Loki's Gambit, page 70
part #1 of I Bring the Fire Series
Jaw tensing, eyes prickling, Amy gives her boss—former boss—a hard stare.
His stare is equally hard. “Amy, Loki was, if not a perfect gentleman to you, always protective of you. He never hurt you, and in your presence was never violent unless he thought he, or you, were in danger. You weren’t an idiot for trusting him or ... being involved with him.” He draws a breath. “Other people put up with worse, and get less. Loki did care about you—and no one could predict their ... partner ... would fall under the influence of a mind controlling World Seed that fancied itself the second coming of Josef Stalin.”
Amy’s vision goes blurry with unshed tears. She’d thought that—maybe—but to hear it from someone else ... “That’s a good speech, Steve,” she says, wiping an eye.
Uncrossing his arms, body visibly relaxing, Steve says, “Good, I’ve been practicing variations of it for the first time a man breaks my little girl’s heart.”
Amy almost smiles. “You’re a good dad, Steve.”
Tilting his head, Steve says, “Of course, after I give that speech to her I will hunt the man down and kill him.”
Amy does smile at that. And for a moment she almost feels better. But then she remembers what Steve doesn’t know. Loki only cared about her because he thought she was part of his “higher purpose,” which he was convinced was burning Asgard to the ground.
Turning towards the table, Steve says, “Sorry to bring you in, but ADUO wanted you to identify something for us.”
Body tensing again, she shoves her hand into her pockets and jumps as a small squeak pierces the air. Something warm and soft squirms under her left hand. Looking down, her eyes widen in surprise. She has a stowaway. Peering up from her pocket is Mr. Squeakers, the eight-legged spidermouse Loki gave to her.
Steve looks towards the air conditioning duct. “Was that a mouse?”
Patting Mr. Squeakers’ head back into her pocket, Amy says, “I didn’t hear anything.”
Steve raises an eyebrow but turns his attention back to the table. A large piece of folded black fabric lies there. Pulling away a fold, Steve reveals a gleaming, slightly curved sword. Amy releases a gasp.
“Can you identify it?” Steve asks.
“It’s Laevithin,” Amy says. The name means “troublesome twig,” but she doesn’t say that. All she adds is, “Loki’s sword.” As she says the words, Loki’s memories come rushing in. As a final parting ‘gift,’ he’d planted his memories in her mind. They don’t invade her every waking moment, but when she stumbles upon something relevant, they come to her. She shakes her head. When she tries to think back to the time right before he destroyed Cera, she gets no insights as to why he’d chosen to give them to her. She thinks it was just an impulse. Her jaw goes hard and her eyes prickle.
“That’s what I told them,” Steve says. “But our experts identified it as Japanese katana, from the Edo period. They wondered why a deity associated with Norse peoples would have a Japanese sword.
“It’s surging with magical energy,” Steve says. “Outside of magically sealed rooms it drives our sensors off the charts. The only stronger thing we’ve seen is Cera.”
Almost without thinking, Amy reaches towards Laevithin. Last time she’d seen it, it had pulsated with magical blue light. Inside the magically sealed room, it’s just a sword, but the blade gleams brightly.
She runs a hand absently over the handle. Suddenly caught in another flashback, she says, “Thor and Loki were in Japan at the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate looking for samurai to join the ranks of the einherjar.”
“Einherjar?”
“Humans recruited to serve in Odin or Freyja’s elite guard. Usually the Valkyries did it, but Odin was desperate. Loki and Thor joined in ... ” A memory comes to her of Thor, disguised by Loki’s illusions to look like a short Japanese samurai hitting his head against the top of the frame of a door. She snorts. Thor bumped his head a lot in Japan, and Loki seems to remember each and every time.
Amy lifts the sword, and Steve shuffles nervously beside her. “It is very sharp,” he says. “Even without magic.”
Pointing the blade carefully towards the opposite wall, Amy rotates the handle in her hands. “It’s so light—you’re sure it’s not magical even here?”
Humming reverently, Steve says, “It’s the magic of exquisite craftsmanship. A thing of beauty, isn’t it? Look at the blade. The surface is as smooth as glass.”
Amy smiles. “It’s like a lightsaber!”
