Published at 12th of August 2022 9:16 pm

Book 2: Chapter 103: Always Forward

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

The call came within ten minutes. Abby was still latched on to Dan’s arm, and she held up her phone to show him the caller ID.

Mama Ana, the screen read.

Abby answered before the second ring. She held a tense, quiet conversation with her grandmother, while still tucked firmly against Dan’s torso. It consisted mostly of toneless yeses and noes. Dan couldn’t quite hear Anastasia’s side of the conversation, but the woman seemed to pontificate on length to Abby. Abby nodded a few more times, then held the phone out and clicked on the speaker.

“Go ahead,” she said, softly.

Anastasia Summers’ cold voice crackled across the line. “Have your boyfriend meet me at the entrance to what’s left of my mansion.”

There was a click, and then there was nothing.

Dan sighed, and slowly disentangled himself from Abby’s iron grip.

“I’d better go,” he said.

She nodded into his shoulder, released him and stepped away. “Don’t let her blame you for anything. You saved our lives.”

“Yeah,” Dan said tiredly. “I’ll be back soon.”

He stepped out of the world.

Dan touched down at the gate barring what was once the entrance to the Summers’ property. There had been green for as far as the eye could see. Imported trees and trimmed hedges and crystal-clear lakes. Wildlife and people. Nothing remained but a bleak, blasted crater. The land was painted in shades of brown and grey; dust hung thick in the air and visibility was close to nonexistent. The ocean crept in from below, mixing with shattered earth to form a sludge thick, brown, and slimy. Dan had murdered any trace of beauty this place held.

Anastasia stood between the open gates, her arms crossed and her back to him. She stared at the remains of her home, and though he could not see her face Dan knew it was grim. Off to the side of the path, only a few feet away from the entrance, were the remnants of Anastasia’s aircraft. The rocket sledge looked exactly like it sounded. It was a tall, narrow tube, with two wide wings and a tail fin, and a pair of massive thrusters bolted onto its rear end. It was buried past its nose into the dirt, wings snapped and cockpit destroyed. She hadn’t landed it; she’d crashed it.

Dan looked from the destroyed aircraft, to Anastasia. He approached her, stopping just behind her shoulder.

“You alright?” he asked, mostly out of courtesy.

She waved a dismissive hand without even bothering to turn and face him. Her other hand, he saw, was clutching on to her cell phone. Her thumb moved up and down the screen as she flipped through messages. She seemed distracted, and clearly in a foul mood. Dan waited patiently as she grew visibly more frustrated at whatever it was she was reading. Finally, she clicked her phone shut, pocketed it, and turned to him. Her eyes took him in; she breathed deep, and let it out. Her expression smoothed out.

“What did you do here?” she asked mildly. It was probably the least hostile tone Anastasia had ever directed at him.

Dan considered the question. He turned to look at the bleak landscape, where he’d fought for his life less than an hour earlier. He decided not to be flippant.

“I threw a massively accelerated log at Cannibal while he was trapped in a very confined space,” Dan said.

“Like your trick at the motel?” Anastasia asked. “You told me it didn’t work.”

“Yeah.” Dan scratched the back of his head and gestured helplessly to the ruined estate. “I made it go faster this time. It worked.”

“You think you killed him?”

Dan wanted to say yes. He wanted it so very badly. The log should have struck Cannibal point blank in the face, and given the state of the surroundings, it had carried a lot of energy along with it. He wanted to believe that the notorious Natural had been vaporized, his pieces flung across the ocean to taunt carrion fish with their unusual toughness. It was what he wanted, but not what he thought.

“I think I rang his bell,” Dan said. “He’s going to have one hell of a headache. I think I hurt him, but I have a sneaking suspicion he’s survived worse. Marcus once mentioned that you destroyed most of a city bringing him in the first time.”

Anastasia’s lips pursed. “I was young, and my control wasn’t what it is now. I traded precision for power. You may very well have struck him directly with more force than I did.” Her voice was wistful, almost nostalgic. “But I think you’re right. I think he’s alive. I don’t know that he can die by human hands. His concept might prevent it. We have to be indirect. Next time I see him, I’ll throw him into the sun.”

Dan blinked at the casual remark, but she continued before he could address it, “I can’t cover this up. Not entirely. It’s impossible to miss, and I was visibly elsewhere. It will raise questions, and I can’t take credit for you.”

Dan shrugged. “Blame it on the People. It was basically their fault anyways. What’s one more thing?”

Anastasia scowled at the mention of her old enemy.

