The Indestructibles (Book 4): Like A Comet (29 page)

Chapter
52:

Beauty
in this world

Kate sat in the dark and watched the
second movement of the Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler at the City Performing
Arts Center. Professional dancers swam across the stage with the strength of
Olympic athletes and the weightlessness of butterflies. She sometimes wondered
what it would have been like to grow up to be one of them, the way her life had
been intended once upon a time. But on this reflection, like on most things,
Kate had grown incapable of dwelling. It just was not in her nature to regret
anymore. Regretting, she thought, was a loss of control over a small piece of
yourself.

      Titus sat next to her, his
luminous golden eyes reflected the stage lights back like an animal's. This she
could not get used to. Sometimes, while in the dark, she'd see his eyes before
she saw him, two glowing spheres in the blackness, reminding her that he was
not human, that they were not the same.

      But he held her hand anyway, and
that was okay.

      Jane gave them the tickets before
she left for outer space. Kate didn't want to take them.

      "Why are you doing this?"
she asked, looking at the tickets Jane handed her as if they were written in
another language.

      "Because it's the end of the
world again, and you should see one more ballet just in case, I told you this
already," Jane said.

      "But why give me tickets?"
Kate asked.

      "Just go to the theater and
sit with your boyfriend and recharge," Jane said, her smile never
wavering.

      "I hate when you call him my
boyfriend," Kate said.

      "Kate Miller, can't you just
for one moment relax and enjoy the fact that someone in this world loves you?"
Jane said.

      "No," Kate said. "I
have… a really hard time with this."

      There was no anger in Jane's voice
during the exchange. She truly did want Kate to find happiness. Whether through
Titus or on her own. Some days Kate wondered if this was on some sort of list
of goals Jane kept for herself.

      The problem, Kate realized, was
that she never even tried to be happy. Maybe she could, if she wanted to. She
understood Titus suffered from clinical depression. They'd talked about it. He'd
been in treatment, quietly, for a long time and eventually discovered that it
was a particularly common trait in werewolves, that something inherent in their
nature led to a tendency toward depression. But he knew how to be happy. Sitting
with him, while taking in the spectacle of the show, joy graced his face. He
reveled in something beautiful despite knowing nothing about it.

      Kate leaned back and turned her
full attention to the stage, the way the dancers mirrored each other, the
finesse, style and power of their actions. She was struck by how much of their
movements seemed like her own, how much dance remained a part of her despite
the violence of her life. As a child, she had danced like a fighter, and as an
adult, she fought like a dancer, and the two were forever intertwined in her
life.

      She released Titus's hand to flex
her fingers. Sometimes, the pain caught up to her. Not the pain from her crime
fighting days—though there were certainly enough injuries to haunt her there.
But the injuries from the car crash, the result of an attempted carjacking that
cost Kate her parents and her dancing career, those injuries welled up in the
dark, in old bone breaks and scar tissue. Though in nearly constant pain since
the accident, she got up, every day, and danced, and fought, time and time
again.

      She watched dancers on the stage,
who did not go out at night to live a life of violence, and she realized that
in many ways she got involved in all the dangerous things so that somewhere,
each night, other people could dance in peace. Other people could create
something beautiful, the sort of beautiful thing her body no longer felt
capable of doing. She carried the pain silently so that no one else would have
to.

      I'll need to thank Jane for these
tickets, she thought. Her mind drifted as the show came to a close, to where
her friend might be, out there in the night sky alone.

      Titus and Kate slowly made their
way out of the theater, "like normal people," the werewolf whispered
in her ear, though Kate knew he joked to avoid pondering things they were both
already thinking about, like how this could be the last time they did something
like this together. They possessed a strong sense of the consequences of the
risks they both took, and they had an unspoken agreement not to talk about how
any day might be their last. Still, with the strains of music resonating in
their ears and worry in their hearts, it felt more real tonight. When Titus
slipped an arm around Kate's waist, something she normally shied away from in
public, she didn't pull away, instead leaning in and wrapping her arm around
him as well. It caught Titus off-guard. The look he gave her unmasked his surprise.
She glanced at him and realized just how terrible she was at saying anything at
all, and even here, arm and arm, she still never seemed to find the words to
tell him what was on her mind.

      I wish you spoke dance, Kate
thought, reflecting on the pure emotion of the performance. I could use it like
sign language to tell you how I felt about all the things I never say. About
every single thing. Instead you stand, waiting for me to reveal things I never
will.

