Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicle-ARC Read online

  An inquiry confirmed what she had surmised. The Infinite was still withholding things about this man from her.

  And she did not know why.

  “Who…are you?” she said aloud, as humans spoke, her voice sounding strange and hollow in her own ears.

  He regarded her for a moment, and then scoffed before taking a swig from his bottle. “I thought that’d be apparent,” came the laconic reply. “I’m your Creator. You’re a figment of my imagination, after all, ain’tcha?”

  That shocked a startled laugh out of her. “My Creator, John Murdock, is nothing you believe in. Why can I not See you?” Her wings stirred restlessly, made of tongues of flame for feathers that gave off their own light for those who could see them. She herself glowed, soft and golden, in the darkness.

  John leaned forward, counterbalancing himself with his bottle in hand and squinting at her. “You’ve got me, Harvey Rabbit. I guess you can’t really see me, period, since you don’t exist, but that’s waxin’ a bit too philosophical for my tastes.” He stood back up straight, ambling over to lean against a wall.

  There came the faintest stirrings of…now what was this? Irritation. She was piqued that he did not believe she was real! Up until this moment she had been utterly indifferent as to whether mortals believed in her or not. Why should she care about this one?

  Yet she did. She was determined to prove to him that she was as real as he was. As he raised the bottle to his lips, with a thought, she changed the beer to spring water. John sputtered his next gulp in surprise, then looked at the bottle in annoyance.

  “Well, that was a waste.” He chucked the bottle away, letting it clatter against the roof and off into the darkness. “Y’know, I’ve known that I’m crazy for a while. I just wish I could still enjoy a simple beer.”

  “One should not litter, John Murdock,” she chided, and held out her hand. The bottle flew to it. She handed the bottle back to him, full once again, and felt a strange tingle as her fingers brushed his. Potential. Potential of the futures. He was awash with them. He was a nexus of many, many important things that might happen—and yet she groped after them blindly, unable to sort them, able at the moment only to understand that they were there. “Perhaps this German beer will be more to your liking—although I can make it be Guinness or Fosters, or…the beer from the recipe of Pharaoh Ramses if you prefer.”

  He accepted the beer, took a long pull from it and sighed before speaking. “Y’just might be of some use here, Harvey. Erm—whaddya call yourself, or do you want to call yourself anything? Harvey probably fits well enough, considering, but it feels a bit odd saying it to a really pretty hallucination, y’know?”

  She blinked, both at the question and at his flippancy, so at odds with what lay beneath his surface. She had never had a name before. She was an individual, yes, but…what she had to identify her was a fragment of the Song, not a name as such.

  “In the mortal media…I am known as the Seraphym.” She frowned. “And I am the creation of the Infinite, not of you.”

  John shook his head dismissively. “That’s too much of a mouthful; how ’bout Sera, for starters?”

  “It is no better and no worse than any other name.” Sera. Que sera, sera—what will be, will be. Am I what will be? Her mind flitted around him and his potentials, trying to guess what she could not see by the shape of the void of which he was the center.

  “Sera it is. Now, what’s this ‘Infinite’ schtick? Some sorta band?”

  She blinked, and took a nanosecond to sort through all the possible meanings of his words before the most logical presented itself. Surely he could not think—she answered his question as if it had been posed in all seriousness. “The Infinite is All. It is and was and always will be. It contains everything and is everything, and we Siblings sing the Song of Its Creation.”

  He stared at her for a few long moments, clearly not happy with her answer. “So it is a band. Whatever you say, Obi-Weird. What are ya doin’ here, if I might ask?”

  She hesitated. This would be the first time she had told a mortal of her purpose. It was the first time she had felt a need to do so. Oh, there were those who had recognized her for what she was, at least in part, but she had never let anyone know her purpose here in so many blatant words. Again, she felt unsettled and off-balance. Why was it that she felt moved to tell him her purpose? What was it about this mortal? Why should she answer him? Was it even permitted?

