Chapter Eleven:
Working For A Living
Steve Libbey and Mercedes Lackey
The women’s locker room rung with excited chatter. Ramona ignored the women and went to her locker, at the far end of the row.
Under normal circumstances, she might have felt intimidated by the lithe bottle-blond trophy wives that made up the usual clientele of a Workout Plus gym. Buff, beautiful, and self-assured, each one must have been detestable in high school. At least metahumans had an excuse for their perfect physiques. Ramona felt dumpier than usual.
Ramona stripped out of her jacket and skirt, and pulled on sweat pants. Topless, she could still find the nearly healed bruises where Valkyria’s bullet had fractured her ribs. Today would be her first workout in a month. One of the blondes looked away as she pulled a T-shirt over her head.
It’s wartime, honey, she thought. Deal with it.
The women hushed themselves with warnings: “Here she comes!” An expectant silence fell over the room, leaving only dripping shower heads to echo off the tiles.
Sleek with sweat, Shahkti strode into Ramona’s aisle, two towels divided between her pairs of hands. The clusters of women stared as she passed them.
“Slumming, aren’t you?” Ramona said, allowing the smirk to bloom on her face.
Shahkti’s own dark face lit up with a comradely smile. “Hello, Detective. Have you just arrived?”
“Oh yeah. I want to get pumped up for my rematch with the Nazi dominatrix.”
Shahkti opened her locker to reveal a nanoweave Echo uniform, crisply folded, and toiletries neatly arranged beside it. “Understandable. You cannot always be assured of a handy printer within reach.” Without a hint of self-consciousness, Shahkti peeled off her damp shirt, maneuvering all four arms free of the sleeves effortlessly. Nude, her body was that of a goddess, reminding Ramona of the rumor that the inhabitants of her village had worshiped her as one.
Shahkti draped a towel over her shoulder. “I have finished my routine for today, but if you wish any coaching on hand-to-hand techniques, I would be happy to offer my services.”
“Really? Wow. I mean, heck yeah, girl.” Ramona held out both arms. “I’m a little bit unarmed for your style.”
That made Shahkti laugh out loud. Ramona hadn’t seen this much warmth in her, ever. “Four-armed teachers were not exactly listed in the Yellow Pages. I know many conventional styles.”
“Then I’ll take you up on it.” She could see the metahuman was ready for her shower, but Ramona wanted to bask in her glory a little more.
Shahkti smiled. “Notify me when you are ready for some sparring.” She patted Ramona’s shoulder and trotted off to the showers, leaving an audience of Atlantans behind her.
Ramona gave the room an offhand shrug. “Office talk,” she told them.
* * *
Another familiar face greeted her in the weight room: Matai, easily the biggest man in the room, grunting under the leg press machine. He nodded in acknowledgment of her presence but kept up his routine. Ramona noted that he had the machine set at eight hundred pounds. She waited in awed silence until he finished.
He greeted her as he wiped sweat from his forehead. The Samoan dwarfed virtually every non-metahuman she had ever met. He would have looked at home as a defensive lineman. No, as a defensive line. Most of his size came naturally; he lacked the definition of a conventional body-builder. Matai simply gave the impression that he didn’t have to make any effort to remain huge.
“So is this the new Echo gym, Matai? I just saw Shahkti.” She handed him his water bottle.
“Thanks,” he said after a healthy swig. “Mostly SupportOps and a few OpOnes. These machines don’t carry enough weight for most of the metas.”
She began a stretching routine. “Ah, that’s right. Only your brother is a meta. I keep forgetting. You Samoans look metahuman already.”
Matai chuckled, his round features suddenly boyish with amusement. “It’s the company I keep.”
“How’s your brother doing?”
“Not good.” The smile disappeared. “He lost a lot of friends from R & D in the attack. I think it broke his heart.”
“I know the feeling.”
Matai shook his head woefully. “A broken heart’s bad for people like us. Samoans, I mean. It’s worse for him, I think. He’s always been sensitive. At home Mama would send me out to bring him to dinner. He would be out in the trees, watching a spider building a web. Sitting for hours, just watching.”
“The soul of a poet.”
“Fighting isn’t natural to him.” Matai paused as a pair of racketballers passed them. “Sometimes I pray to God for Him to switch our places. Give me the powers. Not because I want to be a metahuman, but because he hates it. And I wish he could have some peace.”
Ramona at once thought of Bill, the Mountain, back in his dark hole. “Yeah, I understand.”
“Out in the field, I’m like a child among adults. Isn’t that curious?”
“But you do have a power. You’re a leader. It takes a certain temperament and mind-set. Quick thinking, decisiveness, alertness. They don’t call you ‘Chief’ for nothing, right?”
“Not if I can help it, they don’t.” Matai exhaled as he began another set of reps. Several nearby weightlifters stopped to watch. Ramona wanted to announce to them, to everyone, that Matai was no metahuman, that his strength came from good-old-fashioned genes and willpower. Instead she punched in an ambitious program on the Stairmaster and started pumping.
She pedaled in silence; the whirring of the Stairmaster’s gears and the rhythmic clank of Matai’s leg presses provided a soundtrack to her questing thoughts about Slycke. She had digested his meager dossier over the last week. News searches added little to supplement the data already in Echo’s recovered database. Born in Macon, Georgia, Walter Slycke had acquired his powers one night near a toxic waste dump. He had been recruited by a gang of metahuman bank robbers, the Easy Men, lorded over by a man who called himself Easy Listener, and took it upon himself to dub each of the crooks with a corny fifties-style moniker. Slycke hadn’t suffered the indignity of his handle, Smooth Operator, for long. A string of increasingly violent solo crimes followed until an OpOne team apprehended him in 1999. Georgia law enforcement had refused to mount a search effort for him; they were already overwhelmed, and their unspoken attitude was that Slycke was Echo’s problem.
And that’s all she had to track down the only man who had heard Eisenfaust’s final words.
“Matai.” She tapped the Stairmaster’s power button. “If you had broken out of prison, where would you go?”
“Somewhere I could blend in.” Matai relaxed his legs and exhaled. Ramona laughed, but left it at that. Some jokes just wrote themselves.
“But what if your personal appearance was offputting? Inhuman.”
“Ah. A metahuman. Well…I suppose I would try to cross the border into Mexico.”
“That’s a bit far from Atlanta.”
Matai shrugged. “Maybe I’d go to ground until my pursuers gave up.”
“I’m not giving up on this guy.”
“Law enforcement has a lot on their plates now. It would be easy to disappear. Unless your perp is as big as the Mountain, he can pretty much move around at will.”
Ramona wiped her forehead. The Atlanta heat managed to penetrate even this soulless, air-conditioned box. She imagined her sweat was the strange oily substance that Slycke’s skin exuded. Like the Mountain, he must live in perpetual horror at his own body, cut off from society at large. Except that Bill the Mountain retained a sense of ethics, as lonely as he was, essentially dead to his wife and family.
A germ of an idea took root. Ramona had a sudden urge to dump a liter of 10W-40 motor oil over her head.
“You sleuths have the tough job,” Matai continued. “I have no idea how you gather information and dig needles out of haystacks. I prefer field work: five minutes and either the problem’s solved or I’m a red smear across the pavement. No suspense there. Still too much paperwork, though.”
A slender blonde approached Ramona. “Are you done?” she asked while never taking her eyes off Matai.
“You can have him. Some of us girls have to work for a living.” She gave Matai a wink and bustled off to the locker room, head swirling with possibility. For the first time in days, she didn’t wonder what Mercurye was doing.
* * *
The first thing Jack Point did when Ramona entered his office was give her a white rose.
“Why, thanks, Jack,” she said.
“Identify yourself, please,” Jack Point said. His garish harlequin three-piece suit, pink gloves and polka-dotted top hat belied his solemn, intent scrutiny of her face.
Ramona tilted her head. “Jack, Jack, Jack. How many times have we worked together? I can’t believe you don’t recognize me.”
“You’re lying,” Jack said with a sad smile, “whoever you are. If we’ve worked together, you must be an EchoOps detective. And female…Jeanine Carlson?”
“No.”
