“Echo.” She sighed. “And Comrade Bella is being head of ECHO Medical and ECHO CEO. She is nyet doctor, but…”
“But I trust her. An’ that’s enough for me, right now.” John stood up from the examination table he was sitting on. He sighed heavily, turning himself to face Soviette. “Jadwiga, I need y’to do me a favor. I need ya to keep this under wraps until I can talk with Bella.” He held up his hands quickly to cut off the protest she was already beginning to voice. “I need to be sure. There’s still a lot of fight that needs doing, and I don’t wanna get pulled off of duty based on ‘maybes.’”
Reluctantly she nodded. “Just being remember. Your comrades are being depending on you. You are also not wanting to be weakest link that fails when moment is worst.”
More fear. That had already happened, almost, a couple of times. Fighting against Ubermensch, when the Thulian suicide squad attacked the HQ, and during the battle with the Rebs. The next time…the next time would probably be the last time; he was never that lucky, and he’d already been beating the odds just by staying alive as long as he had. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t come to that. Thank you, comrade.”
* * *
John sat on the roof of his squat. He wasn’t drinking; just thinking. Never can catch any breaks, can I?
No matter what he did now, he was screwed. End of the line, with no more hands to play. Discounting Bella being able to come up with something amazing and unheard of, John was going to die. How does a man cope with that knowledge?
He could slink off somewhere, a place without people, and die alone, like a dog. It’d be the simplest and probably least painful thing for him to do. At least physically. He might even be able to stretch out his time by a few months, maybe a year given the far-above-average plumbing his body had acquired.
He wouldn’t suffer as much, except for the state of his soul. Or at least what passed for whatever his soul was. Not that long ago, that was what he would have done without a second thought. But…now? He’d be abandoning everything again. He’d be deserting the CCCP, his neighborhood, the world. He’d be deserting Sera; that thought was almost unbearable, now. Everything was on the brink, and had been for a long time. He was just one warm body…but everyone counted in the fight against the Thulians.
Giving up wouldn’t do. That itch would still be there. It’d been years since he’d been in action, doing what he was best at; fighting and projecting force in places most folks would never want to go. His cause had almost always been just, and goddamnit, Right. He had that again, now. It was precious to him, in a way, almost as much as freedom and life itself were. He was alive again.
“That settles it,” he said to no one in particular. John looked up at the stars; they were a little more washed out now that electricity was stable in this part of the city. The CCCP and some effort from ECHO had seen to that. It was still beautiful, and John felt thankful. Wonders abound. “So, I’ll fight. Besides, it’s always OK to punch a Nazi.”
* * *
In running the Revolt, Bella had learned many things, one of which was how to delegate and get the hell out of the way. Paperwork? Ramona had someone. Detective work? Ramona all the way—she was still healing up, and coming to terms with what had happened to her, but giving her something to get her mind off her new condition was good for her in many ways. She was still Head of ECHO Med; no one wanted her to step down, but that was a lot easier now with the whole team wired. Public Affairs? Spin Doctor, Pride, and give the media the illusion she was always accessible but so modest she preferred Pride to do the talking. Actually it wasn’t modesty. It was terror.
Strat, Command and Control? Bulwark.
And that miracle ECHO needed? Two brains-in-a-box in far off Metis. They promised her they would give her something impressive. She just prayed they weren’t blowing smoke up her ass.
So being CEO was not yet the nightmare she feared it could be. Give it time, maybe…but for right this moment she could breathe a little. A little.
She ran down her mental list of things to do. Check in with Panacea via Vickie. Check in with Bulwark via Vickie. Check in with Nat via Vickie. Check in with Tesla and Marconi via Vickie. It amused her no end that despite Verdigris’ considerable genius and immense resources he never had had any idea of exactly how much Vickie could do, nor had he or any of his underlings managed to crack her network. And she had no doubt that, somewhere out there, they were trying. Vickie, raging paranoid that she was, was sure that sooner or later he would finger her for the one that had ruined his game.
