Recursion

by Marion G. Harmon

  “Yes, we are!” Shell pitched in.

  I put my face in my hands. They were as bad as the Bees. Half of Chicago was prepping for an emergency evacuation just in case. Lots of people were taking unplanned vacations. But it also felt like half the town was placing bets on who we were going to be fighting next to Save The Day, half was protesting the government’s implicit admission that we knew of a threat but might not be able to stop it, and half was expressing massive confidence and support. Yes, that was four halves, but who said they couldn’t overlap? And Shell and Jacky wanted to talk about my love-life.

  “Fine. What do you want to know?”

  Jacky shocked me. “Do you love him?”

  “I don’t know! I won him in a game of truth-or-dare!” Or he won me, it was all so confusing.

  She frowned. “Okay, now you’ve totally lost me.”

  So I told her all about getting tricked by Kitsune, hunting Kitsune (twice!), the mad game with Kabukicho the god-fish, and Kitsune’s mythic “history.” (Reliving just a part of that myself with him had been so much fun.) And then of course she had to know about Kitsune coming to find me when I was lost, Kitsune’s pranks—his idea of courting—and a wedding and wedding night I only half-remembered. All part of a marriage plot/plan I didn’t really remember either.

  And Jacky was laughing. Cool, calm Artemis, laughed until tears came.

  “It’s not funny!”

  “Oh, oh, oh my God, Hope.” She wiped her cheeks. “Only you could get this twisted up. So are you going to have puppies? Wait, it’s fox-kits, right?”

  “I—” I felt the boiling flush all the way down to my navel, banished by the frozen chill of horrified realization. Had we practiced safe sex? I frantically rummaged the memories I had, flushing again. “I don’t know?” I almost bolted from the table, only just remembering that Kitsune had disappeared again as soon as I’d given Veritas my information of the potential Johhny Cho.

  Jacky took pity on me. “Relax, I was kidding. I’m sure mythic Japanese fox-spirits have a handle on that. But since you can’t deny sealing the deal, I want details. How is he?”

  Shell’s eyes went wide and I was back to boiling red. “Shell’s only fifteen!”

  “Hey!”

  “So, no woman-talk in front of the kid sister?”

  “Hey!”

  It was really, really good we were the only ones in the dining room. “I’m invoking the Change of Subject Rule. Now.”

  “Okay.” Jacky thought for a moment. “So, you still don’t know why you’re here?”

  “Nope. It’s so frustrating and lame. What’s my motivation? If this bit ever gets declassified enough to use in a Sentinels movie, they’ll fix that right up.”

  “But you know that you weren’t supposed to remember anything?”

  I nodded. “Maybe?” I couldn’t quite get a clear recall of my reasons in that fragmentary memory—just anxiety that it might not work. We’d known Kitsune would be fine, and he had his goals this time around.

  “So, has anyone asked if you’re the only ones who ‘came back’?”

  That stopped me, mouth open. Were we the only two?

  “Okay, my mind is blown, now.” Shell looked seriously disturbed. “How would we know?”

  “Wait, wait. Erica Free—the Lady of Doors. She only talked to me about that, when we met. But she saw a lot of others, too. Quin, Ambrosius, Blackstone. . .” Who else had been there?

  “But would she have noticed anyone else?” Jacky shook her head. “What if it’s your memories that make you stand out, make you the ‘wrong shape’? Anyone who doesn’t remember, they might not look out of place to her. Only you and Kitsune might pop out.”

  “Wow, that’s twisty. But what made you think of it?”

  “What if Johnny Cho is back here, too? Taking a second shot at an aborted op, to carry it all the way through this time?”

  “That’s—” That was horribly possible. “But if he doesn’t have memories, either . . .”

  “No conscious memories, maybe. But Shell says you were acting different even before you ‘woke up.’”

  It was feeling more horribly possible. What if—

  “Astra, could you meet us in the Assembly Room?” Lei Zi queried through my earbud. “We have a development.”

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  “Fair fights are for sparring, tournaments, and contests. In the real world, if you go into a planned op and find yourself in a fair fight then you’ve already blown it and if you survive then the after-action review is probably going to bury you.”