  The answer came before she even posed the question. It is permitted.

  That unsettled her more. Now, it was one thing for those who could do so, to see her for what she was and recognize it. It was quite another for her to tell someone, someone who apparently had no faith in any power beyond that which he could discern with his own five senses.

  “What do you see?” she asked, not wanting to look into his mind just yet. Something…was making her hold back.

  He quickly looked away from her, standing up straight to walk over to the side of the roof. Resting his elbows on the short wall there, he looked up at the cloudy night sky. He picked a cloud, gesturing to it with his beer bottle. “I can see a cricket in a top hat. How ’bout you?” He was…hiding something, refusing to say what he wanted to. And she could take that thought from him—but she would not.

  She tilted her head to the side. “You do not answer the question that I asked, John Murdock. Why is that? Why do you fear the answer?”

  “I’m fickle like that,” came the unenthusiastic response. “To be fair, ya haven’t answered my question, either. What are ya doin’ here?”

  That was fair. Information for information. “I am a servant, an instrument, of the Infinite. The Infinite cannot intervene directly in mortal affairs but…there is a shadow on the futures of this world, and a darkness to come to it and worlds beyond this one, unless…” She paused. She knew what she did, but how to phrase it? She searched through things that wise humans had said. “ ‘God does not play at dice with the universe,’ one of your prophets said. What most mortals call God does not play with the universe at all. The creatures of life are given a gift, that of Free Will, and the means to steer their own course. But sometimes—this time—some of those creatures have gone too far. What they may do will undo the fabric of Creation, eventually, or at the least cause significant damage. So…I am here to…show options. It is for mortals to choose, once they know what the options are.” And that was when it hit her. Options. This man had none. Or rather, he had no future at all, or else…hidden inside the man was something entirely new, something that could not be tracked, nor anticipated.

  He was just one man—except…he might be one of those she was expected to try to save. If this mortal in the equation ceased to be able to affect the mortal world, it might be hard to find another to replace him.

  But telling him would serve no purpose, not just now. She had to learn about him, learn about him the hard way, as mortals did, before she could decide what to do about him.

  Seraphym, you have Free Will too.

  She felt breathless, shocked to her core at the thought. The Siblings did not have Free Will; they were infinite reflections of the Infinite. Except…she had been given Free Will. What did that make her?

  “And I am here, on this roof, because it is quiet. I suppose you could call me an angel,” she said, speaking before she thought.

  “Well, that answers your question for ya, too.”

  “Which question?”

  He turned his gaze back to her, soberly. “What I saw when I looked at ya: an angel, in every sense.” John didn’t look at her for long, breaking eye contact and returning to stare at the night sky. “It’s bull, but that’s what I saw.”

  So, he had seen her in her full Aspect! Yet he was not a believer, nor was he gifted with the clear sight of the magicians. That was unexpected. Everything about him was unexpected. She sensed that the time to end this conversation was now. She needed to think. But…

  “ ‘Oh Lord, I believe,’ ” she quoted wr
yly. “ ‘Help thou my unbelief.’ I shall give you a new thing, John Murdock. Something that you may feel with your fingers, smell with your nostrils, taste with your tongue. And it will be there when I am gone, to help with your unbelief. Here.”

  She took one of his hands, feeling again that strange tingle, and put something in it. A pottery jar, corked with a lump of unbaked clay. “This is the beer of the Pharaoh. You will not like it. It is made by fermenting barley bread.”

  And then she spread her wings and launched herself skyward. Out there, she sensed already there was someone she should save. It never ended.

  Could she save John Murdock?

  * * *

  John turned back to stare out at the city. Most of the fires were out, but there was still so much smoke and dust in the air. It ruined what would otherwise be pretty decent nights, like tonight. It wasn’t just the haze that messed it up, it was the stink of smoldering tires, burnt plastic and other less-identifiable things that put instincts on edge.

