Chapter 29:
Valkyrie
Kate could not get used to flying.
They had agreed — she and Dude, whom she could not stop referring to as Dude, despite it upsetting both her and the alien equally — that even though Kate wanted him out of her head as soon as possible, they should make the best use of their time together, and so, when Neal told them he had located Valerie Snow by triangulating weather patterns, Kate offered to fly out to meet with the woman in the clouds.
Riding the hoverbike was one thing, but flying, actually flying under her own power, was the strangest sensation Kate had ever experienced. She thought it might feel like swimming, but it was far worse, a perpetual sense the world might drop out from under her, drifting listlessly if she stopped, a sense that she was never quite in control.
It didn't help that she and Dude fought for command of her body at all times.
"Stop making me move!" she said.
Kate had also steadfastly refused to talk to him silently the way Billy did. She thought this might make her seem less crazy, but talking to herself had definitely made it worse.
I am not making you move,
Dude said.
I am correcting your direction so we do not fly hundreds of miles off-course.
"Are you doing this with Billy all the time?"
Billy is more . . . pliable.
"What do you mean pliable?"
He takes suggestion better than you do.
"Are you saying you control him all the time?"
Dude made a scoffing noise.
Not in the least,
Dude said.
But he does not fight me every single moment of the day. I have never had a host who so aggressively pushed me back out again.
"You are an invading presence!" Kate said. "You're in here without my permission!"
You are the most willful living creature I have ever encountered.
"Did you just call me a creature?"
You are a creature. You are a mean-spirited, willful one at that. It is very cold in here.
"Good," Kate said.
Everything about having Dude in her head offended her. She suspected he could hear all of her thoughts, and his "help" went against what she stood for. She didn't need help. She didn't want help. And she definitely didn't want superpowers.
But the convenience of being able to fly out over the Atlantic for a face-to-face meeting with Project Valkyrie was convenient. She did have to admit that.
Kate had never met her before, and certainly had no idea what to expect now that Valerie/Valkyrie was in control of her own powers. It had made trying to find her all the more difficult, because while she couldn't help but have some impact on weather patterns wherever she traveled, she was no longer the roving eye of a hurricane.
But when Kate found her, finally, there was no doubt. A solitary female shape, with skin the mottled marble of storm clouds, eyes and hair the color of perfect blue sky, Valkyrie noticed Kate's approach and paused mid-air. Kate felt the air change, the temperature dropping as Val tried to decide if Kate were friend or foe.
"You glow like the boy," Val said as Kate drew up to her. Val's voice sounded like rain spattering against leaves.
"I'm borrowing his powers right now," Kate said.
That's not exactly accurate,
Dude said, but Kate ignored him.
"Why do you pursue me?" Val said. "I've sensed you on the wind for miles."
"We need your help," Kate said.
Valkyrie studied her with pupil-less eyes.
"My friends, the ones you met," Kate said. "Solar, Emily, and Straylight. They've been taken."
"By the people who took me?" Val said.
A bolt of lightning flashed in the distance.
Kate was sure it was in reaction to the storm's emotions.
"Worse. They were betrayed by friends."
Val's eyes narrowed.
"What will happen to them," Val said.
"We don't know," Kate said. "I was the one who went to the laboratory to help free you. And my friend the werewolf. I don't know if—"
"Solar told me about you both," Val said. "She told me I would not be free if the two of you hadn't risked your lives in the lab."
"It was all of us. We needed each other to free you."
"And you chose to free me instead of kill me. That was your choice, wasn't it? I can see it in your eyes."
She is perceptive,
Dude said.
Or she talked to Emily afterward, Kate thought, breaking her rule to speak privately to the alien. Jane always thought Emily went to visit her out at sea sometimes and never told anyone.
"You're not able to free your friends by yourself," Val said.
"They're in a bad place," Kate said. "We need . . ."
"I'll help you," Val said. "I don't know what I can do to help, but I will."
"I don't want to put you in harm's way," Kate said. "I know you're not a fighter at heart."
The sentient storm looked as if she were having a similar conversation silently in her own head as Kate was having with Dude. Then she smiled. It was like a break of warm daylight on a stormy afternoon.
"I — Valerie Snow was not a fighter," Val said. "But storms are all warriors, the moment they're born. They are born into conflict. It is what they are. Tell me what I can do to help the people who saved me."
"I don't want you to fight," Kate said. "But I do want you to scare the living hell out of the bad guys."
"I believe I can do that," Val said. She extended a hand to Kate, who took it. Her skin felt like mist drifting on a cool wind. "I can be very scary when I need to be."
Chapter 30:
Prevention's job
Henry Winter had lost track of time while imprisoned in the Labyrinth.
This was common among the inmates, he was told. Lost in an underground maze, rarely seeing daylight, he could understand how easy it was to lose yourself here. When he was a hero, he hadn't questioned the necessity. They locked away some vile people here, people with no interest in reforming, mass murderers, monsters. But over the years he'd begun to wonder.
Annie, crazy Anachronism Annie, had been the most vocal about the cruelty of it all, and Doc always leaned toward wanting to reform the villains, but Annie had been a thief most of her life and Doc's former best friend was a demon queen, so of course they believed in redemption. But the Alley Hawk had seen too many murders, had dug his fingers into the guts of too many victims looking for clues, and the others . . .
We were so scared, Winter thought. We were always so frightened that we were doing the wrong thing, or we weren't doing the right thing, or what we were doing wasn't enough. So yes, please, lock up these awful men, put them somewhere they can't hurt anyone else, put them somewhere we can't be reminded how close we all came to being just like them.