  Atlas, addressing the 7th U.S. Marshals Superhuman Tactics Class.

  * * *

  “This is our target.” Lei Zi looked over the packed Assembly Room as we memorized the face on the main screen; an innocuous-looking man, mid-twenties, dark hair, thin mustache and beard, nothing notable about him physically. He didn’t look Asian now, but from Future-Me’s own never-to-be-mentioned experience as a “Japanese” ronin I knew that meant absolutely zip.

  “We believe this individual to be Johnny Cho, a One Land terrorist operative. He appears to be Kevin Bertarelli, an importer who makes frequent trips to Asia. His most recent trip was three months ago. He popped up on our radar this morning due to being placed at both the apartment building that contained Nemesis’ “lair” and near the scene of a fire which may have been caused by Ambrosius’ thermokinetic. With warrants, Shell and the DSA have spent the day doing a thorough analysis of Mr. Bertarelli’s recent electronic history. Shell has, with approved access to the City of Chicago’s street-camera system, given us an incomplete but informative picture of his movements in the city.”

  She changed the image to give us a montage of shots of Mr. Bertarelli from different distances and angles. “We are going to collect him now, but I will emphasize two points. First, he is only suspected to be Johnny Cho, and even if he is Johnny Cho his powers are not lethal. We’re not serving a General Warrant and will not proceed with lethal force against him. Second, we believe that Johnny Cho is the primary actor in a terrorist plot, which may be underway now and no longer dependent on him to carry forward. Therefore, we must not only take him, we must take him alive. There’s no guarantee that anyone else we sweep up in this action will know enough. Veritas?”

  The DSA agent stood as Shell changed the image to the tactical blueprint of a warehouse.

  “Thank you. Everyone, over the past few days the Sentinels have been attacked by villains representing what we believe to be two groups. We believe one group to be in Johnny Cho’s direct employ even if not all of them know it. Police investigators are aware that Mr. Bertarelli maintains ties with the Chicago mob. His business has very likely been used as a smuggling conduit for, among other things, bootleg counterfeit whiskey. This follows One Land’s favored strategy of subverting or recruiting elements of local criminal organizations to do their legwork. In this case, smugglers can bring in weapons and tools under the radar. Recruiting mob hitters obviates the need for them to bring in and maintain a full One Land action team, and attacks attributed to local criminal activity won’t draw the same national response as an open terrorist attack.”

  He touched a button and the warehouse shrank to show the surrounding zones, circles showing the parts covered by cameras. “This is one of Mr. Bertarelli’s warehouses—one he has been renting for the past two months. Once we focused on Mr. Bertarelli, we reviewed street-camera recordings from his initial rental-date until today. This has revealed traffic unassociated with the shipping side of his business, with many more personal visits to the warehouse since his last Asian trip. He’s there now.”

  Another touch brought the warehouse back to full-screen.

  “Normally, this is where we would stake out the place, take pictures of and put tails on everybody coming and going, positively identify each person now in there and if possible sweep them up individually in a coordinated operation similar to what you did with the Brotherhood and Sanguinaries last December
. Due to the current threat, and knowing that at least one teleporter is working with Cho, the district court has given us a no-knock warrant to enter and search the premises. All Sentinels and associates have full authority to exercise the warrant, although you will be accompanied by two teams of DSA agents.”

  He sat down, yielding the room to me. I stood.

  “Alright, everyone. The team is in a strange position, going into this. The field side of the team now includes only five team veterans, Rush, The Harlequin, Artemis, Iron Jack, and me, and my future memories mean I have far more experience working with them than they do with me. Jack Frost has extensive Chicago CAI training, which includes some cross-training with multiple Guardians teams and ours. Lei Zi, Seven, and Riptide have only just begun to integrate into the team’s field procedures and Riptide is still in his first formal training. Black Powder, Agent G, and Ambrosius are all experienced government agents, but again not integrated into our procedures.” I passed my eyes over each as I named them.

  “This isn’t optimal if the fight turns into anything but a straight-up rollover, and it’s complicated by the fact that we may be facing Phreak with his tech for shutting down electronic communication. We’ve come up with what we hope will be a sufficient work-around for that.”

