Jacky laughed. “Only you, Hope. Only you.”
“Says the daywalking vampire. You’ve practically got a goth cult.” Which wasn’t very nice but was true. At least in Chicago, after her vampire-status had become an open secret the goth subculture had welcomed her with open arms and made her their informal queen. Which had her biting her tongue constantly since she hated goth. Goth music, goth sensibilities, goth mannerisms. Hope thought it was more than a little unfair, especially given the way she dressed as Artemis, but since the psycho “master vampire” who’d slaughtered her parents before kidnapping, tormenting, and “turning” her had been a goth dweeb who’d fixated on her in high school . . .
As long as she didn’t hurt any of her goth fans, Hope was willing to cut her friend plenty of slack.
“You know . . .” Shell mused, “Michael could have been telling you the truth with every story he gave you.”
“Huh?” Hope stood back as Jacky finally drew her Vulcans.
“Seriously. After some powers and even Omega Class beings encountered since the Event, scientists recognize the existence of ‘non-material’ entities. One theory being advanced by Rational Theists is that God is a self-totalizing being.”
“Again, huh? And what does that have to do with what Michael said?”
“In recent multiverse theory, with an infinite number of universes, the odds of a self-totalizing being appearing in at least one approaches certainty. A self-totalizing being would immediately ‘expand’ its awareness to perceive all reality. Past, present, and future would be meaningless to a self-totalizing being since it would be an omniscient precog and postcog, so aware of the past and future that it would effectively inhabit all time simultaneously. Being omnisciently aware of all causality, it would be able to perceive the best of all possible outcomes for the world and all of history. The ‘best possible outcome for the universe’ could be the ‘paradise of human apotheosis’ that Michael mentioned.”
Jacky snickered. “So Michael really could be another time-traveler? And what’s this guy saying?”
“You don’t want to know, and yup!”
Jacky fired her Vulcans, knocking Ijsselsteen on his butt. “So God is science-fiction, now? An ultimate ancient intelligence?”
“Just saying. Maybe? And he gives up.”
“So you’re done with the speculative theology? Then find us the nearest police station.”
“It’s not the Russians.” After ten hours rest and another five hours work, Shelly was more thrilled than she could possibly say to be able to tell the room that.
“Certainty?” General Arun asked.
“Probability close to one,” Shelly confirmed. “It’s absolutely certain that Russians are involved, but that means as much as saying Chinese, Arabs, and Mexicans were involved in the Whittier Base Attack—The Ring was a coalition of nationalist terror groups, not national forces.”
Leiman looked skeptical. “How can you be sure?”
“First, politically. When we’re talking about Russia then we’re talking about New Russia, that’s all of Old Russia from the Baltic Sea to the Ural Mountains, and the Russian Federation, everything from the Urals to the Pacific. The only source for lots of Russian and Kazakh bodies is the warzone that’s the disputed territory claimed by the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan. That leaves out New Russia unless they’re going a long way for bodies and Shell and I can’t find any hint of it.” Shelly paused and looked around. Everyone was nodding.
“Neither Russia recognizes the other’s government and both claim sovereignty over all Russian territory. It would be suicide if the Russian Federation attacked us with weapons of mass destruction, even covertly—if we found any trail leading from the attacks to the RF government, it would be game over, we’ll help New Russia roll them up whatever the cost.”
“All very logical,” Arun agreed. “However, we all know that governments can get very stupid. And the attackers must be getting assistance from elements in the RF military. For the bodies and the mini-tahks, if nothing else. Those could not have simply been stolen as the Gungnirs were. Not in the kinds of numbers we’ve seen.”
Shelly nodded. “Which is why we know Russians are involved. I’m almost one-hundred percent certain that the base we’re looking for is in RF territory. But we’re still looking at a coalition of villains as well. The Green Man, and now the Ascendant.” She held up a hand at Arun’s frown. “We’ve now seen Beatdown, Fastball, Lash, Hellix, Bullet, all those are his minions, at least we haven’t seen them since the Detroit Supermax breakout and they showed up in Brussels boosted. So they’re still with him.” She sighed, rubbed the back of her neck.
