it.

  “There was…a blank space. Now I know it is because I chose…this. I did not know that at the time. I only knew that on the other side of that expanse there were those who were present and those who were absent. The analogy of navigating a hole in a cave with a tiny flashlight comes to mind.” Sera shrugged helplessly.

  “And on the other side, are there…” Ramona stopped, uncertain if she wanted to ask or even know. Sera might have seen things far into the future, but she didn’t know if she wanted a hint of tomorrow, next week, or next year. “Never mind. I don’t want to ask. I can’t ask, if only because it would keep me from acting on what I see and know.”

  “I am—was—not Permitted to tell you, anyway.” Another heavy sigh. “I must assume that edict stands.”

  “But you could see all of us, right? See and act upon, and choose?” Ramona sighed as well and stared out past the ledge. The woman nodded. “And did you ever not do something, even if it was, like you said, permitted?”

  “It was…complicated,” Sera faltered. “Things were Permitted, which I did, and things were Not Permitted, which I did not do, and there were things that were not Not-Permitted, which I did. And things that were not Not-Permitted, which I did not do, because I am not the Infinite and I could not be at all places at all times.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I could not save the one called Devil, because I had to choose.” The whisper broke on a sob.

  Ramona’s heart leapt in her throat. Poor Handsome Devil…who was it that Sera had chosen to save, so that she couldn’t save Klaus? Had it been…her? She turned to face Sera before she could stop herself, unable to conceal the look of shock and sadness on her face. She hated the swell of gratitude and relief that accompanied the shock. Ramona squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her lips together, focusing on the words. “That… that choice. That’s the uncertainty, and it does hurt. It does carry a ton of pain and regret with it. But we have to act in the moment,” she added in a tearful whisper. “Acting and being able to seek forgiveness for our choice based on what we know in that moment… it’s kind of all we’ve got. The flip side of Free Will.”

  Maybe it’s a good thing Shakti and most of the others think that I’m dead. This isn’t what I expected to learn, coming up here. Ramona stopped herself from wiping her face with her hand and resorted to the edge of her sleeve.

  “But now I am…Lost,” Sera continued, spreading her hands wide in a helpless gesture. “I do not know what is Permitted, what is Not Permitted, and what is not Not Permitted. I am in the hole in the cave, and I cannot see the bottom nor the edges. Like Mathew, I fear to act. I could doom the world. I could damn myself.”

  Ramona hugged herself tightly, unable to focus on her own grief and loss. The woman sitting next to her had lost so much, to the point where the thought of acting on anything carried enormous consequences. Anything she said, any attempt to console or empathize seemed trite and almost inappropriate. Could Sera’s choice to become human damn them all? Would her inaction
force ECHO into a situation where nothing more could be done, other than wait for the inevitable day when the Thulians set fire to the earth one last time?

  Sera didn’t know, and that not-knowing shook her to her very core. Ramona tried to grope her way towards some kind of answer. “Not-knowing is part of being human. Hell, acting in spite of not-knowing might be one of the hallmarks of humanity. That’s sort of what Free Will encompasses, right? You’re presented with the options, and based upon what you know and what you think you know, you act, and you live with the consequences.”

  Ramona lifted her head to see the stars above them. “And sometimes, the consequences aren’t so bad. In fact, there’s often joy in that ability to choose. Does following what’s ‘permitted’ give any kind of happiness?”

  “Of course.” Sera looked at her as if she could not comprehend the possibility of the opposite. “We are not Fallen because we trust the Infinite over our finite selves. There is happiness in trust. This is unhappiness in mistrust. Mistrust brings—” she stopped. “I should not lecture on the nature of trust.”

  “But you know what it means to trust. That goes along with Free Will.” Ramona seized the words, turning on the bench to face Sera. “Having Free Will means learning to trust your choices, based upon what you know, even when there’s more that you don’t know. Trust doesn’t erase fear, but it can lessen it.” She tilted her head and studied her companion. “Do you have trouble trusting the Commissar?”

  The corners of Sera’s mouth turned down. “Yes. She is inclined to extreme violence as her first choice. I know that she has on occasion turned to torture. Not recently but…that could change at any moment.”

  “And because it’s difficult to trust someone like that, you fear the choices that you could make when she’s giving orders?” Ramona didn’t try to sugarcoat her words, as the woman next to her wasn’t a child and didn’t deserve to be patronized. “If someone you trusted stood in her place, the choice wouldn’t carry so much fear?”