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“That’s Asmodeus.” Tia’s soft exclamation forced Ronnie’s attention back to the TV. That was why the bastard on the news looked familiar. He was a demon.
Ronnie scrolled through her memory. “Fuck me. Half of the reporters attached to this story are from heaven or hell.”
“It’s you. You’re doing this.” Tia sounded exhausted.
“Excuse me?” She struggled to keep the edge from her voice, but the accusation was ill timed at best. “I’m framing myself? Making my life and everyone else’s miserable? What would possibly be the point in that?”
Irdu closed his eyes, flickered to transparent and then back, and his injuries vanished. “She’s right, but it’s all of us. How did we pick every single name we’ve investigated so far?”
“They’re some of the oldest and most powerful,” Michael said. “The most dangerous if they’re really a threat and continue to roam free.”
Realization spread over Ronnie. “Which makes them the most obvious names on the list. Those who have been around for centuries? Everyone knows their names. Everyone knows we’d know them. Of course we’d go after them first.” Which didn’t help as much as she hoped. It meant Gabe was a step ahead of them.
“The names aren’t a plant. Abaddon didn’t set us up.” Michael sounded certain.
Ronnie would argue his logic later. “At least some are probably real.”
“So we need to go after the people none of us know.” Tia sat up a little straighter.
“Unless that’s what they’re expecting us to do,” Irdu said.
“No. It’s a list of hundreds.” Ronnie sifted the information around, trying to merge and link it with what they knew. “It’s easy for them to identify the powerful from the list, and watch and wait to discover our patterns for going after them, so they can ambush us. It’s a lot harder to guess how we’ll pick the lesser known. He can’t cover every single base. He doesn’t trust them all that much.” She hoped. The logic felt sound, but she’d been wrong too much lately to believe it completely.
“Despite toppling Ubiquity stock value, the information giant continues to be the best source of information for law enforcement to hunt down these criminals.”
“It’s funny.” Irdu’s chuckle sounded anything but amused. “They’re getting the majority of their information from anonymous tips and Ubiquity software. I never realized before how much we drive the world.”
Michael’s eyes grew wide. “We have to shut down the flow of information. They’re using it to track us. To spread evidence of our existence, which is what Gabriel wants. We need to bring it to a halt.”
“Now you sound as bad-movie as him. Dude, you can’t stop the flow of information.” Tia pursed her lips.
“No. But we can bring it to a halt. Shut down Ubiquity. Take them offline.” Determination shone in Michael’s eyes.
On another day, Ronnie might ask if this was a dream come true for him. She’d save that argument for later, though. “It’s not that simple. You’re talking about a site that can never be down. That’s how many fingers they have in the world’s pie. They have redundancies everywhere.”
“No they don’t,” Irdu said. There was no hesitation in his counter.
She stared at him in disbelief. “Of course they do. They control the majority of the world’s data. There’s the hive-mind project they implemented with other companies. The underwater data centers. The open-source hardwa—”
“None of it exists.” Irdu perched on the edge of the couch, concern and excitement warring in his expression. “Projects on paper that never happened.”
Had Ronnie really missed that much? She couldn’t have. “That’s not possible. People would have noticed. That puts everything Ubiquity’s built at risk. Just because you don’t know where the centers are doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.”
“People did notice. The SEC is filing charges, and it’s not only because of forged employee records. Money was allocated that never got spent. And I do have that information.” Irdu gave her a dry smile. “I spent months scrubbing your activity from the public record. I couldn’t have done that unless I had access to every mirror and backup. I made an efficient worm, but it wouldn’t work without network permissions.”
“This can’t be true,” Michael said. “That would make the entire thing, all of Ubiquity, too easy to physically destroy.”
Ronnie’s gut performed a somersault. “Shit.”
Michael met her gaze. “That’s what they want. Isn’t it?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “They’re pointing us toward destroying Ubiquity. They use it to propagate the information they want and then cut off the main source.” Everything he said lined up with her thoughts. “Gabriel has a team of developers who wrote large amounts of that code. If Ubiquity doesn’t own those things Ronnie mentioned, he might. He shuts down the news feeds, and he’s the only one who has a replacement.”
