Collision: Book Four in the Secret World Chronicle - eARC Read online

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE Penny

  CHAPTER ONE Don’t Run Our Hearts Around

  CHAPTER TWO Here With Me

  CHAPTER THREE Secrets

  CHAPTER FOUR Hurricane: Storm Warning

  CHAPTER FIVE Holding On

  CHAPTER SIX Penny: Tarnished

  CHAPTER SEVEN Man in the Mirror

  CHAPTER EIGHT Hurricane: Storm Flags Flying

  CHAPTER NINE Danger Zone

  CHAPTER TEN Wounds

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Lost Penny

  CHAPTER TWELVE Dead Meat

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Hold Heart

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN Cover Girl

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN Eskimo

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN Found Penny

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Next To Normal

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Beloved

  CHAPTER NINETEEN Rubicon

  CHAPTER TWENTY Penny Saved

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Hurricane: Storm Front

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Start Shootin’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Penny Black

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Ice Cold

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Penny For Your Thoughts

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Hurricane: Storm Surge

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Collision

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Soul of a Man

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Ablivion

  COLLISION – eARC

  Book Four of the

  SECRET WORLD CHRONICLE

  Created by Mercedes Lackey & Steve Libbey

  Written by

  MERCEDES LACKEY

  with Cody Martin, Dennis Lee & Veronica Giguere

  Edited by Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon

  Advance Reader Copy

  Unproofed

  From New York Times best-seller and science fiction and fantasy mistress of adventure Mercedes Lackey, Book #4 in the pulse-pounding SECRET WORLD saga of modern-day humans with superpowers. The metaheroes deal with the consequences of their superpowers, but the evil Thulian threat lies in wait.

  Destroying the Thulian North American Headquarters has not made life easier for ECHO, or the world. The Thulians continue their attacks, first in unpredictable incursions, then with another all-out assault on ECHO, orchestrated against ECHO headquarters across the world.

  Dominic Verdigris has not given up on his effort to obtain The Seraphym for himself, in order to use her to avert his own fate at the hands of the Thulians. Nor have the heroes of ECHO and the CCCP found life anything but harder.

  Belladonna's duties have increased a thousand-fold, and now she has responsibility for the lives of every metahuman in ECHO on her conscience. Obviously using the intelligence gathered from the raid on the North American Thulian base to find the main Headquarters is of paramount importance--but once it is found, can she manage to convince the armies of the world to follow ECHO into an all-out attack?

  Then Red Saviour risks everything on a risky gambit of her own: send her "wolves" of the CCCP to find the Thulian Headquarters, despite the dangers, and despite the consequences of blowing everything on this hazardous gambit that could very well end, not in victory, but with the world in flames.

  Collision: Book Four of the Secret World Chronicle

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Mercedes Lackey, Cody Martin, Dennis Lee, & Veronica Giguere

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4767-3691-4

  Cover art by Larry Dixon

  First Baen printing, December 2014

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedicated to the memory of Donald “Tre” Chipman, known to his friends in Paragon City as “Ascendant”

  Victoria Victrix glanced at the clock. She was running out of time.

  Fortunately most of the rest of this story was self-explanatory. She wouldn’t really need to preface anything.

  All right, O my supposed readers. Hang onto your hats. It’s going to be one rough ride.

  PROLOGUE

  Penny

  Mercedes Lackey and Dennis Lee

  In the far corner of the cell, Penny lay curled up in a ball. She clamped her hands firmly over her ears and fought to keep those horrible voices out. They came at night, relentless, mixing together in a disjointed chorus of wailing agony and hate.

  She kept her eyes shut tight now. She had made the mistake, that first night, and had watched the ghosts try in vain to torment the living, but to no avail. As eerie as they were, luminescent figures that floated about, that winked in and out of existence and screamed their pain and loss, no one woke. The others barely stirred. No one believed in ghosts, not when you couldn’t see or hear them, not even if they were wailing at you, their faces inches away from yours, their baleful glares betraying madness. Only she knew how real they were, all too well, and the folly of granting them audience. Penny had learned, long ago, that to acknowledge the dead was to invite their attentions. Now, she refused to even look, and spent each night, every night, all night, curled up and facing the wall, trying her best not to listen. It never made a difference, she heard it all and suffered as her cellmates should have suffered. These were not her ghosts, she should not have to bear them.

  Screaming Girl was the loudest. Always so shrill, so persistent, Penny wondered how even a ghost could not go hoarse from that much caterwauling. Penny had caught a glimpse of her that first night. What was left of her hair was scorched, frayed, and hung in tatters, barely hiding the horribly burnt and scarred scalp beneath. She careened about in a frenzy of movement, her limbs and skin crackling obscenely as they shook with pain. Faint tendrils of smoke seeped endlessly from her hair, eyes and hands, and faded in the dim fluorescent light that lit the cell from above. Every so often, she would stop and make a mad dash for Raphael, the nervous boy with the horrible stutter. Even in sleep his brow was fixed in a guilty furrow. Screaming Girl leapt, as she always did, her burning hands raging forwards to pierce his eyes, to sink into the flesh of his face, but stopped short, as they always did. She let her fingers caress his cheek, and she would murmur the only coherent words she seemed to know.

