Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle

by Mercedes Lackey

  “No-oo. He thought I should have a reward,” she replied, although she didn’t specify why the farmer had thought that. Just another one of her mysterious, ambiguous statements that implied a story she never got around to telling. She took a peach herself and nibbled it. “Oh!” she said in surprise. “They are just as good as they smell! So many things are not.”

  John took another bite, then chewed and swallowed. “You’re an angel, Sera.” He tilted his head to the side. “I only now realize how ridiculous and redundant that is for me t’say.”

  “Well . . . yes. But I take your meaning.” She smiled at him, peach held in both hands. “Perhaps you might come to actually believe it, if you say it often enough.”

  He pointed a finger at her, peach still in hand. “Don’t get any ideas about convertin’ me just yet.” He sighed, putting his elbows on his knees. “Still too much to do, an’ not enough time or energy for it.”

  As if on cue, his CCCP-issue comm device beeped. John held up a finger for silence apologetically, then keyed the comm device. “Murdock, here. Go.”

  It was Jadwiga on duty, this time. “Comrade Murdock. We are needing you to be reporting for another shift; cannot be helped, as we are short-handed. Report to HQ in all haste. HQ, out.”

  John sighed again. “No rest for the wicked, nor any for the bone-tired.”

  “You are weary,” she said, sympathetically. And there it was, another evidence of how alien she was. A human woman, meeting at last with her—what was he to her? Not a lover . . .

  Not yet, but . . .

  Well, a human woman would have been unhappy at the least, angry or annoyed or petulant at the worst, at having the meeting cut so short, and would have voiced a complaint, or a demand for him to tell HQ to find someone else. But Sera—Sera just looked at him with sympathy and understanding, and spoke of his weariness.

  “That could be said of the whole world, darlin’.” He shrugged, but . . . that attitude, that understanding, was unbelievably liberating. Her regard lifted him, rather than putting him in chains.

  His neighborhood was a standout from many areas; here the people actively tried to help each other. In a lot of other places, especially in countries without an Echo presence or an organization like the CCCP to bolster security forces, everyone was forced to look over their shoulders. Things were downright medieval in some areas. Still, Sera’s attitude and presence did more for him than he could adequately express to her.

  “Oh, you are all weary, but you are particularly weary. I believe I can help. Remember?” She tilted her head charmingly to one side.

  “Tryin’ to fish for another kiss, Sera? First you bribe me with peaches . . .” He flashed her a lopsided grin, nudging her shoulder with his own.

  “I like kisses,” she said thoughtfully. “Very much. But I do not need to kiss you to help you, only touch your hand.”

  “Heh. I almost forgot that you can do that.” In truth, he had not forgotten. But it just wasn’t John’s way to ask for help any more than absolutely needed. He did want Sera to help him . . . and more than just help him. But he’d never ask for it.

  “You are a very stubborn man, John Murdock,” she said severely. “If you do not learn to ask, very often you will not get.”

  “Others with more of a need than mine, Sera. Just the way it is; anyways, I’m tough.” He smiled again, leaning closer to her. “I’ll manage.”

  “You are stubborn and foolish,” she replied.

  “Funny, Ma said the same thing ’bout me all the time.”

  “Your ma was right. Be quiet and be kissed.” She put her peach pit aside, and put her arms around his neck, and suited her actions to her words.

  John leaned in closer, wrapping his arms around her, and reciprocated with equal fervor. Instantly, he felt better: more alert, stronger, and nowhere near as tired as he had been. His emotions lifted as well; the edge of depression that had been on everything faded. After what seemed like a long time, not long enough, and no time at all, he pulled away, the smile still on his face, the scent of peaches mingling with her sandalwood and cinnamon and vanilla, wreathing them both. “Like I said before, if’n you could bottle that, we’d make a fortune.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Bella says the same. And no, I do not kiss her.”

  “Well, shucks, there goes all my adolescent fantasies.” He touched the tip of her nose with his finger. “Don’t worry, Angel; you’ll suit me fine all on yer own.”

  She chuckled. “I hope so. I do not intend to indulge your adolescent fantasies. Bella would be horrified. And then she would hit you. You should ask the Djinni about her right hook.”