“That’s terrifying,” Ronnie muttered.
“Of course it is.”
She gave him a weak smile. “I didn’t just mean that, though it’s horrific and—Tia’s right—a bit evil-villainy. What scares me is that you figured all that out. We’ll make a liar out of you yet.” She tried to keep the teasing in her voice.
“Don’t count on it.”
“So we have a solution, right?” Tia asked. “We stop them from bringing it all down. Except, there’s no way we can save every single data center.”
“We don’t have to.” Irdu looked more alert than he had in days. “As long as some of the mirrors and backups survive, a couple of losses don’t matter. That’s the point of the system redundancy.”
Michael frowned. “But how do we guarantee that?”
Ronnie dug through everything she ever learned, in either incarnation, clipping and rearranging data, discarding first thoughts, questioning second and third ones. Looking for something none of them ever did. “We put up wards on every location we know about. It will be tedious; they’ll need to be reinforced regularly.”
“We can’t all do that for the rest of eternity,” Irdu said.
“No. The two of you need to do that.” Ronnie pointed and Irdu and Tia. “Keep on a rotation. If Gabe’s plan is to have us destroy them, you’re watching and waiting. If he’s got something else planned, in case we don’t act as expected, you’ll find agents at those locations and banish them before it’s too late. You’ll need Raphael’s help too. You won’t split up. We don’t know who Gabe’s assigned this to, but the three of you are powerful, especially together.”
“And you’ll be doing?” Tia let the question hang in the air.
“We’re going to the source. Samael. If someone is pulling the metaphorical trigger, it’s him or Gabe, and we don’t know where Gabe is.”
Irdu hopped to his feet. “Right. So when do we get started?”
“As soon as Tia gets Raphael here and I teach the three of you how to cast the wards. No reason to wait.” Ronnie didn’t want to throw them into this, but didn’t see another option. Besides, if she hesitated any longer, she’d second-guess herself out of any action at all. And for all she knew, that was Gabe’s back-up plan.
* * * *
RONNIE’S BRAVADO VANISHED the moment she and Michael appeared in Samael’s office. She stashed her doubt and apprehension behind the mask of a timid smile she needed for this to work.
“Ronnie.” Samael was on his feet in an instant, and came around the desk to give her a hug. “I’ve been so worried about you. Not the kind of famous most people want, right?”
She squeezed back, forcing everything friendly to the surface, despite wanting to choke on the pleasantries. “I just want it to be over.”
“I don’t blame you. The media is shredding all of you. I wish there was some way to stop it.”
If she could keep him chatting, it’d buy her time to figure out what to do next. She was playing this more loose-and-improv than she’d like. “You’re so sweet. Thank you. I swear it feels like everyone else is against us.”
Through the exchange, Michael was quiet. She was grateful for that.
Samael stepped back, to look her in the eye. “Did you stop Abaddon before she made things worse?”
“Who?” Ronnie wanted to yell gotcha.
He frowned. “We talked about it before you left. The conversation I overheard.”
“Oh. Oh. I didn’t know that’s who they were talking about. I thought you didn’t either.”
Samael rolled his eyes and leaned his weight against the desk. “How much longer do you want to do this?”
“Until you get tired of it.” She’d rather not do it at all.
“That was eons ago, Ronnie. I’ve been tired of this for centuries. Lucifer promised change, but that wasn’t supposed to include idleness. Letting people destroy themselves.”
“Excuse me.” Michael stepped forward. “I’m wondering how you envision this going. Could we skip the bullshit and cut to the point?”
The chuckle that rolled from Samael’s chest sent shivers down Ronnie’s spine. “I hate to bore you, but we can’t do that,” Samael said. “There’s protocol to follow, and your darling demon is all about appearances. She worries about whether others think she’s strong enough. An original. Keeping her shit together while her world crumbles... You’re a little harder to read, keeping private and such, but she tends to draw you out. Twice now. Being able to watch the two of you— I’m getting ahead of myself. You wanted a fight, right?”
