Stay of Execution

by Glynn Stewart

  “That bad?”

  “That bad,” she confirmed. “You’ll want to check your work email ASAP, but the short version is that all leaves are canceled, and all teams are on max alert. ONSET Two, Four and Thirteen are stood down because all of you are in medical care.”

  There were technically twenty-six ONSET teams. If there were twelve active right now, David would be surprised.

  “This is nuts,” he admitted. “How’s the rest of the planet dealing?”

  “That’s the strange part,” Mason told him. “We seem to be the only ones hit this hard. We’re up to nine Code Reds since Crater Lake, but the rest of the world is seeing normal incidence rates.”

  “Which I’m guessing are bad enough that no one has any help to send us,” David said. “But…really, just us?”

  “Just us,” she confirmed. “Charles is running an analysis on the whole mess, trying to identify an epicenter, but…this kind of weakening of the Seal is outside anyone’s experience.”

  “Even Charles’s?” David asked. The dragon had lived before the Seal was created and had woken up three times since it was created. If anyone knew more about the Seal, Omicron didn’t know about them.

  “He has no clue,” she replied. “Here.”

  Mason passed him his phone and Memoria.

  “We picked up everything at the site. Your clothes and gear are in the locker outside the hall,” she told him. “Get dressed and check your email, then meet me in the mess. Stone may be down, but with Dresden on your team, you’re back up to three actives, which means I’m going to hand some of my problems over to you.”

  “And the truth of why you want me on my feet is out!” he laughed at her. “Wilco, Commander Mason.”

  “However bad ye think it is,” Charles’s thick Irish brogue said over a webcam in the mess hall, “’tis worse.”

  The dragon’s long lizardlike face was being projected onto a white screen pulled down the wall. Half of the screen showed the dragon and the other half was a map of the United States, a mirror of one of the probably seven or eight monitors the wyrm was running.

  “The big red dots are Code Reds,” he continued. The expected nine dots appeared on the map, ranging across the continental United States. A tenth dot appeared in Canada, close to the Ontario–New York border.

  “The smaller dots are overall supernatural situations,” the dragon noted. The map suddenly looked sick, with dots scattering across the entirety of the United States and the southern portions of eastern Canada.

  “We are being run ragged, to the point where we’ve deployed unsupervised deputy strike teams on no less than three occasions.”

  David winced, sharing a look with Mason. They were alone in the room at the moment, and there was no need to be politic about the use of vampire and Elfin strike forces. Deputized or drafted or whatever they were calling it today, the use of supernatural paramilitaries to fill in gaps was a bad sign.

  “How did we miss this while we were fighting the vampires?” David asked.

  “We didn’t,” Charles replied grimly. “The situation spiked after Ekhmez was summoned and killed, then began to quiet down. The rate of incidents started spiking again just before Crater Lake, and has been rising since.

  “We are now seeing supernatural incidents at a rate unmatched in ONSET’s records. Or,” the dragon noted, “in my own experience.”

  “Weren’t you around before the Seal?” David asked.

  Charles shrugged.

  “We didn’t have random Awakenings and demonic incursions then,” he pointed out. “All of the Awakened were awake. This kind of supernatural incident didn’t exist back then, as it requires a new ‘packet’ of magic to enter reality.”

  “So, the Seal is weaker than it has ever been,” Kate concluded.

  “But only in the United States,” the dragon replied. “There isn’t one neat epicenter to it, either, but we’re running analyses to try and pin down potential sources.”

  “Are we looking at another high-court demon?” David said.

  “Not…yet,” Charles told him. “My current best guess is a minimum of four different sources, and none of them are as powerful as Ekhmez or the breach that brought him into the world.

  “The weakening we are seeing, however, could easily be a precursor to something making it through,” he continued. “This ‘Herald’ you encountered would have been a high-court demon if you hadn’t prevented its arrival.”

  David shivered at the thought. Killing the pregnant succubus was going to go into the list of memories he didn’t want to have in his head. It was hardly the only such one in his head, though.

  Regenerators, it turned out, also had very good memories.

  “For now, we keep pissing on fires,” Mason told him. “We’ve having a few moments of quiet, but Thirteen and Fifteen are officially on standby for the next incidents in the northeastern USA.”

  “Then I think I need to talk to Warner ASAP,” David concluded. “I can probably get away with taking Dresden with me if needed, but I’d rather get that okayed by her first.”

  His phone buzzing interrupted further conversation, and he pulled it out. He thought he’d disabled his alarms for this meeting, but when he saw the name, he was somehow unsurprised.

  The text was from Vanessa Loring, a former black hat hacker turned in-the-know cyber security specialist—and a friend.

  It was four words long:

  Turn on the news.

  6

  “We continue our live reporting as dozens of coordinated protests have exploded across America’s major cities under the banner of the ‘March for Truth,’” the perfectly turned-out reporter said, standing in front of a screen showing hundreds, possibly thousands of protestors marching down the streets of Washington, DC.

