by Ada Hoffmann
“I’m sorry,” said one of the girls, and normally Qun knew everybody in his community by name, but at the moment he didn’t know or care which one of them it was. There was Genne, and there was a blur. “It got bad. We didn’t all make it–”
Some of the other girls were still limping, still bleeding. He should do something for them, but he couldn’t focus.
Qun had told himself things about maintaining a safe space, about caring for his community from the sidelines, about how it shouldn’t be their responsibility to risk themselves to fix a Plague that was not of their making. All those things were lies. Qun was simply a coward. In a just world, he should have been out there, too.
That was what he thought to himself, on his living room floor, as he fell to his knees and howled.
Elu was alone. He was trying to design a new outfit in his head, not an outfit Akavi had asked for, but just something colorful and swishy enough to distract him. He couldn’t focus very well.
Mortals were rising up across the Chaos Zone, and gone people were rising up, and of course angels would be descending to meet them. Elu remembered those protocols. He thought maybe he wanted the mortals to win.
He let himself imagine it, a world where the mortals won, where the Gods weren’t hunting people like him and Akavi anymore. In that world, he wouldn’t have to stay with Akavi. He could escape, and all he’d have to fear would be Akavi’s wrath, not the wrath of all the Gods. Elu could have dealt with that level of fear, he thought. He could have done it.
But he didn’t live in that world.
It startled him when the airlock opened, and Akavi stormed into the room, dragging a struggling Luellae with him.
Elu went perfectly still, staring at them. He’d known Akavi had meant to capture one of the Seven if he could, but he hadn’t expected it to work.
He remembered Luellae; while she was kept in a cell on the Menagerie, he’d visited her every week, trying to keep her comfortable. He’d tried to be kind to her the same way he’d tried to be kind to all the other prisoners, knowing kindness wasn’t enough, knowing their position was equally unjust whether he was kind to them or not. He knew how she’d been made to betray the rest of the Seven.
Her face and hands were dirty, and there were tear tracks making thin lines down her cheeks, and Akavi had her pressed to him in a parody of an embrace, knowing she could teleport away as soon as he let go. His sharp claws, extended out as long as Elu had ever seen them, made indentations in the flesh of her throat.
As she took in the sight of Elu, her eyes widened, and then narrowed in contempt.
“You,” she growled. “You’re why he survived. Aren’t you?”
Elu didn’t have it in him to answer.
“Is the spare room ready?” Akavi asked, in an oddly flat tone, as if this was the kind of thing he did every day.
Of course it wasn’t. Akavi hadn’t explicitly asked for it, and Elu hadn’t really expected he’d need it. “No, sir,” he stammered. “I could print furniture–”
But Akavi had already stopped paying attention to him. He turned his head to focus more directly on Luellae. “You can get over fences, over walls, past guards, but you can’t get out of a fully sealed room, can you? Not if you’re kept away from the door. From what you’ve told me about your new powers, that’s what I’d surmise.”
Luellae didn’t even dignify the question with a nod. Her hands were shaking. “Fuck you,” she spat. “Fuck both of you.”
“Good,” said Akavi, without breaking stride. “Elu, calculate a trajectory while I secure the prisoner. The angels are distracted by the battle; I’d estimate we have another hour in which to launch without detection, if we’re careful. But no more than that. You can work on the furniture once we break orbit.” He pulled Luellae along with him, deeper into the ship. “Then, once we’re safe in the air, we’ll work on what else you can tell me about your little team. I’m going to have a number of uses for you.”
In Dasz, Weaver hurried into action as the local commandoes finally stumbled and staggered back into the dingy apartment. Many of them were limping, clutching bloodied limbs and grimacing; some were still bleeding at an alarming rate. Few of them had made it out of this excursion without a wound. Many hadn’t made it out at all.
Weaver did what she could, pulling and tugging at flesh with her quick fingers, flitting from the most urgent problem to the next-most-urgent. She loved this kind of work, quick and demanding, the way the sensory details of blood and bone filled her awareness. She painfully knitted ruined muscle, skin and bone back together. Healing this way was exhausting, and even though she’d stayed here saving her strength, she might pass out before she helped everyone she wanted to.