“The closest we have on this world,” says Steve, his voice hushed.
At that moment from behind them comes the sound of the door opening. A voice with a Hindi accent says, “Steve? You want some coffee?”
Steve turns beside her. “Bohdi, how did you get in? The door was locked, and there are guards outside.”
Amy turns to see Bohdi give Steve a shrug, unruly black bangs falling over one eye. Always a little embarrassed in Bohdi’s presence, she turns quickly away. Loki had wiped Bohdi’s memories. When she tries to think about it, to understand why Loki seemed to have some personal vendetta against Bohdi, she gets nothing. Another impulse?
In Amy’s hands Laevithin begins to pulse with light.
Behind her Bohdi says, “I didn’t see any guards, and the door wasn’t locked.”
Amy lifts the sword towards her eyes. Her reflection stares back at her. But around her reflection, where there should be the room, there is darkness.
“Maybe they went to help with the troll outside?” says Bohdi.
“Troll?” says Steve.
Tilting her head, Amy says, “Something is happening to the blade.” Instead of tilting its head, her reflection looks behind itself.
“Oh, cool sword,” says Bohdi, his voice suddenly closer.
“Put it down, Amy,” says Steve.
Amy feels a prickle like static in her hands. “Right,” she says, lowering the blade back to the table. She tries to release it, but blue current writhes up her arms. She turns towards Steve. “I ... ”
“Ms. Lewis!” says Bohdi.
“Drop it!” shouts Steve, his hand reaching for her wrist.
And then everything is blackness. Amy is suspended in the nothingness of the In-Between with only Laevithin’s cold glow. There is no Loki to tether her to life with his warm embrace. She has seconds to live, and she aches for him to be with her in the darkness.
Chapter Two
Amy’s eyes open to darkness and cold. For a moment she thinks she’s still in the In-Between. But as her lungs reflexively inhale, air tinged with the acrid scent of fire rushes into her. Something tickles her throat on the way down, and she coughs out a dark gray cloud. She’s alive. This is real. And it’s very wrong.
One hand tightens instinctively around Laevithin, still pulsing faintly, and the other scrapes against sharp pebbles on the ground. Taking a sharp shallow breath, Amy bursts into another coughing fit, her stomach roiling for a moment. Recovering, she blinks in the darkness, her heart beating wildly in her ears. Seized by sudden panic, she pushes herself up, the small gravelly rocks beneath her biting her palm, Laevithin scraping awkwardly across the ground.
Wiping her face, she takes in her surroundings and her heart nearly stops. The blackened, roofless shell of a building rises up on all sides of her, and she’s sitting on a pile of rocks. Beyond the dark walls, the horizon line is lit by yellowish light, but above the sky is dark and gray. Squinting her eyes, she notices dark particulates wafting in the breeze, and for the first time she notices there is sound, a gentle whistling of the wind.
Has she accidentally stumbled through a World Gate somehow? She closes her eyes and wishes for a memory from Loki ... and gets ... nothing. But it’s so dark, and she’s in one tiny place. Maybe if she looks around ...
Turning, she looks in a direction that might be south. A dread so potent she feels as though her limbs are made of lead overcomes her and her body shivers beneath her heavy down coat. Just a few buildings away is a faceless statue of Ceres she recognizes instantly. It is from the top of the Chicago Board of Trade building. The statue was designed faceless because the architects thought no building would ever be tall enough for it to be visible. Now it looks to be at most fifty feet above the street, and it is the tallest thing she can see above the ruined walls.
Clutching Laevithin, Amy scrambles to her feet and stumbles clumsily over rubble to a gap in the wall. Peering through it, she sees that the whole of the Board of Trade has nearly sunk into the ground.
She’s suddenly struck by a wave of nausea so strong she bends over and coughs until tears come to her eyes and she almost loses her breakfast. Screwing her eyes shut, she wills her stomach to be calm, her heart to still, and her breathing to even.
With a shaky exhale, she lifts her head to the black sky. The weather is colder than she remembers when she came in this morning. Her grip tightens on Laevithin’s handle. Did she sleep through the Apocalypse?
From her pocket she hears a squeak.
Amy swallows and pats the head of her little hitchhiker. “This is not good, Mr. Squeakers.”
