She wasn’t a princess, wasn’t a queen. Wasn’t a person, even. She was someone else’s toy. A piece. A pawn.
Nothing.
• • •
The woman made of will disintegrated right in front of him. Angela Neko, his Angela, who had once held him up when he got low, who’d given steel to his own spine, fell apart like a sugar skull left out in the rain. Kellen watched it happen and couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. He went to one knee behind her cushion and caught her at both shoulders lest she ghost away to nothing. He didn’t expect those hands to hold her upright—she was supposed to be the strong one, damn it—but she swayed in his grasp.
Hold on there, darlin’. I got you.
His eyes were drawn to the back of her head, her nape, disappearing into her slick smartfabric dive suit, and his hands, holding her steady. He spotted the tip of a claw mark to the left, and he moved his grasp to avoid putting pressure on a wound that must already hurt. And that’s when he saw it. Shoulder strap on her dry bag, the shape of which was tucked behind her shoulder blade. The shape in that bag was unmistakable from this angle.
She had brought Miss Mari’s gun. Right there, tucked behind a watertight seal and maybe four inches total from the tip of his thumb. Waiting for him to draw it. He dropped his grasp to her biceps, containing both her tremble and his own need to avenge her hurts, moving his hand further from the gun.
Further from temptation.
He had never seen Angela this broken—she was the fighter who always won, always had—and he wanted more than anything to whisk her off somewhere safe, tend her, and holler “fuck it” to the whole rest of the world.
He didn’t need to deal with Vallejo or bring hellfire and justice down on the scientist’s tacky, crimped head. He didn’t even need to know why Angela had reacted so fiercely to whatever bullshit that pissant had spouted. She could keep her private hells private. He wouldn’t push. All he needed was for her to be okay.
Which meant he needed to get her away from Vallejo. Across the low glass table, he locked gazes with the old man.
Vallejo looked more tired than anything but couldn’t resist one more villainous eyebrow wag. “So. Rescue, then? How are we coming with that? I presume based on your silence that you have no more questions for me. What do we do now? Access your message relay? Signal Farad?”
When no one replied immediately, Vallejo rolled his eyes, exactly the way Mari did from time to time, and managed to look both impatient and defeated.
Angela still shook beneath Kellen’s hands. God, please don’t let her be crying. Not her. As he prayed, he also got angrier and angrier. Low hum of menace, not out of his control. Not yet. Gettin’ there, though.
“Best you know,” he told Vallejo, “you are thrumming my very last nerve. I were you, I’d get real quiet.”
“Well, if the two of you would just make up your minds. I mean, you come in here demanding information, asking questions, practically begging me to talk, and now you want me to be quiet. Which is it? Or do you need to ask her for directions?”
It was the disrespectful tone on her that got him.
Kellen slammed his mouth into a line, pressing, holding. Furious heat blurred in a halo around his body, luring the monster out. Settle. Settle right now. That ain’t me.
Except it was him. It had always been him. Any pacifist’s secret was that his inner monster wasn’t leashed by will. It was leashed by fear.
Kellen was scared out of his ever-lovin’ mind that if he released even a smidgen of this fury, there would be no going back, no path home from that. Failure to subdue the beast meant becoming the beast.
And he’d seen that beast come out way too many times to risk it. Mama had gone to violence just as easy as she went to backwoods moonshine. Lord, hadn’t she just. The skills that made him a natural healer and helper had formed themselves of desperation early on, splinting small bones, bandaging cuts in princess-pink adhesive strips, waiting up late after a head-knocking to make sure Sissy kept on breathing and could come to when he jostled her. No coma, no permanent hurt, just a few anonymous logins at the remote doc, and Mama always apologized in the morning. But those nights had sure stretched long, holding it all together. Through it all, he had kept his temper, his monster, under control.
He hadn’t become Mama. Not then he hadn’t, and he wouldn’t stoop to her level now. Insult, even insult to the woman he loved, was not worth losing himself so completely. Insults were just words. His peers back at school had taught him that.
