CHAPTER ONE
Don’t Run Our Hearts Around
There was light. There was peace. There was pain. Mostly, there was pain. At first the pain didn’t have a name. It was abstract, as if it was happening outside of him. Then the name came to him. John. John Murdock. He was John Murdock and the pain was his. The pain suddenly became everything, it became him. He saw flashes that didn’t make any sense through the haze of his anguish; shooting and fighting in a hangar, faces that he didn’t recognize, blood, and fire. It was all fire. As suddenly as it came crashing through him, it was over.
There was still pain, but it was the pain of someone dropped like a sack onto a hard surface in an exceedingly awkward position. John’s shoulder hurt; his entire right side was lanced through with pain. More sensations. He was on a cement floor; it was cold and clean. It was dark around him, except for a slight electrical flickering coming from behind. Chairs in front of him, with something man-shaped sitting in one of them. He struggled, and then remembered how to talk. “Where…am…I?” He croaked out the last vowel before he lost consciousness.
* * *
The Soviet Bear stared dumbfounded at the naked man on the floor. It looked…it looked like Comrade Murdock. Except Comrade Murdock was supposed to be dying, or dead, and not appearing out of thin air, naked and healthy, into the middle of the break room. He looked at the bottle of “Worker’s Companion” vodka in his hand. Looked at the naked man. Decided that the two had nothing to do with each other. Then he noticed that the break room’s trusty television, a sturdy model nearly identical to the ones built in the Soviet Union and looking as if it was half as old as Bear, was cracked and smoking.
He decided that the naked man probably did have something to do with that.
He sighed. “Borzhe moi. Commissar will probably blame me.” Then he looked at the naked man again. “On other hand, if this is Comrade Murdock, she will certainly blame him instead. Good thinking, Pavel.” Much cheered, he shoved himself up out of the chair and headed for the briefing room.
At least a broken television set was not like a broken Ural. Many, many broken, burned, exploded, and mangled Urals.
* * *
Bella probably shouldn’t have been here, but the ECHO debriefing wasn’t until noon, so—hell with it. She was by-god going to sit in on the CCCP one, since she’d taken over for Vic at the tail end of the infiltration op. And anyway, this way she knew that Saviour would get everything.
Unter finished his debrief right up to the point where Vic had passed out. Bella picked it up from there. “…so when I got her conscious she told me she’d neutralized some sort of super-death-machine by pounding it into the ground. I dunno, I’m not inclined to send ECHO down there to look for it unless you’re in favor, Nat.”
Red Saviour shook her head. “Later maybe. Are being have enough on plate. We are having leads?”
“Da. But my people haven’t got done with what the infil team extracted yet. Cross your fingers…I think we’re going to have the location of their HQ when we’re done.”
Saviour let out a breath that she had clearly been holding in. “Then…da. Was worth ten times over, the co—”
Bella felt it. They all felt it. It wasn’t physical, but whatever it was…it might as well have been. Like a body-blow that doesn’t hurt. Except that in Bella’s case—it did. She doubled over with the anguish of it, of something…vital…taken. And yet, it wasn’t something that had been taken from her.
“…borzhe moi…” She looked up with tears in her eyes from the crippling grief to see Red Saviour shaking her head as if someone had just hit her with a two-by-four. “…what?”
She choked down the tears. “I—I don’t know but—”
The clomping of heavy feet outside Saviour’s briefing room heralded the arrival of Soviet Bear. “Commissar—comrades—” he whuffed. “Television is being broken. Also is naked man on floor, that maybe is Comrade Murdock. Not my doing, either of these things.”
Bella suddenly was sure, instantly sure, that this was what she had felt. Or was at least part of it. Before Bear was halfway done, she was on her feet and pushing past him, headed for the break room, impelled by a growing urgency she couldn’t even begin to explain.
* * *
John woke up again, slowly. It was brighter here; he could feel that he was in a different room. It smelled like antiseptic and rubber gloves. That was a familiar smell; it had been the same odor in nearly every Army sickbay he’d ever been in. The soft hum of monitors and someone moving around were the only sounds he could immediately pick up; slowly, other far away sounds came through, but he couldn’t recognize them right off.
That…was odd. Smells were more intense, nuanced. Sensations that should have hurt, didn’t. The pain he’d awakened with was gone, leaving nothing behind but the memory of having hurt. The strangest feeling was that of being heavier; like he had gained mass, somehow. It was disorienting. John groaned weakly, trying to raise himself up and open his eyes.
“So, Comrade Murdock.” The voice was too loud—but within a second, somehow, it had modulated down to normal levels. Almost as if he had some sort of amplifier hooked up to his ears so he could make out things that should have been too quiet to hear—and now he’d turned it down again since someone was speaking. “You are being make bad habit of waking up in my medbay, da?”
He struggled for the words, remembering how to speak again. “Where…my men. Where are my troops?” He still had to squint; his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the bright light in the room yet; harsh halogens, they had left him half-blind.