“Adrianne Penn.”
“Wrong again, buddy.”
Jack leaned back into his chair. “The only detective cruel enough to torment the guy with prosopagnosia is Ramona Ferrari.”
Ramona clapped her hands together twice. “Brilliant deduction. Nice to see you again.” She tucked the rose into her lapel. “Does that help?”
“Yes, thank you. And thank you for not lying when you say it’s nice to see me again.” Jack Point had relaxed from the awkwardness.
“It is nice, you freak. You always keep me entertained.”
“My blindness to faces amuses you?”
“No. The workarounds you find for it impress me.” She adjusted the rose. “The flower’s a nice touch.”
“Looks classier than the ‘Hello My Name Is’ badges. What do you have for me today?”
Ramona leaned forward over his desk with a photograph. “Here’s my quarry.”
Jack Point squinted at Walter Slycke’s scowling mugshot, complete with an oily black film over his skin. “Now that’s a face even I could remember. Metahuman?”
“Until the attack, he was a prisoner in the security wing. He was too slippery, literally, for the Nazis to execute him.” She passed him Walter Slycke’s dossier and pointed to an italicized section. “That gunk he exudes can all but eliminate friction. With fancy footwork, he can deflect bullets.”
“He’ll be tough to recapture.”
“I have to find him first. He’s gone to ground.”
Jack Point shrugged. His attention wandered to an etching on his wall: a scene from Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard, featuring the jester who was his namesake.
Ramona waved her hand in his face. “Stay with me here, buddy. I’m in a bit of a hurry and the courts are tied up with aftermath nonsense. Warrants and court orders are hassles I don’t need. Your built-in polygraph will make interviews much more to the point.”
“Jack Point, that’s me.”
“You bet. What kind of paperwork do I need to fill out to get you on the case?”
“Not much.” Jack Point wrote “out of the office” on a Post-it and adhered it to his computer screen. “Funny how informal things have become since…hmm.” He cleared his throat. “Where to?”
“The sticks. We’re paying a visit to Ma and Pa Slycke.”
* * *
Three hours later, Ramona wished she had requisitioned a helicopter instead of one of Echo’s unmarked sedans. The Atlanta traffic had gone from bad to impossible thanks to the destruction wrought on the highways. It took an extra hour to crawl through rush hour traffic. She bit her lip and resisted the urge to activate the siren that would clear a path—and announce their presence to the world. Jack Point’s top hat was bad enough; fortunately he had to doff it to fit into the car. He watched the cars creep by and glanced at his hands at regular intervals.
“Those gloves aren’t going to change themselves,” Ramona said.
“Hmm?”
“You keep staring at them. Did you mean to wear the white ones?”
He held up his gloved hands. “Ah. No, it’s a mental trick. I’m usually the only person in the room with pink gloves, thus I know these hands are mine and not someone else’s.”
“Of course they’re yours. You operate them, you receive tactile information from them, right?”
“Sometimes it’s not enough,” Jack Point said in a quiet voice.
Ramona blew air out her lips. “Sorry. I guess I forget how acute your condition is. You can’t even recognize yourself?”
He shook his head.
“So you’ve never really seen your own face?”
“I was normal until I was twelve. That’s the last time I saw myself.” He smiled. “But among neuroscientists, I’m a rock star, so it’s not so bad. The most acute case of prosopagnosia in history. I go right off the charts.” He chuckled. “Some of them are convinced vivisecting my brain will reveal the nature of consciousness itself. I’ve lost count of the MRIs I’ve been subjected to.”
“You could say no.”
“They mean well and they’re very grateful. Who knows? They might learn something genuinely useful. Meanwhile, Echo has use for me as a walking polygraph.”
“The good with the bad,” Ramona said.
“Everything’s a trade-off,” he agreed, giving the hat on his lap a flip.
Unsummoned, an image of Mercurye entered her mind. Handsome, metahumanly strong, able to fly…what trade-off did he make for his powers?
Suddenly she missed him terribly.
Well south of Atlanta, the afternoon sun illuminated the edges of kudzu-engulfed trees that formed a parade of grotesque shapes on the side of I-75. Traffic had died down as Ramona and Jack Point left behind the extended suburbs that established Atlanta’s reputation as a major center for urban sprawl. A few intrepid commuters still drove their air-conditioned SUVs to their suburban palaces, their faces tight with exhaustion as Ramona zipped past them.
“Look at those bogs,” she said. “It’s no wonder there haven’t been any sightings of him.”
“You think he’s hiding out in the swamps? How very pulpy of him. Could it be that he’s trying to scare meddling teenagers away from a hidden treasure?”
She chuckled. “Not if he’s smart. But right now he’s scared and lost. Nothing in his history indicates he’s much of a survivalist, so I’m betting he’s lurking around Beechwood.”
“Beechwood. Hmm.” Jack Point shuffled through the papers. “Born 1974, Beechwood, Georgia. Isn’t that a little obvious?”
“Slycke’s trying to have it both ways.” She took the State Route 401 exit off the highway, bypassing a cluster of gas stations and truckstops. “And that’s how I’ll catch him.”
They cruised through Fort Valley and Nakomis, sleepy southern towns settling down for an evening’s dinner. Ramona stopped for a quick refuel and some gritty gas-station hot dogs. Jack Point settled for a honey bun and coffee. Twenty minutes later, as the sun set in a swath of crimson, they entered the swamps of Beechwood.
The tiny village had all the rustic emptiness that Ramona expected from the deep south: a handful of elegant plantation homes with peeling columns, surrounded by mobile homes and decaying shacks. The air lacked the pollution of Atlanta but retained the thick humidity, made worse by the earthy smell of the swamp.
Despite their map, it took three passes down Carter Lane to find the turnoff to the Slycke home. Five hundred yards through bramble and willow trees led them to a yard littered with car parts, broken appliances and overgrown foliage. A shape peered out from a stained curtain when they pulled into the driveway and parked.
“So much for stealth,” Jack Point said. “What if he’s bolting out the back door?”
“I doubt it, but keep your eyes open.”
Wood groaned under their weight as they mounted the steps.
“Take your hat off,” she told Jack. “Manners.”
He sighed and cradled it in his arm.
Ramona knocked on the frame of the screen door. She heard furtive voices within, and the patter of feet. Jack Point arched an eyebrow but she shook her head.
Finally, the door opened to reveal a stout black woman in a fading-pink-floral house dress. Her scowl dented the folds of her face.
“What you want?” The woman’s voice was deep and husky and tired. She stared bug-eyed at Ramona’s companion. “You circus folk?”
Ramona smiled and flipped her Echo badge open. “Echo Detective Ramona Ferrari, ma’am. I’m hoping you’ll answer some questions for me.”
The woman nodded her head at Jack. “Who’s he?”
“That’s Jack Point. May we come in?”
The sigh that escaped the woman had in it decades of bitterness and resentment. “Might as well,” she said at last.
Inside the house, the flickering light of a television bathed the room in a dismal blue luminescence, spitting out audio from a battered speaker. A man in his sixties slouched on a dusty sofa with a can of Coca-Cola. His face bore a look of passive acceptance, as if he had given up even moving.
When Ramona and Jack Point came into view, he tilted his head with sudden distrust. “Who’re you?”
Ramona repeated her introduction as the woman leaned against the wall and glared. The man grunted. “Pull up some chairs, Ma,” he said.
“They ain’t staying long.”
“Don’t back-talk me. They’re guests.” He made no effort to move or even emphasize his anger.
The woman dragged creaky wooden chairs into the living room. Ramona feared hers would give out, but it held firm.
“Say your piece.” The man shifted his eyes from the television to Ramona.
She cleared her throat. “I appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. I promise I’ll make it painless.” Her smile was lost in the darkness. “We need to ask you a few questions about your son, Walter.”
“We ain’t got a son,” the woman snapped. Jack turned his head towards her.
“Ellie’s barren. We’re alone,” the man said.
“The female in the dress is lying,” Jack Point said without umbrage. “The male on the couch is also lying. Additionally, they are frightened of reprisal.”
Mr. Slycke grunted and stared at Jack Point as if seeing him for the first time. Jack Point’s eyes roved the room, never meeting anyone’s gaze.