  “Don’t need to ask him; she’s hit me before, for entirely different reasons.” He checked his comm device, which was blinking still. “A story for another time, I’m afraid. Duty calls. Again. It’s kinda like a bad ex-girlfriend that way. Always showin’ up at the wrong times.”

  “I will meet you on the roof. I shall bring beer. You must bring some of that lovely floppy pizza stuff. I too have duties, and I should be about them.”

  “Sounds like a deal to me, darlin’.” He stood up, kissing her on her brow. “I’ll see ya in a few hours.” With that, John started jogging towards the CCCP HQ, feeling and looking much better than he had just a few minutes before. Turnin’ out to be a fine evening, if I do say so myself.

  The Seraphym stared after him, with longing, and with a little unease. It had taken more energy to heal and fill him than she had thought it should. She wondered if there was something wrong; he had been getting sick and even injured often these past few months, but the work he did often had him becoming injured and stressed. Even a metahuman physiology could only contend against such a rigorous routine for so long.

  She listened, but the Infinite offered no hints. She shrugged and touched her lips, smiling again, thinking of the kiss. There was much to be said for being material. Mortal memories of such things were no match for experiencing them firsthand. She sat there for a little longer, before the sound of a soft footstep made her look up.

  There was a little girl standing there, looking at her expectantly. It was one of the ones she had told stories to. She smiled, and beckoned the child to her, and put the rest of the bag of peaches in her hands. “Take those to your mama, love,” she said. The child peeked inside, gave a squeal of glee, and ran off.

  Then she picked up the two peach seeds, hers and Johns, and took them to an empty spot in the garden where a rose bush had failed to thrive and been taken up. She put them gently into the earth, and patted the soil over the top.

  “Grow,” she whispered, and felt them respond.

  But then she felt the calling. It was time for her to return to the work, as well. And with a flash of flame, she was gone, another life to save.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Descent

  MERCEDES LACKEY, DENNIS LEE, CODY MARTIN

  “The best-laid plans of mice and men aft gang a-glay. . . .” Robert Burns said that. Truer words were never spoken. For both sides.

  * * *

  The Echo locker room was packed. Bulwark’s full team of trainees was suiting up for duty for a fairly routine and very dull escort mission for the retirees of Echo. There weren’t a lot of them, enough to take up about two cars of the MARTA red line train from the airport. About two or three retirees per escort.

  One of those escorts was . . . very loud. Loud out of all proportion to his size. “I am telling you, Bulwark and the blue chick, the CMO, are totally getting it on. I heard it all over in Echo Med. He’s over there practically every night, and what else would you be doing with a gal that’s that smokin’ hot?”

  Frank—who had taken the callsign of “Frankentrain”—had been a member of Echo two years before the Invasion in, of all places, Providence, Rhode Island. His power was that his skin was nearly granite-tough, and he was, as he put it “pretty hard to kill.” He and the only other OpTwo in Providence had both been steam locomotive hobbyists,
and had been at an antique rail museum working on one of their “babies” when the Invasion began. His friend who, unfortunately, had been stronger but not nearly as hard to kill, had squeezed boiler plate into makeshift armor for both of them before they answered the red alert. Frank had kept the armor, now worn over a nanoweave suit, and kept the nickname he’d picked up that day as his callsign.

  “I don’t know, Frank,” drawled Paperback Rider, from the corner where he was (as always) half-immersed in a book, print scrolling over his paper-white face as he read. “Bulwark just doesn’t seem like the type. Really doesn’t seem like the type. If I were making bets, it would be on . . . chess matches, maybe.”

  Frankentrain guffawed. “You have got to be kidding me. Her? I’d say more like chest matches, if ya know what I mean. I bet her chest size just about matches her IQ. But ya don’t date a chick like that for intellectual talk. More like the other four-letter word, right?”

  Frank had not noticed that the rest of the room had gone oddly quiet.

  “Man, I envy him. What’s he got that’s so special anyway? He’s got about the same amount of expression as a brick. If he’s not all over her, he’d have to have the same IQ as a block of linoleum, and hell, we all know he’s not that dumb. No, he is totally doing her. Absolutely. I am so sure I would bet on it. I . . .” Frank felt a chill as an enormous shadow fell over him. “. . . he’s right behind me, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, Frankentrain, I am,” Bulwark rumbled. “Don’t you think you should be armored up by now?”