“Honestly, I can’t imagine him contracting them out. But Karl Langer, he’s a contractor. And Capacitor, Cracker, Slip, and Scales—the guys who hit the CDC vaccine supply in Chicago—those guys are all known contractors. So we’ve got Russian military, boosted fanatics, and villain contractors. It’s—” She slumped in her chair. “This is bad.”
“What’s your theory?” Arun asked for everyone.
“This is one of those constellations of events Leiman was talking about. Even with all the differences between potential futures in the Teatime Anarchist’s files, all futures showed the same progression—multiplying and more powerful coalitions of breakthroughs, non-state actors leveling up to match the powers of states. And these guys are attacking our infrastructure on multiple levels. If they continue with more strikes of the current magnitude, they could wreck the whole global economic structure. The destabilizing effects of total economic collapse—we’re not talking thousands of deaths, or hundreds of thousands. We’re talking millions. Maybe billions. Our whole global industrial civilization. We’re fighting for all the marbles, now.”
“I need a drink,” Kelly said.
“Agreed,” Arun groaned. “And then back to work. We need—”
The screen reserved for Shell lit up with her face. “Guys, grab your science-geeks! The Green Man just attacked! Again!”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Telekinetics (TKs) move themselves by will alone, which means orientation has no effect on anything but air resistance. Atlas-Type flight is very different. They appear to generate thrust, like a rocket, by ejecting virtual reaction mass. The ‘reaction mass’ exists only conceptually and its only effect on the physical world is the counterbalancing thrust it produces in the Atlas-Type. They generate thrust most strongly along the direction of their body’s central axis, and the easiest way to understand their flight dynamics is to imagine them wearing invisible boot-jets. They fly by balancing on their feet atop the vector of thrust, leaning almost horizontal at high speeds to balance against air resistance and gravity.”
Barlow’s Guide to Superhumans
Hope’s first clue something was wrong was Shell shouting in her ear, and from everyone else’s reactions they were obviously getting the same message. Shell’s alert had caught the whole “away team” around a table in an unused office, and Blackstone’s simple “Go,” was purely redundant as Sifu disappeared out the door in a blur and the rest of them abandoned the conference room as a small but intensely focused mob.
“Closest outside access is left!” Shell directed them and Hope skidded around a corner, cracking the glass patio door in front of her in her haste to get through before her Iron Jack-transformed dad ran right over her—and froze. He didn’t and she nearly flew over the rail at the hit.
“Sor—” He didn’t finish.
“Oh just bite me,” Jacky groaned, seeing what had poleaxed Hope. Quin didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to.
The Continental Guard had set up in a damaged but sound building near Luxembourg Station, not far from the Impact Zone and inside the Quarantine Zone, and given them some rooms. The EU military had set up a research field facility in a sister-building on the other side of the station, where they’d moved all the Green Zombie Soldiers for examination. Now, under an open-skied afternoon drizzle, the building looked
like a mutant chia pet, green and woody vine-branches sprouting from dozens of upper windows. Shouts and screams in Dutch, French, and English assaulted Hope’s ears.
“Think it wanted watering?” Jacky quipped.
“Clearingthelowerfloors withSidestep!” Sifu called over Hope’s earbud, snapping her back into fight-mode.
“Right! Shell, patch us into the Guard network and let Nike know we’re supporting! Artemis and Harlequin help on the street!” She grabbed her dad and launched them at the building, behind her Jacky going to mist and Quin leaping from the balcony to fall and bounce her way across. The green-infested building loomed and then Hope was through the widest window she could see, dropping her dad on the runner-covered floor. “Keep its attention, yell if you need extraction! Shell, paint a map and can you get Galatea here?”
“I’m all out of ammo-loadouts from the attack!”
“Then take upper-floor evacuation! Nike, is there a plan?”
“Sidestep is bringing the fire! Until then, pull anybody trapped!”
