Power(64)

I felt my jaw settle at that. “But we live longer than a normal lifetime, and you’re willing to put in the time proving you’re contrite? Is that it?”

“That is it,” he said, sounding like he meant it. “I’ve messed up, and I’ll spend however much time I need to convincing you that I’m genuinely sorry for what I’ve done.” He paused and looked down. “If you’ll give me the chance.”

I studied him, unflinching. He didn’t look pathetic, exactly, but he was laying on the contrition with a heavy spoon. I didn’t know how good of an actor he was, but he was right about the way my mind worked. I wouldn’t have put it past him to be working another angle.

I just didn’t know what that angle was.

“All right,” I said, neutrally. “Let’s say I believe you—which I think we both know I don’t—yet. But let’s say I did. You have no knowledge of where Century is now, what pieces they’re moving, what this meeting is about—or so you claim.” I added that last part to needle him, and he took it well. “So how are you going to help me?”

“Well,” he said, leaning back against the recliner again, “it’s true, I’m on the outs with them. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know anything. I have lots of information, and I’m willing to share all of it with you.”

“Oh, really?” I asked and took a couple steps down into the pit that was my living room. “Okay. Let’s start with an easy one. You’ve talked about phase two, about how you’d put the whole world under Century’s boot,” I watched as he nodded once, but with some reluctance. I wasn’t sure he wanted to part with this one. “How are they going to do it? Take over the world? Beat all the armies and all that?”

“Easier than you think,” Sovereign said, and another expression came forward now, causing his lips to twist in something that looked like … fear? “They have an Ares.”





Chapter 37


“What the hell is an Ares?” Scott asked.

“God of War,” Reed said as we walked, back down the tunnel to the headquarters building. They’d both fallen in behind me as I walked, churning through the thoughts in my head. “They can take command of anyone whose mind is thinking violent thoughts, force them to fight for them or even kill themselves.” I heard his voice change as he directed his next comment to me. “Hera told me they were all dead.”

“Apparently not,” I said. “Kind of like my uncle the Hades, Century seems to have dug one up somehow.”

“As many influential metas as they’ve recruited—Loki and Amaterasu, for example—they’ve got thousands of years worth of meta secrets at their disposal,” Reed said. “A hell of a lot more knowledge than we’ve got.”

I tapped the side of my head with a single finger. “Speak for yourself. I’ve got the wisdom of lifetimes.”

“Yeah, lifetimes spent murdering and pillaging,” Reed said with a snort.

“And that’s just Eve,” I agreed, taking a little shot at Kappler. She was still circling in the back of my mind, swirling in her own angry juices. I was betting that wouldn’t help, but I was beyond caring.

“Seems like there were a lot of meta types that have gone extinct,” Scott said.

“It’s a downward trend,” Reed agreed, “though it’s gotten a lot sharper lately.”

We fell into a silence. It was a heady feeling, realizing you’re part of an endangered species. When I first came to the Directorate and learned about what I was, I’d been told we had somewhere around three thousand metas on the planet. Now we were down to five hundred or so. Three thousand was a low number in a world populated by seven billion people. Five hundred was a rounding error.

“At least they’re not hunting the other metas right now,” Reed said, snapping us out of that deathly quiet. “So … they’ve got an Ares. What are they going to do with it?”

“Turn it loose on anyone that has war and violence in mind,” I said, repeating what Sovereign had told me. “They think the Ares is strong enough to affect the whole world, and that they’ll be able to pretty much kill every soldier and violent criminal and policeman—anyone who’s of a mind to do some harm to other people, even in a protective way—to fall on their own sword, metaphorically speaking.”

“What if they don’t have a sword handy?” Scott asked.

“I don’t know,” I said with a shake of the head. “Maybe they claw their own throat out, maybe they ram their head against the wall until it breaks open, maybe they decide it’s not worth the trouble and sit down to have a cup of tea. I have no idea. I’m not exactly an expert on how these things work.”