“They aren’t acting like they should,” she said, irritation leaking into her tone.

“Enemies rarely do,” Dan quite reasonably pointed out.

She turned her head in a single, sharp motion. “They aren’t acting like they used to.”

“It’s been a few decades since you fought them,” Dan said. “You must have expected that they’d changed a little.”

“People don’t change,” Anastasia replied absently. “Not really. They just become more themselves. The underlying character remains the same.”

“Who are you, Doctor House?” Dan asked incredulously.

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Never mind.” Dan frowned, shaking his head. “Either they’ve changed, or you were wrong about their character to begin with.” He shrugged. “Pick your poison.”

She seemed unhappy with that evaluation, but didn’t criticize it. She just stared off into the distance, oddly contemplative.

Dan sighed. “Why am I here Anastasia?”

She didn’t answer for a long time. She kept her head forward, towards the ashes of her ruined home. The dust in the air began to swirl; slowly, gently, it rose and cleared away. She followed its progress with her eyes until it rose above the treetops.

“I need you to find them for me, Daniel,” she said, her voice nowhere near begging and nowhere near demanding. Just, neutral. Flat. “Track down more of those caches.”

“No way,” Dan denied immediately. He wasn’t having any of that. His involvement had only made things worse. And he’d promised Abby he’d stay safe. “They know i can crack them now. Next time I try I’ll probably walk face first into a bullet.

“Echo barely escaped,” Anastasia argued. “He might default to old habits. He might not expect us to repeat the same trick twice. He might not have any better options.”

“That’s a lot of ‘might’s that I’m hearing,” Dan pointed out. “You’ve been wrong more than enough for today. I won’t risk my life on your say-so.”

Anastasia’s hand slowly closed into a fist. “We have few alternatives. Echo was extracted by his damn teleporter along with Bastion.”

“They all got away?” Dan asked in surprise.

Anastasia flicked her hand dismissively. “We’ve got a handful of People grunts, some Scales, most of Coldeyes’ Crew, and Coldeyes himself.” She nodded at him. “That last one was thanks to your cop friend.”

Dan had a lot of cop friends, but he could only think of one who was capable of fighting a Natural. “Gregoir?” Way to go, big guy.

“That’s the one,” Anastasia confirmed. “Austin’s new golden boy. He’s due in for a promotion. We’ll have to put him on television to try and spin a victory out of this mess.”

And with that, Dan was reminded of the cost.

“How many people died?” He asked quietly. “How many students were murdered by their own military? How many soldiers were murdered by people they were meant to protect?”

“Many, with many more to come,” Anastasia replied dispassionately. “We needed a plausible justification to kill Champion and Echo just gave us one. He incited a riot that cost thousands of lives. Our men went in as ordered, and paid the price demanded of them. The students did the same.”

“You’re not even a little bit sorry for that call, are you?” Dan observed. “All those dead young men and women and you don’t give a shit.”

She snorted. “Blame Echo. He’s the one who riled them all up. He’s who brought life to that crowd. What were those soldiers supposed to do? You expect military troops to lie down and play dead when they’re assaulted by thousands? Don’t be naïve. The moment Echo stepped onto that campus, this was how it was always going to happen.”

“Maybe there wasn’t a better way,” Dan admitted, slowly, “but I’m positive you didn’t look for one.”

Anastasia scoffed. It was a hard, harsh noise. “There is no ‘better way.’ Stability has its price; those students and those soldiers all paid it. I expect there will be many more who pay it in the future.”

“Stability?” Dan echoed harshly. His mind flashed back to his early days, trapped here in this frightening, dangerous new world. There was anger there, and he let it take over, “You people don’t know what stability is. Nobody in this dimension knows. The country has averaged half a dozen major villain attacks per year averaged over the past twenty years.” He made a flailing motion towards his own head, trying in vain to indicate how ludicrous the concept was to him. “That number is defined by any event with more than a thousand casualties! A thousand! That’s considered normal. That’s expected.” Dan shook his head. “That’s insanity. You’ve all lived in conflict for so long you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have peace.”

Anastasia was unmoved. Her face did not turn away, her voice did not change. “We have what we have and it works well enough. I’ll hold onto it no matter how many massacres I have to order. No matter how many corpses i have to make. I will not allow this country to fall over the precipice of chaos.”

Dan stared over at her. He shook his head in wonderment. “You say shit like that, and all I can think is: Damn I hope you don’t win.” He barked out a painful laugh. “I’m supposed to be on your side and I don’t even want to root for you. Why do you think that is?”

