The Central Series

The Academy

The Anathema

The Far Shores

The Outer Dark
(2015)

The Church of
Sleep (TBA)

Other Books by the Same Author

The Night Market

Unknown Kadath
Estates, Volume One:

Paranoid Magical
Thinking

Unknown Kadath
Estates, Volume Two:

Mysteries of Holly
Diem (2015)

Copyright
© 2011 by Zachary Rawlins

Cover photograph copyright © 2009 Claudio Arnese

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any
manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and
incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a
fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual
events is purely coincidental.

Published by ROUS Industries.

Oakland, California

spook_nine@yahoo.com

978-0-9837501-0-9

Cover design by Chloe Rawlins

Second Edition

For Chloe,

for everything.

Table of Contents

One. 6

Two. 10

Three. 15

Four. 20

Five. 26

Six. 30

Seven. 35

Eight 43

Nine. 49

Ten. 57

Eleven. 68

Twelve. 73

Thirteen. 79

Fourteen. 86

Fifteen. 98

Sixteen. 105

Seventeen. 115

Eighteen. 126

Nineteen. 147

Twenty. 162

Twenty-One. 169

Twenty-Two. 180

Twenty-Three. 197

Twenty-Four. 208

Twenty-Five. 219

Twenty-Six. 225

Twenty-Seven. 233

Twenty-Eight 245

Twenty-Nine. 256

Thirty. 263

Thirty-One. 272

One

The yellow moon hung above the city, fat and sick, but the wolves took no notice, at least
not that Mitsuru could see. Squinting through binoculars from the rooftop across
the empty street, she frowned, her hand absently seeking the bag at her feet,
as if to reassure herself that it remained within reach. The restricted field
of view and the necessity of refocusing were unfamiliar and frustrating, but
she was reluctant to use a surveillance protocol. The full moon was tomorrow,
and the Weir would be extraordinarily sensitive to such things.

Mitsuru shifted slightly to take the
pressure off her sore left knee, which had been bothering her since she scaled
the building. Through the lenses, she watched the pack lurking at the edge of a
deserted park; a half-dozen grey shapes, tongues lolling out, sitting patiently
like well-trained pets. Mitsuru found this behavior disturbing.

When the moon was full, Weir hunted
compulsively. They were as much slaves to the lunar cycles as were the tides.
Weir spent four days of every month trapped in their bestial form, berserk with
bloodlust. Weir were always dangerous, but they became even more so as a full
moon approached. Fortunately, they were also terribly predictable.

Weir hunted in packs, tearing anyone
foolish or unlucky enough to cross their path to pieces, in constant, lethal
motion. Like all wolves, they sought the weakest available prey: the old,
infirm, and very young. Even at the height of their powers, under the sway of
the dictatorial moon, they would avoid attacking anyone they judged capable of
putting up a fight, unless starvation or necessity dictated otherwise.

What they did not do, to the best of
Mitsuru’s knowledge, was lay in wait, particularly during their monthly spells.
Typically, Weir ranged across great distances with their loping stride,
endlessly hunting. This particular pack of Weir had watched five pedestrians
walk past the entrance of the park in the last two hours, but made no move to
pursue or attack. The Weir sat quietly under the trees or nestled in the brush,
barely visible even to Mitsuru. They did not wander, fight among each other, or
move to relieve themselves. They were as still as guard dogs, eyes reflecting
the yellow of the moon back into the night, muzzles laying on forepaws.

Weir were capable of many things,
but planning an ambush was not among them.

Mitsuru considered contacting
Central for advice or backup, or both. She would sorely need help if she
decided to intervene. There was no way for her to deal with the six Weir she
could see, and there was no guarantee that was all of them. Concealed
reinforcements were not a typical consideration dealing with Weir, but
everything about this particular pack seemed off.

She decided to wait and watch – she
was too close to the Weir to open an Etheric connection without them noticing,
and would have to retreat some distance to escape detection.

Even without the benefit of the
Analytic Pool, Mitsuru was certain an outside party was running the Weir. It
had to be someone with the kind of power to coerce or intimidate a pack of
Weir. This had to be a hit – Weir weren’t good for anything more complicated
than killing. Mitsuru wondered, not for the first time, whether there was a
Witch in the vicinity, and worried.

Mitsuru massaged the cramp in her
leg and leaned her waist against the concrete barrier skirting the edge of the
rooftop. The jacket and shin-length pants she wore seemed heavy enough when she
left Central, as the night was mild, but standing motionless on the rooftop had
chilled her, and the cool wind was beginning to worm its way inside her
clothes. As a concession to the weather, she tugged the hood of her jacket over
her ponytail to sit awkwardly across the top of her head. While Mitsuru was
adjusting the hood to accommodate her hair, she noticed the boy.

There was nothing remarkable about
him – teenaged, slim and rangy, with dark brown hair that needed a trim. He was
dressed in a scruffy hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans. Even at distance, it was
obvious that his mind was elsewhere – eyes glued to his feet, his pace slow and
aimless, headphones over his ears. He was no different from half the
pedestrians that had passed the park that evening.

No different, that was, except to
the Weir.

Panning her binoculars, Mitsuru saw
the pack stretching, yawning, and grimacing. Moving with uncharacteristic
caution, the Weir fanned out across the brush on the eastern side of the park,
near the entrance where the boy stood – unaware of how many eyes were focused
on him at that moment, and how hungry some of them were.

Mitsuru was not an Analyst.
Nevertheless, she knew that all of her options had narrowed dramatically –
there was no way for her to remain concealed, unless she wanted to watch the
Weir tear the boy to pieces. Anyone important enough to merit corralling a pack
of Weir was too important for her to let die. Without immediate support from
Central, however, there was little that Mitsuru could do to prevent it.

There was nothing for it. Mitsuru
sat down, leaning her aching back against the barrier, and let her eyes roll
back in her head. Under the best circumstances, Mitsuru estimated that she
could handle two Weir in close combat, certainly no more than three. These were
hardly the best circumstances, alone and under a nearly-full moon. If Central
could not provide support, then intervening would almost certainly be suicidal.

Part of her mind registered the howling
of the Weir, but there was no time for worry as she forced her way through the
grey currents of the Ether. Mitsuru followed a red thread she had left behind
her, a guide back to the pulsating core in the depths of the fog, the brilliant
and distant lights of Central. The Ether was frigid and Mitsuru felt her
distant body reflexively shudder, the pain of the cold knifing its way through
her brain, a calculated agony. She pushed along with the current, upward along
the red string, the subtle and oppressive weight of the Ether pulling against
her. For a moment, her world was nothing but the rushing grey currents, and she
felt a curious temptation to remain in that state, as she always did. Then, at
the edge of her consciousness, the lightest possible touch, like a fingertip
brushing the back of her neck. Contact.

Central…

Echoes across the grey vastness that
encompassed her, which, paradoxically, she encompassed.

Mitzi?

A slight delay in the response due
to her lack of natural telepathic affinity. The voice was small, as if it came
from high above, but perfectly clear through the roaring in her head. It
belonged to Alistair, her mentor and the originator of her ridiculous nickname.
Mitsuru assumed that was an American thing.

Central, prepare for upload…

The tendrils of Mitsuru’s thoughts
climbed toward Central, following the red string upwards to the light, mooring,
attaching her to the glow. The roaring of the Ether subsided a bit, then,
within the halo of Central’s influence, the muted currents passing through her
being effortlessly.

