Recursion

by Marion G. Harmon

  “Good to know.” Jacky’s voice didn’t change at all. “So, names. All of the names. Everyone you know or suspect was part of DA’s network, everyone you know we’d want to know about. Don’t go slow—Shell’s recording.”

  And the names came out, falling off his tongue so fast I had a hard time separating some of them. He named Agent Sloane. He didn’t name Rush. Or President Touches Clouds or Director Kayle, and the knot of fear that had been inside me since Shell’d told us about Veritas’ kill-order loosened and relaxed.

  Jacky smiled when he lapsed into silence. “Good boy. And now a last question. Do you know where and when the attack is happening?”

  We should have asked that question first.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  “In any fight, always try to give yourself the most options and limit your opponent’s options. When you choose an option, commit completely.”

  Astra, girl-hero.

  * * *

  “Oh, we are so winning.”

  “Hey, funny.” I rolled my eyes behind my shades. In the packed hall, dimly lit except for the stage, without my super-senses the dark lenses would have blinded me. As it was, back in my jeans, jacket, and sunglasses I probably looked like a too-young girl trying desperately to look adult and hip. And that was fine—I didn’t look like Astra.

  Shelly didn’t “see” the eye-roll, but she heard my tone. And probably knew what it was; cover for desperation. “Veritas, what’s your ETA?”

  “Ten minutes,” Kitsune-Veritas answered in my earbud. “All local DSA teams are on alert and moving into support positions.”

  “Understood. Keep them clear unless the situation changes.”

  “Roger, that. Good luck.”

  Good luck. We both needed it. None of the DSA analysts had come back with high-confidence targets, but Veritas had named the Stoddard Hall rally for the National Public Safety Act as his bet. He’d even named a possible attacker, one I should have thought of myself.

  I’d been blinded by memory. I vaguely remembered the event; it had happened the first time around, but though we’d been on alert in case something bad went down, nothing had. It had been a quiet night.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that it had been quiet because Cho had canceled his op.

  And the rally had already “started,” full to capacity. Around me, the standing crowd shouted encouragement to warm-up announcements and applauded video montages while waiting for the main speaker—my old nemesis Mal Shankman.

  If we’d known just one hour sooner, we could have shut it down before it started and safely searched the hall. Now we were stuck, maneuvering to keep the DSA teams out of it since we didn’t have time to clear them. I couldn’t ask Kitsune how he was really doing, not over the Dispatch line—even with Shell’s cyber-wizardry to help me. But there’d been no time. Kitsune had copied Veritas to direct the local DSA response—and keep them all out of our way. Veritas’ list of traitors might be complete, but we weren’t taking any chances.

  Kidnapping federal agents. Impersonating a federal agent. Probably misappropriating federal resources? Plus involving minors—that was going to haunt me. Shell couldn’t have imagined this mess. Kitsune had been laughing. Greatest. Prank. Ever.

  Save me from trickster husbands.

  “Jacky, you ready?” I whispered.

  “Waiting with Ozma and Ambrosius. He says thanks for the opportunity.”

  “Tell him he’s welcome. On-site readiness check, everyone.”

  “The Harlequin, left of stage.”

  “Iron Jack, right of stage.”

  “Eric—Gantry, left back of hall.”

  “Grendel, left middle.”

  “If-Man, right middle.”

  “Seven, right behind you.”

  I didn’t look around; we’d all dressed civilian to blend in. If-Man was carefully not stretching to “rubberneck,” and both Dad and Grendel wore pairs of Ozma’s anonymity specs so nobody noticed an iron statue or a troll brushing next to them. “Lei-Zi?”

  “Rush, Riptide, myself ready at point-of-entry.”

  I’d given Rush the fast-response point for this op and brought only the “durable” Sentinels and allies into the hall with me. And Seven—he’d survive anything. If it went as bad as it could go, we’d at least not add our own bodies to the body-count. Probably.

  “Chakra? How’s Alice doing?” Just using the Hillwood student’s new-chosen codename made me smile. It helped with the not panicking.

