Recursion

by Marion G. Harmon

  I nodded, feeling numb. “And the backlash against the National Public Safety Act will make civil war almost certain.”

  “Yes. But if we go public with the danger, make the source of the danger known before the attack happens, then the people will know it’s a plot. They’ll know they’re being divided, pushed to demand greater infringements and restrictions on our constitutional and civil rights. The backlash then will mostly be focused on the Ascendancy, One Land, and the PRC.”

  “And the Ouroboros think that the National Public Safety Act will fail?”

  “Yes, it will fail.”

  “Okay.” I drew a steadying breath. “Tell us our part in this, and we’ll do it.”

  But that wasn’t all we were going to do.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  “The Magisterium of the Catholic Church has pronounced multiple times on the issue of miracles since the Event. Only God can be the cause of a miracle. This excludes any sort of occurrence that may have unknown created causes—whether it be a hidden force of nature, a force of nature applied by man in an artificial way, or the forces of nature utilized by pure spirits acting with only their natural faculties. Such effects would be wonderful and marvelous, but not miracles. Naturally, with the proliferation of causes that can be called natural, artificial, and spiritual since the Event, modern claims of miracles are studied very carefully indeed.”

  An Essay on Faith and Doctrine.

  * * *

  It had been a day since the late-night meeting had crystalized my decision to act now. It had been hours since the divine euphoria from hearing the Word spoken had faded. So why wouldn’t my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Was it possible to die of pure joy?

  “I’m pretty sure they’re going to canonize you for this,” Shell laughed beside me.

  “Shut up. Does anybody know what happened?” Both Chakra and Ozma had signed off on it—at least on the safety of the experiment—but I hadn’t really thought it would work. At least, not like it had.

  It had been the most bizarre caper imaginable. As team leader, I’d made the executive decision that the Dome was going to get the same magical-security system installed this time around. Since Dr. Cornelius was already in town, it had been easy to reach out and offer him the job. Which gave me the opportunity I’d already been looking for to confidentially let him know that I knew about the three divine Words stuck in his head. And that I could tell him how to get rid of them instead of self-medicating with street drugs just to stay sane.

  I’d walked him through his job when he and Orb arrived at the Dome. Then I’d taken him aside and, in exchange for his promise to use one of the Words as I asked, explained just what I knew and how I knew it. My plan had been for him to speak the Word of Life in the presence of Rush, Kitsune, and Jacky—healing Kitsune and Rush and turning Jacky into the daywalking vampire she was meant to be. Success was guaranteed; it had worked in the future, after all.

  Then I thought about all the people his Word could help. It had healed a mortally injured Orb, had brought Jacky back from “undeath,” had cured my PTSD, so what couldn’t it do? How many could it do it to?

  “Police are on-site,” Shell said. “Though they’ll have a hard time finding a crime. The first news crews have gone inside, but they don’t know what’s happened yet.”

  We could have been watching this from fixed-up Dispatch, but didn’t dare. Instead we’d dispersed to our rooms after Chakra, Ozma, Rush, Kitsune, Dr. Beth, and of course Dr. Cornelius had all sworn to secrecy. Kitsune-Rei sat beside me and Jacky on the bed as I clutched both their hands and we watched the first official news images—right now just night-shots of Northwestern Memorial Hospital taken from the parking lot.

  We’d been so careful. Jacky had infiltrated a top-floor hospital room, large enough for all of us and occupied only by a sleeping boy awaiting a heart transplant. She’d used the reflective plastic roll and stencil Ozma had given her to turn one bare wall into a sigil-marked mirror, and Ozma had led the rest of us through it with me carrying Rush.

  And before Dr. Cornelius spoke the Word of Life, one of the thirty-six Words his mystic tradition believed had been used to speak the universe into existence, Shell had seized control of the hospital’s public-address system. Then he spoke and the Word, sounding with the depth of bells as big as worlds, too beautiful to ever remember or forget, sang in our souls and rang through every hall to echo in every room in the hospital.

  And everyone within sound of the Word, as far as Shell could tell so far, healed.