He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and then rolled his wrist against Angela’s shoulder, activating his com.
“Hey, Yoink, you li’l fur-butt, please tell me you got that patch up,” he said in a low voice.
At the cat’s name, Angela stilled. He squeezed her shoulder, and she reached and covered his hand with hers. Not grabbing for the gun, just making the connection. Her touch warmed him all over, but not with anger this time. The monster-luring heat retreated, dissolved into this other, better warmth, a sweet one like scratch brownies just out of the oven. The warmth of comfort in knowing he didn’t fight his monsters alone.
“No, it’s me,” came Chloe’s impossibly chipper squeak through the com. “I mean, yes, the cat is here and she’s fine, deep into the process of filling me in on all the details. Something about chatty dolphins and mosquitoes and depth charges and herself being critically hungry and sleepy and lonely and had to be fetched ASAP, which is done by the way, but I gather from all she’s downloading that you’re in danger and hey, guess what? Did you know our plane was armed with tac-nuke missiles? Shall I blow the shit out of something? Please say yes.”
Beneath his hands, Angela sighed. He had no idea what she was thinking or feeling, but right now, it was enough that she breathed. That she didn’t run. Hang in there.
“Not necessary,” he said. “But I do need your help to secure this boat. Can you hook into the fly-by-wire?”
The pause was infinitesimal. And excruciating. At last Chloe chirped in. “Aha! I found those depth charges your cat would not shut up about. Hush, kitty. Well, there you go: all traps have been disabled. Feel free to move around the cabin.” Her voice hitched in a half laugh, like she’d just made a joke. “Easy sailing from here on out, Doc. I am right above you and have removed the data hole, so you can even chat with the wide world if you want.”
“How’d you…?”
“Same process Heron used on Enchanted Rock. I copied the protocol. Go me!”
Kellen didn’t say so, but that was a bit worrying. Heron had blown up the black-ICE over Enchanted Rock by accessing the entire global cloud network. It had been a pretty big deal and had very nearly resulted in Heron’s brain death. Chloe had not just done that same thing.
Or had she? Could she? She was sweet and all, but damn if there wasn’t something just a tiny bit terrifying about her, too.
“Good work, and thank you. Now, can you give us a tow into port somewhere?” There weren’t many intact ports on the Gulf Coast. Not after years upon years of storms and population relocations. “Not Pensacola, not east. We’d like to avoid any continental entanglements just right now. How’s Tampico look?”
“High and dry and zero UNAN patrols,” chirped the AI. After a few seconds, the boat lurched, but then the golden surface of Vallejo’s bourbon steadied, flattened out. They were no longer descending. They were submerged and bookin’ it. “Whoa. This boat flies in the water. We hit fifty knots. And just wait till I tell Garrett I got to drive a sub.”
Chapter 14
That thing Angela had thought earlier, about how having Kellen nearby lent her a quantum of confidence? Well, it was true even when every other wick of her life burned to a nub. He still shone. Maybe he was the only good decision she’d ever made. Well, the being with him part, not what she’d done to him. Not the sending him away part. That had been a mistake.
/>
She couldn’t let herself think about what he would say if he knew all her secrets. She didn’t want to think about being without him. Not again.
Also, she didn’t want to sit here and have a conversation with Damon Vallejo. And even more certainly not about all the things he had so easily understood but that had eluded her for a lifetime. She was supposed to be a goddamn genius. A reader of societies and people, of long-term trends and schemes. A strategist, trained. How could she not have seen?
Vallejo had been quiet while Kellen and Chloe talked, but Angela had been watching him. When Chloe had reported that all traps had been disabled on the boat, Vallejo had been visibly relieved. He’d closed his eyes for longer than a blink, and the hands that had been nervous, alternately clasping each other and reaching for a drink he did not touch, relaxed.
