Legacy: The Girl in the Box #8 (8 page)

“I don’t want anything,” the man said. “I’ve done all I intended to do here. I had hoped for a witness, though, but I failed to keep one alive over there, in spite of my best efforts,” the man swept an arm behind him to indicate the fires blazing behind him. “They made me a little too angry for that.”

“Wh ... Why?” Bjorn asked, feeling the agony from his legs as he rolled to his side, shifting, looking for a more comfortable position. He didn’t find it.

“Because you and your people were a mass of ticks, burrowing your way under the skin of this land,” the man said, staring down at him. “You took from their harvests what you would, took from their daughters everything you wanted, and left nothing behind but your blighted seed.” He leaned down, slightly but not enough to seem like he was by any stretch of the imagination on Bjorn’s level. “Your day is over in this land, do you hear me? Your time as a leech, sucking the blood of people whom you do no good for is at an end. Be on about your business elsewhere. Tell your friends, the ones like you, still playing at the illusion that you are gods, that if I catch them running this deception, I will reveal them for the weak, pathetic deceivers that they are, and if they do not move on ...” He looked back at the fires. “I think you get the idea.” The man stood.

“Who are you?” Bjorn croaked, looking back at the blaze, and saw it starting to consume the pile. He could see the smoke beginning to rise from the clothing of his father, his brother. “Who are you to do such a thing?”

“I am Sovereign,” the man said and stood stiffly, looking down at him without emotion. “That ... and this,” he gestured at the destruction behind him as his feet lifted off the ground, floating into the air as if a bird’s wings had lifted him up, “is all you need know. Harken to my words, Odin-son.” With that, the man called Sovereign flew into the air, straight up and out of sight.

Bjorn lay there on the dirt for a long time after that, the smell of smoke thick in the air around him, the pleasant chill turned bitter on his skin. He lay there until the next morning when his agony subsided and his bones had knit back together. When he got up and left, though, he took care to go a different path than the one he had trod the morning before.

Sienna Nealon

Now

“Is this going to be a problem?” Foreman asked me after the conference room emptied. “You and your mother?”

I held a hand on my chin, trying to think it over. “I don’t know. My instinct says yes.”

Foreman studied me through smoky, inscrutable eyes. I’d heard the stereotype that politicians were supposed to be charmers; that they would tell you sweet things to your face and then say different things behind your back. I saw none of this as he leaned closer to me and started to speak. “Listen to me very carefully. The life of every single metahuman in the entire country is now in your hands. That includes my life,” he said, eyes narrowed, “that of my wife and my children. Our survival hinges on what you’re able to do. Your mother is a resource. She has more experience running down metahumans than anyone else you have available to help you.”

I felt something unsaid, and it took me a moment to realize that the subtext was that I’d killed the four people who might have been able to bring as much to the party as my mother did.

“You’re in charge. Find a way to get this done.” With that, he stood without ceremony and headed for the door.

I felt my mouth dry. “Wait. That’s it?”

He looked back from where he stood at the doorframe. “That’s it. No fancy speeches, no last minute warnings. Your life is on the line. If you fail, we all die, and you get to live with that.” He smiled, but it was grim.

I looked at him with more certainty than I felt. “I’ve killed quite a few people now; how do you know that would even bother me?”

He looked at me through those smoky eyes. “Because I know.”

I almost fell out of my chair with shock. “You’re a telepath?”

He gave a light shrug. “An empath. Like your friend Janus. I can detect the emotions, even stir them when necessary. It comes in handy when you’re trying to get a read on people.”

I rapped my knuckles against the wooden table, felt the sting of the hard wood against my skin and bones. “What does your power tell you about me?”