But he didn’t have any magicians on the payroll either. Until he did, Bella was pretty sure Vickie was safe.
Her comm beeped, with the CCCP sequence. She checked it expecting to see something from Nat.
And frowned seeing the ID. Wasn’t JM usually on patrol?
She answered before it went to voice. “Yo, Johnny.”
“Bella. Got an hour? I need words.”
She was good at reading voices, even his. Something was wrong. Any thought of putting him off went out the window. “Now. Where?”
“Peoples Park,” came the reply. That was the combination community garden and playground CCCP had put together in his hood once the crap in a section of the destruction corridor had been cleared away. Well. Eaten. It had kept Chug in meals for several weeks. Chug went there regularly to play with the squirrels, usually under Bella’s or Upyr’s supervision. No time for that now; she’d have to see if Einhorn could be coaxed into it.
“Five minutes,” she replied.
She didn’t bother to change out of her civvies; she was less conspicuous in the park that way anyway. Well as “less conspicuous” as anyone with blue hair and skin could be. She sat down on a bench next to the playgym made with scavenged pipe and waited.
John was good, but Bella’s telempathy was better than any sneaking skills taught on the face of the Earth. Still, she didn’t hear or see him until he was sitting down next to her. “We have to stop meeting like this,” she said laconically. “My husband is beginning to suspect.”
“Sorry, comrade. Didn’t know that Papa Smurf was that cagey.” John did his level best to appear casual and relaxed. He stretched out, hanging his arms over the back rest of the bench. But Bella could still feel the steel-taut tension running through him. He was, by her father’s favorite phrase “Wound tighter than a banjo string.” And despite everything going on, JM hadn’t been that wound up for…quite some time.
Which meant her first impression was right. Something was really, really wrong.
“Much as I know you love me, you don’t ask me to a clandestine meeting in the middle of the day because you want to know if I want wheat or rye on my Reuben.” She gave him The Look. “Spit it out. Or I’ll touch you and find out anyway.”
So he told her. Told her what little he knew, anyways. Verbatim for what Jadwiga had said, with the scant amount she’d been able to piece together from the ancient medical gear that Moscow supplied them with. “And that’s where I’m at. The doc isn’t going to tell anybody until I’ve met with an expert in the field of metahuman medicine. Namely, you.”
She wrestled for a moment with a viper’s nest of conflicting emotions. Anger, despair, frustration…she wasn’t going to help him if she couldn’t think clearly. “I’m only a paramedic, Johnny,” she said, carefully.
“Yeah, you’re a paramedic. A paramedic with first-hand experience in a field that most med school grads won’t touch because it’s not all that high paid, unless you’re with ECHO. You’re head of ECHO Med, so you can sneak me in on the QT so Nat doesn’t find out. An’ you have your fingers in a lot of pies; places that might be able to figure out exactly what’s going on with me. Places that’ll figure it out without it getting back to the Commissar, immediately.” He turned to face her soberly. “I’m still in this fight, Bella. I can’t let this take me away from it. D’ya understand?”
Only too well. “All right. Now I know Jadwiga’s a psionic healer like me, and
I assume she would already have tried that on you so we can eliminate that as a cure right now.” She drummed her fingers on her knee, thinking fast, running through her options at ECHO Medical. “Are you free right now?” She was a past master at running people through tests. Hell most of the time the problem with running tests was not that the equipment wasn’t free, but that the techs to run it weren’t, and after the Invasion and being short-handed, she was certified on most of it.
“I’m officially on leave for the rest of the week, due to injuries sustained. I was able to suss out an extra five days from Jadwiga, considerin’, as opposed to the two that the Commissar originally ordered.” He grinned lop-sidedly. “Call it my charmin’ personality at work.”
“Right. Then you sit there for a little while I send some texts.” Through Vickie, of course. She wasn’t going to chance any of this going on the ECHOnet.