Now he opened his eyes and caught her staring at him. “Is it even possible you didn’t know about Medina’s plans?” he said in a low voice.
“Why don’t we for the sake of argument pretend I didn’t,” Angela said. She sounded weary to her own ears and felt it even more so. Truthfully, she was tired. So very, very sick of everybody else’s bullshit. What she wouldn’t give to be back at the Pentarc North Tower, reclining on a hammock and stroking Yoink’s soft fur.
If, you know, the Pentarc wasn’t presently under attack. If, you know, it was even possible to go back.
“What do you think Zeke’s up to?” This wasn’t her best negotiation lead. Her position was too weak; she should not have phrased that as a question that could be countered with refusal to answer. She should have wheedled, or at least given him reasons for playing along.
But exercising all her formidable diplomatic training required more will, more energy, than she could muster right now. She desperately needed to hide, lick her wounds, reassess literally everything she knew about herself. But the reality was she could do none of those things. She was on a sub in the middle of the ocean facing down the most notorious villain of her time. And shit to do before I sleep.
Vallejo uncrossed his legs and slumped back against his cushions, looking as defeated as she felt. He raised both hands and shoved them through his coif. It sprang back into place right after, but not without the casualty of a few errant locks.
“As far as I can tell, they’re done building out their group of elites, the future of the species, the protected class,” he said. “That was the effort I knew most about. My wife, Mageda, was part of phase one. She did a lot of testing and recruiting for the MIST, along with her sister and Zeke and Dan and the old gal, I forget her name. They didn’t share details.”
His words pushed ice pricks against Angela’s memory. She didn’t want to hear Daniel’s voice in her mind, but she could not excise it. Over and over. The child we make together will live forever. She swallowed, got herself together. “So now we’re in phase two?”
“I suppose so. They’re still collecting the technology to maintain themselves indefinitely, hence their interest in the consciousness-transferral process that was used on Mari. With that technology, they can grow clones of themselves and move into new bodies, probably forever, one body after another. They don’t care what that makes them, how it alters their souls. How it ruins their minds.”
He was talking about his daughter, and she suspected he wanted to go on, suspected he wanted to explain his thinking and why he had shot her. Fuck that. Angela didn’t want to hear it. Nothing he could say would change what she thought of him for betraying his own child. And then she thought about what a hypocrite that made her.
“Was the transferral tech their main interest in you?” she asked.
“Well, they were fascinated by my work fabricating mech-clones, but their requests tapered off over the years. Other than the clone-transferral bit, which wasn’t even mine, I honestly can’t tell you, Senator. Maybe it was…” He swiped a palm over his face, shook his head. “Unless they didn’t want my research at all. It is possible they just wanted Heron’s.”
“Machine-human integration?” Angela guessed. Or maybe the mind-reading thing he’d tried on her that first day they met. That was certainly fascinating, but she couldn’t think how it would feather into the overall master-race plan.
“No,” Vallejo said, drawing the syllable out as if she were very stupid or very oblivious. “Weather control. Think about it. If you’re planning for a small number of humans to endure forever, you have to deplete the rest of the population, else you get unauthorized inbreeding and other chaos points. Mass populations are impossible to control, so they would definitely need to go or get winnowed down to a manageable number. Phase two.”
Oh. Right. Wow. She’d teased Vallejo’s involvement in weather control to Rafael Castrejon during their live-emote session an eon ago. The day Daniel was killed. But she’d made that up, thought it was bullshit. It hadn’t been. That had actually been someone’s plan.
Not Vallejo’s, though. Zeke’s.
“But you can’t just nuke all the little people,” Kellen interjected. Angela flinched at his voice, glittering over her shoulder, hard and bright and dangerous. Not necessarily the Kellen she remembered; however, strangely, just as comforting. It reminded her of him and his cattle prod, storming the West Spire and cutting down her enemy. Knight in shining armor. Hers.
