Alex eyes widened.
“Why?”
“We’re no better than they are,” Michael said ruefully. “Normal people, I mean. Humanity. We create families, allegiances, cartels — and then we scheme, Alex, we plot out agendas and attempt to advance them, or try to stop others from doing the very same thing. Just like in the real world, eh?”
“That’s pretty depressing,” Alex observed. “All this power you keep talking about, and the best thing you can think of to do with it is fighting each other? Couldn’t we use it to help people instead?”
“Seemed like Mitsuru helped you a lot the other night, you know,” Michael said dryly.
Alex shook his head.
“That’s not what I mean. Fighting monsters, that’s one thing, whatever they are. But why fight each other?”
“It’s complicated, on one level. On another, it’s the same old stupid story — we aren’t enlightened, Alex. We disagree, fall in love, and hate each other, the whole spectrum of human experience. We have differences of opinion, and sometimes, we can’t resolve those differences peacefully.” Michael started to sound a lot like a teacher to Alex, in a very mundane way. “If a disagreement goes for long enough, and is important enough, people start to take sides. Once people start taking sides, conflict is inevitable. No different here than anywhere else.”
“So what is the disagreement about?”
“How best to protect people,” Michael sighed. “How best to apply the power we have. Like I told you earlier, it’s not a good-guy bad-guy thing — we all agree that we have a responsibility to protect humanity. We just have differing opinions on the most effective way to do that.”
“Different enough that you’re willing to kill another?”
“Sure,” Michael said, shrugging. “Don’t tell me you can’t think of anything worth killing over.”
Alex wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he kept his mouth shut instead, and reached for the vile, cooling coffee.
Eight
Blood crawled across the chain, red on black pitted metal, radiating out in coils from where Mitsuru crouched, motionless in the center. She bled freely from her palms, the wounds reopened, and the chain slid slickly through her hands, moving of its own accord. Her nosebleed was a steady trickle, and her blouse was red and wet all down the front. The floor where she had fallen was sticky, and there were two smeared red handprints on the white pine flooring.
Mitsuru felt the blood crawl along the chain, animating it, leveraging her will against gravity, through a headache so severe that it made her feel as if she was looking at the world from a distance, from the mouth of a dark tunnel. She ground her teeth against each other and the sound was terrible, reverberating in her head, but she could not stop. Her jaw was clenched, and her body shook with effort. In her head, she raged against the Black Door, dark pitted wood damp and sticky with blood, the dull iron of the heavy fastenings spotted with rust, the whole of it wrapped and sealed in luminous threads that resisted her efforts to throw it open. She tried to force it, straining against the gossamer bindings that shut it tight, the structure of her mind buckling with the effort.
Against the constraints that had been placed on her, against the advice of those who cared about her, and at the potential expense of her own sanity and wellbeing, Mitsuru labored to open the Black Door in her mind.
Twining itself along the chain, her blood followed her commands, and for a moment, the coils of the chain stirred, animated by force of will. Deep inside of Mitsuru, a few of the luminous threads gave way with a high, musical sound, like a violin string snapping, and the Black Door flexed and groaned. She heard the links of the chain jingle as they rose, flowing and intertwining, moving in concert with her will and volition. In that instant, she felt the chain as an extension of herself, a cold appendage, a union of blood and steel. The chain moved like a living thing, swirling around her like a cyclone of blood-slick iron, and in that instant, Mitsuru recalled herself, before she had been diminished and restrained.
And then suddenly there was no more, no further to reach, no reserves to tap; the Black Door was firmly shut, and Mitsuru folded at the knees, and then fell gently to the floor. She cried out, so she would not have to hear the sound of the chain as it hit the ground.
“You’ve turned this place into the goddamn bloody chamber again, you troublesome bitch,” Rebecca said, not unkindly, from the door. “I’m gonna have to take your key away.”
Rebecca pushed the sliding door open and dropped her bag just inside the room, kicking her sandals off next to it. She was a few inches taller than Mitsuru, a shapely brunette, somewhere nebulously between her late twenties and early thirties. Her accent and style was stereotypically Southern Californian, complete with sun- bleached bangs and designer sunglasses, but Mitsuru knew that she’d been born in Argentina, to a Jewish family that fled Buenos Aires for the United States, after a bombing, when she was a child.
Rebecca walked across the room, picking her way disdainfully through the maze of chain and bloodstains, and stood in front of Mitsuru, folding her arms. She was dressed for the field, in muddy fatigues and a black t-shirt soaked in sweat. Mitsuru found herself unable to look her friend in the eye.
“I’m totally serious, Mitsuru. Do you know what would happen if the Committee-at-Large or the Board found out you were trying to use your Black Protocol again? They’d put you down for real this time, instead of hobbling you. Clean this shit up later, okay? We have to meet Alistair in twenty minutes.”
Mitsuru stirred.
“Alistair?”
“I knew that would get a reaction from you,” Rebecca smirked. “It’s so cute it makes me kinda sick. Now go get yourself cleaned up, and meet us up in his office, okay?”
Mitsuru nodded, and stood unsteadily.
Rebecca grabbed her abruptly and pulled her close in a rough embrace. Mitsuru felt Rebecca’s hand briefly run through her hair, and then gently pat the back of her head. A sob escaped Mitsuru’s throat, and then she wrapped her own arms around Rebecca’s waist, and they stayed that way for a little while.
“You’ve got to get it together,” Rebecca said firmly, holding her by her shoulders and looking into her red eyes. “If you can’t do it for yourself, then do it for Alistair and me, okay? We put our asses on the line for you — and I’m not doing you any favors, Mitsuru, don’t look at me that way. I know that you’ll make a great Auditor. But like this, sweetie? You’re inviting them to decide that what you couldn’t control then, you still can’t control. And it reflects poorly on us.”
Mitsuru nodded, biting back tears. She knew it all already, of course, but she hadn’t stopped herself. Even when it wasn’t her who would pay the cost for her actions. She wanted so badly to use the abilities that had been forbidden to her again.
Rebecca released her hold and turned to collect her sandals and duffle bag.
“I’ll see you upstairs, Mitsuru,” she said, waving over her shoulder. “Try not to take things so seriously, okay? The world can’t end every day.”
Mitsuru had enough time for a quick shower and change before heading upstairs, through the smoky chaos of the half-full Operations room to the equally smoky back office that Alistair had taken over. She’d replaced the bandages on her hands, as well, so that Alistair wouldn’t notice that she had reopened the wounds.
Rebecca was already there, her hair damp from the shower, wearing loose jeans and a blue UCLA sweatshirt, leaning over a chart laid out in front of Alistair, across the desk. Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, and Mitsuru noticed the bruises on her neck and jaw for the first time. Someone had tried to strangle Rebecca, and recently, too. She wondered where she had been, and who had been stupid enough to try something like that.
Rebecca was Alistair’s lieutenant, and the Auditors liaison to the Committee-at-Large, as well as a Board member. Mitsuru had been her classmate, many years ago, and knew her to be resourceful, tactically brilliant, and a peerless empath, justly respected by most Operators, and perhaps less-justly feared by almost as many. She was rumored to have once Audited a rebellious cartel completely out of existence, and while Mitsuru didn’t know the whole story, she wouldn’t have been surprised were it the truth.
She also knew Rebecca to be a cheerful drunk, a flirt, a fanatic collector of eighties hardcore punk LPs, and by far the best friend she’d ever had. Maybe the only one.
