14: ARBITRARY EXECUTION
Beyond the light is a city – or at least all the parts that make up a city, if not in the right order. There are buildings, and streets and power lines and cars, all jumbled together like the view through a kaleidoscope. Artemis finds her feet on the side of what looks like the wall of the Pokémon Centre, fragments of road rising at oblique angles up into the sky before her; slices of building are piled up on either side, the end of the old kiln turned upside-down on top of a church tower sandwiched between half a block of terraced houses and a set of balconies from which grow the trees of the Celadon Public Gardens.
“What the hell …?” breathes Cass, gripping her hand tight. “This is … what is it, like Dark Celadon?”
“I don't know,” whispers Artemis. It's hard to raise her voice in the face of all this impossibility. Way above her, a flight of stairs waltzes across the sky, revolving slowly. There's no sun up there, no clouds, just a chill grey void. She isn't even sure if there's any air; her lungs feel sore and somehow empty. But she hasn't died. So there's that.
A bus goes by on one of the pieces of road, emerging from what passes for the ground and slowly fading away when it reaches the end. Shrieking pixellated things that are in no way birds flutter along in its wake.
There might have been ghost people looking out of its windows, but if there were at least they're gone now.
“Why would he come here?” asks Cass. “Why would
anyone ever come here?”
“I don't know. I don't know.” Keep calm, Artie. You have a mission, scary as this place is. “Can you see him?”
“No. Ringo? You got good eyes. Anything?”
If there is, he isn't talking about it. Ringo has fluffed out his feathers and hunkered down on Cass' shoulder, his usual bravado gone. Brauron isn't looking so good either, clinging to Artemis so tight her claws have pierced her dress. This place is not somewhere they want to be.
Artemis doesn't blame them. She wouldn't be here herself, if she didn't have to.
“Okay,” she says. “Should we look?”
“Yeah,” says Cass. “Guess we should.”
Neither of them move.
“All right,” says Artemis. “Go.”
They make their way across the side of the Pokémon Centre, avoiding the doors and windows. Artemis finds the courage to sneak a glance at one of them, and sees behind the glass what looks like an aerial view of the suburbs. After that, she keeps her eyes forward. The thought that there might just be a thin layer of bricks between her and a three-hundred foot drop is not comforting in the slightest.
At the end, the Centre merges with an overpass that climbs over the shapeless mass of a supermarket, its surface mazed with miniature roads. They walk up and over, and come down on the other side on, for once, actual pavement. The buildings on either side are tilted at bizarre angles, merging into one another like tiers on a melting cake, but it looks a little more like a street than where they came from, at least. From where they stand, the road sweeps up a long slope towards a huge pillar of office blocks mashed together into something like a termite mound, and there, at the pillar's base, are figures.
Artemis stares. Are they ghost people? They are, aren't they? Ghost people, and any minute now they'll cross the distance in that unnatural way they do and be here―
“I think we found them,” says Cass, squinting. “They look human, anyway. And I'm willing to bet there aren't any other humans here.”
“O-oh.” Artemis forces herself to breathe. Not ghost people. Real people. Possibly the only thing that would actually be
worse, given the circumstances. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Right.” Cass pauses. “So, uh, what's the plan, exactly?”
“I don't have one.”
“That's … what I thought, I guess.” Cass squeezes her hand. “Just go after them and do what we can?”
Artemis squeezes back.
“Yeah,” she says, unable to believe that she is agreeing to this. “I think we might be out of other options.”
They let go of each other's hands, and begin to run. They get maybe twenty feet before someone notices.
“Well!” cries one of the figures, in a familiar voice. “It looks like we have company!”
The others turn, and now that they're a little closer Artemis thinks she can make out details: Giovanni, his right arm strangely bulky; a woman with short hair and severe features, holding some kind of engine; three men in dark suits whose job description probably goes something like
big, broad, silent. No pokémon, but those squat things in the men's hands have to be guns. Artemis has never seen one before, but there isn't a lot of room for interpretation here.
She doesn't stop. All that hiking has paid off, it seems, and she barely slows as the slope gets steeper up towards Giovanni and his agents.
“I believe we have met before,” Giovanni continues, utterly unruffled. “You were much friendlier last time around. And this – who's your friend?”
“Cassandra?” A different voice this time: the woman holding the machine. “Cassandra, what the hell are you doing here?”
“The right thing!” Cass yells back, which Artemis thinks is probably the best snap comeback she's ever heard. “What the hell are
you doing here?”
