“I’m talking about all of you … you ancient dungheaps … being a giant collective pile of chickenshits.”

  She delivered her judgment in a thunderbolt, and it landed like one, though with perhaps more effect, given Mag and Modi could—and had—taken more than a few of those in their time.

  Modi’s ruddy skin was dark, his face twisted, pride wrecked. Sophie just watched, a faint hint of interest that she didn’t dare show rising within. “How dare you,” Modi whispered.

  “Yeah, I dare,” Sienna said, leveling her gaze at him. “You know how I dare? Because I have guts, unlike you worthless turds.”

  “Wow,” Angra Manyu said, slipping into a thin smile. “You … do indeed have those. Brains … not so much. To come into our home and throw around baseless accusations like—”

  “Oh, they have a base,” Sienna said, turning on him. Her skin was subtly on fire at the hands, so light it was barely noticeable. Everyone noticed nonetheless. “They have a big, fat base. Like the kind that holds up the Statue of Liberty. And you know damned well what that base is if you have an ounce of honesty.”

  No one spoke until Penny broke the silence. “Sovereign.”

  “Bingo,” Sienna said with a tight smile of fury. “You’ve got a collective commune down here of hundreds of metas … hundreds.” She threw a hand behind her. “You think I don’t know what this is? This is your hideyhole, where you ducked out of the war to save your own asses—”

  “That … is a vast oversimplification,” Anbay said, though his voice strained.

  “My friends and I fought Century, a hundred of the meanest, toughest metas that Sovereign could pull together,” Sienna said, anger flooding out, “and then I took him on myself—and where the hell were you, old gods?” She snapped her gaze to Cuchulainn. “Where were you, Irish Achilles? Chilling with a whisky?” She looked at Anbay. “Where was your justice when our people were being annihilated? Because I was fighting the good fight, and you were—what? Banging your gavel in children’s court? Rendering judgment on some spray-painting vandal?” She waved a hand at a mural in the distance, painted on the side of the general store. “I see before me old gods so famous for their power I picked every last one of you out from just your names—”

  Sienna looked like she was ready to throw fire, but she stopped.

  Sagged.

  And then she just stood there, all the fight gone out of her.

  “I lost friends in that war you didn’t want to fight,” she said quietly. “I lost … so much. And where the hell were you people?” She turned an eye toward the green fields. “Here? Hiding? Seriously?”

  “You don’t know what we went through during—” Modi started.

  Sophie hid the blanch that was her first instinct; she had long been practiced at hiding all her reactions. It was a product of her upbringing.

  “Was it the death of ninety percent of your species?” Sienna asked, cold fury radiating. How could so small a girl, so small a voice, so young … hold so much malice?

  Oh, right, Sophie remembered. Fruit of a poisonous tree.

  “Was it the death of the people you held dearest?” Sienna asked. “Because Omega fought. To their frigging deaths, Omega fought, and they were gangsters and criminals. Alpha fought. Hera … I watched her die. I watched Omega ministers eat it. They were on the field to the end. I may have hated a lot of them, but … they went out fighting.

  “While you were hiding under your dome here,” Sienna said, her malice was spent. “Hiding. You cowards.” She spat it at them. “That’s my judgment. Good luck with whatever your problem is.” And she started to rise from the earth, feet leaving the ground.

  “Sienna … wait,” Sophie said, in the face of the overwhelming silence of the rest of them. No one had dared to speak against her, against what she’d said.

  And Sophie knew … it wasn’t because what the girl had said was wrong.

  It was because what she’d said was true.

  “You’re right,” Sophie said, meeting her gaze evenly. “None of us wanted that war. But we were prepared to fight it.” She glanced away, just for a moment, to recompose herself. “I was on my way to Minneapolis when you killed Sovereign.”

  “Bullshit,” Sienna said, hovering there. But she wasn’t flying off—yet.

  “Believe me or don’t,” Sophie said, “but if you’ll wait five minutes—” She looked at the others, caught the subtle nod from Persephone, “—talk to me … alone … for five minutes … I’ll explain.”