She turns around and a light flashes in her eyes. Throwing up her hand as a shield from the beam, she hears a shout. “Hands above your head!” It sounds like Steve, but Steve never yells at her.
Amy lifts her hands, Laevithin still tight in her grip.
“Steve?” she says. She tries to look in the direction of the light but sees only a tall dark shadow silhouetted in a gap in the walls.
“Who are you!” says the voice, shifting to her right and edging closer.
“Steve? It’s me, Amy,” she says.
“Amy who?” shouts the maybe-Steve.
“Lewis! Amy Lewis!”
“Liar!” he shouts. “What are you doing with Loki’s sword!”
“You asked me to come into the office to identify it,” Amy says, her voice becoming frantic.
“Shut up and put it down!”
Shaking, Amy says, “Okay ... ” She slowly lowers it to the ground. It falls to the stones with a clang.
The beam of light drops to the ground. With the spotlight out of her eyes, she can see her interrogator for the first time. It is Steve, but he’s exchanged his suit for combat gear. His face is framed by stubble. In sharp relief against his nearly black skin is a grimy white surgical patch covering one eye. A really big gun of some sort is strapped over his shoulder. It’s still pointed in her direction.
Steve edges towards her slowly, body angled sideways, gun upraised; his one good eye looking at her through the sight.
“Who are you really?” he says when he’s only a few steps away.
Sputtering, Amy says, “It’s me, Amy. We were in the conference room together, with Bohdi ... Bohdi Patel? He’d brought you coffee I think and I was lifting the sword and—”
“Shut up!” says Steve, and the gun is suddenly inches from her nose.
Steve’s lips are curled in a snarl, and his one eye is wide. It strikes her that he’s breathing hard. Almost like he’s afraid.
Shifting awkwardly, gun still aimed at her, Steve reaches a hand out towards her face. Amy draws back a little with a gasp. Steve does not touch her. Ever. For a moment he hesitates, but then he puts his fingers on her cheek; his fingers are cool, verging on cold. He taps her once, twice. And then he brings his hand up to touch her hair. Her own breathing has become as loud as his, and her heartbeat is deafening in her ears. “Ummm ... .” she says.
“Amy?” he whispers, his voice awestruck, the white of his one eye wide. Tapping her cheek again, he says, “It’s really you?”
“Errr ... yes,” she says. “What happened? Where is Bohdi?”
Steve drops the gun to his side. Shaking his head, brows hitching to his hairline, he says, “Dead. Just like you.”
“What?” says Amy, a shudder sweeping through her body.
“I saw you,” Steve says. Bringing his other hand up, he cradles her face and turns her head to the side to look at her neck. “The bullet hit your carotid artery—there was nothing we could do, not even Thor,” he whispers. His lips part, and his eye stays riveted on Amy’s throat as though he can’t believe what he’s seeing. He looks awestruck, bewildered, and frightened ... Like he’s seeing a ghost.
Clasping his wrists, Amy says, “No, it just missed. You got to me in time. Thor took me to the trauma center.” She’s alive, and Steve has to believe it, because this is so weird she might actually start to doubt it herself.
Hands falling away, Steve stares at her, face blank. And then Amy’s thoughts snag on another one of Loki’s memories.
Loki was a little boy, sitting by Frigga, queen of Asgard, as the queen spun wool into thread.
“Do the threads tell the future?” Loki asked. He’d heard the maidens whisper that the queen had the gift.
“There is no future, Loki,” said Frigga. “Only possibilities that become more and more likely probabilities, and probabilities that become realities.” The queen smiled down at him. “Although some people say that with each choice we make a new thread is spun, and from all our choices a new universe is born. Our fate is not one single strand of thread, but an infinite spider web.”
Amy groans, even as she feels Loki’s child-like wonder at the possibility of infinite versions of himself. So the quantum mechanics’ Many-worlds interpretation has validity. Spiffy. It would be an appropriate time to cry, but what comes out of her mouth is a joke. “I think Schrödinger’s cat just bit me on the butt.”
Steve’s eye narrows slightly, and Amy remembers that Steve isn’t into the sciency stuff. She starts to explain, “The Many-worlds interpretation is true. That’s when ... ”
He cuts her off with a curt nod. “All possible histories and futures are real.” Tilting his head, he says, “Are you sure you’re completely human?”
