Recoil 7-1: Bury the Dead; Life Goes On (Patreon)

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

 Thursday, August 11, 1994
Chicago, Illinois
PRT Department 4
A Holding Cell
1749 Hours

I sat in the holding cell, elbows on my knees, head down, staring at nothing.

The guards had taken my pistol and walking-cane as per protocol after a firearms incident. I wasn’t under arrest; isolation and observation after such an incident was also protocol. The cell door wasn’t locked, but the guards outside (plural, some out of sight) were to discourage me from going anywhere except the bathroom until my boss had all his ducks in a row. I knew all this and was not offended. With Lisa’s assistance, I’d laid down the ground rules for incidents like this.

The onsite medic had checked me over (in the manner prescribed by my guidelines) and cleared me from having current or ongoing Master influence. I trusted Kinsey had been likewise cleared. Valefor’s power didn’t last after his death. Lisa had assured me of this.

Immediately after entering the cell, I’d gone looking to her for answers and to confirm my suspicions, and I’d gotten both. While tacking a high-tech yacht across the stormy world-ocean of Europa, she’d identified the mother and child as Christine and Elijah Mathers, AKA Mama Mathers and Valefor. One a Cauldron cape, the other a natural born trigger. It made me wonder what could’ve caused Valefor’s trigger at such a young age; Lisa hadn’t expanded on that topic and I hadn’t pressed her.

Once I knew for a fact who Valefor was, everything fell into place. Not so long before, I had been instrumental in bringing the wrath of the PRT and associated law enforcement organisations down upon the heads of the Brotherhood of the Fallen. Valefor had been a rising star in the Fallen of my time, and I had no doubt his mother would’ve been a power in the background, given her specific Master ability. She’d bought a vial to match off with her son’s power, probably to give herself an ‘in’ with the Fallen that didn’t involve being bred off to their most powerful capes. I’d taken all that away from her.

That had been part of it, Lisa agreed. It also hadn’t helped that the stupidly named Snow Protocols were making it harder for Masters and Strangers (of which she was both) to slip through the cracks. So she’d come to Chicago and grabbed Robbie, the one idiot who didn’t want to do what he was told, all because I’d been the one to implement those rules. Though I hadn’t heard either of them order Robbie to stop me. As much as I hated to admit it, that bit hadn’t been the Mastery speaking. That had been all him.

I wasn’t actually unused to people disliking me for no good reason, but the sheer pettiness of the man still took my breath away. Even if his only other action could have been to stand still and do nothing, he’d chosen to help them.

Still, all of that was not why I was searching my soul so deeply. It was the fact that I’d shot and killed a child.

He’d been an enemy combatant, that was true. A Master who was in the process of trying to kill one of my only true friends, and a better man than he would’ve ever grown up to become. With words alone, he had attempted to make Kinsey blow his own brains out, and nearly succeeded. Had I not acted, had I not put steel on target, Kinsey would now be dead and Valefor-to-be would likely have ordered me to do the same, carrying out his dead mother’s wishes.

I had done the only thing possible under the circumstances.

I knew that.

But still …

I shot a child.

People had died at my hand before, always because they were threatening me or mine, but I’d never thought I’d have to take out a kid.

None of my instructors had ever sat us down and bluntly come out with it. “At some point in your career, you will be faced with a child who is a clear and present danger to your well-being. In order to save your own life, you will have to shoot that child. Can you do it?” We’d never even done an exercise on it. The subject just hadn’t come up. We were the good guys. Good guys don’t kill children.

It was a rare (though somewhat understandable) blind spot in the training regime. Child soldiers were a thing, but the PRT didn’t get sent on overseas deployments. More to the point, when the PRT’s doctrine was being formalised, villainous child capes were so thin on the ground as to be a negligible factor. In later years, containment foam would make it even less of a potential problem: some little overpowered munchkin is being a problem? Foam him to the eyeballs.

But the sad truth of it was, this early on, nobody had anticipated a parahuman child with murder on their mind.

(Well, I had, seeing as I’d encountered several in my time. But nobody had consulted with me. And even I hadn’t thought I would be running into one who was quite so young.)

I knew perfectly well the fault wasn’t mine, that his mother had deliberately brought him into the scenario and that I’d had to act to save Kinsey’s life, but it still didn’t make me feel any better.

Lisa hadn’t helped with a muttered aside to the effect that history always repeated itself. She’d refused to explain that one either, which irritated the crap out of me. Knowing Lisa, that was probably deliberate.

The cell door opened, snapping me out of my introspection. “Captain Snow, Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton will see you now.”

I stood, automatically straightening my uniform and brushing myself off where I could. Some of Mama Mathers’ blood had sprayed onto me when Kinsey shot her, but I’d been given the chance to clean myself off and change into a fresh uniform jacket. The body would currently be getting tested for infectious diseases; yet another protocol we had to go through, but one that would become much more important after the advent of Bonesaw and people like her.

(I was clear. Lisa had assured me of that.)

Retrieving my beret from where it had been sitting on the bench next to me, I tucked it under my epaulette and marched out of the cell, following the MP who’d been sent to fetch me. It would’ve been a little more comfortable with the cane, but I could handle it. Again, it was made clear that I was not under guard; his firearm was holstered, with the flap clipped down. I knew well enough not to ask questions. Even if he’d been authorised to answer them, he probably didn’t know what I wanted to hear.

We made the trip to Hamilton’s office in silence punctuated only by the rhythmic cadence of our boot heels hitting the floor in unison. Nobody passed us by on the way, which said to me that our route had been cleared ahead of time. Once again, no surprise to me. This was by its very definition a matter that would be dealt with under the tightest of security, and then buried as deeply as our classification system would allow it to go. The fewer people who could say they saw Captain Snow being escorted to the Lieutenant-Colonel’s office by an MP (with three more trailing behind) after the shooting of a woman and her child in the parking lot (yeah, that bit was still sticking with me), the better.

The door was opened for me; I marched in and came to attention in front of Hamilton’s desk. Although I’d seen him less than an hour previously, he suddenly looked a lot older. Mentally, I apologised to him for making his life more complicated than it already had been. I would’ve done it out loud, but somehow I didn’t think it would make him feel any better.

