Chapter 226

Annie swaggered through the doorway.

She glanced around the room, then threw herself into the chair opposite him. “So this is where you’ve been hiding out while the rest of us worked our butts off?”

Alexander chuckled. “That’s the privilege of not being the sidekick.”

Annie stuck her tongue out.

“How are things in the city?”

She shrugged. “Under control. The infected aren’t exactly subtle. They just run screeching at the nearest person, vomit on them or bite them, then try to kill them before running off and repeating the process. Once the infection stopped spreading, it got easy.”

“Then you’re free for something else?”

“I guess.”

Alexander leaned back and studied her over steepled fingers. “Good. I’m sending you home.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s time to pick up your sister.”

Annie’s mouth fell open. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Closed it. Then looked down at her hands.

“Oh. Yeah. I guess I should, huh.” Her gaze snapped back to his. “Wait. Is she okay?”

Alexander nodded. “I checked with the intel broker. There were several outbreaks in Argentum, but Iron Nadya and some of the other local supes dealt with it quickly.”

Annie exhaled. “Fuck. That...” She ran a hand through her hair. “I shouldn’t have left her there so long.”

Alexander cocked his head. “Why did you?” 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

“Thought she’d be safer there for a while. Away from us.” She picked at the arm of the chair. “I figured I’d wait until she turned eighteen and we could give her the serum. That way she could at least protect herself.”

“That makes sense.” He paused. “And then we learned that eighteen isn’t the magical cutoff we thought it was.”

“Yeah. But there was just so much going on, I...” She shrugged. “I just wasn’t ready. Every time I thought about going to get her, something else came up that made it feel like the wrong time. Like she’d be in more danger around us than where she is.”

“Annie. Nobody is blaming you. Who could have known the leader of the superhuman authority would turn out to be a bloody vampire hellbent on traumatizing the world?”

She almost smiled at that. Almost. “Still should have gone sooner.” She was quiet for a few seconds. “It’s just scary, you know? She’s like us, Alex. She isn’t going to just get powers and chill at home watching the holo all day. Ash’s going to want to fight.”

Alexander said nothing. He understood her fear, but he didn’t have a solution.

Annie glanced up, and a small, complicated smile crossed her face. “Probably going to fight us a lot, too. She’s not good with authority. I don’t know if she’ll do as she’s told.” The smile turned into something closer to a grin. “But I suppose that will be your problem, huh?”

Alexander raised an eyebrow. “How do you figure?”

Annie leaned back, smirking now. “Well, as the guild’s Freyja, my job is to look after the noncombatants. Ash is definitely going to be a fighter. That means she falls under Aesir.” She spread her hands. “Not my department.”

They looked at each other for a moment, both arriving at the same conclusion.

“Auggy’s problem,” they said together.

Then she frowned. “Um…” Hesitated. “The other reason I didn’t go is that I know she’s going to want her friends to come too. She might not leave without them.”

“Ah. I hadn’t considered that.”

“So…” Annie fidgeted.

Alexander sighed. “Yes. You can bring your sister’s friends. We’ll find work for them.” He raised an index finger. “Make sure they understand who they’re dealing with first, though. They get one chance and one chance only.”

She nodded. “I will.” Then she hesitated again before drawing a vial from the pocket of her red leather jacket. Gold liquid swished inside. “I kept this from the Dubai raids. Can I…?”

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It felt like a dangerous decision. If Ash was anything like Annie, she would accept the serum without considering the consequences. Giving Annie permission here meant deciding Ash’s future before he’d even met her.

Live or die, he would feel a measure of responsibility.

Not that Annie knew she’d put that on his shoulders. Her question was innocent. Just seeking approval to use a valuable, rare resource. One she’d held onto, hoping to give it to her sister one day.

“Okay. But not right away.” Alexander’s eyes narrowed. “I think it’s best I meet with your sister before anything else, after all. Make sure she understands the price Grimnir demands.”

Annie gulped. Then she nodded. “Okay.”

“I secured permission from Max for you to do this. As long as you don’t kill or maim anyone, they won’t consider it a breach of the agreement.” He smiled. “So play nice. Ish.”

She grinned. “Sure thing.”

“One more thing.” He paused. “With the chaos of the Lost Prophet, it’s possible Flashpoint’s public tour is going to end early. I don’t know if we’ll have the full three weeks. How is your flight coming along?”

Annie blinked at him. “We’re still doing that? What about the whole good guy Compact thing?”

