Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle

by Mercedes Lackey

  But at the same time, like poking the wound to see how bad it is, she had to listen, had to know what was going to happen. Had to know the worst. She was a pessimist after all; she always wanted to know the worst. Even though, along with everything else, there was a heaping helping of guilt sitting right alongside the anguish.

  Then there was a moment of terrible silence. Then Bella blurted something unintelligible, there was the sound of running feet, and Bella wrenched open the side door, careened through the room without noticing Vickie, and fled out the hall-side door, leaving it wide open.

  Red followed her as Vickie sat bolt-upright, movement and emotions making her nauseous all over again. Unlike Bella, he noticed her and stopped short, surprised.

  “Oh, hey . . .” he began, lamely. He stared at Vickie for a second, then at the door Bella had gone through, then back at Vickie. He seemed caught in an infinite loop of indecision.

  Her cup of bitterness overflowed. She clasped the ice bag Einhorn had brought her to the side of her head, lurched to her feet, and stumbled out into the hall. Doing a slow-motion imitation of a ball in a pinball machine, she careened down the hall, heading for the brightly lit door at the end, fell against the bar, and stumbled out into the bug-filled night.

  Before she could even manage to marshal her thoughts enough to wonder how she was going to get home, the sound of a motor approaching made her turn and squint into headlights bright enough to send twin daggers into her skull.

  What might have been the strangest contraption she had ever seen pulled up at the Med building door. A canopy slid back revealing half a man, a man with a neat, short afro and skin the color of dark coffee. The rest of the man was buried in machinery. She blinked. Between one blink and the next, he looked up at her.

  “Mutual friend said you were gonna need a ride home,” drawled the . . . driver? “Echo OpTwo, ‘Speed Freak’ at your service Ms. Victrix. Oh, and same friend said to ask you to get me wired in.” He winked. “If y’all know what I mean.”

  The hell? It had to be Ramona. Though how Ramona had known . . . never mind. She was just feeling too battered and too anguished to think about it, and fell into the passenger’s side seat, which embraced her like a comforting hand. The canopy slid closed, leaving her in darkness, with machinery between her and . . . Speed Freak.

  She felt something hard and lumpy stuck in her bra. She fished it out. It was the Djinni’s broken claw.

  She stuck it back in, as the last of her control shattered. The motor howled, and the vehicle accelerated off, allowing her to lean back and cry for loss and loneliness without anyone knowing.

  But how can you lose something you never had?

  * * *

  Red stood in awkward confusion, staring at the door through which the two most important women in his life had just fled. From him.

  Ah, Red ol’ boy, you still got that magic touch.

  Bella . . . Vix . . . what was it about him that made them both turn into neurotics—or in Vix’s case more neurotic—around him? Women. So. Messed. Up. And what was it about women that the better they were, the more messed up they got around him?

  Who to go after? Bella or Vix? One way or another he knew, absolutely knew, that he was going to have to put some sort of conclusion to this running away shit. And he knew there was one woman he had to deal with now, right this minute.

  He started for the door, to follow—determined to have this dealt with one way or another, when the door shut in his face.

  The hell?

  Suddenly, and with no warning whatsoever, the room got very warm. There was a scent of sandalwood, cinnamon and vanilla. And simultaneously as he sensed a presence behind him, the room seemed to get claustrophobically smaller, as if something far too big for it had crowded inside.

  “I greet you, Timothy Torres,” said a voice that was inside his ears and his head at the same time, a voice that had so many over- and undertones it sounded like a chorus.

  He yelped and stumbled back. Great, let’s add another woman to the equation. Bring on the crazy!

  “I am neither mortal woman, nor crazy, Timothy Torres,” the voice said, sounding faintly amused.

  He turned. And there she was. It was her, the one talked about in hushed whispers and furtive glances, as if they were all afraid she could overhear them. He understood. She seemed like the real deal, had that whole aura thing going and everything, and pupilless golden eyes that seemed to peer into his very soul.