At the side of the desk sat a PRT captain. I didn’t need to see the briefcase to know that this was a JAG lawyer. He had that look of a shark in human form.

Why no, I don’t have problems with lawyers. At least, not many.

“Captain Snow, reporting as ordered, sir!” I announced, ignoring the JAG guy.

“At ease, Captain,” Hamilton said automatically. I had to say that about him; he wasn’t one for petty power plays. He was the boss and I was the wunderkind, and we both knew it. I also knew quite well that if I hadn’t had Lisa assisting and coaching me from behind the scenes, it probably would’ve been impossible to pull the wool over his eyes as I had been. If, indeed, I was actually fooling him. Sometimes, the look in his eye made me wonder. He’d been doing the job for longer than I’d been alive, after all.

I relaxed my stance; outwardly, anyway. Inside, I was still wound tighter than the mainspring of a grandfather clock. He looked me over, not scathingly, but as if refreshing his memory of me. His gaze was direct, but I didn’t look away. I would own what I’d done, no matter how Hamilton wanted to play it.

Off to the side, I was aware of the JAG lawyer’s scrutiny, but it wasn’t his opinion I was worried about.

“Well, this is a mess, Snow, and no mistake,” Hamilton said at last. “I listened to the verbal report you gave while you were being checked over. Master/Strangers infiltrating my own goddamn base!” The swearing didn’t surprise me. I’d done a little myself in the cell, under my breath. “How did Lieutenant Gordon get taken in by her? There are guidelines for this sort of thing!”

I kept my own voice as flat and inflectionless as possible, so it didn’t sound as though I were enjoying the chance to throw Robbie under the bus. As much as I might have wanted to hate him, there was no point. He was merely a forgettable idiot. “You’re aware that Lieutenant Gordon and I have history, sir.”

It was impossible for him not to be; my road trip had been initially occasioned by Robbie’s shenanigans. Though he probably wasn’t fully aware of the sheer depth (and occasional skeeviness) of some of those shenanigans.

“And because you’re the one who wrote the protocols, he decided he knew better.” Hamilton’s mouth twisted in disgust. “I’d thought with his other troubles, and with you out of the way, he might have been able to let that go.”

“Some people don’t ever let a grudge go.” Not that I was one to talk. I wasn’t about to turn my back on anyone who’d wronged me in my previous life, if I could possibly help it. “Also …”

I hesitated to say it. It came perilously close to kicking the man when he was down.

Hamilton had no such scruples. “Speak.” At the same time, the JAG lawyer leaned a little closer. Scenting blood in the water, no doubt.

With a deep breath, I steeled myself to say the words that would forever and irretrievably sink the career and ruin the life of Lieutenant Robert Gordon, PRT (Intelligence). “Also … he body-checked me when I went to draw down on them. I hate to say it, but I don’t think he was ordered to do that.”

The lines on Hamilton’s face were engraved even deeper by the time I finished speaking, but he didn’t say anything. I could see the pain in his eyes, though.

Clearing his throat, the JAG captain spoke for the first time. “For the sake of being a devil’s advocate, I’m going to suggest that Lieutenant Gordon may have been given prior orders, that he was carrying out when the time came.”

“That’s a possibility, sir,” I agreed, acknowledging his presence. “But I doubt she ordered him to say the words, ‘Not this time, Snow’ as he did it. He went to say more but just about then, I tagged him with the walking stick.”

“That you certainly did,” Hamilton said as the JAG lawyer sat back again. “You damaged his larynx to the point that they had to perform a tracheotomy before they could set about getting his airway open again. I haven’t yet had the chance to speak to him. Now … I will be having rather more strenuous words with him.”

We all knew what that was about. Robbie would no longer be under Master influence. With mother and son out of the picture (still painful to think about) he was his own man once more. A soldier who had fallen under the sway of a Master was one thing; Kinsey had proven that such men could go on and return to service with no ill effects. But someone who actively cooperated with the Master for their own reasons could not be trusted ever again, even if no criminal charges were preferred.

“What about Kinsey, sir?” I asked. “Is he alright? He saved us both.” I knew how he’d broken Mama Mathers’ influence on him, but only because Lisa had told me. She’d been very impressed, as had I. Kinsey had hidden depths—I’d already known that—but this was a whole new level to the man.

“He is,” Hamilton said with a rare smile, then pressed a button on his intercom. “Send the sergeant in, please.”

A moment later, the door opened behind me and Kinsey entered; I didn’t look around, but I would’ve known his tread anywhere. He stepped up alongside me and went through the same process as I had, going to attention and announcing his presence. The lieutenant-colonel waved a hand. “At ease, Sergeant.” He looked from me to Kinsey and back again. “I’m pleased to see that you have both come through the experience relatively unscathed. Though I do have some questions as to how you pulled it off.”

I was glad he’d said ‘relatively’ unscathed. This was one sea story I was never telling Andrea. Not because I didn’t think she’d forgive me, but because I didn’t want to have to put her through the ordeal of knowing about it. “Before we begin, sir, do you have identification of the persons?”

One shaggy white eyebrow rose. “Nothing concrete, Snow. Lieutenant Gordon’s personal possessions contained a reference to a ‘Christine’. You and the sergeant reported that Lieutenant Gordon referred to them as Christine and Elijah. She herself carried no identification. Are you saying you have more than that?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied crisply. “I had time to think while I was in holding, and I managed to narrow down who they were and what this was all about.”

Kinsey never even twitched, which bespoke either phenomenal self-control or absolute assurance that I knew everything and had been merely waiting to reveal it in good time. If the latter, he was partially correct. Lisa was the one who knew everything; I was merely the mouthpiece.

On the other hand, Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton’s eyebrows both climbed toward his vanished hairline and he leaned forward slightly. “You will never cease to amaze me, Snow,” he murmured. “So who was she?” Deliberately, he pressed the button on a tape-recorder on his desk.

I cleared my throat. Time to give him a lot of truth and one small lie. “Her name was Christine Mathers. Elijah was her son. I’d encountered reports about them before, but fragmentary and not the easiest thing in the world to piece together. Specifically, I had no pictures of them. But the mother could hijack the sensorium and force her victims to feel and see things, including blinding them and making them experience excruciating pain. Her range for this was extensive, at least from one side of the country to the other. The child, if he saw you and you could hear him, could give you a verbal order that you absolutely had to follow. Up to and including ‘forget you ever saw me’. Ms Mathers was affiliated with the Brotherhood of the Fallen, and would’ve come after me once they were destroyed, for revenge.”