“Right!” In her super-sight the world around her was lit in shades ranging from red to yellow in the infrared spectrum—the growing reaching climbers of the Green Man brighter than the ambient temperature. The glowing outlines of the building’s occupants was brighter than both, but blocked by most of the walls. “Shell, have you hacked the building cameras?”
“Got them! Sending you targets!”
“Thanks!” Hope flew through the building, prioritizing pockets where the Green Man’s roots and vines grew densest, smashing the thickest branches with Malleus to open the way for escapees to get to the stairwells. It became a race against the green to keep halls clear enough for bodies to move through and she had to repeatedly fly to junctions as they sealed. “Iron Jack! How’s it going?”
“I’ve got it’s attention!” An HUD schematic showed his icon moving steadily towards the center of his floor. Hope smashed another woody knot, turning her head away from the explosion of pulp and chips. “Got a handle on your new toy?” Shell asked.
“Swinging it’s like swinging me!” It really was. The thing had to weigh twice as much as she did wearing her Vulcan-made armor. It multiplied the force of her swings, but even bracing herself it pulled her around her center of gravity. She felt like the tail on a dog.
She’d also forgotten just how messy fighting the Green Man was; she was already covered in cellulous and plant bits.
A dark haired lab-coated scientist scrambled past her, tripping over runners and pulling himself up and onward. Hope swept aside vine runners behind him, noting they weren’t growing with any real direction, and pushed further in. “Should I go up or down?”
“No! It looks like you picked the originating floor! You’re closing on Nike’s position!”
That was when Hope found the first body, a researcher who’d been trapped in growing vines, the runners sending out roots into the body as thicker branches had grown around him. “Yeah, I’m not going to unsee that, ever,” Shell muttered as Hope pushed past him into a hall choked with growth. She didn’t look back at the sounds of growth behind her.
“Here! Here!” Nike’s voice shouted in her ear, and Shell helpfully threw a targeting icon up for Hope. She pushed into another choked corridor and then was suddenly in the clear. In front of her Nike carved away at what looked like an almost solid wall of woody vine and branches. Astra’s EU counterpart swung a humming leaf-bladed sword that glowed bright enough to hurt Hope’s eyes. The large Greek hoplite shield the woman wielded on her left arm had the same glow around its rim and Hope realized both shield and sword had nearly monomolecular edges as grasping vines simply sheared away on contact.
“It started here!” she declared as Hope joined her to attack the wall, and then both were silent except for hard gasps for air as they worked to cut and smash their way in. “What. Will. The. Fire. Do?” Hope asked between swings.
“Stop the spread! The building will go!”
“Shell! Is everyone out?”
“Still got pockets—Iron Jack’s finding some—most are evacuated.”
“Then we wait and hold!” Nike declared. “Make a hole for Sidestep!”
“Nah a problem,” a voice behind them said and a long-bladed spear sank into the woody mass and exploded. Hope felt the building shake as every branch and vine around them shuddered, and when her vision cleared everything was still.
She was also covered in pulp and explosively heated sap. Morrigan stepped past to retrieve her spear. “Not sure ye’ll need the fire, now, though. Tha’ seems to have done it.”
“Holy crap—that was at least ten megajoules of lightning!” Shell whispered. “Lei Zi would be jealous!”
“She doesn’t need to go and pick up her lightning every time she throws it,” Hope quipped, a little dazed. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and her wig sparked with static charge. Nike recovered first, renewing her attack on the half-shattered wood barrier, and Hope joined her as Morrigan stood back. With no more resistance, they cleared a way to what looked like it had been a cross between a lab and a torture chamber. And five more bodies, messily and definitively dead. Six, counting the freakily misshaped Green Zombie Soldier in the restraining chair.
“Vlamenos,” Nike spat, but didn’t look surprised. “Idiot,” she translated. “Sidestep!” The Rotterdam Guard’s speedster arrived in a blur with Sifu, both holding enough C-4 and thermite to blow and burn a stadium. “Set everything, then we finish clearing!”