“We were hoping you’d stop all of this, whatever it is, if we asked nicely.” Ronnie didn’t know if Samael was trying to provoke her into acting out of hand, or hoping she’d hesitate. Either way, she’d missed her window of opportunity. Frustration built inside, fueled by indecision.
“No can do. Sorry. For me, this ends with a big flash bang that destroys the building and causes enough destruction it makes news around the world.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Michael vanish, then reappear next to Samael before she could blink. Sammy had already phased to the other side of the room. As Samael reappeared, a loud roar and a gust tore through the room and echoed from the hallway. The windows shattered, and pebble-sized shards of glass flew through the air, impacting with walls, furniture, and bodies.
The tiny slices cut into her skin, and Ronnie devoted enough attention to the tens of thousands of wounds to heal them. Her feet froze to the floor, despite the voice in her head chanting for her to do something. Was she supposed to fight? Walk away? Try to keep Samael talking? What was he expecting, so she could do something else?
“Ronnie. I need you here.” Michael’s quiet but firm voice cut through the cloud of indecision but didn’t disperse it.
“She’s torn.” Taunting filled Samael’s words. “Doesn’t know what to do next. Tell you what—you two stay here and talk. Coax her out of this haze. I’m going to the roof, because if I’m going to blow this place up, I want an audience, and I want to take my time.”
The threat mobilized Ronnie. She vanished when Samael did, appeared above Ubiquity in a blink, and wrapped Michael, Samael, and herself in a bubble as the demon summoned his next attack. “It’s the middle of the day.” She struggled to keep her voice even. The impact of his attack hit her harder than she expected. “The building is full.”
Samael shrugged. “Of agents. This won’t kill them.” He lobbed a fireball at Ronnie like he was tossing a softball. The speed it flew at her contradicted the ease of the motion, and it singed her skin as she ducked. The distraction made her drop her shield, and he sent a much larger projectile toward the building.
Michael blocked the impact, and Ronnie phased closer to Samael. When she reappeared, she collided with Michael, who’d done the same thing, and tumbled to the roof. Samael’s next attack slammed into her chest, and agony rocketed through her soul, despite her being ethereal when he hit. How long did it take him to learn that trick? She shook off the pain and launched back toward him. For the next several minutes, her frustration mounted, as he dodged every move she made, or she landed in Michael’s way.
On the ground, agents had spilled from the building. Most watched, some left. She wanted to scream at them to do something. At the same time, inexperienced bodies would make this worse.
It was the attention from the main roads that concerned her more. She didn’t have to waste any time looking. Every turn of her head revealed another person with a phone out, filming the entire event.
“The longer this takes, the happier I am.” Samael lobbed another stream of fire at the building, like slicing off a piece of cake. The concrete slid to the ground, shaking the earth and sending dust flying.
She pushed past her inability to quickly bring this to an end. “The only thing you’re doing is causing a spectacle.”
“She has a point.” Michael joined in. “This could be a publicity stunt, to draw attention from the company’s issues. It’s not as though you can bring the entire infrastructure down from here.”
“Technically, I can. The explosives planted in every single data center around the world are remote activated. We have an app for it.” Samael smirked and sent another attack hurtling toward the freeway. Ronnie blocked it, and Samael countered with another burst toward the ground, but Michael was there waiting.
Something slammed into her from behind, knocking her off balance and sending her rolling across the fractured rooftop. Her ethereal form was battered and bruised, and the newest hit made it difficult to stand.
“Thought you might want some help.” Asmodeus joined Samael. He was still in the suit he wore on air, tie loose but everything else polished and shined. “You’re getting brilliant coverage, by the way.”
Ronnie tried to stand, but her right leg wobbled and gave out. She collapsed to one knee. From this vantage point, it looked like Michael wasn’t doing much better. She didn’t know what to try next. Samael seemed to have an intimate knowledge of her skills and tactics, and she was out of ideas. If he had a second demon by his side, she and Michael were fucked. Even if they managed to take these two out, if the Ubiquity hardware was destroyed, Gabe won.
Damn it.