Heart of the Storm, page 15
“For a breather, yeah,” Wade said, already moving around. He pulled off his camo, and I saw to my surprise he was carrying two backpacks.
“Oh! You got my backpack?” I was surprisingly excited about that.
“What? Yes,” he said, and unslung it, handing it over. I took up its weight and he immediately squatted, opening up his own. “Let's see...yep, Cassidy included a tent. That's lucky.” He pulled out a package about the size of what I would have guessed was a poncho, then unfolded it, clicked two buttons, and I heard a gentle whirring. The thing in his hand expanded to become a tent. Not a huge one, mind you, but reasonable-sized, big enough for two, certainly. He pulled out a pack of four spikes and quickly anchored it to the earth with his bare hands and a little metahuman gusto. “There,” he said once he was done, “shelter.”
While he was doing that, I'd been in a daze. I was reaching out to Ricardo MonFalcon, who had tried to follow us, but had gotten lost in the supersonic wash of speed that we'd poured on. Fortunately, I had a deep bond with my falcon, and could touch his mind from great distances. It was tough, a little like watching a dirty movie on Cinemax when you weren't a subscriber. Back in the days when paid cable was a thing. I could get flashes of his mind, but fortunately it was such a simple one that getting him heading in the right direction wasn't tough. I did estimate it'd be a matter of hours before he caught up, though, so I settled in to wait.
“So...what next?” Wade asked, once I'd informed him about Ricardo's current status.
“Ricardo's out there,” I said, waving vaguely, “on his way back to me. Probably should just wait for him.” I gave Wade a glance. “Unless you think the Chinese have a way to track us here?”
Wade screwed up his face, frowning, lips twisted as he thought. “No...their real-time, down-looking satellite capability over China doesn't provide complete coverage, and we flew quite a distance. I'm pretty sure we're fine, especially given we flew a lot more once we were under the tree canopy. If we hear so much as a truck engine, we can zip off, but I think we've lost them.” He looked up at the boughs overhead. “For now.”
“That sounded like some gloom was appended to it.”
He shrugged. “Their Tianwang – that Skynet surveillance system – blankets the whole country. I know Cassidy's camo is supposed to defeat it, but I'd feel a lot better if it was just offline.”
“Maybe Sierra will get it,” I said, and then my own gloom slipped out. “Unless they figure out what we did at the electronics shop and root her out.”
“It'd be nice to know how she's doing, wouldn't it?” He smiled wanly, pinching the bridge his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Think we can turn the satphones back on?”
I pondered that for a moment. “Maybe. We're far enough away from Anshun that I'd think we'd be clear of whatever tracking systems they were using. There's gotta be a lot of devices between there and here that would act like a smokescreen, right?”
Wade gave me a slight smile. “When you're talking about advanced tech, my ceiling for understanding is much lower than, say, Cassidy's. So I don't know.”
“We should probably give it a try,” I said, pulling my phone out of the pocket I'd stowed it in. “We need to get ahold of Lethe and Jian and Hades anyway.” I clicked the power button on it, and it started the boot-up sequence.
Wade just nodded and plopped down, landing his ass right in the soil. He didn't bother to turn on his own phone, because why risk two?
“So...” I said, watching the little icon appear on the phone screen as it started up, “you want to talk about what happened back there?”
“What's to talk about?” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “We fought. Enemy soldiers died. That's war, same as it ever was.”
I chuckled. “Dude. How many people did you drain back there?” Then my smirk disappeared, because it occurred to me that maybe I was being a little too cavalier about the fact that he'd just killed a whole heap of people.
He laughed, giving me the reassurance that whew, my husband was in fact as dark in his sense of humor and as casually jaded to the business of killing enemies as I was. For good or ill. “A lot. I picked up nine new powers plus got the one I already had boosted to full strength.” His hand glowed purple for a moment as he regarded it with interest. “Obviously I'm still a piker compared to you–”
“Who isn't?”
“–but I'm catching up fast, Ms. Nealon,” he said with a smile.
“I wish I'd been awake to partake,” I said, then frowned at the inadvertent rhyme. “I could use some new powers.”
“I could have used the help,” he said. “Together maybe we could have just taken out the whole army and been done with it.”
“Heh,” I said, mildly chuckling at the thought of winning the war, just the two of us. But no: “Still wouldn't get us Fen Liu. Unless...” I perked up slightly. “Any chance the peons you absorbed have any intel on her whereabouts?”
“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “I sifted my way through them while we were in flight. The only useful information is that their regiments were spun up in a hurry and directed to Anshun via portals about five minutes before they made contact with us. They came in right on us, knew which train car we were hiding in and everything.”
I tried to think that thought. “We were only in that car for...what, thirty minutes?”
“And in the shop for twenty more before that,” Wade said. “So...how'd they find us?”
My phone had completed the boot-up sequence, and I checked for signal. It had full bars, so I dialed directory assistance.
As soon as it clicked to indicate the connection was in place, Sierra spoke: “Sienna. I am relieved you made it. I was concerned.”
“Bring us up to speed, Sierra,” I said, pulling out the little earwig and planting it in my ear canal. I saw Wade do the same where he sat. “How'd they find us, are they tracking us now, your progress, etc.”
