Legacy(75)

“Be coming back at us again, yes,” I said. “I told you I got it. You graded my papers for years, you know I’m not stupid.”

She sounded tired, too. “I just want to make sure you don’t miss the important implications here. This is potentially vital to our efforts.”

“It is,” I agreed. “And I promise I’ll be all over it ... when I’m capable of thinking again. When I’m capable of drawing a breath without remembering that once again I’ve failed people that I’ve made promises to, that I’ve gotten people killed again—”

“This was not your fault,” she said. “This is war—”

“This is my fault,” I said. “They would have been safe if they’d stayed in London.”

My mother let out a bitter laugh that crackled through the phone. “Sweetheart, this is war. Real war. Waged by the baddest, meanest meta on the planet with a hundred of the strongest, most capable people following in his wake. Thinking that anywhere is safe is folly.” Her voice hardened, and I felt compelled to listen on rather than interrupt her. “You’ve seen what men do when they mean to wage war—because war is will against collective will, and the will of Sovereign and Century is to wipe us all out. You can’t go beating yourself up because you stood your soldiers all in a line against theirs and said you wouldn’t let them do it unchecked because it was inevitable that they were going to challenge you on it at some point. It was inevitable that he’d eventually send someone to knock you down, to pitch you back on your heels, and hit you hard enough to put you out of the fight. That’s how they do it, men like that. Like Winter.” Her voice hardened. “You did what you could for them. Mourn. Get it out of your system. Because what you can do for the dead is exactly nothing. But what you can do for those still standing with you is lead. And you need to get back to that as soon as possible.”

I swallowed heavily, listening to her words. I knew she was right, even though I didn’t want to hear it. “Okay. What about you?”

“We’re fine,” she said. “I’ll tell Reed and Karthik once I’m off the phone with you. I’m sure they won’t take it too well, so I’ll try to break it gently.” I didn’t feel any actual amusement at the thought of my mother trying to break anything gently to anyone, ever, but there was definitely a ghost of it in there somewhere. “We have a line on an Omega safehouse, so we’ll be checking it out in a couple hours once everyone’s all woken up.” She sniffed. “Pacific time is a little bit of an adjustment for the team, apparently.”

“Just be safe,” I said.

“Can do,” she replied. “And Sienna ...” She hesitated. “Don’t beat yourself up. You did everything you could for those people, and you still have a mission to get on with.”

I bit my lip as I heard the click of the line going dead and lay my head back into the softness of the seat, staring out the window of my office into the bright sunshine of a day that should have been storms and darkness.





Chapter 31




I sniffed as Ariadne and Scott stared at me from across the desk. I’d cried some, no lie, but that was past now. I’d addressed the troops as best I could, but they were morose and scared. I tried to motivate them, tell them how we weren’t finished yet, how Sovereign had taken his shot at us and failed to do anything more than bruise our spirit, but I didn’t think they bought it entirely. I didn’t blame them, not with our dead friends as visible evidence to the contrary. I didn’t buy it, either.

“We need options,” I said, staring at Ariadne and Scott, both sitting quietly across the desk from me. “We have a dispatch point for the mercenaries, at least—”

“I had Li call surveillance on it,” Ariadne said, looking up, her red hair catching the sunlight filtering through my window.

“You did what?” I leaned forward, incredulous.

“There’s no one there,” she said. “I had them watch from a distance, and after eight hours of observation, they were ordered in. Nothing there, it’s just an empty warehouse on Chicago’s south side. They used it for staging, but cleared it out either before or after the mercenaries left for here.”

“Any idea where they came from?” Scott asked. “Other than Chicago.”

“All over,” Ariadne said. “I’ll forward you the dossier, but we’ve got IDs on most of the dead and the handful of survivors. They’re mostly foreign nationals, the types that go where the money takes them. They were filtered into the U.S. in a few waves, met up in Chicago, and got sent out on this mission.” She pursed her lips. “It was supposed to be the first of many.”