Nemesis: The Alliance Series, #2

1

KAY

"N obody told me the goblins would be invisible," I said to Ms Weston.

This wasn’t the oddest conversation I’d ever had with my boss, but it was close. First ambassadorial mission and I’d managed to break my third communicator in a month, this time because it had fallen out of my pocket when chasing down a horde of ravegens, or goblins, as Earth people called them, from the world affectionately known as the cesspool of the Multiverse.

Ms Weston narrowed her eyes at me in her usual disapproving stare. We’ll definitely look into that next time. She rested her hands on her meticulously organised desk. That blasted Campbell family… we need a reliable way to track down who they sold the bloodrock to. This is happening far too frequently.

Yeah. It was inevitable, now the family who’d been in charge of the illegal bloodrock trade on Valeria were dead or imprisoned, that there’d be an upsurge of activity on the black market, but even I hadn’t guessed I’d spend my first week as Ambassador tracking down goblins across three universes only to find they’d got hold of a substance that could create a camouflage effect, and used it to cross Valeria and cause havoc. Admittedly, I’d always wanted to ride one of those hover bikes, so as far as first missions went, it could have been worse. But I hadn’t intended to crash it into a wall and break my communicator in the process.

Okay, perhaps it was typical of the way my luck usually went. For the past ten minutes, Ms Weston had lectured me about disrespect for Alliance technology—and offworld technology, come to that, considering the hover bike—and she was finally coming to the point where she remembered I had, technically, caught the culprits. Even if the Alliance had had to fork out for property damage.

Anything else I should know about? I asked. Before the next job?

Ms Weston sighed. If you insist on getting into these situations, Kay, it might be an idea to look up how to operate Valerian transport beforehand.

She had a point. Valeria prioritised style over a system that made sense. I did have an Earth motorcycle licence, not that I actually owned one—yet. I was planning on rectifying that now I had the full use of my hands again. A wyvern had destroyed my car, and I’d find a one-to-one fight with another more appealing than London’s public transport system. But assuming the same rules applied on another universe was never a wise idea. Valeria’s technology revolved around magic, and people continually found ways to use it to cause trouble.

And I was a magnet for both.

Ms Weston turned and walked to the window, which overlooked London from the south of the Thames. Beyond the car park below, the river glittered amongst the towering office buildings, a markedly ordinary sight after Valeria’s capital. Now I’d been promoted to an Alliance Ambassador for Central, I’d be spending more time offworld than on Earth, which suited me just fine. Even with the invisible goblins.

Point taken, I said. I didn’t expect it to get out of hand so quickly.

Things have a habit of doing that wherever you’re involved, Kay. You didn’t use magic, did you? She turned her scrutinising stare on me.

No, I didn’t. I knew better. Now the Balance had shifted back to normal, virtually all traces of magic on Earth had disappeared and the other worlds had stabilised, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous.

We could do without the damages, Ms Weston muttered. Especially considering the recent refurbishment.

I’ll write a cheque in the Walker name, I said.

For the first time since I’d worked here, Ms Weston looked genuinely surprised, which was saying something, considering we’d once been ambushed by a wyvern outside Central. Do you think your father will mind the Walker accounts being charged for offworld property damage?

Honestly? I said. I doubt he’d notice.

That, at least, was true.

Very well, she said. Carl will give you a new communicator. Again. She waved a hand in dismissal, and I left the office with the feeling of having narrowly avoided stepping off a cliff.

Do I really want to know what happened this time? asked Carl, head of Central’s guards, as I met him in the guard office downstairs. The floor space in the office was the size of a cupboard, because the entire room was taken up by a large padlocked adamantine cabinet along the back wall containing weapons and any magic-related things that hadn’t yet been classified. A foot-long reptilian claw was mounted to the back of the door, which I strongly suspected belonged to the creature to which Carl owed the scar on his face.

Would you believe me if I said it involved invisible goblins and a hover bike? I asked.

