Legacy: The Girl in the Box #8 (13 page)

“Joshua,” I whispered. “Joshua Harding?”

“He died in a blaze of glory,” Rajeev said. “Broke the necks of two of them himself that I saw and managed to work a grenade off one of their belts and blow it up in the chopper, before the last of them put him down as we were driving out of view.” He put his head down. “We threw all our cell phones out the window after that, got rid of everything they could trace and just ran for it.”

I felt a stir of emotion at the thought of a kid I’d met only once, who probably—no, almost certainly—had a little schoolboy crush on me. I tried to picture him, but all I could see clearly was the glasses. “Damn,” I whispered.

“He saved our lives. They all did,” Rajeev said. “But what we were up against wasn’t even metas and they nearly killed us.” He cast a beseeching look at Scott. “Please forgive me for not being excited about stepping up to go toe-to-toe with this group’s A-team when their B-team already nearly wiped us out.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said quietly. “You should stay here, with the cloister. They’ll be able to better protect you than we will.”

“They will?” Scott asked, giving me the sidelong.

“They will,” I said. “Because we’re not going to be about defense, we’re about offense. Our job is to take the fight to Sovereign and Century, not circle the wagons and stay carefully cocooned until the threat is over. Tell them to run,” I said to Rajeev, and he nodded. “Tell them to keep running. Run as far as you think is safe and then run farther, because nowhere is safe. Nowhere is safe from this man.” I felt a burning deep in my gut. “And nowhere is going to be safe for him to run from me.”

Tomah, Wisconsin

September 1947

The cranberry bogs were full to the brimming, flooded with water to bring the berries to the top. There were patches of red filling swampy little square ponds on either side of the road. It all looked quite magnificent from above, which was how Aleksandr Gavrikov saw almost everything. It was an early fall day with just a hint of a blustery wind, though he couldn’t truly feel it within the fire that covered his skin; he was aware of it, though, dimly, as though it was blowing in the face of someone else. He flew a little lower than he normally would have, taking in the majesty of the view. “I barely notice it anymore,” he said aloud, the mild wind whipping him in the face. “And it is such a shame.”

He took a breath and smelled something a little different. More of the slightly sulfuric smell that he had long since grown accustomed to. It was heavier somehow, though, more fragrant. He paused in his flight, idly curious.
Nowhere to go, no great hurry. Several days until I’m to rendezvous with Janus in Chicago ...

He took another whiff and caught it again, stronger this time. He stopped his flight, ceased the forward momentum and extended his hands out. The winds were always warm around him, the heat from the flames that wrapped his body doing their level best to warm the air. Something was different, though, something ... more.

“Hello, Aleksandr,” came a voice from just behind him. He spun in the air, twisting, his jaw slack as he looked up.
HOW?
The sight sent waves of shock through his body. Another figure was hovering just behind him, wreathed in flames that glowed blue, a slightly off-color mirror image of himself, staring back at him, an odd, fiery grin set upon non-existent lips. With a black hole as the only sign of a mouth, it was really more of a leer.

“Who are you?” Aleksandr asked and felt himself bob in the air from a sudden lack of control over his flight. He steadied himself, trying to push aside the shock of seeing a doppelganger hanging just outside his reach, staring back.

“Sovereign,” the other figure said casually. “But that’s just a name.”

“What do you want?” Aleksandr spat with a hiss and a crackle of flame. He could feel his non-existent skin burning.

“Nothing,” the other figure said with something approaching a shrug. “I just sensed you flying over and thought I’d introduce myself, let you know that you’re not the only one in the neighborhood right now.”

“The only what?” Aleksandr said, looking the flaming body up and down. “The only fire-covered freak?”

The figure gave another slight incline of the head and the flames dissipated as they’d been snuffed. A man remained behind, a figure a little taller than himself, clad in khaki pants, dress shoes, and a dress shirt. “Now I’m not fire-covered, at least.” He smiled. “Though one could argue that every meta-human, by dint of being so comparatively rare, is a freak.”

“What do you want?” Aleksandr asked again, his brain running along the same grooves repetitively, his mind still reeling from the shock of seeing someone like him hovering just a few feet away.