“Why, I never!” The woman stomped her foot. “Calling me a liar in my own house…”
Ramona held up her hands, palms out. “Ma’am, please. We know that Walter’s your son. Has he been here? Did he threaten you?”
The couple fell into angry silence broken only by the distorted bleating of the television. Neither would speak first.
“The female is too ashamed to reveal the information. The male feels familial competition with the suspect and thus may betray him out of resentment.”
Like a walrus, Mr. Slycke levered himself to his feet. “You goddamn cracker freak,” he said, brandishing his can of cola at Jack Point. “No man talks to me like that. No man!”
“Sit down, sir. I am carrying a firearm, and I am likely to shoot one or more people in this room if you threaten me again.”
Ramona interposed herself between Jack Point and Mr. Slycke. “Jack! For Christ’s sake, don’t antagonize them. We’re trying to get them to cooperate.”
“Why? I can read them like open books. Walter Slycke was here at least two days ago.” Jack Point stood and walked past the angry old man as if he wasn’t there. He plucked a picture of a young boy off the mantle, holding it in his pink-gloved fingers by the frame’s corners. “See?”
Ramona marveled at Jack’s perceptiveness. In the dim room, he had spotted a thumb-shaped smudge in the dust on the old picture frame. To him, she realized, objects were just as communicative as people.
“Cute kid. Who’da thunk?” Ramona showed the picture to the couple. “Feeling nostalgic recently?”
Without warning, Ellie Slycke spun on her heel and left the room. Her footsteps reverberated in the kitchen.
“That was a long time ago,” Mr. Slycke said into the air of the room.
“Twenty-five years, I’m guessing. Walter has been a metahuman since he was seventeen, correct?”
The man closed his eyes. “What I done to bring down the wrath of God on my boy, I don’t know. Never fought, never drank. I looked after my wife and my boy like a man should.”
Ramona nodded her head when he opened his eyes again. “I’m sure you did, sir.”
“Walter wasn’t a smart boy, but he worked hard at anything he put his mind to. Could have hired him at the body shop. It’s a good job,” Mr. Slycke insisted. “Honest work. Walter wasn’t no criminal.”
Jack Point opened his mouth to speak, but Ramona silenced him with a finger. “That changed, didn’t it?”
“He and his friends were out at the dump. I don’t know why—boys like to act up at that age. He didn’t come back till dawn, and that—stuff—covered him like he’d changed a truck’s oil without a pan. Only it wouldn’t come off with rags or water or detergent. Walter cried like a baby, he was so scared. Every time Ellie tried to comfort him, even put a hand on his shoulder, it slid right off. He could barely stand, he just lay down on the floor.” He pointed at the wall. “Fetched up against that wall because the foundation is shifting towards the backyard.”
“That must have been horrible.”
“I pray you don’t have to see your children like that.”
“Why didn’t you contact Echo? We have specialists to help metahumans deal with their condition.”
Mr. Slycke shrugged. “We just thought he got into some kind of industrial waste. The hospital’s an hour away. Ellie kept trying to wipe it off him…I suppose we should have called someone. But after a day of worry, Walter found he could clean himself just by willing it. He put on overalls and kept the oil under his clothes. Once he did that, he stayed in his room for a week, not talking, hardly eating, just thinking. And then he left.”
“To join the Easy Men.”
“I don’t know. I reckon he just wanted to hide from respectable folks until this ‘condition’ worked itself out of his system. It never did.” He hung his head.
Ramona and Jack Point waited respectfully for the man to gather himself. When he raised his head again, tears glistened in his eyes. “I suppose you’ve come to arrest him.”
“That’s our job, sir. Is he here?”
“No.” Mr. Slycke looked at Jack Point. “That’s the truth.”
Jack Point nodded.
“Was he here?” Ramona asked, leaning forward. Her heart raced with excitement.
“Three days ago.”
She ran a hand through her hair, both relieved and disappointed. “What did he say?”
Ellie Slycke’s voice rang out in the quiet room. “That’s between Walter and his kin. Ain’t none of your business.”
“Ma’am, with respect, it’s everyone’s business. Walter may have information pertaining to the Nazi attacks. The sooner we find him, the sooner we can act on it.”
The woman shook her head slowly from side to side. “He didn’t say nothing about no Nazis. He felt bad about what he done, and wanted to make up for it.”
“This would be a good start.”
“You keep away from him!” With sudden fury, Ellie Slycke advanced towards Ramona with fists balled. “Leave him be. He’s been cursed enough already.”
“Ramona, these people don’t know the fugitive’s whereabouts, but they do know his intentions,” Jack Point said coolly. “They are using hostility to deflect your questions.”
“I noticed,” Ramona muttered. She stood up and confronted Ellie Slycke. “I don’t care a whit about your family drama, lady. Those Nazi bastards killed my friends right in front of me.” Her voice rose in pitch. “If one life—one life—can be saved with what he knows, then I’ll track him down like an animal through every stinking swamp in the state. I won’t eat, I won’t sleep, and I sure as hell won’t be intimidated by a bitter old woman!”
Ellie Slycke blinked and backed up. Ramona pursued her.
“Your boy is a convicted criminal. Blame his ‘curse’ if you want, but I have co-workers in far worse shape who risk their lives every day to serve and protect. We’re at war, lady. If Walter is withholding information, that makes him a traitor.” She paused for effect. “And I don’t think you raised a traitor.”
“Damn right,” Mr. Slycke said.
Hands over her mouth, Ellie Slycke regarded Ramona with horror and sadness. “Walter left to meet up with those thieves,” she whispered.
“The Easy Men?”
Ellie Slycke closed her eyes and wept.
“The Easy Men were disbanded a decade ago,” Jack Point said. “However, the female is telling the truth, as best she knows it.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
But Jack Point had already started for the front door of the ramshackle home.
“Hey,” Ramona called to his retreating back.
“What remains to be learned belongs to them alone.” The bang of the screen door punctuated his statement.
* * *
The bland whiteness of the laptop screen mocked her with its lack of information. Each of the five dossiers in the list ended with the same bad news. Current whereabouts: UNKNOWN.
In an act of desperation as much as faith, Ramona ran the names—and aliases—through the FBI database, the Interpol database, the CIA, the IRS, and even the phone book. For the second time. Just in case there was a server hiccup, she told herself, though she knew it was pointless.
With the exception of Walter Slycke, there was no official record on the Easy Men from the last decade. Before Slycke’s capture, the Easy Men had a bad run and disappeared off the radar. Ramona had spent hours cross-referencing unsolved robberies in hopes of recognizing the modus operandi of the remaining Easy Men, such as a hyperspeed snatch by Twinkletoes, or an uncrackable safe cracked by Easy Listener. Nothing.
Slycke could be anywhere within four states by now. The Easy Men could be across the world. As helpless as she felt in front of the computer, it beat pounding the pavement in Atlanta.
“You stink,” she told the laptop. “Do my thinking for me!” She closed it with more force than was healthy. With a pang of guilt, she reopened it; cheery light and a logo greeted her. “Okay, okay, sorry. Take a nap for a while.”
Ramona stood, stretched, dug out a cigarette. She opened the window in spite of the air conditioning. The smoke gave her a momentary boost which faded fast, leaving only the comfort of the habitual movements. Smoking did her no good aside from putting her in a reflective state.
“He’s in Georgia,” she said aloud. Her voice functioned as an aural whiteboard. “He’s got to be. Why, I don’t know, but I feel it, and if I’m wrong, I’m screwed anyway.”
She wished Mercurye was listening to her. A silly urge, because he hardly struck her as a deep thinker, yet in explaining Slycke’s movements to him, she might talk herself into some grand insight.
She remembered the German’s posture as he spoke rapidly to the metahuman criminal: urgent, desperate, tensed and waiting for a killing blow. Whatever the man had done during World War II, her mental image of him in his last moments was that of a self-sacrificing hero. It was too much to reconcile.
The humid Atlanta air crowded into her apartment, making the cluttered mess feel even more vile. Ramona knew a detective who thought best while cleaning, and prayed every day to become that person. Alas, she thought best when mournfully studying her mounting trash piles.