“I can't be certain how they found you,” Sierra said, “but it seems likely that our escapades at the shop did not go unnoticed. There is presently a large Chinese government presence outside the shop, including police, army, and forensics teams, all visible via satellite imagery. I place the likelihood that the shop was where they acquired us at 95% likelihood given the rapidity of their arrival on that scene, which was concurrent with your battle in the rail depot.”
“Okay,” I said. “But are they tracking us now?”
“Without being certain how they found you to begin with, it would impossible to say,” Sierra said. “I give it a 50% likelihood that you lost them after the depot because their armies are still in place in Anshun, and I see no indication that they are mobilizing to go elsewhere.”
“That's a relief,” Wade said, “because I could use a breather.”
“It is possible, however,” Sierra said, “that they are preparing a different army to engage you at your present location. The Peoples' Liberation Army does have 4 million personnel with reserves, and given the average rate of metahuman power adoption from the serums, up to 3 million could be metahumans.”
Wade let out a pained whistle. “That kinda makes what we did to them in the rail yard a drop in the bucket, doesn't it?”
“Indeed,” Sierra said. “Furthermore, I am not currently able to make contact with the program you inserted into the Chinese internet. It remains either beyond the firewall, where I can't access it and it can't reach me, or it has been found and destroyed. I rate the former most likely, at 80%, but we cannot ignore the possibility of discovery and failure.”
“Oh, good, more gloom,” I said.
“I am sorry I don't bring better news,” she said. “Also, I have not made contact with Jian, Lethe, or Hades. They remain 'in the blind,' so to speak.”
“Great,” I said. “Hopefully they cleared out of Anshun without any trouble.”
“Hopefully,” Wade echoed. “So should we just sit here and wait until Ricardo arrives?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And then, maybe...I don't know.” I ran fingers through my tangled hair, “I don't know what to do next.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Zhang
“It seems they accessed our internet and used it to try and search for you, with little result – obviously,” Zhang said, his hobble gone. He spoke into the phone, directly connected to Fen Liu in her fortress-like lair.
“Obviously.”
“The search history is somewhat muddled, according to our chief investigator,” Zhang said, striding out the back of the store into the alley, where a forensic team was working diligently on a patch of asphalt in the alley. “One of the soldiers assigned to this post is missing. We suspect Nealon or one of her team killed him, then disintegrated the body.”
“Oh? That is interesting.” Fen Liu chuckled darkly. “For all her reservations about fighting a war, she certainly hasn't hesitated to kill since arriving on our soil.”
“She seems to draw the distinction between civilians and military very carefully,” Zhang said.
“A meaningless distinction,” Fen Liu said. “If necessary, I will raise all of loyal China against her.”
“Well, let us hope she doesn't realize that,” Zhang said, speaking quickly because he knew his life depended on it, “or else we will have a real mess on our hands.”
“We have a mess on our hands anyway,” Fen Liu said.
“We are still following the falcon's path,” Zhang said. “He will lead us to her, I suspect. But we need a plan to deal with her once we find her.”
“Stick with the current plan,” Fen Liu said. “You pin them down. We'll work on the drone swarms. If they'd only been in a more open area, they would have worked.”
“Perhaps,” Zhang said. “We'll stay on the trail of the falcon, and keep trying to figure out what happened here.”
“Good,” Fen Liu said. “Keep me apprised.” And she broke contact without a further word of goodbye.
Zhang stared down at his phone. Not a word of endearment. Not surprising, exactly, but still...it might have been nice. Zhang looked around the shaded alley, and marshaled his wits to figure out what the next step was beyond waiting for a break.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Fen Liu
“What is news out of Anshun?” she asked the Jianjun, the portly Minister of Public Security. His head was down, double chins wobbling in the light of his monitor.
“We're shutting it all down as fast as anyone can post,” he assured her. “Scrubbing all references the moment they are mentioned online.”
“Good,” she said, and clicked the button to bring up Minister of Defense Guoqiang. “And the status of the bombs I asked prepared?”
“Our teleportation metas are in place,” Guoqiang said, jowls shaking. Between him and Jianjun, she had two advisors that needed more exercise and less food. “They will do as you asked, keeping themselves from danger.”
“Good,” she said, “because I cannot spare them, but I must have this done.”
“And it will be done,” he said, “as soon as you ask.”
She gave him a curt nod and nothing more. With a click, she severed the link, leaving her alone in her confined quarters. They were all waiting on her, there at the press of a button. The power was at her fingertips.
And soon...soon she would exercise that power fully. As soon as they figured out where Sienna Nealon had landed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Sienna
“Can I ask about that?” Wade pointed to a pouch I held in my hand. It held the two serums that, if injected, would give me power beyond measure. The full souping-up of the ghostly powers I had – Magneto, Eyebeams, Thor, Brance's sonic voice – and also, perhaps, unlock powers adjacent to mine. While I didn't know exactly what those would portend, I had suspicions that becoming a full-on Hades and an Aeolus was in the starter deck, to borrow one of my brother's geeky aphorisms.
