Ian pulled into traffic. Kids were pouring out the front doors of the school. It was a fancy place, that was certain. They all wore the same uniform: navy blazer with white shirt and tie and khaki slacks for the boys and skirts for the girls.
Ian waited for the light to change and scanned the radio. Shitty pop music. Sports talk. News.
“There’s been another mass shooting, this time outside Jacksonville—”
He turned it off. He looked at the police scanner Wink had installed under the dash. He turned it on as the light turned green. He pulled into the first empty spot he found.
After an uncomfortably long silence, Ian tapped the radio in his ear. “Xa—I mean Halo?”
There was a click. “I would like to be alone, please.”
She wasn’t crying, but there was something different in her voice, like maybe she was sick. He nodded, even though she couldn’t see it.
Ian didn’t bother to get out and feed the meter. He sat back and sighed and listened to the police scanner Wink had mounted under the dash. The dispatchers were mostly women for some reason. They were so deadpan.
A reported robbery.
A civil disturbance.
A request for a drive-by.
The radio feed was live but none of the action was. Everything was after the fact. Gathering statements. Driving around. Following up. Police work seemed really boring.
Ian’s eyes drooped. He was exhausted. He hadn’t slept well in days—in fact, not at all since they’d arrived on the East Coast. He hadn’t told anyone about the panic attacks, if that’s what they were. They gripped him every night as he lay on his yellowing, lumpy mattress, listening to Xana snore and John toss in his bed. Just as he started to drift, the dire circumstances of his new life, which always hovered just under his ability to control them, would jump free and dance ice-cold in his blood. He’d spend the next fifteen minutes trying silently to calm himself.
Then the whole thing would repeat.
Every night it was like that. Every night he would shut his eyes and feel the Oric wriggling inside him, like a snake. The feeling wasn’t real, he knew. There was nothing tangible in him. But he felt it. Always there. An alien thing. Inhuman. Filled with a purpose. It had to be made for a reason. What was it doing to him?
But Ian never brought it up. The fear. The doubt. Everyone had their own problems. John was in constant pain. And he already thought Ian was a whiner. Xana constantly fretted about AJ. She was obsessed. He figured parenthood had to be its own kind of torture.
Besides, he told himself, he wasn’t a kid anymore. He couldn’t just run around carelessly like Wink, unaware of the trouble he caused and leaving it for others to clean up.
So there he lay each night, breathing in tiny, jerking breaths, tears down the side of his face, thinking about his old car and his apartment and his mom. He’d hidden the picture of his family under his mattress, just like a little boy would. Just like a little boy, he didn’t have anywhere else. He wondered how long it would be before the police let his landlord clear out his old apartment. Then everything of his life would be well and finally gone. He would be alone.
The dispatcher on the radio droned on. Her deadpan was mesmerizing. Ian reached to turn it off when he heard the words Terrorist Screening Database.
He froze.
The NYPD had apparently been assisting the FBI with an arrest. An African American woman, 47, had made multiple bomb threats—two schools and a stadium. The authorities raided her apartment but she had managed to escape. No one understood how. It was as if she’d been tipped off.
Now she’d been sighted at Penn Station. A patrolman at the scene said she looked nervous and was holding a heavy bag in the middle of the afternoon crowd. She wasn’t moving. The police had no idea what she was waiting for. But Ian did.
Orders.
The tow truck sped away.
Ian had his hood up and his head down as he maneuvered through the rush hour crowd of Penn Station. It was packed. He scanned the nooks and corners for cameras, just like John had taught him.
They were everywhere.
He stopped when he saw the woman. She was heavy and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair was straightened and pinned back. She wore no makeup. She fidgeted as she stood next to a painted concrete pylon. There was a large leather bag at her feet. The life of the city hummed around her.
Ian looked at the bag. He knew the police were watching from somewhere. He knew they were trying to figure out what to do without causing a mass panic. Or tipping their hand. He knew she had a sniper’s rifle pointed at her head.
He didn’t take his eyes from the bag. If he could get it away from her somehow, the police would move in and escort her away. Quietly. That at least would get everyone else out of danger. He wasn’t sure what he could do for her after that. If anything.
