Recursion

by Marion G. Harmon

She changed the image and we watched from several mask and helmet-cams as Rush’s team overran the first floor. Flash Mob had been caught with only the pistol he’d been packing at first, and watching a couple dozen of him pop up to fall to Rush was both gratifying and scary. Swarm stopped us short of the stairs, behind a protective barrier thrown up by Ambrosius, but Jack Frost performed exactly as I’d hoped and froze Swarm’s micro-insect bits into inert dust. Lei Zi froze the image there.

  “Iron Jack and Agent G made their own hard entry through the back and encountered no resistance, following Rush and the fireteam up the stairs. The Platoon fireteam who entered through the mirror with my own team spread out to cover the open warehouse and never engaged. Here’s the relevant video.”

  A cut from my mask-cam showed the first sight of Johnny Cho behind Warp, along with some better-armed Flash Mobs and Drop. I hadn’t seen Balz, but the next shots from Rush and helmet-cams—after I’d been diverted by Villain-X—showed a rising cluster of his spheres. We watched Ambrosius neutralize the spheres by simply pushing them aside with his fields. Black Powder took down Warp and Drop with two non-fatal shots, and then— “There. Thank you, Shell.” Lei Zi pointed. “Veritas, were your instructions unclear? Your men had a no-shoot order on Johnny Cho, did they not?”

  The frozen image, from Lei Zi’s mask-cam where she’d been dropping into range of an office window, showed the instant of the shot. Vectored lines on the image traced the shot to the auto-rifle in the hands of a member of the DSA fireteam, the second one through the door.

  It had been a clear head-shot. I looked away.

  “Yes, they had orders.” As usual, Veritas’ tone gave away nothing of his thoughts. “Before tonight this fireteam had a long and perfect record. There will be an investigation and certainly disciplinary measures.”

  He wiped his shades, put them back on. “We’ll continue to refine our knowledge of his back-trail, of course, examine every contact. I suspect we’ll be able to uncover all of his criminal contacts eventually, now that we have his end to start from. It will close one door for One Land operations on US soil.”

  “What about Balz and Drop?” I made myself ask.

  “We’re already in the process of interviewing them to see if they can lead us back to the Ascendant. Neither are talking, and we’ve applied for a warrant to use telepaths.”

  I shivered.

  Telepathic interrogation. Invasion of the subject’s mind. I’d experienced an “indirect” TI in Japan and just remembering the helpless fear creeped me out. “They won’t be prosecutable, afterwards. Not for anything the TI turns up.”

  Veritas shrugged. “No. But this is a counter-terrorism operation now, not a law enforcement one. Johnny Cho practiced decent spy-craft—if we can’t get to the Ascendant quickly, I don’t like our odds of stopping this. Even if we do acquire Dr. Pellegrini, he may not be able to give us more than a face. Possibly not even that.”

  “And the Sentinels?” Lei Zi asked.

  “With Drop, Warp, Villain-X, and Tin-Man in the bag, the opposition has lost a lot of its force-projection ability. We didn’t get all of Flash Mob, so he’s still out there, but Shell and Vulcan’s electronic countermeasures seem to have checked Phreak as well. In a straight-up fight, I’d say the balance of force has shifted decidedly to the Sentinels.”

  I rubbed my temples, made sure my voice stayed even. “But we don’t know where to apply it. Unless something breaks our way, we’ll only be able to respond to whatever Cho’s plan is when it happens.”

  “Yes. And we’re using every resource to find that break. I’ve already reported the outcome of tonight’s operation to Director Kayle. We may know more tomorrow morning.”

  I was pretty sure that meant Director Kayle was going to be consulting the Ouroboros Group about their future-files and analysis. I stood. “If there’s nothing else to be seen tonight, I’m calling it an evening. Lei Zi?”

  Lei Zi pushed her chair back. “I agree, we’re done. Astra, you’ll sit in on the after-action reviews tomorrow?”

  I nodded, said my goodnights, and left. The halls were silent and dimmed for night, everyone else either abed or crashing in the recreation lounge. Getting downstairs and to my rooms without crossing paths with anyone, I dropped my mask and gloves on the nightstand, unclipped my cape and folded it for ready access, pulled off my boots, and collapsed face-down on the bed.