“Don't get smart with me!” The woman glances at Giovanni. “Dioli – that's my niece, the one who―”
“Who's been a double agent for some time now!” Cass shouts. “You a*shole!”
“What?” The woman almost drops her machine. “What – Cassandra―”
“I don't think we need concern ourselves with this,” says Giovanni. He raises his right arm, and now Artemis can see why it looked so strange: he has some sort of machine strapped to it, vacuum tubes and wiring running the length of his arm and feeding into a complex gauntlet that hums and sparks as he moves his fingers. “Breach disrupts,” he says, tapping the air with his fingertips in an intricate pattern. “Breach
changes. You've seen a lot of it by now, Artemis, but you don't understand it, do you? You still have no idea what it is, what we can do with it.”
The men in suits are ready with their guns, but Cassandra's aunt shouts at them,
that's my niece, you morons, don't shoot, and they lower them again, uncertain. How have they got this far? Artemis is only forty feet away now, close enough to see the light gathering on Giovanni's fingertips, reality turning into a glowing slurry at his touch. She still has no idea what to do when she finally closes the distance, but she is closing it, and Cass beside her.
“Breach is a byproduct of the forces that construct our world,” Giovanni proclaims, as if giving a lecture. “The processes that make reality – that say: this is gravity, this a house, this a growlithe. Sometimes these processes go wrong.” His fingers dance; the world shivers. Bits of building shudder loose from the architectural abominations all around them and shoot up into the sky like rockets. “These aberrations – these are breach. Not magic. Not divinity. Mere software glitches in the matrix of the real.” He jabs his ring finger forward emphatically and clenches his fist. “In our hands: the power to rewrite anything.”
The road shakes and vomits a portion of itself upwards, a frothy plume of asphalt rising up in front of them and cutting off their path. Artemis stops dead, staring, as the tarmac dissolves into motes of light and reforms into a familiar figure, jittering and twitching beneath his pixellated face.
“zzzNzzellozzz,” says the blurred man, shuddering towards her. “zzzIdzZliketzobaztzzz …”
Cass has stopped too, is backing off, Ringo fluttering nervously around her shoulders. Her aunt is saying something, asking Giovanni what the hell he's doing, that's her niece, but her voice fades into the background the way incidental noise does on TV when the hero sees something important. But Artemis is no hero, is just a kid with a lizard, and in the face of the blurred man she can barely even move her feet.
“Keep them away!” orders Giovanni, his voice cutting through the turmoil like a knife. “No need to harm them. They are Kantan citizens, nominally.”
“ZZOAK,” says the blurred man, and speeds up his shuddering until his whole body is one dizzying blur – and then all at once falls still.
“What the hell?” says Cass, shaken. “Is that Professor Oak?”
Oak smiles genially at them from where the blurred man used to be.
“Hello,” he says, taking something from his pocket. “I'd like to battle.”
“Oh no,” says Cass, backing away. “Oh no, no, no
Artie get back―”
They turn and run, Ringo swooping after them, and out of the corner of her eye Artemis sees the telltale flash of a ball being thrown―
A shadow falls over them, and something roars. Something big. Something big with hot breath that stinks of fish.
“Oh what the actual
f*ck,” moans Cass, and the gyarados lunges.
It doesn't hit: they're too far back by then for that, and when they turn, alerted by the swish of its vast head through the air, they can both see that it isn't following. The gyarados simply stays there, coiled and rearing, its big fish-mouth gaping like the entrance to hell. How big is it, Artemis wonders. Fifty feet? Sixty? They always look enormous on TV but this is something else entirely. The
size of it. The way its shadow engulfs you, the rolling stench of its breath.
And behind it, still visible: Giovanni, watching calmly as if he sees this every day.
“Do you see now?” he calls. “And he has four others, all just as strong! This, conjured out of nothing, bound to Kantan will!” He clenches his ungloved fist tightly. “But that's only the start. Artemis, I must thank you. You've been an extraordinarily helpful part of this, and remarkably resourceful in your efforts to get to the bottom of things, too. Quite how you managed to recruit Santangelo and Mew-2, I have no idea. The enemy of my enemy, perhaps? But you still have no idea what we're trying to do. You proved as much the moment you ran in here.”
Artemis can't answer. She can't actually move at all, not with the gyarados right there, rolling its eyes and grunting; on her chest, Brauron is panicking, is darting back and forth, drawing blood and ruining her dress and she can't do a thing to comfort her. Her claw stabs into the piece of silicone that serves to give the impression of a left breast and draws part of it out through the hole in her dress, mixing grains of plastic in with the blood and cotton fibres, and Artemis doesn't so much as blink.
