With the silent subway tunnels as cover, the team made their way out of the city undetected. The handful of workers they passed weren’t particularly surprised to see an ambulance in the middle of a crisis, although it was a bit odd to see it bouncing slowly over train tracks underground.
Wink bandaged John’s head, and he made sure she was hydrated and warm. Xana sat on the floor and stared into space. Her eyelids twitched.
But Ian was the worst. He happily took a shot of morphine and lay on the stretcher in silence, clutching the bandaged stub of his severed arm. He didn’t move.
One of the ambulance’s damaged tires finally gave way while riding over the rails of the Upper Hudson Tunnels, and when the team emerged in New Jersey, they pulled into an empty lot on the far side of the river to make the change. But when the vehicle stopped and chirped at them, no one moved. They were all in shock, or exhausted, or both.
John went out first, and when the others saw him stop at the end of the ramp and stare for no reason, they joined him on the grass one at a time. They sat together and looked out across the river.
With only minimal light pollution, the stars shone as never before. The dark towers of the metropolis seemed less like architectured habitats and more like silent cliffs from a time before man. It was beautiful.
Power had been lost and the world hadn’t ended. Chaos didn’t reign. In fact, after the first initial outbursts, the entire city seemed to settle into quiet. Neighbors met for the first time as everyone gathered to keep watch. New friends were made. Parties were organized on the roofs of buildings. There were drinks and laughs as lifetime city-dwellers saw the Milky Way for the very first time.
At some point, one rooftop gathering held up flashlights and phone screens to the sky. Others saw and joined them, and soon the whole skyline was rimmed in a halo of white that seemed to mirror in some small way the twinkling lights of eternity overhead. And all of it, stars and city, was reflected in the shimmering waters of the river.
The team sat next to each other on the shore and watched in silence.
They did it.
Wink felt something damp on her legs. She touched it.
Blood.
Xana saw immediately and whisked the girl into the back of the ambulance. John turned his head, then grimaced. He asked if they were okay, but as the pair disappeared into the back of the truck, the big woman told him in no uncertain terms to stay put.
It was odd.
After a moment, she hastily pulled on the rear door to close it further and give them more privacy. Then the women began to whisper. Wink yelled in surprise and John feared the worst. He turned and rolled his chair closer.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“Go away!”
He peered through the crack.
Xana heard the whine of his motor and she slammed the door shut.
But not before John had caught glimpse of a box. Pink. Filled with plastic-wrapped pads.
He turned. Ian was standing behind him, one-armed. Hunched. Pale. Shaking.
The two men looked at each other, at first bemused. Then relieved. Then hysterical.
They laughed at each other as quietly as possible.
Even though it was never spoken of, it was clear it was never to be spoken of. Wink was embarrassed, which embarrassed the two men, which meant it stayed between the ladies, which meant it was up to Xana alone to help the young woman through a big change.
Back at the junkyard, John overhead a snippet of a conversation echo from the bathroom. Wink was exclaiming that it wasn’t fair Xana’s cycle had stopped as a result of her condition, and Xana was trying to explain, without getting upset, that she didn’t see it as a blessing. At all.
“It’s a horrible design!” Wink objected. “Bleeding once a month is totally wasteful. And unsanitary. I could come up with, like, a hundred things that are way better.”
“I’m sure you could.”
“It’s a stupid way to make a baby. I can’t believe you let a boy do that inside you. It’s totally gross. And it, like, comes out after?”
John made bug-eyes. He was only too happy to keep rolling down the hall and let Xana handle the heavy lifting.
Ian sat on the couch with a bottle of water. His stub was bandaged. He was trying very hard not to think about how much his life had just changed. “We did good.” He smiled. He was still pale.
“We did okay.” John corrected. “Considering we caused the blackout in the first place, we’ll call it a push.”
Ian turned to Wink, who emerged scowling from the bathroom as the toilet ran behind her. “We did good,” he repeated to the girl.
John spun. “Just tell me we got what we were after.”
“I’ll know in a minute.” The girl wandered off under a cloud.
Ian watched her leave. He looked at Xan, who came out wiping her hands. “Is she okay?”
Xana nodded. Then she braced herself against the door.
“Are you okay?”
“I just need to rest.” She trundled over and plopped onto the couch next to Ian, who was almost launched into the sky. In mere seconds, she was sound asleep. Her giant hands fell to her side.
“We’re up,” Wink called from her workstation in the corner. “If you want to come see.”
Xana started snoring loudly.
