Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

Melissa answered and didn’t say anything.

Behind her the building was coming apart at the seams. Voices stacked on voices, somewhere above her a door slamming, somewhere below a woman’s voice going up and up until it stopped being words.

People who’d spent a day and a half being told everything was under control, working out in real time that it wasn’t. The sound of a locked headquarters discovering that the locks were the only thing left between it and the street.

Beside me Ingrid stood with her eyes on the front doors. Ahead of us Max was walking back toward the horse with the device already up in his hand. The scorched glass still held. The yard still burned. The administrative lights on the upper floors still burned above both.

"He doesn’t think this is a real threat," Melissa said.

"Is that what he’s saying, or what he’s thinking?"

She breathed out once. The line carried the particular quality of a woman standing in a corridor while the building around her rearranged its understanding of the night.

"That’s what he’s saying."

"Melissa. What’s he thinking?"

The pause went on a beat too long. The noise behind her filled it.

"It’s worse. It’s a lot worse than what comes out of his mouth." Her voice dropped under the noise behind her. "Bram, there’s a version of tonight in that man’s head where the building burns with everyone in it and he’s still Lord of the walls in the morning. He’s already made his peace with it."

Of course he has.

"Then go around him. Get Pauline. Get every agent still standing in that building and put him in a room." I turned away from Ingrid. The infected held their positions around us without interest in the living conversation. "You arrest Sinn tonight and this whole city is quiet by breakfast."

"I’d have done it an hour ago." Her voice went flat. "It’s not possible now."

"Why not?"

"Monica’s here. And Sophia. They’re both inside the building and they’re both backing him on the doors."

I opened my mouth to ask how and shut it again.

It doesn’t matter.

And then it landed, all at once, the way things do.

That’s why.

That’s why the system has spent this entire night pushing me at this building.

Sophia. Monica. Melissa. Two sources and a mark, standing in the same lobby, behind one locked door.

And Max Donman is out here trying to open it for me.

Max Donman again.

I put my hand over my other ear. Max’s broadcast was starting—the C-shaped device at his mouth.

"You’ve got keys to those doors, don’t you."

"Yes." No hesitation. "I have keys to everything."

"Just a minute. Stay on the line a second."

"Okay."

I lowered the comms and turned to Ingrid.

I put the comms in my pocket, screen down. The fires in the yard threw broken light across both of us. Max’s voice continued from the speakers without either of us needing the words.

"What happens to the people inside when the doors open?"

I asked because nobody welds a chair into a cart without planning the rest of it, and these two had probably been planning this since before I crossed the walls.

"Nobody gets touched unless they get in the way." Ingrid didn’t look at me. Her eyes stayed on the scorched entrance. "We have a list."

"How long’s the list?"

"Three. Sinn. Melissa. Monica."

Both Veyrons.

They’ve never heard the word primordial. They don’t know what those women are, they don’t know what’s under this city, they’ve never sat in a white sand camp and had any of it explained to them.

And they still found the two people in that building who actually matter.

That’s not luck.

I’m giving you the last chance. If those doors open for me, you have my word that not one infected moves from where it stands again. Not while I’m Lord of these walls.

Max’s voice from the speakers. The offer landing in every locked room in the capital at the same moment it landed in the open air between Ingrid and me.

"And what happens to those three?" I asked.

Ingrid kept her eyes on the building.

She didn’t answer, and she didn’t pretend to be thinking about it, and she didn’t do me the courtesy of saying something soft. The silence was the answer. The list was the answer. The chair welded into the cart and the horse and the radio unit and the sentence cut into her neck were the answer. I took the comms back out.

"Melissa. You still there?"

"I’m here."

The noise behind her had not decreased. If anything it had concentrated.

"I need you to open the doors."

Nothing came back for a while. Just the building behind her, and somebody in the near distance shouting a name over and over. The fires in the yard continued. Max’s broadcast continued from the speakers. Ingrid’s stillness continued beside me as if the outcome of the call had already been filed and she was only waiting for the physical fact of the doors.

"You want me to open them."

"Yes."

"And then what? Then I stand there?"

"Then you let the rest happen without you in it."

"Bram." Her voice didn’t shake. "I’m a Veyron. Am I on his list?"

I could have taken a second. I could have made something up.

"Yes."

"Say the rest of it."

"You’re on it. Monica’s on it. I don’t know what he does with either of you and I’m not going to stand here and tell you it’ll be fine."

"And if I don’t open them?"

"Then they come through those doors in an hour anyway, and Pauline’s at her desk when they do, and so are the cooks, and so is every person in there who never picked a side."

The noise behind her went on and on. The name being shouted found no answer. The building continued its slow discovery that the locks were not going to be enough.

"So that’s the trade." Her voice had gone somewhere quiet and level. The fear was still in it. The decision had moved past the fear and was speaking from the other side. "I open my own door. I risk my life and my sister’s. And the whole building walks out in the morning."

"Yes."

"Fine," Melissa said. "I’ll open them."

"Melissa—"

"Don’t." Short. Almost kind. "Whatever you were about to say, don’t."

The line stayed open.

Then it didn’t.

The soft click of the ended call was the only ordinary sound left in the street. The fires continued. The speakers continued Max’s voice for another few seconds and then he stopped as well, as if he had felt the shape of the night change from the saddle of the black horse and was waiting to see what the change looked like from the ground.

Ingrid’s eyes came round to mine.

Has it worked?

Yes.

She raised her hand and waved Max back toward us.

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