  “You had umpteen hours alone with me in the car to explain,” Sienna said, staring her down. “You chose not to.”

  “You blame us for our lack of courage, but you won’t even face our cowardice for five minutes without jetting off,” Penny said. Her words were calm, reasoned—

  And struck home. Sienna’s eyes flared, and she drifted down, glaring at Sophie. She treated her to a solid thirty seconds of silence, a silence which no one else—gods of old, every one—dared break.

  “You have five minutes more of my time,” Sienna said, her voice raspy as she walked toward Sophie, and then past her, clearly expecting her to follow, away from the old ones. “Don’t waste it.”

  Penny nodded, almost imperceptibly, and Sophie suppressed the sigh she felt inside, then turned and broke into a very slight jog to catch up with Sienna Nealon.

  32.

  Reed

  “Remember how we were going to do this nice and quiet?” Augustus asked as we came up over the hill. Bodies were laid out everywhere, screams of the dying ringing out on the impromptu battlefield.

  Angel popped up next to him out of the grass, causing Augustus to yelp in surprise as she drew her rifle to her shoulder and fired a couple rounds. The yelping ceased. “I don’t think we were anticipating a small army being between us and our objective.”

  “Don’t think this is just going to dry up the resistance, either,” Jamal said, pacing up over the hill. “The Custis family has powers of their own. I wouldn’t be surprised if they provide a harder fight than these gun-for-hire yahoos.”

  “I don’t understand where they keep finding these people.” Greg’s voice echoed over a loudspeaker as the Apache shrank down and disappeared. Greg himself popped up a second later, snatching something small out of the air and placing it, gently, back in a case. It was the Apache helo, shrunk down to the size of the Micro Machines I played with in my youth. He snapped the case shut and put it back in his breast pocket. “At some point one would think the world’s supply of idiots willing to go up against metahumans would run dry.”

  “I know,” I said, “Sienna keeps killing them and more keep spawning, like enemies in a video game. I can only assume there is no shortage of morons willing to do violence for cash, relying entirely on their illusions of foolish immortality in the face of blindingly obvious statistical horror. Their workplace death rate must be near fifty percent by now. Actuaries should start placing extra risk surcharges on their life insurance premiums.”

  “I don’t really know what you just said there,” Eilish said, a little out of breath as she came up the hill, “but I’m just glad I didn’t have to help murder any of these people, because that seems like a bad thing.” She listened carefully. “Also … why are there no sirens in the air? Do you not have police in this country? Is that why everyone has their own gun?”

  “No police nearby, no,” Jamal said, phone in hand, holding it up like it was a tricorder from Star Trek. He must have gone active on his electronics again after things went sideways. “I’m not getting any 911 calls, either. I think the Custises own enough land around here that the gunshots and the explosions were distant enough not to trigger any worry among the neighbors.” He shrugged. “Or maybe they’re used to weird stuff happening out here, I dunno.”

  “What have we got inside, Jamal?” I asked. We were still on the hill, overlooking the complex, which was … not that complex. To our left, down the hill and across a central parking lot lay a small office building. Across the lot, to our right, was a silo. And straight ahead, sitting on the far side of the parking lot square, was a massive factory building with a sloped roof and windows built into the sides, open to the night air.

  “Dead zone, electronically speaking,” Jamal said, finger anchored to his phone’s charging port. “If the Custis family ain’t here, their powers are creating a mighty fine decoy.”

  “Greg … can you give us some recon so we don’t go stumbling blindly into a trap?” I asked, then launched into the air on a couple tornados.

  “Certainly,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “Jamal, care to help me … broaden the reach of your eyes?” He came out with a dozen miniaturized drones, each the size of a cockroach.

  Jamal’s response was almost lost to the wind, but I got it just before I flew out of hearing range. “Oh, hell yeah,” he said.