Because it’s you, Kay, I would. Try not to break this one. He handed me another of the Alliance’s standard communication devices—advanced smartphones with offworld roaming, Internet and information storage on virtually every world in the Multiverse. On Earth, only Central’s archives had a more comprehensive store of information.

I made a note on the communicator to check out Valeria’s transport instructions as soon as possible, and pocketed the new device.

Maybe the tech team should invest in wyvern-hide coverings for these, I said.

How did you break it, exactly? asked Carl. It didn’t involve magic, did it?

No. Why did everyone keep asking that? Carl, unlike Ms Weston, was unaware of the unusual nature of my ability, though he knew I was one of the Alliance’s few magic-wielders, like him. I crashed a hover bike.

And your communicator took the fall?

Pretty much. I’d escaped lightly with a few bruises and caught both ravegens before they’d wreaked any more havoc. Not bad for a first mission, especially as I’d only been promoted two days ago.

And it had been two days since I’d last seen Ada. The distractingly pretty, fierce redheaded girl who’d caused the Alliance so much trouble and managed to both aggravate me beyond measure and impress me with her sheer goddamned stubbornness. She was starting work here tomorrow—well, evaluation—and considering the Alliance had almost cost her everything, it surprised me that she’d said yes so readily.

It surprised me even more that she’d kissed me. Damn if I hadn’t relived the moment a hundred times since.

I’d thought she hated me, and I couldn’t say I blamed her. Thanks to the Alliance, she’d been turned into a weapon and nearly died. I’d convinced the council not to order their arrests, but her family had lost their livelihoods. The least I could do was get her a job, but I hadn’t had a clue how she’d take the offer. I’d half expected her to throw it back in my face.

Instead, she’d kissed me like I was the last source of oxygen on the planet, and for one brief moment, blanked out all the guilt and horror that had plagued me since the attack on Central—even before that.

You’re back, said a contemptuous voice from the hall as I turned to leave the guard office. Figured I’d run into Aric here. Aric had only two modes, self-satisfied and pissed off. Looked like the latter this time. He’d shaved his head military-style and stuck a metal stud through his ear, with the result that he looked more like a biker-gang dropout than a professional Alliance guard.

Well observed, I said.

Heard you had some trouble with goblins.

And there I was, thinking you’d got past the stalking thing.

Piss off, Walker.

Eloquent as ever. I was just leaving, and you’re blocking the door.

Aric, quit stirring up trouble, said Carl. If you want a chance in hell of getting a promotion yourself, then acting like a dick isn’t doing you any favours.

He speaks sense, I said, shouldering past. It took a herculean effort not to tread on his feet.

Aric had been an unwelcome presence ever since we’d both joined the Academy five years ago, and things had been even more strained since he’d set a wyvern loose in the Passages and almost got me and two other students killed. He was ever-so-slightly pissed off that I’d ended up at the centre of all the drama a few weeks ago and wound up getting a promotion out of it.

Talking to Aric always made me want to hit something, so I headed for the training complex after checking out. This was the place they tested new recruits, while the rest of us got in practise beating the crap out of monsters. Though the monsters weren’t real, the simulations worked as a substitute until they’d let me out into the Passages again. This was offworld tech with restricted access, advanced enough to simulate virtually any situation and with total sensory immersion. Which meant: when the virtual monsters hit back, it hurt.

And right now, if I admitted it, I was also trying to distract myself from thinking extremely inappropriate thoughts about a certain future colleague.

A field of virtual corpses later and I left the training complex slightly less aggravated, though that changed when I had to sidestep a contingent of junior guards who kept glancing at me and talking in low voices. I heard the words Walker and hero.

Oh, for god’s sake. Apparently, that one was still going around. I’d told everyone the Alliance-approved version of the story, in which Ada and I just happened to be there when the Campbells’ plan backfired, leaving them all dead. But rumours were hard to stamp out when I was the sole witness aside from Ada, and she hadn’t been around to tell her side of the story. I still wasn’t sure on parts of it. But in no way did it involve the word hero.

