New Olympus Saga (Book 1): Armageddon Girl by C.J. Carella Read Free Book Online Page B

overconfident. He never had a chance,” she concluded.
    Working with Cassandra is equal parts
helpful and maddening. Much of the time, she lets me know places to be or
people to find. Thanks to her, I know where to go to stop trouble or find
people who need killing, or at least need a good beating followed by some time
behind bars. That works great for me, since it gives me something to do and
people I can fuck up and rob with a clean conscience. But she often doesn’t tell
me the whole story beforehand, and things sometimes end up being more
complicated than they first appeared to be. She claims it’s the way her visions
work and that giving me too much information can actually change the future
events she has seen. The paranoid part of me thinks she just likes to make me
sweat.
    This last escapade made for a good
example. “Why didn’t you send me to her directly instead of having me beat the
location out of Giamatti? Not that I minded doing that. The fucker needed to be
put down.”
    “I wish I could have,” she replied. “The
problem is simple; it’s very difficult for me to sense her location. It’s very
difficult for me to perceive her at all, as a matter of fact.”
    The job had been weird from the get go,
even by our standards. Early last evening Cassandra had contacted me
telepathically, which was unusual in itself. She only does that during
emergencies, since she claims it takes a lot out of her. She told me about a
girl being abducted from a hospital, how many perps had been involved and the
name of the ringleader. I’d had to find the ringleader and get the girl’s
location from him. Normally Cassie would have just sent me to the address where
the girl was.
    “What do you mean? You saw her get
kidnapped, right?”
    “I wish I could show you how I see
things,” Cassandra said. She looked distracted, which happened when something
in the future caught her fancy. In the flickering candle light, her face looked
older than normal. She was clearly exhausted, which was rare enough to worry me
a little. “The future is fluid, and the very act of observing it often changes
it. I sensed this woman’s arrival, and how momentous it would be. Even then, I
could not see her directly. I’m seeing the effect she has on the world. She
leaves a… I guess you could call it a footprint, or an impression, on the very
fabric of reality.”
    “Great, that clears up everything. I
didn’t see any scuff marks on the fabric of reality when I saved her. Just an
unconscious Neo girl. I would have brought her here, but you told me not to.
Didn’t tell me why, either.”
    “I wish it were otherwise, but I cannot
have her near me. Her presence would completely overwhelm my senses. From the
moment of her arrival, my abilities have been affected.”
    “Her arrival? What do you mean?”
    “Whoever this girl is, she was not in
this world twenty-four hours ago.”
    “Nice. So she’s an alien?” That would be
a first. Some Neos claimed to be from other planets, but so far every single
one of them had turned out to be full of shit, batshit crazy, or both.
    “I only know she’s not from this world.”
    “So, like an alien. Or not,” I said.
“She’s a Neo, so she’s as human as I am. Unless aliens took her away and just
dropped her off. What else could she be? Time traveler? Visitor from a parallel
dimension?” You did get some of those every once in a while, and things usually
got very messy when they showed up.
    Cassandra shook her head. “I’m not sure.”
    “Now that’s something I don’t hear every
day.”
    “I know that her presence here is causing
the future to warp in ways I can only vaguely glimpse. Things are going to
change, perhaps radically, because of her. Things all around the world.”
    This was getting better and better.
“Sounds like a job for Ultimate and his super-pals. In case you’ve forgotten,
Cassie, I’m just a Type Two vigilante. Since when do I handle threats to the
world? I can do