Ascendance (2 page)

02

‘B
oston has been trying to reach you, sir,’ the agent confirmed. ‘And the Pentagon. And Homeland.’

‘I turned my phone off, Agent Nguyen,’ snapped Trinder. ‘With good reason.’

‘Yeah, because it’s a BlackBerry.’ Dave smirked.

He thought he saw Agent Comeau suppress a grin. Karen Warat was eating protein bars, peeling the wrappers and inhaling the contents as though she were loading bullets into a gun. Dave wasn’t feeling all that hungry, yet, but he knew he’d burned through a lot of his reserves fighting her, and then repairing the damage from that fight. He patted down the pockets of his coveralls looking for something to eat.

‘What does Boston want?’ asked Trinder, with the air of a man who didn’t care for the answer.

Nguyen tried to keep her face blank, but failed. Even the boss-looking tattoo couldn’t hide her grimace. She really didn’t want to be the messenger.

‘You’ve been ordered to detach Mr Hooper back to OSTP for temporary –’

She didn’t finish. All of the colour which had previously leached away from Trinder’s features came flooding back in a hot, red flush.

‘The hell I will,’ he said, loud enough that it echoed around the garage.

‘Sir, if you would just turn on your phone . . .’ Agent Nguyen said, or tried to. Her cute little mouth froze in a perfect ‘O’.

Dave was ready for it this time.

‘Will you stop doing that!’ he said, turning to Warat, the only other human being who was still in motion. She had frozen the others, or warped with Hooper, or whatever the fuck it was they were doing when they did this. He was beginning to understand how annoying it must be when he did it to other people.

‘We don’t have time for their bullshit,’ said Warat, tossing him an energy gel. ‘I just orbed out of the consul-general’s office while I was explaining why I had to cut the third secretary into sushi chunks. We have monsters to fight. So eat up, Super Dave.’

He caught the packet and frowned.

‘You know, you really shouldn’t call me that unless you mean it,’ he said, emptying the gel with one squeeze. He didn’t mind blowing off Trinder. The guy was turning out to be even more of a pain than Heath; although, admittedly, not nearly as much as Compton had been. And since Karen hadn’t said or done anything about that little Russian woman he’d rescued, the smart money was on getting her out of Trinder’s building before she noticed Agent Madigan spiriting the girl away. He’d explain it to Trinder later. Couldn’t let big bad Colonel Varatchevsky catch them in the act.

‘Okay. Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Where are these critters at?’

Dave hefted Lucille across one shoulder. She was humming their special tune again.

‘Forty-second Street,’ Warat said as they jogged up the ramp.

East 91st Street looked even worse than it had before. Traffic had been piling up outside the ruins of the consulate, smoke and people pouring from the wreckage, when Karen hit warp. Dave could hear a long, unnatural wail which had to be sirens, and one police car, its flashers caught turning, threw a crazy blue glow up the side of the buildings. The cops had driven their patrol car right up onto the sidewalk and been busy trying to direct consulate workers away from the burning building, while ordering rubber neckers to get the hell back across the street. To get the hell out of the street altogether. The frozen tableau looked like some sort of cinematic special effect to Hooper, and he realised he had never really seen so many people caught in his . . . what? His warp field?

‘You did this, right?’ he asked, waving a hand at the unmoving chaos.

‘You helped,’ said Karen.

‘No, I don’t mean the demolition job. I mean the pause button, the warp field, whatever you call it. I didn’t do it, you did, right?’

She strode on down the sidewalk, weaving her way around the living human statuary.

‘Yeah, come on,’ she said. ‘I want to try something.’

Dave found himself wondering if Karen had caught a whiff of his super-powered pheromones. She hadn’t given the slightest hint that she was affected by them. He’d seen the flush colouring Madigan’s cheeks, and the sexy Asian chick with the tattoos on her face as well. They got within about twenty yards of him and he could tell they just had to . . .

‘Knock it off, you fucking idiot. I wouldn’t suck your dick if it blew espresso martinis.’

Dave almost tripped over his own feet he stopped so suddenly. Karen rolled her eyes.

‘The Threshrend are empath daemons. All the sects use them. When I get close enough, I can tell what they’re thinking, and, God help me, you’re even easier to read than they are.’