      "I could help with that,"
a familiar voice said from an alley. Kate and Titus immediately launched into
defensive positions, stepping apart to flank the newcomer, Titus already
sliding out of his coat to transform.

      Then a woman both of them thought
they'd never see again stepped out from the shadows.

      "Prevention," Kate said,
snarling.

      "I'm going by my first name
now, but that's fine," the woman said. "And I mean it. I'm a
telepath. I heard all those complicated dilemmas bouncing around in that dark
thing you call a brain, Dancer. And I could translate for you."

      "Give me one reason why I
shouldn't knock you out right now," Kate said.

      "I'm here to help, not start
a fight. Calm down," Laura, the former Prevention said.

      "You kidnapped my friends and
tried to kill me," Kate said. "And you're here to help?"

      "I came to you exactly for
this reason," Laura said. "Because you have the most reason to
distrust me. I wanted the person I contacted to be suspicious."

      "Well, we're suspicious,"
Titus said.

      Laura removed an envelope from
inside her coat and put it on the ground slowly.

      "Inside's a list with information
about a stockpile of tools you'll want to fight the invasion," Laura said.

      "What do you know about it?"
Kate said.

      "Probably as much as you do,
maybe more. I've been working to prevent it all along. None of us knew that,
but it's true."

      "You're full of garbage,"
Titus said.

      "Take that envelope to the
Department. Have Sam Barren look up what's in there. It'll help them to help
you," Laura said.

      "You think you're just going
to drop this on us and walk away?" Titus said.

      "Let her go," Kate said.

      "I knew you of all people
would understand," the former Prevention said. "You know it's not
personal, don't you?"    

      Kate said nothing and watched the
telepathic agent drift back into the shadows.

      "Don't think this settles
things between us," Kate said.

      Prevention, Laura, shrugged.

      "My fight's not with you
anymore," she said, pointing up into the sky. "In a lot of ways it
never was. Just give that to Sam. Tell him it's all their gear anyway. I just
put it away for safe keeping."

      Prevention disappeared. Kate held
out a hand, to stop Titus from pursuing.

      "We're really going to just
let her walk away?" he said, staring at the empty space where the former
agent had just stood.

      "It's the end of the world,
Titus," Kate said. "If ever there was a time for strange allegiances,
it's now."

Chapter
53:

The
strange machine

Henry Winter limped into his office,
looking at a text message from Sam that simply said "we have to talk."
Winter found himself strongly considering hitting an old man. "We have to
talk." About what? Is he quitting? Having digestive problems? He couldn't
possibly give slightly more detail than this?

      "When did the old man get so
good at being vague," Winter muttered, sitting down at his desk
dramatically and reaching for the phone.

      "They say that talking to
yourself is a sign of insanity, but I don't believe it," Entropy Emily
said, standing in the corner looking at the bookshelf lining the office wall.
Winter's whole body shook in surprise, not having seen her on his way in. "I
talk to myself all the time."   

      "Why didn't you tell me you
were here!" he said. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

      "Don't be ridiculous,"
Emily said. "That only happens in the movies."     

      "I don't… you can't just… why
are you here, Emily?"

      "You're going to teach me how
to use that strange machine you showed me and Kate before," Emily said.

      "You're not touching that
machine unless there are no other options," Winter said.

      Emily crossed the room and sat
down in one of the chairs across from Henry Winter. She crossed her legs and
steepled her fingers.

      "We're days away from an
alien invasion, we're outmanned and outgunned. I'd call that having no other
options. Obi-Wan Kenobi, I'm your only hope. Show me how to use the machine."

      "Emily," Winter said.     

      "Don't Emily me, Henry
Winter," Emily said. "I saw the look on your face. You are dying.
Dying. Dying to show me how to work that thing. You want to see it in action.
You're a crazy inventor guy. Watching your creations destroy stuff is how you
sleep better at night."

      "I don't know what you're
talking about," Winter said.

      "You built that thing for
yourself, huh," Emily said.

      "Huh?"

      "You did! You built it for
yourself. Are you not showing me because you wish you were using it instead?"
Emily said.

      Winter stared.

      Emily belly laughed. "I knew
it. The second I saw it I realized you built that thing for yourself," she
said.

      "Why would you think that?"