“ECHO troops are being back at their own HQ. Comrades Untermensch, Mamona and old man Bear are here. You are being only casualty…well, were only real casualty of infil team. Pavel’s arm has been replaced with a spare, and Mamona’s fractured arm has been set. Angel took you and went poof. Then, you are being poof back into CCCP recreational room.”
“What…? I don’t know…any of those names. Who are you?” The shape was coming into focus now; obviously a woman from her voice. She was tall, with the classically beautiful features of a statue rather than a model or Hollywood starlet. Her black hair was cut in a severe style that was even with her jawline. She wore a white doctor’s coat with a stethoscope poking out of one pocket, over what looked like a uniform; it differed from the coats Army docs wore only in the red star and Cyrillic nametag where an Army doc would have just the nametag, in English.
“Shto?” The woman blinked very blue eyes. “You are not being to remember? Not ECHO? Not CCCP? Not battle?” She muttered something in Russian. At least, he thought it was Russian.
“I’ve heard of ECHO, lady. Everyone has…where the hell am I?”
She held up an imperious hand. “Wait. What is last thing you remember?”
He paused. “I can’t say, ma’am.” He held up a hand, mirroring her. “I remember it, I’m just not allowed to say. Sorry.”
She pursed her lips. “Chert. What is year? Month? Day? Who is being win World Series?”
“…It’s 2006, August, 31st day, and I don’t really follow baseball. I’m more of a football kind of guy.”
The doctor’s face froze for a moment. She licked her lips. “It is being 2014, Comrade Murdock. It seems you are missing more than your clothing.”
Everything went very still for him for a moment. If he believed this woman—and he had no reason not to—he had lost eight years of his life. God only knew what had happened in that time. She mentioned ECHO, as if he had been working with them, which was impossible—something called CCCP, as if it was accepted he was a part of them. Commies obviously—so—whatever had happened, had been drastic. He was overcome with nausea and disorientation. “Ma’am, I’ve got one last question for you before I throw up.”
“Shto?”
“Where are my pants?”
* * *
The group walked down the labyrinthine hallways of the CCCP HQ, heading for the Medical Bay. Jadwiga, callsign Soviette, was leading the way, and explaining while they walked, Bella and Saviour beside her. Vickie and Sera trailed behind. Vickie was not even sure she should have been there. Except—except that somehow she had gotten all tied up with this. Sera had materialized in her workroom, Bella was her dearest friend—the two of them were connected somehow, Vickie’s mage-sight clearly showed the bond between them. Jadwiga was going on about trauma, transitory amnesia…Vickie wasn’t paying much attention to it. Sera—well, Sera wasn’t The Seraphym anymore, wings notwithstanding. She reminded Vickie of the description in the fairy tale of the Little Mermaid, how, once she got legs, she walked in pain as if every step was taken on the blades of knives. Bella reflected that pain. But how, or why this had happened—Vickie still wasn’t sure. Sera hadn’t said more than a dozen words so far.
As for what they were going to see, in the CCCP medbay…Vickie wasn’t sure what that was going to be, either, at this point.
Hope and despair flickered over Sera’s face by turns.
“…so…here,” Jadwiga said, opening the door to the medbay. “Here is being comrade patient.”
The group entered the cramped medbay. Sitting upon a gurney in the center of the room wearing only a hospital smock and a pair of skivvies was John Murdock. But, at the same time, not. This John didn’t have darkness under his eyes. The same quiet intensity, but none of the troubles which had seemed to weigh him down even before he knew of his own impending death. The scars were still there, but they seemed fainter, unimportant now. Not really a part of the man that was sitting in front of them. And he still had his same lop-sided grin.
“Howdy, y’all.” He regarded the group, still smiling. “Now, who exactly are you people, an’ what the hell am I doin’ here?”
* * *
Bella was hyper-aware of Sera behind her. There were only two people in the whole world (as far as she knew) that knew anything at all about the angel. She was one. John Murdock was—or had been—the other.
Now? Well, Sera was no longer an angel. She no longer had that feeling of infinite power, infinite certainty, and infinite control. Her wings were feathered, not fire. According to Jadwiga, John was back, but completely cured of what had been killing him—and Vickie had also said that Sera wasn’t an angel anymore. Since the last time anyone had seen either of them, it had been together, it was pretty obvious that the one thing had to do with the other.
Right now, Sera was vibrating with mingled hope and despair, so much so it was making Bella’s empathic shields hum.
According to Jadwiga, this was the same man, in every way but two. He was perfectly healthy, and the cellular disorder that had been killing him was now gone, as if every bit of damage had been instantly healed, the dysfunction removed. Jadwiga couldn’t tell what had done that, and she was the more experienced healer of the two of them, and a full MD to boot. “Is being magic,” she had said, and shrugged. That answer produced a derisive snort from Natalya.
And now, here was the man himself, sitting on an examination table, looking entirely like himself. Sera peered around Bella’s shoulder, her wings trembling so hard that the feathers rustled.
“Who exactly are you people? I expect some answers, and right quick.” he said, looking directly at Sera for a brief moment.