He didn’t answer for a moment, looking down at the carpeting, then he sighed. “That you’re the only one that’s a hundred percent committed to stopping this calamity.” He waved out into the hallway. “I’ve visited cloisters, seen the people there who have gotten faint warnings from Europe about what’s coming; they don’t have a clue. Most of them aren’t taking it seriously yet; they think it’s an ‘old world’ thing.” He waved toward the wall behind me. “But they’re coming. This ... Sovereign ... his minions ... they’ll come for us.” He let a faint smile creep out, a worried one. “See, we know what happened now in the European Union. How it happened. The authorities have found enough of the bodies, sniffed around the edges enough that it’s obvious that there’s been a genocide that almost no one has noticed. There were just too few of us, y’know? There are five hundred metahumans in North America by our guess, three hundred in South America, and once we’re gone, it’ll be down to ... dozens, maybe. Outside of what Century’s got, I mean. The very few who have managed to hide at the corners of the world. Three thousand people now down to nine hundred or less,” he snapped his fingers, “just like that. And no one else has the power to stop it.”

“What about the government agencies here?” I asked, feeling the creep of terror coming back, that same feeling that had been haunting me since England.

He shook his head. “Our people—metahumans, I mean—have done too good a job hiding themselves, finding ways to subvert the system and keep underground. We had all these secretive organizations to cover for us, to keep us out of the spotlight, but it turns out that when no one knows you exist, they don’t care when you’re being killed off.”

“But
you
know,” I said. “A sitting U.S. Senator, you’ve gotta have some high-powered friends—”

“I do,” he cut me off, “and I’m trying. My colleagues are not unsympathetic. But this secret is burying us. It may end up being the death of us. Think about it—even if we had the full support of the U.S. government, even if all this were out in the open, what do you think it would really lead to? It’s not like we can deploy the U.S. Army against Century.” He laughed mirthlessly. “It’s not as though I know where to send the Marines to give Sovereign a good ass-kicking. Assuming anyone could kick his ass.”

“Metas can be killed by armies, you know that,” I said, feeling the thoughts tumble through my head. “Based on what I’ve heard, Weissman has plans for the armies of the world. He’s just got it in his mind to deal with the metas first.”

Foreman nodded. “Like I said, it’s down to you. This whole thing is a lot to put on your shoulders, but there’s no one else clamoring for the responsibility. Your mom would run given half a chance. Your friend Scott is quite content to retire to the nearest bar and continue putting away rum and cokes until Century comes through the door to spill his drink. And your friend Ariadne—”

“I don’t think we could really be called friends at this point,” I said. “Since I killed her girlfriend.”

Foreman gave me a nod of concession. “Ariadne’s powerless on her own. But she could be of tremendous aid to you. Once you get past your ... personal problems,” he said it with an air of distaste, “she’ll probably turn out invaluable.”

“Great,” I said, rubbing my hands over my face. “So all I have to do is make up with a woman who’s got a deep personal grudge against me, fight off a superior army, and—oh, yeah—try and make some sort of peace with my mother.” I rubbed my face harder, focusing on the bridge of my nose. “By the time this is finished, I may wish I’d taken the jail option.”

Foreman did not speak for a long minute, and when he did, it was filled with a sort of quiet authority that I would forever associate with Old Man Winter, when he was a mentor to me and not a murderer. “You’ve left a trail of bodies behind you. A series of bad decisions, heated emotions, and broken laws. You’ve made mistakes,” he said, his eyes meeting mine, and I could feel his words resonate in me. To his credit, I never once believed he was using his powers to stir me. “You are awash on a sea of blood you’ve let, paddling against the tides of fate to keep from being swept up in an even greater wash. By all rights and under normal circumstances, you would be in jail. You would be in jail for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, depending on how long you lived. You deprived people of life in the name of your own self-satisfying vengeance, and that’s not the sort of thing that the soul just callouses over and forgets about.

“But these are not normal times,” he said, and I listened to every word as the guilt crept through me in time with his almost lyrical delivery. “You have an opportunity to save yourself, and it comes in the guise of saving others. You can’t just pay for a life with a life. You’re going to have to save a hell of a lot more than one life to balance the scales for what you’ve done. Every day you wake, until this crisis is resolved, I want you to remember that you are doing the impossible. The penance for your crimes is to do what no one else has done before, to beat a man who is hell-bent on destroying our people to the very last. It is ... impossible.” His voice was filled with quiet strength, and not a whiff of desperation was present in the way he said it. “But these are not ordinary times, and you are not an ordinary person. There is something about you that is Sovereign’s weakness, something about you that no one else in all the meta world has.” He straightened, and his spellbinding words drew me in just a little further as I hung on, waiting to see what he would say next. “Find it. Find out what makes you special, find out what it is that makes you unique. Find the strength to do the impossible.” He turned and opened the door, and took his first step out. “You do that, and you’ll actually earn your redemption.” With one more step, he was carried out of view, but I still heard the last words he said, echoing down the hall.