“This is why you’ll never hook up with that man. You’re a slob.” She caught herself—why were her thoughts drifting to Mercurye like an infatuated schoolgirl? In this time of crisis, it was selfish and childish. But thinking about him did make her feel better somehow.
She put the godlike metahuman out of her mind. Too many lives depended on her ability to suss out Slycke’s whereabouts and get him in an Echo interrogation room. If they could hold him still. A memory came back: Southwind, the gangling, hairless, pale metahuman, dashing Valkyria into the ceiling and saving Ramona’s bacon. All of the Four Winds—the survivors, anyway—had varying degrees of telekinesis. A psychic hand could hold a greased pig far better than a physical hand.
When I find Slycke, I’ll make sure Southwind is there for backup. After losing his partner, he’d probably appreciate a chance to be a part of the solution.
She ground out the cigarette. Purposefulness filled her: she remembered one very strange resource that she had not considered until now.
Her desk was far more chaotic than the room around it, as though it were the wellspring of all disorder. The piece of paper with the important phone number had been torn from a Vogue magazine. The unceremoniously beheaded underwear model on the other side was clear in her mind. For an hour, she rooted through the drawers, working from the smallest to the file folders filled with scraps of paper and inaccurate dates. Her stomach began to claw at her in hunger and anxiety.
“Oh, come on.” She wished with all her heart that she had undertaken to organize her desk…five years ago.
At last a tanned hip flashed at her from a pile of Post-its. Ramona pounced on it and then laughed in triumph. She hadn’t thrown it away after all.
She dialed the number labeled “BFH” on her cell. The number rang for two solid minutes as she chewed on her fingernails.
“It is good to hear your voice again, Ramona.” The voice was delicate, breathy, low and carefully neutral.
“You knew it was me. I should have figured.”
“It’s my job. I know why you’re calling, too. My prices have increased since you last used my services.” A pause. “I want fifty thousand dollars for the information you are going to ask me.”
She whistled. “That’s a lot of benjamins, Benjamin. Can’t Echo just write you a check?”
“No checks. No companies. No reimbursements. I only accept real money from real human beings. If you want my information, you have to bleed for it.”
Fifty thousand dollars? “For Christ’s sake. I don’t carry that kind of cash around. Even if I had it.”
“That’s the price for what you need to know. I recommend that you hurry. Your bank closes in forty-five minutes.”
“Wait. How do I know—”
“I’ll call you when you have the money in hand. One-hundred-dollar bills, unmarked. Paper bag.” The line went dead.
* * *
Ramona’s cell rang in time with the swish of the bank’s revolving doors spitting her out. She stuffed the paper bag into her purse, feeling conspicuous about holding her life savings in a vulnerable physical form.
“Hello?”
“Walk two blocks north. Cross the street. Half a block and take a right into the alley next to the package store, before the sidewalk ends.”
“Classy as always, Benjamin.” The line went dead. So much for witty banter, she thought.
With one hand on her purse and one hand on her holster, Ramona walked briskly down the Atlanta street. Aside from sporadic commercial zones like this one, it was rare for there to be enough sidewalk for a pedestrian to get around. People standing on the streets seemed to be waiting for the next riot. Tension was in the air, and more than one bystander gave her a predatory once-over.
The city really has changed, she thought. Where are these lowlifes coming from?
A pair of armed guards bearing shotguns smoked cigarettes outside the package store. Ramona spied the coiled snake insignia of Blacksnake, the security contractor. The men ignored her scowl as she passed them.
I can’t begrudge the store owners for providing for their own safety, even if it’s through those scumbags. Hell, guarding package stores is all they’re qualified for. Should just pay them in liquor.
Trash stank up the entryway to the alley. Ramona breathed through her mouth and stepped gingerly over broken bottles.
“Calling Benjamin Franklin Hotline,” she announced to the empty alley. “Inquiring minds want to know about their futures.”
The alley’s walls caught her words in a wash of sharp echoes. She peeked in doorways as she passed them.
“Hello? Anyone home?”
Without ceremony, a slouching figure appeared in the mouth of the alley. Two large plastic buckets, one set into the other, dangled from a hand hidden by the overlong sleeves of a gray-cloth greatcoat too warm for the Atlanta summer. A floppy brimmed hat hid a pale, wrinkled face in shadow.
Benjamin Franklin Hotline separated the buckets, overturned the empty one and sat on it. “Money first.”
“Nice to see you, too.” Ramona opened the paper bag to reveal the sheaf of bills. “There you have it. I’ll be working in McDonald’s when I’m sixty thanks to you.”
“Echo pays you plenty. Drop it in the bucket.”
She removed it from the bag and started forward. Benjamin Franklin Hotline held up a palm. “Bag too.”
Ramona shrugged and did as he requested. She loomed over him. “Didn’t bring a seat for a lady?”
“Ask your question.”
“I have a few.”
“I’ll answer one.”
Ramona gaped. “I just paid you fifty grand! You should be writing me a goddamn novel! What the hell’s happened to you?”
Benjamin Franklin Hotline didn’t look up, but his head swayed in acknowledgment. “Fair enough. I’ll stop you from asking the wrong question.”
“Christ. Fine, Mr. Genie from a Bottle.” She lit a cigarette. “Let me think.”
“He’s alive and safe, but that’s not the man you’re after.”
“What, Slycke? He’s—”
“Echo OpOne, code-named Mercurye.”
Her cheeks burned. “You read my mind.”
“I read everyone’s mind. That’s my job. Walter Slycke is the question here.”
“Yes, yes, yes! Where is he?”
The psychic paused. Street noise filled the air around them.
“Well? Is that the right question?”
“It is. I can give you an address.”
“The Easy Men, right?”
“What remains of the Easy Men. He will not be there long, I wager.” Benjamin Franklin Hotline leaned over his open bucket and reached inside. The sound of sifting papers reached her ears. He never looked at the papers, but eventually the hand came up with a scrap.
How appropriate, she thought.
“Here,” he said. “I strongly recommend you arrive there before six p.m. tonight.”
The address was unfamiliar: Osierfield, GA, in Irwin County. That made it two hours away by car.
“What happens at six?”
“I can’t answer that question without another payment.” He stood and dropped the open bucket into the one he used for a seat. “You’re better served making haste.”
“Right, right. Thanks.”
“I don’t require thanks. You paid for it.”
“Then don’t spend it all in one place.” She opened her cell as he hobbled away. She needed a team, and fast.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Ramona stood in the parking lot of the last team member’s current location, and it was not a place she had ever expected to be. Her call to Echo had produced a helicopter and a pickup squad: Flak (Mercurye’s squad leader, but Ramona put that out of her mind), Silent Knight, and the mind reader she requested, Pensive. One team member that worried her was the new Damage Control Officer, Belladonna Blue, who was on probation for flouting procedure. And Southwind, on whom the operation hinged, had gone AWOL.
Well, AWOL here.
“I have to have a telekinetic. I’ll settle for Carrie, or get me Mintohk from Williams Street, or some teenager’s poltergeist. Anyone.”
“Southwind’s the only one,” the dispatcher had assured her. “He’s your man, if you can call him that.”
Ramona didn’t know if it was a crack about Southwind’s sexual orientation or his alien appearance. “I have an hour and a half to nab this perp and he’s the only one who can do it.”
“Like I said, his comm has been off for days.” The dispatcher lowered his voice. “There are rumors, though…”
And thus Ramona strode up to the burly, shirtless bouncer at Menergy, the all-hours club. “Looking for Southwind. You can’t miss him: eight feet tall, bald, looks like he double-parked his flying saucer.”
“Not here.” The bouncer had to raise his voice to be heard over the pumping Euro-disco music. He wore leather pants and suspenders that didn’t conceal his nipple rings. “I can’t let you in.”
“What?”
“We’re at capacity. You’ll have to wait.”
She blinked. The dimly-lit dance floor could have fit a bulldozer in between dancing couples. Ramona drew herself up. “Do you know who I am?”
“Don’t care, sister.”