Bella had never actually seen someone’s heart break before, but the change in Sera’s expression showed that moment in agonizing detail. Bella’s shields rang like a bell with the blow of grief and loss.
And then—Sera was gone. Literally flying from the room, and out an open hallway window. Bella was torn—follow Sera, or try and sort out Murdock? She’d never catch Sera; she couldn’t fly, and certainly couldn’t move that fast. Throttling down her own feelings, she turned to Murdock.
John only looked mildly surprised, but still expectant for an answer. “Well?”
Untermensch laid a hand on Natalya’s shoulder. “Commissar…”
Saviour nodded. “Da. Comrade Murdock. You are seeming to be experiencing memory problem. For past year and more, you have been sturdy worker and operative for the Super-Sobratiye Sovetskikh Revolutzionerov. You Amerikanski are being know this as CCCP. This occurred after an invasion by an army of Nazi-affiliated metahumans and—” she paused.
“Oh for godsake, Nat, say it. Aliens. Big, ugly, aliens. ET, but not cute, not friendly, and as far as we can tell, planning to wipe us off the planet.” Bella crossed her arms over her chest, trying to physically hold in her churning emotions.
“They attacked almost every major city on Earth a little more than a year ago in a coordinated strike, decimating much of the world and killing untold numbers. The attack was to soften up the governments of the world, and cripple ECHO, as well as other metahuman crime and logistics organizations. Since then, you have been helping us and ECHO fight these fascista. Questions, comrade?”
John’s jaw didn’t quite drop, but it was close. “This has to be bullshit. What happened to my troops?”
“I am not knowing which troops you are speaking of, Comrade Murdock,” Saviour said crisply, “but if they are the ones in Costa Rica—”
Unter coughed. Nat’s mouth snapped shut self-consciously. John stared at the two, his gaze going cold and dead for the barest second. Bella knew that look. She’d seen it before. It meant that John Murdock was considering every option he had…and a lot of those options included killing someone. The tension in the air was ready to snap like an icicle; Bella found herself holding her breath, waiting. It was Untermensch that broke it before things turned to the unfortunate.
“Comrade, my name is Georgi Vlasov. My callsign is ‘Untermensch.’” He paused for a moment, to see if any recognition sparked in John. “You and I are being comrades in arms for the last year. During this time, we have killed many fascista, and struck hard blows against their efforts.” He paused again; still, nothing but that expectant look from Murdock. At least the murder had gone out of his eyes. “Comrade, when you came to us, you were injured and were being on the run. It is our understanding from what you told us that you were the only survivor from your unit. I am sorry, comrade.” Unter looked away briefly, then back to John.
Bella saw that John believed Unter; Murdock had a way of judging sincerity in people, and he always used to go with his gut. Emotions passed through John—no, they tore through him. Bella braced herself against them. Rage, despair, confusion—disbelief—the disbelief started to win. And who could blame him? Even in a world full of metahumans, this must sound like a bad science fiction movie. Show, don’t tell. That would be the best way to cut through whatever walls he was already trying to put up between himself and reality.
She strode over to the medbay window and yanked up the ugly Soviet venetian blind. It clattered and sunlight poured in the room. “Look for yourself,” she said curtly. “That’s Atlanta out there. What’s left of it. What the Kriegers left us.” John looked at her hard, then hopped off of the examining table. He strode quickly to the window, peering out of it.
Without looking away, he started to speak in harsh tones. “What the hell happened? Is everywhere like this?”
“We are being on edge of what nekulturny teevee calls ‘destruction corridor.’ Enemy marched war machines towards ECHO HQ and were not gentle about doing so. Many cities have them.” Nat’s jaw tightened. “Red Square is similarly…disrupted. My CCCP was there for a…meeting with officials. They came for us metahumans, we know this now—” She broke off. “I will to being get you briefing.”
“Um,” Vickie said softly from somewhere near Bella’s elbow. “I can do that. I’ve got all the records and the hardware with me to make it happen, it won’t take long. Heck, I can start on it now.”
Nat nodded curtly. Bella took up where she had left off. “The world economy is devastated, but…coping. Relief efforts are going on everywhere. Cities are full of these corridors; the countryside was impacted the least or not at all, and it’s hit or miss with manufacturing and industrial centers. The thing is, now we’re finding out that the Kriegers had weapons cached damn near everywhere, and cells to activate them. Every time things seem to get a little better, they activate one, there’s a helluva lot of fighting and death until we get it shut down, and governments go ballistic.”
“Sorry, Kriegers?” John shook his head, uncomprehending.
Vickie ducked out from under Bella’s elbow, her laptop open, typing away. “Here,” she said, shoving the thing at him. “That’s the enemy. We call them Kriegers, for ‘Blitzkrieg.’ They seem to be a combination of the aliens and a pile of Nazi metahumans and fanatics that escaped after the War. And recruits.”
Light from the screen flickered on his eyes, mirroring the emotions that flitted through him. “So…y’all are fighting them? Stopping stuff like this,” he gestured towards the ruined buildings outside, “from happening anymore?”