Taken off guard by the question, she stammers, “Yes. Why?”
His mouth opens but no sound comes out. He just looks her up and down, and then, not meeting her eyes, he says, “Nothing ... just a weird feeling.”
Shivering, Amy says, “Steve, what happened here?”
Lifting his gaze, Steve says, “Loki has the World Seed.” His smile tightens. “Or the World Seed has him. The Nine Realms went to shit.”
“Oh ... ” says Amy.
“That did not happen where you’re from?” Steve says.
“He saved us,” Amy whispers, voice catching as she remembers Loki’s final moments and begging him not to do it.
“Lucky,” says Steve. Squatting down, he picks up Loki’s sword. It pulses in his hands for a moment so brightly that the blue light makes Steve’s own skin look a vivid shade of ultramarine, but his single eye, normally dark brown, goes impossibly black. “Next to Cera, this is the most powerful magical instrument I’ve seen.”
Amy’s body stiffens. “Steve, you don’t have a magic detector on you. How do you know that?”
Standing beside her, Laevithin tight in his grip, he says, “Just a good guess.”
In the distance Amy hears a roar that sounds suspiciously like a troll. Steve’s eyes flick in the direction of the sound.
Putting his arm around her shoulders, he says, “You shouldn’t be out here. Besides the trolls, there’s the fallout. Limited exposure won’t hurt you, but you should get to the tunnels.”
Amy’s body goes cold. “Fallout?”
“World went to shit,” Steve says, pushing her towards the gap in the wall. “Right now, I’d really like to know how you came by Loki’s sword.”
The air ahead of them starts to shimmer, and a silky voice rises through the air. “As would we.”
“Loki,” Amy says. Beside her Steve goes rigid.
The shimmering stops, and Loki stands before them. His hair is ginger, and his face pale, though the dark circles under his eyes give his face a blue cast. His own Laevithin is sheathed at his side; he’s in full armor, horned helmet included—except for his left arm. In Amy’s world, Loki had patched together some awkward magical plating to cover his left arm, almost as though he’d wanted to leave himself vulnerable—and in the end it hadn’t been enough to protect him from a stray bullet. The resulting pain had split Cera from Loki’s mind just long enough for him to scheme against her. In this world, a form-fitting magical glow encases his armor and the exposed skin on his arm and face.
“It’s Amy,” says Steve. His voice is very calm, but Amy feels his hand tightening on her shoulder. “You don’t want to hurt her, Loki.”
Loki tilts his head, and one side of his mouth ticks up. “It’s a trick. We don’t like it! We will make you pay!”
Amy lets out a breath.
Stepping around her, Steve raises the sword. “No, Loki.”
Loki snarls. “We are not in the mood for games, Steven!”
Seeing shadows writhe at Steve’s feet, Amy yells, “Steve, look out below!”
Steve looks down. Gravel and rocks are sliding up from the ground over his feet. Steve takes a step forward with a grunt, sending rocks skidding, but pieces of twisted metal snake up around his legs. Leaning forward, Steve snarls and takes a few more steps before the jumble of debris has crawled its way up to his waist. As the rock and metal continues to climb, Steve gives a cry of rage and hurls Laevithin in Loki’s direction. Amy gasps. The point strikes Loki squarely in the forehead. There is a flash of light and Loki growls, but the blade falls harmlessly away. “Nice try. Because you’re so brave, maybe I’ll let you watch.”
“Leave her alone!” Steve snarls, as the debris coils its way around his arms. “Leave her alone, you ... ” Another black bar snakes up around Steve’s mouth, and his voice becomes muffled and indistinct.
Loki turns back to Amy. “Where were we ... Ms ... .”
Amy’s hands ball into fists at her sides. Maybe it’s because she knows that running and fighting aren’t options, or maybe being exposed to magic and violence has altered Amy in some fundamental way, but instead of being frightened, she is just extremely pissed. “You’re not my Loki,” she spits out.
Stepping forward, Loki tilts his head. “You’re right, we don’t belong to you.” His eyes narrow. “Agent Hill, is it? Is that some fancy reconstructive surgery they’ve given you?”
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