“That wasn’t really my idea,” he said, and I caught a hint of mortification from him. “But I guess I can’t really dodge the responsibility for it, can I?”
“Not really.”
“Would it help if I told you it was for a good cause?” He gave me a sly smile. “Because at the end of it all, it really is.”
“It might help if you told me what the real cause was,” I said. I didn’t know if I should spring or not, find out if he was really as badass as everyone seemed to think he was. I looked to Winter and Hildegarde’s flunky; part of me was hoping they’d test the theory for me.
“Winter’s not going to come at me,” Sovereign said with that same smile. “He’s a broken man, still scared of me since I burned and crippled him after he tried to shake me down outside Peshtigo a hundred years ago. Neither is that nameless Omega red shirt, either, because I’m mentally paralyzing him right now.”
You’re a telepath? I asked in my head.
“Yes,” he said. “But it’d be rude to have this conversation in our heads. Also, probably a little too forward for me. I don’t want to be too presumptuous; I know you’ve got enough business going on in that head of yours to keep it spinning. I don’t want to add to your problems.”
“Bub,” I said, “you are my problems, every last one of them.”
“Now, now,” he said, and took a couple steps along the wall, keeping his distance from me, “don’t exaggerate. Weissman is at least ... like 95% of your problems. I may be the big gun backing everything up, but I did not put this in motion.”
“You know, let’s just cut the shit,” I said, keeping a wary eye on him. “What do you want?”
His face creased a little as he smiled, tightly. “That’s a funny question to ask. Do you know why it’s funny?”
“Because you’re not a guy known for wanting things.”
“Mm, sorry, you didn’t phrase your answer in the form of a question,” he said with that same smile. “Kidding. It’s a Jeopardy joke. You didn’t watch that, I guess.”
“I only got an hour of TV a day, so no, a quiz show wasn’t high on my list of teenage priorities.”
“Aww, Jeopardy is more than a quiz show,” he said with good humor. I got the feeling he was trying to out-irony me, to let me know he was in on my sarcastic little view of the world, that he wanted to share my wavelength. It was the same thing he tried when I thought he was a fifteen-year old boy who was trying to hit on me, and it wasn’t any more effective. “Listen, I have walked the world. For ... a long time,” he said, stopping before telling me his actual age, probably concerned it would affect my opinion of him. “I’ve seen horror and wonder, sometimes within a breath of each other. I’ve seen humans at their best, and their worst. I’ve seen a lot, and the one constant is that there are terrible things happening out there.” He kept a sense of quiet sadness about him for his soliloquy, and I wondered if he was using his power to influence me. “It could be a better world, if we troubled ourselves to act, to make it one.”
“And here comes you,” I said, “ready to take that first step. Of course, it involves completely destroying anyone who might oppose your plans first, so naturally it has to be the bestest plan ever. Because we base our designs for a better world on ... what? Body count?” I saw him recoil only slightly. He was keeping his cool. “Hey, the good news is you’re not Hitler, Mao or Stalin, yet, though since I don’t know how phase two is going to end, you’re still in the running.”
“You don’t understand,” he said quietly. “And no, that’s not an invitation to ask me more about the plan. You’ll see what we do. You’ll be around to realize the rewards of what we’re going to accomplish. Eventually you’ll discover that we were right, that the world could be a better, safer place—”
“For those who survive,” I said, winning the award for most irony. “Go ahead, pick your broken egg/omelet rebuttal metaphor of choice, and let me know why people have to die in order to make your better world.”
“People are dying anyway,” he said, and I caught a hint of sadness in how he said it. “People die every day, and for a lot less purpose than making the world a better place.”
“Well, since your definition of ‘acceptable breakage’ and mine differ, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess my definition of a ‘better world’ isn’t going to jibe real well with yours, either.” I cracked my knuckles, and he looked at me with a sense of uncertainty, as if he felt a little sick. “Why don’t we just get this fight underway?”