They did, guided by Shell’s tap on the building’s security and their super-duper senses. Morrigan turned into a crow to maneuver through the growth-choked halls—which would have surprised Hope if she hadn’t already seen drone recordings of the scarred battle-goddess diving into the middle of GZS swarms like a black avian bomb before transforming back to swing and stab away with Lugh’s Spear. They raced to recover the last trapped survivors as the Green Man’s veins of roots and vines began to show life, and when Shell announced the building clear Nike gave the order.
The charges planted at the center weren’t the only charges, and the building came down spectacularly. Hope was getting sick of seeing buildings come down. “And now I’m covered in plant ick and concrete dust,” she sighed. “Oh, joy.” She looked at the ring of emergency vehicles. “Shell, you showed Blackstone what happened in there? If the Green Man—”
“On it. He’s passed the word, and we’re burning every last GZS corpse in Chicago.”
“Wise.” Nike nodded. “If the Green Man can use any of its puppets as the seed of a green wave, we must do the same.”
“Also, you three really need to clean up and get a group shot!”
“Excuse me?”
“Look. At. You!”
Hope burst out laughing. It wasn’t often that Shell’s old inner fangirl reemerged, but this time . . . At Nike’s puzzled look, she waved at the three of them. Muscled and scarred Morrigan in equally battered leather armor, spear hoisted on her shoulder. Almost-as-tall Nike in hoplite-style armor carrying shield and sword. And then there was her own little self, in breastplate and holding her battle maul.
Morrigan practically cackled, slapping Hope on the back. “Warrior-sisters! The money we could make! All men would be ours!”
The “messy pic” of them hit the news sites before lunch.
Half of Europe might still be powerless, but the city had managed to restore full power and amenities to its center and Hope luxuriated in hot water. She tipped her head back to let the rain shower wash away tension and fatigue. The rest and sleep had helped, but Hope knew herself; she was sixty-percent, maybe seventy. Not for fighting—there she was one-hundred percent after Michael’s cheek-poink. She rotated her left arm, ran fingers over her shoulder, over slippery skin and muscle that didn’t ache.
It should have; except for during her virtual experiences in the God-Fish recursions, the ghost of her injury had ached after every fight since Tokyo. Just a little miracle, nothing worth mentio
ning, she’d been healed before of worse. Yeah, by standing at ground zero for the speaking of a divine Word of Power. She dropped her arm.
Father Nolan had once described Dr. Cornelius as a “mortal instrument,” speculated that if God had indeed revealed an aspect of His reality to the wannabe mystic then it had been because those Words had been needed in the world and the hermetic magician had been the best delivery vehicle “for Her purposes.” The father’s eyes had twinkled when he’d said it.
Admit it—Father Nolan would tell you to stop asking ‘why me?’ and get on with it. She turned the hot water up to boiling, attacked the parts of her not protected from sticky splatter by costume layers.
Shell faded into virtual existence beside her, hair up and wrapped in a thick towel. “Got a minute?”
“Why? Want me to scoot over?” Hope felt a smile quirk her lips; Shell wasn’t bothering with verisimilitude, roiling steam and stray shower spray passing right through her.
“We could wash each other’s backs,” her BF quipped. “Kitsune would be jealous. There’s something you need to see. I’ve made sure the room’s secure.”
That sobered Hope right up. “What’s going on?”
“I wanted to see how the new Green Man attack started, right? So I watched the security footage—”
“You hacked EU military data?”
Shell rolled her eyes. “Considering I, I don’t know, hacked their whole on-site security system to direct everybody, I think they know I’m in there.” She grinned. “They won’t find me. I’m just that good.”
“If they don’t catch you, it didn’t happen,” Hope deadpanned and sighed.
“Yup. Anyhoo, you need to see it.”
“Now? Okay, hit me.” She braced herself as the shower disappeared and she stood in Shell’s virtual simulation of the plant-choked room she’d seen, before the attack. Lab-coated techs moved around the close room, checking machines and ignoring her and Shell and the GZS strapped to the frame.
Repercussions (Wearing the Cape Book 8) Page 19