What did she think she was going to do? What did she, Artemis, functional-but-barely, hiding behind a change of name and a thin veneer of make-up, behind one badge and one pokémon, behind a forced smile and a mouthful of fear – what was she going to do, when it came to it?
Nothing. Because she is nothing. And it doesn't even matter if Giovanni tells the gyarados to kill her because there is nothing of her to kill, not really. What matters is that Cass and Brauron and Ringo would get caught up in it too. She wishes they hadn't followed her, though there's nothing to be done now.
“You see,” Giovanni continues, “we stand upon the brink of the greatest revolution in human history.” He gestures expansively. “The test in Lavender? This Oak and his gyarados? Nothing, really. Proof of concept. Mere parlour tricks.” The mere parlour trick sways, moving its head from side to side as it regards the tiny things before it with each eye in turn. “The true potential of breach is the power to change. Anything and everything, Artemis. And once our apparatus” – he gestures at the machine Cass' aunt is clutching – “is installed here in the heart of breach, that power will belong to Kanto alone. Everybody knows that Unova's star is waning. The world is watching to see who fills its shoes. It is a fit time for Kanto to take the world stage.”
Artemis listens numbly. Her chest hurts, she notices. Brauron has calmed down, or at least grown fatalistic and resigned, but she's definitely done some damage. It's just so difficult to care.
“I tell you this by way of thanks,” says Giovanni. “You have helped pave the way to Kantan greatness. So many people come to this country seeking to find what it can do for them, but you have proved that a true immigrant asks what they can do for it.” He smiles, and it's a real smile: it's warm, it reaches his eyes. He believes every word of this. He truly does. If there is anything scarier than the gyarados, this is it. “And you will be witness to the dawning of an era,” he tells her. “Anything you can imagine, we will be able to do. The banks forecast a coming recession: so? Rewrite the economy, set it growing! The UN doesn't approve of our military base in the Sevii Islands? Rewrite it; we shall have its blessing! Sanctions? Rewritten. Defeat? Rewritten. Gravity itself? If it displeases us, we can rewrite that too. True Kantan sovereignty, at last.”
“That's too much,” murmurs Cass. She's clutching Ringo now, who has flown to her arms and stayed there, shivering. “That's too much, you can't …”
“And it is all thanks to you.” Giovanni gives a little bow. Ridiculous, really. Artemis would mock it, if she had the spine to talk. “On behalf of all of us at ROCKETS, Artemis, I should like to thank you.” He pauses for a response, but doesn't get one. “On that note, then – I have business to attend to. I recommend you two return to Celadon, although if you'd prefer to wait there staring at Oak and his friends, I suppose that won't do any harm. Until we meet again!”
He starts to turn away. Cass' aunt shifts the machine in her arms to free up a hand, places it on his arm; they have a brief conversation, during the course of which he seems to mollify her, and then they and the three bodyguards move off, around the edge of the pillar.
With what looks like extreme difficulty, Cass takes her eyes off them, off the gigantic pokémon bobbing and swaying before her, and turns to face Artemis.
“I … what do we do?” she asks, plaintively. “Artie, what do we do?”
Artemis doesn't answer. She still hasn't found where her voice went.
It seems moderately likely that she no longer exists.
*
ROCKETS security is well trained; nobody wants to say where the agency's laboratory actually is. But most people get a lot more talkative when Sovereign lifts them up by the throat and pushes them into a wall, and after that it doesn't take long to find out what they need. Concealed beneath a framed advertisement for the Rocket bar in the elevator is a keypad that, if you enter a certain code, will take you down into the sub-basement where Giovanni moved ROCKETS after it was decommissioned earlier this year.
Unfortunately, someone has been sensible enough to lock the elevators.
“Damn it,” says Emilia, pressing the button over and over without result. “There's got to be another way. Stairs somewhere?”
We don't need stairs. Sovereign pushes past her and jams their fingers into the gap between the doors, dragging them apart with a squeal of grinding metal. Frankly, Emilia shouldn't be surprised after seeing them defeat the tyranitar, but even so, it's hard not to stare. Ripping open elevator doors never struck her as the sort of thing that happened in real life.
There, says Sovereign with a grunt, leaning out and looking down into the void.
Long way, but I can make it. Come here.
Emilia hesitates, but only for a moment. She steps forward, Sovereign takes her in their arms, and the next thing she knows they are floating gently down the elevator shaft, the air around them distorting with the levitation field.