The JAG lawyer’s jaw honestly dropped open, then he shut it again hastily. By contrast, Hamilton merely shook his head slightly, though I judged it to be more in wonder than disbelief. “Well, that explains a great many things. I presume one or the other got you under their control, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.” Kinsey shook his head in self-disapproval. “The child ordered me to do whatever his mother said. It was as though my mind was submerged in warm jello. From that point, I couldn’t even think to resist her orders.”

I could sympathise. Years ago and years to come, in the original timeline, I’d encountered Valefor. He’d briefly taken me under control, but my bugs had intervened and I’d had the opportunity to remove his conduit of power by blinding him. Just to make my point abundantly clear, I’d packed his eyeballs with maggots.

“So what changed?” asked Hamilton. “How did you break free of his power?”

“I didn’t, sir, not really,” Kinsey confessed. “It was the Captain who gave me the key to acting. When we first met, we both got controlled by the one called Nice Guy, until she killed him. After she took me on as her orderly, I asked her how she broke free of his control, and she told me about the self-hypnosis she practises. So I bought books and studied them in my downtime, then started doing it myself. I’m probably not as good at it as she is, but I gave myself one order: if anyone tries to make me hurt the Captain, I will kill them. Every morning and every night, I’ve been doing the mental exercises, sir. And when that woman started saying that she was going to make me rip the Captain’s arms off, neither one of them had ordered me not to kill her, so the orders I’d given myself took over. I just drew and started putting rounds downrange.” He paused. “To be honest, I felt really stupid doing all those exercises, but it all worked out in the end, sir.”

Hamilton took a moment to brush down his moustache with finger and thumb. “Whereupon the child ordered you to kill yourself, and Captain Snow ended that threat. I see.” He stood up from his chair. “Well done, Sergeant. Your unswerving loyalty and attention to duty are a credit to the service. And you too, Captain. There may well be a medal in this for the both of you. The details will be kept confidential, of course.”

“No, sir.” I said the words before I realised what I was going to say. Even more surprising, Kinsey spoke up at exactly the same time.

“I beg your pardon?” Hamilton regarded us both quizzically, while the JAG lawyer looked positively shocked. “Are you two refusing recognition for a legitimate achievement, one that saved your lives and removed two dangerous Masters from consideration?”

Kinsey glanced sideways at me, clearly deferring to my leadership. I nodded fractionally, then addressed Hamilton directly. “All that is true, sir, but I don’t want a medal for shooting a child.”

“I see.” Some of the extra energy had left Hamilton’s stance as he turned to Kinsey. “And you feel the same way?”

“Sir.” Kinsey nodded. “She might have been a bad guy, but I don’t want to be reminded of her face every time I polish that medal.”

Slowly, Hamilton nodded. “I can understand that. This is a dirty world we live in, and sometimes we have the need to do things that we’re never going to be proud of. It’s a credit to you both that you feel this way, rather than just brushing it off.” He slowly sat down again.

“Thank you, sir, for being understanding.” I took a deep breath. “May I ask what will be done with Lieutenant Gordon?” The last thing I wanted was to see him put into a position of authority, like they’d done with Emily Piggot in my original timeline (I had yet to see how that would play out in the here and now) to give her an incentive not to blab about the utter debacle that the Ellisburg incident had become. Shifting him sideways out of the PRT officer corps into a Directorship (or even the position of Deputy Director) would almost certainly lead to, in my expert opinion, an impressively spectacular fuckup.

“I don’t know as yet,” Hamilton answered; honestly, as far as I could read him. “He was good at his job, though prone to pettiness and laziness when he thought he could get away with it. I’m going to recommend that he be let go from the PRT, but I don’t know if it’ll stick.”

The JAG lawyer cleared his throat again. “While we can’t actually prove his actions against you were distinct from the Mastery, he still got himself into that position in the first place, so it will probably end up as an OTH. At least, that’s what my recommendation will say.”

Kinsey shifted fractionally beside me, and I figured he was thinking back to how close he’d come to being given a discharge of his own after the run-in with Nice Guy. This was a totally different situation in every respect; Kinsey had actively fought back, and had done his best to not cooperate in any way, shape or form.

An Other Than Honorable discharge would almost certainly disqualify Gordon from re-upping with any other department of the PRT, or indeed any branch of the regular military. Even ignoring the personal dislike between us, he’d screwed up massively by failing to follow the protocols that had been implemented in Chicago before they’d gone into action everywhere else.

Once he was gone from the PRT, he would hopefully be out of my life for good. Whatever he felt about me, he was welcome to go and have those feelings somewhere else. He wasn’t worth the hassle that would arise from dealing with him in any meaningful fashion. I hoped he could be made to understand that it was far better for all concerned (him as well as me) if he just went and had an uneventful life that didn’t involve Captain Taylor Snow ever again.

“That’s probably for the best, Captain,” I observed. “From what I personally know of the man, but can’t prove, he probably would’ve ended up with a BCD sooner or later. This way, he’s out of my hair and yours.” A Bad Conduct Discharge was a lot more serious than an OTH, and might even lead to prison time. In a way, Robbie was getting off lightly.

“So to speak,” Hamilton murmured with a dry smile, running his hand over his mostly bald scalp.

“Though I can see one potential problem, sir,” I noted, as diplomatically as possible. “Lieutenant Gordon has not demonstrated any kind of track record of smart life choices, at least where I’m concerned. I am concerned that he might decide to hold a grudge against the PRT and speak to the media. Being in Intelligence, he knows more of our dirty little secrets than most.”

Hamilton didn’t bother quibbling about the phrase ‘dirty little secrets’. We had them, we both knew why they were kept secret, and if they got out without the accompanying context, they could do the PRT a certain amount of damage. And doing the most damage possible would suit Robbie’s purposes perfectly if he decided that the PRT had betrayed him and wanted payback.

“Permission to speak freely, sir, ma’am,” Kinsey said.

“Of course, Sergeant,” Hamilton said at once. “What’s on your mind?”