Ready when you are, Mitzi.

His reply was prompt, but held the
hint of a question. Typically, an Operator delivered their field reports after
they returned to Central – more effort was required to upload directly from the
field. Mitsuru had no time for explanations, so she rapidly composed her mind,
reviewing the events of the last few moments until she had what she hoped was a
clear narrative, then reached for the tendril of light extending out of the
halo of Central, allowing it to touch her mind.

The union was invasive, a momentary
sense of the alien, a passing shudder of revulsion. The pain was sharp, sudden,
and over so quickly that she had no time to scream. Somewhere far beneath
Mitsuru, on a windy rooftop, her body convulsed in sympathy, in memory of pain
that was already gone.

Alistair was a powerful telepath and
a remarkable handler; there was virtually no lag while he processed the data
through Central, queried various databases, and then pressed the Analytic Pool
for local probability lines. His response came down, cool and authoritative,
moments after Mitsuru had completed the upload. He spoke formally, for the
record.

Operator Aoki, you are cleared to
engage at your discretion. We have backup en route to your position. Estimated
time of arrival between three and five minutes, should you choose to intervene.

Mitsuru was surprised. There was no
possibility that Central would attempt to open a route through the Ether, not
to suppress a single pack of Weir. Operators who could perform apport protocols
were in short supply and high demand. There must have been an Operator
somewhere nearby, close enough to intervene. The chances of that happening by
coincidence were miniscule.

Clarify, Central. I require
situational analysis.

Another brief silence while Alistair
consulted the Analytic Pool.

Operator Aoki, according to
projections, if you hold the Weir back from their target for a minimum of three
minutes, the chances of a successful intervention are well within operational tolerances.
If you cannot meet or exceed this standard, then your involvement should be
limited to observation.

Mitsuru paused to take stock of her
current strength. She was uncertain whether she could hold off the Weir for the
required three minutes, but there was an urgency to Alistair’s thoughts that
made her think this was something big.

Whatever was going on, she decided,
it was important enough, in the eyes of Central, to merit risking a provisional
Operator. It was important enough to make the Weir act in this highly abnormal
manner. Whatever else was true, Mitsuru needed an important success if she was
going to continue to work in the field. For her own sake, and for the sake of
her mentor.

The decision took only a few seconds
to make.

I will engage, Central. It is
unlikely, however, that I will be able to hold out for three minutes.

His promise was immediate and
reassuring, because it was Alistair.

I will do what I can to expedite,
Mitzi. Do you require any protocol downloads?

Mitsuru was surprised again. Clearly
there was more going on here than she had realized, if Central had authorized
protocol downloads for a routine field operation.

Negative, Control. Engaging.

She was already falling, away from
the halo, through the grey currents, following the red string back to her body,
back to the rooftop, to the boy and the wolves.

Good luck, Mitzi…

The concern Mitsuru sensed in
Alistair’s thoughts was obliterated by a rush of sensation as she was jolted
back into her body, the sheer nausea and tactile euphoria of physical
existence.

Two

Alex walked with his head down, his eyes on his feet, not thinking too hard about
where he was going as long as it was away from school. His headphones were deafeningly
loud, and the music gave the world a surreal and almost cinematic feel. He took
a certain satisfaction in that. The streetlights bled pools of light on the
sidewalk, yellow like the moon, as Alex threaded a path between them, trying to
stay in the puddles of dark between the sulfur halos.

He was walking because he had
nothing better to do. One more absence from afternoon classes would not make a
whole lot of difference – in fact, his chances of joining the rest of his class
as a senior next year were kind of up in the air, due entirely to lack of
effort on his part. Not because of his grades, of course. He had been careful
to be an average student, no matter the subject. However, his attendance had
slipped from ‘barely acceptable’ last year to ‘frequently absent without
reason’ this year, and he was on academic probation. At the very least, that
meant summer school. Alex did not want any more school than he had already.

It was not so much the classes that
he wanted to avoid, he thought, glancing at the windows of a used-clothing shop
he passed, fixated on the way the glass caught and reflected the jaundiced
light. He mainly wanted to avoid the people.

As far back as he could remember,
Alex had wanted to go somewhere else, a place no one knew him. Somewhere they
hadn’t heard about his parents or the fire, where he could leave behind the
whole ugly story. After his grandmother had died, he had almost done it, too.
He had even bought bus tickets to Los Angeles, and spent several pleasant
evenings trying to figure a way to fit his meager possessions into a single
duffel bag. It had been comforting, puzzling through what he would need and
what he could do without, a little bit like freedom. He had known, even as he
packed to leave, that he would not go through with it.

It was all right to admit it, Alex
decided, kicking the crushed remains of an aluminum can into the gutter – he
was afraid to leave. This town – a wretched suburb in the orbit of Bakersfield
– was the only place he had ever been, unless he counted the places where he
had been locked up. The idea of going somewhere no one knew him was a dream
that Alex played with on the bad days, a comforting fantasy. The reality of
leaving terrified him for reasons he did not fully understand. Outside of the
total social isolation, Alex figured, his life right now was pretty
comfortable. He had spent the better part of eight years alone, which was
nearly long enough for Alex to convince himself that he didn’t mind it.

He was surprised to find himself
standing at the entrance to the park. Alex figured that his body had brought
him here, the park where he often slept when ditching school, on some form of
autopilot. He had originally found the park while cutting class one day, in an
anonymous neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac. He did not know what the
park’s name was, or if it even had a name. It wasn’t the worst destination he
could have picked, actually, as the place was deserted and he wanted to sit
down somewhere. Alex turned off his mp3 player, but left his earbuds in, as he
headed through the park gates.

He trudged along the muddy sidewalk
bordering the algae-choked small lake, careful to keep his grey sneakers dry,
not entirely sure why he bothered. He reached a play structure in the middle of
sand pit, and sat down. He leaned his back up against the aluminum bars, closed
his eyes, and tried not to think about anything. Everything would be okay as
long as he didn’t think about what he was going to do next, once he graduated,
after school was over.

If he considered that particular
conundrum, then he would start to panic. Because he did not have a clue.

The lake smelled awful; the marshy,
rotten-egg stink that was probably the reason Alex had the park to himself so
often. It didn’t bother him much. Alex had low expectations in general, and
life had generally obliged him by meeting his expectations. The important thing
was the park’s emptiness, not the smell of the bird shit-saturated water. Alex
tried not to wonder, to keep his mind blank. It was a skill honed through years
of confinement and observation, when he could not sleep any longer. It was
usually easy to empty his head, but tonight nothing seemed to work. The more he
tried to quiet his mind, the further it managed to wander.

Alex looked out at the foul water,
the few stars peaking reluctantly through the smog, the cluster of bare
branches and tangled briar along the fringes of the park, and felt profoundly
sorry for himself. Normally he would have crawled inside the play structure for
a nap, but he wasn’t tired enough to sleep right now.

He was startled from his reverie by
something that was not a sound. It couldn’t have been, because they made no
noise. Nevertheless, something snapped Alex from his maudlin introspection,
made him open his eyes and stare out suspiciously at the half-dark. Then he
took a second, harder look, after the first revealed nothing.

As soon as he saw something, Alex
wished he had not looked at all.