  “Extraction was successful,” Shell added. Sitting on the floor in front of us, she was practically hugging herself with glee. “Jacky got the ‘mirror’ down again and got out without anyone noticing. They didn’t get to Billy’s room until just a few minutes ago, and he slept through it all. Let’s just say he’s off the transplant list, though. For good.”

  I squeezed Jacky’s warm, living hand. “Is everyone . . .”

  Shell nodded. “I’m using their closed-circuit cameras since the intercoms are down, but so far I haven’t seen one case of post-healing complications. Nobody who was on medication or life support machines has had a bad time with suddenly not needing what’s in them anymore.” She sounded as giddy as I felt. “Guys, that’s nearly nine hundred beds. Preemies, kids, trauma victims, cancer patients, you name it. Heck, the whole staff is healthier than they’ve ever been.”

  I had literally no words. The scope of what Dr. Cornelius and Shell together had done was just beyond anything I’d imagined. “Well, Shell? How does it feel to be instrumental in the biggest mass-healing in history?”

  “Don’t. Tell. Anyone.”

  Rei started laughing. “Hey, we’ve already vowed to take it to our graves and beyond. Hope? Best. Trick. Ever. How often do you do a good deed like this, and leave everyone going absolutely crazy? There’ll be investigations. Conspiracy theories. Whole movements coming out of it. No-one will ever know, and everyone will want to!” She chortled like a child. “So what next, my captain?”

  I looked at the time. One in the morning, another late night. “Jacky?”

  She tore her eyes from the tv. “I’m going to sleep. Really sleep. Hope—”

  I hugged her. “I know, I was here the first time.” I let her go, wondering if she’d be able to sleep at all, waiting for the sunrise, and turned to Kitsune. “Bed. Get furry—the fox takes up less room.”

  Hopefully I’d be able to sleep and not lie awake anticipating tomorrow’s “interview.”

  * * *

  “So, Dr. Cornelius is here only to arrange for magic protections for the Dome.” Veritas looked over my contract with the mystic breakthrough.

  I nodded earnestly. “Yes. Well, he also helped take care of giving Jacky a power-up. But my main concern is Hecate. I don’t know anything, really, about Ms. Free. How long can the Lady of Doors keep up her interdiction on Hecate’s magic? And can she keep the door closed if the Ascendant boosts Hecate’s powers?” I really was trying not to have nightmares about that possibility; our first warning might be suddenly finding ourselves eyeball-deep in qlippoth trying to eat our eyeballs.

  “I might have asked Ozma what she could do, but Dr. Cornelius did a superb job of warding us and the Dome against all manner of scrying and nasty stuff the first time around.”

  He switched to another document. “And I see you’ve noted Rush and Kitsune as ‘recovered.’”

  “Uh huh. Rush’s been adding extra days with Hypertime. And Kitsune’s wound disappeared as soon as she woke up and could change. She’s been resting, since.”

  “I’m not stupid, Astra.” He set down his epad.

  “As if I ever, ever, for one teeny tiny second, thought you were.”

  “Are you planning something?”

  “ . . . Yes? Always? The team is cooperating fully.”

  Beside me, Lei Zi nodded agreement. “I’m going to recommend renewed patrols, with the team on alert for backup. It will help get across the government
’s message that while the risk-level is elevated we’re doing our jobs.”

  Yesterday had been full of those messages. The White House had released a statement. The Department of Superhuman Affairs had released a statement. City Hall had released a statement. Now political commentators of all stripes and political affiliations were commenting on and analyzing those statements.

  The public had never been safer, and the public had never been more at risk.

  Quin stepped in. “Papers are dubbing it the Northwestern Miracle. It’s pushed the cyanide bomb story out of the news and is suppressing the more hysterical reactions to news of the Ascendancy threat. It’s even topped Astra’s ‘covert ops past’ story in the comments sites. It’s an incredibly positive story—most people are assuming it’s the result of a new and secret breakthrough.”