My communicator buzzed in my hand, and I flicked the touch screen to unlock it and accepted the call from my boss. Ms Weston never seemed to leave Central, especially in the last few weeks. There was always some crisis or other.

We need you to go offworld, tomorrow, she said, without preamble.

Whereabouts? I asked. Damn. I’d been intending to talk to Ada, because she didn’t have the code for this new communicator.

Aglaia. You should speak to Markos. Aglaia’s in the middle of a crisis, and we urgently need an Ambassador to be there.

Isn’t Markos enough?

A non-Aglaian Ambassador. More than one. It seems the centaur king’s been assassinated.

And there I was, thinking I’d be able to get through one day without someone mentioning murder.

Damn, I said, moving away from the guards so they wouldn’t overhear. There’s no way they’ll let outsiders in.

It’s part of Alliance custom to oversee the change of leadership, as we’re a neutral force. I’m sure you already know Aglaia’s history with the Alliance.

Unfortunately, I said, with a glance at the dark shape of Central silhouetted against the perpetually-grey London sky. Is Markos back on Aglaia, then?

He’ll give you the details. There was a sound of papers being shuffled. The peace treaty with the humans was due for renewal next week, so the timing makes it all worse. This could be perceived as an attempt to ignite old conflicts. At the very least, it will delay all plans, including consultations with the Alliance.

You need someone who speaks Aglaian, right? I was hardly experienced in this kind of diplomacy. Least of all with a volatile, high-magic world.

Not just that, said Ms Weston. We specifically need a magic-wielder. Just in case.

What? Are you sure? I was under the impression centaurs hated magic. I retreated under the overhang outside the training complex. The last thing I wanted was anyone to hear me talking about magic.

"Yes, they do. But humans on Aglaia are all magic-wielders, and if it turns out one of them did have a hand in the centaur king’s death, then it’s better for us to be prepared. It goes without saying that you won’t be able to reveal you are a magic-wielder in front of the centaur contingent, but considering Earth’s lack of magic, they have no reason to suspect that you are."

Yeah, that’s reassuring. If you say so. The humans, though—they’ll be trained magic-wielders. We aren’t.

No. What I knew of magic, I’d learned on instinct when fighting for my life. And I couldn’t forget that two streets away from here, it had almost caused a wave of destruction across London. Even the guards who’d fought in the Passages that day didn’t know just how close Central had come to being wiped out. For all I knew, they were the ones who’d started the stories. People needed to believe someone had had the situation in hand.

Ms Weston paused before saying, Actually, magic-wielders on Aglaia are relatively peaceful, at least with each other.

It’s the centaurs I’m more concerned about, I muttered. Who else is going, aside from Markos?

A small team. You’ll meet here tomorrow at seven.

Right, I said, resigned. Aglaia was hardly an opportunity to pass up, but it felt uncomfortably like the conspiracy scenario I’d ended up mired in at the Alliance a few weeks ago. Assassination, magic, and aggravated centaurs? Still, nobody signed up as an Ambassador purely for the Valerian hover bikes.

Good, said Ms Weston. Best of luck. There are two aims. Reinstate a new monarch before certain disparate centaur groups take power, and find out who killed their leader, if possible.

I’m pretty sure most of that is up to them, not the Alliance. They don’t like humans meddling in their affairs.

Ms Weston drew in a breath. Well, given the circumstances… Markos will tell you. Essentially, you’ll be acting to stop a group of enraged centaurs from declaring war on humans.

Great, I said. No pressure?

2

ADA

It was the evening before I started my new job, and from the look on Nell’s face as she passed me in the corridor, I might have signed up to kick-start the apocalypse.

Watch out, said Alber, my brother, handing me a tub of shoe polish through my half open bedroom door. She’s on the warpath.