“Oh, you will. Because either I pull out my Echo ID and pull rank, or I pull out my Echo sidearm, drop you like a frickin’ roach, and write a report about how you interfered with a peace officer in the course of performing her duty.” She gave him a steely glare. “The first choice hurts less and involves no paperwork, but I guaran-damn-tee you I like the second one better.”
His jaw twitched.
“Well?”
“I promised Rey he would be left alone.” The man’s face softened. “He’s in mourning. We all are.”
“Then he’ll want to hear what I have for him—a little chance for revenge.”
The bouncer’s eyes narrowed, then he stood aside. “Second red door on the right. Knock first.”
Ramona passed through the barroom quickly. She was the only female in the room. Menergy appeared to cater to the macho gay crowd: black leather and facial hair abounded, though there was a selection of young men decidedly more effeminate than the bouncer and his ilk. Nevertheless, the bright desperation here was the same you’d find at happy hour at any bar.
She pounded on the second red door.
“Occupied!” The voice was familiar.
“Rey! It’s Ramona Ferrari. We have a situation and you’re needed.”
The voice was slurred in a comic parody of intoxication. “Who—oh, Christ. Get lost.”
Ramona tried the handle. Someone—or something—held it firm. “Either come out or let me in, Rey.”
The metahuman barked harsh laughter. “I came out a long time ago, before I turned into a freak. Leave me alone.”
She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes had already been lost with this unsavory detour. The amusement in the copter pilot’s voice when she told him to rendezvous with her at Menergy was bad enough. Now she had yet another self-pitying metahuman to deal with.
“I am going to count to three…Oh, the hell with it.” She drew her pistol and fired five swift shots around the doorknob, angled towards the jamb. The wood holding the bolt shredded. Ramona gave the door a kick before Southwind could force it shut.
A leather modular couch took up most of the room, which stank of sweat, smoke, and booze. Southwind reclined across the entire length of the couch, wearing nothing more than a thong. Two pale and similarly underdressed young men had cast themselves under his arms in fear.
Southwind rolled his giant, bulbous eyes at her. “Rah rah, very exciting. You scared my friends, mean lady.” He patted their heads. “You’re not going to use that big bad gun on little old me, are you?”
“Cut the crap. I need a TK for a mission right now.”
“So what? I quit. Or I will when Echo finds me.” He considered. “Which, I guess, it has now, right?”
“No. We’re at war, soldier, and you have marching orders.”
“Forget it. Echo let Kevin die in their stupid war. They don’t deserve me.”
Ramona locked eyes with him—a feat considering that his were the size of her hands. His transformed features did not express emotions as a normal human’s face might, instead seeming to switch between serene and evil. What he truly felt was unreadable, but she could guess: grief, rage, loneliness, resentment.
“Listen, mister. Echo didn’t ‘let’ Kevin die. And we’re doing a snatch-and-grab on a meta that has intel on the Nazis—the people who actually killed your boyfriend. You want revenge, this is the place to start.” She holstered the gun. “You in or not?”
“You’re serious?”
“Helicopter will be here in minutes. Only a TK can catch this guy. Without you I’ll just send the chopper home and call it a night. So?” Ramona put out a hand to him.
Southwind took her proffered hand and stood, nearly smacking his head on the ceiling. His boytoys fell to the floor with yelps.
“Yes, ma’am!” he said with a crispness that betrayed his military past. A pile of clothes floated past her head and unfolded. Ramona had never seen clothes put themselves on before. In seconds he was dressed in a spindly Echo uniform and giving her a snappy salute. “Ready for deployment.”
* * *
Interstate 75 cut through the verdant Georgian landscape that blurred underneath them as the Echo copter carried them to their destination on spinning blades and roaring jets.
“This is where we get off,” Ramona shouted over the headset.
“We’re ten clicks from the target, ma’am!” The pilot jabbed a finger at the heads-up display. “I can put you right on their roof.”
“That’s a negative. One perp has metahuman hearing. Southwind will take us in.” She tilted her head at the giant meta hunching over in the cabin. He nodded. “Head over the highway and circle it until you hear from us. With luck, Easy Listener will mistake you for a traffic helicopter.”
“I’ll lay off the jets, too.”
“Good boy.” She turned to the team. “All right, folks. With the exception of Flak, none of you have worked with me before. Flak is the squad leader but he’ll be executing my orders. This is a snatch and grab against meta Ones. These guys are not known for excessive force but are known for skilled escapes. They will be frightened, so be prepared. Our target, Slycke, is carrying critical intel. He must be taken alive at all costs. Pensive will make the read on the scene, which makes him mission critical as well.”
“Another point,” Pensive said. His wild eyebrows and graying hair gave him the air of an art-film director. “Should we not have more combat operatives for this mission?”
“That’s what Silent’s for.” And, she added to herself, the best she could do given the dubious response she’d gotten from Tesla when she described her hunch about Slycke. She had to call in favors to get Flak and Silent Knight.
Southwind crouched at the helicopter door. With a flick of a finger he opened the latch and slid the door open. The roar of the blades swelled.
“Form up, close as you can, and I’ll grab you. Close your eyes if you feel dizzy.” He removed his headset and rolled out of the hatch, looking for a scary moment as though he were committing suicide—and then he floated alongside the helicopter, utterly relaxed. One spidery hand urged them forward.
“I hate this part,” Flak muttered before he pulled his headset off. The five clustered together, Silent Knight hulking behind them like a pet truck.
Southwind raised both hands. A million miniature hurricane winds wrapped their bodies and dragged them out of the helicopter. Ramona shut her eyes to the vertigo overwhelming her. Over the sound of the blades she could hear Flak swearing loudly, using curses that would make a sailor envious.
In seconds the helicopter peeled away from them. Southwind kept them hovering in the air until the helicopter had become a speck in the distance. Aside from the susurrus of the prevailing winds, silence enveloped them.
Southwind chuckled. “That’s better, isn’t it? You should see yourselves with your faces all screwed up.”
Ramona opened her eyes. The unincorporated landscape of Irwin County stretched out beneath her like a verdant woven blanket. Floating in the sky, she was reminded of the time as a child when she had taken a hot air balloon ride at a state fair, and the world had seemed vast beyond comprehension.
Silent Knight, who, true to his moniker, had been virtually silent for the entire trip, surprised her by speaking first, though the words seemed out of place in his computerized voice: “A lovely sight.”
Flak pointed towards the destination. “They may have spotters. Can you take us in low?”
“You got it. The view won’t be as pretty. Ah, close your eyes again. Trust me on this one.” He dropped from view. Ramona squeezed her eyes shut as they began a free-fall. Her stomach lurched and panic rose inside her.
As quickly as it started, the descent ended in a gentle slope. The ground was a mere five feet below.
“Sorry,” Southwind said. “But we’re under the radar now.” Force built up behind them.
Once they began a horizontal vector, genuine metahuman flight was actually rather relaxing. Southwind deliberately steered them towards the tree line to take advantage of cover. Ramona forced herself to gather her thoughts about the mission. She checked her watch: 5:45 p.m.. Slycke would be on site for another fifteen minutes. She asked Southwind for an ETA.
“Five minutes, ma’am.” His exaggerated features were screwed up in concentration. Given that he was working hard to keep from slamming them into obstructions, she decided not to pester him.
She addressed the others. “We’re going to deploy without any chatter, so listen up. Slycke is going to bolt when he gets wind of us. Southwind’s job will be to lock him down—he’s the only one who can hold onto him. Flak and Knight will run interference. Pensive will remain outside until the area is secure. I’ll do the talking.”
“What about me?” Belladonna asked.
“You’re the DCO.” Ramona frowned. “Listen, Blue, no trouble from you, please. Just watch our backs.”
“She’ll keep it tight,” Flak said. “We’ve been over this already, believe me.”
They emerged from the grove of trees. A tattered Texaco sign stood sentry over a concrete box labeled country store. A flickering fluorescent light proved the power was on, in spite of the store’s ramshackle appearance. Ramona held up a hand for Southwind to reduce their velocity.