  “Your lies were so sweet…”

  Then she would be off again, dashing madly about the room, screaming.

  Penny shrank away from her, from all of them. Screaming Girl was by far the loudest, but the others frightened her more. The Drunk Lady swayed about, moaning of lost loves and brandishing a broken glass that wept perpetual tears of blood from jagged shards. Awful Granny barely spoke above a whisper, but with each word she promised bloody retribution for even the slightest transgression against church, state and common decency. The Creepy Man was the worst. He never made a sound. He shifted about the room on sturdy legs that supported a twitching torso and shaking hands, glaring at them all in turn. His face, matted with long, damp and thinning hair, masked a pair of wide, luminous eyes that stole hateful looks about. His hands and feet were caught in irons, held together by short bits
of chain which seemed to catch the light. His feet, which would on occasion slam down with each agitated step, never made so much as a soft thud on the concrete. He would sometimes hunch over and convulse in coughing fits, without even a whisper escaping his lips. His chains, which dangled and slammed together during his odd patrols about the cell, did so in silence. Penny had once caught the full effect of his hateful glare. It burned into her, and it didn’t seem enough to slam her eyes shut. She had burrowed deep under the thin shelter of her blanket, her shaking hands holding her head against her knees. She had done that for the rest of the night, silently praying for the sun to rise.

  And so it would go, each and every night. The ghosts would rise, and Penny, at the tender age of twelve, would suffer them until daybreak.

  “Not mine,” Penny whispered, her voice muffled into her pillow. “You’re not mine, go away…”

  But a voice spoke in her ear. “They’re not, but I am, dear…”

  “You go away too,” Penny groaned. “Stop bothering me. I didn’t do anything to you. I hate you.”

  “Now deary,” the voice purred, hovering just over her. “I taught you better manners than that.”

  Penny sobbed, and tightened up even more. “Just go away,” she said. Her tears seeping out and soaking her flat pillow. “I’m sorry you died, I’m sorry, but I didn’t…”

  “But you did, dear.” The voice was impossibly close, and Penny could almost feel an icy breath on her neck. “Didn’t I always tell you? Tell me, what did I say?”

  “Go away…”

  “Momma knows best, Momma knows all. And you believe Momma when she tells you…”

  “No,” Penny cried. “No no no no no no…”

  “Momma died because you killed her.”

  Penny shrank away from her, pressed her hands tighter against her ears, and almost screamed when she felt the hand on her shoulder.

  “Hey there, whoa, it’s just me…”

  Penny exhaled and turned to face her brother.

  “She talking to you again?” He sat down on her cot and stretched out his legs to form a barrier between her and the rest of the group. When Penny nodded and buried her face in her pillow, he reached over to ruffle her hair with a gentle hand. “She’s wrong. You can tell her that, too.”

  “You just did.” Penny sniffled and shifted so that her head rested against his lap. “But she says—”

  “Just because she’s dead don’t make her words true.” He winced as she pushed against a particularly tender spot on his arm. She lifted her head, the skin around her eyes almost translucent from lack of sleep. “Aw, Penny. I’m okay. I told you, it doesn’t hurt as much as before. Put your head down. Nobody’s gonna come over while I’m here, okay?”

  She did as he said, eyes closing while calloused hands patted her back in that awkward way of older brothers comforting younger siblings. It would work for a while, until Screaming Girl began a fresh tirade. His hands felt patronizing. He believed her about the ghosts, at least that’s what he always said. He believed she heard them, that she saw them, how could he not? How many girls lay awake all night, pretending to shake with fright? But did he actually believe the ghosts existed, or did he think his sister was simply cracking up? She tried not to think about it. It was enough he was there, that he would always be there to protect her. It would have to be.

  “How long?” she asked finally.

  “’Til sunrise? Couple of hours. Then you can sleep, sis.”

  “Unless he takes you again,” she said. “Unless he takes you away and makes you scream.”

  “He’s been gone for weeks this time,” he assured her, though his voice sounded far off, haunted. “Maybe he’ll stay away for a while. Maybe he’s dead.”

  Penny snorted. “You can’t kill the devil, stupid. He just comes back, mad. He’s always worse when he’s mad.”

  He sighed, and patted her back again.