Near the edge of the park, something
was creeping out from the brush; actually, Alex realized that it was a number
of somethings. Large and long-limbed, too big to be
dogs, moving on all fours. Silent grey shapes slunk out of the scrub and across
the mud and dead grass, eyes shining in the long shadows of dusk.

Alex was surprised to feel no fear
whatsoever, only a vague sense of ridiculousness. This is it, world, he thought
madly. Mauled by… are they wolves? Wolves in a city park, in the early evening,
wearing grey sneakers that he had bought online and still wasn’t totally sure
that he liked. He could imagine the gossip the next day. “Oh, Alex Warner, you
know, that fucked-up kid, did you hear? Got eaten by fucking wolves.”

He could not tear his gaze away from
the lead-grey form, with its terrible feral eyes, moving toward him with what
seemed like deliberate slowness. It crossed the distance between them with a
graceful, compact stride, pink tongue darting out of the side of its mouth,
running across a row of sharp yellow teeth.

Alex stepped back involuntarily,
colliding with the metal bars of the climbing structure. A sharp pain radiated
out from his shoulder and elbow. He closed his eyes and waited to feel teeth,
then, waited to feel hot breath on his neck and what he imagined would be
horrible suffering – and he felt a consuming anxiety wash over him, a raw tide
of resentment against the injustice of the entire situation. Eaten by wolves.
Or did they just bite you to death? Did they actually eat you? Alex wasn’t
sure, but it didn’t matter much. Fucking wolves.

Not one thing, Alex thought numbly,
not a single event in my entire life has ever made sense. His whole body was
numb and trembling, waiting for an impact, waiting for rending teeth and
protracted agony. Not one thing had made sense.

He waited for what felt like a long
time before he cautiously opened his eyes to see what was taking so long.

He must have been expecting an
intervention on some level. How else could Alex explain his strange acceptance
of the Japanese woman running toward him through the center of the wolf pack
with a semiautomatic pistol in either hand? She moved fast, faster than he
would have thought possible across the muddy ground, but that didn’t faze him
much either. He could even accept that she appeared to be shooting in two
directions with what seemed to be some accuracy – one of the wolves collapsed
in a pool of blood and filthy water, while another crawled toward the brush on
its belly, dragging wounded rear legs through the mud. Alex could not explain
his lack of surprise. Maybe years of science fiction films had prepared him for
something like this.

Alex could swear, even at a
distance, that the woman was smiling a little bit. For reasons he could not
comprehend, that freaked him right the fuck out.

For a second, anyway, until Alex
remembered the wolves that were trying to eat him.

The woman crossed the final distance
between them in a few bounding steps, then stopped close enough that Alex could
make out her features – black hair in a high ponytail, sharp Asian features,
those weird pants that cut off at the mid-calf, and red lips curled into what
was unmistakably a smile. At least a few years older than him, but Alex
couldn’t say for sure.

“Hey…”

Alex cursed his lameness.
Unfortunately, his second attempt at speech was no improvement.

“Hey, what the fuck?”

The woman rolled her eyes in his
direction, and Alex immediately regretted saying anything. Which he had to
admit was par for the course.

She came up to his shoulder, making
her the shortest person he had ever found intimidating. She was lithe and
compact, underneath a denim jacket heavily splattered with mud, and what Alex
could only assume was werewolf blood. Despite the situation, Alex found himself
wondering how old she was.

Then he noticed her eyes. They were
startling – impossibly brilliant red irises set in grotesquely bloodshot eyes.

“That was amazing…”

He tried for any sort of facial
expression, but did not feel that he accomplished much.

The woman shook her head at him and sighed,
ejecting the magazines from both of her pistols directly onto the mud. She
pulled two new magazines from a side pocket and slotted them into place without
seeming to pay any attention to the process. Her eyes lingered on him for a
moment, and Alex was certain that she was going to yell at him – but then she
turned her back to him to face out toward the wolf-filled park.

“The Weir aren’t dead, boy,” she
said, her tone flat and lacking any inflection. “Stay close if you want to
survive.”

Alex followed her gaze and realized
that she was right. The four remaining wolves spread out in front of them,
about fifty feet distant, advancing cautiously. Another group appeared to be
descending from the scrub into the park proper, moving more rapidly in their direction.

“Oh shit,” Alex said softly,
realizing that he had assumed, with no basis whatsoever, that he was safe the
moment the woman had showed up, guns blazing.

Stupid. He had no good reason to be
hopeful.

“Um, can’t you just, you know, shoot
them?”

Alex heard the hysteria in his
voice, and he hated it. Sweat poured down his back, and when the wind hit, he
was abruptly very cold. He gritted his teeth, and attempted to stop shivering.
When that didn’t work, all Alex could do was convince himself that he was shaking
from the cold.

“I did,” she said, over her
shoulder, in the same flat voice. “Those aren’t wolves, boy. They won’t die or
run away from a gunshot wound, or a few. And I don’t have enough bullets or
time to kill all of them.”

Alex took a tentative step toward
her back, and then, when she didn’t lash out at him, another. The part of his
mind that seemed completely unconcerned with his impending death wondered how
long her hair was when she didn’t have it tied back, and what it would feel
like if he touched it. He shook his head, trying to clear it of the suicidal
triviality.

“Um, well, can I, that is… can I
help you?” Alex said nervously, his voice squeaking when she glanced coolly
over her shoulder at him. He waited a moment for her to respond, and then
continued in a panic when she did not.

“I mean, I’ve never shot a gun or
anything, but maybe I could…” Alex trailed off, and struggled to find a
suitable way to complete the sentence. “I dunno, distract them or something? I
mean, they’re here for me, right? If I run off that way, they’ll follow me –
maybe you could get out of here and, um, go for help…”

For a moment, he was sure that she
would laugh. He almost wanted to laugh himself. She had run through the park
shooting at wolves with both hands, without needing to aim. Who could possibly
help her? Moreover, had he really offered himself as bait?

“No.”

Her voice was flat, and the answer
came without a moment’s hesitation. Alex looked down in shame, his face
burning. What had he been thinking? Obviously, he was dead weight in this
scenario. Alex wished he would simply shut up and let himself be rescued.

When he looked up, he was surprised
to see her glance at him over her shoulder, the pistols in her hands
autonomously tracking the circling wolves. For the first time when she looked
at him, she did not seem angry. As angry, anyway.

“That’s more than I expected from
you,” she said in a softer voice, turning back to the advancing pack. “But, we
cannot hope to run, not now.”

“Then what…”

Alex started to speak, and then
trailed off, not even sure what he was going to ask. Despite the advancing
wolves, what she said hit him right in the chest, and he felt a mad urge to
rush out, to put himself between this stranger and the wolves, solely to prove
her right, that he had something to offer. He could only marvel at his ability
to think about such things in the face of impending doom.

“I will buy us time,” the woman
said, not looking back. “Stay behind me.”

She pointed both of her guns
straight ahead, at the closest of the grey shapes, but the sound when she fired
was much less dramatic than what Alex had expected, and he felt inexplicably
disappointed.

Three

Twenty bullets. Two minutes, five seconds. At least
six Weir currently visible and more movement in the brush at the park’s edge.
One trembling teenager, trying not to cry, standing right behind her.

These numbers defined the current
parameters of Mitsuru’s world.

