Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle Read online

  They saw him as a hero, too. They believed in him as such. That was why he held them spellbound. He was, at one and the same time, Everyman and Larger Than Life. He was one of them, and their potential savior. And not one of them, picturing him or herself in danger, had the slightest doubt that if Corbie was there, he’d risk everything to get them out.

  Was he doing something right? Was there something to really playing it for the team, not just pretending to?

  “. . . and besides,” Corbie was continuing, “that frickin’ bastard owed me a beer!”

  They all laughed. “Corbie, what about that business last week, with the Djinni?” asked someone else, and Corbie was off on another story.

  “Ah, now, the Djinni . . . now there is one weird bloke . . .”

  The waiter had to call his name three times before Verdigris knew he was there. “Sir? Mr. Verdigris?”

  Dominic almost allowed his annoyance to show as he turned away from Corbie and his audience. “Yes? What is it?”

  “Champagne, sir?” The waiter was new to the job, that much was plain; most of the staff that he hired knew that when Verdigris wanted something, he damned well asked for it instead of being pestered every five seconds.

  “No, that’s fine, thank you.” He waved his free hand to make the dismissal that much more obvious. The waiter wandered away meekly as Verdigris turned his attention back to Corbie.

  So, where was I? Verdigris hated losing his train of thought; his mind often took him to strange and unexpected places, and it was particularly vexing when that journey was interrupted. Right. Him. He’s happy. He’s not rich, he’s not really famous, and all he’s got is a pair of wings, so he’s kind of a flying target. And he’s still happy. If he got a call right now to go throw himself after some Thulian or something, he’d leave this party without even thinking about it and do it.

  Verd frowned a little. He’s happy. He did something he rarely did. He took his own emotional temperature. He had accomplished the impossible. He was incredibly rich. It was trivial to make more money. He commanded both Echo and Blacksnake, not to mention all of his different proxies throughout the world. He was in the position now to do something about the Thulians.

  He wasn’t happy. But what more could he possibly acquire? What could he control that would make him happy?

  Well, not ending up as a brain in a box would be a damn good start. His frown deepened a little. That was the missing part of the equation; he still had that sword hanging above his head. Did anything else really matter while that possibility was still open?

  No. That’s what’s standing between me and everything else. I mean, no point even in going for world domination if that’s at the end of it. All of the doubt and anxiety melted away. Pleased that he had identified the cause of his lack of happiness, now he just had to go for the cure. And he knew the shortest cut to that cure.

  So, full speed ahead with the Project. Get the Chinese chick up to speed; she’s made for this sort of job. Appease Khanji somehow, since I still need her. Trap angel, interrogate angel, implement whatever I need to get myself off the list of “to be boxed.” He pondered a little more. Would it be worth negotiating with the Thulians once he was in a better position to do so? Probably. Very probably. Always have to leave as many options and plays open as possible, of course.

  And meanwhile, in the shortest of short terms, work the party. Verdigris was fairly confident that he’d have quite a bit of fun reviewing all of the surveillance tapes later.

  I wonder if finding someone for Khanji to kill to work off her aggression might help. He lifted a finger and a waiter—one of the old ones, who knew his signals—was instantly at his side with champagne. There’s that . . . oh wait. I think I’ve got it. I get rid of dead weight, potential trouble, and Khanji’s mad, all at the same time. Brilliant, as always, Dom. Heh.

  This party just might turn out to be fun after all.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In One Ear

  MERCEDES LACKEY

  Bella, if you are reading this, this is going to embarrass the hell out of you.

  I don’t know how Bella did this.

  Of all of us, she never lost hope, never lost focus. When something went pear-shaped, she was always the first one to pick herself up off the ground. No matter what she might have thought herself, she was the only one fit to lead the revolution. I’d be sitting there in the Overwatch suite, paralyzed, trying to make my brain work, and she’d be on the wire going “Vix? What about—” and kick start my brain again.