“Nyet. We are not doing so well as that. Trying to keep them from turning the world into giant labor camp,” the Commissar said, grimly. “Conventional forces—well, being to look at screen, comrade.”
Bella sighed. “There are a handful—and only a handful—of metas and special weapons that do anything but dent these guys and annoy them,” she said, sensing that his first instinct was to head straight for the nearest Army base and volunteer. “Most of those aren’t in the arsenals of most armies. Uh—and you happen to be one of the metahumans that can actively hurt them. Same for me, the Commissar here, most of CCCP…oh, yeah, I’m the head of ECHO…I guess you don’t remember that.”
John did a spit-take. “What? You said…that I’m metahuman?”
“Uh, yeah. You’re some sort of fire-chucker. Plus…” She rubbed her temple. “Evidently you were in some kind of super-soldier program. You wouldn’t tell us much. But you’ve got implants. And fire, which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the implants.” She sighed again. “Conventional troops are good if we’re the spearhead, Murdock. Without us…conventional troops are just a blunt stick against a hungry tiger.”
“You’re…what’s your name again, ma’am?”
“Bella Dawn Parker, callsign Belladonna Blue, and acting head of ECHO. I’m not technically the CEO, that’s Yankee Pride, but that’s an administrative position and we’re on a war footing. So sometimes they call me a CEO too.”
“You’re not feeding me a line about any of this, right? No BS?” John met her eyes. His were searching, looking for anything to latch onto. He needed someone to look to as an authority. That made sense, he was a soldier, after all…or at least, the him of eight years ago had been. And given he was US, Army, he wasn’t going to look to some commie foreigner as that authority, at least not yet. It had to be her.
Mutely, Bella fished her ID out of a pocket and handed it to him. As she touched his hand, she tried to send him a thread of reassurance, juggling her need to help him with the ethics of imposing anything on him.
John scanned the ID quickly before handing it back to Bella. “I need some time to think on this. And I’ll be needin’ some more information; hell, all of it.” He looked to Natalya. “I’m guessin’ from your charmin’ Muscovite accent that you’re in charge of this bunch?”
Saviour nodded. “I am being Commissar Red Saviour, second of that name, of CCCP. Your commander, Comrade Murdock.”
Bella nodded. “Technically you should be in ECHO, but given that you clearly did not want your former…friends…to know you were even alive, this was the best place for you to go. You’ve also had Blacksnake sniffing at your heels…with guys with katanas. Who put holes in you. It’s a long story. I’ll cut to the chase. Until a few minutes ago as far as I can tell, you were dying of whatever gave you that fire-chucking ability. And…something happened to you. Vick, scan him would you?”
“You mean—” Vickie looked up at her, a little apprehensive.
“Yeah I need to confirm my hunch. Make with the finger wiggling.” John tensed as Vickie approached him, looking to Bella. “It’s OK. She’s a magician as well as a computer wizard.” Now that has to be a mind-screw, on top of everything else.
Vickie paused about a foot away from him, and flexed her fingers. “All right. This won’t hurt a—”
“—YOW!” There was a pulse of white light, emanating from the center of John’s chest, that hit Vickie squarely on her outstretched hand.
Vickie staggered back. Her short hair was literally standing straight up.
Bella grabbed Vickie’s elbow and held her up. “Vick! Are you okay?” She did her own version of “scanning,” making sure there was no damage. No physical damage at least.
Vickie put shaking hands up to her head, smoothing down her hair. “Uh…yeah. Ever stick a fork in a light socket? Don’t. But…yeah, he’s…fixed, and the same, only different. And it’s not ‘magic’ as I understand it. It’s, well…” she waved her hands, vaguely. “Bigger. A lot bigger.”
“Sera,” Bella said flatly. Vickie nodded.
“What’d she just do to me?” Bella recognized John coiled and ready to spring into action. All of this was strange and new to him, and it must have been very frightening.
“She didn’t do anything to you. You did it to her. She was trying to ID what it was that fixed you, it didn’t want to be ID’d, and it bit back…” She shook her head. “Look, Vick, job one, get Murdock briefed. I’ll try and find Sera, among everything else that’s going on.”
“Anyone gonna ask what the hell I wanna do, maybe?” John’s back was against the glass window, his arms crossed.
Saviour snorted. “You are being registered member of CCCP and under my orders, Comrade. That was by your own—how you say—enlistment? So I am still your commanding officer, nyet?”
He bristled. “Lady, until about 10 minutes ago, I didn’t even know you existed. I’m slow on most days, so you’re gonna have to be real slow with me now. Especially in telling me what the hell to do. Savvy?”
“Lyuboi. Your callsign is now being Slow Boy. So, Slow Boy, you are to being briefed on last eight years by ECHO Op 3 Victoria Victrix. When you are to being caught up, then we talk. Daughter of Rasputin is also bolshoi computer wizard, anything you are needing to know, she can find. Da, Victrix?”
“Da, Commissar.” Vickie tucked her laptop under her arm. “I’ve got it from here. Just one thing, Commissar?”
“Shto?” Saviour said, turning back.
“Can we please find him some pants?”