The firearm protocol she had
downloaded before she left Central was still active, running an auto-targeting
subroutine that saved her the trouble of aiming her twin Kimber
1911 semiautomatics. Rose-tinted boxes and text cluttered her vision,
ballistics data and distances, potential threats, angles of attack. With the
protocol activated, she knew with a steely confidence that she could fire all
twenty remaining rounds and expect to hit every time.

Mitsuru did not need input from a
protocol to know that the situation was hopeless. She had enough rounds to stop
the first two Weir as they came at her, probably. She could handle one more in
close combat, possibly. She had made a reckless decision to engage the Weir
alone, and badly underestimated their numbers. Two minutes may as well have
been an eternity.

If they ran, the Weir would overtake
them in the mud before they even made it to the path, never mind getting out of
the park. She did not have the firepower to kill all of them, and fighting Weir
hand-to-hand was just short of suicide. They were very strong, and inhumanly
resistant to injury. She had another two or three downloaded protocols she
could activate in her current state of fatigue, but their combat value was
negligible.

Reengineered as a logic-processing
engine, Mitsuru's mind was a web of equations and calculated assumptions,
permeated with Etheric tools and machinery, capable of rapid analysis and
projection based on probability measurement. She was, in many ways, an Etheric
computer – not an Analyst, obviously, but rather a field strategist. She was a
node on a wide-ranging and invisible Etheric Network; a precision device,
capable of thinking or killing her way out of almost any situation, sifting
through the probability fields for the most desirable outcome, adapting to her
surroundings with rapidly evolving mathematics and an overriding drive for
survival.

The only favorable outcome she could
foresee was her backup arriving early, almost immediately. She gave them no
more than a minute, optimistically, and in most of the scenarios she ran, less
than thirty seconds.

Mitsuru let all of it go with one
long, slow exhale, and then leveled her pistols at the closest Weir. She fired
off a couple of rounds to slow it down, as a warning, the .45 caliber hollow
points shattering a forepaw and sending it tumbling into the mud. The Weir
weren’t aware that she was nearly out of ammunition, and while they would not
have been afraid even if she were wearing a half-dozen bandoliers, they might
slow down a bit while jockeying for the best attack position. Being shot hurts,
after all, even for a werewolf.

Older Operators claimed that silver
Weir were particularly cunning and long-lived. Certainly, the Weir who flanked
them fit the description. It was powerful enough to conceal its Etheric
Signature until it was almost on top of them, and smart enough to use the lake
as cover, bursting from the waters and charging up the bank at them. Mitsuru
spun to face it, and then grimly readjusted her survival projections, diving
for the boy and firing with her other hand.

She was too late, and she knew it
already.

The silver beast was a huge, vile
thing, teeth protruding from a blunt snout, ears shredded to nubs, its coat
matted and patchy. The Weir was close enough that Mitsuru could smell it, the
musk and embedded odors of blood and decay. It was old and fast, moving in the
halfway form that some Weir could assume, a bipedal wolf-thing, knuckles
dragging like an ape, fingers tipped with cruel talons. It came out of the
stinking water of the lake at a run, making no noise other than the heavy slap
of its back paws against the muddy banks.

The boy heard the Weir approach and
he flinched, just enough to keep the first lunge from tearing him in half. The
Weir struck, raking the boy down his back with its claws, along the spine. The
boy fell forward with a whimper, a gout of blood from his back splashing
Mitsuru’s face and clothes in a thin stream as he fell. The Weir followed him
down, clutching and tearing.

Mitsuru moved, knowing she would be
too slow, that there was no chance she could intervene before the boy was
mauled. She felt neither hope nor despair. Her calculations were definitive and
implacable.

And, for the first time that she
could remember, utterly wrong.

She moved as fast as she could,
covering the few feet between them in a split second, the Weir’s jaw clamped
onto the boy’s forearm as he struggled weakly. It was toying with him, she
knew. It could have simply torn the arm to shreds, but it liked the way he
cried and screamed. The overlay of the ballistics protocol burned like
rose-tinted magnesium in her vision the closer she got. She did not have time
to wonder about that.

Mitsuru leapt over the hulking
hindquarter of the Weir, landing on the far side with bent knees, dropping into
a crouch, twisting her upper body to place the muzzles of both of her pistols
securely behind the Weir’s left ear. The wolf meant to turn; she could see the
muscles in its neck and legs tense as it prepared to throw itself off the boy
and onto her. All it had time to do was whine and twitch as Mitsuru discharged
both pistols twice, a thick wetness coating her arms and the front of her
chest. The Weir’s innards smelled awful, copper and rotten meat.

Kicking the limp Weir aside, she
crouched beside the now silent boy, one gun tracking the cautiously advancing
pack, her other hand hovering above his chest, an Etheric Probe extending
invisibly from her palm, designed to relay his vitals to Central. If the boy
was dead, or certain to die, then there was a chance that she could withdraw
and live.

The Etheric Probe activated as soon
as it brushed the boy’s chest, with an intensity Mitsuru had never previously
experienced. The connection immediately became white-hot, a glowing thread
linking her hand with his sternum, burning with data and power. The human part
of Mitsuru’s mind reeled.

Power? It could not be. The probe
was not meant to relay energy; it should have been a purely analytic operation.
Moreover, where was the power coming from in the first place? And so much of it!
The part of Mitsuru’s mind that never stopped analyzing, however, had no time
to worry about niceties like that.

The boy would not die if he received
medical attention in the next hour; the probability thread was very vivid.
Whatever was happening, the boy was not a target of opportunity, he was an asset,
and he represented enough potential to merit the attentions of an entire pack
of Weir. If someone wanted him dead this badly, then Central needed the boy
even more. Somewhere deep in the surgically altered spaces of her brain, tissue
embedded with Etheric machinery executed instructions, determined parameters
and threaded probabilities, then offered up a suggestion.

Mitsuru called home.

Contacting Central through the Ether
was not difficult, but it did take a few moments of concentration, and she
briefly lost both awareness and control of her body. At least, it did under
normal circumstances.

She was fully aware of herself at
the park, the bleeding boy half-embedded in the mud, the howls of the wolves as
they gingerly closed the distance between them. Another part of her mind raced
through the currents of the Ether, normally so suffocating and oppressive,
running along the red string toward the dim lights of Central so fast it
astounded her. She had never previously threaded the Ether in that manner, even
under ideal circumstances. Part of her was terrified, but another part exulted.

Alistair!

She cried his name out, her mind
breaking the barrier of Central’s halo like glass.

Mitzi? How did you –

There is no time for that. How long
until backup arrives?

Less than a minute. We are moving as
fast as we can, Mitzi.

She ran options, scenarios, and
probabilities. One stood out.

Barrier protocol. Now.

She could feel Alistair hesitate.

Mitzi, there is no time to complete
the download. It takes more than thirty seconds…

Alistair, I do not have time for
this right now. Trust me. Start the download.

There was another brief hesitation,
perhaps Alistair consulting the Analytic Pool, then confirmation.

All right, Mitzi. Your call.
Download commencing.

She did not wait for the download to
start. Mitsuru had already begun to return to her body, moving along the red
string, so fast it felt like freefall. She crashed into her body with a
sickening sensation, then the protocol hit her, and she felt like screaming,
raw logic structures descending on her mind, displacing, enlightening. It was a
migraine headache, a cluster of migraines localized in her forebrain. A wave of
unutterable brilliance passed through her, illuminating, making her vision warp
and blur.