  Like this. None of us, none, saw this coming. It blindsided us all.

  And she grabbed the ball and ran with it.

  * * *

  This has to be a joke.

  Bella stared at the email. It didn’t make any sense. True, she was acting as de facto head of Echo Med, but Verdigris didn’t know that. She was being very, very careful to make sure he didn’t know that. Almost everything was running through Doctor Luke Sanders, aka Doc Fluke (his strange little metahuman power was to be able to diagnose really weird stuff instantly, while missing the common things completely, which made him incredibly useful to Echo Med). What wasn’t running through him was going through Ramona. Maybe by now Verdigris knew she was the only one able to calm Einhorn down, but surely that was all he knew. . . .

  It is permitted me to tell you. Verdigris believes you are an incompetent airhead.

  Bella looked up so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash. The angel was sitting on the chair across from her tiny desk in the little storage closet Ramona had stolen her for an “office.” The Seraphym looked like a Sulamith Wulfing painting; wings folded, hands laid one over the other on her lap, strange eyes staring through her.

  “You know, things like ‘incompetent airhead’ sound really odd coming from you.” She ran her hand through her bangs, fluffing them to cool herself. The room always seemed too small and too warm when the angel was in it. Even when the room was the size of a football stadium.

  The lips curved a little. I seem to be picking up odd phrases from John Murdock. But it is permitted me to tell you that your ruse still holds. Verdigris selected you because he believes you are a fool.

  Bella narrowed her eyes. “So . . . he wants Echo Med to be in chaos. The titular leader is a moron. And . . .” she sucked on her lower lip, and thought aloud. “If I were a vain little airhead, I would turn all bitchy boss on everyone. I’d insist on doing the running of things even though I don’t know squat about it.”

  Yes.

  Bella smiled grimly. “All righty then. We’ll give him the show he expects. Overwatch: Command. Call Victrix.” She heard the tiniest of clicks as her Overwatch wire came on. “Vix, you live?”

  “I’m never not live. You check your email?”

  “That’s a Roger.” The angel smiled at her, and vanished. She shook her head. She was never going to get used to that. “How many Overwatch wires have you got now?”

  “How many you need?”

  * * *

  One by one, the staff of Echo Medical filed into the conference room. Most of them had been taken aside by Ramona Ferrari over the course of the last day, taken to a broom closet that emitted a curious hum, given a couple of sentences of briefing and given what looked like a perfectly ordinary Echo field op headset—the sort that was easy to hide. They were all wearing them now.

  Vickie watched them from the cameras in each corner of the conference room—cameras Verdigris was either watching now, or would pull the footage from some time soon. As the doctors and nurses and techs and support staff shuffled around to find seats, she cued a discreet little bird chirp to their headsets to alert them.

  And Verdigris would never, ever be able to detect this. Overwatch no longer used radio signals. Every one of those headsets was getting her voice via the magical equivalent of a radio frequency. It had taken her a lot of brain sweat and even more work to get it working right, but now they were secure in a way no encryption could ever manage.

 
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t look startled. You are now listening to the Voice of Overwatch, a very clandestine little operation that started as a support net for a few chosen field teams and allies, but is now the coordination arm of the revolution to take down Dominic Verdigris III. Most of the people in the room have these headsets. The only ones who don’t are those whose discretion is somewhat lacking, or who we suspect are Verdigris plants or sympathizers.” Einhorn was one of the former. She couldn’t keep a secret for thirty seconds. Fortunately, she was one of the few who didn’t care who was in charge. “The voice in your ear will be giving you Bella’s real speech. So pay no attention to what comes out of her mouth. This little show is all for Verdigris’ benefit.”

  Bella came into the room at that point, looking flustered and smug and pleased all at once in a . . . somewhat radically tailored version of her Echo uniform. She looked like what Verdigris thought she was—a supermodel put in a position of power she in no way deserved or was suited for.