  He wasn’t terribly sure of what to make of Sera. He’d seen at least one of the news broadcasts detailing the “Seraphym phenomenon” that had been documented in cities all over the globe. Some of the pundits speculated that it was a group of mind-linked or body-duplicating metahumans, while others contested that it could be a single, sufficiently “talented” meta sending out projections. He had dismissed what he had seen in New York as a trick of his anguished mind and the terrible explosion that had been the red-haired kid going nova. Ever since he got to Atlanta, he hadn’t given the “being” he’d seen at the truck ambush much thought, but now he was certain that it was the same as his newest acquaintance.

  He didn’t like any of it. Her knowing his name, showing up on top of the roof of his building, not any of it. He’d done a good job of hiding it, but every instinct in his body had railed against his will to strike out and attack her out of surprise when she’d first shown herself on the roof. Attack her reflexively, or run as fast and as hard as he could in the other direction.

  Under it all was sheer, mind-blanking terror. It was one of the constants of his life in the past few years, but never had it been as strong as it was now. Everything he was doing nowadays—none of it made any sense. He wouldn’t make it through if he kept up like this. He ought to pack up and leave tonight—to hell with that, just leave. He didn’t have anything he couldn’t replace. One of the advantages of being a vagrant: picking up and running was a simple affair.

  But…still. He couldn’t, despite the fact that leaving would be the first smart thing he’d done since the Nazis showed up.

  When he’d looked at her…something had quaked inside of him. Something primal and horrible, and he knew that he couldn’t ignore her. And with that realization came the other constant emotion of the past five years—hate, mostly of himself.

  John ran his fingers through his hair, finishing his beer. He left the clay jar that Sera had given him on the ledge, and went back inside. He had a lot of thinking to do.

  Chapter Ten:

  Bad For Good

  Mercedes Lackey

  “Miss Parker, you must be getting at least as tired of this as I am, but unfortunately, you seem to have violated the Damage Control Officer’s Directive again.” Yankee Pride glared at Bella. She shrugged.

  “I was with an OpOne and two SupportOps and they lost control of the situation,” she replied. “I restored it. I’m supposed to maintain a safe zone, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And you would agree that a goon in cyber armor—cobbled together from the stuff in his garage and the bits he snagged from looting research firms—running rampant through Five Points is not safe, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And he managed to knock Corbie out in the first ten seconds, ran Silas up a tree and had Grainger peeing his pants. And there was no backup. Dispatch said so. The SWAT sniper squad was stuck on the other side of the destruction corridor, and that assumes they would have found a chink in that armor when they finally did get there. If they got there. Which was looking dubious.” She kept a deadpan expression on her face. “I saw he was wide open telepathically, and I dealt with him. End of story.”

  “You hit him!”

  “With a psionic blast that put him into an epileptic fit, yeah.”

  “You walked up to him—”

  “From behind. Whatever he was using for a heads-up display and scanners sucked. Anyone could tell that. He had about thirty percent straight-ahead vision, no rear and no peripheral. That’s how Corbie got on top of him in the first place.”

  She glanced over at Corbie, who was in rather better shape after her psychic-healing treatments now than he had been when the goon had thrown him into a building. “I’d have had him, if the taser hadn’t malfunctioned,” Corbie grumbled. “Piece of shite—Yank, if you’re gonna expect me t’ be getting physical, you gotta give me better equipment.”

  “I’ll discuss that with you later—” Yankee Pride turned back to Bella. “You walked up to him, put your hand on him, and you hit him!”

  “I’m a touch-telepath, if you want reliable,” Bella sighed. “I’ve told you that before. After five feet, things get weaker, after ten, dicey and after that—”

  “I don’t care about that! You hit him! You’re the DCO!”

  “Yada, yada, healers aren’t hitters.” She returned his outraged glare. “You’re too used to Einhorn, who’d rather cry and hope the big bad mans folds. Who else was going to? You had an out-of-control situation, I controlled it. Like I was supposed to. Protect the civilians. Right?”