She did not have time for that.
Mitsuru dropped her guns and dug a short knife from her belt sheath. She heard
the Weir howl and knew that they had started to move, even without confirmation
from the acoustic analysis of the half-forgotten firearms protocol. She slashed
one palm with the knife, deeper than she had meant to, and then the other, and
then dropped it. There was no pain, only blood spilling from the wounds,
propelled by her frantically beating heart.

Mitsuru slumped to her knees beside
the boy, and then planted both of her hands palms down into the already bloody
mud on either side of his head. The pain of the rapidly downloading protocol
was intense, but it flared even brighter when she forced it to activate,
ripping away her vision and replacing it with a field of ruby-tinted darkness.
Her palms ached, and she could barely feel her fingers, as they sank into the
viscous mud. There was fantastic pressure in her sinuses, a tingling sensation
throughout her body, and then her eyes rolled back in her head.

The energy bled out of her, through
the wounds in her palms, and her hands burned where they touched the mud. Every
nerve sang as Mitsuru forced power through her hands, through the blood-borne
nanites, into a dome she visualized, a thin red transparency that surrounded
her and the boy, perfectly round and perhaps a meter across. The migraine
threatened to consume her thoughts, as the incomplete protocol sputtered and
whined. The power she forced into the protocol struggled to find an outlet,
attempting to discharge to relieve the unbelievable pressure. Submerged in the
cold mud, her hands burned. She held the structure of the protocol in her mind,
aligning and maintaining the energies by force of will.

The first Weir to hit the barrier
crumpled, going down in a tangle of teeth and paws, bones cracking against the
translucent field. Mitsuru screamed as it hit, screamed as power flared through
the incomplete protocol, but she was unaware of it. The whole of her
consciousness focused on channeling power into maintaining the damaged
structure of the protocol. Whatever the source, the mysterious power seemed
inexhaustible, and she made herself into a conduit for it, a preferential
pathway for the available energy.

One half-human paw on the back of
its damaged head, the silver Weir rose to his feet and paused, staring at
Mitsuru in the mud a few yards away, her body wracked with effort and pain,
sprawled across the boy, and the translucent red shield over them.

“Little one,” it said, walking
toward them, his voice a repulsive parody of human speech. “Little one, you
cannot hold that barrier for long. It is tearing you apart, I can see it.”

If it expected a response, it did
not get one. It studied the shivers that racked Mitsuru’s body. Her nose poured
blood unheeded, her face pale and her eyes screwed shut.

“It will fail, girl, it will fail
without me even touching it. And when it does,” it said, lolling its long black
tongue over its tangled teeth, “we will hurt you. First, we’re going to tear
that boy apart. Then you…”

It leaned down closer then, almost
touching the barrier, its breath foul and hot on the back of Mitsuru’s neck.

“We’ll take our time with you. You
will wish you were dead long before we let you die. Think about that behind
your dissolving barrier.”

The thing’s tongue extended out
several inches, black and viscous, caressing the barrier obscenely, leaving a
trail of mucus and spittle behind.

Mitsuru’s fingers dug into the mud.
Her nosebleed had become a stream now, the blood flowing steadily onto the boy,
onto the ground around him. The shield flickered, not due to lack of power, but
rather because the incomplete protocol had begun to disintegrate.

“Enough.”

Mitsuru felt, rather than saw, the
arc of blue-white flame that struck the silver Weir, igniting his fur and
hurling him, bones cracking, back toward the scrub and brush. The shield around
them flickered and then dissolved, as Mitsuru allowed the protocol to dissipate
and then rolled herself off the boy and onto her back. Lying on the mud, she
forced her eyes open and saw the Operator standing over her through the veil of
the migraine.

Mitsuru did not recognize the man,
though she had a nagging feeling she had seen him somewhere before. He was
middle-aged, Caucasian, with a serious, plain face and dark hair. He wore an
overcoat, damp and heavy for the season, and an expensive-looking brown suit
beneath. In his right hand, he held something that looked very much like a
metal umbrella handle, a blue-white stream of flame running out of the
elongated end, dripping to the ground and pooling there, beside his
immaculately polished shoes.

The barrier protocol diminished to
fragments and half-remembered images, but Mitsuru’s headache remained blinding and
her nose continued to gush. She managed to force herself up to her knees,
though it took both hands and a concerted effort. She put two fingers against
the wrist of the fallen boy, too tired even to summon a probe.

“Relax, Operator Aoki,” the man said
crisply, his expression unreadable. “I will finish this. Do you have the
strength to contact Central for retrieval? They’ve prepped an extraction for
you.”

Mitsuru stared at her wounded hand,
wondering. She realized that somehow she did, and managed a nod.

“Then go,” the man said curtly,
raising the bar over his head, the liquid fire trailing behind him in a
continuous wave; like a long whip, or more accurately, like the line of a
fly-fisherman, extending out yards behind him in elaborate coils, a sinuous and
lazy exaggeration of his movements.

Mitsuru reached through the Ether as
the line struck the first of the Weir, snapping forward with a terrifying,
unavoidable momentum. Wherever it touched, the line scorched, reducing the
wolves to ash and smoking meat, sending up gouts of steam from the hissing mud.
He drew the line back over his head in a high, slow arc, and then brought it
whipping back in a wide sweep, parallel with the ground. The night was suddenly
bright and crackling with flame.

Already, the park was devastated,
and filled with howling, terrified Weir. It was the single most flagrant
display of the Salamander Protocol that Mitsuru had ever witnessed, and even
through the pain of the broken protocol, she felt a profound envy.

Then she hit the white of Central,
and a moment later, both she and the boy were gone, into concerned voices, soft
light, and hospital sounds.

Four

“What, then? Are you suggesting that we should kill him?”

Gaul tried to be patient. Vladimir was
badly arthritic, and during the cold months, he was inclined to be
cantankerous. He was not trying to be difficult, Gaul reminded himself, he just
didn’t have the patience for complicated answers right now.

Gaul pushed his wire-frame glasses
up with one finger, sighed, and tried again to explain the scenario to the two
other conscious men in the room.

“I’m not saying we should kill him,
Vlad, I’m saying that is one of the solutions that some of the cartels will
come to. Others, the majority probably, will want to recruit him, but I’m
certain that all would rather see him dead than see him join another.”

“I thought you said he wasn’t fully
activated yet?”

Michael was incredulous, but Gaul’s
nod was matter-of-fact and somber.

“It’s true, but that makes this all
the more terrifying. This child,” he said, glancing meaningfully at the mess of
tubes and IVs that occupied the room with them, “isn’t more than partially
activated and he’s already the most powerful catalyst we’ve ever seen.”

“I don’t see what’s so remarkable,”
Vladimir complained, stroking his trimmed white beard. “The Witches can
accomplish the same things, with their circles, sharing power.”

“Operator Aoki has never previously
used this particular barrier protocol in the field, and she didn’t have time to
complete the download before she activated it. She maintained it,” Gaul
explained, “for the better part of a minute, despite the Weir’s attacks, and as
far as we can deduce, it was because she checked that boy to see if he was
alive. Witches can transfer power, yes, but it takes a number of trained
participants, and even then, the cumulative effect is modest. Brief contact
with this boy appears to have temporarily increased Mitsuru Aoki’s abilities by
a degree of magnitude.”