  She had papers in her hand and arranged them on the podium, and cleared her throat. “Hi everybody!” she chirped. “I guess by now you all know who’s head of Echo Med!”

  Vickie cued what Bella had recorded previously. While Bella churned out a speech consisting entirely of clichés, this was what was playing into the ears and minds of the people who were the heart, hands, and backbone of Echo Medical.

  “First of all, I know most of you, and most of you know me. Some of you like me, some probably don’t, but regardless, I am pretty damn sure that all of you are in some stage of disbelief, anger, and resentment over this whacked-up promotion. I’d like you to try to continue to look that way, please, if you can.”

  Vickie could see that some of them were doing their best to do just that. Some were just looking bewildered. That would work too.

  “No, I didn’t sleep my way to this. This is our Lord and Master’s way of turning Echo Med into a seething mass of unorganized chaos. Some of you are going ‘wha—?’ and some of you have suddenly had your suspicions confirmed. Yes, Verd wants us to fail, spectacularly. He wants all of Echo to fail, I suspect, so he can disband the entire organization, cherry-pick the pieces, and put together his own version of Echo without any messy nonsense of preexisting charters or legal considerations—or the safety and continued existence of the metas in it.”

  Vickie was very good at reading expressions. The flashes of anger she saw would be read by Verd as anger at Bella. But those expressions boded very well for Bella’s ability to be what Verd had set her up for, and more.

  “I’m not alone in this little conspiracy, although for a while it was just me, Ramona, Yank, and a couple more folks you’ll be hearing about later.”

  Brief flashes of relief at the mention of Yankee Pride and Ramona. Good move, Bell.

  “Yank and Ramona are obviously too high profile with Verd to be the chief rabble-rousers for this, so it kind of fell to me. We were going to bring you guys in slowly, but Verd forced our hand. Now, if you want out, turn in your headsets to Ramona later today. No one but you and Ramona will ever know who you are. No one is going to judge you either. If I was in your shoes, I’d be thinking twice and three times about this myself. Going up against Verd? We gotta be nucking futz.”

  Not a word about “don’t rat us out.” Another good move. With people who were nervous, but mostly trustworthy, implied trust tended to become real trust.

  “If you’re sticking, or even if you’re not, I want you to act the way you would if an incompetent, power-hungry moron just got promoted over you. We need to make Verd think Echo Med is about to fall apart as soon as we get hit with a big emergency. This is going to have to be the most convincing acting job you’ve ever done in your life, and I hope to hell we are all up to the performance. The lives of our friends are going to depend on it. Overwatch will give you all a further briefing later today after those of you who are opting out have turned in your headsets. So, okay, everybody, thanks for listening. I’m about to wrap up the speech now. Showtime.”

  Vickie cut the recorded speech, as Bella chirped into the mic at the front of the room. “And I just know we are all going to be the best team there ever was! Thanks for coming, everyone!”

  There was tepid applause as Bella beamed fatuously. People began filing out quickly, even before she had a chance to step from behind the podium. The only person who came up to congratulate her—and sincerely no less—was Einhorn. Vickie found that oddly touching. Too bad she didn’t have the sense God gave a goose.

  Ramona was outside the conference room door with a bag open just enough that people could discretely drop their headsets in as they filed out. When they were all gone, Vickie cued up her freq and conferenced with Bella’s.

  “Okay, give us the bad news. How many bailed?” Vickie asked, before Ramona could say anything.

  “Zero.”

  Vickie was sure she hadn’t heard right. From the sound of Bella’s voice, so was she. “Uh—what?”

  “Zero,” Ramona repeated gleefully. “Zilch. Nada. Everyone’s in.”

  There was silence from Bella. Then, “Goddammit, I want to holler and dance and I don’t dare with the cameras everywhere.”

  “I’ll do it for you,” Vickie replied gleefully. Even at her most optimistic she had figured for about a third to bail. Pessimistically, she had figured more like half.