She thought her thumbs were going to fall off when she was finished, but within a few more minutes, the answers started to come in. Most of them were appended with “If you can run the—” She sighed. Looked like she was in for a long night.
“First thing, Johnny,” she said, eyeballing him for size. “We need to go borrow one of Bulwark’s ECHO uniforms.”
* * *
Three days, of tests, more tests and in the end, a verdict that the patient was terminal. Now all she had for him was no hope and an armful of bottles to keep him going, keep his energy up and the mounting pain at bay. She wanted to break down and cry, but she was going to save that for when she was alone. She waited on the park bench with the bag at her feet and wondered what he’d done to deserve this.
Then the flash of borrowed memories shared with Sera hit her, and she knew what he’d done to have some bad, bad karma. Because not all of the people he’d turned to smoking ash in the rubble of that Project of his had been guilty of anything other than working for the wrong people. Maybe not even most of them. And a good number of them had been victims, just as he was.
“Frikkin’ karma,” she said bitterly. She didn’t know those people. She knew him. She didn’t want to lose him, not only for herself, but for Sera. Dear god, for Sera…
“Still keepin’ my bench warm, Blue?” John had slipped in dead-quiet, as always. He was way too good at that for Bella to be completely comfortable with it.
“Beats you setting fire to it.” She sighed, felt her throat try to close, and blinked back tears, fiercely. “Here. These will keep you on your feet and fully active for as long as you have left. That’s what I’ve got. That’s all I’ve got.” She handed him the bag. No point in making a soft sell.
He shook the bag, then stuffed it into a cargo pocket on his pants. “That’s all she wrote? I’m really buying the farm, no if’s, and’s, or but’s?”
“You’re unique.”
“My mother said the same thing.” He grinned. “She also said I was an incorrigible brat an’ a pain in the ass.”
She wasn’t a real doctor. And every second she wasted trying to be nice was a second he didn’t have. “I’m cutting to the chase, Johnny. Your powers are killing you. You can stretch things out longer by not using them, but…”
“But you an’ I both know that I won’t stop. That I can’t stop so long as America, the world, an’ my new family have enemies out there. Right? So long as the Thulians are looking to make this a world of ashes.”
“Nothing short of a miracle is gonna help you now, and nobody’s handing me a halo.”
He nodded, sitting there silently for a long time. Children were playing in the park. Swinging on swingsets, wrestling and chasing each other, and just generally being little kids, happy kids. He spotted one pair playing with an action figure, clad in black and red, a CCCP uniform. He vaguely recognized the likeness it held, smiling. He thought it might be Perun. “Then it’s settled.” John stood up, hooking his thumbs into the belt of his pants.
She held out a hand. “Johnny—look, ECHO isn’t everything. Maybe Vickie can dig up some magic or—”
He cut her off, without any hardness in his voice. “ECHO’s the best. An’ I know y’already went to Vickie. If she couldn’t find it on her first run, it probably isn’t there; she’s thorough like that.” He sighed, then grinned at her as he turned to leave. “You’re a good friend, Comrade Kiddo. I’ll see ya around.”
And then he was gone.
* * *
She knew, of course. She had known from the moment that Jadwiga told him. And she realized that if only she had thought about it, she should have known before that. Her heart, and being unable to see his futures, had hidden the truth from her. She grieved for him, for the pain he must endure—for his own fears—but not for him. She knew, how not, that death was just a transition. But he…he did not.
He needed her. He would find her. This time, in her sanctuary, not his, not the Suntrust Tower where she could be seen, but a little stone bench in the quiet shelter of some trees that were as old as the city was, at the edge of a tiny cemetery. People often mistook her, those that could see her, for a statue. He needed her, thus, he would find her.
And he did.
He was surprised to see her when he wandered onto the edge of the cemetery. His surprise passed quickly, and he slowly made his way over to her. The same reserve and practiced calm as he had evidenced for Bella, all of it stretched over a writhing mass of fear and despair. He was scared, and she could feel every nuance of it.
“Evenin’, Sera. The folk ’round here started dancing yet?”