“With what Max and I learned out in the desert, it’s become even more important.” Alexander shook his head. “Don’t ask. We’re not ready to discuss it yet. But it means this has to happen soon, so if his schedule changes, I may need to move fast. Will you be ready?”

Her face hardened. “You’re not going without me. I can’t fly very well yet, but I can keep up. His flames aren’t a threat to me like the others. And you can throw me at him or use me as a shield if necessary.” She crossed her arms. “The end.”

Alexander laughed at the image of using her as a shield. “I think you’d be more valuable as a battering ram, given how hard your head is.”

She glowered. “Fine. As long as I’m there.”

“Alright.” He reached into his ring and pulled out a damaged drone, then flicked it over to her with a pulse of Metallokinesis. “Hold this.”

Annie’s hands snapped out, catching the dead metal sphere. She turned it over in her hands. “What do you want me to do with this?”

Alexander leaned forward. “You’re going to help me test something before you go.”

She looked confused. Then she tossed the drone into the air and caught it. “Okay? Test what?”

“I need you to be very un-Annie-like.”

“Huh?”

“I need you to be quiet.”

Alexander closed his eyes, ignoring the look she gave him. Then he pushed his Will outward, filling the room with his intent. Not to do anything specific with it. Just letting his existence occupy the space.

The threads appeared. Golden filaments, reaching metaphysically across space. He ignored most of them, letting their existence fade from his awareness. Focused in on the single thread that stretched from Annie to him.

Immediately he felt the connection, and again the best interpretation he could come up with to encompass what he was feeling was ‘trust’. But he knew it was more complex than that.

“What are you doing?” Annie asked.

Her voice was sudden, despite barely a second or two having passed. Something about the threads threw off his sense of time. And his awareness.

He kept his eyes closed. “Shush. This is important.”

Annie grunted. But she fell silent again.

Alexander reached deep inside and felt the same sensation he’d noticed the day of the press conference. When everyone’s Wills had flowed into one.

Something flowed from his soul into the thread he’d caught within his Will. It wasn’t purposeful, but it felt like power, like drawing on Electrokinesis or Metallokinesis, except he wasn’t. It didn’t carry any of his intent.

“Dude, your drone just turned on.”

Alexander’s eyes snapped open. Everything he’d been sensing, feeling, seeing, collapsed. The absence left a void within for a moment.

He saw the drone. It had begun to hover. Then it deactivated again, the battery dead. It dropped back into Annie’s hand.

She looked up at him. “Seriously? You needed me to hold on to your drone while you turned it on?”

He looked at her strangely. “The battery is dead. I didn’t turn it on.”

“Huh? Well, I didn’t turn it on.” Annie turned it over in her hands. “Do these things even have an on switch?”

Alexander flicked a finger, and with a pulse of power, tugged the drone free of her grip. With a second thought, he sent it back into the ring.

He couldn’t talk to her about it without giving away what he was testing, and he wasn’t yet ready to have that discussion. But what had happened seemed pretty damn obvious. Electrokinesis powered the drone while Technopathy activated it.

With no conscious decision on his part.

Without his intent.

“What are you doing with your Will, anyway?” Annie asked, glancing around the room. “I can feel it. How do you do that? You did it at the press conference, too.”

“I don’t know… I just do.” Alexander sighed. “It’s something you should work on, though. Maximilian told me it’s the beginning of forming a Domain.”

Annie nodded. “Cool. Cool. I will.” She paused. “What’s a Domain?”

Alexander couldn’t help but smile. “No idea.” He frowned. “Okay, that’s a bit of a lie. I have lots of ideas. I just don’t know which is correct. If any. Maximilian doesn’t even know exactly. Apparently his own father wouldn’t tell him the details. Said it’s ‘too personal’ and that explaining would ‘ruin it’ for him.”

“Oh. Kind of like when Auggy wouldn’t share how to improve our Willpower.”

Alexander’s eyebrows rose. “Yeah. You’re right. I’d actually forgotten all about that.” He took a breath. “Damn. Feels like a lifetime ago.”

Annie stood up. “That’s just because you’re getting old. You’re basically Auggy’s age now. Two old men who are going to need walking sticks soon.”

Alexander narrowed his eyes. “I’m barely older than you are.”

She headed for the door, pulled it open, then glanced back. “Well, yeah. But you’re like twice as old for real. You were already older in your other world, plus twenty-something here. That makes you like fifty, dude.”

Then she was gone.

Alexander stared at the empty doorway for a long time.

“There’s no way that’s how it works,” he said to the empty room. “Right?”