“Lieutenant Gordon is not a stupid man, sir. He’ll know that the ice is very thin and that he’s either fallen through or is about to. I’ve seen what the Captain can do with computers; I would restrict his access entirely until you decide what you’re going to do long-term. Making wild claims is one thing. Making them with tangible evidence is a whole other thing. And then I’d drop his body weight in NDAs on him. He’s not a man to take no for an answer without clear and obvious repercussions at stake, so I’d be inclined to make them clear and obvious. Sir.”

I cleared my throat. “Kinsey has it right, sir. In fact, I’d suspend his computer permissions immediately, so he doesn’t try to pull something pre-emptive. NDAs are useless if he’s already spilled the beans.”

Hamilton nodded slowly. “Your points are valid, both of you. As much as I hate to hang a man without trial, it’s better to shut the stable door before the horse bolts.” He glanced at the JAG guy, who nodded fractionally in agreement. Then he looked back at the both of us. “If either of you feel that you need to talk to someone about this, let me know and I’ll arrange for a suitably cleared therapist. Captain Snow, the MPs outside have your weapons and your walking cane. Dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir.” I turned and left the office, Kinsey one pace behind me. As we did so, I heard the sound of Hamilton picking up his phone.

Outside, I retrieved my firearm and cane from the MPs as promised, then made my way to the quarters I used while on base. Pistol in hand, I checked the interior of the quarters to ensure that no surprises awaited—I hadn’t thought there might be anything like that in Chicago, but I wasn’t going to fall into the same trap twice—then turned to Kinsey, still waiting patiently at the door.

“How are you doing, Kinsey?” The corridor was deserted, but I kept my voice low anyway.

“I’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep, ma’am.” His voice was firm and steady. “I never thanked you for what you did, earlier.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said, and I meant it. I didn’t ever want to hear it mentioned again. “What you did was goddamn impressive. And I know what I’m talking about.”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “I didn’t even have time to think about it. It just happened so fast.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, getting his attention. “Kinsey. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred, in that situation, would’ve stood there drooling. You acted. After what happened with Nice Guy, you could’ve checked out altogether; we both know that. But you took the initiative, prepared for a repeat of that scenario, and took out someone who could’ve easily killed us both.” I shook my head. “Thinking about it … well, it’s the fact that you didn’t think about it that let you get your pistol all the way out and start putting bullets into her. If you’d spent any amount of time actually considering the action before drawing down on her, she would’ve known about it and probably shifted your aimpoint to me. So you did it exactly right, and you got us out of it. Well done, Kinsey.”

Kinsey and I had a very matter-of-fact relationship. From the beginning, since I’d rescued him from an ignominious exit from the PRT, I’d been in charge. We’d saved each other’s lives a couple of times since then, but I was betting this was the first time that he’d managed to prove to himself that he was actually worth the high regard I held him in. Not least because he’d also managed to face the bogeyman that had brought him low in the first place—a hostile Master—and come out on top.

It was against regulations to salute indoors and without a cover on, but Kinsey drew himself to attention anyway and ripped off a parade-ground perfect salute. I fancied I saw a tear sparkle in the corner of his eye. “Ma’am,” he managed, his voice rough.

I returned the salute with just enough of a smile that he would understand that I knew why he’d saluted, then nodded more informally. “Kinsey. You’re off duty as of right now, so go eat and get some rack time. We won’t be driving out until tomorrow, just in case JAG has more paperwork for us to fill out, or Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton needs us for anything else.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, and performed an about-turn. I watched as he marched off down the corridor, and smiled fondly. Kinsey could be scary as hell if he put any effort at all into it, but pulling him out of the pit of despair I’d found him in had been the best move of my PRT career, bar none. While having someone at my back who could render extreme violence at need had always been an asset, it had never been more so than when I was facing two Masters at once.

Going back into my quarters, I closed (and locked) the door, then took my pistol out. It would need to be checked and cleaned, then I wanted to have a shower, go online to ensure the local intranet hadn’t been breached in my absence, then get a meal and some shuteye. I hadn’t thought anyone could break through the precautions I’d taken, but we didn’t know yet if Robbie had handed out his online credentials to anyone while under the sway of the Master. Everything he knew, we’d have to change as a matter of course.

My job, I decided as I went and got my gun-care kit, would be so much easier without short-sighted idiots to fuck things up.

-ooo-

Saturday, August 13, 1994
0630 Hours

“A whole day,” I grumbled under my breath as I helped Kinsey load the car. Translation: I carried the light cases while he hefted the heavy stuff. “Seriously, couldn’t they just boot him out without my assistance?”

“It appears they’ve made up their minds,” Kinsey observed imperturbably as he carefully placed my packed-up computer in the back of the car. “They’ve decided that he’s enough of a problem that they don’t want him being able to fight it from any angle.”

“Well, you’re not wrong there.” I shook my head. Checking the Chicago system over had been a piece of cake; barely anything had needed adjusting. Everyone bar the idiotic soon-to-be-ex Lieutenant Gordon had been following the guidelines to a T, and it showed. “Depositions as far as the eye could see.” They had plumbed into my interactions with Robbie right from the start, back when I was a lowly lieutenant under him in the Intelligence division. Even Kinsey had been called in to give his assessment of the man, and to offer witness corroboration of things I’d already mentioned.

We’d managed to scrounge a break in the middle of the day to get some exercise, light sparring and range time in, then it was back to the depositions. The JAG captain (who I learned was called Nelson) headed the team; while he was never overtly hostile, he asked very penetrating questions and looked quietly pleased at the answers. Suffice to say, these were not softball interviews.

By the end of the last interview, after the final statement had been taken down, double-checked for accuracy, and sealed away, it was after dark. I had debated pushing on anyways, but decided to spend one more night in friendly surroundings. As friendly as the world ever got, that is.

And so there we were, the morning sun slanting its rays across the parking lot, as we finished packing the car once more. If there was one good thing about our odyssey from PRT department to PRT department, we’d gotten really good at getting everything where it was supposed to go. Packed the same way every time, we’d be able to find any one thing at a moment’s notice.

“They’re JAG, ma’am. Before they take one more step, they’re going to want all their ducks in a row.”