Ian felt the crowd moved around him, but he didn’t take his eyes from the bag. He heard a woman’s voice behind him.
“Out for a stroll?”
Ian turned. He didn’t recognize her. She was pale, maybe mid-fifties and dressed in a sharp blue suit and heels. Her burgundy lipstick matched her purse. There was a computer tote in her hand.
Ian looked to her face and was about to respond when he caught her eyes. He scowled and turned away.
John.
Ian started walking through the crowd in a wide arc around the pylon. “I thought you were done taking innocent people?”
“You didn’t leave me much choice. This place is crawling with cameras, in case you didn’t notice. And if that woman up there isn’t snagged, someone else in this crowd has gotta be keeping an eye on things.”
It was so odd to hear him talk with a female voice. Ian slid between an arguing couple and sidestepped a businessman looking at his phone instead of where he was going. “They’re going to hurt people.”
“And what are they gonna do if they see you?” John kept up. One foot wobbled in his heels. “You think that hood is enough?”
“Obviously you don’t, but I’m kinda in the middle of something here so you’ll hafta give me the short version of the lecture.” Ian scowled. “How did you even get here?”
“Amazingly, I managed to get around just fine before I met you all. You’re putting the mission in jeopardy.”
“Yeah, well, apparently ‘the mission’ is detonating bombs. And whatever else you’re not telling me. So I’m cool with that.”
“You wanna quit, be my guest.”
“And what about her?” Ian made sure not to point. “You just gonna stand there and watch while—”
“They’re not gonna blow up Penn Station and you know it. Whatever they’re after, this is just a means. They probably want the police occupied here while they do something on the other side of town.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.”
“She’s a pawn. And you know exactly what they’ll do to her when they’re done.” Ian turned to keep walking.
John grabbed Ian’s arm with thin, manicured fingers and stepped close. He looked Ian in the eye. Their faces were inches apart.
Ian spoke softly. Volume wasn’t necessary. “You gonna fight me, Cap? Right here? Inside an innocent woman’s body?”
People brushed past. A young woman laughed loudly on her phone. The bustle and footsteps muffled the men’s words.
“I won’t have to.”
“Why?” Ian made a face. “Because I’m a pussy?”
“You can’t help that woman.”
“If she’s got a bomb I can teleport it away. Or phase it through the floor or something.”
“And if you mess up their plan, who’s to say she won’t go ahead and detonate? Then what?”
“My mom used to say ‘There will be always plenty of reasons not to help someone.’” Ian pulled his arm.
John tightened his grip. The two men locked eyes. Ian braced his legs and pulled hard.
Just as John let go.
Ian fell into approaching commuters and then to the floor as John screamed in the woman’s body.
“He has a knife! He tried to rape me! Please!”
The noise of the crowd lowered. Some people turned to look at Ian. He was surrounded. Men were angry. They were going to grab him. He had only moment.
Ian pushed the air from his lungs. He felt hands on him.
As he sank through the floor, he caught a glimpse through shuffling feet of plainclothes police officers taking advantage of John’s distraction. They quietly grabbed the bag and escorted the hapless woman away.
Ian walked, hood up, hands in his pockets, down the street toward the water. He didn’t dare go back to the truck until things had calmed down. Xana wasn’t answering her radio. Neither was John. Or Wink. That wasn’t like her. That meant she was probably gone. Again. Ian remembered how she had left him suddenly in California. Where was she going?
Ian wasn’t sure what he was doing anymore. About anything.
John.
He was following, back in his own body. He rolled down the sidewalk five or six paces behind.
A group of construction workers passed making crude comments about a coworker.
Ian turned his head to speak but didn’t stop or slow down. “You gonna push your way into my head now?”
“Tried before. Oric protects you.” He paused. “I can see it, you know. When I leap. Inside you. It’s beautiful.”
Ian could see the Hudson River ahead. Hardly any people. A small stretch of green ran along the water. “That was a neat trick back there. That why you took a woman?” Ian stopped at the street light.
“Borrowed.” John stopped next to him. “And fighting should always be a last resort.”
“Ha.” Ian scoffed. “That’s funny coming from you. Since when?” The stoplight turned and Ian scurried across the road without waiting for the crosswalk.