  “Well that was exciting,” Jacky said.

  I turned my head to where she sat at my desk. “I knew you were there.”

  “Where’s Casper?”

  “Shell’s been quiet since we got back. Shell? Jacky just called you Casper, what are you going to do about it?”

  She popped in standing between us and I raised my head. No witty t-shirt, no snarky comeback, she just stood with her arms folded defensively. “Guys, we’ve got a problem.”

  Jacky straightened up, obviously getting Shell on her earbud.

  I sat up. “What is it?”

  “Cho’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  * * *

  “What are we going to do?”

  Shell’s question stopped me as I paced. It was the question, and I had no answer.

  “You’re sure the DSA fireteam was under secret orders? From Veritas?”

  “Yes!”

  “But he can’t be—” I closed my mouth on the rest. Shell had a right to be pissed at me. I wasn’t taking this well.

  She’d walked us through it. Her analysis of Agent Sloane’s fire-pattern showed practically zero chance he’d made the shot that killed Johnny Cho accidentally. After that she’d gone down the surveillance rabbit hole. We’d done a lot of electronic networking with the DSA and she’d used that to crack the security on Agent Sloane’s cellphone, found an encrypted, coded text from Veritas. It had taken her a few minutes to break the encryption and code.

  It was a kill order.

  Veritas had ensured that Johnny Cho wouldn’t survive to be questioned.

  What. The. Hell?

  When the door chimed I froze. Shell rolled her eyes. “It’s Kitsune.”

  “Oh—come in!”

  A second later Rei appeared in the door of my bedroom. “Getting a bit crowded in here. Slumber party?”

  “Should I call Ozma? We can all give each other mani-pedis.”

  “Maybe later. Shell filled me in.”

  “And made sure she got in here without anyone else seeing,” Shell added.

  Jacky laughed. “Calling crazy-girl in too might not be a bad idea. We can’t trust any of the old hands, now.”

  “Wait, What?” Shell turned on her, wide-eyed.

  I sighed. “Think about it, Shell. Veritas’s been a contact and resource for the Sentinels for years. After the whole Dark Anarchist thing, he’s the one who vetted Rush, confirmed he hadn’t known he was working for the bad guys. Veritas is why Rush isn’t in prison.” Had Veritas been working for the Dark Anarchist, then? The Teatime Anarchist had claimed his quantum-twin had his own networks. Bile rose in my throat. Had Blackstone been part of it? Compartmentalized like Rush had been? “No.”

  “No, what?” Rei was watching me carefully.

  I folded my arms. “No, you can’t distrust everybody. Okay, Veritas is dirty. Rush may be dirty. Until we find out how deep this goes we can’t trust Black Powder, Agent-G, Gantry—Veritas vetted Eric. The rest of the senior team? Just, no.”

  “I think you’re safe to think so. For the rest, I doubt they’re part of this but that doesn’t change anything now.”

  She was right. If we had any hope of doing anything about this, we had to act as if everyone we couldn’t eliminate was suspect; even if they weren’t, keeping what we knew safe meant keeping it to ourselves.

  “Can you trust me?” Jacky asked, stopping me in my tracks again. “Blackstone trained me.”

  “But you used to work for the Anarchist.”

  “Are you sure? Who told you that? Me.” Her eyes were cold. Even without her black Artemis cost
ume with face-shadowing hood, she looked remote, dangerous.

  “Shut up. I’m not kidding, I’m not going down that road with you. I know you. I know all of you. We’ve been through too much together for me to— Just, no.”

  “You’d make a lousy spy.”

  “She would,” Rei agreed happily. “That’s my girl.” She laid a hand on my arm, smoothly capturing one of my hands before I noticed. “Since I’m the super-spy in the room, would you all mind if I jumped in?”

  “Okaaaay . . .” Jacky looked at our hands, her cold expression melting into the shadow of a smile as I clamped down on the urge to start babbling. “This should be interesting.”

  “The only thing we know is that Veritas didn’t want Johnny Cho taken alive. We don’t know if he and Agent Sloane were acting alone, or whether he’s following orders from higher up. Agreed?”