* * *
It’s the same man. It’s not the same man. Absolutely contradictory statements, yet somehow, both were true. Still…that could happen in magic and physics, which were more closely related than most people realized. So…all right, first things first. Get him up to speed on current events, then hit him with the personal stuff.
Fortunately, there was a crap-ton of media documentaries about the Invasion and subsequent events. Vickie just searched out the most unbiased (BBC and a select mixture of online reporting, which was no big surprise for her), downloaded it and put JM in a chair and the laptop in his lap. Thankfully, he was dressed now; a spare CCCP coverall. He picked at the insignia now and again, clearly less than comfortable with it.
“There,” she said. “That’s about two hours. Pause it and ask questions if you want to.” While he was watching, she was going to cobble up something showing him clips of himself in the CCCP. Maybe get other records. It was a good thing she carried a spare netbook; it was powerful enough for that task.
“Miss…Victrix, right?”
“Technically Nagy. Call me Vickie, or Vix,” she said absently, using her PDA to access media files for the “Adventures of John Murdock” sequence.
“Right. Vickie. How the hell did I get mixed up in all of this? I mean,” he shook his head, sighing, “last I remember, Nazis didn’t run around blowing up things all that much, and aliens weren’t exactly taken seriously as terrorists.”
She ran a hand through her hair; she wasn’t quite as prone to panic attacks as she used to be, but she could feel her nerves doing the jitterbug, and her hair was damp at the roots. This wasn’t her room, her chair, her safe place. But this was Johnny, and they had done all those ops together with her as Overwatch. But…it wasn’t. Dammit. “Look…watch the documentary first. What I am going to show you about yourself won’t make any sense until you see what happened. OK?”
“Alright, ma’am. Do y’have any coffee or tea, since this seems like it’ll take awhile?”
Tea. “Uh…it’ll take a minute, the Russkis live on tea, but it’s all black samovar tea, not green, and it doubles as paint-remover.” Was it worth the effort to apport some from her kitchen?
* * *
John looked at her hard for a moment before turning his attention back to the laptop. How did she know that I prefer green tea? This whole “being out of the loop” bit is getting old, fast. This tiny woman…like a little blond pixie…she was making all of his internal alarms go off. Her body language said she was on the ragged edge of a panic—he could almost smell it on her—and yet her voice was steady, everything she said made sense, and she acted like an old friend. She wasn’t faking it; this person knew him. It was disconcerting. All of his instincts told him to run; get distance, asses the situation, figure out what to do. He was fighting in the dark at the moment, however; he had been thrust into a world that seemed to have turned itself upside down. He was a metahuman, the world had been devastated, and now he was working with commies. It all seemed like too much to process. The only smart move he had to make, for now, was to wait and see. Learn what he could; these people seemed to want to help him, not play him, but he was still wary.
Then she said something that actually made no sense at all. “Um. Since I guess you’ve never seen real magic before, this might freak you. So, uh, you being special ops military and all, and military reactions tending to be a tad strong, uh—”
“Hold up, ma’am. Y’said ‘magic,’ right? We talkin’ rabbits coming out of hats, sleight of hand, an’ all of that?” He had heard the blue woman, Bella, and the commie leader, say that this Victrix was a magician before. He knew he hadn’t misheard, but he hadn’t exactly been ready to believe, either.
She sucked in her lower lip. “Uh, no. Magic. Real magic. Like…oh hell. Just don’t freak.”
“Metahumans exist. Broadcast energy exists; that much, ECHO shit, I remember. Apparently, Nazis in power armor exist, along with aliens. But…magic, ma’am? Color me an unbeliever; is this just a schtick for your powers or somethin’?” He looked utterly unimpressed.
“Just don’t freak,” she repeated. “Don’t karate chop me, or grab a scalpel, or…just don’t freak.”
She licked her finger, drew a circle in spit on the top of the table, then drew inside the circle, and muttered…something. Her eyes flicked back and forth in rapid fire while closed; she was obviously concentrating extremely hard on something. There was a little bumpf of displaced air. And where she’d drawn the circle, the empty table now had…
A little stone figure inside it. No larger than an original G.I. Joe action figure…but it was moving. The figure was lumpy and prehistoric-looking. One “hand” clutched an electric teakettle. The other held a wad of teabags to its chest.
John did his very best to keep his jaw from hitting the table; he managed it, barely. After a few stupefied seconds, he regained his words. “Ma’am…what is that?” He pointed at the stone figure. This has gotta be some kinda trick.
“Oh, this’s Herb.” She turned her attention back to the animate rock. “Thanks sweets, you remembered the kettle, you are a lifesaver,” she said to the statue. Which squeaked, and moved, holding the teabags up to her.
John felt ill again. “This isn’t a trick, is it? You’re really doing this.”
“It’s my job,” she said, dryly, taking the kettle, filling it from water in the medbay sink, and plugging it in. “I’m a technoshaman. I do cybermancy. My traditional magic is Earth magic, primarily. Herb is an Earth Elemental.”