Gaul paused while the two men
digested this, and then glanced at the boy, laboriously breathing in an induced
coma.

“Even so…”

Vladimir’s voice was unsteady. Gaul
shook his head and cut him off.

“The boy hasn’t even had time to
fully assimilate to the changes that have been made in him, Vlad,” Gaul said
earnestly, “we are only seeing his potential. There is an excellent chance that
this catalytic effect isn’t his primary ability – I honestly can’t see what
this boy might become when he matures.”

Michael closed his eyes, and leaned
over the boy’s bed, palms down. His arms crawled with black tattoo work, in a
vaguely tribal style.

“You’re right, Gaul,” he said softly
a few moments later, his eyes closed. “This kid is only beginning to activate. Even
so, he’s radiating raw power, and a substantial amount of it.”

Michael frowned.

“I can’t access it, though. It seems
to be free-floating, but it isn’t responding to me…”

Vladimir closed his eyes, and
muttered to himself briefly, then shook his head.

“It’s based on affinity.”

Michael lowered his hands and opened
his eyes to look at Gaul.

“You think?”

“Yeah,” Gaul said reasonably.
“Witches can’t even form a circle unless they have a very strong rapport – we
aren’t talking about vampirism – this must be a consensual process. The boy
manufactures and multiplies power, gentlemen, but consciously or unconsciously,
he’s exercising discretion about who can use it.”

Michael sat back down next to Gaul,
his brow creased with worry.

“Gaul, what is Mitsuru’s current
classification?”

Gaul did not need to reach for the
slaved Etheric tendril that trailed invisibly behind him to access the
information – he had wondered the same thing earlier that morning.

“She was Class E, at her last
evaluation, with upward potential.”

“Operating a partial protocol,”
Michael said quietly, looking at his old friend with sad eyes, “would be an
M-Class operation, assuming it is even possible, correct?”

Gaul nodded his agreement.

“Are you saying,” Vladimir asked
incredulously, looking over at the comatose boy, “that this child is already an
M-Class Operator? Impossible!”

“No, you’re right Vlad, he isn’t an
Operator at all – he’s just a boy who seems to be capable, without activation,
of M-Class operations,” Gaul said gravely.

Vladimir leaned back in his chair
and whistled.

“I would not think such a thing
possible. That is bad…”

“I’m afraid it gets worse,” Gaul
said, again pushing up his glasses, a tick that Michael knew grew more
pronounced when he was under stress. “I’m afraid that this boy is anything but
your average, ordinary child.”

“How so?”

“Alexander Warner,” Gaul said,
nodding to indicate the boy. “His father was an abusive drunk – a number of
domestic disturbance and family complaints on record, multiple DUIs, all
resolved without jail time. Some bruises noticed at school when Alex was
twelve, occasional visits from Child Protective Services over the years. All to
no avail. Alexander’s father met his end in a fire six years ago, a fire that
also took the life of Alexander’s mother and sister.”

“So? That is bad, yes, but…”

“Alexander set the fire,” Gaul said
softly, “or at least he believes he did – I lifted the impressions from him
earlier, when I did a fairly deep scan. He spent a number of years in
institutions, before his release into his grandmother’s care two years ago. She
died, of natural causes, last August.”

Michael looked at the boy
sympathetically, while Vladimir shook his head and muttered darkly.

“He has been on his own, when he
wasn’t institutionalized. The community he returned to blamed and ostracized
him, and he was small enough to be the target of violence and abuse in the
juvenile facility. Alexander withdrew, almost completely – no real incidents,
no run-ins with the law, nothing like that. However, when I probed him earlier,
I did not find a single connection, not one person with whom he shares an
emotional bond. He has never had a friend, never so much as touched a girl’s
hand. I am not sure he is even capable of forming bonds, or caring about other
people, at this point. He’s damaged goods, gentlemen, and we’ve been down this
road before.”

“Did he actually kill his family?”

Michael seemed curious, but not
particularly troubled.

“You made it sound a bit doubtful.”

Gaul shrugged.

“I can’t be certain – the impressions
are too vague. He thinks he did, and he thinks he is glad he did. He remembers
closing the front door behind him and walking away from a burning house. I
would assume that it is likely true.” Gaul frowned and waved one hand
dismissively. “Whatever the case, the reality of the trauma remains.”

“You believe that he is dangerous?”
Vladimir pointed a blunt finger at Gaul accusatorily. “Many of us have come
from unhappy places, Gaul, and we do not all become monsters.”

Gaul shrugged again, tiredly.

“I don’t know anything for certain,”
Gaul admitted. “But, I do know that Alexander Warner has no idea how to care
for – or to be cared for by – other people. He was ignored at best, and at
worst, brutalized. Moreover, he has enough power locked inside of him to
decimate a third of our student body, even only partially activated. If we
choose full activation, there is no telling what will happen. It’s impossible
to predict.”

Vladimir and Michael exchanged
worried glances.

“I don’t think he’s dangerous,
Vladimir.” Gaul leaned forward, his eyes cold and bloodshot pink. “I know it,
even without a roomful of analysts. He’s a bomb waiting to go off, and that’s
without considering the political ramifications.”

Michael spoke from behind his steepled hands; his voice was reflective, pensive.

“Any cartel that finds out about
him, they’ll want – no, they’ll need to either recruit him or eliminate
him, simply to keep anyone else from getting him. They won’t have a choice. His
potential value is too great to overlook.” Michael shook his head sadly. “Gaul,
how many students do we have right now with the potential to reach M-Class?”

There was a pause, and both Michael
and Vladimir knew that Gaul, always exact, was consulting the Etheric Network.
He did not need to close his eyes; there was no obvious change in his body or
demeanor. His gaze simply grew distant for a moment while he communed with the
Etheric graft in his forebrain.

“Four,” Gaul said mechanically, his
eyes unfocused. “Though there are perhaps another two or three who could reach
that level, under optimum conditions.”

“So he’s the biggest unclaimed piece
on the board,” Michael continued. “He could shift the balance…”

Gaul shook his head, looking grim.

“It’s worse than that,” he said
flatly, looking at the boy. “The conflict won’t be limited to the Hegemony and
the Black Sun – every individual cartel will want him for themselves – and
they’ll all make their own play for him. Think of the advantage, the prestige
they could gain…”

“Chaos, then,” Michael agreed. “With
everyone making a play for our Alexander, here.”

“And the easiest play,” Vladimir
said frankly, “is to simply eliminate the boy.”

Both other men looked at him,
surprised.

“What? It’s true,” Vladimir said
dismissively, “you said it yourself, Gaul. The danger of him joining another
faction is greater than the advantage to be gained by having him join their
own, if you are playing safe.”

“It’s true,” Gaul said, in the
definitive way that both men knew meant he had just checked the probability
threads. “The chances of him being killed are quite high.”

“Some of the less conservative types
will try and make a play for him,” Michael mused, “using whatever they can.
Bribes, intimidation…”

Vladimir snorted.

“They will use girls, fool,” he
scoffed. “He is a teenage boy, after all. Young love will work far more
effectively than indoctrination.”

Michael was grateful that Gaul was
not moved to confirm this particular probability, at least aloud. He was
genuinely fond of the Director, but at times his detachment and his frankness
made him challenging company. Sometimes it was sort of like trying to be
friends with a computer.