“This is … something,” she says, to cover her awkwardness. Sovereign's body is hard as iron with muscle and scar tissue, and seems to run far hotter than any human; it must be a hell of a metabolism that supports those devastating psionics. They almost burn her where they touch.
Sovereign snorts.
You are easily impressed, Santangelo.
“You know, you can call me Emilia.”
Noted, Santangelo.
Sovereign touches down lightly on the roof of the lift and lets her go. Nadia, previously huddled against Emilia's neck, springs away again, rearranging her feathers in embarrassment. She can't hide her discomfort at Sovereign's proximity from Emilia, but she has her pride, and Emilia pretends to believe her.
Stand back. I'll get us in.
The hatch leading into the elevator is locked, but locks are mostly meaningless to Sovereign, and soon the three of them are down in the elevator itself, where Sovereign sniffs the air and tilts their heavy head to one side.
They're prepared, they say.
I detect at least seven human minds, and as many pokémon. Stay back until I clear the way.
“Fine,” says Emilia. “You're the expert.”
“Hah,” they bark, the real sound jarring after all the simulated mental speech.
Yes, I suppose I am.
They force the doors and bound out with a snarl. Emilia hears gunfire, sees flame licking at the walls, and then a series of heavy thumps.
I am Sovereign! In name and deed!
A shriek that dies halfway through, and then silence. Sovereign pads back to the door and beckons her out.
It is done, they say, as she and Nadia follow them down a narrow hallway that bears signs of having recently been barricaded and, even more recently, unbarricaded with extreme force.
I think they are running out of soldiers. Three of these people were civilians and their partners.
Emilia stoops to inspect someone's lanyard: Dr Felicia Barker, Indigo League.
“Yes,” she agrees, getting out her phone and taking pictures. This new one doesn't have nearly as good a camera as her League one, but it's good enough. “These are the scientists who jumped ship with Giovanni.”
Do we need to collect these ID cards? As proof?
“I don't think so,” she says. “I'll send all the photos I take to The Cataphract, along with directions on where they've hidden the lab. The police will find it anyway, when they search the building, but it won't hurt to get the press involved.”
Speaking of the police, we should keep moving, says Sovereign, pacing on ahead.
We have not exactly been subtle about this.
“Right.”
They keep going down the corridor. It's quiet now; that alarm has stopped, and Sovereign's feeling that ROCKETS is out of security seems to be right. Nadia keeps scanning, and she does detect people, but everything she broadcasts to Emilia suggests fear rather than hostility. At the end of the passage, Sovereign motions for her to stand still, and then darts around the corner in one sudden swoop.
You think you can sneak up on me? they ask.
I am Sovereign.
“Oh god,” Emilia hears. “Oh god oh god oh sh*t oh god oh―”
Where is Giovanni?
“Oh god oh god―”
WHERE IS GIOVANNI?
At this close range, the telepathic shout is enough to stun Nadia; her claws seize up and she almost falls from Emilia's shoulder, catching herself at the last moment on a lock of her hair.
FURRET, she murmurs, climbing unsteadily back into position, and follows it up with some incoherent pictures of goats.
Are you okay? asks Emilia, concerned, and gets something back that might be affirmation.
What do you mean? Sovereign demands to know.
Where is he? What is this?
“It's – the kid, he was here, he – we were gonna get our agent to grab him and bring him in but – but he was already here, so we just – we went ahead with the plan, you know, because we knew we couldn't beat―”
Enough of this blathering, growls Sovereign.
If you cannot marshal your thoughts, I shall marshal them for you.
“What are youuuuh …”
The voice trails off, and Emilia hears its owner fall, heavily. A moment later, Sovereign reappears around the corner.
Giovanni has made his escape, they snarl, thumping the wall and leaving cracks the concrete.
I am still working out the particulars of the thought … it seems his plan was to apprehend some boy who serves as a target for breach, the way Artemis does, so that he could trigger a breach event here in Celadon. Some sort of entrance into the breach itself, so that he can take full control.
Some boy. Emilia's fists clench involuntarily. Sovereign doesn't know, do they? They don't know anything at all.
This boy apparently made his way back to Celadon regardless, they continue.
When we made our attack, Giovanni had his agents hold us off so that he had time to trigger the event and escape through the back to his portal into the breach. They glare at her.
Why did you not tell me there was a second person involved in Giovanni's plan? I thought it was just Artemis.
“It
is just Artemis,” snaps Emilia. “They just―” She breaks off, unable to figure out how to explain it. “They are cruel,” she says, in the end. “She made herself and they are cruel.” She shakes her head. “She and I are … I don't know if I have time to explain this. What's the situation with Giovanni?”