  * * *

  Bella smiled for the cameras. There were hundreds of them, and that didn’t count the cell phones and so on in the hands of the audience. She smiled and stayed one careful step behind Verdigris, but kept the artful, hip-shot, swimsuit-model poses that the cameras wanted. Verdigris had ordered a special uniform for her just for this occasion; in her personal opinion, it looked like something a very high-class, role-playing hooker would wear for a client, but based on a doctor’s smock rather than a nurse’s uniform. It was just that tiny bit too form-fitting, showed just a little too much cleavage, for anyone to take her seriously. Which was the point, probably. It had the Echo logo superimposed on the standard red medical cross just over her right breast.

  I hate this, she thought resentfully. She wasn’t even sure why she was here. She hadn’t been on the Echo campus on the day of the Invasion. It would make more sense to have someone who had been there standing here now.

  On the other hand . . . this might be her one, best shot to get at Verd and give him that stroke . . . she’d been completely unable to get anywhere near him until now. Her requests to make reports in person had been sloughed off, and anywhere he went in public, Khanjar was right at his elbow. Now . . . she wasn’t. She was directly behind him, but standing behind Bella, and her attention was directed more at the audience than at the people on the podium.

  I bet at some point he’s gonna grab me around the waist for some sort of photo op. That would be the time to do it. Ramona and the others were confident that the charter plot was going to work, but she wasn’t so sure. After all, this was Verdigris they were dealing with. He had a history of being one step ahead of his enemies. So what should it be? Should it be something minor, in the cerebral cortex, something that would just hamper him? While that was the option that gave her the fewest ethical heebie-jeebies, and it was the safest for her since it was unlikely Khanjar would even notice she had done anything, it wasn’t one she particularly favored. Because . . . this was Verdigris. For all she knew, his brain could rewire itself in a situation like that. So the only other options were a psionic lobotomy, something massive to turn him into a vegetable, or something fatal.

  Which might very well turn fatal for her if Khanjar decided correctly that Bella was the cause when Verd collapsed. Bella reckoned the odds were about fifty-fifty that Khanjar would do just that. Higher than that if Khanjar remembered how Bella had taken out that gang-banger back when she was just a DCO.

  She glanced over to Verdigris’ other side, where Yankee Pride stood, looking entirely comfortable with the attention, yet appropriately solemn. Would Pride notice in time to intervene, if Khanjar attacked? Could he hold the assassin off if he did? Did she want him to try?

  Well . . . no. Because tough as he was, he wasn’t ready to take on an assassin in hand-to-hand combat.

  Which of us is more important to Echo, him or me? Him, of course.

  Behind them was the monument. It was elevated on a Carrera marble pedestal that had bronze plaques with the names of all the Echo metas that had died in the Invasion. It was a very tall pedestal; they were on a platform in front of it, and the pedestal top ended about six feet from the top of the platform. There would be no climbing up on it to view parades and tag the extremely expensive sculpture itself with graffiti. Bella had no idea what the sculpture looked like. No one did. Right now it was swathed in a huge blanket of canvas, banked by two Jumbotrons so that everyone could see Verdigris as if they were in their own living room. She was pretty sure it cost enough to keep every school in Atlanta funded for the next ten years. It had been created by a computer rather than an artist, and it would be devoid of meaning. Well, except as a monument to just how rich Verdigris was, since he’d been making the point he’d funded this out of his own personal fortune.