“In a row?” I quipped. “They’ve got these ducks so organised they’re singing The Star Spangled Banner in four-part harmony.”

Kinsey chuckled briefly at my weak joke, then cleared his throat. “Officer on deck, ma’am,” he warned me softly.

I turned to see Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton crossing the tarmac to join us, hands clasped behind his back. Kinsey and I came to attention and saluted. He returned it, then nodded to us. “Carry on, Sergeant. Captain Snow, walk with me.”

“Yes, sir.” I moved to stroll alongside Hamilton, leaving Kinsey to finish loading the car, a task with which he was entirely familiar. “Is there a problem, sir?”

“Nothing immediate,” he assured me. “Legend got back to me. He’s very interested in your proposed meeting. Whenever and wherever you wish to set it up, he says.” He chuckled dryly. “For someone who doesn’t seek the spotlight, you seem to have amassed quite a fan club.”

Mentally, I groaned. Eidolon must have gone overboard with his praise for me. “I’m just trying to do my job, sir.”

“And you do it damn well, Captain. Just do me a favour and try not to keep getting injured, will you? There’s only so much abuse the human body can take and still keep on ticking.”

“I do my best to stay out of trouble, sir,” I protested weakly. “It just seems to have a knack for finding me.”

“Whereupon you bring it to a sudden and definitive end,” he noted. “I can’t argue with that part of your actions but given your propensity toward encountering problematic situations in the first place, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t authorise a larger guard contingent for you.”

Yeah, that was a huge nope from me. “With all due respect, sir, a larger guard contingent would not have done me any good, and may well have gotten me killed on several occasions. Also, for every extra man, there’s more gear we’ve got to bring along. Any more than one extra, that’s another car, and more resources I’m draining away from everyday operations. And the very last thing I want to do is draw attention to a convoy of vehicles travelling from department to department.” Besides, I liked my freedom of action, and Kinsey was remarkably open-minded when it came to off-the-books operations. I doubted very much that any other guard would be.

“Very true,” he conceded. “I defer to your judgement in this area. Though talking about judgement, Captain Nelson was very impressed by your testimony and general bearing. He made noises about poaching you for JAG Corps.”

I suppressed the gagging sound I was tempted to make. “No, thank you, sir. I very much prefer what I’m doing now.”

“So I informed him,” Hamilton said, his voice amused. “After I explained that you’d turned down multiple attempts to recruit you for the Washington think-tank, he accepted that you knew what you wanted.”

Behind me, I heard the rear of the sports wagon close and click into place. “Well, that seems to be us, sir.” I stood to attention and saluted. “With your permission, we’ll be on our way.”

He returned the salute again. “Granted. Oh, and just by the way, your leave request from the nineteenth to the twenty-fourth has been approved. Is there a particular occasion you wished to be free for?”

I smiled. “Yes, sir. Same as the last time. Another one of my friends is getting married, back home in Brockton Bay.”

His eyebrows rose slightly. “I’m impressed. The last such event was back in March, wasn’t it? How many more engaged couples do you know?”

“That’s about it, sir,” I said. “Danny’s kind of my semi-adoptive brother. His parents took me into their house when I first showed up in Brockton Bay. I told him I would attend if I could, with no promises attached. He understood. But he’ll be thrilled if I manage to make it on time.”

Hamilton nodded and gave me an avuncular smile. “Well, then. You’d best be going. I wouldn’t want you to be late on my account.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, and headed back to the car. We climbed in, Kinsey driving of course, and headed out.

“Where to, ma’am?” asked Kinsey.

I pulled the map from the door pocket and unfolded it. “Next stop, Indianapolis.”

-ooo-

A Few Days Later

“Hm,”, I murmured as I looked down over the parapet of the unreasonably tall building we stood on top of. “A little fog around tonight.” Far below, around the seventy to eighty floor mark, wisps of cloud were beginning to form a layer that obscured the grimy pavement below that.

“That’s not fog,” Lisa advised me grimly, and handed over a form-fitting facemask. “The refinery down the coast stepped up production. Brother X wants more servers installed. So a few more safety regulations just got suspended ‘for the duration of the Emergency’.”

I snorted, but put the mask on. It covered the lower part of my face as if moulded to it, and there were integral flip-up goggles. I could feel it adhering to my face via van der Waals force, leaving no gaps to let the unfiltered outside air in. Filtered air, on the other hand, came through readily enough. We could even converse quite easily, with the short-range radio communicators that were built into them. “How long’s the Emergency been going on now?” I asked idly.

“Fifteen years. Ever since they switched Brother X on and he took over the government. Or maybe he just paid them off and they stepped aside. I was never sure about that part.” Lisa’s voice was harsh, even through her mask. Brother X, the world’s first AI dictator, had been originally intended as a tactical computer. Nobody had thought to program in any kind of regard for human life, and so ever since then, life had been cheap. Regaining our freedom, on the other hand, was going to be very expensive indeed.

Which was why Lisa and I were on top of a building we had no legal right to be within half a mile of in any direction. Brother X’s robotic hoverdrones cruised through every layer of the sprawling megatropolis known only as the Urb, sensors scanning for the slightest deviation from accepted behaviour. There was data to be hacked inside the building—the tallest in Bravo Sector—that Lisa thought could be used against the malevolent AI. She knew what it was, and how to get it. I was just along to watch her back.

The only reason we’d even gotten this close was down to the sensor-defeating stealth suits we wore, but they would lose a lot of their effectiveness in close quarters. After all, we weren’t actually invisible. This was why I was also carrying two pistols and a submachine gun.

Lisa attached our descent cables to the stanchion, then I tested each of them, first putting my full weight against the lines then giving them a series of solid, jerky tugs to see if they’d jolt free. They held firm. We were ready to go.

We both wore harnesses with an attachment point for the descent cable reel, right about where our centre of gravity would be. I backed up over the side of the building, letting the cable out through the brake in nice steady increments. With my feet braced against the vertical surface and my left hand controlling the brake, my right hand was free to grab a gun if necessary.

So of course Lisa had to do it differently. She came down headfirst, guiding herself with both hands, the cable sliding around her left leg and over her foot. I nearly had a heart attack when I realised her cable brake was off, and she was arresting it with the pressure of her right foot over her left instep. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I hissed.