      Emily smirked.

      "It's got the same color
palette as—"

      "Fine, fine, yeah, I built it
for myself and it never worked. And yeah, I think Dr. Bohr is right and you'll
be able to manipulate it using your bubbles of float, but you are not supposed
to be allowed to use it yet," Winter said.

      Emily leaned in conspiratorially.

      "You ever seen it working?"

      Winter shook his head.

      "Not once?"

      Winter shook his head again.

      "Wanna go see if your plan
will work?"

      He shook his head a third time.

      Emily stared, waiting.

      Winter threw his hands up in the
air.

      "Fine, fine! I admit it! I'm
dying to see if it'll work. I'm dying to. Why do you do this stuff?"

      "Because I can," Emily
said.

      "Doc's going to kill me,"
Winter said.

      "That's okay," Emily
said. "There's a fair to moderate chance the whole world will be dead in a
few days anyway. The least we can do is have some fun first, right?"

Chapter
54:

Spy
games

So Agent Prevention just showed up in
the street and gave you the location to a forgotten warehouse where a bunch of
our stuff has been stashed?" Sam Barren said while standing in a hallway
of the administrative wing of the Labyrinth.

      "That's what happened,"
Titus said.

      Kate folded her arms and leaned
against the wall.

      "We'll go retrieve the items,"
she said.

      "No," Sam said. "No,
we got this. If a Department field team can't go pick up items we actually
recovered ourselves over the past ten years and lost, we don't really deserve
our jobs. We'll take care of this and see if there's anything in the inventory
we can use."

      Sam thumbed through the file Kate
had given him, grumbling under his breath.

      "Well, she certainly made us
look stupid for years," Sam said. "I suppose we shouldn't be
surprised that she'd pop up one more time to make us appear like fools again."

      "She said the people who
hired her had this in mind all along," Titus said. "That she was
there to get the Department ready for an invasion."     

      Sam sniffed and smoothed his
mustache.

      "Well I'll say this much,"
Sam said. "When I retired, the Department was like a giant detective
agency. We were investigators, we were researchers… agents, certainly, and we
knew how to defend ourselves, but we were really a covert sort of thing.
Prevention turned the Department into a fighting force. I can't say I was happy
about the idea of my old company being militarized, but that would make
sense—she made the Department much more of an armed service than an agency."

      "You think she's telling the
truth?" Kate said.

      "I don't know anymore,"
Sam said. "I can't say that I trust her. But we've seen some things the
past few years, haven't we?"

      Kate nodded.

      "The Children of the Elder
Star were infiltrated by people who wanted to promote the invasion," Kate
said. "It's not a huge stretch to think that an opposing force might try
to infiltrate the Department to do the opposite." 

      Sam grunted and closed the folder
aggressively.

      "This is too much cloak and
dagger garbage, and I was a professional government agent most of my adult
life," he said. He shook his head and turned back to Kate. "Any word
from our friend?"

      "Alley Hawk is still laid up,"
Kate said. "Vermin King almost killed him."

      Her quasi-mentor and fellow
vigilante without superpowers had dropped off the grid weeks back after
recapturing his arch enemy. His allies had complete confidence he would recover,
but still, everyone concerned. His injuries were severe. "No word on your
end, then?" she said.

      "We're keeping an eye out,"
Sam said. "He always disappeared when he needed to. And he always came
back."

      Kate made a sound in the back of
her throat. She didn't have the time to worry about Alley Hawk, but she was
worried nonetheless.

      "I'll put a team together to
check out this bunker," Sam said. "With its space-junk. You know,
this is a clerical screw up."    

      "Clerical?" Titus said.

      "Paperwork. We collected all
this junk. If we'd kept better track of it…" Sam said.

      The sound of Billy's voice in Kate
and Titus's earpieces cut them off.

      "Guys," Billy said.

      "Way to be formal, Billy,"
Titus said.

      "No time," he said. "We've
got a thing. There's a ship coming in fast, one of the Nemesis fleet ships, it
looks like a gunship or something."

      "On our way," Kate said.
"What's the trajectory?"

      "It's headed right for the
City. Where are you?"

      "At the Labyrinth. We'll move
out," Titus said.

      "It's worse," Billy
said. "Neal has detected that the fleet is within striking distance of the
planet."

      "What?" Titus said.

      "It's starting," Billy
said. "They're here."