“Then the Hegemony will probably use
Emily Muir, she’s perfect for this,” Michael said thoughtfully, then grinned.
“Maybe it’s not so bad to be Alexander, after all…”

Vladimir laughed. Gaul smiled
mirthlessly and then shook his head.

“Why do we not then make him one of
your Auditors, Gaul? Surely, whatever his other attributes, he has the
potential. You have an allowance of six, yes? And last I heard, you have only
four…”

“I thought the same thing,” Gaul
replied sourly. “I’ve been running numbers all morning looking for a way to do
just that. He certainly has the potential for it, assuming we can salvage him.
In addition, it would exempt him from the machinations of the cartels. But, it
wouldn’t work.”

“Why not?” Vladimir demanded.

“The Hegemony and the Black Sun –
they would both regard it as poaching,” Gaul said hopelessly. “They would claim
that we were recruiting at an unfair advantage, taking the most promising
potential Operators before they were admitted to the Academy, before they had a
chance to be introduced to their ideologies. They would see it as a violation
of the Agreement, and they would be right. There’s no precedent for it.”

“The cartels would use the decision
as a rationale to attack the Academy? Or us?”

“Us, more than likely.” Gaul said,
shrugging. “All of the cartels would prefer to see a more sympathetic
administration at the Academy. This is particularly bad timing, too. Everything
would be far less complicated if Anastasia Martynova wasn’t currently among our
student population. That the future head of the Black Sun would be in the same
class as Alexander, should we choose to admit him, is particularly
unfortunate.”

The room was quiet then, for a
moment, with only the labored breathing from the hospital bed to break the
silence.

“Then, if I understand correctly,”
Vladimir began, looking cunning, “the problem is that we cannot make this boy
an Auditor, unless he first attends the Academy?”

Gaul nodded slowly, looking at the
grey-haired man’s smile and trying to understand.

“Once he is a student, he is free to
choose for himself, yes?”

“After he completes two full years,
same as any other student,” Gaul allowed.

“The solution is simple, then. We
make sure that he decides to become an Auditor, and there is no problem,”
Vladimir shouted, delighted.

“I’m not sure that it would be that
easy…” Michael began, with a touch of exasperation in his voice.

“It’s a possibility,” Gaul said
distantly.

“We protect him, from the cartels,
from everybody,” Vladimir insisted, leaning toward Michael to look at him
directly, his pale blue eyes sparkling from within wrinkled folds of tired
skin. “We make sure that they can’t get close to him, that they can’t brainwash
him to see things their way.”

“How do we know that he will choose
what we want him to?”

“You are his teachers, yes? Teach
him. It should help,” Vladimir pointed out, “that we are in the right.”

Michael smiled.

“There is another possibility,” Gaul
said reluctantly, his eyes on the floor.

“Who rescued Mitsuru and this boy?”

“Henry North. Of the North Cartel,
affiliated with the Hegemony,” Gaul added, his voice again distant and
mechanical.

Michael shook his head. His friend’s
habit of constantly accessing his network uplink to answer routine questions
bothered him. He wondered if Gaul had any faith at all in his own mind,
unassisted.

“There is no other possibility,”
Vladimir said, folding his arms, “if one faction is already aware of him, then
the others are too, or will be shortly.”

“They are not aware of his
potential,” Gaul said quietly, still looking down.

“You are certain?”

Gaul paused, and then shook his head
slowly.

“Then there is no other
possibility,” Vladimir said defiantly.

“There is, though,” Gaul insisted,
“and it has to be decided by vote, by the Board, immediately. We have no idea
how long we can keep this kind of information under wraps.”

“Assuming it even is under wraps,”
Vladimir muttered. “You know how far little Anastasia has worked her claws into
the Hegemony. If they know about Alex, then she does, too.”

Michael gave the two empty chairs in
the room a significant look.

“What about Rebecca and Alistair? What
do they think about all this?”

“Rebecca is handling negotiations in
the Philippines. Alistair is running an operation right now, but he will
contact her as soon as we are ready to vote. I’ll relay their decisions,” Gaul said,
finally looking up, cold and impassive.

“Very well,” Vladimir said. “Let me
remind you both that you are teachers, not butchers. If all we see in these
children is risk, then we, and the Academy, have wholly failed.”

“How do you vote, Vladimir?”

Gaul’s voice was hollow when he
asked the question, obviously relaying the decision to the Etheric archive.

“Admit him.”

“Michael?”

Michael hesitated for a moment and
then shook his head.

“It could undermine everything we’ve
done here. Regardless, it’s not in my nature to write the kid off, no matter
what his story is. Vladimir’s right, we admit him.”

There was a brief pause, and then
Gaul spoke again, robotically.

“Rebecca also votes to admit.
Alistair abstains. Majority vote for admission. For the record,” Gaul
continued, “I vote for termination.”

Michael did not bother to disguise
the shock he felt when he looked at Gaul. Vladimir clucked and had a sour
expression. Gaul looked down for a moment then, and when he spoke again, it was
in his normal voice.

“I’m sorry,” he said apologetically.
“It’s very important to make sure the record is complete.”

Michael sighed and shook his head.

Five

Alex knew he was in a hospital before he opened his eyes, from the soft beeping, the starched white sheets
against his skin, and the pervasive antiseptic smell. Given the dull, insistent
pain in his back and abdomen, and the more immediate pain in his forearm, that
seemed like the right place for him to be. Alex rested a bit longer, comforted
by the various chimes and chirps of the hospital electronics. He wondered
briefly how he would pay for all this, and then put it out of his mind with an
effort. After a while, he decided to try opening his eyes.

He was not expecting the huge
dreadlocked black man next to his bed, wearing an immaculately tailored grey
suit and brilliant red tie, looking at him with an expression that managed to
convey concern and amusement simultaneously. Alex had not figured on anybody
being there, but if he had expected anyone, it would have been the cops. This
person, with his ridiculous grin and his beautiful suit, he was definitely not
the cops.

What about the half-destroyed park,
filled with dead wolves? That was bound to attract some sort of attention.

Alex was a rational person, or at
least he tried to be. Life, he knew, did not always conform to that standard –
in fact, it often did not, at least in his case. Nevertheless, he tried to be
reasonable about things, to stay realistic. He did not delude himself. He
wasn’t crazy.

At least he wasn’t this
crazy.

That left only one option – namely,
that the world was not as described to him. For anyone else, that might have
been a troubling notion. For Alex, that idea had vaguely positive connotations.
How much worse could it get, after all? He had nothing to lose, they way he saw
it, or nothing he would miss that much. Alex was more curious than he was
frightened.

“You don’t look like a cop,” Alex
said, opening his eyes and yawning. This was actually understatement – Alex was
certain that he was not a cop. This was an instinct developed over years inside
institutions: instantaneous recognition of authority.

Michael looked both surprised and
delighted.

“No?”

Alex shook his head. The black dude looked
tough, but he didn’t seem angry or anything. In fact, he looked as if he might
to start laughing, though Alex could not figure out what he found so funny.

“Nope. You don’t look much like a
werewolf, either.”

“Is that so?”

Michael appeared to be stifling
laughter.

“Well, okay, I’m not sure what a
werewolf looks like when he’s not, you know, being a wolf, or a
wolf-man-thing,” Alex admitted. “But you don’t seem like the type to me.”