  “Just hold on, Penny,” Pike said. “I’ll get us out of here.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Don’t Run Our Hearts Around

  Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin

  There was light. There was peace. There was pain. Mostly, there was pain. At first the pain didn’t have a name. It was abstract, as if it was happening outside of him. Then the name came to him. John. John Murdock. He was John Murdock and the pain was his. The pain suddenly became everything, it became him. He saw flashes that didn’t make any sense through the haze of his anguish; shooting and fighting in a hangar, faces that he didn’t recognize, blood, and fire. It was all fire. As suddenly as it came crashing through him, it was over.

  There was still pain, but it was the pain of someone dropped like a sack onto a hard surface in an exceedingly awkward position. John’s shoulder hurt; his entire right side was lanced through with pain. More sensations. He was on a cement floor; it was cold and clean. It was dark around him, except for a slight electrical flickering coming from behind. Chairs in front of him, with something man-shaped sitting in one of them. He struggled, and then remembered how to talk. “Where…am…I?” He croaked out the last vowel before he lost consciousness.

  * * *

  The Soviet Bear stared dumbfounded at the naked man on the floor. It looked…it looked like Comrade Murdock. Except Comrade Murdock was supposed to be dying, or dead, and not appearing out of thin air, naked and healthy, into the middle of the break room. He looked at the bottle of “Worker’s Companion” vodka in his hand. Looked at the naked man. Decided that the two had nothing to do with each other. Then he noticed that the break room’s trusty television, a sturdy model nearly identical to the ones built in the Soviet Union and looking as if it was half as old as Bear, was cracked and smoking.

  He decided that the naked man probably did have something to do with that.

  He sighed. “Borzhe moi. Commissar will probably blame me.” Then he looked at the naked man again. “On other hand, if this is Comrade Murdock, she will certainly blame him instead. Good thinking, Pavel.” Much cheered, he shoved himself up out of the chair and headed for the briefing room.

  At least a broken television set was not like a broken Ural. Many, many broken, burned, exploded, and mangled Urals.

  * * *

  Bella probably shouldn’t have been here, but the ECHO debriefing wasn’t until noon, so—hell with it. She was by-god going to sit in on the CCCP one, since she’d taken over for Vic at the tail end of the infiltration op. And anyway, this way she knew that Saviour would get everything.

  Unter finished his debrief right up to the point where Vic had passed out. Bella picked it up from there. “…so when I got her conscious she told me she’d neutralized some sort of super-death-machine by pounding it into the ground. I dunno, I’m not inclined to send ECHO down there to look for it unless you’re in favor, Nat.”

  Red Saviour shook her head. “Later maybe. Are being have enough on plate. We are having leads?”

  “Da. But my people haven’t got done with what the infil team extracted yet. Cross your fingers…I think we’re going to have the location of their HQ when we’re done.”

  Saviour let out a breath that she had clearly been holding in. “Then…da. Was worth ten times over, the co—”

  Bella felt it. They all felt it. It wasn’t physical, but whatever it was…it might as well have been. Like a body-blow that doesn’t hurt. Except that in Bella’s case—it did. She doubled over with the anguish of it, of something…vital…taken. And yet, it wasn’t something that had been taken from her.

  “…borzhe moi…” She looked up with tears in her eyes from the crippling grief to see Red Saviour shaking her head as if someone had just hit her with a two-by-four. “…what?”

  She choked down the tears. “I—I don’t know but—”

  The clomping of heavy feet outside Saviour’s briefing room heralded the arrival of Soviet Bear. “Commissar—comrades—” he whuffed. “Television is being broken. Also is naked man on floor, that maybe is Comrade Murdock. Not my doing, eit
her of these things.”

  Bella suddenly was sure, instantly sure, that this was what she had felt. Or was at least part of it. Before Bear was halfway done, she was on her feet and pushing past him, headed for the break room, impelled by a growing urgency she couldn’t even begin to explain.

  * * *

  John woke up again, slowly. It was brighter here; he could feel that he was in a different room. It smelled like antiseptic and rubber gloves. That was a familiar smell; it had been the same odor in nearly every Army sickbay he’d ever been in. The soft hum of monitors and someone moving around were the only sounds he could immediately pick up; slowly, other far away sounds came through, but he couldn’t recognize them right off.

  That…was odd. Smells were more intense, nuanced. Sensations that should have hurt, didn’t. The pain he’d awakened with was gone, leaving nothing behind but the memory of having hurt. The strangest feeling was that of being heavier; like he had gained mass, somehow. It was disorienting. John groaned weakly, trying to raise himself up and open his eyes.

  “So, Comrade Murdock.” The voice was too loud—but within a second, somehow, it had modulated down to normal levels. Almost as if he had some sort of amplifier hooked up to his ears so he could make out things that should have been too quiet to hear—and now he’d turned it down again since someone was speaking. “You are being make bad habit of waking up in my medbay, da?”