Good old reliable Georgia mud, Ramona thought. Parallel tracks led away from the door. She pointed them out, and Southwind followed them at a slower pace along the overgrown gravel road. The country store was still in sporadic use, it appeared. Ramona had a guess who was the primary customer.
Abruptly, Southwind halted them. A wing of a dilapidated antebellum mansion peeked out from behind looming stands of hydrangea. Time had weathered the walls and columns, leaving only a few dirty shreds of white paint to mottle the gray, water-stained wood. A rusting tractor stood watch by the driveway.
Ramona waved them on. Silent but for the air they displaced, they entered the yard.
At once, a raucous sound of shrieking and scrabbling startled them. Guns swung around to find a target in…a chicken, loose in the yard and surprised by the floating visitors.
Pensive pointed to the house and held up four fingers. He folded all but one and nodded meaningfully. Southwind let him down in the yard.
Her watch read 5:55 p.m. Ramona put a finger to her lips and gave a single nod.
Southwind guided them towards the double doors of the front porch. They glided like ghosts over the stairs and a makeshift ramp. Inside, angry voices volleyed back and forth. Invisible hands swung the doors open before them with a woody groan.
The interior of the house, while not restored, had been cleaned of dirt and grime. The voices echoed out from the dining room. Southwind floated them over the buckling hardwood floorboards to a clear view of the occupants seated at a table.
Ramona’s heart raced. Walter Slycke stood with his back to them, hands gesticulating wildly. An elderly, gaunt man in a jacket and tie sat across the table in a wheelchair and winced at the volume of Slycke’s voice. A slender, blond man in a dirty hooded sweatshirt ignored them both and picked at his food, but the thick-armed, bare-chested man in overalls glared in anger at Slycke.
Twinkletoes and Musclehead, she realized. And Easy Listener was in worse shape than she had expected.
Ramona cleared her throat. “Excuse me, folks. Need a word with your slippery friend here.”
Slycke whirled around. His skin oil had been flowing freely over his face and neck, as if he were a mechanic bungling an oil change.
“Oh, hell no,” he said.
Her feet touched the floor, making it easier to aim her sidearm. “Oh, yes. Thanks for distracting your host for us, Mr. Slycke. I trust you can guess who we are.”
Body tensing, Slycke scanned the room for a bolt-hole. Southwind raised a hand and the shutters of the windows clattered shut.
“Area secure, ma’am.” His smirk twisted his thin features disturbingly.
The old man scooted back his wheelchair. “Miss, please. Lower your gun. No one wants any violence here. Walter was just leaving.”
“Damn right,” Slycke said. “And you ain’t gonna stop me.”
Ramona grinned at him. “Not me, Walter. Meet my friend Southwind here.”
With a howl, Musclehead launched the entire table at them—at her. She reflexively threw up her arms.
Silent Knight stepped in front of her, palms outstretched. Musclehead’s howl—and every voice heard in the last two minutes—played back as a tight-beam, amplified and focused sonic burst. She had never been so close to Silent Knight in action; it was tantamount to unleashing a hundred thunderstorms in a small room, and she blanked out momentarily. The table exploded into splinters.
Easy Listener fell out of his wheelchair, covering his ears and wailing. Twinkletoes appeared over Ramona in a blur, her sidearm now in his hand. As rapid as a machine gun, he emptied the clip into Silent Knight. Most of the caseless rounds ricocheted off the metal and nanoweave—she had not loaded armor-piercing bullets. Still, the impact staggered Silent Knight and blood sprayed out from his stomach.
Twinkletoes stared at the crumbling giant in shock; it was obvious that he hadn’t been in a fight for years. Ramona, on the other hand, had been so keyed up in anticipation of this confrontation that she was ready to act. She wrapped her arms around the metahuman’s legs and put all her weight against his knees. He tumbled to the floor with a yelp.
“Stop, please!” Easy Listener’s anguished plea went unheeded. Flak had pinned Musclehead’s arms behind him and held tight as the strongman bucked like a bronco.
Twinkletoes raised the empty gun to pistol-whip Ramona. In his hands, even an unloaded gun became a deadly weapon. Ramona blanched. Yet the gun leapt out of his hands and bounced off the ceiling. Southwind had nearly dropped Slycke from midair so that he could turn his attention to protecting Ramona.
She pulled handcuffs from her jacket and slapped one on Twinkletoes’ ankle. “Hey!” he protested, but before he could squirm out from her weight, she cuffed his other ankle. She rolled off his legs and caught her breath, half crawling to retrieve her pistol.
Her cell phone vibrated.
What lousy timing, Ramona thought. She struggled to her feet, ears ringing, and scanned the room. Slycke floated in the middle of the room under Southwind’s control; Flak had Musclehead in a half nelson and grunted under the strain of keeping him still; Easy Listener had curled up into a ball, blood seeping from his ears and crying. Twinkletoes clawed at the handcuffs preventing him from using his speed to escape.
Belladonna crouched by Silent Knight’s prone form. Her hands moved over the ragged, bloody holes in his nanoweave shirt. Ramona leaned in. “How is he?”
“I can handle it,” the blue girl snapped without taking her eyes from Knight.
Ramona exhaled in relief. The moment of terror and violence had ended in relative success. Her desperate curiosity about Eisenfaust’s final words came back in delicious anticipation of gratification. She even smiled.
“Hot damn. Now we can get started.”
Slycke flailed his arms as Southwind held him fast, three feet above the floor. He glared at Ramona with undisguised hatred. A faint scent of oil wafted off him, spread by the displaced air from Southwind’s telekinesis.
“Walter, Walter, Walter.” Ramona tapped her cheek with her gun. “Whatever are we going to do with you?”
“I ain’t going back to lockup,” he said.
“That’s up to Southwind, honey, and his magic fingers. But if you cooperate with us, I can ask for your sentence to be reduced.”
“Bull.”
“Hey. I’m not the criminal here. You make me an offer. Why shouldn’t we throw you back in a hole?”
Oily liquid formed patterns over Slycke’s blunt features. His eyes narrowed. “What do you want from me?”
“Information, Walter. You’re a witness to the murder of Heinrich Eisenhauer—Eisenfaust. His last words were addressed to you.”
“Yeah. So? Lots of killin’ that day. Hell, I thought they killed you.”
“Which explains why you’re so happy to see me again. Walter, what did Eisenfaust say?”
“Let me down first. I ain’t no animal.”
Ramona snorted. “Not according to your dossier. Spill the beans. Now. Or I get the psion to scrape out your skull, and believe me, that is unpleasant.”
Walter Slycke glanced around nervously. A long moment passed…then her phone rang. Again. She hit the Ignore key.
“I’m a popular girl, Walter. Start talking while I still feel generous.”
“See, the thing is…” He sighed. “I kinda forgot what he said.”
Her jaw dropped. “You…forgot?”
“There was a lot going on, lady. I was sure them Nazis was fittin’ to kill me. All I could think about was how I was going to get out of there alive.”
Flak coughed. “Doesn’t that just figure? Knight’s down and it’s all for nothing.”
Ramona rubbed her scalp. “Not for nothing. Pensive can dig through and get those memories. Just takes time.”
Slycke cringed. “I’m gonna get scraped?”
“Yep. If you ask nice, he’ll cuddle you afterwards.” The phone rang again. She ignored it and instead flicked on her Echo comm unit. “Pensive, we’re ready for you.”
Ramona crossed the room to where Easy Listener sobbed on the floor. The metahuman’s enhanced hearing made him utterly vulnerable to the shock wave–generating armor of Silent Knight. A pang of guilt rose up in her.
“It’s all right.” She got an arm under him and propped him up. He clung to her like a frightened child. “It’s over now.”
The buzz of her cell sent a fresh wave of quivers through the crippled old man. She dug it out of her jacket pocket to silence it—and blinked. The number was familiar, terribly familiar.
“We just wanted to be left alone,” Easy Listener whimpered. “We wouldn’t hurt anyone. You didn’t have to bring an army.”
Army? “Just us, old-timer.”
He shook his head. “So many troops to arrest an old man. It’s not fair.”
“I told you, there’s only—” Ramona stopped. There was something horribly wrong. Why hadn’t Pensive confirmed her orders? And the persistent caller, who kept calling back, avoiding voice mail…
She gasped and flipped the cell phone open to answer. “Benjamin!”