  Then I was above them, above the factory, hundreds of feet up, doing my own overflight. I needed to make sure, given the noise we’d just made, that there wasn’t anyone running away. I squinted at the back roads, looking around for any hint of cars. Then I tapped my earpiece. “Jamal … you have satellite overhead imagery?”

  “I’m a little busy right now,” Jamal said. “You might want to talk to support back at HQ about that. They can probably do something about—oh, damn, Greg. You really do have the coolest toys.”

  “Thank you,” I heard Greg say in the background.

  “Yeah, you go play,” I said. “But first, you mind tying in—”

  “On it,” Jamal said, and then there was a faint crackling.

  “Uh, hello?” J.J.’s voice came into the line with a distant hiss.

  “J.J., it’s Reed. I need overhead, real-time, downlooking satellite imagery. Need to make sure the bugs aren’t running off before we get to them.”

  “Abby, my dear … we’re on it, Reed the steed.”

  “You use that one all the time,” Abby said in the background.

  “Because it plays,” J.J. said. “How goes it in the uppest part of upstate?”

  “I can see Canada from here,” I said, waiting for him to deliver and scanning the roads visually while I waited. “Can practically smell the maple syrup and lumberjack body odor.”

  “Eww, you just had to go there, didn’t you?” J.J.’s voice crackled in transmission. “Okay, got a visual … no running cars within twenty miles. No heat signatures except your team and some small … ish woodland creatures. There’s a bear about two thousand meters behind you and hauling ass away. Guess you scared him.”

  I frowned. “Hope that’s not a skinchanger like Parks. Tag it and keep an eye out. In case I need to mop it up later.”

  “Dude, it’s probably just local wildlife. Don’t poke the bear.”

  “If I poke the bear, it’ll be with wind from a distance,” I said. “Anything outside the complex?”

  “No movement except for your team, no heat signatures … nothing in the office or that … silo, I guess?”

  “Good guess,” I said. “I think this might have been some sort of corn processing plant or something. See anything in the factory proper?”

  “No go on that,” J.J. said. “Walls too thick, and there’s machinery everywhere. I have no visual there.” He paused. “Reed … it’s kinda set up perfectly for—”

  “A trap, I know,” I said, cutting the wind and letting my body drift down, back toward my team. “I’m not stupid, J.J.”

  “Never said you were, bro. Just trying to watch your back.”

  “You’re doing a fine job,” I said. “Keep overwatching.”

  “On it.”

  I drifted back, flaring a wind burst just before I touched down on the hilltop, landing between Angel, Jamal and Greg, who were all deep in their own business. Angel was looking through the scope of her rifle, scanning every window of the factory. “You catch that flash from J.J.?” I asked.

  “Yep,” Angel said tightly, not stopping her scan. “There’s nobody watching from the windows. If they’re waiting, they’re huddled up inside.” She spared me a look with the eye not glued to her scope. “Ambush?”

  “After they threw a hundred-plus-man army at us?” Augustus asked. “That’s some depth of defense right there.”

  “This family could hold all the marbles, at least when it comes to proving Sienna’s innocence,” I said. “Seems like this group, whoever’s behind them … they’re very invested in making sure that doesn’t happen. If they’ve already hired a cast of hundreds to protect the secret, they’re putting a ton of money into this.”

  “So what’s a little more, right?” Eilish asked. “But they’ll run out at some point, won’t they?”

  “Maybe,” I said, and looked ahead to the factory. It was just sitting there, silent and forbidding. This wasn’t all there was in terms of defenses. It couldn’t be. “Probably.” I nodded. “Let’s go find out.”

  33.

  Sienna

  While starting my own, personal prison riot just a dozen paces away from the warden and a couple guards may have seemed like the kind of stupid that usually required one to first strap a GoPro to your head in order to cement the Darwin Award, it was actually kind of genius.

  Or so I was telling myself until the third harpy leapt across the table at me with meta speed.

  She hit me like a fighter jet launched off an aircraft carrier, boom, right into the ribs. I barely had time to throw up a hand with a dagger in it, and when she slammed into it—and me—she buried that sucker six inches into her chest.