She looked at him in puzzlement for a moment, until her mind sorted through all the possible meanings and settled on the most likely for him. “No one has played the proper music,” she replied, moving over on the bench in unspoken invitation, and making herself look as human as possible. The strange and bitter irony of this meeting being in a graveyard was not lost on her.
“What’s a gal like you doin’ in a joint like this, at this hour?”
“It is quiet. I can rest. I am not entirely immaterial. I need not eat, drink or sleep, but I do need rest. I can rest here.”
He chuckled; there was darkness behind his mirth. “You an’ a lotta other folks. Got time for talking?”
She regarded him, unblinking. “I would make time, even if I had it not, John.”
“Yeah, I suppose you could.” He rubbed his arms against the cold and sat down next to a headstone in front of her. “Weird how things turn out, isn’t it?”
“I hope you are not contemplating destiny, John. There is no such thing. The future is mutable.” She bit her lip. “Futures. I see many, many. I have told you; it is what I do.”
“Naw, nothing like that. I just meant like the location, and whatnot. Angel in a church graveyard. And me, here, talkin’ with ya. Just weird how everything plays out, eventually. Irony is a cast-iron bitch.” He steepled his fingers, resting his elbows on his knees. “So, do y’know why I’m here to talk to you?”
She closed her eyes for a moment as his pain washed over her. She already knew the answer to the question she would have asked: May I heal him? The answer to that was It is not permitted. She did not know why—but that she would obey was the difference between a Sibling and a Fallen. She would obey, because she had trust. But this…this hurt. Hurt that she could not save him this. “Yes. But you must also tell me. There are reasons for this.”
“Then I’ll just say it. I’m dying. It’s because of how my powers work; my ‘natural’ ones, that is. And there’s nothing that anyone knows to do about it.” He visibly shook. It was the first time she’d seen him like this; he’d been consumed with anger, regret, purpose, and duty for so long. But this was fear; naked and unadulterated. “I think I’m okay with it. What do you think?”
“I think…you are afraid.” A tear formed at the corner of her eye, and fell. “I think…I am sorry for your fear, and grieving with you. And I think…I think this is too much pain for you to bear alone.” He remained silent and another tear slid down her cheek. Her voice remained
steady; she didn’t think he realized she was weeping for him. But she could scarcely believe how little time had passed—and how much had changed—between this meeting and the last. Tears instead of smiles, grief and fear instead of laughter. “What will you do now?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” He sat there, staring at his hands for several long moments. “I figure there’s only one thing I can do; keep fighting. People need for me to be there. The CCCP, my neighborhood, everyone. There’s nothing that I can do ’bout dying. But I can make my time here count for something. I can make the Thulians pay dearly for my life, if that’s what it takes to keep them from winning.”
His answer was unexpected, and not unexpected. It would not have been out of the question for him to say he was going away somewhere, for him to “crawl off to a lonely place to die.” It could have been one of his futures…in fact now that he had said what he had said, she could see it, even as that future closed off; see him wandering somewhere cold and snow-clad, lying down, and never getting up again. There were many of his futures that had ended that way. More of them than she had any notion of. Perhaps if she had known, she would have already have given up, because so few led to this moment…and only this moment gave way to the great blank spot, on the other side of which was hope.
But he had changed. Changed profoundly. This was merely the signal-point of that change.
Tears continued to follow one another; she could not stop them, and did not want to. She had wept for humans before, but this was different. John was—so much to her. Things had progressed between them far, far past the love of mere friends. There was no one she was emotionally closer to, not even Bella. The seraphs had emotions, of course, but they were nothing so immediate. Tentatively, she reached out to him, stopping just short of touching him. “John?” she faltered.
“Yes, Sera?” There was pain in his voice, but he was able to bring himself to look at her.
How did humans bear such pain? “How can I help you?” She faltered again. “It is not permitted me to heal you. I wish that it was. But…you are my…friend. Tell me how I may help you?”
Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Page 57
