“Well, since your definition of ‘acceptable breakage’ and mine differ, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess my definition of a ‘better world’ isn’t going to jibe real well with yours, either.” I cracked my knuckles, and he looked at me with a sense of uncertainty, as if he felt a little sick. “Why don’t we just get this fight underway?”
“I’m not here to fight you,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to fight you, Sienna.”
“If you want to build your ‘better world’ on a pile of corpses, you’d better be prepared for mine to be one of them,” I said as I assumed a fighting stance. “Because I’m not just going to lie down and let you kill everyone I care about.”
His hand came up, covering his face for a moment, and when it came away he looked tired, older. Same guy, just weary. “Are you even willing to listen to reason? What is it with you?”
“Maybe it’s something you said, maybe it’s something you did.” I dipped a shoulder, my version of shrugging when I was in a fighting stance. “Could be the company you keep. Like Weissman. Not a huge fan of your BFF.”
“He’s not my ...” Sovereign looked chagrined, like I’d caught him doing something embarrassing. “He’s an ally of convenience, okay?”
“I’ve had those before,” I said, and indicated Hildegarde’s prostrate body with a nod of my head. “See how well it works out?”
“She was going to betray you, you know that, right?” He looked uncertain again.
“So you’ve said.” I was still waiting for the fight to break loose, and I was beginning to wonder if he was using the same power to hold me back that he was employing on Hildegarde’s Hercules, who still had not said one damned thing. “I’m a little unclear on the why.”
“She was trying to prove her worth, buy her way into Century by clearing a few spots off our roster,” he said.
“You mean she thought that if she killed a few members of your club, you’d let her into the club?” I raised an eyebrow at the Hercules, who still stood there, looking like a helpless thing, overinflated and unsure of himself, looking haplessly from Sovereign to me. “Not the greatest plan ever.”
He looked down at her unconscious form. “She’s your ally.” He looked up, and was smiling again. “Maybe you should pick them more carefully.”
“Maybe you should stop killing all the good ones,” I replied with a smugness I didn’t really feel. “Or at least the more effective ones.”
“Hey, I didn’t beat the Primus of Omega to death with his own chair,” Sovereign said, stepping around Hildegarde’s body to lean against the wall, his black leather coat making a little noise as he did so. “I don’t typically go in much for wrath, but I heard you really put it to him.”
I sighed. “Are we going to discuss my greatest hits or can we just get to the fighting already?”
“Why are you so eager to fight me?” He let out a sigh. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“Then why are you here?” I asked. “To get back your telepaths?”
“What?” He frowned. “No, I know they’re dead.”
“Then why the hell did you send an army of mercs in here to shoot us up a few days ago?”
“That was Weissman,” he said quickly. “He didn’t know they were dead. Also, he is eventually going to try and kill all your friends.”
“It seems like you’re trying to make a good impression on me,” I said. “Keeping it polite and all. You know what would make a really good impression? Not killing the people I care about. Not killing random strangers. And not letting your boy Weissman do any of that, either.”
He grimaced, and I could tell he was genuinely pained. “I would if I could.” He pushed off the wall and walked over to Old Man Winter and stood behind him. Winter, for his part, stiffened as the shorter Sovereign hovered over him. “But I can’t. You know why?”
“Because you’re a neo-fascist and you just can’t get this killing of your inferiors out of your system?”
He made a face, something between a smile and a frown. “I’m not a neo-anything.”
“So does that make you a paleo-something?”
“You know why Winter did what he did to you?” Sovereign clapped both hands onto Winter’s shoulders, causing the giant man to blanch. “Because he believed that pushing you to kill was the right thing to do.” He leaned toward Winter and peeked around his arm. “Isn’t that right, Erich?”
Winter looked me in the eye. “I did what I did to make you stronger. To make you the kind of person who could—”
“That’s enough of that,” Sovereign said, and Winter stopped speaking. “She gets the point. He did something horrifying to you because he believed it was the right thing to do. What do you think about that?”
I paused, caught a little flatfooted. “I ...” I blinked, not really sure how to answer.
“Come on,” Sovereign said, encouraging. “You know how it makes you feel, don’t you? What it felt like when he did what he did? When he ordered you to be held while—”
“Shut up,” I said, my cheeks flushing hotly. “I don’t need a reminder.”
“So how did it make you feel,” Sovereign went on, “when your father figure, your newly adopted parent, replacing the old, inferior one who’d abandoned you, turned out to be even worse?” He didn’t smile.
“He’s not my father,” I said a little too abruptly.
“No, of course not,” Sovereign said, “because you’ve never actually met your father, the real one. He died before you were born. Would you like to talk to him?”
“You are such an asshole,” I said and meant it.
“I am just pointing out that the people who have helped shape you and influence you may not have been the most morally centered individuals.” He stepped out from behind Winter and spread his arms. “All your outrage at what I’m doing is at least partially grounded in the judgment given to you by a mother who locked you in a metal box regularly and a ...” He glanced back at Winter, “... a father figure who forced you to kill your first love.”
“So I should take instruction from you instead?” I asked. “Because you’re morally superior, having never locked me in a box or caused me to kill someone I care about?”