  “Alice says Myst is excited but he’s going where she tells him to. I’m about to settle in and see if I can feel anything in the crowd.”

  “Besides fear and hate?”

  “Astra. More fear than hate.”

  I flushed at her gentle rebuke. “I know. I just— Keep her safe.” The Headmaster was going to be so pissed that I’d “borrowed” Alecia again, but we’d needed every hand for this desperate race against disaster. Ozma had magic-mirrored her and If-Man back when she’d agreed, and now an invisible and untouchable fairy dragon flitted overhead and through the halls.

  “We’re not in there with you, be careful yourself. I don’t want to lose any more family.”

  “Roger, that,” I mimicked “Veritas’s” cool tones, scanning the hall again. It had been built after the Event, part of neighborhood recovery, which made it a great symbol for our interesting times. It could seat a couple thousand comfortably, with bleachers. With just a central stage and pushing the fire codes, it could cram in hundreds more uncomfortably.

  Tonight it was definitely pushing the fire codes.

  It might not happen. Chicago’s a big city. But Veritas was a veteran agent, with deep experience in risk evaluation. He’d thought it would happen here, and if the target was already here—

  If we try and evacuate and he sees, he’ll strike. If he catches us searching for him, he’ll strike. Best-case scenario Veritas is wrong, worst-case—

  “Ozma? Are you ready?”

  “I am in the Pit with Vulcan and Ambrosius. Good luck.”

  I choked on a laugh. “Seven’s here, so our luck is too.” Now if only we could trust his supernatural luck to protect everyone and not just himself. It might but there was no way I could count on it—he could find himself the sole survivor in a mass of dead and dying.

  Shell broke into my morbid thoughts. “I’m getting pretty good visual off the collar-cam Vulcan whipped up for Myst.”

  “Good. Shell, are you okay? You’ve been pretty quiet, since—this started.” I looked left, right, couldn’t see anything but enthusiastic crowd. Big screens showing political-ad clips and well-received snippets of previous Humanity First speeches ramped up the energy in the room.

  “You’ll be leaving, won’t you?”

  “Succeed or fail, if this was the mission then yeah, it’ll be over. Do me a favor?”

  “Sure—anything.”

  I smiled at that. “If it goes the way I think, you’ll have your depressed, moping, oblivious three-years-younger Hope back and she won’t be having a good time. Tell her from me that it all works out?”

  Not what Shell had expected. “Yeah—I mean, sure. But, I’ll miss you.”

  “No, you won’t. I’ll be here and we’ll do this together. We’re power Chick and Awesome Girl, we always do.” I frowned. “We’re missing something.”

  I could feel it and fought rising panic, an urgent pressure that Something Wasn’t Right, that we were looking in the wrong place. A hand brushed my elbow and I automatically turned, arm back to protect the blueprint tube I’d borrowed from Dad and had slung over my shoulder; our worst-case option. Seven stepped close.

  “You’re freaking out,” he said softly.

  “In Shell’s words, duh. Every second we don’t find him is a second we don’t have.”

  “Unless he’s not here at all.” But he was playing devil’s advocate, I could tell.

  “We’ve got their teleporter so he can’t just drop into the hall, and now we have the entrances c
overed. But then if he’s here, where is he?” Something tickled the back of my brain. The way his power worked, even forgetting about the Ascendant’s boost, how could he do the most damage? He’d want a . . . “Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” I started moving. “Shell, check the building’s blueprint and tell me what’s right below the hall! Boiler room, electrical or maintenance, whatever!”

  “There’s event storage, a vehicle-accessible space, but we’ve got that entrance covered too!”

  “He won’t be going through it, he’ll be using it!” Douglas Barnett, our fugitive thermokinetic, concentrated thermal energy from the surrounding environment into one focused mass. Even boosted, his power-signature wouldn’t change; he could only focus on one target at a time. The event stage was hollow. Speakers, people, anything he directly targeted he could turn to slag and ash, but it would still take time to really spread the inferno. He might think he had that time, but he might not. If he didn’t . . . we’d already seen him turn something into a bomb.