“I told you, nothing,” the man said, his amusement gone. “Like I said, I saw you flying by and just thought I’d say hello.” He gave a semi-formal salute with two fingers. “That done, I’ll leave you to your business. I wouldn’t want to impose upon you, after all.” He tilted in the other direction and began to float slowly downward, toward a state highway a few hundred feet off in the distance.

“Where are you going?” Aleksandr asked, struggling for a word, for a question, something beyond the rote instincts that were throwing absurd question after question at him. He was vaguely aware that he should be asking something different, something more ... intelligent, yet he could not seem to find it in himself to do so.

“Wherever I want,” the man called Sovereign said, not bothering to turn back as he sank toward the road below, drifting as casually as a leaf on the wind and no more concern about his direction, it seemed. “Just like always.” The man turned and gave Aleksandr a little smile. “Take care of yourself. As far as I know, you and I are the only fire-covered freaks left in the world.”

Aleksandr watched him go, silent, unsure what he should say or if he should say anything. The man reached the pavement and began to walk—to stroll, really—along the blacktop, slowly, seemingly unconcerned with anything.

For a time, Aleksandr watched him, trying to think of something to say, something to ask. After a few minutes, the man disappeared behind the trees lining the road, and Aleksandr flew on toward Chicago, his head now swimming with all the questions he wished he had asked.

Sienna Nealon

Now

Six months passed quickly in a fever of activity. They all started to run together, really, and the only differentiation until we moved into our new headquarters building (it took them only five months to build it) was what the weather was like outside my window on any given day, and whether or not Senator Foreman was in the building. He was with us at least once a week, popping in to make sure we weren’t slacking off while the world was burning, I supposed.

And burning it was.

“Estimated casualty reports say it’s all over but the crying,” Agent Li said from his place at the head of the conference room. We did things a little more formally in the new Agency. Li was standing in front of a map of Mexico City, which was the last place in the entire country of Mexico to feel the tentacles of Century snake their way through.

“The Mexican authorities weren’t able to muster an effective counter to their efforts?” Karthik asked from side of the table to my left, closer to Li.

“No,” Li said. “We extended another offer the week before last to assist, but they felt it was their ...” his face soured, “sovereign business to deal with. Mexico didn’t have a huge meta population, but they had some very good cloisters that are now smoking craters, including one in a neighborhood in Mexico City that’s being attributed to drug war violence.”

“And Canada?” Scott asked, seated just to my right, which was fitting. He, Karthik and Reed had become my lieutenants, helping me keep the crazy fevered pace of operations running. Well, with a little help.

“They infiltrated telepaths into the major metro areas weeks ago,” my mother said, putting her elbows on the table, “after they were done nailing down Mexico. They’re finishing up a clean sweep now.”

“She’s right,” Li said with a curt nod. “Hawaii and Alaska are similarly already stitched up, Century’s work already done. We didn’t get much warning on either of those, of course.”

“Why is Sovereign saving the United States for last?” This one came from Senator Foreman; it was one of his days with us, and his deep, resonant voice echoed in the conference room.

Li paused. “We’ve speculated quite a bit about that, but the truth is we don’t have a solid answer.”

“Because of me,” I said, drawing Foreman’s attention my way.

“Pure conjecture,” Li said.

“But probably good conjecture,” I said. “We still have no idea what he’s planning beyond the extermination. I leaned back in my chair, barely noticing the leather padding. It had been a long six months, a frustrating six months. Most of the countries of South America hadn’t even wanted to acknowledge they had metas, let alone that they were being hunted to extinction by some unknown, shadowy force. Even having Foreman on our side hadn’t allowed us to intervene in any but the smallest cases. We’d managed to save five metas in Ecuador, to move them to a cloister here in the U.S. I’d also killed eight submachine-gun toting mercenaries and a meta who didn’t even get a chance to show me her power before I shot her dead. She’d been about a half an inch from breaking Scott’s neck, and so she had to go, no choice.

“I love how the phrase ‘conjecture’ is really just replacing the word ‘guessing’ with something more sophisticated-sounding,” Breandan added, watching the whole conference unfold with his hand cautiously over his mouth.