“Should we wake her?” Ian asked. “She seems like she’s in pretty bad shape.”
John nodded. She’d pushed her body well past anything it had ever done before. “Let her sleep. We’ll catch her up later.” John looked at Ian’s bandaged stub. “Are you okay?”
Ian froze. “I’m telling myself that the Oric can fix it. I just haven’t figured out how yet. And don’t tell me that’s bullshit because I can’t handle it right now.”
John nodded. He knew exactly how Ian felt. He figured he might have to press the issue at some point, as he’d done with some of his friends at the VA, but it definitely wasn’t the time.
Ian avoided John’s knowing glance and shuffled over to Wink. John followed. The whine of his motor and Xana’s snoring were the only sounds.
Wink glanced at Ian’s stub as she typed.
He held it up and lowered it. “Helluva birthday present, huh?”
Wink didn’t answer. John rolled to a stop behind her.
Ian looked down at the girl in the chair. “Hey.” His face was long. “I owe you one, genius.”
“Well, duh. I knew right away that you couldn't take care of yourself.” She stopped short of saying he needed her.
“I mean it.” But Ian sensed the girl was uncomfortable, so he changed the subject. “When’s your birthday, by the way?”
She shrugged her tiny shoulders. “I dunno.”
“What?” He scowled.
“I don’t think my parents told anyone when they dropped me off on this planet.”
Ian turned his eyes at John, who just nodded for him to ignore it.
“Okay. So we’ll make one up. How about next month?”
The girl shrugged again like she didn’t care in the least.
“So . . . what do you want?”
Wink stopped typing. She looked up at the high ceiling. She thought hard, as if no one had ever asked her that before. When she spoke, she was very serious. “An orbital gun.”
Ian snort-laughed. John smiled.
“I’ll get right on that.”
“What’s the word?” John asked.
Wink sat back. She looked up from her chair without a word.
“Well??”
“We got it.” She smiled.
Ian lowered his head. “Jesus thank God,” he said softly.
“I mean, not everything. But we should have what we need. But it’s almost three hundred terabytes of data. Prophet’s sending it to the Faction now. It’ll take a while for them to go through it all.” She sat back. “But we did it. We totally cracked their network.”
John held up his good hand and Ian gave an awkward high-five. The sound woke Xan. The big woman stood, blinking, then uttered complete gibberish as it if were a very serious question.
John scowled. He knew what that usually meant. “Xan? What’s your son’s name?”
But the big woman didn’t answer. She simply fell face-first on the floor.
“Dr. Fears was no great loss.” The dark-complected woman on the screen had neat hair, pulled back, and a Spanish accent. She was dressed impeccably in a white, form-fitting dress.
The man in front of her wore a gray-and-white-striped suit coat with matching pants and no tie. He was large and thinly-haired with white skin and narrow eyes. He spoke with a Dutch accent. “Digby was an asshat, but he was a valuable asshat and a pioneer in mass psychological manipulation via the Internet.” He spoke calmly, almost sweetly, as he reclined in an office chair at the end of a long conference table. The sun set in the windows behind him. “Such skill would be helpful now as we work to alter the official version of what happened in New York. Redactions are a blunt instrument. It would be better if people simply remembered what we wanted them to remember. Dr. Fears was an expert at that.”
Anders Benet had been a software mogul, a musician, a venture capitalist, an athlete, a model, a member of the European Commission, and—known to only a very few—a lifelong serial killer. He leaned with two hands over the screen in the table. The rest of the people in the conference room waited silently. “But that’s not the point. Control should have been notified the moment the artifact was in the wild.”
“I’m not going to run to the collective every time there is a problem. We both know I would do little else.”
“Losing the artifact isn’t a problem, Maria. It’s simply a disaster.” Anders was calm, but his words kept everyone in the room silent. “We have no idea what it’s capable of. Or the limits of its power. And now it’s in the hands of our enemies. And unknown enemies at that.”
Maria kept silent. Anders was smart enough to figure out that, after testing, she had planned to implant the Oric inside herself.
He continued. “Research says there’s an 85% chance our network was compromised. And I don’t mean the Faction fumbling around for a couple minutes like a virgin in the back seat of a car. I mean compromised. Plans. Codes. Timetables. Schematics. Personnel files. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want them leaking my wife’s name to The Guardian. Or heaven forbid, showing up at my daughter’s school.”
“There is no direct evidence the system was breached.”
Everyone in the room froze.