‘You can read my mind?’ asked Dave, alarmed at the idea.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You’re more Dr Seuss than Tolstoy. Now get on. I want to try this.’

She swung a leg over a motorcycle, a big-ass rice-burning Jap number.

‘You ever try this?’

Dave looked dubious.

‘You mean riding? While, you know . . .’ He twirled a finger to take in the stalled world around them. ‘No,’ he admitted. Probably because he’d presumed it wouldn’t work. Or if it did, that any machinery would just run stupidly slow.

Warat seemed to have none of his reservations. She had a key for the motorcycle, perhaps explaining the leathers she wore. One long leg scissored over the bike, she seated herself, turned the key, flicked a succession of switches and thumbed the ignition. The bike roared into life.

‘Get on,’ she said, indicating the pillion passenger space behind her.

‘I don’t normally need to be asked twice to climb on for a lady,’ said Dave. ‘But what about helmets and Lucille and your nasty little friend there?’ He indicated her sword. ‘Last guy who touched that thing, I heard his arms fell off.’

Warat regarded him with a look verging on contempt. She slid the scabbard off her shoulder, examined the sword and tossed it at him without warning.

‘Catch!’

‘Fuck!’ squawked Dave, but he couldn’t help himself, plucking the sheathed weapon out of midair. No body parts fell off him.

‘I don’t think it will be a problem.’ Warat smiled. ‘That guy you heard about didn’t even touch the blade, just the scabbard. Get on. It’ll be quicker and we’ll save energy.’

He passed her sword back, frowning. ‘You know, for a traitorous bitch, you’re quite an asshole.’


She passed one arm through the old leather strap of the katana’s sheath and seated it comfortably on her back again.

‘I’m not a traitor,’ she said. ‘I’m a patriot. Just not for your country.’

Dave was still trying to get his head around the idea. Her voice, her looks, her energy, everything about her was so American. He carefully climbed on the bike, a Honda, gripping Lucille up near the business end, and slipping his other arm around Varatchevsky’s waist.

‘Nice abs. You work out, right?’

‘Just because the sword didn’t cut you doesn’t mean the sword wouldn’t cut you. Now shut the fuck up and hold on.’


Warat leaned forward slightly and Dave felt one arm flex as she fed power into the bike. They leaped away from the sidewalk and threaded through the chess pieces of all those motionless bystanders and consular workers. He felt awkward, riding behind her, as though he might spill off at any moment, but Warat seemed entirely comfortable. Her body flowed with the bike as it leaned one way then the other. Immobile figures blurred past on both sides as she accelerated away from the weird, 3D still of the burning building. He adjusted quickly, finding his balance in a way he knew would not have been possible a week earlier.

By the time she leaned into the turn onto 5th Avenue, Dave was seated as comfortably on the speeding Honda as she was. He’d only ridden a motorcycle once in his life. A disastrous misadventure at a county fair as a teenager. He’d put the little dirt bike straight through a fence and come out of hospital with twelve stitches and a promise never to ride again. Now he felt as though he could take the wheel of this thing and give the Russian a run for her money. Just as soon as she showed him which buttons to push to turn it on and off.

Sadness caught him by surprise. Marty Grbac would have loved to race this bike.

They roared down the avenue, heading toward 42nd Street. Dave found it easier to keep his gaze forward, over her shoulder, watching her anticipate the moves needed to plot a course through thousands of motionless, or nearly motionless, vehicles. He knew the stasis wasn’t total, that the world was still moving, but that they were moving through it on some hyper-accelerated fast track. He also knew that even using the motorcycle, they were still burning energy, running down their reserves, to hold the warp field in place.

Or maybe he was wrong.

Maybe they hadn’t hit pause on the whole world. Maybe they were in something like a bubble, bending space and time around them, and only them. Urgon knew nothing of this ability and Dave was no better informed. He didn’t know how he’d even begin figuring it out. Whenever he was in warp anybody who might help him, a friendly Nobel-winning physicist for instance, was frozen out of the effect.

The Honda screamed past a line of yellow cabs which were crawling slowly – very fucking slowly now – past Saks. He wondered how the drivers and passengers would experience the motorcycle’s passage. As an inexplicable blur of light and sound? A small sonic boom?