“Techno-what? Your church give out pamphlets or have y’all shave heads or anything like that? I have no clue what you just said.”
She sighed. “Now do you see what I mean by stuff not making sense until you watch the film? So watch the film.”
He nodded obediently, keeping his eyes on Herb for a few more moments before turning to the laptop. When all of the BBC recaps and internet clips were over, he felt as if he was waking up naked and disoriented all over again. Jesus…eight years. I’ve been out of it for eight years. How did I get like this? John’s head swam, and he felt sick to his stomach. He had to focus; he had to figure out what to do. If what these people were telling him was true—-it seemed to be, so far—his troops were dead. He was out of the Army, and a metahuman. And the world had been set on fire. What could he do?
She had been typing away madly at some smaller device while he had been watching, taking time out only to gulp tea herself. Now she looked up. “OK. Sixty-four dollar question. Do you want to know how you got into the CCCP first, or…or what you’ve been doing for the last eight years first?”
“If they’re exclusive, I’d like t’hear where the hell I’ve been the last eight years. Ma’am.”
She didn’t answer him. She turned to the little stone creature. “Herb, remember the file cabinet in my Overwatch room? The file folder with the Solomon’s Seal lock on it?”
The thing squeaked and nodded. She handed it a ring she took off her finger. “Unlock it with the ring and grab what you find in there, hold onto it and tell Grey to ping my PDA when you have it. Make sure you have every scrap of paper in that folder, ’kay?”
It squeaked and nodded more vigorously. She repeated the actions that had fetched the stone “Elemental,” tea, kettle and all, drawing a new circle around the thing. Then she clapped her hands, and it…vanished.
“Good help is priceless,” she said to no one in particular, a bead of sweat running down her face. “This’ll take a little bit. Tea?”
John shook himself out of a daze. “Um, yes please, ma’am.” Magic was too weird. Even with strangeness such as metahumans and techno wonders that would boggle the mind, John figured that he had a fairly good handle on the world. Magic was different; it felt wrong to him. For some reason that sensation sparked something in him, like there was something he was forgetting that he ought not be. He dismissed it, staring at the laptop as Vickie made more tea, dumped what seemed like about a quarter cup of sugar in hers, and drank it down. He stared. That was a lot of sugar. “Uh…it’s your body but…”
“Right. I explained all this to you before, but…yeah. Uh, magic is like physics. No free lunch. Energy to move stuff has to come from somewhere, usually me. So figure I’ve been running up and down five flights of stairs to do this. A lot.” She mopped her brow with a paper towel. “So while Herb gets what I need, I’m drinking sugar and I am taking a rest, here. But that’s why I became a technoshaman in the first place, I need a lot less energy to do stuff with computer assist. Like—well, keeping track of you, which was mostly my job. Is my job. Your techno-wizardry eye over your shoulder, called Overwatch.” She blinked. “Huh. I wonder.”
He leaned back in his seat. “That tone doesn’t sound like somethin’ I’ll like, ma’am.”
“Let me borrow that a second.” She gestured to the laptop. When he handed it to her, she began typing furiously.
A moment later…a HUD appeared in front of him, seemingly about six inches in front of his eye. He swatted the air furiously for a moment before realizing that it was a projection. “How did you do that?”
“In-eye implanted camera and projector, part magic, part mechanical. Also a subvocal pickup mic and a speaker in your ear. Still working…which proves that you are you, anyway.” The other device made a chirping sound. She put the laptop down, took a deep, weary-sounding breath, and did her little ritual all over again. This time when the air displaced, the stone man was holding a fat file folder.
“Good job, Herb,” she said with approval, and took it, then handed it to John. “This is your CCCP stuff, plus everything I have on you, as well as in regard to working with them. Read it. Then start asking questions.” She was a little—no, a lot—pale. “I need to lie down and suck on some more sugar.”
John hefted the folder; it was heavy. “What is it?”
“Your missing eight years. Part of it, anyway,” she said, lying down on the examination table, and sticking a lollipop in her mouth. “I’m still working on the video files to verify for you, but I need a break.” Curiouser and curiouser. I think I need to wake up, or somethin’. He opened the file, and began to read.
* * *
John finished reading the thick folder some time later, standing up and walking to where Vickie was lying down. “All of this is legit?” He didn’t look very impressed.
She cracked one eye open and looked at him sardonically. “Why in hell would I bother to fake up that much photoshopped material just to fool one guy? In case you hadn’t noticed, hotshot, there’s a war on, and I already need three of me just to keep up.”
“Lady, I wake up and everyone is telling me the world is on fire, Nazi aliens exist, and that I’m eight years behind on all of my car payments. I’m not really takin’ much for granted, ’kay?” He tapped the file. “According to this, I wandered in here, injured by some Blacksnake operatives that were trying to recruit me ‘cause I’m a metahuman. I then became an operator for the CCCP, patrollin’ this area of Atlanta and goin’ out to blow Nazi stuff up regularly. Right?”
“When you weren’t blowing up CCCP Urals, yeah, pretty much.” She closed her eye.