“Because you’re a naïve child who has never had to face a decision more difficult than what to eat for breakfast,” Anastasia replied coolly. “I will win. I already won, decades ago. It’s just taken a while for it to sink in, is all.”

“Yeah? What’d you win?” Dan mocked with a lilting voice.

Anastasia genuinely seemed to consider the question. She cocked her head slightly, eyes unseeing as she stared into the distance. Her answer came eventually, and it came without any doubt.

“Despite the best efforts of many, many enemies, I am rich, successful, and powerful in every way that matters. I have few peers and no superiors.” She paused, finally turning to him. “What else is there to win?”

There was no joy in her words. He couldn’t hear a single ounce of pride. Just a toneless statement of fact. It annoyed Dan, because he knew it was a lie.

“Your enemies have risen from the grave. Your husband is dead. Your children are dead,” Dan ticked the points off on his fingers. “You can’t stand your surviving family, and the only one that you favor thinks you are a monster.”

He gave her a steady look and repeated, “What is it you’ve won, exactly?”

The change was instantaneous. The atmosphere grew dark and heavy. His ears began to ring. It became hard to breathe. His vision narrowed in on a single point.

Dan stared at Anastasia, and a wolf stared back.

“You will not speak of the dead,” Anastasia said mildly. She sounded oddly calm. Serene, even. She’d reached that point where rage cleared the mind rather than occluding it. She hovered there, buoyed by unspoken menace. Dan felt the weight of the world settle on his shoulders and his heart clenched as if in a vice.

Dan considered the threat. He found, to his surprise, that he wasn’t actually afraid. Perhaps he’d used up all his fear fighting Cannibal. He was, however, sorry. It was Abby’s family too, and by all accounts she’d had caring, if absent parents. And it went without saying that Stanley Summers had the best of intentions, with the worst of all possible executions. But the man wasn’t really at fault. That lay elsewhere. Dan shouldn’t have referenced their lives nor deaths so callously.

“You’re right,” Dan admitted. “That was too far. I apologize.”

The weight lingered for several seconds before slowly withdrawing. Anastasia’s gaze drifted away from him, towards the shattered landscape. She seemed to age before him. her silver hair holding less of a shine, and her back not quite so straight. Her features, usually so reminiscent of Abby, were lined and wrinkled. It was as if the effort of recall had a physical toll.

Her words came slowly, dredged up from the dark pit of miserable memory. They were less than a whisper, softer than the breeze.

“I sometimes wonder if he’d still recognize me.”

Dan didn’t need to ask who ‘he’ was.

Anastasia stared out into the ocean, watching black clouds gather over the horizon. She stood, lost in reminiscence for a time. Then it was over. Weakness fled her form. Her eyes hardened and her shoulders squared. The years fell away and she turned to face him, two pearlescent ice chips glaring into his soul. Her words were hard and cold.

“And then I realize it does not matter,” she said, carefully enunciating every single word. “The past is irrelevant. The ‘might-have-been’s are pointless to consider. I take the world for what it is, and I can only move forward.” Her lips peeled back into a snarl, and she spoke the words like a mantra, “Always forward.”

“Marcus used to say that,” Dan noted quietly.

“They are his words,” Anastasia confirmed. “That man was wrong about many things, but not this.”

“That man spent his final years alone and isolated a couple billion miles away from everything,” Dan corrected. “If he was right about anything, I doubt it had to do with personal philosophy.”

His words washed over Anastasia like the ocean breeze.

“He didn’t follow his own teaching,” she said. “He ran away, rather than progress. He couldn’t face what he’d created, so he fled. I am no such coward.” She turned away from him, her mind already elsewhere. She flicked her fingers in his direction and he felt a nudge against his chest that sent him rocking backwards a few steps. “Run along now. If you aren’t going to track down any more caches then you are worthless to me. Return to the yacht. Have my family brought to…” She considered her options, then nodded to herself. “Miami. Nobody tried to murder you while on business for me, so we can suppose some amount of safety there. And give my love to my grandchildren.” With that, she dismissed him entirely. She turned to the devastated manor grounds and began to walk. To where, Dan could only guess.

Dan examined her for another few seconds. There was no hint of the weariness she’d displayed. None of the regret, none of the pain. There stood Anastasia Summers, unassailable, unbeatable. Whatever brief dredges of empathy she’d found had vanished between moments. Whatever humanity was left clung to her invisible and unreachable, a shadow in the night.

She lingered there, a tall, lonely peak on a flat and broken plateau.

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