  And she was right—in fact she was understating it. Shell had greeted me over breakfast with news clips starting to flood the media; images, interviews—mostly high drama with sobbing ex-patients or their families. Floods of gratitude, a wish for someone to thank, hopes that it would happen again, and extreme religious response, had put Northwestern Memorial in the center of what was escalating into the biggest media event I’d ever seen.

  Father Nolan was going to be leading a mass of thanks at St. Christopher, and I was very, very thankful that the Church was careful about what it officially declared holy miracles.

  Veritas looked at the three of us, while Lei Zi and Quin avoided looking at me. Bless them, they were never going to ask what had really happened. I raised my own epad. “Moving on, Lei Zi could you go over your action-response plan?”

  Five minutes later we finished our Pre-Day Briefing to head to the Day Briefing—which turned into a celebration of Rush’s return. He took high-fives and fist-bumps all around, stressing how many incredibly boring weeks he’d spent in hypertime healing up. Veritas’ non-expression actually grew a sardonic edge at that speech, but he said nothing. What was there to say?

  “So, do you think we’ve buffed our numbers enough?” Artemis asked as we exited the briefing. “Not complaining—I like Riptide and Pretty Boy and Lei Zi seems cool—but Jack Frost? Your Dad? A shooter, two shapeshifters, a forcefield-projecting Texas Ranger, and a pair of Hillwood kids, one of them definitely crazy?”

  “Agent-G’s totally different than Kitsune,” I defended, laughing. With his amorphous, protean body he could punch and take hits like an Ajax-Type and was even a bit stretchy. Nothing like If-Man, but if I hadn’t seen him in a sparring match with Dad I wouldn’t have believed his reach.

  “How was breakfast?” I’d been sorry to miss it—the first time around I’d seen cold, tough Jacky nearly cry over a sandwich. I was wondering how to find the time to change out of uniform and go grab lunch across the street with her (it might be a frozen day outside, but it was day), when Shell popped in.

  “Fisher’s got something for you!” She was almost jittering. “We gotta go go go!”

  I was across town in minutes, dropping into an alleyway behind a shuttered business. Fisher and Officer Jesse waited for me there—Jesse hopping up and down lightly to keep warm, her hands buried in the pockets of her police jacket.

  She flashed me a grin. “Hey, Astra! That was fast.”

  “I wasn’t doing anything that couldn’t wait. How are you feeling since—you know, the almost dying bomb thing? And what’s going on?” I didn’t see crime-scene tape, more uniforms, anything that screamed crime scene.

  Fisher took a final drag before dropping his cigarette and grinding it out underfoot. “Thanks for coming, kid. And we’re both fine, thanks for asking. Right this way.” He took us further down the alleyway, to the closed business’s covered loading dock. Beside it sat a dumpster that had seen better days and one really bad day. “This.”

  “This?” I looked at the dumpster, floated up to look inside when Fisher flipped the lid back. Someone had lit a fire in it. Nothing remained now but caked, hard ash—which meant that someone had drowned the fire instead of letting it burn itself out. Whatever had been inside had burned hot enough that the paint across two sides of the dumpster had scorched and peeled away and the metal had deformed a little.

  “The building across the alley has apartments above the office floors,” Fisher told me while I looked around. “Last week one of the residents called 9-1-1, thought this old building was on fire. The fire department found just the burning dumpster.”

  “Okay . . . And I’m here, why?”

  He took out another cigarette, didn’t light it. “Here’s the thing, kid. You suggested I look more into Nemesis. Well, the feds have pretty much taken over that side of things since the cyanide bomb, but I stayed interested in the location. The owner of the apartment building had hidden security cameras in a few spots. Nothing showing the alley or the hallway outside Nemesis’ door, but Officer Jesse here and a couple of the others stayed motivated to comb through the video-logs. They got with the manager and super to eliminate residents and friends, and came up with a few faces.”

  Pulling out his cellphone, he brought up a series of images and cycled through faces. “Recognize any of these people?” When I shook my head, he went back to one, a dark-haired man with a thin mustache and fringe beard. European-American, late twenties? Early thirties? Dressed nice enough.