I don't understand, says Sovereign. They seem genuinely confused.
Why would they― but you're right. Giovanni is the priority. It would seem he has already left to get to the breach.
“Damn.” Emilia chews her lip. Difficult to say what Giovanni's doing, exactly, but whatever it is, if it's the last thing he needs to do to take full control, they can't afford to let it get out of hand. “Okay. Can you find it? The breach, I mean.”
They are usually quite obvious, as I understand it. But what about our efforts here? There are still some scientists left, and the laboratories to document―
“Leave that to us,” says Emilia, with an assertiveness she doesn't feel. “Nadia and I can handle it.”
No, you can't. You are completely defenceless.
She sighs.
“Objection noted,” she says. “Go and stop Giovanni, Sovereign. We'll clean up in here, start destroying evidence. Nadia can stun people at least. Right?”
Nadia cheeps and thrusts out her chest. Sovereign shakes their head.
Bravado will not win fights.
“No, but intimidation will. Just go, Sovereign. Or do you want Giovanni to win?”
They hesitate, and for a long moment Emilia is half convinced they won't go for it – and then in the end they nod.
Fine. But you – you be careful.
“Hah. Careful, Sovereign, people might think you care.”
“Hmph.”
Don't flatter yourself. I want Giovanni's operation stricken beyond repair. Your survival is necessary.
“Sure,” says Emilia, hiding a smile. “Just go, already. You want Giovanni taken care of, this is your chance. And take this with you.”
She takes their ball from her pocket and hands it over.
“Maybe you could lose this on the other side of the portal,” she says. “Just an idea.”
Sovereign looks at her askance.
An idea, you say. They mull it over for a second or so, then hold out their hand.
Good luck.
“Same to you,” says Emilia, shaking it. “We're both going to need it.”
Speak for yourself, Sovereign retorts, and bounds away down the corridor towards the lift.
Emilia watches them until they disappear into the elevator, and then breathes out.
“Ready, Nadia?” she asks, under her breath.
YES.
“Okay, then,” she says, moving forwards, towards the corner and the body beyond. “Let's go scuttle ROCKETS.”
*
“Artie?” Cass sounds really worried now. Artemis wishes she could do something about it, in a distant sort of way. “Artie, please say something.”
It's been a while, maybe. Nothing has changed; no lightning has struck, no earthquakes have occurred. They've just been standing here, while the ersatz Oak and his gyarados watch them calmly.
Artemis blinks. It's not over. Maybe it won't ever be. But she has her mouth back. And hey. There aren't any ghost people. That has to count for something.
“Cass,” she says. “I'm really sorry. I guess it didn't really work out.”
Cass sighs.
“I mean, maybe we weren't really in with a chance in the first place,” she says. “Guy's got a magic glove that lets him rewrite reality.”
She stands there, at a loss, and Artemis stands with her. It is, at this point, about all she can do. She could turn around, of course. Could go back. But even if she could find the courage to turn her back to the gyarados, she can't leave, not after everything. So she stays, unable to leave, unable to continue, and waits for something to change.
On her chest, Brauron twitches again, burrowing into her armpit with a desperate little his. Artemis puts her arm around her, holds her close against the wash of the gyarados' foetid breath.
Cass takes her hand.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay, I guess we should … go.”
Artemis lets her pull her back, towards the overpass leading back towards the wall of light, and then something falls out of the sky onto the gyarados' head and slams it into the ground with enough force to crack the tarmac.
Oh, Giovanni, says Sovereign, kicking away from its skull, soaring up and floating down to alight before it.
You don't learn, do you? Always you go for show, and never for substance.
“Sovereign?”
They do not turn to face her; the gyarados is rising, its eyes bloodshot and ropes of spittle flying from its lips, and as it lashes out with those yellowed fangs Sovereign dives beneath the blow to wrap their arms around its neck. The gyarados bellows, thrashes, but Sovereign is immovable, rooted to the air by their psionics, and as they tighten their grip its roar dies down into a soft, hoarse rattle.
Useless creature, they say, as the huge dragon writhes, its coils flapping uselessly against one another.
Giovanni has always had a weakness for easy power. True strength cannot be purchased. He has never understood this.
One last squeeze, and they let the gyarados go. It collapses like a house of cards, gasping and wheezing, and does not get up again.
“Jesus Christ,” gasps Cass, eyes wide. “You show up out of nowhere, choke out a gyarados and start talking like a fortune cookie.”