  But she also broke my right hand in the process. I heard the crack, listened to something—maybe several somethings—break, felt the spike of agony …

  Ouch.

  I hit the ground and rolled, fortunately, sparing myself adding broken ribs or a busted ass to the pain toll I was already paying. My latest victim rolled, too, but it was more a sideways, unprompted, out of control thing that ended when her momentum carried her into a table leg welded to the ground. She lay there, gasping and bleeding out and thrashing with ever less effectiveness, until she finally went still.

  I clenched my right hand, and it crackled like popcorn in a skillet. That … was not good.

  A roar that sounded like the Incredible Hulk startled me into sitting up, disregarding my most recent ouchie.

  Yep. There was Gert, swole, pissed off, leaping onto her table, looking like she was ready to pound her chest and then, probably, me.

  I still had one good hand and a dagger, and I was gonna need both of those if I was going to make it out of this alive. I looked up, hoping to see suppressant gas falling from the skies.

  Nada. Clearly I had not caused enough of a stir yet.

  “Well, okay, then,” I said, and tripped someone as they ran by. I didn’t know who and I didn’t care, I was trying to start a riot here, and I was willing to throw whatever tinder I had on the fire. When that poor soul hit the ground, I kicked them, and they slid a few feet, then let off a burst of some sort of fine energy. It was a weird shade of green and burst up to the ceiling, lasering through.

  “Seriously, you don’t suppress that?” I asked the empty air above me as I jumped another table. Gert roared after me and leapt, and I dove, thumping off a welded bench and under the near-useless cover of the table as she landed on top of it. It strained under her weight.

  People were running like mad, all willy nilly, in every direction. I sensed I was the only one in the room with a plan, and right now it was pretty flimsy: cause enough havoc to get them to gas us with suppressant. That was it.

  But hell, if I could make it happen, it’d look like a genius plan compared to what the rest of them were doing, which was basically “Run for your lives!” in whatever direction they could.

  Actually … given that Sienna Nealon, killer of, uh … people in general … was in the middle of this with Gert the Herc … that was probably a very sensible plan.

  Gert ripped the table from over top of me. I heard it go and scrambled to my feet, just barely dodging her swipe at me. She threw a fist, her reach and the fact that she had a bench or something at her knees the only things stopping her from crushing my spine with a single punch and sending me, crippled, to the ground.

  Yeah. Running away was seeming like a more genius plan all the time.

  “Oh my gah—” someone shouted as they ran past, and Gert just clocked the hell out of them on a back swing. Something in me told me that this sort of accident was inevitable. In fact, I was surprised I’d never seen it happen before. Bones broke with a sickening sound, the body flew, orange jumpsuit stained red in a dozen places from bones ripping out of flesh. I didn’t see where she landed, but I did hear it across the room, and it stirred a chorus of screams from those who did witness her coming down.

  “Yeehaw,” I said as I ducked under another table. Gert leapt and landed on the seat behind me. The steel buckled under her swollen weight and force of landing, and she grunted, trying to keep from spilling over the side and busting her ass on the floor.

  Then she grabbed the side of the table and ripped it clean off. Brandishing it above her head, she held it there for a second like a stone, raised high—

  And brought it down, releasing it about five feet from my face.

  Only a blind person could have missed that throw. It was right there, and she had super strength.

  Well, a blind person …

  Or someone who missed June grabbing me by the arm at the last second and ripping me out of the way.

  The table top impacted the ground like a frisbee from hell, wedging in the steel floor. When we’d built the place, we’d saved the gel packs for the areas where the prisoners were supposed to be, and apparently my genius successor hadn’t considered that fact when he’d renovated the place to its current, social environment standards.

  It suggested a dangerously arrogant over-reliance on suppressant, a real fault in the design and the thinking of the people responsible for this place. I would have counseled not to do that, but it worked out really well for me that I was a fugitive on the run and not consulted when it happened, because I was about to exploit the shit out of it.

 

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