Anne Winchell - The Last War

He typed frantically as he attempted to reach all of the world leaders and talk them out of instant retaliation. Africa was willing to wait for an Eastern World Conference to discuss possible retaliation, but India and Europe were pushing for a quick strike against the Western World. They were also putting forth candidates for the open position of president. Medane warned them not to jump ahead in the procedure. He had his own candidate, if Raven was up to the task.

All of the world leaders respected Raven and almost all had worked with him in the past. Raven didn’t realize it, but Medane had been grooming him for power for years. He would have liked longer to work out Raven’s rough edges, but there wasn’t time for that anymore. He would have to promote Raven as a candidate for president and hope that Raven understood the good that he could do in that position. Everyone else being promoted was corrupt with power, like the old president; Raven would bring enlightened equality and serve the ideals that the Eastern World was founded on. If Raven was able to recover from this devastating blow, and if he was the same person afterwards, that was. Medane finished communicating with the leaders and took a deep breath. He needed to talk to Raven and the others before he returned to the Eastern World to sort out this mess.

He found Raven sitting outside the embassy building but still clearly on its grounds, a good move. If he so much as set foot outside of the embassy, there was a good chance Atheus would snatch him up. After all, if Atheus was bombing NeoLondon, he would be willing to kidnap Raven from right under Lethe’s nose. But luckily fear of Lethe was still preventing Atheus from entering the embassy itself, so Raven and the others were safe for now.

Raven was alone and had his eyes closed, but he was clearly alert because his head turned when Medane approached. It was rare to find Raven off guard; Medane had never seen Raven truly relax before ever since the first time they had met, when Medane had found the boy sobbing over the bodies of his parents and their murderer. Medane was visiting Portland at the time, having been tipped off by one of Atheus’ men that an attack on the superhuman subjects was about to take place. Medane never would have guessed that the attack was on the parents, not the child, and the goal of the attack was to supercharge the child’s abilities.

When Medane had arrived, Bryce was covered in blood, sitting over his parents’ bodies and weeping. He was holding a gun—his father’s, according to the police—and the body of the attacker lay on the floor with a single bullet wound between his eyes. One shot had been fired, and it had been fatal. The attacker was a pro, a hired assassin, no real loss in the world, but because of Kaonite law Bryce was considered a murderer and was due to be put to death. Medane had helped the boy escape and set him up with a family in a wealthy district of NeoLondon.

But Bryce, being the type of stubborn, idealistic boy that he was, had run away from his family and joined the rebellion. Medane had kept an eye on him all his life, though Raven didn’t know it, and after the Graveyard Massacre, Medane had finally seen his chance to reunite with the boy. It took years, but eventually Raven joined Medane and Medane had been able to protect Raven properly.

Medane examined Raven’s bullet wound and a strange anger bubbled to the surface. No one should be allowed to hurt Raven. Then he met Raven’s eyes and when he saw the pain there, he knew Raven would have suffered a hundred bullets if it meant saving a single person in NeoLondon.

“Shouldn’t you be returning to your nation?” Raven asked emotionlessly.

“Our nation,” Medane corrected, not wanting Raven to distance himself too far even while understanding the instinct to run from the pain. “And yes, I’ll be leaving in a few hours. I wanted to talk to you.”

“So talk.”

“Raven, you are not to blame for this. Atheus has been waiting for an excuse to do this for years. I was blind not to see it before. This is my fault, not yours.”

Raven shook his head. “He attacked because I ran, because you helped me run.”

“He attacked because I interfered with his plans, yes. You had nothing to do with it.”

“But all those people,” his voice shook. “Who will mourn them? Who will bury them? Who will make sure this doesn’t happen again?”

Medane let out a sigh of relief. Those were good questions to ask. The other leaders were asking who would avenge their deaths, and how many of the enemy should die before they were even. The other leaders were as bloodthirsty as Atheus. There had been no war in decades and they were itching for one, but Raven was not. Raven wanted peace. He would be a good leader for the people. He considered telling Raven his plan, but bit his tongue at the last minute. Raven was too deep in his grief to see his way out. But he didn’t seem lost, as he had been after the Graveyard Massacre. That tragedy had completely undone him. This seemed like a setback, but he had friends and confidence to see him through. He would recover, and he would be a formidable president.

Scott slammed back a drink, feeling the burn wash down his throat into his belly. It made no difference. He held the glass loosely in his hand and was vaguely surprised when Medane filled it for him. He knocked it back again, and again the drink did nothing to dull his mind. All he could think about was his wife.

“Have you heard anything?” Medane asked.

“Nothing. She was on a shuttle headed out, but there’s no news if she reached the moon or if—if she was caught in the blast.”

Not just Lydia, he thought with a sinking heart. Their child as well. Unnamed, ungendered, undeveloped, but their child nonetheless. Having a child was such a privilege in this world, and it wasn’t right that it should be taken away so soon. And Lydia. Beautiful, angelic Lydia, helpless in the mesh seatbelt as the shuttle would have been rocked by the initial blast, then incinerated in the sky. Or perhaps the bomb had only shorted out the shuttle and she had fallen to her death, prey to gravity’s inevitable pull. What were the chances that she was far enough away? No one knew. The shuttle wasn’t due to reach the moon for another day, and Scott knew he wouldn’t survive the wait sober.

“Scott, I need your help,” Medane said. “The Eastern World wants to retaliate and I need to stop them.”

“They should retaliate! Don’t you understand what they just did? We have to show them that we aren’t afraid, that we won’t sit back and take it!”

“No,” Medane corrected. “We have to show them that we aren’t like them. A new president has to be appointed, and I want to put Raven forward as a candidate.”

Scott laughed. Raven, with his black past? But Medane seemed serious, so Scott thought about it. Raven was incredibly careful that none of his activities led back to him. He was the subject of numerous rumors, but police had never been able to pin anything to him except for whatever had happened in the Western World. But there were so many rumors. People were terrified of Raven. It would never work.

“You’d have to nominate him as Bryce, and that opens up whatever problems he has here in the West.”

“I can get around that,” Medane said. “But I want you to start floating the idea around in your circles, get people talking about him. Start a popular movement. I can persuade most of the leaders, but he’ll need popular support as well.”

Scott tipped his head back. Lydia would want it. She would want Bryce in charge of something, in a position to finally do all the good he was capable of. But it meant smoozing with politicians at a time when he was worrying about—and perhaps mourning—his wife. Was he up to the task?