Dave held tightly to Lucille, who was humming louder as they moved downtown. Could Warat hear it too, the murder song? He supposed not, since he couldn’t hear any backing vocals from her magical sword.

And then his stomach clenched.

Hunger.

A second pang, stronger and lasting twice as long quickly followed.

‘Stop,’ he yelled in her ear. ‘Pull over.’

He was pushed into her back as she applied the brakes and brought them to a fast stop near the intersection of 5th and E49th Street.

The bubble didn’t burst. Everything and everyone but them remained suspended.

‘What?’ Karen asked, exasperated.

‘Sorry. You gotta gimme a second. Honest, it’s important.’

‘It had better be,’ she warned.

He dismounted the Honda. Light blazed from storefronts and above them from office windows climbing away into the sky. Turning a quick circle he estimated he could see thousands of people, hundreds of vehicles. And beyond them? The whole city, a stopped watch. All of existence, frozen.

His stomach cramped again and hot flushes followed cold chills through his body. There was no way they could be doing this to the whole world. He’d been turned into some sort of mystical freak, but he was still an engineer and he knew that the energies needed to affect all of existence like this – even mystical energies – were so vast as to be impossible. Whatever effect he and Warat had generated, and were maintaining, it had to be limited to them. They couldn’t, for instance, be dragging the planet out of its orbital track. But even limited to some temporal bubble around the two of them alone, there was a cost. Just as there had been a cost for all of the energy he’d spent fighting her.

Karen was starting to look annoyed.

‘We don’t have time for you to scratch your balls and ponder the mysteries of magical physics,’ she said, obviously reading him.

‘Just give me a minute,’ he said testily. ‘They’re not going anywhere.’ He waved his hand at the tableau around them.

‘No, Hooper. We’re the ones not going anywhere.’

Dave let her protests fall behind him as he found what he wanted a short way down 49th. A steakhouse.

‘One minute. Promise,’ he called back to Warat as he started toward the restaurant. Another racking gut cramp doubled him over, almost tripped him as he mounted the sidewalk at the corner. He was careful not to bump into anyone as he passed. He could probably impart enough energy with a tap to send them flying when his time stream synced with theirs again. Best not to take the chance.

He recognised the steakhouse as part of a chain operation, but a boutique chain. Smith and Wollensky. There was one in Houston that was popular with the carpet walkers at Baron’s. Dave left Lucille by the door and carefully picked his way through the suits at the entrance and into the main dining room. His mouth flooded with saliva as he smelled chargrilled meat and melted cheese and the salty goodness of deep-fried carbs.

‘Sorry, darlin’,’ he said to a waitress as he ghosted past her. ‘I only got time for a dine and dash.’

Two bizoids in dark suits and
hundred dollar haircuts
were already tucking into their mains at a nearby table. Without ceremony or apology he scooped up the long-boned rib eye of the older, portlier gent and, grimacing, the steak tartare of his companion. The loose pile of nearly raw meat started to come apart in his hands, forcing Hooper to stuff the lot into his mouth. He had memories of hating this dish, but when the uncooked flesh hit his taste buds it arrived as a revelation.

‘Fark,’ he gargled, surprised at how much he blissed out to the taste and mouth-feel. If they got through this latest orc attack he was definitely coming back for more. He’d even pay for it. Or get Trinder to. He hurried back out, licking his fingers and stuffing a couple of baked potatoes into his pockets. He grabbed up the enchanted splitting maul and tore huge bites from the rib eye as he trotted back to Warat through the unmoving crowds and traffic.

‘You want some?’ he asked, around a mouthful of half-chewed meat.

Her face curled into a disgusted expression, but she took the proffered bone and bit off at least half the remaining flesh. She chewed and swallowed quickly, as if not wanting to be caught at it.

‘You really know how to show a girl a good time, don’t you?’ she said, wiping blood from her chin.

‘They had fries. Smelled good too. I could grab some?’

‘No. Hurry up and finish.’

He did as he was told, throwing the bone into the gutter. Seated securely behind her again, he leaned forward slightly as they accelerated away. His cheek touched the hilt of her sword; the same sword which had cut down the agent who’d tried to grab it during Trinder’s raid on her art gallery. It wasn’t even giving Dave a close shave. He wondered if Varatchevsky would be able to pick up Lucille. Only he had, so far.