I figured, I said. Shoe polish? Really?

Hey, you have to look the part.

Yeah, when I’m not chasing monsters out of the Passages. I waved a hand in the direction of my new Alliance-issued guard uniform, laid out on my bed. Finally, I had my hands on their infamous magicproof gear, and if it wasn’t totally vain to think so, I looked damn good in it.

One of the perks of working for the Alliance. Along with free entry to the Multiverse—if I passed their tests.

Alber stepped away from my room, hands in his pockets. We vaguely resembled one another though we weren’t actually related, with the tanned skin and fair hair of Enzar, though Alber’s hair was short and spiked, while I’d dyed mine dark red.

You’re making me jealous already. No more sneaking around. Hey, you’ll be the one arresting trespassers.

That’s so weird. A month ago, I’d been arrested and taken into custody by the Alliance. Now, I was going to be working for them.

It’s a good thing, said Alber. You’ve got to give us all the gossip on Central. He glanced down the corridor at Nell, who was now running through combat manoeuvres. Behind his half open door, our older brother, Jeth, sounded like he was on the phone but was probably talking to one of his computers. Alber himself had always preferred beating up monsters on video games to actually going out into the Passages, and maintained that he only wanted to travel offworld to have a ride in a hover car on Valeria. He was incredibly jealous of my hover boot experience, which was the one part of the worst day of my life I could look back on and not want to scream.

I wanna go to a high-tech world, said Alber with a wistful sigh. Do you reckon you’ll be allowed to bring anything back?

Probably not, I said. The Alliance is strict about that. They’d flip a lid if they knew half the stuff I’ve got in my room.

Oh, yeah, you’ve got to play by the rules now. He smirked. How will you survive without your daggers?

Shut it, you, I said. I’ll get proper Alliance-issued weapons. Wyvern-hide daggers. And stunners.

Ooh, get you, said Alber. That’s a fancy Taser, right?

With magic. I’d had one of those stunners used on me, and it hurt like hell. Like an electric shock, but worse for me because I was a magic-wielder of the unconventional type.

And now I wished I hadn’t thought about magic, because just that one word made the anxiety come clawing back.

That’s badass.

Yeah. I managed a smile. Guess it kind of is.

Come on, Ada, admit it. You’ve spent years fantasising about running around with the Alliance guards.

I have to pass evaluation, first.

From what I figured, it involved proving I had at least a rudimentary understanding of how the Multiverse worked, and could handle the unpredictable nature of patrolling the monster-ridden Passages. In the thirteen-odd years I’d helped Nell at her offworld shelter, I’d interacted with people from too many worlds to count. Nell had taught me three offworld languages and seven styles of combat from different worlds. And I’d battled my share of monsters. Even cut the tail off a wyvern.

But I was still nervous as hell about tomorrow. Nervous enough that I actually considered calling a certain someone on my (also-new, also-Alliance-issued) communicator.

You’ll rock it, said Alber. You can run circles around them. They won’t know what hit them.

At one time, I would have had the same level of confidence. But after that day, I couldn’t even sneak into the Passages anymore. It was for the best, I told myself. That hidden door was where an army of dreyverns had almost killed Nell. Would probably have killed the rest of us, too, if not for…

I looked at the communicator lying on my bed for a moment, then shook my head and set down the shoe polish on top of a stack of books. I didn’t used to get this nervous about life changes. As we’d lived under the Alliance’s radar most of my life, every day had been about risk. But since waking from that coma, everything I’d once took for granted had suddenly seemed like it belonged to a different Ada. A more naive Ada who had no idea she carried a built-in weapon that could destroy the Multiverse.

Someone who never would have taken leave of her senses and kissed an Alliance guard.

Deal with it tomorrow. Once again, I repacked my bag and flicked the touch screen of my communicator. Fitted with offworld roaming up to five universes away, maps, information files and god-only-knew-what else, it had kept me entertained for two days straight trying to figure out what everything did. I was fairly sure it was worth more than our house.