  “Hold on,” Jacky said. “Why would the government want Cho dead?”

  “Remember the Teatime Anarchist’s original manifesto—the claim that the federal government was secretly attempting to gain control of superhumans as a step toward transforming into a truly authoritarian regime. What if elements in the current administration want that to happen? What if they consider it the safest option?”

  I jerked. “That’s why you infiltrated Littleton! You wanted to see if the—” I clapped my hand over my mouth.

  Rei laughed at my dismay. “A lousy spy. Yes, my government wanted to make sure your government was using a specific and not to be referred to resource correctly. Used for evil it could accomplish exactly what the Teatime Anarchist warned about and, after all, a dictatorial USA isn’t in Japan’s interests.”

  “Were they—will they be?”

  “I don’t know. Above my pay grade. The point is, we can’t just try and cap the problem—it may go higher than we know and we don’t have time to figure that out the careful way. Here and now, we can’t rely on anyone we don’t bring into this ourselves if we’re going to keep Chicago safe.”

  “It’s—there’s more to it than that.” I dropped her hand, hugging myself again. And I told them about my hit-induced vision of black rain.

  * * *

  “Well that can’t be good.”

  Jacky gave a short laugh at Shell’s response. Rei was back to watching me carefully. “What do you think it means?”

  “It’s why we’re here, isn’t it? You said you were here for Johnny Cho, and he’s connected to what I saw. Right?”

  “Do you think it was a memory?”

  “No, I think it was Quan Yin.” It had felt like one of her induced visions, too crystal clear and lasting to be a dream. “She’s the only one I know who’s taken advantage of my more concussive moments to show me something.”

  She nodded. “That’s how this all started. You saw . . . that.”

  “It’s not in any future-files,” Shell piped up. “You’re talking about a super-eruption—there’s no volcanoes, active or extinct, anywhere close to Chicago. But a super-eruption of the Yellowstone caldera might drop that kind of ash in town if the wind was right.”

  “What would the fallout of a—super-eruption?—be?”

  “You know that electromagnetic-pulse attack we stopped in your future?”

  “Yeah?”

  “About that bad, maybe worse. Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Montana, and Utah would be buried under four feet of volcanic ash—most of North America would get something though we’d probably just get a few inches out here. Volcanic ash is heavy and persistent. It would crush buildings where it was thick enough, destroy farmland with only a few inches. It would also block sewers and short out power grids. Enough would get ejected into the upper atmosphere to spread out and cause global cooling and famine, years without summer. Millions would die.”

  I laughed unhappily, pushing my hair back from my face. “Well, it’s good to know we’re here screwing things up for a good cause.”

  “It’s not like that—” Rei started.

  “Then what’s it like? We come back here to mess around and Blackstone dies? And Willis and David and Bob? This is so much worse than the first time around, so why are we here? You said we were here for Johnny Cho, but now he’s dead.”

  She let out a long breath. “We know that Johnny Cho had a hand in setting up whatever led to your vision. We don’t know how, and let’s just say he’s inaccessible back home. So we came here.”

  “Where he’s dead. So we should, what, go home?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes! I want to be where I’m not three years out of my proper time and screwing everything up! And no, we’re not going anywhere! We broke it, we bought it, we’re going to fix this. And why are you smiling?”

  Rei grabbed my head and planted a big kiss right on my lips. “Because we’re going to win,” she laughed as I sucked in air. “What do you want us to do?”

  * * *

  “You’ve learned something about Cho?” Veritas had come at my call promptly enough. He’d also brought Black Powder and Agent G with him to the Assembly Room, so things were going to get tricky. We’d planned for tricky. I turned to Kitsune—now tall dark and handsome Yoshi. “Could you step outside for a minute?”

  He flashed me his dimpled smile. “No, I’m good.”

  Oookay. He knew the plan, so if he thought he could stay through what happened next I wasn’t going to change it. “Yes, we’ve learned something about Cho.” That you wanted him dead. “Or Shell has, anyway. Kitsune’s here for what we do next, and we appreciate you taking the time.”

  “It’s not a problem.”