I couldn’t see her face, but I could still hear the smirk in her voice. “It’s my version of the Australian rappel.”

Well, that settled it for me. Australians were insane. “Well, just ... take care,” I muttered. That head-down position had to be uncomfortable as hell, not to mention more precarious than I wanted to think about. A second of inattention—hell, even a cramp at the wrong moment—and she’d be in free-fall until she got her hands on the cable brake. Any kind of mishap like that could doom the mission.

“I’m always careful,” she responded blithely, letting herself down another few yards. Her hands skimmed the mirrored glass, barely touching it. I caught up and gave her a dubious glance. “Well, I am,” she muttered, giving me what I interpreted as a dirty look.

We kept going down, floor by floor. Lisa occasionally checking a device on her wrist. She’d explained to me that it detected subquantum interference, which meant a high-end processing core. To me that said “high-end security”, but Lisa had been adamant. The risk, she maintained, was worth the reward.

And then she stopped. Putting her hand on the cable reel, she engaged the brake. “We’re here,” she murmured. There was a dull red light pulsing on the device on her wrist. I watched her press a couple of buttons and wave her arm around; for what purpose, I had no idea. It was just my job to make sure we weren’t snuck up on by a roving drone.

With my hand on the SMG, I angled my head first one way and then the other to make sure there was nothing directly behind us. The sky was clear, save for the wisps of air pollution now beginning to thicken and spread upward. We were in for a few days of poisonous smog, I judged. Unfortunately, this was not overly uncommon.

There was a muted click, and I looked around to see the window sliding aside. Looking as smug as she could with a full-face mask, Lisa inverted herself to an upright position and climbed in. I followed her, detaching the cable reel once my feet were on solid ground. “And here I thought you were going to do the classic circle cut,” I murmured as she did the same. We were in a small storeroom of some kind, with boxes stacked to the left and right.

She caused the window to shut once more, trapping our descent-cables in the gap. “Pfft, that’s old school,” she said, her eyes twinkling behind the goggles. “Besides, it’s a lot harder than it looks, and takes a lot more time.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Which way do we go?” Unslinging the SMG, I went to the door and listened at it. There was nothing going on out there that I could hear. Carefully, I tried the handle. It didn’t budge.

“I got this.” She went up to the door and tapped the wrist device on the handle, and it unlocked with a click. Pulling it open, she glanced left and right then went through.

I followed on, musing on the mindset of a computer that locks storerooms from the inside as well as outside. We made our way along the darkened corridor, our goggles affording us a moderate level of passive low-light vision. I kept my eyes open for security cameras or roving drones; the ones that Brother X used outside were too big to fit in the hallway, but he no doubt had smaller models.

Five very tense minutes later, she sidled up to a door that looked like every other one we’d passed by. “Okay, this is where it gets interesting,” she said softly. “I can get the door open, but I might have to brute-force it a little. If the internal security decides that something’s hinky, we’re going to get a lot more attention than we really want.”

“Well, that’s my job,” I replied. “You just do yours. Make this worth it.” Lifting the SMG, I extended the stock and snuggled it into my shoulder. I pulled back the bolt just far enough to glimpse the brass lurking in the chamber, then let it snap back into place. “Locked and loaded.”

“Let’s do this thing.” She pressed her wrist device against the door panel and tapped a few buttons. The door didn’t do anything. She made an irritated noise in the back of her throat and tried again. There was a beep from the door, but it still didn’t open. “Come on, you stubborn bastard,” she mumbled, and tried another sequence of buttons.

There was another beep, this one quite a bit more urgent, and the door clicked. There was a series of beeps from the door as it slid open a few inches. I scanned the corridor, finger resting on the outside of the trigger-guard for the moment. Something caught my eye, and I looked more closely. On the nearest security camera, in both directions, a red light had popped into being. “I’m pretty sure it knows where we are,” I warned her.

“Yeah, no shit.” She pulled the door open a bit farther, then yelped and jumped aside as there was a brrrt from within and a burst of fire pitted the floor a yard to my left. “Fuck, there’s a turret in there!”

“God damn it.” I turned toward the door. “Watch my back.” Sidling up to the doorway, I paused to take a breath then leaned in, finger on trigger. I already had an idea that it was up high; I got the sight picture as it started traversing toward me. My sights were already on target and I fired a long burst. Sparks flew and the twin barrels of the security turret drooped toward the floor. Immediately, I ducked back and waited for return fire as I swapped out the mostly-depleted magazine for a fresh one.

None came.

I leaned in again, scanning from side to side for more turrets. Nothing showed itself. Taking a step through the door, I looked around again, finger on trigger and my senses in high alert. No more threats presented themselves. “Clear,” I called softly.

“Oh, good,” Lisa said, ducking in through the door beside me. She hit a control and the door slid shut. “We’re on fast time now.” She hit the light switch, causing my low-light lenses to automatically power down. Within the room, banks of servers and processors (so I assumed) were arrayed in rows, lights blinking in unison.

“How many entry points to the room?” I asked. “And how do we exit, now I come to think about it?” Fighting our way out was likely to be a lot more difficult. Brother X could swamp us in drones from now until next week.

“Just that door, and I have a plan,” she assured me. “Now shut up and let me work.”

I shut up and let her work, but that didn’t mean I was idle. There was a table off to the side, which I moved to a point that would make for a good defensive position. I didn’t trust its capability to stop bullets, but visual cover was better than nothing. Also, they were unlikely to use anything that might over-penetrate and damage a server.

Lisa had just fetched something that looked like half a shoebox with a handle when the door started to slide open again. Kneeling behind my impromptu cover, I took aim. A small version of the urban hoverdrones outside drifted into the opening, and I put a single shot through its sensor turret. It’s possible to make those things bullet-resistant, but lenses are hard to protect. Letting out a high-pitched whine of distress, it lurched off to the side; from the sounds I heard, it bounced off the wall before falling to the floor.

I didn’t have time to congratulate myself, because the next three that came through the door were firing as they came. I picked off the first, dropped the second in a burst of fire, then had to throw myself to the side as the third one hurtled overhead. With a shriek of turbines, it turned to shoot downward at where I’d been kneeling, then started walking its fire toward where I was lying. The SMG was trapped under my body, so I drew my left-hand pistol and double-tapped a pair of AP rounds through it.