  I nodded to Vulcan and Galatea.

  “Our new resident tech wizard brought a pet project with him.” I’d gone down to the Pit to check it out, and yup, she was the same slightly-creepy robot I remembered seeing decapitated by Tin-Man’s dragon in my future. “Meet Project Galatea, an AI-directed gynoid robot. Galatea’s AI isn’t up to handling the fluid and chaotic environment of field operations, but Shell is able to pilot her remotely. Vulcan has loaded Galatea with a new signals-booster module, essentially a overpowered wi-fi. We hope it will be able to cut through Phreak’s jamming tech to keep us connected, but be prepared to operate in a blackout.”

  Turning my direction to the others, I ignored Grendel’s dark scowl; he hadn’t been at all happy when I’d told him how it would go down earlier, but he was still under eighteen—we couldn’t send him into the field for a planned combat-op.

  “Additionally, with a team this large we’re facing a deployment issue. Right now, I’m the only flier capable of carrying passengers with any speed. I can open the fight in a hurry, but can only bring four with me, tops. To work around the problem, we’ve decided to field a new method of fast-entry. Chakra will be directing Ozma and Grendel for this phase. We’ve already tested the plan against defenses prepared by Dr. Cornelius, but just in case it doesn’t succeed against Hecate’s barriers, we’ll carry out this part of the attack from just outside the zone of operations. Failure will only mean a short delay in arrival for that team.”

  I looked around the room, feeling the energy, the hunger. This was our duty. We moved to protect our city, but we’d also be carrying the fight back to the enemy. We’d be fighting for Blackstone, for David, for Willis, for Bob and all our fallen, bringing justice to their killers. I worked hard to keep a savage smile off my face.

  “So on to deployment. Lei Zi?”

  * * *

  Carrying four people had to look ridiculous, but nobody laughed as we lifted into the night in a short arc starting just outside the DSA wagons and ending in the central warehouse skylight. Galatea let go to land on the roof and Jacky leaped from my back and into mist before we hit the skylight. I released Dad’s and Agent G’s grips as we dropped inside. Agent G squished on impact before returning to his DSA agent-shape but Dad made a divot in the concrete—the crunch of his landing simultaneous with the bang as Rush’s shaped-charge “door-knocker” went off on the other side of the warehouse. As Dad and Agent G sprinted to come at the two-story office section from our side, I unslung Malleus from its catch on my new armor to focus on my target; the Big Freaking Robot I’d half-expected to find.

  “Tin-Man’s giant is on-site, inactive!” I yelled as I came down on it.

  “Understood,” Lei Zi replied through bursts of static. “Neutralize it and proceed.”

  How do you fight Tin-Man the smart way? Take down his big metal puppets before he can animate them. The huge thing sat, almost as tightly folded as they’d keep it for hauling, in the big open space that filled the back third of the warehouse. Jacky came out of mist and went to work on the closest wall but I ignored her to go for the giant—in my future, separating the head with its cameras had always “killed” Tin-Man’s creations. I hoped it gave him a huge mental backlash and headache.

  Clang! My first swing knocked the sitting giant on its side but didn’t decapitate it. My second took its head off as I heard a brief tinkling like crystal windchimes as the plastic-foil mirror Jacky’d unrolled and stuck to the wall turned into a magic portal. “And they’re in!” Shell called as I flew to follow Dad and Agent G.

  Evil clowns aside, I could really learn to like mirror-magic.

  “Contact with Swarm!” Seven called through the general channel. “Jack Frost is on him but there are Flash Mob’s all over the place!” Hearing the snap-snap-snap of Seven’s shots, I went through the overlooking bay window into the second-floor offices in a shower of glass.

  “Ignore Flash Mob!” Lei Zi called as I swept through the upper floor. “Secure the target!” Then my world went sideways and I hit the carpet.

  “Warp!” I choked out through rising nausea. Focus focus where—boosted— “Shell, he’s boosted!” I remembered his attack, almost three years ago to Future-Me, and this was a lot worse. The floor twisted under my hands and even trying to track his motion in the room overwhelmed me with thought-stealing vertigo as nothing around me held position or shape. My second attempt to put myself upright ended in wrenching convulsions. “Chakra!”