  “Nobody knew this guy, but he came in once not far behind Nemesis. And a second time alone the day before the shooting. Officer Jesse brought me the picture. Meanwhile, I’d found this.” His wave took in the dumpster and alley.

  A really hot fire. . . “The Dearborn projects victim wasn’t the first?”

  “I’ve got no new leads on the thermokinetic case, so I thought I’d see if I could find any pyro activity that might be related.” He rapped the dumpster with a knuckle. “There was no body, here. Just a lump of twisted metal and glass that could have been anything. The fire department wrote it up and wrote it off. Didn’t even classify it as attempted arson. Do you smell anything? It burned way too hot for normal dumpster-fuel.”

  I gave it a sniff, winced at the reek. The dumpster hadn’t been used to dump food; it smelled of burned plastic and paint on top of whatever cardboard and wood had been in there but— “No accelerant.” I couldn’t catch a scent of any of the chemical traces the CPD’s own forensics people would later train me to look out for.

  He looked the opposite of shocked. “So, no accelerant, and a fire too hot for the fuel available. What does that tell you?”

  A grin stretched my face. “You’ve connected this.”

  “Damn right. I checked nearby city cameras. There aren’t many of them, and no sight of the guy Ambrosius is looking for, but guess who showed up real close to this alley?” He held up the cellphone again, this time with a picture from a street-cam. Definitely the same guy as the visitor to Nemesis’ building.

  Johnny Cho—if that was him—was connected to our pyrokinetic, who was connected somehow to our dead gravikinetic. I felt almost light-headed. “Thanks for bringing me down here. What’s your next step?”

  “I don’t have one, kid.”

  “Wait, what?”

  He lit his cigarette, blew a cloud and nodded to Officer Jesse. She nodded back. “This is it. If there’s something going on in my department—if our pyro connects to a killer the feds are after—then I don’t want this going up the chain. So we’re giving you the information—the DSA has better resources for finding a face without a name, anyway.”

  * * *

  “You’re all being careful?” Mom asked in the same tone she’d use for are you taking your vitamins? I’d called to ask how everyone was and incidentally preemptively apologize for not coming to Sunday mass and dinner tomorrow. Doubly disappointing for Mom with Jacky back in town—she had made me turn my phone so she could see how the girl looked.

  “Yes, Mom, I’m being careful. Dad, too.” Dad was enjoying himself. He’d used to come in once a week or so to spar with Atlas and Ajax as part of his reservist trainin
g. He and I had sparred a bit since, but he couldn’t really bring himself to go all-out fighting me. With Grendel, Eric, and Agent G in residence, he was in heaven. “How’s Mrs. Robinson? And how’s your preparation?”

  “She’s fine and on her new blood-thinners. And the boys have their bug-out bags and plans. Annabeth called to make sure I’d be ready as well—I’m sure she’ll send Dane after me if it comes to that. And she’s worried about you. All your friends are. So, you are being careful?” She frowned, sighed. “Of course you are. I’m sorry, honey.”

  “Don’t—” I let out a breath. “I love you, Mom, and I love that you’ll never stop asking if I’m careful, or happy, or safe.”

  “Well. Speaking of happiness, you’re not off the hook. Not tomorrow, but you will bring Jacky and your new young man to our next dinner.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Is he Catholic?”

  “He’s a Shinto kami, so probably not?”

  “He can skip mass, then. But not dinner.”

  “Yes, Mom. I’ve got to go, Mom. I love you.”

  “Love you too, honey.”

  I shut off my phone and set it beside my plate without looking at Jacky. “You’re going, you know. She’ll come down here if you don’t.”

  “Is my last name Corrigan? No, it’s not.” She took another bite of her BLT.

  “Doesn’t matter. The Bees are all her girls, too. Shell will be again, as soon as she womans up and lets me or Dad tell her she’s back.”

  “I heard that.” Shell popped in on my other side.

  “Of course you did. And you will, too. And since both my BFs are here, tell me how it’s going. Shell? You first.”

  “Really?” Jacky asked coolly, putting her sandwich down. “It’s just the three of us and we’re not going to discuss the fact that I go away for a few weeks and you add three years and get married?”