  “Here in DC, the leaders of the protest are family members of soldiers killed in the incidents around Crater Lake,” she continued. “The organizers of the March for Truth claim that the official government story around the Crater Lake incident and the deaths of US Air Force and Army personnel at facilities surrounding the area rings hollow.

  “CNN’s own research suggests that Air Force fighter craft from several bases were involved in the incident… Wait.”

  The reporter paused, listening to her earbud, a momentary shocked expression sweeping over her face.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, CNN has just received video footage provided by the organizers of the March for Truth from the airspace near Crater Lake park the night of the incident,” she said slowly. “I remind viewers that we have no independent validation of this footage, but March for Truth representative Velma MacLean claims that the video was taken by an amateur astronomer who was starwatching that night.”

  The bottom dropped out of David’s stomach as the protest march disappeared, replaced by the scene of a night sky. He suspected he knew exactly what footage an amateur astronomer might have that would damn everyone.

  Someone had played with the zoom carefully, highlighting the squadron of jet fighters as they flashed across the sky. Then, suddenly, the sky lit up with fire as the fighters opened fire on each other. The battle was only in the scope of the camera for a few seconds, but that was enough to watch over half of the USAF planes blow each other apart.

  The reporter returned, her face now white.

  “Viewers, I promise that we will be verifying this footage as quickly as possible, but I repeat: the March for Truth has provided the news media with footage showing US Air Force fighters firing on each other in the lead-up to the Crater Lake explosion.”

  Behind her, the screen flipped to an image of Central Park, where someone had sent up a crude stage and was bellowing through a megaphone at the gathering crowd of people waving banners.

  “The protests continue, and we don’t know what effect this new revelation will have on either the March for Truth protesters or on the claims and explanations offered by the government. Law enforcement officials have already stated they are concerne
d the march may turn violent and have moved to provide additional security for government off—”

  “Turn it off,” David said sickly.

  “They’re digging,” Mason said quietly. “There’s a lot for them to find. Hell, the fucking road leading up to Crater Lake is wrecked. Anyone with half a brain who looks at photos of that is going to guess why a tank battalion ended up dead.”

  “I know. What do we do?”

  “Our jobs,” his lover told him. “That mess isn’t our problem. That’s up to Congress—and no, David, I don’t know what happens if Congress orders the Committee to come clean.”

  The Committee of Thirteen was the Special Committee for Supernatural Affairs, charged to wield the full power of Congress in affairs of the supernatural. But the rest of Congress didn’t know the Committee existed, so if they kept asking questions and subpoenaing people…

  “It’s going to be a bad few weeks,” he said quietly. “I hope the Committee has a plan for this.”

  “So do I.”

  “Warner here.”

  The second-in-command of the Office of the National Supernatural Enforcement Teams sounded exhausted.

  “It’s White,” David told her over the phone. He’d managed to get out of the hospital room now, though the only difference between the ward room and the spartan quarters he’d moved into was the lack of monitoring equipment.

  His boss sighed.

  “Glad to hear you came through okay,” she told him, “but I doubt you’ll be surprised if I tell you that you’re hardly popular in the upper circles right now.”

  “No, not really,” David admitted. It was a somewhat bitter realization. It wasn’t like he’d done anything but his duty, but it was the nuke that was raising the largest concerns, and that had been his call.

  “You ended a two-century-long war,” Warner told him. “That’s worth a lot of problems, but…”

  “But right now, the entire fabric of secrecy over the supernatural is being strained,” David concluded. “We could always just tell everyone the truth.”

  The Mage on the other of the call laughed bitterly.

  “Who’d believe us?” she asked. “It’s a giant pain in the ass just to convince the people we need to work for us that all of this is real. The human brain doesn’t like this shit.”

  “How much of that is the Seal?” David wondered aloud. “With the Seal weakening…are people more likely to believe?”

  Warner was silent for a long few seconds.

  “That, Commander White, is a potential headache I don’t think any of us considered,” she admitted. “And could help explain why our normal obfuscation is failing. We don’t usually have to try all that hard—incidents involving the supernatural just sort of slip people’s minds.”

  “This is also an entirely different scale,” David replied. “It could just be that.”

  “That too.” She sighed. “What do you need, Commander?”

  “You saw Dresden’s request?”

  “To put his niece on your team and half a dozen other Elders in ONSET uniform?” She snorted. “That’s going to be a hard sell and you know it.”

  “I’ll take Veronica on Thirteen,” he replied. “She’s tough, she’s smart, and she’s a Mage. I need the numbers, too.

  “Give her a few weeks with me before deciding on any of the others,” David suggested. “Ease everyone into the idea of vampire ONSET agents.”

  “Gods. I can’t believe we’re even considering this. Vampires in ONSET? Half of our damn job until a few weeks ago was shooting the bastards on sight.”

  “And they were responsible for most of our losses, too. Peace is worth the attempt,” he told her. “And with the situation getting as bad as it is…”

  She sighed.

  “You’re right. Fine. You have my okay to read Veronica Dresden in as an ONSET Agent. The rest of them can wait until we see how she works out.” She repeated her sigh. “Which I’m not betting against, knowing how much of a damned headache that family has managed to be as our enemy.”