I don't know what that is. Sovereign levitates down to the ground, stately and unhurried.
I assume it is not complimentary.
“No, man, I'm super grateful, but … god. That just happened. Also, um, Oak's going for another ball.”
Sovereign moves like light: there, and then elsewhere. Once Artemis' eyes have managed to process the movement, they see that Oak is lying alongside his gyarados.
“Is he …?”
No. Sovereign shakes their head.
I am not sure if it was alive to begin with, but it is not dead, either.
Oak begins to vibrate again, to twitch and dissolve, and his gyarados with him. Within seconds, there is nothing left but tarmac and scattered motes of light.
“Thank you,” says Artemis. “Thank you, we … I don't even know.” Her mind is waking up, bit by bit; suddenly she realises that her chest hurts, that Brauron is still huddled beneath her arm. “It's okay, kiddo,” she says, lifting her up and turning her to face Sovereign. “Look. The cavalry's here.”
Brauron eyes them with suspicion and flicks her tongue out. It's the most lively she's been since Oak turned up, and it makes Artemis smile, despite it all. She's okay. She gets scared, but she bounces right back. Amazing, really.
“You really scratched me up, huh,” she says, touching her chest and seeing fresh blood on her fingers, over the dried stuff that she wiped from her eyes earlier. “'S okay, I forgive you.” She looks up at Sovereign. “How did you know?”
We learned from the scientists at the Rocket that Giovanni had fled to consolidate his plan. They lash their tail.
I subdued the security and left Santangelo to mark the evidence.
“Alone? Is she―?”
She is … tougher than you think, Sovereign tells her.
Although I forbid you from telling her I said that. They sniff, and shake their head.
Where is Giovanni?
“That way,” says Cass, pointing. Ringo is back on her shoulder now, glaring at the spot where the gyarados was as if daring it to come back. “He said he was gonna plant some machine, take control of breach …”
Sovereign snorts.
Then let us prove him wrong, they say, cracking their knuckles.
Come!
They lope off down the broken road. Cass lets out a little snatch of cracked laughter.
“God,” she says. “God, I think … Artie, correct me if I'm wrong but I think we've got a shot at this?”
“Yeah,” says Artemis. “Yeah, I think … I think we need to hurry up if we're gonna catch him before he sets up his machine.”
Cass smiles. Amazingly, Artemis doesn't think it's forced.
“C'mon, then,” she says. “Let's get running.”
*
Emilia creeps along the corridor, as quickly as she dares. She's got Nadia, sure, and that lets her detect people before they detect her and stun them if they get close, but Nadia isn't a battler, and these are absolutely not ideal conditions to start learning.
Most of the doors down this corridor are locked, but with a key card swiped from one of the scientists Sovereign knocked out Emilia has access to all of them. In the offices beyond, she sweeps notes off tables into wastepaper bins and drops lit matches in with them, watching Giovanni's data turn to ash. It sets the fire alarm going, but at this point it doesn't really matter, and after a while someone turns it off again.
Some stuff will survive, of course. There will be digital backups, and that might not be something she can deal with. But as much as she can, she needs to make all of this disappear. Not much point stopping Giovanni if someone else can just pick up where he left off.
Outside the fifth door, Nadia indicates that she should stop.
Someone in there? thinks Emilia.
HIDING, says Nadia, interfacing with her vision and making part of the wall pulse purple.
HERE.
By the door, then. Waiting for Emilia to come through. She weighs her options, then nods.
Okay. Be ready.
She swipes the key card in the lock and steps back as someone swings a lamp straight through the space she would have stepped into.
“Nadia!”
A flare of green and red wings, a flash of light, and the someone groans, the lamp slipping from his fingers. Another, and he collapses onto the floor, snoring.
Emilia lets out the breath she was holding. Okay. She's never actually attacked anyone before. Or not sober, anyway; she lost a few bar fights back when she was a student. It does not feel good to have started now.
“All right,” she says, running her fingers through her hair. “Good work.”
She steps through into another office, like the others. Nothing here to burn. No reason, in fact, to come in here at all. Which means she knocked the guy out for nothing.
Emilia sighs. At least this way he can't sneak up on her, she supposes.
“All right, back out,” she mutters, and continues down the hall. She's running out of doors to try now, but the corridor is almost over, and she can see an open space up ahead. Sticking close to the wall, she draws nearer, trying to gauge the size of the room she's looking at. For some reason she can't get a read on it, and then she reaches the end of the hall and realises why: it isn't a room. It's a shaft, ringed by catwalks, descending thirty or forty feet to accommodate a huge spire of baroque machinery, bristling with cables and terminating in a vast crooked structure like the claw of a fearow, along which crackles of discoloured electricity pulse in irregular waves.