There was nothing neutral about Benjamin Franklin Hotline’s voice. “I told you to be there before six.”
“We were. Slycke’s right here, under arrest.”
“Ramona.” He spoke her name with disturbing urgency. “That wasn’t the reason.” He paused. “You’re not my only client.”
“What do you mean?”
“I—get out of there right now. I can’t tell you more without violating client confidentiality.”
Ramona looked up at the tableau of the secured metacrooks and the wounded Silent Knight. “Who’s out there, Benjamin?”
“Just go. Use the back door.” The line went dead.
“Damn.” The comm line was silent as well, hissing like it had on the day of the invasion.
Flak gave her a concerned look over Musclehead’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“Not sure.” She turned to Easy Listener. “What do you hear?”
“Ringing…” He shook his head to clear it. “And footsteps, dozens. An engine, unfamiliar. Someone being strangled. Guns—rifles. Machines.” Easy Listener paled further. “They’re not Echo, are they?”
“No,” Ramona said. “I don’t think so.”
“They’re speaking…it’s German. I can’t understand what they’re saying.”
“I can guess.” She retrieved her sidearm and slapped in a fresh cartridge. “We’re already acquainted.”
Southwind gave a laugh. “Speak of the devil! I was in the mood for some payback. What should I do with Mr. Exxon Valdez here?”
“Put me down,” Slycke snarled.
“Hold onto him. That intel is still our primary objective.”
But Southwind shook his head. “Can’t do that and defend you.”
Easy Listener had climbed back into his chair. “They’re advancing. They’re on my porch! Oh, Lord, protect us…”
The Nazis had the building surrounded. Benjamin Franklin Hotline told her to use the back door. Was it too late?
Ramona knelt by Silent Knight and Belladonna. “Can he move?”
“Not really,” the healer said. “Not without support, which would require Flak or Southwind.”
“Then we leave him.” The words sounded foreign as soon as she spoke them. “To cover our retreat.”
“Retreat?” Flak had released Musclehead, who rubbed his arms. “You’re joking, right?”
“No. Think of this as a football game with Slycke as the ball. Our team’s goal is to get him to safety, no matter what it takes.”
“We should stand and fight,” Belladonna said.
“Damn straight,” Flak said. “We got the firepower.”
“I want blood. They have to pay.” Southwind said.
Ramona stood and faced them all. Her spine tingled. “No. I give the orders. We run. Now.”
A buzz issued from Silent Knight’s speaker grill. “Orders confirmed. I will provide covering fire.” The mechanical quality of the synthesized voice didn’t hide the finality in the statement. “Commence retreat at Detective Ferrari’s command.”
Belladonna clenched her fists. “This isn’t right. My patient—”
The building shuddered from an impact on the roof. Plaster dust shook down from the ceiling. “No more time. Let’s go.”
“What about these clowns?” Flak gestured at Musclehead and the cuffed Twinkletoes, who still sat with his legs outstretched.
Ramona aimed her gun and fired two rounds. Twinkletoes flinched. The bullets shattered the chain of the handcuffs.
“Evacuate them. Southwind, keep Slycke secure.”
“Ain’t no more need for that,” Slycke said. “Jus’ lemme go, I’ll run plenty fast on my own.”
Ramona ignored him. “Which way to the back door?”
Twinkletoes was on his feet and standing at the far door in an instant. “Over here.”
“Carry the old man as far as you can when we break through their lines,” Ramona told him.
Southwind raised a hand. “Wait a second, ma’am. I can fly us out of here in a snap.”
“And when a stray shot hits you? We drop out of the sky and splat. No, we need to move on our own feet.”
Easy Listener cried out and covered his head. Ramona jerked around to watch him. What had he heard?
“Down!” Flak shouted.
The ceiling over the old man and Twinkletoes collapsed. Beams slammed into the floor, and drywall fell in sheets, released from decades of failing support. A metallic claw the size of a man forced its way through the rubble and grasped the metahuman speedster. Talons the length of a man’s arm pierced his chest. He died without being able to scream.
The wall nearest Ramona caved inwards. A huge, gleaming metal shape wedged through the opening, weaving from side to side. Though the lines were stylized and sleek, there was no question that the shape took the form of an eagle’s head. Between its bulbous glass eyes, a swastika stood out in relief.
The robotic eagle fixed both eyes on Slycke.
The Echo metahumans wasted no time. Flak leapt forward to throw his arms around the eagle’s head. The eagle dashed him against the floor and ceiling, but Flak’s skin had the tensile strength of steel, and the thrashing took far more toll on the house. The eagle plunged into the room and headed straight for Slycke, still suspended in the air.
Belladonna seized Ramona’s arm. “Let’s go, let’s go!” They ran across the center of the room, ducking as the second, airborne eagle tore through the rest of ceiling with a blood-curdling, half-organic hunting call. Its wingtips battered the rafters; antigravity engines glowed orange along the length of its pinions. Ramona swerved to avoid the buffeting wing and stumbled. A claw, already coated with Twinkletoes’ blood, reached out for her.
Thunder resounded in the room. Silent Knight’s armor had been absorbing all the sound in the room to convert it to concussive energy. The cacophony from the destruction of the ceiling gave him a spike in power, and he released it at the eagle. Shards of metal feathers exploded from its chest, showering Ramona. Instinctively she covered her head with her arms—but with only a nanoweave vest to protect her, the shrapnel tore through her jacket and into her arms.
Belladonna dragged her to the wall, just under the shuttered window; she tore open the seams of Ramona’s sleeves to reveal bloody flesh. Belladonna plucked out the largest of the fragments as Ramona gasped in pain. Then warmth flooded from the healer’s fingers into Ramona’s arms.
“Can you move your arms?”
“I think so.”
Slycke’s cries cut through the cacophony of collapsing ceilings. The gunmetal eagle dragged Flak along as it snapped at Slycke as though he were bait hanging from a hook. Southwind yanked him back and forth to keep him from being sliced in half.
The blue girl’s face was resolute. “That thing is going to kill our target. You were right about the intel.”
Ramona shook her head, dislodging tears of pain. “That was all talk. I never meant for anyone to die just so I could question him.”
Belladonna grabbed her arm. “Listen—I can read minds, too. I’m not as good as Pensive, but I can do it if I can get a hand on Slycke.”
“It’s—”
“Not my job as DCO. I know. But do we have a choice?” Belladonna’s eyes pleaded with her and demanded at the same time.
A rapid-fire popping, followed by the whine of bullets, increased the noise level of the room. Ramona and Belladonna flattened themselves on the ground.
Slycke was a sitting duck.
“It’s now or never!” Belladonna shouted.
Ramona reloaded her sidearm. “Go! Go!”
Belladonna bunched her legs under her and ran forward like a dog, using her hands to keep her balance as she hunched over to avoid the volley of bullets from outside. Where the bullets hit the wall, they kicked up dust and splinters; where they hit the eagles, they ricocheted into the floor—or into the occupants. She saw Easy Listener jerking from multiple impacts.
Ramona squeezed the trigger, sending armor-piercing caseless rounds into the tail of the eagle blocking Belladonna’s way. The eagle spun, wings sweeping the floor, forcing Belladonna to leap into the air to avoid a devastating swat.
A bullet caught Bella in the thigh. Flipping end over end, she clattered to the floor in a tangle of blue and black.
“Damn it!” Ramona kept firing at the eagle as it advanced on her. The beak opened as if to shriek—and the “tongue” dropped down to reveal a gun barrel. Its focusing tip glowed a wicked azure.
The back door. Ramona was close to it. She dove into the opening as the familiar, teeth-grating whine of the Nazi force beam presaged a blue eruption of energy. The wall where she had been exploded outwards, and behind it, sections of floor, foundation and yard outside.
The robotic eagle’s beak clacked and a spent capacitor casing ejected. The gun revved up for another blast.
She got a glimpse of what lurked behind her in the yard: two dozen men in red-and-black uniforms, with white-faced gas masks and coal-black sloping helmets. They fired their rifles into the side of the house.