John didn’t answer. He followed fearlessly in his chair. A car honked, then sped around the corner.
“You getting tired of being a babysitter yet?” Ian called back.
“Big time.”
“How did you find me, anyway?” Ian turned and walked across grass. He could smell the river. He felt the cool wind in his face. It stank like dirty water. Gulls made noise overhead. Then he remembered Wink’s oscillating induction coil was still in his leg. He shook his head and leaned against a railing. “Never mind.”
“I’m sure she’s got us all tagged somehow. Prophet’s orders. Probably.” John stopped a few steps away.
Ian wondered if that was to stay out of arm’s reach. He looked out over the water. “You’re not gonna leave me alone, are you?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Whether or not you think you’re a good fit for this team.”
“You don’t. You’ve made that clear from the beginning.”
“I didn’t say that. But it is an open question.”
Ian scowled. “You know, I signed on because I thought you guys were gonna do some good. I gave up everything I had left and didn’t look back because I thought maybe I could help get these guys.”
“And now?”
“How the fuck would I know?” Ian raised his arms and his voice. None of the passing pedestrians were near. “You and Prophet keep everything so goddamned secret. We could be stealing nuclear launch codes. Or committing industrial sabotage. We don’t even know who the fuck he is. And then you guys spring this shit with the fake terror attack? Seriously. A bomb? Near the U.N.? You can’t whip that out and then just expect people to trust you. You roll around all the time acting like you’re this straight-shooting, stand-up guy. And I dunno, maybe you were. But whatever Prophet has on you, it’s fucking up your mojo pretty good. So what is it? Or is that a secret, too?”
John turned his head. He nodded. It was a fair thing to ask, especially from someone putting his life on the line.
Ian waited.
But answering that question took John someplace he didn’t want to go, a place he’d been trying to avoid since he left the hospital.
John didn’t like the downtime. It brought out the ghosts. He liked that Prophet had kept him busy. He liked planning missions and coming up with training plans. He was good at that. He liked to think he wasn’t afraid of anything. But it wasn’t always true.
He looked down at his thighs. “The truth?”
“If you even know what that is anymore.”
John rolled forward and turned to the railing. “New legs.”
Ian’s lips pursed. “No shit?”
The soldier nodded. “Prophet said the Faction’s seen some technical specs or whatever. Inside this place we’re gonna hit, this fortress we’re trying to find. Supposedly there’s some tech that can . . . I dunno, reanimate dead tissue.”
“Reanimate?” Ian squinted. “How?”
John didn’t answer. He shifted himself in his seat with his arms. He felt his stomach knot. A gull landed on the grass nearby. It looked at them like it was waiting for food.
When Ian looked up to urge a response, he saw the veteran’s eyes. He stiffened.
Moments passed.
John clenched his good fist.
Ian was silent. He was terrified at what might be coming. And that it was his fault for stirring it.
“The truth, huh?” John took a deep breath. “I know you all think I’m some kinda granite headstone or whatever. But the truth . . .” He stopped. He took a breath. “The truth is, I can’t do this forever.”
Ian nodded.
John ran his palm along the padding of his armrest. “This fuckin’ chair. Dragging my weight around.” John exhaled slowly. He blinked a few times. “The pain . . .”
Ian waited.
“One way or another, it’s gonna end. Prophet doesn’t care if any of us live or die.” He turned to look Ian in the eye. “As it happens, a suicide mission works out fine for me. But the rest of you . . . Y’all have no fucking clue what’s coming. What it’s gonna be like. When shit gets real. I don’t know how to explain it to you. But missions like this—dark, dirty, desperate—people always die. Usually for no damned reason.
“When the man first contacted me, I thought we’d be breaking into a vault or some shit. Stealing tech. I’d done that before. But this ain’t that. These people . . .” John nodded in earnest. “They’re legit. The shit they’ve collected, it’s how they live. How they do business. And stay secret. There’s not a single piece of it they won’t defend. To the death.” John waited. “I’m not gonna send civilians in to die. Even for a new pair of legs. So I keep thinking I should quit. That you all can’t do what the Faction wants.
“But then what? They’ll just get someone else to take my place. Someone who doesn’t give a shit. You and Xan and Wink will be dead and I’ll be . . .” John took a deep breath and let it out slow.