Here, underground, Winter had begun to have a different view of the world. Things become clearer in the absence of daylight.
He knew for certain the new Department wasn't the old Department. Not a single familiar face, not one agent he and Doc and the others had worked with, returned when the Department reopened last year. No continuity of process, no one who'd seen things from the ground floor. These were the men and women who found and hid him all those years ago. They hid him from the old Department, and they hid him from the world.
Sure, they saved his life. The crash that almost killed him broke half the bones in his body. Ruptured him from the inside out. And these mysterious agents rescued him, put him back together, piece-by-piece.
Early on, they also made sure he was hooked on painkillers, Winter thought, as he wandered into his private bathroom to pop open another orange bottle. He'd tried to quit several times, but whoever put Humpty Dumpty back together again made sure to do so in a way that left him in permanent pain. It was one way of keeping a thumb on him, ensuring he couldn't go far.
They tried to make certain he didn't feel like a prisoner, though. His cell was better than most luxury hotel rooms, and filled with all of the equipment he required to do what they kept him here for: reverse engineering stolen technology, inventing new gear, keeping this secret agency, the one that co-opted the Department's old title prepared for war.
It's too bad they're monsters, Winter thought. It really hasn't been unsatisfying work.
He stepped out of the bathroom to find Prevention sitting in his living room. She had poured two drinks, as if she were here on a social call, but Prevention never made social calls. Winter sat down across from her and picked up his drink.
"We need to talk about Sam Barren," Prevention said.
"We do."
"I know you brought the rugrats down to see him. I have no idea what you think you could accomplish with that, Henry."
"They deserve to know what happened to him. He is their friend."
"They can't save him," Prevention said. "If they take him off those machines he'll be dead within minutes."
"Which is why we should take him off those machines," Winter said.
"We're getting close," Prevention said. "It's time to see if we failed or succeeded."
"If we succeeded, he would be up and about," Winter said. "We killed him. He deserves a dignified death."
"We didn't kill him. The man was half dead already," Prevention said. "We just hurried him along some."
Prevention took a drink and rubbed her eyes.
"The little monster hasn't made anyone else sick for over a week. It's making me nervous," she said.
"It's making everyone nervous. Why not turn them loose and see what they can do to help."
"Because those aren't my orders," Prevention said.
"And what are your orders, Laura?" Winter said. "I'm beginning to think they're not what you've told us they were."
"Close enough," Prevention said.
They sat together in silence for a moment, prisoner and jailer, partners in a crime neither quite understood.
"I was really hoping he would be a silver bullet," Prevention said.
Winter laughed.
"You may need one still," Winter said. "You forget you've left a very angry werewolf at large out there."
* * *
Prevention forced Winter to come with her to speak to the Indestructibles. She knew all about their little excursion into the lab, so, she told him, better to try to head off any rebellion before it started.
"Time to come clean about Sam Barren," she said.
They entered the Indestructibles' suite and the tension was immediately palpable. He felt heat radiating off Solar like a car on a hot day, and Entropy Emily was doing something strange to the air, causing all of his hair to stand on end. As they walked in, Prevention pointed at Emily.
"I ask you politely to not make me trip over my own shoes, please."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Emily said. "Perhaps you should consider flats at your age."
"Everything okay, Mr. Winter?" Solar said, ignoring the spat between Emily and the agent.
Winter set his mouth in a firm line and nodded at her. Okay enough, for now, he thought.
Prevention looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He could usually tell when the woman was listening in on his thoughts, but she'd been quieter about it lately.
"I understand you've been up to the hospital ward to see your friend," Prevention said.
"The one you're killing," Billy said.
"The one who volunteered for an experiment," Prevention said. "You knew he was dying?"
"We knew he was sick," Billy said.
"I understand your Tower is full of found items. Alien technology, things from other places," Prevention said. No one answered her, so she continued. "Well your predecessors weren't the only ones collecting unusual antiquities. The Department has decades of such things."
"What does this have to do with Sam," Solar said.
Prevention looked at Winter, then continued.
"We have been trying to graft an alien artifact into a human body. It's a healing device," she said.
"Really? Because it kind of looked like you were doing the opposite," Emily said.
"It's a graft, Emily," Winter said, interrupting. "Some idiot in the research and development department thought grafting alien organs onto a human being was a good idea. I have no idea how they did it, but Sam's lasted longer than anyone else they've tried this on."
"They've tried it on more than one person?" Billy said.
"Sam volunteered for this?" Solar said.
"I wasn't there," Winter said. "I would have tried to talk him out of it. I don't think it can work."
"And you've said over and over again that you're no biologist, and certainly no medical doctor, Henry," Prevention said. "Your genius has limited scope and this experiment was none of your business from the very beginning."
"I stand by my assessment," Winter said.
"And that's well and good, but we needed this right now, didn't we?" Prevention said. "Because we've got someone making people very sick and they never get better, and no one knows how to fix that. If killing a lonely old man in the hopes we can give him some sort of alien magical powers brings us closer to fixing the problem, then I have no problem with killing a dozen lonely old men to make that happen."
"You need this to stop the Plague person?" Solar said.
"Exactly," Prevention said. "And we both know where we think he came from. So this is your fault as much as it is mine."
Prevention took a deep breath, looked at the floor, then spoke.
"We're escalating the experiment," she said. "I suggest Mr. Winter bring you up to see Sam in the morning for you to say your goodbyes in case this doesn't work."