NewU Pt. 38

All five men looked at me expectantly, but I wasn't about to give away trade secrets. Not yet, anyway. "There is one thing I don't understand," I said slowly. "What is with all the religious bullshit? Every time I have interacted with one of your people, I have been bombarded with a tirade about how it is God's will that I die, and I am an abomination, and so on. You don't strike me as particularly religious."

"Oh, that," Tiberius snorted out a laugh. "Let's just say we have never forgiven the church for mandating our exile from Constantinople. We could have been the difference that turned the tide of that battle. We could have at least gotten the last Emperor to safety. So, we look to redirect attention to them at every chance we get. One day, we are hoping that someone will take us at face value and reduce the Vatican to ashes."

I nodded, a little underwhelmed by the answer. Silence descended on the room. The five men at the opposite end of the table all looked at me while I continued to look thoughtful.

"Pete. We would like you to join us," Tiberius said after a while. "I know it is a lot to consider, but we will be on hand to answer any questions you may have. We are not your enemy; I would ask you to try to remember that. There is no rush for your answer, but..."

"No need," I said, resting both of my palms flat on the table. "I can answer you now."

"Oh, that is... unexpected, but..."

"There are two things that you haven't taken into account with your sales pitch." I carried on as if the man hadn't interrupted me. "Firstly, my age. I am the oldest known person to ever be awakened, meaning I spent all but the last year or so of my life living as just a human. They are assholes, they are cruel, they are vicious, they are unreasonable to the point of stupidity, but they are my people, and I haven't given up hope on them yet, at least not enough to see them subjugated by an order that thinks so little of them. Secondly, there have only ever really been two people that I have ever loved, and you killed them both. I let myself get captured so I could be brought here. Your torture didn't break my loyalties because I am not loyal to the Conclave; I am loyal to them. One of them you just called collateral damage, and the other, one that Toussant murdered just for the crime of knowing me, was, apparently, only a human. This isn't a recruitment meeting, gentlemen. This is a reckoning. But you were right about one thing..."

"Oh, and what was that?" Tiberius answered with a self-confident smirk on his face.

I turned and nodded toward the door.

All eyes fixed on it.

And nothing happened.

"Err, Jeeves?"

"A few more seconds, Sir."

"Seriously? You could have warned me about the timing before I made a fool of myself in front of the bad guys."

"Of course, Sir, but as you would have said, where is the fun in that?"

"For fuck sake. I had a really cool line prepared and everything."

"The world will forever be poorer for its loss, Sir."

Tiberius shook his head. "I'm sorry you feel that way, Pete. You could have been an important man in the new world." He flicked his eyes up to one of the guards behind me. "Kill him."

I heard the rustle of movement behind me and a loud bang. Something, presumably a bullet, tapped into the back of my head, deflected back away from me, and hit the guard in the throat. He was already slumping to the flood, grasping at the gaping and bloody wound in his neck by the time I had turned to look at him. Everyone else in the room looked at me with wide-eyed shock as if finally realizing the full extent of my ruse.

"Surprise," I smiled maliciously at them. With a surge of power, I pressed down hard onto the table. I wasn't sure if I was the only one who could see it, but a ripple of energy rolled across the top of it toward my five targets. As soon as it reached their end of the table, it erupted. Razor-sharp shards and splinters of wood exploded into the air. Tiberius was knocked backward out of his chair. Two of the three Evos had their heads impaled on the shrapnel, one of them taking a lance of wood under the chin and into the brain, the other took a foot-long splinter through the eye. The other Inquisitor at the table's head didn't last much longer as the bust of General Corbulo, the one he had been so proud to tell me about, caved in his skull.

"Take him!" Tiberius screamed as he scrambled away from the detonation of my power. "Take him now...!"

His words froze in his throat as the door to the conference room was kicked in, and in strode a now blonde Jean Pierre Toussant, an assault rifle pressed firmly into his shoulder. The surprise I had been waiting for.

"Fucking Finally"

The weapon in his hand sang its loud but deadly tune as, one by one, the guards behind me were reduced to bullet-riddled corpses.

I turned back to the room. The Evos lining the walls had all ducked away from the explosive force of the table and then again at Toussant's surprise intervention, but they were quickly regaining their composure. Their furious gazes locked onto me for just a moment as Tiberius smashed his hand into the bright red alarm button on the wall before the combined weight of their minds smashed into mine.

********

It had been months since I had been in my city. Not wanting to draw attention to the fact I had been faking my condition for the entire ordeal of my torture, I had stayed away from it on the off chance that my face had shown that zoned-out expression of Evos entering the mindscape for even a moment.

The entire metropolis was thrumming with energy. The power drained from Sterling had been a lot, the combined power of dozens of Evos over the centuries, but the power from Uri had eclipsed even that by a huge amount. After Sterling, there had been a single new powerplant in my city; after Uri, there were four. I looked out at the thriving, vibrant cityscape from atop my colossal marble walls, basking in the warmth of the sunlight I hadn't felt since before Horlivka.

And then I turned toward my enemy.

On the horizon, much further away than normal - possibly because there were so many of them that the mindscape had to push them back to make room - were thirteen hostile cities circled around mine in every direction. A strong wind blew over the mindscape and rustled through my hair. I rolled my neck as I watched their gates open, and thirteen armies started to pour out.

"Jeeves, can we take them?"

"I believe so, yes, sir. As long as Toussant keeps the others occupied in the real world."

"And yeh won't be doin' it alone, darlin'." Faye's soft, lyrical voice echoed over the wind as she shimmered into place next to me, leaned up, and kissed my cheek.

"You and me against the world, eh baby?" I smiled down at her.

"Yeh sure know how ta show a girl a good time." she grinned. "But, in this case, it's not just the two of us."

"What do you mean?"

She turned and nodded behind me. "Surprise."

I turned to follow her smiling gaze and immediately felt my jaw hit the floor. "Oh, you have got to be shitting me."

"She shits you not," Uri said as he shimmered into full view before me. His presence in my mind was as strong and as permanent as Faye's. "It's good to see you, Pete. Now..." he nodded over my shoulder at the oncoming hordes. "... shall we?"