Still stuck in the chair, Ian thought.
Any other person in John’s situation, he realized, would have had to accept the reality of their situation a long time ago. They would have had to begin the healing process. To adapt to a new life. To find peace. Dignity. Just like all the folks John had helped at the hospital.
Ian leaned his back against the railing and looked over the city.
But John Regent wasn’t like any of those people. He was never bound to his chair. Not totally. Not finally. And Prophet’s Faustian deal had kept him clinging to just enough hope for a future without pain, without drugs, without colostomy bags and electric feet. And without the guilt of stealing what wasn’t his.
Ian felt like shit. He rubbed his face and lowered his hood. He stood next to the soldier, dripping guilt. “I know I’m just a punk kid and all that, and I haven’t done half the shit you have. But, you know, it was my choice to answer that police call. And it was my choice to join this thing, whatever we’re doing. We each chose for ourselves. Even Xan.
“You say we don’t know what’s coming.” Ian turned back to the water. “Maybe we don’t. Maybe that’s why I wanted to do something today. Something that mattered. Before . . . You know. The end. I can feel it. Every night. Like it’s sneaking up on me.
“So don’t tell me we don’t know the risks. Why do you think I’m making stupid comments all the time? Just to be an ass? People are trying to kill me. Like, that’s not even a joke. There are people out there right now legitimately planning my murder. If I didn’t try to see the humor in it, I would probably stay curled up on that old, stained, stinking, disgusting, yellow, nasty-ass mattress back in my bunk.”
John chuckled.
“I’m serious!” Ian objected. “I wake up on my side and it smells like a homeless guy pissed himself and passed out in his own vomit.”
John was nodding. “Mine too.”
“I lay there at night breathing through my mouth trying not to panic, and I think, how is it we can afford frickin’ black-market Chinese missiles but not a few decent mattresses?” Ian’s smile slowly faded. “And then you realize. It’s because we’re expendable. We’re a death-risk someone else is willing to take.”
John’s smile faded as well.
“Xan’s counting on death. She’s taking those heavy metal treatments for her bones, pushing her heart every day, because the only thing she wants in the world is to be with her son once last time—legitimately, legally, as his mother—before saying goodbye. She wants her legacy to be her son’s good memory of her. And she believes she’ll get that, if we pull this off. But not because of a deal from some ghost in a machine. She signed on because of you. Because she trusted you. And Wink . . . Jeez, she thinks you’re frickin’ invincible, like just having you on board solves this whole equation.”
John dropped his head. “I’m not invinc—”
“I know,” Ian interrupted. “Okay? That’s not the point. The point is, we’re not a bunch of kids. Well, Wink is, but you know what I mean. We’re just people, man. Regular people who are already risking their lives and—”
“Regular folks don’t ride around in a flying ambulance.”
Ian turned. “But that’s what I’m saying!” His voice was quick. “Neither do the army guys you used to run with.”
John made a face. That was true.
“You said it yourself. We have an eight-foot woman who curls Volkswagens and a kid who plays with missiles. You can turn anyone on the planet into a weapon. And I can fucking phase through walls. How fucked up is that? We’re not ever gonna be Special Forces, man. Or whatever it is you’re trying to turn us into. Guys like that need orders and something to shoot at.” Ian cut himself short. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
Ian shrugged. He leaned back against the railing. “I signed up because I thought we’d be different. Better. I dunno. Maybe that’s not something you can understand. A professional, I mean. Maybe you just think it’s silly civilian stuff.”
John thought for a moment. “You know, I jumped around a lot in my career. I worked hard, got good, kept moving up. And every time I switched units, I thought now. Now’s when we start doing the serious work. Hitting the bad guys where it counts. Making things better.”
“Did you?”
“Sometimes.” He nodded. “But shit never works out like you expect. Every now and then we’d get some orders. Something ‘justified.’ Ends and means and all that. And you’re right. We were just supposed to do it. To follow orders. It was just assumed we would. ’Cuz we were professionals and that was the job. And so at some point you find your finger on a trigger and you ask yourself, what’s the difference between you and a killer robot who looks exactly like you?”