Anders leaned on his elbows with his hands to his face. He took a deep breath before speaking. “That’s exactly the kind of thinking that lets us slip by. Politicians and businessmen fight for control of a dying order and so refuse to agree with each other on anything until they can’t squeeze any more value out of a denial. The sky will boil the oceans. Water will run out. We’re supposed to be smarter, Maria. Better. Direct evidence or not, the blackout in New York wasn’t an accident. Would you agree to that much?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. So here’s where I’m getting hung up. You see . . . What I’m hearing now is that your people had a run-in with these people. But no one else seems to know anything about them.” He motioned around the room at the silent witnesses. “And yet, if the Active Threat Profile were updated, as it should have been, our data centers would have automatically taken extra precautions. Isn’t that right?”
Maria didn’t answer.
Anders turned to the others in the room. “Control makes a motion to the committee that these people be elevated to Priority One. With special focus on the one called Prophet. This will displace most of the current list, including everyone’s favorite extraterrestrial, who will have to remain at-large. For the time being. Are there any objections?”
No one spoke.
“So let’s hear some ideas. Everything is on the table at this point.”
“What about Havek?” Maria asked.
“I stand corrected.” Anders smiled. “Everything but that.”
“He’s the only one to ever cause this much trouble. He obviously knows how to avoid our security net or it wouldn’t have taken us so long to catch him. Perhaps he could be useful. Like a consultant.”
“The only way Pavel Havek gets out of cold storage is if we’re facing total annihilation by something worse. We’ve now lost three of five strike teams and two Special Assets. Let’s see what we have left.”
A holographic projection appeared above the long table. A list of database entries scrolled. The first two items were in red.
Adeyvi Mamat (Malaysia)
Asset Code: DEADBOLT
Status: Terminated
Bryson Beatty (U.K.)
Asset Code: BRICKBAT
Status: Terminated
Veronika Molotov (Russian Federation)
Asset Code: PSYPHIRE
Status: Assigned-Hunt/Capture
Amir Rizage (Yemen)
Asset Code: KILOBITE
Status: Assigned-Hunt/Kill
Megan Stagmar (U.S.A.)
Asset Code: MALADY
Status: Unassigned
Justin Martin (U.S.A.)
Asset Code: PREACHER
Status: Assigned-Deep Cover
Julien Crow (Hong Kong)
Asset Code: SCAPEGALLOW
Status: Assigned-Deep Cover
Heinrich and Tobias Sorensen (Denmark)
Asset Code: MODUS
Status: Unassigned
Kelly Andrews (U.S.A.)
Asset Code: SCARAB
Status: Assigned-Sabotage
The list kept scrolling as an athletic woman entered the room. She wore skin-tight jeans and a silk top that hugged her lithe frame. Her wispy, auburn hair had blue tips, like a chemical flame.
She became visible to the woman Maria as soon as she sat at the table.
“She is supposed to be on assignment.”
“I asked Ms. Molotov to join us here today. She is, after all, our most experienced hunter.” Anders looked up. “Or do you prefer huntress?”
“I prefer Psyphire.”
“Dammit, Anders.” Maria didn’t let up. “You don’t have the authority to reassign my assets without my approval. And certainly not without notification!”
The man raised his hands to the assembly. He sat back. He waited. “I don’t hear anyone objecting.” He waited another moment. “The fact is, we all feel that you have your hands full overseeing the completion of Phase Two, upon which everything depends, and that Ms. Molotov—excuse me. That Psyphire, being already familiar with your organization, is best equipped to step up and help us all deal with this unexpected resistance. As of now, she’s been seconded to me, with all Special Assets reporting to her until this obstruction has been handled.”
Maria choked back a scream. Anders just cut her own department from under her and gave it to one of her own subordinates. Control just absorbed Special Assets in all but name. It was a clear violation of the founders’ charter, but no one said a word. Maria looked at the department heads seated around the table. They were no better than those they sought to replace.
Anders swiped his hands in the air and the projection in the middle of the room switched to static-filled video. Grainy stills scrolled to one side. He looked at Psyphire. “As you can see, we don’t have much.”
“Yes, we do,” the young woman corrected. She took control of the projection via a touchpad in the table. She tapped with manicured, sapphire-blue nails. A grizzled face appeared, a mug shot of a white-haired man with cheeks covered in gray stubble. His eyes were frosted gray, as if blind.
Anders sat forward. “Is that . . . ?”
There was uncomfortable shifting around the room.