“I saved your life,” he said calmly. “Three times now and counting. No, I don’t expect you to take instruction from me. I don’t expect your opinion of me is going to change one way or another tonight. I’m just here ... to save you. To help you. I don’t care about telepaths who are already dead,” he waved a hand at the sky, “and I’m not gonna tell Weissman that you sent your mother, your brother and your British friend away with all your junior metas so you could try and draw out some of his people and kill them in a rather obvious trap.” He smiled. “He’s probably figured that one out already, anyway, if you want to know the truth.”
I felt gut-clenching fear. I had been so sure I was being clever, even though everyone but me had practically cursed me for being a fool. The dormitories were sealed tight but completely empty, wired to explode if I ordered it. And I had planned to order it, too, as soon as Weissman’s latest gambit showed up.
“It was a good plan,” Sovereign went on. “But I can read minds. The good news for you is that I’m not fussy. I’m not in a hurry. I’m more worried about doing this right and not being harsh with you than I am about running over all your friends and getting them killed. I can be flexible. There’s room for mercy in my plan. I promise you that we can build a better world, one where people aren’t starving to death or being killed in wars every day that they didn’t start or want, where the planet isn’t being killed because of selfish desires.” He didn’t smile, just looked at me grimly. “You could help. You could be the greatest force for good that the world has ever known, saving more lives over the next five thousand years or more that you’re going to live than the piddly few that we’re going to have to take to start setting things right.” He cocked his head to look at me, and his tone turned imploring. “I know it haunts you, what you’ve
done. Who you’ve killed. What you’ve become in the process. You worry about the cost to your soul. Make that sacrifice mean something by truly balancing the scales.” He took in everything with a sweep of his hand. “I know you think you’re fighting the good fight against the grand evil here, but what you’re really doing is perpetuating a system that creates outcasts, isolation, alienation, fear, starvation and death. You’re fighting for everything bad and ignoble and horrible in life but you think you’re on the side of the righteous because ...” He gestured to Old Man Winter. “Because of something he told you? Because of something your mother instilled in you? These people fight to keep the status quo. Why is he even here?” He poked Winter in the chest with an outstretched finger.
“To tell the truth,” Winter said finally.
“Which you could have told her at any point previously, if you’d been of a mind to,” Sovereign said. “No, now you’re here because you’re scared. Because a system that you helped prop up, that made you wealthy and gave you power, is about to crumble. That scares you, scares you enough that you’d scar a teenage girl for life in hopes that she’d protect you—your position, your power—from the change that’s coming.” He shook his head at Winter. “Your legacy is going to be that you did it all for naught.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” I said. By now I was just cocking off, still hesitating. I didn’t want to attack him, and I didn’t know why. He was just being so damned ... polite.
“Don’t you realize what’s going on here?” Sovereign turned on the passion, and I could feel it exude from him. “He’s got you fighting for a world where the people who were supposed to show you the most care betrayed you, hurt you, left you. You’re lined up to defend a world that has made you lonely, bitter and mournful. I know you don’t want to hear it, and this whole ... this extinction, you call it ... this isn’t how I would want to get to where we’re going. But there aren’t any other viable options. The old world has to be torn down to bring about a new one.” I could hear the remorse in his voice, and I knew— somehow knew—that he actually felt the pain; he wasn’t just putting me on. “I don’t want to do what we have to do. It took a long time to convince myself that it was right. I don’t expect you’ll come around until you see the result, I really don’t. You’ve been beaten down, broken, shattered by people you trusted. I don’t think you’ll look at me and see someone who’s trustworthy for a long time, not with what I’m doing, how we’re going about this. But I know that when we’re done, you’ll be able to look out on what we’ve built, and it’ll be a shining world, something new and bright without the rough edges and cruelty you’ve come to know from this one.”
“And who’s going to live in this world of yours?” I asked, practically choking up. “The five people who haven’t ever done anything bad, haven’t ever hurt a soul?” I glared at him.
“Everyone could have a place in that world, that’s the point,” Sovereign said. “It won’t take as much as you think.”
“I don’t think I have a place there,” I said. “I don’t think I could live in your world.” I put my hands up one last time. “I’m going to fight you now.”
“I won’t fight you, Sienna,” he said, shaking his head. “I won’t. I’m not here to harm you. I’m here to save you.”
I felt a curious swell of emotion, some great sadness and longing that I didn’t want to feel, but it was there anyway. “Well, I’m here to save the world, so I don’t think you’re going to have a choice.”
I launched myself at him, a little slow, halfhearted, and he dodged by hovering right out of my path. I landed and turned, and he hung a couple feet off the ground behind me, watching me with sad eyes. “I told you I don’t want to fight you.”
“I don’t feel the same,” I said and pulled my gun. I ran through the magazine, sixteen rounds, and he stood there all the while, never moving. When the smoke from the chamber cleared and the action was open, he still hovered, and I heard a faint clinking. I looked down to see the bullets falling off of him, hitting the concrete floor of the construction site one by one.