“And you were part of my support crew. Just seems like stuff that, I dunno, I’d remember. How the hell did I lose my memory?”
“Wish I knew. You’ll note at the end of your file that you were dying. As in, days to live. At the end of the last op, which was roughly yesterday, of which all I have at this moment is the recordings I made during it, not my notes, you had hours to live. Now you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and you don’t remember eight years worth of living on the run, not to mention our last altercation with Hitler’s stepchildren.” Her eyes were still closed. “All I know is there was a big old mystical bang, and you turned up in the CCCP break-room without either your clothing or your memory.”
There was something about the set of her jaw, even with her eyes closed, that warned him she was not going to let things remain this uncertain.
“Alright. I’ll bite for now.” He turned to start reading the files again, but looked back to Vickie before he sat down. “Who was that red-haired gal with the wings that ran outta here so fast? ECHO, like you and the smurf?”
Now she opened her eyes and sat up. “Now that is a very interesting question indeed. She used to be an angel. I mean that literally. Fiery sword, wings, celestial powers, appearing and vanishing at will, speaking cryptically, the whole nine yards. I am not making this up, an angel.”
John arched an eyebrow skeptically. “Ma’am, I wasn’t much of a believer back before this craziness. I’m still not much of one now. An angel?”
“Verified by every magical and mystical authority that I trust.” She shrugged. “And she seemed very attracted to you for some reason.”
He paused for a few beats. “I’m not wholly sold on magic. But I’m not entirely unconvinced, either; I’ve never seen stuff like what you did earlier, an’ I got the impression that it was all small-fry stuff. Nothin’ metahuman I’ve heard of can do that, unless you’re playin’ with my head. But—angels?”
“Well, currently the most interesting thing is that she picked you up off the battlefield, coughing blood, and all my med-readouts said you had hours to live. None of our our people were able to heal or fix what was wrong with you. Then there was that mystical nuke going off, somewhere nearby, and now here you are—and there she is, just a metahuman. Or…hmm I’ll say mostly a metahuman. Certainly mortal. I figure it’s gotta be connected.” She shook her head. “Anyway, let’s bring you up to speed on you, first. You were a fire-chucker. So…make with the fire.”
“Got a lighter or a couple of twigs? I’ll get right on it.”
“OK smartass…” she muttered. He saw her fingers twitch a moment.
He felt the movement; instincts kicked in. Something big behind him. John whirled around, the dropping feeling in the pit of his stomach telling him that it was going to be bad. He scanned it instantly, and everything seemed to move much slower than it should have. After reading the file Vickie gave him, and watching the recorded BBC broadcasts and CCCP archival footage, he instantly knew what he was looking at; one of the Nazi troopers, in full power armor.
There weren’t any weapons nearby, beyond makeshift bludgeons and a few useless surgical implements; John had scanned the room the instant he’d been awake enough to be aware of his surroundings. He was as good as naked. Vickie was just some young gal, and worn out from whatever her magic was; he had to do something, give her time to get away, anything. He lunged towards the Nazi, thrusting his right hand forward—
—a large spat of flame blasted against the trooper, and it instantly disappeared.
“Nice shootin’, Tex.”
Where the trooper had been was a thin rock, tall as the trooper, and now flame-scorched and partly melted.
“What the hell just happened?” John was still in a half-crouch, scanning the room for threats.
“You were a smart-ass, so I dropped a live-fire exercise on you.” Vickie looked at her hands for a moment; they were shaking. “Think I can wait a little before I put that rock back out in the garden. I gave you a target with an illusion instead of just an illusion because I didn’t want you to blast a hole in Sovie’s medbay. You’re already down three Urals to the Commissar as it is.”
He looked unbelieving at his hands. “I could actually blast through the wall? Am I that powerful?” He glanced at her. “What are the ratings that metas use again? What am I?”
“You’re an OpThree at least. Not a Four…yet. But a definite high Three. One of the few people that has anything that can actually get through the Krieger power armor.” She gestured at the file folder. “There’s recordings in there of you duking it out with one of their big shots, not once, but twice. Ubermensch II. Or you can wait for my director’s cut version.”
John snapped his fingers, producing a lighter-size flame. “Fire weakens them, right? The suits. Makes ’em easier to take out?”
“That’s it, in a nutshell. However, you can do more than produce fire, you can ramp up to plasma and cut through them. Even the Death Spheres, at full-on power.” Again, she gestured at the folder. “I’d say go sit yourself down at a computer and watch my stuff. I’ve got all the feeds from the ops I was Overwatch for you in there, including the last one. Eyes-only stuff, please. Don’t want it showing up on the internet.”
“Uh, roger, ma’am.” He closed his hand over the flame, extinguishing it.
“Oh, also? You have implants. Aside from mine, that is. Some sort of “Super-Sekrit” implants. You wouldn’t talk about them. At least not to me, probably not to Bell, and definitely not to Saviour. So if things seem to go all special-effects for you when you’re ramped up, well, that’s probably why.”
“Everything is…enhanced. Things are too loud an’ too bright sometimes, an’ they got…’special-effects,’ as y’said, when I shot that rock. Is that the ‘implants’?”