Psyphire scrolled to a police report in Russian. “He was picked up by state police outside Vladivostok, Siberia. Trying to book passage to Japan. Fake ID, of course. They didn’t know who they had. Only that he was in the country illegally.”
Maria examined the photo. It was him. It was really him. She looked at the young woman, who was doing her best not to gloat. She’d found her target. Maria wondered how long she’d had him. “Where is he now?”
Anders interrupted. “None of us here should know that. Are we agreed?”
Maria watched her colleagues nod. Hypocrites. Every single one of them wanted him for themselves, but they’d never admit it, and in so doing they guaranteed that Anders would get control of the man when the mission was done. He’d find a way. He was married and old enough to be Veronika’s father, but it wouldn’t surprise Maria in the least to learn he’d been fucking her. He was just the kind of psycho the young woman got off on.
Maria squinted at her rival. Psyphire had been smart. She’d kept her catch to herself and waited for her chance. And now, with Anders’s support, the collective was only too happy to make her de facto department head. Because she had the one man in all creation who could find anyone, anywhere, anytime, no matter where they tried to hide. The one man who knew everyone’s dirty secrets. The one man wanted by every intelligence agency in the world.
The Wisper.
“Xan?”
The big woman opened her eyes. She was in a bed. She didn’t know where. A clinic maybe. It was a small room. One door. One window, covered by blinds. The light creeping in at the sides suggested it was daytime.
“We got a present for you.”
The big woman tried to sit up, but Ian put a hand on her shoulder. He raised the back of the bed. She was on the stretcher from the Mast. Her feet dangled off the end.
“What do you mean?” Her voice was weak.
Wink handed her a small tablet computer. The screen was split evenly into four camera feeds. A fancy living room. A playground. A classroom. A boy’s bedroom. She understood immediately, even before she saw the wood letters A and J hanging on the bedroom wall.
Xana looked up at her friends. “How did you . . . ?”
“I rigged up some super-tiny wireless cameras. John borrowed the janitor and installed a couple at the school. Ian teleported into the McDoom apartment. They totally have security cameras outside but not in. Sorta makes you wonder what they don’t want anyone to see. Anyway. Microwave signal. Total crypto.”
“But . . . when? How long was I out?”
“We did it the other morning.” Ian smiled. “When you were training.”
“I asked Wink to keep the location of AJ’s school from you,” John admitted from the corner.
The girl looked down.
“But . . . why?”
“I knew you would want to see him. That you wouldn’t be able to focus—”
“We were going to surprise you.” Wink interrupted the captain’s apology. She was smiling. “After the mission. I almost had it all set up, but then I got sidetracked when we changed the plan.”
Ian stepped closer. “We’re sorry you can’t be with him. But now at least you can see him whenever you want. We know it’s not the same, but . . .”
Xana looked at the screen. Children played on swings. “It’s amazing.” It was more than she ever expected.
“But that’s not the good part.” Ian waved his hands at the screen. “Show her the good part.”
Xana scowled. She thought maybe Ian was being sarcastic as usual. How could it get any better? “What’s the good part?”
Wink climbed into the bed with Xana. She weighed almost nothing compared with the big woman. She straddled Xana’s legs and took the tablet from her hands. She tapped.
“Here.” Wink handed it back.
There was a single full-screen video. Xana took the thin computer in one hand and examined the image. It was the same school room from before. It was much fancier than Sister Rosa’s. The desks were all the same, and there was lots of space. There were plants in the windows. The children all wore uniforms. Xana saw AJ in the second row. It was hard to miss the boy’s wild hair.
Xana hit play. A blonde girl a few rows over and half offscreen was explaining how she had lit a bunch of candles during the power outage and how her dad had caught her stepmom’s hair on fire and it was so bad because now they had to cancel their vacation to Fiji.
The little girl finished her story and the teacher, a heavy, bearded man in a V-neck sweater, turned to the second row. “What about you, AJ? What did you do during the blackout?”
As the teacher asked the question, the boy’s face lit up. He shook in his seat as he waited for the man to reach the end of his question.
And then AJ said four words. Four simple words that changed Xana’s life forever.
Four words that brought her huge hand to her face, that crinkled her mouth and her eyes, that brought a wave of tears.
Four words.
“I saw my mom.” The little boy beamed. He was so happy, so excited.
Xana’s entire body began to shiver. Her skin tingled and sprouted tiny bumps.
He must have seen her. On the bridge. And he had known it was her. Even under her armor. Even after all this time. AJ still knew his mother on sight.
