Free Fall. Laura Anne Gilman
to reclaim the organization from the corruption eating it from the top down, the force that had turned it from benefactor of the innocent to persecutor of the different. Sergei didn’t think that the old man had a chance in hell, but hell had been known to throw some wild dice.
In the meanwhile, Sergei stood just inside the door and tested the foundation for weaknesses. A way for the Cosa to defend themselves, come the next attack. Because it would come, there was no doubt of that.
“You never tried to find her again?” he asked his companion.
“Of course I did. But after a while…You let dreams go. Or you go insane trying to convince others that it was real.”
They ate in silence. When the waiter came to take their plates, Sergei’s host raised weary eyes to him. “They are real.”
Sergei nodded. The knowledge did not seem to bring the older man any peace.
“What do you want me to do?”
Sergei’s next meeting didn’t go quite as well.
“No.” Flat, unbending, and final.
“Joanie…” He tried for a reasonable tone.
“No.” She kept walking, looking straight ahead; no sideways-slanting glance that might give him hope. She had a black leather pocketbook slung over one arm, and black leather sneakers on her feet. He had caught her on her lunch break, taking a power walk.
“Joanie.” He kept pace with her, letting a hint of calculated wheedling slide into his voice, just enough to make her laugh and give in, once upon a time.
“I hate you.”
“You always did.”
Her mouth twisted, and she glared at him. Joanie was tall, and blond, and had a chest that just asked for a deep breath and a low-cut neckline. But the way she glared made her cousin to Wren in attitude, if not looks.
Don’t think about her. Don’t go there now. Damn it, focus!
They were walking along a glass-enclosed arcade, under artificial lights replicating sunlight. The stores lining the walkway were trying very hard to look expensive and exclusive, and the women walking in and out of them, bags in hand, were doing likewise. He had just come from his lunch, with the results of it tucked securely away by means of one phone call to a very discreet private bank, and an electronic transfer to another account set up within the same bank. Sergei felt a little dirty about it all, but that wouldn’t stop him from using every penny, and going back to ask for more, if needed.
“I can pay for information.”
“You think I’m holding out for money?” Her voice went from reluctant to honestly annoyed.
Nobody who worked for the Silence ever needed to take a second job, even if they had the time or energy for it. “No.” He didn’t think that. “But it will make…whatever happens, easier.”
He had no idea what was going to happen, but playing on someone’s fears of the future was usually effective. He’d learned that from his tax guy.
Joanie shook her head, blond ponytail wagging. “Nothing’s going to happen. You’re wrong.”
“I’m not wrong.” He paused. “Joanie. I was there. I saw what I saw.”
She didn’t bother arguing that point. “You never killed for the cause?”
He had. He had, more than once. “I never killed an innocent. I never killed one of our own.”
Poul Jorgunmunder had. Poul, Andre’s protégé, his replacement once Sergei left the Silence.
And the innocent he had killed was Bren, Andre’s left-hand woman. A good woman, as far as Sergei knew. Poul had killed her in cold blood, in order to implicate the Fatae in the murder of a Silence employee, setting a trail of clues that would have fired up anti-Fatae sentiment even higher, caused even more deaths.
Sergei had seen it happen. So had Andre. Only one of them had been horrified.
“I was an Operative for ten years,” Joanne said. “I worked with Poul, when he first came on-board. Smart kid. Sharp. Everyone knew he was going places.”
“Yeah,” Sergei agreed, tasting something sour in his mouth that wasn’t from lunch. He had never liked Poul, but he had trusted Andre’s judgment on the man. They had both been wrong. “He went places…right to Duncan’s side.”
She looked puzzled. It seemed honest. She didn’t know. She wasn’t part of it.
He had picked right. Sergei allowed himself a faint breath of relief.
“The Silence, they’re using the FocAs, Joanne. Our kids. They’re using them as weapons. Against their own kind. Against innocents.”
FocAs. That was Silence shorthand for Focused Active Agents. Talented Operatives, brought in by the Silence—by specific Handlers like Joanne and, once upon a time, Sergei, to work on very specialized situations—using magic to fight magical threats. Most of them were low-res, to use Wren’s term. Not Pures, not extremely strong, but still Talent. Young. Hell, most of them were children, in all the ways that mattered. Most of them had been under twenty when they signed on.
The Silence was twisting them. Brainwashing them somehow. Using them against the Cosa, and then throwing them away.
They had been the greatest victims of the Bridge, killed by their own kith and kin in self-defense.
The more of this he told Joanie, in just a step more detail than he estimated she could stand, the greener her pale skin became, until she tuned away and was sick in a potted plant outside one of the stores. He watched, feeling only a little guilt. He did what he needed to do, to get the results he needed.
A salesgirl glared at them, but made no effort to come out and either help, or chase them away.
When Joanie finished, he took her by the arm, and walked her to the nearest public rest room. He waited outside while she washed her face and flushed out her mouth. His point had been made; there was no need to punish her further.
When she came out, her skin was still pale and green-tinged, but the control that marked a good Operative was back in place. She opened her mouth, and the party line fell out. “We do good work. The means aren’t always just, but…”
He wished he was more surprised at her words. “Is that justification for murder, fraud, and setting up more innocents to die?”
“Are they innocent?” she asked. “Are any of us really innocent? Bren…I never met her. But she was a member of the Silence. To protect the innocent is our reason for existing. That means we take on the onus of not being innocent. We see too much. We know too much. Sometimes, we do too much. That’s the cost.”
It wasn’t, Sergei reflected sadly, only the FocAs who were brainwashed. He had been there once, too. It had taken a case going horribly wrong before he had found the strength to walk away, and only Wren had kept him from going back.
What would it take to get Joanie to walk away?
“Are you willing to wake up at three in the morning, knowing what cost you’ve paid out of your soul, if you sit and do nothing, now?”
She looked away, watching the progress of a pair of young women down the escalator below them. “I’m awake at three in the morning anyway, Sergei. Aren’t you?”
Once, he would have been silent. Now, he had an answer for her.
“No. I’m not.” It sounded priggish, but it was also the truth. “I don’t wake up and stare at the ceiling, or listen to the clock tick. I go to bed, and I sleep through the night, now.”
And with that small white lie, he walked away, hoping that what he had said had been enough to seed doubt, that even if she would not question her loyalties, she would not turn around and betray him.
He