“You already know what these are, don't you?” I flashed the leather serum pouch at him. “What do you need to ask?”
“Why don't you just take 'em?” he asked, and I could hear a little drip of frustration.
I almost chuckled; I felt a grim smirk pull at the corners of my lips, and I made a sort of grunting, amused noise in the back of my throat. “That is the question I seem to most often ask myself.”
“They're right there.” He waved a hand at the vials. “Incredible power at your fingertips. You wouldn't have to drain a meta anymore to have their powers, you could just feel the burn for a few seconds and let them live, and forevermore their power is yours.”
“Speculatively,” I said. “That's what logic might suggest.” I lifted the little leather bundle, and stared at it. “But you know power doesn't always follow logic.”
“But I just don't get it,” Wade said, and now the frustration was really bleeding through. “You could have walked through the fight we had back there, drained every single meta to death with Hades powers, if you wanted to, at a distance, while hiding in a corner, and boom – you have a hundred, a thousand new powers that you can use to get the next hundred, the next thousand.” His eyes found mine across the slowly seeping dimness as the sun slipped its way over the mountains to signal the approach of night. “You'd indisputably be the goddess you always mockingly claim to be.”
“Who says I'm not already?” I kept a high tone of amusement in my voice, and gently put the leather packet back in my backpack. “Wade...how do you think of your powers?”
He paused, as though he'd had an immediate response he was ready with, but wanted to take the answer as seriously as I'd posed the question. “I haven't had many to speak of, until now. The CIA folks took a very serious line toward me absorbing metas. They were very happy that I had my current powers, and used the hell out of my super strength, my ability to drain possible terrorists of their knowledge, my dreamwalks for achieving perfectly secret contact with our spies in other countries – but they didn't trust me to absorb so much as a Hercules.” He grunted. “And, frankly, that drove me a little nuts, because in a case like my experience in Hong Kong, a few extra powers would have gone a long way to maybe keeping me from getting caught by the Chinese. I guess I don't understand not grabbing what you can when you get a chance. My entire life experience is always being undergunned and undersupported, so I just can't figure out why you'd ever want to walk into a fight without having the biggest gun. Or in your case, being the biggest gun.”
“It's a tricky thing,” I said, my voice turning quiet, pensive, “being thought of as the most powerful person in the world. See, on one hand, my hero's reputation is handy, because people generally think I'm trying to do the right thing for them, for the country, for the world – and so they cut me a little teensy bit of slack.
“On the other – if you've never had all society turn against you because the villains trying to wreck your life have skunked you in a cloud of suspicion or just exposed your bad deeds, it's probably hard to understand why the thought of becoming more powerful absolutely terrifies me.”
He cocked his head. “You're right. I don't get it. Help me understand?”
“One of the easier times of my – admittedly not very easy–life was after Scotland. After I'd adjusted to the loss of my souls, the loss of their powers,” I said.
The thin hint of a smile perked at the corner's of Wade's mouth. “You mean when you were Public Enemy Numero Uno, thrown in prison, and then forced to work for a cabal of shadowy geek overlords that styled themselves our betters?”
“Yeah, then,” I said. “I know it sounds funny, but it led them to underestimate me for the first time in a while. Same thing when The Network came along and tried to bend me to their will. I only found out I had my powers again partway through my term of service with them, and it was nice being able to surprise people with them again. Like they thought they had me, and boom! Destroy the stupid sonsofbitches they sent to kill me in six seconds.” I brushed fingers against my cheek. “I miss being underestimated. I miss being not noticed. I can't escape being come after with overwhelming power. And it's not like I'm invincible.”
“So,” Wade said, “why not take the shots? Give yourself overwhelming power again. Always have a new surprise waiting for your enemies.”
“Because they're never going to stop coming after me if I do,” I said. “They already barely do. They hounded me out of Minnesota because they were terrified of what I could do. Your pals at the CIA tried to kill me because they feared my ability to mess things up for them. Now imagine every petty tyrant the world over suddenly thinks, 'Oh shit. Now she's got enough juice to destroy me, and the cost to her of coming over and overthrowing me? Like zero.'”
He chuckled. “You're serious?”
“It's the whole Peter Parker thing,” I said. “You know, 'With great power–'”
“Great responsibility. Sure.”
“Well,” I said, “your responsibilities do ratchet up. If I've got godlike power, how can I let the children of the Congo be slaves forced to dig cobalt all day? How can I let the women of Afghanistan be stoned to death for the crime of being raped? Because technically it'd be in my power to stop it. There's a whole world of injustice out there, Wade, and I see enough of it to know it's there, but I'm just weak enough that I don't feel a need to go try and set it all right. As if I could. As if I have some sort of perfect knowledge to go along with my power, to be sure that everything I try to set right isn't going to go horribly wrong in the end.
“I think that's one of the reasons it's so easy to confine my activities to the US, or Western Europe mostly,” I said. “If you've got a mostly functional society, it's like the bedrock on which people can build a life. Some evil criminal comes along, tries to ruin someone, tries to murder them, wrongs them horribly...I can come in and excise that one villain, and the balance of justice is restored. They can go back to living their life.