Breandan, he was here for the comic relief. And oh, how desperately we needed it.

“We’ve got action on the border crossings near Seattle,” Li said, and the slide on his presentation changed. “Unfortunately we didn’t connect them in time, because they were using new passports, but some things developed after that that steered us in that direction.” He clicked his remote again and five passport photos showed up, three women and two men. “If they’d been using the same passports, we might have been able to track them from country to country, at least among the ones who have electronic records. As it is, we flagged them because they were all caught on a security camera in downtown Seattle in a shootout with unidentified operatives.”

“Of Omega,” I said.

Li cast me a withering glare. It was a regular thing between him and me, so I ignored it. “We haven’t been able to substantiate that.”

I pointed at the blurry, black-and-white images on the screen, which showed the very vague and only slightly enhanced faces of the quintet of Century operatives whom he’d just shown us being shot at by a woman and three men. I reached into a thin file sitting on my desk and tossed out three photos on the center of the conference table, one at a time. “I’m telling you, these are the same people.” The woman was a blond, looked to be in her late thirties, severe, with a worn look around her eyes. “Katheryn Hildegarde, an Omega field officer.” I stood, because that was how I did things whenever I was about to butt heads with Li. “Last known posting was Seattle, along with a few of Omega’s field operations people.”

“You haven’t had any luck chasing down Omega’s remnants?” Foreman said in a way that was just a little shy of accusing me of failing at my job. He wasn’t wrong, though. I’d also spent the last six months chasing Omega’s ghosts with little success.

“No,” I said. “Their headquarters is essentially fallen, remember? These people aren’t dumb. They know if HQ is gone, it’d be smart if they were in the wind.”

“They’ve been highly trained,” Karthik put in. “They were in charge of helping expand and run Omega’s illicit businesses here in America with very little oversight. These are seasoned people, experienced thugs, and usually quite savvy. They’re also used to going well under the radar since Omega’s political connections in the States were significantly weaker than back home in Europe.” He looked down at Hildegarde’s picture. “They’re resourceful, mean, tough fighters. We have yet to get a reasonable line on what Hildegarde is planning to do, other than potentially disrupt Century’s plans.”

“What type is she?” Foreman said, staring down at her picture.

“Medusa,” I replied, and he looked at her hair questioningly. “No snakes,” I answered before he could ask, “but she does have the ability to control her hair, lengthen it, use it as a solid appendage to beat and flail at an enemy, even entrap them within it.”

“She doesn’t really look like she’d turn you to stone with a gaze,” Breandan said, looking at the picture on the table. “She’s actually quite fetching, you know, might be she’d turn parts of you to the same consistency as stone—” He stopped, as if he was remembering where he was. “Sorry,” he said as he flushed.

I ignored it. “Whatever she’s doing, I’d like to talk to Hildegarde. She’s already put a thorn in Century’s eye, and I can’t pretend I don’t like it.” I pointed at Li’s backdrop photo. “Three of Century’s agents were killed in the exchange, along with two of hers.”

“Type?” Foreman asked, his jaw level.

“Impossible to say for sure,” Li said, his voice clipped, “but we suspect at least some of Century’s losses were telepaths, coming down to start the reconnoitering.”

Foreman leaned back. “So this is very good news.”

“If it’s true,” I said cautiously, “yes. Which is why I’d like to find a way to make contact with Hildegarde. Maybe make her an offer.”

“You think she’s going to be interested in any offer that you have to make?” Foreman asked.

“I think she’s killed Century agents, and that puts us on the same side for now,” I replied. I caught my mother’s worried look out of the corner of my eye.

“You don’t expect some sort of Omega power struggle between the two of you?” Foreman asked, fingers stroking his chin.

I glanced at Karthik. “Omega is dead. She’s welcome to whatever’s left, absent the people who have chosen to side with us. We’ve visited a few safehouses in the last few months, and everyone has pretty much flown the coop, except for that one Siren-type we ran into down in Chicago.” That hadn’t been pretty. Breandan, Scott, Karthik and Reed had almost been wiped out before I had ended her allure by breaking her jaw. Now she was stuffed in a cell in Arizona and fed three times per day by female guards.