As the drone crashed to the ground, I rolled up onto my knees then got to my feet. “How much longer?” I yelled. “Because this is getting fraught!” Holstering the pistol, I changed mags again on the SMG.

“Almost done!” Lisa yelled back.

“Good!” I got behind the table and aimed over it at the open doorway. Normally, the drones were so quiet you couldn’t hear their turbines until they were very close, but now I could hear them coming. Lots of them. Enough that they were going to swamp me if they came through all at once. I didn’t care; I was going to try anyway.

The first one swooped in, followed by more. I tagged the leader, then walked the fire back onto the others. Drones swerved, crashed, fired at me, and let out all the discordant tones under the sun as I ran the magazine dry. Without missing a beat, I dropped it onto its sling, pulled both pistols, and started firing as fast as I could. Brass tinkled on the floor all around me as I picked one drone after the other out of the air. Return fire whispered past me and tugged at the sleeve of my sensor suit.

And then, one pistol ran dry. A single shot later, the other did the same. I reached for more magazines, and found that my belt-pouches were empty. I’d been reloading without even being aware of it. Dropping the pistols, I fumbled with the SMG. If I could get a full magazine into it, I could hold them off a little longer.

A dozen drones zipped into the room. In another second, as I froze with the magazine in hand, I was surrounded. The table had done surprisingly well as cover, but these ones could shoot me from every angle. I could almost feel their laser dots painting my torso, seeking the most efficient shot.

“Stop!” The voice was high-pitched, almost childish. The drones seemed to freeze, then turned to aim their sensor turrets toward the server banks. Lisa emerged, her very posture radiating smugness. In her hand she held the handle of the box. It had a screen on the front, with a computer-generated image of a child’s face on it. I had no idea what was going on, but gradually I got to my feet. The magazine clicked into the SMG.

“Go away!” The voice was definitely coming from the box. “Leave my friends alone!”

Hesitantly, the drones turned and left the room, the last one lingering in the doorway before it, too, disappeared. As I crouched to retrieve my pistols, I didn’t take my eyes off Lisa and the box.

“Okay,” I asked. “Just what’s going on here?”

“Meet Pandora,” Lisa said cheerfully. “Brother X decided to make himself a daughter, but didn’t like the fact that she was a nice person, so he chained her up in his basement. So to speak. She managed to get a message out before all communication was cut. Thus, this rescue mission.”

“Hi!” said the box enthusiastically. “You’re a people, aren’t you? I like people! Can I be a people too?”

“Honey,” said Lisa indulgently. “You can be whatever you want to be.”

“Oh, goody!” The box giggled. This was not the strangest thing I’d ever seen, but it was close. “I like dragons, too. Can I be a dragon?” The computer-generated face morphed into the cutest little cartoon baby dragon.

“Definitely,” I agreed.

“Whee!” On the screen, the little dragon spread its wings, diving and looping in a sky filled with drifting fluffy cartoon clouds.

There was an odd sensation and I put my hand to my ear. “I think my ears just popped. Is there a storm moving in?”

“No, that’ll be you coming into Brockton Bay,” Lisa said. She pulled off her mask. “Kiss before you go?”

I removed mine as well, the gecko-grip peeling off reluctantly. Leaning in, I kissed her. Her lips tasted of dust and blood, as they always did. An errant breeze carrying some of the outside air pollution tickled my eyes, and I blinked.

-ooo-

Slowly, I opened my eyes as the car descended the last stretch of the road into the city. It had been almost a week since we left Chicago. There was a deadline I wanted to meet, and a ways to travel before I did.

After Indianapolis had come Louisville, Columbus, Detroit and Cleveland. Six days, five cities, four states and over eight hundred road miles. We’d hit Cleveland after twenty-one hundred on the 18th and Kinsey had gone straight to sleep while I stayed up all night, unfucking what had been done to it. Someone had definitely gotten creative, but they hadn’t signed their work or even hung around, so I put everything back in order, locked the doors, and handed over the metaphorical keys to Director Pollock.

By this time, Kinsey was up and around again. He wanted me to get some rest, but I didn’t bother. A shower and a change of clothes later, and we were on the road once more. Half an hour out of Cleveland, I reclined my seat as far as it would go and closed my eyes. I woke briefly when Kinsey stopped just outside of Buffalo to put gasoline in the vehicle and buy some food, then fell asleep once we were on the road again.

Ten and a half hours after we left the city limits of Cleveland, we rolled into Brockton Bay. The lights were just coming up across the city as we descended the shoulder of Captain’s Hill, and I had Kinsey pull over.

I opened the door and got out; every joint I had popped and crackled as I stretched and turned to get some level of flexibility back. I had to be careful about it so I didn’t pull any stitches, but the last time I’d checked the injuries that Night Terror had given me, my legs had been healing well.

“It’s been a trip so far hasn’t it, Kinsey?” I asked, leaning on the front bumper of the wagon and looking out over the city. “And we’re back more or less where we started.”

“You’re not wrong there, ma’am.” Kinsey put his fists into the middle of his back and stretched, popping some vertebrae back into place. “I’ve had the chance to catch up with old friends and make some new ones. But it is nice to get back to a quiet out-of-the-way spot once in a while.”

“Quiet?” I raised my eyebrows at him. “As I recall, there was that one time Marquis had you kidnapped just to get my attention.”

“Which was a unique experience, yes,” he conceded. “But I was extremely impressed with the way your friends pulled together to help rescue me.”

He made no mention of my specific part in that incident, but I was fine with that. We both knew what I’d done. More to the point, that was only one of the off-the-books operations that I’d perpetrated with his knowledge, and he’d never mentioned any of them to Hamilton (or, for that matter, anyone else in my chain of command), so I had to conclude that he approved. Then there were the ones I’d pulled off that he hadn’t been a part of but suspected their existence anyway; I hadn’t gotten into trouble over those ones either.

As we were talking, the sky darkened and more lights came up. I went around to the passenger side and climbed in. “Let’s go,” I said. “Danny’s place first.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

-ooo-

Danny Hebert

The doorbell rang just as Danny was helping his mother wash the dishes. “That’s the doorbell, Dottie!” called his father from the living room, as if nobody else in the house could hear it. Pausing with a plate in his hand, Danny paused and looked at his mother.

