Legacy: The Girl in the Box #8 (7 page)

“Like links in a chain,” Scott said with a nod. “Makes sense. If you’re a meta, odds are overwhelming your family is as well, that someone up the tree came from a cloister or knows others who are metas. We’re all connected, except for wildfire metas and a few other loners. You just keep following that chain in both directions until you reach the end, then try and get hold of another chain and another until there are none left.”

“An apt metaphor,” I said. “And they’re cutting more links out all the time. If Weissman’s in Rio, they’ll be putting all their attention there for the time being. Except for Sovereign.”

“Oh?” My mother gave me a questioning look. “You know something else about him?”

“I guess I’m a priority for him,” I said, feeling myself flush. “Not sure why, but Weissman said I’m the only meta outside Century that he’s categorically forbidden to kill.”

Scott gave me a funny look. “How’d you make the list?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” I said. “There are some things going on with Century that make no sense at all. Like, remember when they tried to kill us in the woods, when they shot Andromeda? But now they’re not allowed to kill me? Weissman said that was direct from Sovereign. Same with this whole extinction protocol: Weissman said it’s his program, that Sovereign doesn’t really care about it. Meanwhile, Raymond told me that Sovereign and Century are going to make the world a better place by removing the old order of metas and putting a new one in power.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s like we’re in the middle of this giant puzzle, and there just aren’t enough pieces in place for us to see the entire thing yet.”

A pall hung over the conference room. “Who would have the answers?” Li asked, watching me with a measured gaze.

“Sovereign,” I said. “Weissman. The other members of the one hundred.” I sighed. “But I don’t know who any of the others are.”

“So we have two problems that need solving,” Li said. “One, we need to gather intelligence to ascertain where metas are located in the U.S. regardless of what we decide to do with them. Second, we need to discover any Century operatives within our borders, and—obviously this would be much worse—any operating within the government or even our new agency. Counterintelligence,” he finished, “in order to fend off their efforts against us.”

I leaned my head back against the worn leather headrest of the chair. “That’s a tall order, and we can’t even do it by traditional means.”

“Because of telepaths?” Li asked after a moment’s hesitation.

“Yes,” I said.

“There aren’t that many telepaths in the world,” my mother spoke up from her end of the table. “If there are only a hundred metas in Century, I can almost promise you that they can’t have gathered more than ten telepaths at most to be part of their number.”

Foreman placed fingers on his chin, contemplative. “How do you know that?”

My mother smiled. “With the Agency, we started to track the basic disposition of metas by type. Pure telepaths are rare. If Century got their hands on ten, it’d be probably half of the current supply worldwide. More now, I suppose.”

Scott leaned forward. “Is it possible they could be tracking metas through other means?”

“Cloisters,” I said. “They’re a good starting point, since they’re essentially communities where almost everyone is a meta. I don’t know how well a telepath can sift a brain, but my impression would seem to suggest that they can go through it like—”

“Like you or I would with our touch,” my mother said. “They just don’t have the touch requirement, and can do it without anyone but a very well-trained person knowing that they’ve done it.”

“So a telepath could sit at the edge of a cloister,” Scott said, talking it out, “and just dig through the inhabitants one by one, pulling out their memories of every meta they’ve ever had contact with?”

My mother nodded slowly. “Yep. Depending on the strength of the telepath, they could be as close as a few hundred feet away or as far as hundreds of miles.”

I chewed my lip. “Or more. Some can do more.” Everyone looked at me. “I’m pretty sure Zollers touched my mind from a lot farther away, unless he followed me to England.”

“Maybe he was in England?” Scott asked.

“He touched my mind only a few days earlier when I was still here in Minneapolis,” I said. “So unless he traveled in the intervening time, I think we can safely assume that the range might be longer in certain circumstances.”

I looked around and saw my mother contemplating that, deep in thought. “Maybe because he’d touched your mind before? That could have had something to do with it, helped him find you, the lone grain of sand in the middle of a beach.”

I played her statement back in my mind again, searching for the sarcasm, the barb. I didn’t hear it. “Maybe.”