Hey, Ada, said Jeth, from down the hall, peering out of his room with his own new communicator in hand. You figured out the night-vision button yet?

There’s night vision?

Yep. They think of everything. If ever I want to know the temperature in Alvienne or the population of Klathica’s capital, I know where to look. Jeth started work at the Alliance tomorrow, too, in the tech department.

What’re you taking? I said. Aside from the Chameleons? Your other projects?

Hell no. They’re not getting hold of all my ingenious ideas, little sister. But this— He waved the communicator—is awesome. I’ve already thought of a few adaptations. There’s a translator, right, but what if I made it into an earpiece? It’d mean people could communicate offworld if they didn’t speak the same language. There are like fifteen thousand languages logged in here already, I doubt anyone on Earth speaks all of them. I know Klathica has some kind of device, but it involves cutting your head open and—

Yeah, we get it, you’re a genius, said Alber.

I was glad at least one of us felt mildly prepared. But then again, the only jobs I’d ever had were crappy part-time shift work at supermarkets and once, a coffee shop (which had had absolutely nothing to do with the free hot chocolate every hour). As I’d helped Nell at the shelter since I was eight, its absence left a gaping hole that hurt more than I’d expected. I knew the open Passage from Enzar to the New York Alliance would help more than I ever could, but my family was left jobless and sinking into debt. Being able to help people from my homeworld had made me feel like I had a purpose here on Earth. Stupid thing to think, really. Once I’d passed initiation into the Alliance, the first thing I’d do would be to ask my supervisor if I could help Enzar from here. Even if my new boss was singularly the most terrifying woman I’d ever met.

Hey, said Jeth, glancing up from the communicator’s screen. It’ll be okay, Ada. Just a new start, right? It’s what you always wanted. The Multiverse.

He was right, of course. For all the years helping refugees through the Passages between the universes, I’d never set foot on another world—at least, not until the craziness a few weeks ago. If I got this job, then I’d be aiming for an ambassadorial position to help people in other worlds. I’d get to do what I’d dreamed of all my life. And yet…

I took in a deep breath. It’s just hard, you know? I have a feeling at least some of them won’t trust me, after what happened.

Then they’re idiots, said Jeth, putting the communicator in his pocket and crossing the landing to give me a hug. D’you think I’m not worried about the same thing? My world’s not the Alliance’s friend.

He had a point. Jeth was originally from Karthos, a world almost as volatile as Enzar, and Nell had adopted him like she had my brother Alber. She’d assembled our small family from broken worlds left to ruin, and since she’d smuggled me out of Enzar as a baby, she’d risked her life to keep the Alliance from finding us.

You didn’t cause a scene in front of a hundred guards, I pointed out. Or break out of jail in the most dramatic way possible.

I can think of worse things you’ve done when drunk.

I gave him a sarcastic look. Thanks. My older brother was the sensible one. My younger brother was the recluse. And I’d always been the reckless one. Up until now.

Hey, just being honest, Ada.

Yeah, well, my wild party days are over. At school, I’d already stood out a mile thanks to my Enzarian heritage. If people remembered me as the girl who got shitfaced and danced on the table, I’d rather have that than anyone coming close to guessing I wasn’t from Earth at all. Now it felt like everyone knew. Like walking under a spotlight.

Quit overthinking things. You’re gonna rock this job.

A disparaging noise told me Nell had caught the end of our conversation. Her mouth was pressed in a frown as tight as her hair, which was pulled in a bun. Like me, she had the tanned skin and deceptively delicate features of Enzar, but her natural eye colour was pale purple, now hidden by light blue contact lenses.

What? I said, more snappishly than I intended. Having to defend my life decisions to my foster mother didn’t help all the doubts buzzing around my head like a swarm of mosquitoes. Unfortunately, Nell hated the Alliance for letting Enzar tear itself apart in war without