Follow and Assume 2.4

This fight had gone badly, then. I'd been there when Legend had outlined the consequences of Leviathan's victories in Newfoundland and Kyushu, and this was worse. That was bad in itself, but my friends would have been there, along with the Ambassadors. I couldn't bring myself to move. Who had walked away? Who hadn't?

The bodyguard was significantly more indifferent to Alexandria's pronouncement than I was. "The Doctor will be free in another eight minutes. I'll get her then."

"Interrupt her," Alexandria snapped, and I found myself in the surprising position of sympathizing with her frustration. "It's more important than what she's doing."

"Nothing is," the bodyguard said, "And we need to maximize the time she spends doing it."

"The northern half of the Indian subcontinent is gone!"

"Drink your coffee," the bodyguard said. I wondered at how calm she was being in the face of Alexandria shouting at her in the wake of an Endbringer victory. Did she not care about what had happened, or had her powers affected her mentally?

Alexandria glared at the bodyguard, but relieved her of the outstretched mug.

"Did Behemoth change tactics?" the Number Man asked. "Reveal something new?"

"Neither. He reached his target. Fucking local built a fucking time-bomb and used it on a fucking diakinetic. Tell me how the fuck that makes any fucking sense."

The Number Man frowned. "It doesn't."

"David's beside himself. He thinks he could have better contained the blast and kept it focused on the Endbringer if he'd been more up to speed." She looked over at the bodyguard. "He's still on search and rescue for now, but he'll come to the Doctor later."

"I'll prepare her," the bodyguard said.

"Scion didn't put in an appearance?" the Number Man asked.

She shook her head. "It would be useful if whoever is pulling Scion's strings would explain how to answer a fucking phone."

That raised questions that begged to be answered, but I didn't ask. I didn't want them to remember my presence and kick me out.

"We can't depend on Scion," the Number Man said.

"I know!" Alexandria roared, hurling the mug.

The Custodian intercepted it before it could hit the window.

"Sorry," said the Number Man.

"You don't understand. We lost too many people today. Rime, Exalt, an entire Wards team . . . the Indian capes will never recover. Reports are saying Dragon is dead, which cripples the Guild."

"Dragon was never alive," the Number Man said. "There are ways of restoring her. Or we can go to Saint."

What the hell does that mean?

"I suppose," Alexandria said. "But look at the bigger picture. We lost Myrddin and Rime in less than a month, the same month they separated me from the PRT and deposed Legend. Chevalier was in intensive care when I left and I can't think of any good candidates to take his place once he dies."

"He won't," the bodyguard said. "I'll see to it."

"There—" the Number Man began, but Alexandria went on.

"And you know what Tattletale told Chevalier? They're playing with us. They set themselves up to lose. They hold back, they go easy on us, they give us time to beat them before they hit their target. What happens if they sense our desperation and turn up the pressure in the next two years? What happens if the Simurgh directly targets us again?"

Neither attempted to answer her question.

"It could have been worse," she said. "Tattletale was able to give us some warning that he was looking for something, and we scouted ahead to find out whatever it was. One of the Thanda built an energy weapon that recycled light. He'd designed it specifically for Endbringers, had wanted to use it against Leviathan or the Simurgh but didn't want to wait until either of them showed up. Stupid, stubborn fool."

"We know they can sense things that would be useful against them, things they shouldn't know about. Does the fact Behemoth came for it mean it could have seriously damaged the others?" asked the Number Man.

"Somewhat, I think. It did damage him, for what little it's worth. David manifested a few forcefields in time, and one of them trapped part of the blast around his head. It mostly melted off."

"He didn't care about losing his head?"

"No. Tattletale says they're made out of increasingly durable layers, centered around cores dense enough to 'fuck with space and time,' whatever that means. They don't have to look like anything, but they choose to take forms that terrorize us as a species. The core is their real self, I suppose. Chevalier went to attack Behemoth's, which is how he got hurt. I'm not sure if was what drove Behemoth off, or if it happened to coincide with the time Behemoth felt like leaving. Fuck."

"There is some good news," the bodyguard said. "The Travelers had a seventh member."

"That is not good news, Contessa," Alexandria snapped. "What is your malfunction?"

The bodyguard, Contessa, went on, unperturbed by Alexandria's venom. "The Travelers abandoned him to Accord, who sold him to the C.U.I., who put him in the Yàngbǎn, who sent him to New Delhi, where he saw Accord in the command center, which he attempted to teleport into so he could kill Accord. I noticed in time to intervene because Tattletale would have been caught in the crossfire."

She was a precog, then, which fit with the fact she'd known Alexandria was coming back. If I understood what she was saying, she was also the one in charge of saving my teammates.

That didn't explain how the Number Man could have expected her to keep him bug-free.

"Accord was going to die?" Alexandria asked, irritation arrested. "That . . . that would have been disastrous. I don't think we'd have gotten anyone out if he hadn't been there. He coordinated the evacuation."

"Like I said. Good news." She bent over to pick up the coffee mug from where Custodian had set it on the floor. "There were also about two hundred Thanda capes trapped beneath New Delhi and I transferred them to Samech."

"I should think that's good," Alexandria said, "but I'd rather have one hundred of the capes who died today instead of two hundred cowards who couldn't be bothered to defend their city."

"Two-Nine-Seven will correct their deficiencies."

"I'll leave that to you. Something else requires your attention. I suspect that the region will dissolve into war. There's no way that Pakistan and the C.U.I. will leave the northern border, Nepal, and Bhutan alone. Maybe you can enforce some stability."

Contessa shook her head. "Number Man can disrupt any mobilization of forces. The Doctor won't want me to spend my time on things like that, not with the end point so close."

"Then we need to think about evacuating Bet," Alexandria said. "Or our armies aren't going to last long enough to matter. We have at least six more Endbringer attacks before—"

"These walls have ears," Contessa said.

Alexandria spun around, and she finally noticed me.

"Close the doors here," she said, and the portals shrank into nothingness.

I was left alone with my spiders, staring at a wall.