Emilia stares, trying to take it all in at once and failing. How the hell is she meant to take this apart? She came here to document the place and end all breach research for good, but this is going to take more than a few matches. She doesn't even know how Giovanni built the damn thing. He's rich, sure, but this?
This? There are League departments with smaller budgets than what you'd need to put something like this together. And that's not even considering what it would take to excavate this place in secret, or to get workers and materials down here.
She takes some pictures. It feels incredibly inadequate, but at this point it's pretty much all she's got.
FURRET MACHINE, mutters Nadia uneasily, pressing herself against Emilia's neck.
“Yeah,” she replies, looking from screen to machine and back again. “Furret machine indeed. Come on, maybe we can find the server or something. We might be able to delete some data at least.”
She makes her way around the catwalk, trying to tread softly but unable to stop the clanking completely, and down the stairs leading to the next level. A door down there leads to another corridor of card-locked rooms; at the end, Emilia finds one with a keypad, and presses her ear against the door to hear a faint mechanical humming from the other side. Computers, then. Big ones, by the sound of it.
“All right,” she mutters. “Let's see what we can do. Nadia, tight focus. Just the keypad.”
She chirps her agreement, and after a couple of false starts, Emilia has the code: 0451. She punches it in, and steps through into what is very obviously the server room: at the far end, three tall computer towers stand whirring at one another in the chilled air. On Emilia's left is a desk with a terminal; a wiggle of the mouse turns the screen back on and confirms that it is currently locked.
“Same again, I guess,” she says, closing her eyes and holding Nadia out. “Find me the keys they pressed.”
Nadia gets to work. It takes a while; there's much more data to sift through here than with the keyboard, or even in Giovanni's office – more than one person has used this computer, and the traces are tangled. But Nadia is a natu, and she can handle it. She does, however, have to devote her full attention to it, directing all her sight into the past, and so she does not detect the mind approaching down the hall in the present, not even when its owner opens the door and Emilia turns, opening her eyes, at the sound―
The metal bar hits her full across the face with the kind of crunch that means something broken. Emilia gasps, staggers, falls; her head knocks against the edge of the table and a dizzying greyness wobbles through her vision. Somewhere Nadia is squawking, trying to pick herself back up, and above her she can make out someone raising their arm again―
Emilia blacks out. Just for a second: Nadia overcooks her stun pulse in her panic, and the edge of it clips her too. A moment later she opens her eyes to an awful pain in her face and a natu pecking anxiously at her cheek.
“What the …?” she groans, sitting up groggily. “Nadia? Was that you?”
TOO STRONG, replies Nadia, penitence flooding through her mind.
TOO STRONG TOO STRONG―
“It's okay.” Her voice sounds strange. Emilia blinks away the bleariness and stares. There's a woman lying near the door, out cold, with a dented metal rod a few inches from her hand. For a moment, Emilia juggles the pieces in her head, and then they all fly into place and she gasps, clutching at what she now recognises as a broken nose. “Ah! God, that … f*ck.” She breathes out slowly through her mouth. “Thank you, Nadia,” she says. “Think you probably just saved me.”
FURRET WOMAN, says Nadia, glaring fiercely at her fallen assailant.
“I think she probably thought it was self-defence.” She closes her eyes for a moment, rests her head in her hand. “Ugh. I am … very out of practice at being hit.”
EMILIA OKAY? asks Nadia. Her mind pushes impatiently through Emilia's own, searching for answers before she voices them.
“Yeah. Yeah, probably.” Emilia gets one hand on the table and pulls herself up, fighting the dizziness. “Ugh. Nadia, can you get the door?”
She cheeps and flits over to peck the button.
“Thank you.” Emilia pulls the chair out from beneath the desk and sits down heavily. “Okay,” she says, trying to force the life back into her voice. “Okay, let's try that one again.”
This time, she keeps one eye open. Nobody else interrupts, however, and after a few minutes of poking around they manage to get the computer unlocked. Emilia starts deleting things, indiscriminately and without checking to see what they are; it's a slow process, though, and she knows it's only a matter of time before the cops come down here. And she can't let the data be captured. If any of this survives, if it makes its way back into the hands of anyone with any authority at all, then this isn't over. Probably there are ways of recovering whatever she deletes here, too.