“You can’t hurt me,” he said, shaking his head. “And I won’t hurt you.” He swept to my right, hovering just behind Winter. “But I’ll tell you what ... here’s a gift for you. Take Winter. Do what you want to him.”
Winter’s eyes widened, but he said nothing.
“You think I give a damn about Winter now?” I shook my head at him, incredulous. “You’re a pretty lousy mind reader if you think I’m going to waste my effort on him while you’re still hovering over there, ready to destroy everything—everything I hold dear.”
“Sweetheart ... all the things you hold dear are things you shouldn’t,” he said, looking down on me with sadness. “The things that have hurt you.”
“Sure, tell me how to feel, that’ll fix everything.” I nodded at Winter. “What I see is this—another guy who just has plans to make the world over in whatever image he wants, not really caring that everyone else might not want to share his vision. Sure, yours is grander than his, but your intentions are exactly the same. Remake your corner of the sky to your exacting specifications, and to hell with the consequences for the people who don’t fit into your plan.” I almost spat at his feet. “You want to talk about legacy? Yours is a mass grave.”
He gave me a haunted smile, a kind of half-hearted expression that didn’t even look like he was remotely happy. “The people who change the world? They almost always have a mass grave under their feet. Most of the time that doesn’t end up being their legacy, though.” He stared me down. “What about you? You’re digging a pretty large gravesite at this point. You don’t want to at least examine the reason why it’s happening?”
“I ...” I started to answer, then found I couldn’t. I didn’t really have one. Everything that had happened, everything I’d done, I had no words to reason for it, not now. I just stood there, blinking, not sure what to say to the surprisingly warm brown eyes that were staring at me expectantly, as if I should know the reason why I’d killed so many people.
And then Old Man Winter was flung through the air into Sovereign’s back, knocking him over, and the need to craft an answer became completely irrelevant.
Chapter 42
Hildegarde rose to her feet, her hair whipping back behind her, retracting from where she’d thrown Winter into Sovereign’s exposed back. She took one look at me, then at her crony, and bolted, running full out around the corner of the wall segment that Sovereign had appeared from behind. I stood there, a little confused, not really sure if I should be doing something or if continuing to do nothing was the appropriate play. After only a moment’s pause, her Hercules followed suit, running off in the opposite direction, dodging behind a corner and out of view.
“Excuse me for a moment,” Sovereign said, and rose into the air as Winter fell off his back. Sovereign shook his head then flashed into flight around the corner where Hildegarde had just vanished. I was left staring at Erich Winter, whose hunched frame was slowly getting up off the ground.
“He will destroy you, you know,” Winter said. “Whatever he says is lies.”
I blinked, as though I could clear my head of the surreal imagery I had just seen merely by doing that. “I guess you two have that in common, then.”
“I never lied to you,” he said, easing to his feet, shoulders still stooped. “I may not have always told you everything, but I did it to try to protect you—”
“Spare me the warmed over, empty air that you’re flinging in my direction,” I said. “Your excuses are doing nothing but adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.” He quieted, and a long, piercing scream came from somewhere in the distance. It was male, and it cut off after a moment. “I guess we just found out who’s stronger than Hercules.”
“He will kill everyone,” Winter said. “You heard him admit as much yourself.”
“I did,” I said. “I also watched you order your goons to force me to drain Bjorn, then my boyfriend, i
n order to piss me off and make me kill people.”
“You needed to prepare,” he said. “You needed to lose your hesitation.” Another scream followed his words, this one from a woman, and only slightly farther away, judging by the sound. “He is coming.”
“Yeah,” I said. “If he doesn’t kill you, by the way, you’re under arrest.” Winter cocked his head at me, most curiously. “Senator Foreman sends his regards. He’s a little miffed that you fled the country rather than making at least some report to him.”
“I had important work to attend to,” Winter said.
“Yeah, I bet fleeing my impending wrath was crucial to your strategy of saving your own ass to work another day.”
“Sorry about that,” Sovereign said as he flew back around the corner, sweeping low to avoid the rebar ceiling. “I, uh ...” He met my gaze. “I hope you don’t mind, but I had to kill those two. I don’t normally go for killing if I can avoid it—witness this guy here,” he waved at Winter, “but in this case, I mean, their time was pretty limited anyway, and hitting me in the back of the head with a Norseman? I can only handle so much insult from someone who’s already killed my people while trying to impress me.” He looked from me to Winter. “Sorry, did I interrupt? I can wait. Really. If you two have business to hash out, you go right ahead.”
I let out an impatient exhalation. “I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to fight. This is how it always ends—talk, fight, done. It’s a cycle. Don’t mess with the process.”
“Sorry,” Sovereign said. “I’m not going to fight you. I’m sure Weissman will, when you stick your nose in his end of the operation again, but not me.” He didn’t look like a fifteen-year-old, not anymore, and he had sadness aplenty that differentiated him from someone that young. “I’ve warned him about killing you, though.” His jaw tightened. “I thought he knew better before, but ... I had to teach him a lesson after Andromeda. That never should have happened. And for that, as well, you have my apologies.” He bowed his head in contrition.
Legacy: The Girl in the Box #8 Page 26