“Yeah. Well.” Ian watched a passing gull as it swooped in the breeze. “At least you tried. My whole life I’ve just expected someone else to take care of shit. My parents. The school. The government. Then after California, the curtain got pulled back and I saw.” He shook his head. “There’s no wizard. There’s not even a dude in a green suit. There’s nothing. Nobody has a fucking clue. Not any more than you or me. They just act like they do so people won’t freak out. That’s, like, their only goal, really. To keep the rest of us from freaking out.
“But maybe we need to freak out. Ya know? Maybe people need to freak the fuck out. Because the police and the army and the government and all that, they’re giving the world away. But I look around and nobody knows what to do. They’re all worried about their kids or their mortgage or whatever.
“So here we are. And I think, yeah, we’re a bunch of fuck-ups. But they are too, really. So maybe we’re what’s missing. Maybe we’re the ones who go first, who stand up and say fuck this shit.”
John was silent. He heard Ian’s words and thought about his career. He watched some office workers eating lunch at the other end of the park. Normal people. The ones he was supposed to protect. Each of them was alone. In a city of millions.
Ian saw his distant gaze. “Or maybe I’m just full of it and I’m talking because I feel bad and I don’t know what else to say to a guy who’s killed, like, a hundred people.”
“Fifteen,” John said softly. "I was never a sniper."
“You keep count?”
The soldier shook his head. “When it's up close, you remember.”
John thought about his stepmom. He thought about Danny and Kathleen. He thought about young Deadbolt in Malaysia and the smoking wreck in Siberia and the old woman in the cave. The further he ran from his past, the deeper he dug into the underbelly of the world, the weirder it had become.
And the more he was alone. Until . . .
Amarta. The first person to know the truth. The real truth. To see him as he was. As something other than the perfect soldier.
He missed her. He missed how she never let him get away with the self-sorry bullshit. “I’ve been told I might have a hero complex.”
“No.” Ian was flat. “Really?”
John smiled. “Punk.” After a moment, he got serious again. “No more secrets.”
Ian turned his head.
“From now on, if I know it, you do, too.”
Ian nodded. He felt like he needed to reciprocate, but he didn’t know what to say.
“But . . .”
Ian smiled and dropped his head. Cap always had a ‘but.’
“If we’re gonna get these guys, I’m not the only one who’s gotta stop playing hero. No more going rogue. If we do this, we do it together. All of us. Or it don’t happen.” John held out his good hand, palm up, in the space between them. “Deal?”
Ian looked. He slapped it.
John reciprocated. “All right.” He rolled his chair back. “Now. What do you say you and I find out who the hell we’re really working for?”
A middle-aged Spanish woman in a form-fitting white dress stood on a catwalk over a massive hole in the ground. Her neat, black hair was pulled taut. Her nails were manicured. A quarter-mile of concrete arched overhead and completely blotted out the sky. Technicians, like ants, crawled over three curved metal towers, like a giant white claw, fingers swooping ten stories upward from a central pivot in the floor following the shape of the spherical room. Sparks flew amid the clang of hammers and the echo of distant calls.
“Ma’am?”
The woman turned to her subordinate, a round German barely out of graduate school. “Tell me you have something.” She spoke with a thick Spanish accent.
“We got a hit. During a routine asset acquisition. Someone in the network caught a glimpse of a man matching Mr. Calrissian’s description.”
“Where?”
“Penn Station. New York.”
It made sense. If they’d followed the breadcrumbs from Digby’s lab, it would have led them to the New York nexus. From there, they could breach the entire network. The man Prophet was smart. Very smart. And, it seemed, always a step ahead.
But not this time.
“It’s them. Inform the field team.”
“Records says it’s only a 64% match.”
“It’s them.” The woman gripped the railing of the catwalk with both hands. Finally. There could be no mistakes this time. “Deadbolt has Alpha Strike, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She thought. “Scramble Beta Strike. Give them the location but tell them not to engage and not to contact Alpha team. They are to travel in secret and wait in reserve. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The woman tugged the railing in excitement. She was giddy. Now she had them. With the Oric, it didn’t matter if Psyphire was successful or not. With the Oric, she could finally make a play for Control.
She only wished she could see the look on Anders’s face when he lost everything.