  “Everyone else, stay in the hall!” Lei Zi called. “Shell, stairs! Alice, get Myst on Astra!”

  I pushed through the crowd, Seven keeping a grip on the back of my jacket to stay with me in the crush. A brush of invisible wings and scales on my cheek drew my eye and I spotted the warm glow of Myst flitting ahead of me, invisible to normal sight.

  “Stairs are to your right!” Shell put up a virtual red icon through our quantum-neural link. “I’ve radioed the security-guard there—he knows you’re coming!”

  “Are there cameras down there?”

  “Yes, but you know how they can be spoofed. What are we looking for?”

  “Large containers of volatile liquids or gas? Big propane tanks? Fifty crates of bootleg scotch with an invoice attached? A security sweep wouldn’t have spotted it, they’d be looking for a bomb, explosives with wires and stuff!”

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  I prayed I was wrong, prayed hard in my head as the big security guy by the door checked me over and nodded. “Okay, you’re Astra.” He opened the door for me. “Should we evacuate?”

  “Only if you get word. If there’s somebody—”

  “Don’t want to spook them, right. Good luck.”

  “Keep saying that.” I darted through the door he kept open behind me and down the stairs, completely ignoring Seven behind me. At the bottom Shell flashed a virtual icon right and I followed to a door, stopped. Myst didn’t—he went right on through, less substantial than air, less seen than a heat-ripple. I listened with all my might, didn’t hear anything through the thick steel fire-door. “Shell?”

  “Hold on, he’s moving past stuff . . . there! He’s here, we’ve got Barnett!”

  I wanted to faint. “Show me.” The door disappeared as Shell cast a three-dimensional ghost of the room beyond onto my sight and I saw everything Myst’s collar-cam saw. Pallets and the huge central AC unit stood between the door and Barnett, but Shell rendered them transparent in her overlay. He stood by a large stack of crates, with cardboard boxes stacked on top of and around them. Labels clarified as Myst circled. I’d been right about the scotch, but boxes of ball-bearings? Nails? The boxes on the sides were unmixed cement. “Crap,” I groaned. “He’s turned a giant incendiary bomb into a shaped-charge fragmentation bomb.” But if he was standing beside it—that was the good news.

  “Shell? Calculate the yield? What’s it going to do?”

  “Barnett might be immune to heat, but he’s going to have to get behind something thick. Even shaped, the concussion from that much fuel is going to blow out the room. The ball bearings and nails are enough shrapnel to blow right through the ceiling.”

  “It’ll collapse the hall. And set it on fire.”

  “Looks like.”

  “Lei Zi?”

  “I heard. We go with the Oz option.”

  “Got it. Rush?”

  “You had me at Oz.” He stood behind us. “Give me a second.” A blur and the lock clicked as he put away his tools, holding out a hand for the tube.

  I handed it off. “Lei Zi?”

  “Alice had Myst drop his collar-cam and he’s withdrawing as fast as he can go, we are ready to move. Go.”

  I checked my Shell Vision again and started to open the door. The shriek of the alarm froze my blood—a match for the sudden drop in ambient temperature that followed a heartbeat later as Rush blurred to rip the door from my hands and disappear through it as I moved. I barely registered the obstacles to fly around them—Barnett and the red icon behind him my whole world as I flew. The air was ice before I punched into him and threw us both across the room—straight through the plastic-foil mirror Rush had unrolled and stuck to the wall in the seconds I’d been in motion. Darkness, burning heat, then sight again and a familiar warm liquid gold field pushing Barnett away from me. I sagged as the field thickened between me and the man struggling, caught like a fly in its hardening amber. Ambrosius bagged the quarry he’d been sent north for.

  My vision dimmed and Jacky caught me before I sank to the floor. Heat-stroke’s a bitch. I heard myself laughing, the heady adrenalin of stark fear and pure relief spiking my blood. Jacky could get high on it. “We got him!” Shell screamed in my head. “We’ve got—”

  And my blurry vision of Vulcan’s safe-room in the Pit went away with Shell’s ecstatic cry, replaced by water, floating Sentinels stirring and waking, and schools of ecstatically darting golden god-fish.