“So, for agenda,” Foreman said, and I looked over to find him writing on a small, pocket-sized notepad, “so far, I’ve got inventorying the metas presently in the U.S., gathering intelligence, and setting up counterintelligence in preparation for Century’s first moves ... what else?”

“We should track down the remains of Omega here in the U.S.,” I said. “They had a presence here, complete with operatives and facilities. They may have lost their European operations, but I suspect they’ve still got some people in place here.” I looked at Foreman. “Karthik—one of my people in the UK—could help with that.”

“Expediting visas,” Foreman said, writing on his notepad. He looked up. “What else?”

“We had a lot of kids in school at the Directorate,” Ariadne said at last, drawing everyone’s attention to her. She sat, red hair limp and lifeless around her pale face. “Someone should check on them to be sure they’re all right.”

I felt a surge of concern, like I’d forgotten something. “Joshua Harding,” I said quietly.

“Who?” Scott said, looking over at me.

“This kid,” I said. “He helped me evacuate the dorms on the night the Directorate was destroyed. He promised me he’d help get the kids to the nearest cloister.” I looked to Ariadne. “That’s definitely something we need to look in on.”

“The nearest cloister is up on the North Shore of Lake Superior,” Scott said, frowning.

“Should be easy enough to take a look at,” Foreman said, looking up from his pad. “Anything else?”

I shook my head, my mind completely blank. I honestly didn’t know what else I could think of that we’d need to deal with right now. Nothing pressing, anyway.

“Money,” Ariadne said quietly, pulling everyone’s attention back to her. “We’ll need a payroll if you want me to pull the old Directorate back together.”

“Ah, yes,” Foreman said, and I could see the chagrin on his face. “For that, I’ll need you to put together the old trading unit again so you can make it self-sustaining because we don’t have any budgetary help from Washington. At all.”

That just sort of lay there like a bomb had gone off in the middle of the table until my mother finally broke the silence. “Let me clarify this, just so I can be certain I have it all straight.” She put her hand up and started ticking off points on her gloved fingers one by one. “We’re forming a new agency to replace the Directorate. We’re reporting directly to the government, but they’re not paying us. Our job is to stop the extinction of our entire subspecies of the human race from a threat we know almost nothing about save for that it’s headed by probably the most dangerous man in the world—”

“His second-in-command is probably one of the most sadistic I’ve ever met,” I added helpfully. “And can freeze time, making him near invincible.”

“Yes, thank you,” my mother said. “We have no real plan, no idea what’s coming, no resources to draw on save for the intelligence that you can filter to us. So we can see parts of the threat as it’s coming to wipe us out, but really the only thing standing between us and the one hundred most powerful metas in the world is me, my shut-in daughter, her teeny-bopper friends, and whatever castoffs from Omega have survived the extermination of our kind.” She sat back and let the silence consume the table. “Yes. This is going to be marvelous. I’ve saved myself from prison just so I can be killed by Sovereign.”

No one said anything for a long time after that, not even Foreman. His face was so grey it was almost ashen. I felt more than a little annoyed and tried to figure out the most creative way to bring our morale back from the brink that my mother had just pushed it toward. “Look on the bright side,” I said, looking directly at her, “at least you didn’t get locked in a box by one of your loved ones who then disappeared on you for months and months.”

Nope. That wasn’t it.

Norway

1635

His breath frosted in the air, the chill of the Norse morning sensual on his bare skin. It was almost like a lover’s touch to him, something with its own appeal, something that gave him a thrill of pleasure. Bjorn walked down the path that had become familiar to him over the last year, a trail between the new halls of his family and a village just down the way. The place where he stayed with his father and brother and other family members was good enough, pleasant enough, but it lacked mortal company. Female mortal company. And so Bjorn walked this path at least twice per week, sometimes more, to partake of the girls of the local village. They were accommodating enough, having seen an example of the folly of resistance, and made him welcome in their own way. He took a breath of the frigid air as the partially snow-covered ground crunched under his feet.
Even if they weren’t as willing as they are, I’ve dealt with that before.
He smiled at the thought.
And it carries its own pleasure and rewards.