  * * *

  Everyone had begun to line up just right. The news vans had already disgorged their news teams, who had all set up their cameras and lights, jockeying for position to get the best shot of the unveiling of the “Echo Memorial for the Invasion.” Verdigris was busy making small talk with all of the luminaries that he had invited or who had invited themselves; no one wanted to be left out of this event. There was still a lot of unrest, especially among the journalists, about Echo: why weren’t they doing more, why were there still Thulian attacks, when would everyone be safe and how it was all Echo’s fault. He’d been carefully manipulating opinions for the last month to be more favorable toward Echo; nothing too overt, but just enough so that today’s events would serve as a catalyst for a wave of overwhelming support. That support would help him get done what needed to be done, what had to be done. Sometimes Verdigris wanted to just sit down in front of the cameras and outline for the whole world how if they just did what he said, then everything would make sense and go so much smoother and more efficiently. All they had to do was follow his directions completely and without question. After all, wasn’t he arguably the smartest man in the world? Shouldn’t they just quit jockeying with each other and listen to him for a change?

  Verdigris flashed another perfect and perfectly fake smile as he shook hands with the mayor. The world didn’t work that way, unfortunately; nothing would be so simple that he could just lay everything out for everyone and have it happen. Today, however, would work: another thing that needed to happen, for the good of everyone. Even if they didn’t know it or agree with it.

  He was aware of Bella Dawn Parker behind him, and Khanjar behind her. Bella was performing exactly as expected; eye candy for the cameras, with an outfit he had strategically picked out. She posed as if she had been born to model. Sex sells, no matter what anyone will tell you; he needed to sell her right now not only as the brainless bimbo but also as the calendar fodder. Both images served his purposes. After today, she would become irrelevant, anyway; all of Echo Medical would be replaced by his own people, people he was completely in control of. Without Ramona Ferrari around to issue orders, they’d flounder in the crisis he was about to manufacture, and he’d have all the excuse he could ask for to shut them down and replace them with medics who would be sure to follow his orders. Just a little longer, that’s all he needed . . .

  There’s that word, again. Need. Verdigris wasn’t used to it; he’d never had needs, outside of the basic ones. He’d had desires, all of which he was able to fulfill with relative ease, either through his immense wealth or his intellect, or both. But today, he needed everything to go right. His life, his future
depended upon it. It was an uncomfortable feeling, at best; he did his best to push it away as he moved on to the next city politician that had come to make an appearance and use the valuable photo opportunity; for all of the ire that Echo and metahumans had received for not doing enough during and since the Invasion, no one could afford to be seen as being anything but supportive of the metahumans that were really all that stood between them and the Kriegers.

  Verdigris noticed Khanjar out of the corner of his eye; she caught his attention, subtly motioning that it was time to begin. Good. The sooner this is over with, the sooner I can move forward with far more enjoyable things. He checked his PDA—excellent. All the flights had been delayed just enough that the Echo retirees were all still waiting for the baggage, or slowly tottering up to the waiting point for the special Echo MARTA express downtown. They’d be delayed just enough to miss the ceremony, and as he had planned, they’d be sitting on the shuttle when he was about halfway through his planned address.

  He graciously disengaged from the crowd of VIPs on the stage, waiting for everyone to take their positions before he approached the podium. Once he saw that everyone was ready, he turned to the news cameras and the gathered crowd, smiling, before composing his face in an appropriately solemn expression. The cameras got their cue from Khanji, who was supposed to be his executive assistant; they all focused on him. The Jumbotrons above his head filled with his face, and the speakers up and down the streets went live. Flawlessly, of course. No squeals of feedback for Verdigris Electronics.

  “Ladies and gentleman. I’d like to thank all of you for joining us here today, on the anniversary of the Invasion . . .”

  * * *

  Bulwark looked over the specially modified MARTA trains for the Echo veterans and winced inwardly. As part of the festivities, the mayor had seized upon the opportunity to showcase the next generation of transit cars that had been sped up through production to replace those that had been destroyed during the Invasion. Only three of the seven train cars were actually new, having just been finished that week, the first car at the front and the two luxury passenger cars at the rear reserved for the veterans. In theory, every car could be the engine; they all had control booths and were automatically slaved to the car in the lead, but the lead today didn’t even necessarily need a driver, though it had one. They certainly looked sleeker, he had to admit, but certain features had been lost in the rush for development. For one thing, the old models had allowed for easy access between cars. These new cars were sealed, each car separated from the rest. He didn’t like it. Too many holes in their security, too many ways for their defenses to be compromised. Not that he really expected anything to go awry, but still, he had been tasked with escorting their honored guests, and he always took his tasks seriously.