In the middle of the room, on a small table, the survivors of Dasz had placed the prize that they’d liberated from the angels. It gleamed there, clean and metallic and a little bit stained with fresh blood: a food printer.
When it was over, Yasira slumped to the ground.
Leaves tickled her face. She was too exhausted to react. She had pulled all the parts of her consciousness back into her body. She was tired in ways she didn’t have words for – as if her very soul had run laps on some horrible treadmill until it collapsed.
There were sounds, and they were awful and loud, and she could not interpret them.
Not until she realized, gradually, that one of them was Tiv’s voice. Tiv’s hand, placed as lightly and unassumingly as she could, on Yasira’s shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Tiv said softly. “It’s okay, Yasira, it’s over now. We did it. You did it. We’re done. Let’s get you home.”
“Mmph,” said Yasira.
Her limbs trembled, but with a bit of help from Tiv’s steadying hands she managed to push herself vaguely upright. The air hurt. The park around her spun.
“How bad is it?” Tiv asked, her big eyes bright with concern.
“It’s…” Yasira mumbled, surprising herself. “It’s not bad.”
It wasn’t bravado. She felt different from before. She was still an unnatural mess, exhausted and in pieces, and all too keenly aware of how far they still were from real victory. How small today’s triumphs were, compared to the real freedom Jai needed, and exactly how much they had cost.
But Yasira had risen to that cost. She had seen the triumphs through. And all the things that were broken about her, even the parts that hated life and hated herself, had been just the things she’d needed for the task.
We saw it through, the Strike Force murmured in agreement. We rose to the challenge.
I learned so much, said the Scientist, still distracted, trying so hard to remember the details of the patterns she’d seen.
The parts that just wanted to help other people had helped them. The parts that wanted pain had been given a noble reason to endure it. The parts that were more fragmentary and less human than that, the parts that just wanted Outside – well, they’d gotten what they wanted in spades.
there is no nature or unnatural, the gone people had told her, there is the soil of reality there is us
“Good,” said Tiv, guiding her forward. Yasira stumbled along, but at Tiv’s pace she could just about manage. “You were amazing today, Yasira. You were the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
It was the kind of thing another person might have said as flattery, maybe. Because they were worried for Yasira. Because they wanted to soothe her any way they could. But Tiv wasn’t like that. She’d said as much, repeatedly, in no uncertain terms. Tiv was good, but she said what she meant.
And, just for this moment, Yasira believed.
CHAPTER 19
Now
Enga was in the middle of a cleanup operation with one of the teams she’d trained, chasing off the last few pitiful mortals from an illegal protest, when the ping came in from Irimiru.
We have a read on Akavi Averis’s location, said Irimiru without preamble. We’re certain of it this time. A Vaurian was spotted among the mortals in Büata, interacting with
one of the Seven, and everything about the recording matches Akavi’s modus operandi. He used Outside abilities to escape, but he came into the city by mundane means, and we were able to use existing surveillance footage to track his approximate origin.
Listen to me very carefully, Enga. I will make good on my promise. I will allow you to be the first to attempt to bring him in. But you are not to harm him nor Elu Ariehmu. Not yet. The situation has evolved.
WHAT SIR, Enga said back resentfully. This was one of the parts of her job she hated. Hunting people down and killing them was an angel of Nemesis’ job, but Inquisitors and Overseers always wanted to do it in the most complicated possible way. Enga was built to just shoot things.
Vaurian Inquisitors of Nemesis have tried to get close to the core of Yasira Shien’s insurgent group for months now, Irimiru explained. All have failed. But Akavi came closer to success than any of them. He’s been seen in the girl Luellae’s vicinity twice now, and both times he was able to convince her to use her powers to help him. On the first such occasion he came very nearly within striking distance of Yasira herself. I don’t want him dead until we find out how he did that and how it can be replicated. The broader mission to remove Yasira’s heretical influence from Jai is more important to our forces than the recapture of a pair of fallen angels.