  “She’s got a point, mate,” Corbie said laconically.

  “You stay out of this!”

  Yankee Pride, Bella thought, was starting to unravel. Just like Tesla. Echo was in a siege mentality, and for Pride, that meant “stick to the rules no matter what, because that’s all we have left.”

  And Bella was violating the rules with practically every breath she took. Echo healers do not operate offensively. New Echo personnel do not live off the campus. Echo healers do not practice medicine on citizens without a license. Yeah. That’ll work.

  She already had her eye on an apartment near that little magician. She was operating a roving Free Clinic out of a van. The van in question was operated by a hippie commune that was going into the ’hoods and helping people set up gardens, and distributing anything in the way of food and help they could get their hands on.

  “The rules ain’t workin’, mate,” Corbie persisted.

  Yank very nearly exploded at that point. “That’s not your call. That’s not my call. We follow the rules!”

  “Ja, ja,” Bella muttered, “I vas only followink orders.” Fortunately Yank didn’t hear that, though Corbie did, and smirked.

  “The rules are there for a reason, Parker!” Yank was saying, losing the “miss” now. “You DCOs get involved in combat, you make yourselves targets, you make your patients targets, and if you go down, who’s going to protect the civilians and keep the team on its feet?”

  “And when none of the team is on its feet?” She wasn’t giving an inch on this one. Lost Wages FD didn’t tie the hands of its paramedics when they went into a dangerous part of town. If you wanted to carry, and you got the permit, you were allowed to carry on the job. Bella’s hammerless Taurus .45 was in her luggage, and when she got her own apartment, it would be in her headboard. “When the rest of the team is outgunned and outmanned, you still want me to sit on my hands? Dammit, Yank, the Fire Department let me carry a gun as a paramedic! You don’t want me using powers, fine, then let me pack heat!”

  “Damage Control Officers do not act offensively!” He was on his feet and yelling.

  “Then make me something besides a DCO!” she shouted back. They glared at each other for a good minute, before Yankee Pride threw up his hands melodramatically and marched out.

  She stared after him, sourly. She hadn’t won, and she knew it.

  * * *

  T
he apartment was good-sized, and the price was a great deal. The building was old, and it was in the blue-collar part of town, but it came with appliances and some furniture, there was cable and…

  Bella stared at the metal box by the socket in the wall. “Is that a T1 line?”

  The super made a face as if to say hell if I know. “That’s what I’m told. Little gal next door to you, the writer, had it put in a good while back. Asked for permission, owner said if she put it in her own place she had to put it in everyone else’s. She didn’t bat an eye. Guess those romances pay good bucks.”

  “Either that or she’s got connections.” There was definitely way, way more to Vickie Nagy than met the eye. “I’ll take it.” She signed the lease, and wrote out a check for the first month plus deposit then and there. “In fact, can I take it now?” On the off chance that she’d be able to get a place today, she’d loaded everything she had brought with her in the Echo van she had borrowed.

  The super shrugged. “The utilities are on, the companies are sayin’ that they want people to do stuff over the ’net instead of tryin’ to come in. If you got a credit card an’ can make deposits?”

  “Within fifteen minutes of plugging into that T1 line.” Bella eyed it with greed.

  “I’ll help ya unload.”

  Shortly the living room was full of boxes and bundles, the super had a twenty-dollar “thank you,” and Bella had a new home. She took off from unpacking just long enough to get the van back, and she got a break on that. One of the SupportOps she worked with was just coming on shift and needed it and was willing to come there to pick it up. He brought pizza, she paid for it for both of them and passed him a six-pack of beer. Easy peasy.

  Good thing about being a meta; they all seemed to have some slight component of superstrength and endurance. By sunset, Bella had everything unpacked, the boxes broken down, and her own bed with the NASA foam mattress made up and ready to sleep in. Now all she needed to do was find the laundry room.…