  Ugh, that can’t be a pretty sight.

  It was hard to tell what she was looking at, exactly. Without pupils to follow he had no reference, no way to read her. He checked for body language instinctively, and got another disconcerting jolt, because she didn’t have any. She was still in a way no one he had ever met—at least no one who wasn’t in a coma, dead, or “almost dead” like Tomb Stone—could be. In fact, everything about her threw off everything he knew about reading people, and he might as well have been blind and deaf. He closed his eyes, ignored the scents that assaulted his skin, and there it was. What he couldn’t see, or hear, or smell, he felt. It was judgment, her judgment, and it was harsh.

  “She is not for you, Timothy Torres.” Now it wasn’t amusement in her voice, but admonishment. “It may be that she is not for anyone. But she is not for you. The path you take pursuing her is not a good one. Not for her, and not for the futures.” Then she sighed. “I determine, I do not judge. I . . . may sometimes inform. You may ignore me. You would not be the first. But this path is not a good one—”

  “Yeeeeahhhh . . .” Red interrupted, his hand held high and timid like a schoolchild, his eyes still shut, his expression pained. “Why don’t we start with something simple. Hi, I’m Red. Not Timothy Torres, and I’d really appreciate it if you never said that name again.”

  “There are but three that know that Torres and Djinni are the same, two are dead, and one is myself. I shall not speak the name again.” A pause. “Does that please you?”

  “It’s a start,” he answered, and stopped. Red opened his eyes, and started counting on his fingers. He waggled two fingers speculatively, but looked confused at the third.

  “It is not permitted for you to know,” she told him. “Not yet.”

  “The hell with that, lady!” He would have continued but she interrupted him.

  “Enough. You have a choice before you,” she said. “There are those who matter to the futures, and there are those who do not. I do not See you in the present, Red Djinni. And I do not See you on the path you intend to pursue. But there are other paths, and they branch from this moment. I do not order, I do not advise, I only give information. And in this, I am permitted to only tell you so much. Unless you choose to be UnSeen, and matter not, not even so much as a cipher on the pages of the futures, she is not for you.”

  Red found it hard to look right at her. He had never believed in God. Of course, there was a time he hadn’t believed in magic either. He had since accepted that much of this world, this reality, was a mystery for a reason. The blatant transparency of having a bona fide angel telling him what to do, or rather what not to do, sort of flew in the face of that. And in typical Red fashion, he stiffened in anger when he should have fallen to his face in abject terror of being held in judgment by a higher power.

  “Lady, despite what you’ve heard, I’m really not all that egotistical. Not enough to care about being seen. If you haven’t noticed, I’m more about not being seen.”

  “You are deliberately misunderstanding. Or feigning that you are.” There might have been a tiny shading of irritation there. “I know you, Red Djinni. I can read you. When I say that you are not Seen it means that you are not important to the lives, not only of those you have connected with, but those so far outside that web that you have only taken brief thoughts for them. And that they still will not know your name, nor who you are, when this chapter ends, but you will have mattered to them. You will be part of the reason they still live. That the world still lives. Even if no
one ever knows it was you. That is what it means to be Seen. And that is your choice. Do you matter? Or do you not?” Again, she lost even the slightest shading of expression, and went utterly and completely still. Even when his eyes were closed, he read nothing but waiting.

  “Man, and I thought Vix was long-winded,” he said finally. “You’re telling me it’s about choice, that through a simple matter of choice, I have to become someone important, someone who can change or even save the world.”

  “Yes,” she said, simply.

  “Who do you think I am, Jesus?”

  “No,” she replied. “For one thing, Jesus had more hair.” Her eyes blinked slowly, as if startled by her own joke. Red watched her intently. She was so alien, so unreadable, and yet there it was, finally, something to catalog for future reference. A touch of . . . humanity? She wasn’t completely indecipherable after all.