  “Good. Would you like anything to drink?” I waved at the open door to the lit pantry. “We’ve started some coffee.”

  “I don’t think so, unless this will take a while?”

  “It might.” I sat, Yoshi taking a seat beside me. Veritas and his two minions took seats on the other side of the table. I nodded once we’d settled. “Shell, lights?”

  The room plunged into darkness and I shoved hard, pushing the huge table a good five feet to throw all three back in a tangle of limbs and chairs. “Move move move!”

  Bang! Unbelievably, Black Powder managed to get one shot off before Jacky dropped from the vent and out of mist to wrap her superhumanly strong arms wrap around him, teeth at his neck. Agent G deformed around the table, but Sifu dropped him in a blur as I launched myself over the table to pin Veritas before he could try who-knew-what. “Lights!”

  The lights came back up to reveal Black Powder, pushed face-down over the table and turning purple in Jacky’s constricting embrace, and Agent G mummified in layers of glue-tape. Sifu stood over him with spent tape rolls in his hands. Even the protean agent wasn’t fluid enough to squeeze his way out of that—he didn’t need to breathe and there were barely openings for him to see and hear.

  “Thank you, Sifu. If you could help Jacky, then me?”

  “Gotcha.” In two more blurs, he’d frisked Black Powder and Veritas and secured them to their chairs. I looked around. “Kitsune?”

  A red and white hummingbird landed on my shoulder, flicked its wings a couple of times, then drifted sideways to transform back into Rei. “That was exciting.”

  “Not really, and that’s the point.” I eyed Agent G. Unable to deform himself between any of the strips of glue-tape, he was trying to expand and burst targeted bits. Sifu stayed by him ready. “Veritas, what Shell learned about Johnny Cho was your kill-order on him. I’m pretty sure that acting to further a terrorist plot on US soil is, in fact, treason. In fact, I am sure because Shell looked up all the precedents. Black Powder, Agent G, I apologize for restraining you. I needed to interview Veritas before deciding what course of action to take. Veritas? Anything you want to say first, get it out of the way? Something like ‘You can’t do this,’ or ‘You’re making a mistake?’”

  To give him credit, his usual bland mask didn’t fail. “No to the first, the second will become obvious. You’ve assaulted federal agents.”

 
I smiled. “Yes, and not just any agent—we’ve committed assault and battery and unlawfully arrested the right-hand spook to the spook-master, as Shell would say. Here’s the thing. Shell’s got all the proof she needs to demonstrate that you ordered the shot that killed Johnny Cho. Mr. Cho was our best chance to shut down whatever’s coming before more people die, and that means that stopping a terrorist attack in Chicago is not in your plans.”

  I sat back. “I suck at intimidation, you know, looking like a high-school cheerleader. So I’m just going to tell you how this is going to go. You’re going to tell us why not. You’re going to tell us what you want to accomplish. You’re going to tell us everything, down to the color of your boxers if we ask. Jacky?”

  When Jacky rested a cool hand on his neck, he flinched. A tiny, tiny part of my mind screamed ‘You can’t do this!’ I ignored it and didn’t look away when Jacky turned his head to make eye contact with him. She gave him almost a minute, only bending down when his breathing went shallow and he’d relaxed. He shivered when she bit him.

  From here it looked like she gently laid her lips on his neck, almost a resting kiss. His pupils dilated and he almost stopped breathing. When she straightened and looked at me I nodded.

  “So,” she said softly. “First question. Why did you have Johnny Cho killed?”

  He didn’t hesitate “Because the attack needs to succeed.”

  “You want the National Public Safety Act to go through?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re part of the Dark Anarchist’s old network, aren’t you?”

  I held my breath, waiting for his answer. I’d gone to him when I’d needed to interview the Teatime Anarchist, as much as telling Veritas I was in contact with the ‘terrorist.’

  “Yes.”

  And there it was; I’d gotten the Teatime Anarchist captured by his twin. I was responsible for closing the trap that led to both their deaths.

  Jacky gave me an unreadable look. “Why?”

  “Because he was right. There are only two paths! If we want to escape the end of the world, America has got to be strong.”