He swung his long legs over the back of the cushion and sat on the deck next to her shoulder. She could see him in her periphery now. No hiding from him. She still didn’t let go of his hand. She should have. Should have run, gotten small, reduced contagion. Recalculated herself. But she didn’t. She just kept hold of Kellen, ping-ponging her attention back and forth between her lover and her enemy and her past.
“Because yikes radiation,” Vallejo said, referring to the idea of nuking mass populations.
“And you can’t just move your armies in,” Kellen went on.
“Because in a postarmy world, all our soldiers now are drones, and nobody can rig the whole thing at once with enough real-time coordination to make those big genocides work properly. Too much scattering.”
“So you drown them in hurricanes.”
“And crisp them in droughts.”
“And burn them in volcanoes.”
Every scenario spoken aloud was a new image, both bleak and familiar. She had seen these things happen. Mother Nature, acts of God. But the dirtiest secret of all was there was no God; there was no mother’s mercy. There was only the consortium with a horrible plan and too many toys.
“They also play up their rebellions, creating conflict zones,” she added, half turning on her cushion so she could look up at Kellen. “Remember when I told you about the bad shit pattern? How every massive disaster follows the same refugee-relocation, more tragedy, more population-reduction pattern?”
“Yeah.”
She turned back and met Vallejo’s gaze. “That’s phase two. We’re in it. All those drone attacks right now are meant to start a war with Texas. There’s no easier cover than war to hide body count. I ought to know.”
She had never felt more certain about a thing in her life. Phase one, collect the worthy humans. Phase two, destroy the extras. Phase three? She didn’t know that yet, but she felt pretty fucking certain it would suck.
She swallowed, but she was still dizzy and tracing brain paths. None of her usual tricks worked. This gut-sick roil wasn’t something created in her conscious mind. It was brain stem–type stuff, primal and lizardy, and she could not stop it. Couldn’t stop anything. Just a toy. Will live forever. Smile for the camera, Ange.
Kellen squeezed her hand. “Right. War minister. And there you go being all brilliant, as usual.”
She flared her eyes at him, startled. “What? What are you even talking about?”
“I’m talking about stopping this phase two bullshit, right now, before Medina gets sworn in for a third term,” he said. “He’s launching all these att
acks and then blaming them on Texas, right? He needs to be stopped, and weren’t you two heartbeats from being the war minister of this continent?”
“Well, yes.” Essentially. Maybe. “But that was before I…before Daniel died.” Before she’d been removed from all her official profiles.
“But you know where the command codes are.”
Fucking hell. He was right. She did. She knew exactly how to get there. Darknet, string of sixteen digits, photographic memory. Oh yeah. Her eyes stretched wide, and she had to bite her bottom lip to keep from either laughing like a loon or doing something else wildly inappropriate.
Maybe kissing the shit out of that man right next to her. Because he so deserved it. And she so wanted to.
“We still have the problem of rigging a vast continental drone army,” Vallejo reminded them.
Good thing he did, too, because Angela had pretty much forgotten he existed and was so very close to climbing onto Kellen’s lap right then. That could have been embarrassing.
“It’s not really that much of a problem,” Kellen said. “Heron can rig your drones, easy. I don’t think there’s a max number on his command-and-control, not anymore. And am I really talking to Damon Fucking Vallejo about this stuff?” He tilted his head and thwapped it, as if he expected loose logic to fall out of an ear.
“Look, trust me or not, I really don’t care,” said Vallejo, “but I’m interested in getting off this boat, and you pair all but promised to release me. I’d help Hitler take over the government if such action guaranteed my freedom.”
Yeah, that wasn’t a scary proposition. But it did have the ring of truth to it. And he had managed to deliver several not-fibby bits of information. Trust him? No. Let him help her stop Zeke and the consortium? Maybe. Angela thought she might need all the help she could get.
She’d actually believed him when he said he was seeking atonement for his sins.
Perfect Gravity Page 24