There was nowhere to go.
The eagle’s eye lenses whirred and zoomed in on her, and the monster opened its beak to expose the energy cannon. Desperately, Ramona fired at the blue glow, over and over, as fast as she could. The bullets embedded themselves in the eagle’s beak—but for the few that found their way right down the collimator of the force cannon and into the capacitor housing beside it.
In a flash of blue light, the eagle’s head swelled and burst; the thing crumbled into the shattered floor with a titanic crash.
Ramona saw Belladonna’s head peek over the debris. She was crawling towards Slycke. Ramona tried to move in her direction, but the eagle’s energy bolt had opened a hole in the wall that gave the assembled soldiers out front a clear view of the room. Bullets raked across the floor between Ramona and her comrades. She tried to make herself as small as possible and reloaded her gun with her last magazine of armor-piercing rounds.
Flak and Musclehead pounded on the remaining eagle. Foot soldiers poured in from the back door. Those in the vanguard took shots at the two strongmen. The bullets bounced off Flak’s invulnerable hide, but Musclehead had no such protection. He cried out as the rounds embedded themselves in his meaty body, mostly in his left side.
The eagle reared up and lunged at him. Caught off guard, he could not dodge the razor-sharp metal beak. It sliced into his shoulder and arm and hauled him into the air. Flak beat uselessly on the robot’s neck. In all this chaos, Southwind still held fast to Slycke. His huge black eyes flicked back and forth from target to target. Ramona knew his powers were curtailed by her orders. Meanwhile, as he kept Slycke from harm, he also kept him out of Belladonna’s reach.
Ramona reached out with her sidearm and fired blindly. The foot soldiers’ cries of surprise and pain were muffled by their gas masks. Those behind her targets returned fire, chewing holes in the drywall as she ducked aside.
The wreckage of the robotic eagle rose into the air. Ramona cursed, appalled. A sick feeling welled up from her stomach: she was going to die.
But the eagle had not come back to life. Instead, it floated towards Belladonna and Slycke.
Ramona felt a tug on her leg. An invisible pull horrifically dragged her out towards the center of the room—into the line of fire.
“Rey, no!”
Gunfire ripped up the floor a yard from her foot. She dropped her sidearm to scrabble at the floorboards. But the force was implacable, irresistible.
A low sound rumbled inside her, gained power, roared into life. The sound was all-encompassing, overwhelming. Silent Knight stood, hands extended, and broadcast a shock wave into the air of the room itself. Bullets lost their trajectories and skittered across the floor, harmless.
Southwind’s pull on her increased. She slid under the eagle and rose up until she floated aside Slycke and Belladonna.
A shadow passed over them: the headless eagle enfolded them in its wings.
The space it created was no larger than the backseat of a sedan, so Slycke’s effluvia and Belladonna’s blood smeared them all. Belladonna, however, ignored her wound and wrapped her hands around Slycke. He struggled against her until his eyes rolled up into his head.
“Get him,” Ramona whispered.
Belladonna’s hands roved over his face, almost in an intimate embrace until one of her hands slipped off Slycke’s coating entirely. She kept her pressure light, maintaining contact without gripping. Her face screwed up in concentration and her eyes shut tight.
“He’s fighting me,” she shouted over the roar. “It’s not on his surface level, either. He really wasn’t paying attention.”
“He’s expendable. Do what you have to!”
Belladonna cracked her neck, took a deep breath, and bowed her head. Slycke began to jerk as if he had touched a power line. A high-pitched, inhuman wail rose up from his throat.
“Come on, you sick son of a bitch.” Belladonna’s entire body had tensed up. “Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
The healer shook her head as if to clear it. “He’s—I got it, by God, I got it.”
As if on cue, Southwind released his hold on Slycke, and the metahuman’s limp form dropped out of their telekinetically sustained shelter. Silent Knight and Flak took his place. The wings of the robot eagle constricted, and the tail as well, shutting out the light. The four of them pressed together as Southwind released them in order to compress the eagle into a hollow ball of impenetrable metal. The patter of bullets resumed; the soldiers were firing at the former robot eagle.
Belladonna sagged against Ramona. Her blue skin had gone pale. “What’s he doing?”
“Something big. Hang on.” Flak enveloped Ramona in his arms, Silent Knight did the same for Belladonna.
The ball fell to the floor, then lurched over as a deafening ripping sound enveloped them. The interior of their makeshift shelter was hardly smooth; the metal feathers jabbed at them as they bounced on the inside, like an amusement park ride designed by a sadist. Ramona pressed her head into Flak’s chest and let his back and her nanoweave vest absorb the impacts as the ball twirled through the air.
For a pregnant moment, they hung in midair, not from telekinetic force, but in free fall. Then they hit the ground, hard. Flak’s head smashed into the eagle’s wing and he grunted against an impact that would have split Ramona’s skull open.
The ball rolled to a stop against an obstruction. Flak released her. “You all right?”
“Hell of a ride. Thanks.”
Flak wedged his hands where the two wings met and flexed. Slowly, painfully, the metal bent, and an opening large enough for them to pass through was created. They emerged into sunlight dappled by the green leaves of the oak tree that had stopped their tumble. In the distance, crashes and gunfire resounded. Ramona shielded her eyes from the sun to get a look at the mansion once occupied by the late Easy Men.
It was virtually scoured from the earth. Any recognizable structure from two-thirds of it was gone. Beams and roofing and wiring were twisting away, only to be slammed together, like fistfuls of modeling clay in the hands of a petulant child and torn apart again.
And then the remaining wing of the mansion rose into the air, and came crashing down atop the rest, compressing it all down to a height of mere feet. A spindly figure hovered in the air above it: Southwind, freed of his obligation to protect Slycke or the rest of the team. He had turned the mansion into a weapon, and left nothing to doubt or mercy. Blue energy beams lashed out at him from the trees nearby, but he was in full battle rage now, the pain of the loss of his lover channeled into unholy destruction.
A blast of displaced wind washed over them.
“Good God,” Ramona said. “I doubt Southwind left any survivors, but the after-action team should be on its way. I had no idea he was capable of that.”
Flak helped Belladonna to her feet. “He may not be. That expenditure could kill him. I don’t think he cares.”
“I hope it was worth it.” Ramona met Belladonna’s eyes. “Well? Is it?”
The blue girl looked immeasurably old in that moment. What Belladonna had seen in the vile depths of Walter Slycke’s mind, Ramona could only guess. She put a comforting hand on the girl’s arm.
Belladonna hung her head. “I don’t know. It’s—it’s weird, a non sequitur. Maybe you know more than I do.”
“It’s all we have, right now.” She squeezed. “Thank you.”
“All in a day’s work for a DCO.” Belladonna managed a wry almost-smile.
The blades of the Echo helicopter beat the air above them. As columns of dust kicked up around them, Ramona let herself close her eyes and think about nothing at all.
Interlude:
Bottom feeders.
You get them in every disaster. We got them now, in spades, the “smart guys” that make a very high profit off the misery of others. The PMCs were some of those. Private military companies were basically highly organized, heavily funded mercenaries with as much money sunk in their legal, PR and packaging departments as they had in their bullets and fatigues. The aftermath of the Invasion created a feeding frenzy among them. They took contracts, they heavily recruited to fill those contracts, and anyplace where the law was not there to step hard on them immediately, they took the law into their own hands and became judge, jury and on-the-spot executioner. The ones who’d bought politicians ahead of time got the fattest gigs first, but everyone in the biz got a slice of the terror pie. Life on the ground was great for a merc. They had systems worked out where as long as your CO filed the right papers, you could shoot, confiscate, or “secure” whatever you wanted. PMCs became the elite looters of the aftermath, “securing” valuables and supplies, and guarding them in the most luxurious “command posts” they could take over, like million-dollar condos. Their highest-paid members were the guys who wrote the after-action reports, spun to always make it the other guy’s fault. On the ground, people knew. But up where the money was, far from shunning them, anyone that had anything to lose and wasn’t thinking about scruples lined up to hire them. Frightened people do that, and then they have the illusion that everything is all right again.
I expect the Thulians are laughing about that.