Which was saying something. Normally, fallen angels were the highest-value targets of all. An angel could do a lot more damage than a mortal could. But Evianna Talirr and her students had redefined what damage even meant, and they’d taken a whole fifth of a planet hostage.
I WILL BRING HIM IN AND YOU CAN INTERROGATE HIM SIR, Enga suggested.
No. You were friends with him. Your facial expressions are atypical due to nerve damage; Akavi’s microexpression software won’t work on you. I believe he’ll try to capture and suborn you. Let it happen. Befriend him. You’ll be contacted later so as to tell us what you’ve learned.
Enga ground her jaw in rage. The elaborate metal of her arms gave a warning creak as she clenched those, too. She had demanded to be placed on this mission because she wanted revenge. Irimiru had pretended to give her what she wanted, only to take it away again. I AM NOT A SPY SIR.
Then you’ll learn to be one, or you’ll be terminated.
Enga could feel the cold smugness that accompanied the text-sending. Enga had challenged Irimiru, weeks ago, to either give her what she wanted or let her die. It gave Irimiru great pleasure to finally call that bluff.
They may try to do the same surgery on you, Irimiru continued, that we suspect they did on themselves. Removing your ansible uplink so our systems can’t trace you. If they suggest it, don’t resist. We’ll find other ways to get in touch.
FUCK YOU SIR. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK Enga wrote, in the buffer of her mind that held the text in the instant before it was sent. She then deleted the words, swallowing them down without sending them. She was going to have to get used to this, swallowing rage, pretending to cooperate. This was what she wanted, in a horrible, twisted way. This was revenge. A way of bringing Akavi and Elu back to their betters and making them pay for what they’d done.
It was just going to be much, much harder than she had expected.
The Talon was right at the coordinates where Enga had been told it would be. Akavi had hidden it well, within a mossy ravine surrounded by thick woods. It looked different from how she remembered, more like a mortal ship – but Enga knew how little that mattered, how easy it was to make cosmetic alterations using the printers and bots. It was a ship of the right size, in the right place, and that was enough. The engines were idling, but the ship was still parked.
She strode to it, shifting the mechanisms of her arms to expose one of her heaviest blunt-force clubs. She locked the elbow joint of the club in place and then slammed it repeatedly, in a parody of a knock, against the Talon’s side.
“AKAVI AVERIS AND ELU ARIEHMU,” she said. Enga couldn’t speak aloud, but for occasions like these, she wore a translator. The device, looped around her neck like a cheap bit of jewelry, received her text-sendings over the ansible network and translated them into audible Earth Creole speech – in this case, boomingly loud speech, the kind that rattled the Talon’s frame and would definitely be audible even from inside the ship’s thick walls.
It was possible for God-built translators to perfectly mimic the cadences of a real human voice, complete with contextually appropriate emotion and the small imperfections that made speech feel present and unrehearsed. Enga could have synched the translator up with her neurological state as well as her literal words; she could have customized it to any timbre, accent, or mannerisms she preferred. Enga had never wanted to do that. The only thing that felt like her voice was text-sending, blunt and plain and literal, and in all capital letters because lowercase took more effort. So she calibrated all her translators to sound like that. The words were loud and clipped and lifeless, like vocabulary being read out for a language class.
“YOU ARE WANTED FOR DESERTION FROM THE ANGELIC CORPS,” she said. “OPEN THE DOOR AND SURRENDER.”
She didn’t expect them to open the door. She’d wait a few seconds, then knock and say it again with a little more emphasis, and when that didn’t work, she’d start blasting. A heavy armor-piercing missile, the kind she’d used against Jai’s biggest monsters in emergencies, would crack open even a God-built hull.
But before she finished counting those few seconds, a light blinked over to yellow above the airlock.
Someone was coming through.