“Save us, Sienna Nealon. Save us all, and you might just save yourself in the process.”

The flight came in from England a little over a day later, a Gulfstream IV that had been modified for the seventeen of them who were left plus a hospital bed in the back for Janus. I watched them disembark as the cold winter wind of Minneapolis greeted them. It was beyond brisk, a late November kiss that I could tell from Karthik’s reaction as he stepped off the plane’s stairs was more than he was used to dealing with in London.

“Not exactly a balmy day now, is it?” Breandan said with a grin as he crossed the snowy tarmac to reach me. The Irishman’s mustache was still waxed in the oddest affectation I could remember seeing ... well, ever. He bent and gave me a hug that lifted me off the ground and I let him. He was wearing a fedora, and I patted him on the back as he set me down.

“Welcome to Minneapolis,” I said and was promptly picked up again by the next man in line. Reed’s embrace was firmer than Breandan’s and just as appreciated. He gave me a peck on the cheek as I gave him one in return, albeit brief. He pulled back from me and smiled. “It’s good to see you.”

“Yeah, it didn’t take as long as we thought it would,” Reed said, watching me cannily then looking past me to the waiting vans. “Looks like you made some new friends in the last couple days.”

I smiled. “I’m a friendly person. People are just drawn to me. They want to help me.”

“Which affirmation book did you get that out of?” Reed deadpanned.

“Sienna!” A blond streak cut through the crowd and hit me with a surprisingly firm hug.

“Kat,” I said, giving her a light squeeze in return. I would have asked her to stop, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t have done any good. No matter how many times I tried to bat her away, Kat Forrest ... or Klementina Gavrikov ... or whoever she was this week ... just couldn’t seem to stop being nice to me. It annoyed me for reasons I can’t even fully describe.

I finally pulled back from the skinny blond cheerleader. Karthik gave me a polite nod and I gave him the same in return. Karthik was my type of person: all business, no affection. This I understood. However, I was willing to make exceptions for people like Breandan and Reed who had saved my ass a few times. And Kat, because truthfully she was still like a little kitten that I couldn’t bring myself to strangle the life out of. Not that I would strangle a kitten.

I saw a few other familiar faces; the crew that was with me in the last attack on Omega’s headquarters and a girl named Athena that I’d helped recruit to Omega’s protection. She gave me a faint smile even as she looked desperately lost on the cold airport tarmac. “We’ve got hotel rooms booked for you,” I announced to the small crowd. “These vans will take you to there. We’ll all meet soon to talk over what the next step is, but first I have to speak with this lot,” I gestured toward Karthik, Reed and Breandan, “to figure a few things out. This way,” I said, leading them toward the vans.

I’d had Ariadne handle the arrangements. She still had access to all the Directorate accounts, and we were already up and running. Omega may have blown up the buildings, but they weren’t able to damage the banking apparatus. The Directorate still had millions on deposit, ready to be used by us. Which was fortunate because we needed it. Ariadne was looking for temporary office space for us even now. I hadn’t ever given much thought into exactly how convenient our setup was at the Directorate. Helicopters were available to shuttle us around, along with an extensive motor pool. Now we had nothing, and Li had to fight with the FBI as it was for use of the vans we were now sitting in.

I got into the lead van and Karthik, Breandan and Reed followed me. I watched Kat help load Janus into a converted ambulance at the rear of the motorcade. He was on a gurney, a stretcher designed just for transport, his figure looking even more shriveled than I remembered.

“So,” Karthik said, breaking the silence as the van started into motion, “would you care to bring us up to speed with what has happened since we parted?”