“Probably. You were faster than you should have been, and stronger, and a helluva lot harder to kill. Any human and most metahumans would have died from the gut-stab you had when you showed up here, long before you made it to the door.” She watched him through narrowed eyes, face giving away nothing. He felt like he was going to throw up again, though he was trying very hard to hide it.
But her hands were still shaking.
* * *
This was a gamble, a very high-stakes gamble. She was gambling that if he had the mindset of the Delta soldier that she thought he had been those eight years ago—after working with all the ex-Forces guys that turned up in the FBI, she was pretty good at pegging people—he’d respond to her putting on the “command persona.” Not someone in command of him, just someone who was used to calling some shots. It seemed to be working. It was giving her a chance to do a lot of fast observations.
This version of John was a lot less hardened, a lot less cynical, a lot kinder than the old one. He moved warily, as a combat-soldier should, but without the paranoia. The old JM would have reduced her rock to a melted puddle if she had startled him that way; no hesitation, straight for the kill. Then he’d have yelled at her for pulling the stunt in the first place. This JM waited just that fraction of a second to ascertain threat, then responded with what should have worked to make that threat pause a moment. Not straight for the kill.
And when he wasn’t under threat, he moved…easily. Without the tension Johnny carried around with him, always, like it was wired into him with the implants. There was a relaxed-but-ready air about him the Johnny she knew didn’t have. The Johnny she knew was always ready, but it was the always-ready of someone who expects to lay down an arc-light attack at any moment with no survivors.
Then there was the fire.…
It was different. It smelled of celestial. Like the Seraphym’s fire. She was beginning, she thought, to get the shape of this, and it made her itch to find out the details.
And last of all…this Johnny did not have that burden of sorrow and guilt that weighed the old John down, darkened his eyes, shadowed his features, as if the ghosts of a thousand victims walked behind him at all times. If she had to put a name to the difference, it would have been a name that both the old and new Johns would probably laugh at.
Innocence.
“OK sport,” she said, hopping down off the bed. She apported the rock back to what had once been Fei Li’s Zen garden. Steadied herself to make sure she wasn’t going to pass out. “You’ve got my contact info. You’ve got a bunk, showers, and three squares here. Get some food, watch the files, get some sleep, get hold of me when you’re ready. Just say ‘Overwatch: Open Vickie’ and the system I installed in you will call me. I’d say get hold of Bell, because you two were tight, but she’s sort of busy right now.” She started out the door, then turned back. “You might want to pay close attention to the stuff about the Seraphym. I’m pretty sure you two have a major connection too.”
“Right, ma’am. Vickie?”
“Yo?”
“Thanks. I realize that I’m not the easiest SOB to deal with on my good days, not to mention now. I appreciate you takin’ the time for this.”
She felt a wave of sadness pass over her. “Kiddo…I’ll do more than that. You know, you were my friend too.”
He smiled; it was the same carefree and lop-sided grin that he always had. But—free of the shadow of hidden pain. “Were? I’m not dead yet, ma’am.”
A little of the sadness passed. She mimed a blow at him. “Then for the love of Pete, stop calling me ma’am.”
“Roger, ma’am.”
* * *
John was used to thinking on his feet, adapting, getting out of tight spots in a hurry. But this entire situation was on a whole new level. These people didn’t seem to be trying to feed him any lines; they were sincere, and expected him to believe them. They were telling the truth, as well as they knew it. His problem was that if it was the truth, it was almost too fantastical to believe. How could the entire world have gone to hell so quickly? Almost launched into an apocalypse, with millions upon millions dead. Governments battered to nearly the breaking point, and the citizenry of the world no better.
Even more maddening, he couldn’t remember it. John needed more information to make sense of this mess. He knew a few things with certainty. He was now some sort of metahuman; his own senses and the incident with Vickie’s stone proved that much. The world was in crisis; he’d been in warzones, but looking out the window of this compound, it appeared as if the entire world had become one. Finally, that these people, the CCCP and ECHO, seemed to want to help him; they seemed to need his help, too, if the file he’d read was right.
Well, what are you gonna do now, moron? It was an interesting question. He was in a world of crap up to his neck, and the high tide line was rising fast. He could go back to the military; almost immediately, he discounted that idea. John loved Army life, but he also knew that since the early 70’s the Army had no great love of metahumans. There were some, of course, but by and large they were considered too unpredictable, and most of the best were already swallowed up by ECHO or, in recent years, PMCs; the pay and benefits were a lot better.
Then there were the implants. Where had those come from? Every time he thought about that, he got a cold, empty feeling in his gut, because there had been rumors…
He could also run; from the sparse information in the file he’d read, it seemed to have been what he’d been doing prior to the attacks. That wasn’t any good either, though; these Nazis…they wanted the whole world. Nowhere was safe, not even here in this base.
That left one real option; it wasn’t pretty, but it was the only hand he had to play. It was also the only one his conscience would let him take. He’d stay, and help these people. Besides, it looked like he needed their help just as much as they needed his.