The trees were bare, brown, with branches standing out from the trunks like fingers stretched out to each other. It reminded him of the skin of the men he had met in the years he had gone south, across the wide sea below Rome, and onto the shores of a much hotter land. He walked stark nude, his clothing clutched in his hand out of sheer enjoyment of the cold weather. When he had done so in that hot, dry land, he had not been nearly as comfortable.

The winter is in my blood,
he thought, and luxuriated in the chill prickling at his flesh. He touched one of the rough trees as he passed, letting his palm cross the gnarled bark and caress a knot where a limb had been lost a century earlier. He leaned his shoulder into it and felt its rough touch. Everything was blissful this morning. He’d been well fed the night before, well satiated by a village girl. Now he looked forward to a day of lounging around the fires of home. Perhaps later, if he felt the need, he’d walk this path again.
Two nights in a row. I might end up spoiling these village girls, getting them too used to what it feels like to have their wombs blessed by a god.

His nose caught the scent of something in the wind as it shifted direction from ahead of him. It was sharp, heavy. It was smoke, a fire, but stronger than the simple fires that kept their stronghold warm and the houses heated. This was more pungent. He cast off from the tree and regained his balance, standing there in the chill morning, hesitating as he took another deep breath. The smoke was heavy with the smell of roasting flesh.

Bjorn felt his feet move underneath him without giving it thought. They carried him onward, running under the canopy of bare and empty branches that only allowed the orange of the rising sun to peek down on him every now and again. It was a short enough run, a mile or two, and the smoke smell grew heavier and heavier until he caught sight of a black cloud where the village should be.

He burst out onto a clearing at the edge of the field before his village and his eyes beheld a sight of purest horror. Everything was in flames, a thick, orange conflagration rising from the angular frames of the wooden homes, burning bright and roaring with great fury. The semi-circle of buildings was completely enflamed, the heights of the fire reaching above the trees.

Bodies were stacked on the outside edges of the fire, just starting to be consumed. They were still a few hundred feet off but his eyes could see them from here. There were only a dozen who lived there, all grown men and women, and few enough women at that. Most prominent among the bodies was his brother, his golden hair visible at even this distance. His father was there, too, his grey beard stretching halfway down his chest, easy to pick out from the small mass of corpses.

“You must be Bjorn,” came a voice from behind him. He turned and saw a man standing there, dark of hair and eyes, watching him coldly, arms folded.

Bjorn did not answer, but an answer of sorts flashed across his mind.
It was him. He did this.
Bjorn felt a roar of fury bellow from his throat and the war-mind blew from him automatically, sending the image of darkness, of ravens, through his thoughts and blasting his enemy’s mind with it. The man did not stagger, though, like others he’d fought, did not even react. Bjorn came at him in fury, expecting him to hold his head and duck away like all his other foes always had—

But the man did none of those things. He stayed still, and just as Bjorn was about to strike him down with a mighty fist, the man reached calmly across and gripped Bjorn by the neck, interrupting his charge and slamming him to his back on the cold soil. Bjorn’s head hit the ground, the wind rushed out of him and he grunted. He lay there for a moment before realizing that the man had done this to him, this interloper, this killer, this—

“That’s enough,” the man said, still watching him coldly. “If you get up again, I will break your knees.”

Bjorn roared and started to stand, but before he had fully reached his feet the man was moving, and there was a searing pain in his knees. He sunk to the ground once more in exquisite agony, cheek hitting the packed tundra as a glob of saliva ran down his chin.

“Be a good lad and stay down,” the man said, and Bjorn looked up to see he’d shifted positions and was now standing between him and the burning village. “I have something to tell you, as you are the only survivor of this monstrosity.”

“What do ... you want?” Bjorn choked out, trying to ignore the pain in his legs, anguish as he moved one and felt the grind of bones where there had only been sweet, unnoticeable movement before.