  “It is always about choice,” she continued. “Free Will and Choice are the ruling Laws of the universe.” A very long pause. “To save the world, Red Djinni, you first must save yourself.”

  “Lady, I don’t want to save the world! You think I asked for any of this? I’m just trying to get by here!” The words sounded anything but convincing, especially to him. It was clear he wasn’t fooling her either, as if he could.

  “Like so many, you seek redemption. You fear you will not find it, that you may not even deserve it. I am here to tell you, Red Djinni, that redemption is within the grasp of all who seek it, of all who would sacrifice what is needed to earn it. Forgiveness is always possible.” Those strange eyes felt like lasers, burning away every bit of bullshit he had buried himself in. “Always. The question is if you yourself are ready to pay for forgiveness. Forgiveness itself is there, waiting for you to accept it.”

  Those that had witnessed her arrival during the Invasion would have said her power lay in her fire, in her sword, and the merciless way she cut down her enemies. They were wrong. Her power lay in her words, in revealing simple truths that stripped away all manner of concealment. Red had shielded himself behind not only his signature scarf and any number of disguises, but with lies and half-truths that he had persistently piled upon himself over the years. He had been relentless, unable to deal with even simple insecurities with anything even remotely resembling reality, that in time he had accepted his own illusions as fact. The Seraphym, with her burning clarity, had neatly cut a swath through them all, and he felt his innermost demons laid bare for her to discover. At his core, he was an opportunist. That might have been bad enough, but there was always that voice in his head, Amethist’s voice, as a constant reminder that he could be more. Every once in a while her voice won, and he would try to make amends, usually with disastrous consequences. It didn’t matter what he did, he would always hurt people, especially those he loved. He was nothing, no, worse than nothing. He was a curse to all around him—

  “Stop.”

  Visions flooded in on him. The most recent, just charging in to help that kid, Pike. Hours spent coaxing Vix out of her apartment, over the obstacles, real and in her mind. The gut wrenching moment when he just convinced himself to accept her and her magic as inseparable, even though he loathed the thought of it. And further back . . . moments when he had done exactly the right thing, even when it cost him. The visions engulfed him like a tidal wave, but thank god they stopped just short of his life with Amethist.

  “Enough. Use the past to change the future.” Another set of rapid blinks. “You must cease beating that dead horse.”

  He could barely look at her, she was so radiant. He felt the tears in his eyes and wondered how she had broken him so quickly, so completely.

  “So tell me what to do,” he said, surrendering.

  One single, perfect tear formed at the corner of her left eye and traced a path down her cheek. “I cannot. It is not permitted. I can only tell you there is a choice, and not dictate what that choice may be.”

  “Please,” he begged. “I’m so lost.”

  “It is before you. I cannot tell you what to do. It is not—” Abruptly her head came up, like a hound scenting danger. “I must go.”

  “What?”

  “There is a need. It is imperative. I must go.” She started to fade.

  And with that, Red felt all sense of awe and vulnerability fall away, leaving only his anger.

  “Hey! You can’t just leave me with this crap! We’re not done here; I’m coming too!”

  She solidified again, looking at him with astonishment. “You cannot follow where I must go.”

  “Like hell I can’t!” In desperation, he leapt for her and grabbed her arm, pulling her back.

  “It is not—” Abruptly, her words cut off, and a look of utter astonishment came over her face, as if he had somehow managed to shock God Himself. Something had changed, profoundly.

  “It is permitted,” the Seraphym said, and the world went blank.

  In the beginning, there was darkness.

  * * *

  The Seraphym had suggested to Bulwark that he should begin by reconstructing his little “waiting space” after having so efficiently destroyed it—rather in the manner of, “You broke your toys. Here are glue and wire and tools. If you want something to play with, you will have to fix them yourself.” Given his will, energy, and creativity, she expected to find something “liveable” when she returned.