  Putting down the phone, David turned to leave the plain quarters, then paused as the wall seemed to flicker in front of his eyes. For a moment, he thought he’d seen the news video of New York Central Park again, but as he blinked and focused, there was nothing on the wall.

  Even for him, seeing things was weird, but given the day—several days, really—he’d had, he was willing to chalk it up to exhaustion. A flicker of blackness hit him halfway to the mess hall, sending him reeling into the wall, but nothing clear came through.

  “Are you okay, boss?” McCreery asked from behind him as he leaned against the wall, blinking and focusing on the plain white surface for several moments.

  “Yeah, just woozy,” he told her. “I should eat.”

  “Conveniently, the mess hall is about ten feet that way,” his Empowered pilot said dryly. “Need a shoulder?”

  For a moment, he considered refusing. Then he realized that would be stupid and nodded.

  Leaning on McCreery against further blackouts, he carefully walked into the mess hall. Nothing else hit him along the way and he felt fine. This was…weird.

  “I’m fine,” he told her, letting go of her shoulder and making his way over to the buffet. With his plate rapidly occupied with what the label insisted was beef stroganoff—the smell bore at least some resemblance—he turned back toward the table where Pierre Dupond was pulling out a chair for McCreery.

  On the wall behind them, the projector they’d used to conference with Charles earlier was playing the CNN news feed with the sound off. He blinked against the moment of déjà vu, then smiled at his own silliness.

  Of course the news was playing here. This was now the impromptu ready room for two of the United States’ top-line supernatural combat teams.

  He made it halfway to the table before he found himself staring at the news feed, the video of Central Park popping up onto the wall…and then his tray and plate toppled to the ground as the image slammed into him like a ton of bricks.

  A long-haired man in a plain business suit stood on the impromptu stage, bellowing through the megaphone as the crowd chanted in response. David could see police gathering behind them, letting the protest continue as it remained calm.

  It was getting dark, evening clearly rushing in as the protestors bellowed. It seemed perfectly normal for about five seconds—and then the screaming starting.

  Something flew across the crowd and smashed into the stage before David identified it as a news van. Moments later, the police joined the panicking crowd—but their panicking involved gunfire.

  The vision seemed locked to the same angle as the CNN camera and David couldn’t see what was happening. The police were firing at something approaching from the other side of the crowd as debris and vehicles smashed into the crowd.

  His view was constrained, and he was sufficiently confused as to what the hell was happening that he missed the SWAT officer producing the anti-tank missile launcher. The rocket flashed across David’s Sight and slammed into something.

  Then the entire stage lifted up and flew at the police, smashing down on top of New York’s finest and silencing the gunfire in a crash of exploding electronics and shattering steel.

  The crowd ran, but more thrown debris was crashing down on them and too many of the protesters weren’t moving at all. An inhuman roar tore across the vision, and then blackness cut away his Sight.

  He blinked and was staring up at the blank ceiling of the mess hall, rapidly blocked by Dupond and McCreery’s head.

  “Sir, sir! Are you okay?” his pilot demanded again.

  “I’m fine,” he gasped. “Help me up.”

  She did, and he turned his gaze on the news feed on the wall. None of the chaos he’d just seen was happening there, but the sky was still light. Late afternoon. His…vision had been of early evening. Maybe an hour away.

  Possibly two.

  He’d never had prescience more than a few seconds in the future, b
ut it was theoretically possible. It was the same gift, the same Sight. His was just very short-term-focused.

  “Get Mason and the others in here,” he ordered harshly. “We need to get to New York.”

  7

  “There aren’t many places I’d say we can’t deploy on a vision, David,” Warner told him, “but Central Park is on the damn list.”

  She shook her head over the videoconference he and Mason had dragged her into.

  “I’m not even going to argue the veracity of the vision,” she continued. “You’re a goddamned Seer, I’m perfectly willing to accept that you might start longer-term visions, but I can’t—can’t, David—authorize a deployment to Central Park right now.

  “The entire edifice that holds Omicron together is on the verge of breaking. ONSET teams in the middle of the public eye? Hell, ONSET teams in the middle of a protest?

  “The President would shit himself sideways—and he’d be right.”

  David winced.

  “Can we at least evacuate the park?” he asked. “If I’m judging the light level right, we’ve got maybe an hour before it happens. I might be having hallucinations…but if I’m not, people are going to die.”

  “David,” Warner said quietly, “that’s a March for Truth protest. These people are convinced that the government is lying to them about a major incident involving a nuclear weapon on American soil. They’re not going to believe us if we try to evacuate them, no matter what excuse we give.”

  “And we are lying to them,” David replied. “Ma’am, what do we do?”

  She was silent.

  “Major?” Mason asked. “We have to do something.”

  “The situation could not be more complicated,” Warner finally said. “I’ll put a bug in the ear of the right people at the NYPD; they’ll make sure there’s heavier gear in the protest watch team than normal. The NYPD has a lot of equipment another police department wouldn’t have.

  “If mortal weapons can stop what you saw, they will stop it.”