  Her kundalini energy settled over my mind like a warm, fragrant hand and most of the twisting, wrenching, confusion went away. Down didn’t stay still, but I could see who I was looking at in the next room. Drop, Warp, Johnny Cho.

  I didn’t bother to call out—Shell saw everything I did and Lei Zi knew a second later. “Everyone not engaged or on the perimeter, close on Astra’s position!”

  If Drop was still here, he’d just arrived and his window hadn’t reopened yet. Footsteps pounded on the stairs behind and though I still wanted to puke I threw myself at the door. The hit came out of nowhere and I barely glimpsed Villain-X before my world went away.

  Ash. Ash everywhere. Ash falling from the sky. Finer ash suspended in a fog so thick I could barely see the buildings around me. Cars drove through it, stirring it up around coughing, shambling, pedestrians. Not fire-ash. Pulverized rock and volcanic glass. The first black raindrops started to fall as I turned in the air.

  “Hope! MOVE!” A starburst of pain between my eyes lit my world as Shell screamed. Throwing myself to the side I caught a glancing blow to my chest-armor as I bounced off a wall and swung Malleus wildly. Villain-X body-slammed me and threw us through the wall. I clung to him and dropped us both to the warehouse floor below, twisting as we hit and swinging again into our concrete-cracking bounce. Malleus caught him in the side, one hundred pounds of titanium powered by all my might folding Villain-X over with an explosive gasp. I spun, kicking him in the gut, swung again.

  “Where’s! Your! Monologue! NOW?” My third swing caught him in the temple and when he went down I brought Malleus down on the back of his head. He dropped and didn’t move.

  “Geeze, Hope!” Shell popped in beside me. Well, she could multi-task.

  “He’ll heal.” I took a breath. “Where now?”

  The giant headless robot smashed me to the floor beside Villain-X. Then it fell on us.

  As adrenaline-pumped as I was, I barely felt it. “Shell, call out any more incoming!”

  I lifted into the air and body-slammed the big bot, then went to work on its limbs, Whang! Whang! Whang! barely hearing the storm of auto-fire in the offices. I did hear the silence when I stopped. “Shell, where now?”

  “ . . . nowhere. Johnny Cho’s dead
.”

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  thatsjustwrong21: You catch the video of the Sentinel-DSA op?

  starbright423: Brutal.

  thatsjustwrong21: So, Astra takes out a guy attacking a dinky store-front rally, there’s an attack on the DOME that effing kills Blackstone, someone shoots up a start-up breakthrough band, there’s a dogfight between Astra and some unknown Atlas-Type to protect some nobody-knows-him D Class breakthrough drummer, and now the raid?

  starbright423: What’s your point?

  thatsjustwrong21: It’s all going down, bro, whatever IT is. The Stoddard Hall rally? I was going to go throw stuff at Shankman, now I think the safest place to be is Anywhere But Chicago. I’m out.

  Monitored dark net thread, NSA JS-47 Program.

  * * *

  Staring at the images, I felt numb.

  It had been textbook perfect. We’d made a hard entry with complete surprise and overwhelming force. Sentinels—both the tv show and movie franchise—was scripted to make pretty much every fight a skin-of-your-teeth win, but the reality was that if a fight we initiated was anything but completely one-sided then we’d screwed up bad. And we hadn’t. Rush’s entry through the front—Jack Frost, Ambrosius, and the Black Powder and the DSA fireteam right behind him—had been clean. My hard roof-entry with Iron Jack and Agent G had barely left time for Lei Zi and her mirror-entry team to get stuck into the fight before it was over.

  And we’d still failed.

  Lei Zi replayed the mask-cam recording of my fight with Villain-X. Veritas only raised an eyebrow as the three of us watched the video, but I cringed a little at how savage it had been. My job after delivering Dad and Agent G had been to keep the heavies off everyone else. Between my handling of Tin-Man’s giant robot and the way I’d simply and brutally beat Villain-X down, I’d done that with attitude.