  Instead, she found one, shadowed, claustrophobic cube, with Bulwark in it. This . . . was not good. Finding his image sitting cross-legged and hunched over on the “floor” of the cube was even worse.

  “Gairdner Ward,” she said, in mingled alarm and admonition. “Why are you . . . what are you doing?”

  “Waiting,” he replied, dully. “For you.”

  “You are doing rather less than waiting,” she replied. Because with every moment that passed, he was fading a little, as were his surroundings. In human parlance . . . “circling the drain,” she believed it was called. “What is wrong?” She stepped into his space and flung her wings wide, blowing open the walls, and with a thought, reestablishing some of the ambience that had been here before he destroyed it. Light, grass, flowers. Mostly light. He appeared not to notice.

  “Wrong?” he looked confused. “Nothing is wrong. I’m not sure that anything is approaching right, either. Is it time to go back now?”

  She could fix this. She could fill him with hope. She could show him things he would not remember when he awoke but which would awaken his desire to join the world again—

  It is not permitted. He is not ready.

  She shook her head. “You were tasked with restoring this place,” she said. “Why have you not done so?”

  Bulwark stood up, came to attention, and looked around. He gave her a slight shrug. “What would be the point?”

  He was, as ever, a soldier. He stood at ease, though some spark, something vital, was missing. She saw his willingness to return, to carry on, though it stemmed from a sense of obligation and responsibility. There was nothing but a stubborn code of duty that fueled him, and that would not do, not at all. No one ever returned from these crossroads with anything less than a strong will to fight, driven by something that simply could not let them pass onward. While he was prepared to face life again, he was not willing to embrace it. In fact, he would dutifully perform until something killed him, a mere animated shell.

  She could fix this. . . .

  It is not permitted. He is not ready.

  This was not the Gairdner Ward that mattered. A robot would do better. Red Djinni would do better . . . though not by much, nor in the needed direction. Briefly, she considered allowing him to fade anyway—but nothing in the futures gave her the clue of how to make Red Djinni into what was needed.

  “You know,” a familiar voice said, “I can kind of hear snippets of your thoughts here.” She turned and saw the Djinni grimacing. “And thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “If you deserved confidence, I would have it in you,” she said sharply, perh
aps more sharply than was warranted. She felt . . . rattled. Unworthy of being trusted as an Instrument. She should be able to see more solutions; instead, her paths just became more muddled.

  “The point would be to be willing to live, and not just exist, Gairdner Ward,” she said equally sharply, ignoring Red’s snort at hearing Bull’s real name. Bulwark didn’t seem to hear Red, or even realize he was there. “The world does not need another short-timer, going through the motions. The world needs those who are fully engaged in it, who have a stake in seeing it survive.”

  “Call me Bull,” Bulwark said.

  “Appropriate, since that is what you are feeding me.” Again, she heard the Djinni snort. “Be willing to tell me the truth. What is holding you back?”

  “Nothing,” Bull answered. “I am prepared to go back. You have my promise that I will do everything in my power, use everything in my arsenal, to fight whatever is thrown at me.”

  Desperately, she began to sort through futures, narrowing her focus to Bulwark, trying to find a thread, any thread, where she could reengage his will for life. Dimly she became aware of someone peering over her shoulder, as it were. The Djinni. The Infinite was allowing him to See what she could, even as it had allowed her to bring him here. She didn’t know why . . . but she was a seraphim, one of the Siblings, and the seraphim trusted the Infinite at all times, and in all things. The Infinite wished for this, and so it would be.

  Perhaps there was something there that it wished him to know, something it would take too long for her to tell him, or to convince him of. Sometimes Seeing was Believing.

  So she sorted and allowed him to watch.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Red felt as if his mind were expanding. It had to, to accommodate the near infinite stream of realities that seemed to run through it. It was the perspective that made it both manageable and utterly chaotic at the same time. From a single point in time, the possibilities streamed out as countless rays, each leading to countless more, a forever tree with crystalline branch points, beautiful and horrible to behold.