Xana swallowed a lump that wouldn’t move. Everything was blurry through the tears.
The teacher, now off camera, seemed hesitant. “Now, is that true? I know it’s hard for you, Ajax, but your mother passed—”
“Nuh-uh!” The boy shook his head. It jiggled his wild hair, wild like his mother’s. “She didn’t! I knew she wasn’t dead. And I saw her. She had this so-cool body armor”—the boy moved his hands over his chest—“with, like, skull paint and stuff. And there was this bad guy. And he had metal arms, and he was punching everything.” The boy swung his fists in the air. “And he was gonna hurt people, and I thought he was gonna hurt me and my dad’s girlfriend, and for a sec I was really scared, but then my mom came! And the guy knocked a whole bus on top of her! And she was just like POW! And then they ran at each other, and it was like BOOM! And the guy, he was like super strong too, and he was kicking her butt and everything. And he knocked her down and against the walls on the bridge or whatever and her helmet cracked and he’s punching and punching and punching and just saying all this crazy stuff and I thought my mom was gonna die! ’Cuz he was totally crazy and soooo strong. And my mom goes down and the guy raises both fists and screams sooooo loud and then brings them down on her and then there’s this blast and windows crack and there’s all this dust. And I wanted to run to her, so I pulled away from Christine—that’s my dad’s girlfriend, but she kinda acts more like my sister—anyway, she grabbed me and then the dust cleared. And wow! My mom was there holding on to him, like her hands are so super big and she knew she couldn’t beat him so she just took the beating so she could get close and grab his fists! She had one in each hand. And then she stood on one leg and kicked the guy in the chest and his body flies back but my mom had his arms so they ripped free! And the guy landed on the ground and my mom’s standing there holding his metal arms and I could tell she was real sad, you know, like she didn’t want to do it. Then she drops the arms and walks over to the guy and he just looks at her and says ‘thank you,’ like he was all happy and stuff. It was so crazy! But then there were people yelling from down in the water, because the guy had knocked their cars in the river. But they’d gotten out and were stuck at the base of the bridge. So my mom, she looks for me, but Christine, she had us hide ’cuz she was scared when I tried to run, but I didn’t tell her it was my mom because my grandpa is mad at her and all and I didn’t want him to know it was her. So my mom doesn’t see me, so she runs over and rips out one of the metal cables from the side of the bridge and bends it down and climbs down to get the people in the water, and she’s so strong she can just use her arms to bring everybody right back up. And—and then she had to go.”
The boy took a breath. Then he finished, as wide-eyed as ever. “She’s the strongest person in the whole world.”
“Well, that’s . . . a very exciting story, AJ.” It was clear the teacher didn’t believe any of it, not a story like that, not from a child who had, until recently, spent his entire life in a Third World country.
AJ’s face was blank but his eyes were expectant. He didn’t understand why his teacher didn’t react. A tiny furrow appeared between the boy’s eyes as the man, wanting neither to indulge the apparent lie nor embarrass the boy, quickly called on the next student in class.
Xana shook. Her chest shook. Her hands shook. Her hair shook. She was crying. Bawling. It was unstoppable.
The video ended and returned to the first image. Wide-eyed AJ was waiting impatiently to tell his whole class about his mom. He looked so happy. And there was no fear. Or disappointment. Or sadness.
Xana looked up at her friends. Wink waited expectantly in the bed. Ian shuffled his feet. The captain hung back, as always, but Xana knew what was in his heart.
“My f-friends . . .” Her voice trembled. Her legs shook. Her body shook. The bed creaked in time.
She looked back at the screen, at her son. Her teammates had given her the greatest gift of her life. Sister Rosa had been right. AJ hadn’t forgotten his mother. He didn’t hate her for leaving. And he wasn’t stupid. He had figured out exactly what his grandfather was like. He didn’t believe Xana was a monster. To him, his mother was a hero.
The strongest person in the world.
That single fact, Xana realized, was more than everything. It was greater than every truth she’d come to accept about her life. Her bond with her child. It was greater than the sun. Greater than the stars. Greater than the Bible. Greater even than God, even though she knew that was blasphemous to say.
And her friends had given it to her. They’d given her back the only thing in the world that mattered. And they’d done it without expecting anything in return. They weren’t manipulating her like Abby or Renkist or the McDooms. They’d done it to make her happy. Simply because they cared.
As her body shook, Xana’s heart swelled with her blessings. It filled. It overflowed.
And then it burst.
Xana flatlined.
[end episode four]