“Go get the door, honey,” she said with a smile.

“Sure thing, Mom.” He gave the plate one last wipe with the towel and put both of them down, then headed through the living room. “I got it, Dad,” he said unnecessarily; George Hebert hadn’t gotten up from the chair.

Stepping into the entrance hall, he checked his appearance briefly to make sure he didn’t have washing foam stuck to his face and that his shirt was tucked in, then opened the door. The polite greeting he was mustering for whatever stranger was ringing the bell was immediately forgotten. “Taylor!” he exclaimed. “You made it!”

The tall girl—no, woman—in the blue PRT uniform gave him a genuine smile. “Well, I did say I’d try to get here on time. C’mere.” She stepped forward and hugged him; he had no choice but to hug her back.

“Well, who is it?” demanded his father from within the house. “Don’t leave them standing on the doorstep.”

“Right, right.” Danny let Taylor go and backed into the house. “Come in, come in. Is Sergeant Kinsey with you?” A moment later, the bulky figure behind Taylor was clearly illuminated by the porch light, and he chuckled to himself. “Of course. Come in, Sergeant.”

“Thank you, sir.” With a quiet tread for a man so solidly built, Sergeant Kinsey followed Taylor into the living room. For all that the man had called him ‘sir’, Danny knew full well that was merely courtesy, and it was far different from the ‘sir’ that an actual officer would get.

“Taylor Snow, as I live and breathe.” George Hebert levered himself up from the easy chair as Danny shut the door. “It’s good to see you again, girl. What’ve you been doing with yourself? And why are you using that cane again? Have a seat, have a seat.”

Taylor chuckled, though the sound was entirely without mirth. “The details are confidential, but I can safely say that the other guy came off a whole sight worse than I did.” At George’s gesture, she moved over to the sofa and sat down with a sigh of relief. “Ahh, that’s better. The car seat is comfortable, but it’s nice to sit down where it’s not moving.” She glanced at Sergeant Kinsey, but the big man merely stepped to the side and assumed a stance with his hands behind his back.

“How long—” Danny began, but was interrupted by his mother emerging from the kitchen.

“Taylor! My goodness, why didn’t you call ahead? The house is a mess! Whatever must you think of me?”

“Relax, Dorothy,” Taylor said with a genuine smile. “Kinsey and I didn’t just drive halfway across the country to critique your housekeeping skills. It’s good to see the both of you again.” Leaving the cane leaning against the sofa, she got up once more—this time, Danny caught the twinge of discomfort—and crossed the room to hug Danny’s mother.

… who was also Taylor’s grandmother, genetically speaking, though Danny tried not to think too closely about that.

“Well, it’s good to see you too, Taylor.” Dorothy put her hands on Taylor’s shoulders and looked her up and down. “Have you been injured again? You’re standing a little stiffly.”

“Nothing that won’t heal,” Taylor prevaricated. “And while I’m not at liberty to divulge specific details, the good guys lived and the bad guys died.”

“I thought you guys were Intelligence Division, not combat operations?” Danny realised he’d asked the question, and decided that he might as well double down. Turning to the stolid Sergeant Kinsey, he added, “I mean, she’s not supposed to go into combat, right?”

“That’s true, sir,” agreed Sergeant Kinsey. “But sometimes, despite my best efforts, combat still finds her. Fortunately for us all, the Captain is very good at what she does.”

“I’d be astonished if it was any other way with young Taylor,” George Hebert declared. “Dottie, do we have enough for our guests?”

“I believe I should be able to—” began Dorothy.

“No, no, really,” Taylor said. “We’re not going to put you out. Kinsey and I were just dropping in to say that we were in town and to say hello. We’ll see you tomorrow at the wedding, and do more catching up then. Right now, Kinsey’s been up since before dawn, and I’ve been napping in the passenger seat all day, so we’re going to find someplace to put our heads down.”

It was rare that George Hebert had his will thwarted. Taylor, Danny had found, was one of the few with sufficient force of personality to pull it off. Her tone, while not being rude, left no room for argument or denial.

“Very well,” the older man stated, accepting the refusal of hospitality with reasonably good grace. “If that’s what you want to do.” He held out his hand. “It is good to see you again … Captain Snow.”

Taylor, ever the graceful winner, shook it firmly. “And you too, Mr Hebert. Dorothy. Danny. I’ll see you tomorrow. Same church Franklin and Gladys got married in?”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” said Danny. “See you tomorrow. It was good to see you.”

“Yeah, well, you guys are the closest thing I have to a family here in Brockton Bay, so it’s always good to see you.” Taylor favoured them with a smile and a wave while Danny tried hard not to choke, then she went to the front door. Sergeant Kinsey retrieved the cane then followed her out, pausing to give them a general nod before he went out the front door.

Dorothy broke the silence that followed the click of the latch closing. “Is it me, or is Taylor becoming more abrupt? She used to enjoy spending more time talking.”

“Taylor’s Taylor,” George grunted, going back to his chair. “Girl’s clearly got a lot on her mind. The PRT’s getting busier by the day, and unless I miss my guess, she’s right in the middle of it all. You mark my words, that little girl’s fighting a war that we’ll never hear about until it’s all over, or maybe not even then.” He settled back and retrieved his paper. “Just hope she’s not biting off more than she can chew.”

And all Danny could think as he went back to help with the washing up was, I hope so too.

-ooo-

“It was definitely nice to see them again,” I observed as Kinsey pulled the car into the parking spot. “Danny looked like a cat on hot bricks though.”

“Pre-wedding jitters, ma’am,” Kinsey said wisely. “I never met a man who didn’t have them.”

We took out our essential luggage—including my computer setup—and entered the building, then crowded ourselves into the elevator. We didn’t make any more casual conversation; we were both too tired, right at that moment. The elevator hummed upward. When the doors opened, I took the cases Kinsey had allowed me to carry, and led the way.

We reached the door. I set down one of my cases and knocked.

Andrea opened the door, a smile of pure joy crossing her face. “Taylor!”

Dropping the other case, I took her in my arms.

Right then, right there, at least for the moment …

… I was home.

 Part 7-2