  “Okay. Phase two. Vic, I’m signing off the ranch right now, and heading for a very noisy, very trendy hotspot. Which is exactly what an airhead would do to congratulate herself. Let me know as folks come off-shift, and conference our headsets so I can do more detailed briefings.” Bella let out her breath in a long, heartfelt sigh. “God, I hope I am up to this . . .”

  “You are,” Vickie and Ramona said simultaneously.

  “I’d better be.”

  * * *

  Bella took a long pull of a virgin Bloody Mary as inane chatter rang around her. She’d chosen the latest, hippest bar in Atlanta as being a place Verd was least likely to have ears, and as one that would have enough noise to cover her subvocalizations. Her headpiece and mic were no longer visible at all. Vickie had implanted them, somehow. She was the walking test subject for that particular piece of magic. If her body didn’t have some sort of horrible reaction to the apparatus, they’d implant the rest of Echo Med and Sovie first. And if they didn’t, everyone but Djinni would get the implants. He, obviously, didn’t need his gear implanted to hide it. Then again . . . maybe Djinni would get them. Vix had hinted she had more planned than just the mics and pickups.

  She was glad for the cool-down period before everyone else started coming off-shift. She needed to stare something right square in the face and decide if she had the . . . well, it wasn’t bravery . . . she wasn’t sure what it was. But working with the paranoid Vickie had convinced her that if Ramona and Yank’s plan to use the Charter against Verd didn’t work, they needed a backup.

  Talking with JM had convinced her that there was only one thing that backup could be. Someone was going to have to take out Verdigris, permanently. Echo could not survive his leadership. And if Echo didn’t survive . . .

  This was not something she could confide in anyone else. This was a plan that had to stay in her head, and her head alone. Yank couldn’t assassinate a fly. Ramona didn’t have the skills or the means. CCCP? Could, and would, but the only one with a chance in hell was People’s Blade, and Nat had confessed the little Chinese girl had gone off the reservation—and was probably working with either Verdigris or Blacksnake.

  The angel could, but wouldn’t.

  At least, Bella didn’t think she would. Assassination didn’t seem to fit the parameter of “permitted.”

  That left Bella, who had the power, the skills, and the access, now that she was head of Echo Med; who could kill him in a way that would leave no sign that he’d suffered anything but a perfectly natural aneurysm or heart failure. All she had to do was touch him.

  But could she?

>   I don’t want to. . . . Murdering—there was no other word for it—that gang-banger still left her feeling sick and filthy and guilty as hell. And he’d been about to kill her and her friends. This would be murder in cold blood.

  What would that make her?

  What other choice would I have? It was like that old sci-fi cliché. If you could go back in time and murder Hitler—would you? Could you?

  She thought about Tesla. About Bulwark, still unconscious. About all her other friends who would certainly be picked off one at a time or by wholesale groups if she didn’t do this.

  I can’t let them die.

  No matter what this does to me.

  Then she felt her mouth quirk in a wry little smile. Of course . . . if that creepy bodyguard of his figures out what I did, I might not have to worry about what it does to me.

  The chirp of Vickie’s incoming signal put an end to any further thoughts on the matter for now. “Okay, Bells, I have Doc Fluke, Panacea, Chiron, Gilead, Doctors Read, Morse, Sayers, Childreath, Kyne and Joyce, and Nurses Romanski, Charam, Fields, Liam, Lin, Wong, Sakamuti, and Jeanne on conference. Folks, the floor is Bella’s.”

  She took a deep breath and a last sip of her drink. “First of all . . . thanks, guys. You are the bravest, best people I know . . .”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Smoke and Mirrors

  DENNIS LEE AND MERCEDES LACKEY

  Even in the middle of everything falling apart, even in the middle of war, revolution, disaster, people stubbornly have the habit of falling in love. Part of it is the old survival instinct, by which I mean survival of your genes, not yourself. Fall in love, do the wild thing, make a baby or more and your genes go on, in theory at least. Part of it is that in horrible times we either break apart or come together.