  Success! / Success! / You won! / You / won!

  “You have got to be kidding me!”

  Chapter Thirty

  “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”

  The US Constitution, Article III, Section 3.

  * * *

  I was seeing double. Worse, I was remembering double, triple days repeating over and over and over, too much all at once. How many times had we done this? The little school of golden koi by my head danced and spun as Yoshi, whose hand I’d been holding, opened his eyes with a smile. I returned it automatically before gasping “Blackstone!” and spinning quickly in the “water” that supported us. My heart almost burst from my chest when I caught sight of him, alive and unharmed, floating beside Chakra as he watched her wake up.

  He tipped his top hat to me. “Well done, Hope. Well done.”

  “You saw?” And then I was hugging him and crying. He stiffened with surprise, relaxed.

  “Every moment from my death.” Shuddering lightly, he chuckled. “Kabukicho wanted an appreciative audience.”

  “We—I—” Now that he said that, I could remember my own audience moments. I’d died twice. He patted my back as I released him to Chakra.

  “Three tries,” Kitsune said beside us. My kami-husband didn’t look disoriented at all. “Fish, honor our bet.”

  But / she remembered! / She remembered! Excitement turned to agitated darting.

  His smile turned sly. “We both remembered, and I followed your rules.”

  I laughed. We’d committed ourselves to victory or sleep in the god-fish’s realm, and Kitsune’s elopement gambit really had made the difference. In more ways than one; I’d been half-awake from the beginning, and my first full memory had returned the night my fox had crawled back into bed with me. “Where’s Johnny?” I held my breath as my personal fish stopped spinning to fix their dark-eyed gazes on me before bursting into motion again.

  Yes! / Fair! / He’s / here! / He’s here! Shoals of god-fish divided to show him to us, still floating in sleep and the only sleeper close to us, now. The rest of the team were all varying degrees of awake and vertical, Jacky bright-eyed and alert, Riptide and Quin still dazed, everyone watching their attendant fish and us.

  “And we’ve won.” Lei Zi affirmed the god-fish’s own declaration. “He’s ours and we can go. All
of us.”

  Yes! / Yes! / You have won! / You can go! And we went, dropping out of the crazy god-fish’s realm. As always it was disorienting, feeling like rising and falling at the same time, water and sleepers vanishing to leave a bright-lit stage. We stood on the stage of the kabuki theater in Okinawa, empty except for a tall Japanese woman in a jacket and sharp-pleated skirt. She straightened from her at-ease posture, bladed spear ready, and relaxed again.

  I laughed. “Kaminari!”

  “Astra. Kochi told me you’d all be out soon and your cat-friend just called. A plane is waiting.”

  “Thank you.” We were going home.

  * * *

  “So Jim is a traitor.” Director Kayle, formerly president of the United States and now probably the second-most powerful person in the world, ran fingers through his thinning hair. “Veritas, I mean. Dear God.” He hadn’t shown this much emotion when Shell’d called him direct, bypassing who knew how many layers of electronic security, to tell him I was coming.

  “Yes, sir.” I kept my eyes on the three armored and helmeted US Marshals in his protective detail—a tiny voice in my brain wondered if any of them were part of Veritas’ network. Different agencies. Not in Veritas’ chain of command.

  “You’re certain that Kabukicho couldn’t have embellished, to add more challenge to the game?”

  I shook my head. It had been my hope, too. “Kitsune assures me the god-fish played it straight. No help, no hindrance. It was a true reflection of Veritas as he was then.” That was true for everyone else I’d met there, and I hoped I’d bump into a few of them again. I’d need to make another trip to Hillwood; Brian and Alicia would be seniors now.

  “Can you tell me how it happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I sighed miserably. I still had a hard time believing it; I’d liked Veritas. “Chakra thinks he might have been turned by a direct conversation with the Dark Anarchist, maybe years ago. DA wasn’t crazy, and he was sincere. With Veritas knowing the subjective truth of any statement he hears . . .”