She thinks about getting the metal rod and trying to break the servers apart, but if she's honest, she isn't sure she can actually get up right now. Two blows to the head and a stun pulse will do that to you.
“Okay,” she sighs, considering her options. “Okay, um – Nadia, take dictation. I need you to get a message to Sovereign …”
*
After Sovereign's arrival, there isn't much time for talking. They run, up to the pillar and around it to descend into a canyon of mangled architecture, a single steep path diving down between two cliffs of fused buildings. It's hard to find details in them, though Artemis tries: here's a window, there's a column, but everything is so fragmented that her eye just slides over it, unable to see the components for the whole. Sovereign pays none of it any attention, following the twisted path through the canyon with the casual ease of a native.
“Have you seen this before?” asks Artemis. “This place?”
Only in my dreams, they reply, and something in the way they say it makes her afraid to ask any more.
The path slopes lower, or possibly the walls grow higher, and the sky retreats into a single narrow band of grey, impossibly far off. Are the walls narrowing? No, definitely not, Artemis tells herself. Probably definitely not.
They are narrowing. They continue to narrow until the three of them have to move in single file, elbows knocking against pediments and doorsteps, and then all at once they fly apart again and Artemis stumbles out into a huge, lonely void.
There are no buildings here, no stolen pieces of the real world. There is nothing at all except that grey sky, and underneath it a grey land, so exactly like it in colour and texture that Artemis is half convinced she's flying.
And, way out there in the middle of it all, the five ROCKETS agents and their machine.
Sovereign doesn't wait for anyone to speak. They take off at a sprint, heading for Giovanni, and Artemis does her best to follow, though she falls far behind. In the distance, she sees the figures moving, the three bodyguards fanning out. Someone else – Giovanni? – raises an arm and the grey of the sky coalesces into angular, shimmering creatures of static fuzz that fly down at Sovereign like eagles and bowl them off their feet, crying out in voices that sound like knives on grindstones.
Artemis cries out, but Sovereign is already back up, lashing out with paw and hand; their fists puncture the breach creatures easily, shatter them into flakes of light, but the pieces keep coming back together, and the creatures keep pressing down on them, opening wounds with their edges.
Vile creatures! they growl, smashing one against another.
Keep moving! Don't stop for me!
She does, and Cass too, and as they move past Sovereign the figure – definitely Giovanni; she sees the flash of the gauntlet working – raises his arm again and new creatures appear before them, slithering out of the ground and spreading their arms wide to block their path. Artemis slows, concerned – and jerks her head back in alarm as a vivid jet of green flame shoots out from her chest and wreathes the nearest entity in fire. It twitters piteously, clutching at itself with arms that smoulder like paper, and as Brauron croaks her defiance Artemis turns her shoulder forward and charges, heedless of the edges that rake her skin like broken glass or the flames that lick at her face.
It's so light. Like paper, really, if paper could cut like broken glass and burn like a furnace, and yes it hurts but Artemis is past it now, and so close that she can even see the ROCKETS group, see Giovanni manipulating the world with his fingertips and Cass' aunt finishing up with the machine and the three bodyguards raising their guns to stop her―
Someone screams, and Artemis blinks to see Cass' aunt tackling the lead guard to the ground, shrieking about her niece. The other two turn, startled, and in the moment of their distraction Cass barks
follow―
―and Ringo closes the distance with supernatural speed, nailing one in the small of the back, exactly where a pursuit hurts most. Not that it does hurt much; he's a big guy and Ringo's a little bird. But he staggers, and by that point they're so close, and Giovanni is actually looking worried, is working his gloved hand faster and faster, tongue pinned between his teeth. Artemis senses rather than sees the breach entities wink out of existence as its power shifts, and a split second after they do:
I am Sovereign! In name and deed!
And she sees them flying in at the corner of her vision―
And Giovanni shrugs.
“My apologies,” he says, raising a gauntlet now glowing blue-black all down its length. “You weren't quick enough. And now you don't exist.”
It's like in a movie, when someone important dies and the protagonist's world distorts with sorrow and outrage, time and space collapsing into slow motion and mumbled noise. Artemis is still running, Sovereign is still diving; the breach entities are falling apart. A stall tactic, she realises, with some remote part of her brain that is still operating on a rational level. He never meant to stop them. Only to slow them until he finished doing … whatever this is.
She reaches out, her arm pushing against the air as if through treacle, and then Giovanni closes his hand and everything goes black.
*
![[Imaginative]:[Clockwork]](/data/avatars/m/192/192875.jpg?1525616141){kind=avatar}