Enga turned off the safety on every single firearm she possessed and extended her arms to their fullest position, fanning them all out, every muzzle mercilessly trained on the airlock door.
She was going to have to handle this carefully. The obvious thing to do here was to just fucking shoot Akavi as soon as he opened the door. But she wasn’t allowed. She needed to let him win. He would try to use his words to persuade her to stand down, to join his side, and she was going to have to pretend to agree.
She’d have to pretend well enough that it fooled Akavi, who was a very keen observer of people, and who had every reason to be suspicious of her. Even with the apraxia and dead nerves in her face, which stopped his microexpression software from working on her, it would be hard.
Oh well. If it didn’t work, she could shoot him and tell Irimiru she’d tried.
The airlock opened.
Akavi stood behind it – he hadn’t bothered to change out of his true form, so she saw him in his natural translucent skin. He held a sheet of metal in front of him as a makeshift shield – pitiful, really. She still could have blown his head off with ease.
“PUT THE SHIELD ON THE GROUND,” she bellowed, “AND YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.”
But even as she said it, Akavi barked out a series of words of his own. She couldn’t make sense of them, mostly because she was already talking and she wasn’t good at understanding more than one sound at a time. But she felt something grab on to her mind as he said the words. Her vision blurred, and her limbs seized, and–
NO.
He’d said he’d had this program removed. But he’d lied, of course he’d lied. Akavi always lied, and so he’d kept this hidden in a part of her circuitry after all, just in case she ever turned against him. He’d kept the off switch.
And Irimiru – had he fooled Irimiru?
No, he wouldn’t have had to. Irimiru would have checked, but Irimiru didn’t care. Irimiru had said that Akavi would try to capture her. And this was one of the simplest methods by which that could happen. Irimiru just hadn’t bothered to tell Enga about it in advance. Why should they?
Enga’s consent was irrelevant; she couldn’t do anything about it now. She couldn’t even scream, as her vision faded to nothing, and her hearing faded to silence, and her powerful body faded away to nothing at all.
Elu waited, too nervous to properly breathe, as muffled sounds he couldn’t make sense of came from outside the Talon.
Akavi had only just
come back onto the bridge after securing Luellae in her room, but his face had lit up strangely when he heard Enga’s voice. He had exited without a word, without even bothering to explain his plan to Elu. Elu didn’t know how Akavi thought he could survive against firepower like Enga’s. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe Enga would kill Akavi and board the Talon and–
His first, foolish thought was that she’d run away with him. Let Luellae go and then take him some place where they would be safe. He had missed Enga. And she was so powerful – maybe she could protect him from the other angels. But of course, she wouldn’t. Elu had violated Nemesis’ rules even worse than Akavi. He’d left the angelic corps, left her, of his own volition, and he knew the kind of person Enga was. He could not expect mercy.
Maybe Enga would kill them both. Maybe he deserved that.
The airlock creaked open, and Elu held his breath.
Akavi was uninjured, and it disturbed Elu just how much relief he felt, seeing that. Why did he still want Akavi to be all right, deep down? Akavi looked at his stricken face with scorn. “What do you take me for, Elu? Did you think I didn’t install failsafes into my own most dangerous operatives? Come out here and help me with this.”
Elu followed him numbly through the airlock. He had already worked out what Akavi meant. He remembered the off switch. He thought that had been removed decades ago, but of course it hadn’t. Of course Akavi, manipulative and controlling, wouldn’t truly give up such a method of control.
Amid the trees, Enga was standing still and frozen, her eyes unfocused, the weapons that protruded from her arms half-cocked. She barely breathed.
Elu flinched slightly as Akavi approached her frozen body. In this state, Enga wouldn’t even be able to see him approach. She would be conscious in some sense, but removed from any ability to perceive the world around her. If she was threatened, she would not know. If she was injured, she would not feel the pain.
“What are you going to do, sir?” Elu asked, a lump in his throat. If Akavi wanted to hurt her, kill her, Elu clearly couldn’t stop him. He couldn’t stop anything.