“You’re right. I’m definitely not a werewolf.”
Michael affirmed. “This is probably a good thing for you.”

Alex inched his way up in bed and
took a long look at the man sitting confidently in a hospital chair by his
bedside. He was thirty-something and built, but in a practical sort of way – like
he might do physical labor, Alex thought, not like he spent a lot of time in
the gym. He appeared to be heavily tattooed, black line work creeping up his
neck and peeking out from his sleeves on his wrists, the spidery designs only
marginally darker than his skin. He smiled broadly, and for the entire world
seemed utterly benevolent.

“Who are you?”

“You don’t want to know where you
are? That’s what people in your situation usually start with.”

“I’ll decide what I’d like to know,
thanks,” Alex said tersely. He regretted it immediately and softened his tone.
No point in making unnecessary enemies, particularly when he did not know what
was going on. “Who are you, exactly?”

Michael laughed abruptly, and then
nodded.

“Alright, Alex, we’ll do it your
way. You don’t mind if I call you Alex, do you?”

Alex shook his head.

“My name is Michael Lacroix; we’ll
shake when you’re feeling better. I work here.”

“You’re supposed to be a doctor?”

“No, nothing of the sort,” Michael
said with his wide, disarming smile. “This isn’t a hospital, Alex; this is the
medical wing of a university. There is nothing to worry about, though. You are
getting the best medical care possible.”

“Sounds expensive,” Alex said,
looking pointedly at the pitcher and water glass on his bedside table.

“It could be,” Michael allowed,
pouring water into the plastic cup and handing it to Alex. “That is a definite
possibility, what with the sorry state of the world. However, there is another
possibility I would like you to consider with me, Alex, one in which this whole
experience costs you nothing at all, not one cent. Not financially, anyway.”

“Alright,” Alex said, sipping water
from the cup slowly, holding it with his good arm. His other arm was wrapped in
bandages and had a cast up to the elbow. He could not see much of his injuries,
but the pain in his left forearm was severe, and he wiggled his fingers
nervously, just to be certain he still could. “Tell me all about it, Mr.
Lacroix.”

“Well, as it I see it, there’s a few
different ways this could go,” Michael said blithely. “I’m not an expert in
this, mind you, but I’ve got colleagues who are. And this is how they see it.”

Michael leaned forward and spoke
confidentially.

“One way it could go, Alex, we patch
you up and send you home. The cops will hold you for a while, check out
whatever story you tell them, then they will probably let you go. ’Fraid we
will have to stick you with the bill, so sorry. You keep on doing whatever it
is you think you are doing in that pathetic little town; whatever parody of
life it is you think you are living, right? Your big bright future, yeah?”

Alex let it pass without comment. He
felt completely bewildered. The man’s face beamed with positivity, but he felt
a bit pissed at the tone he was taking. Not that he had said anything that
wasn’t true, but it seemed rude to come right out and say it.

“The other way we can do things is a
lot more interesting.” Michael grinned again. “From my perspective, anyway.”

“Oh?” Alex said, finally, when it
became clear that the odd man not only expected a response, but also seemed
prepared to wait however long was necessary to get it.

“Yes, I think so. A private
institution, the very Academy that we currently occupy, in fact, has taken an
interest in you, young Alex. We would like to offer you a place among our
students, a stellar and far-ranging education in a number of esoteric and
often-overlooked subjects, with the promise of eventual lucrative employment.
This would obviously include full coverage of your medical expenses and a,
shall we say, intervention in your legal affairs to preclude any further
problems with the police,” Michael finished cheerfully.

“I see,” Alex said doubtfully, not
at all sure that he did. “Um, can I ask why?”

It all felt like a hustle to Alex,
an impossibly elaborate swindle, but he felt too wary of Michael to make a fuss
about it. Whoever this man was, Alex was sure that he was not to be taken
lightly, sunny disposition aside. The whole thing could be a con, but Alex was
not about to challenge Michael on it.

“Because you have potential, Alex,
potential that we can help you develop,” Michael answered sincerely. “Because
there is something – a number of things, really – that can only be done by
people with that kind of potential, and the only place capable of fully
realizing that potential is here.”

Alexander looked at Michael’s open,
honest face for a long moment, and then nodded.

“Alright,” he said firmly.

“Just like that? No more questions?”

“Oh, I have lots of questions,” Alex
replied, yawning. “I have questions about pretty much everything. But I’m
tired, and my arm hurts, and I don’t want to deal with the cops, or the bills.”

“Alright, then, excellent…”

Michael stood up, and began to push
the chair to the side of the room.

“But so we understand each other,”
Alex said, carefully lowering himself back down on the bed. “I don’t really
want to go to your school, whatever it is. I can’t really think of anything I
want to do right now.”

Alex laid his head back on his
pillow and closed his eyes, the pain in his arm beginning to bother him.

“But, no one has ever said I’ve got
potential for anything but trouble. And I don’t have anything else going on,
Mr. Lacroix,” Alex said moodily. “So, I’ve got questions, and reservations. If
I don’t like what happens from here on out, I will walk away. If you want an
answer, then that is mine. Whatever it is you’ve got in mind, it’s probably
better than my other options.”

“I understand you, Alexander,”
Michael said, nodding. “I’m okay with that.”

“Like I give a shit,” Alex said, rolling
onto his side, facing away from Michael. “Do you have nurses around this place?
Could you please tell them that I am in a whole lot of pain? Is that possible?”

Michael nodded seriously. He liked
the kid already, and anyway, he had something he really needed to look at in
the boy’s charts, rather urgently, before anyone else got the same idea.

Six

“How are you feeling, Mitsuru?”

Gaul kept his voice mild, looking
over the battered Operator on the other side of the desk. She had refused
treatment for any of the injuries she had sustained during the operation –
something that worried Gaul, even if it was mostly minor cuts and bruising. She
had changed into a loose T-shirt and black yoga pants, but she had dried blood
caked on her wounded hands, and the faint remnants of her nosebleed stained her
nostrils. Mitsuru’s relationship with injury disturbed Gaul.

Mitsuru met Gaul’s stare, her
crimson-tinted irises almost identical to his own. He was surprised to see
tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

“If it’s all the same with you,
Director, I would prefer to discuss this with the Chief Auditor first,” she
began, sounding as tired as she looked.

“I’m sorry,” Gaul said, shaking his head
curtly, “but that isn’t how it works. Alistair works for me, and so do you. I
decide who does what and when. Right now, the Chief Auditor is coordinating the
mop-up for today’s operations, and we are debriefing. You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Mitsuru said quietly,
eyes on the floor. Gaul felt the frustration he had been suppressing since the
morning well up inside him.

“I’m certain that when his tasks are
completed, your mentor will come to collect you,” he said, with more venom then
he had intended.

Mitsuru’s sob was immediate, and he
looked away, guilty and confused. He didn’t care much for Alistair, or for his
pet Operator, for that matter. Even Gaul had to admit that Mitsuru was a
brilliant field operative – but defective, unfit. He understood the need for
tame monsters; after all, he had spearheaded Alice Gallow’s ascension to Audits
decades ago himself. However, he did not feel that Mitsuru was tame, but rather
simply monstrous.

Which was to say that Gaul was very unprepared,
when Mitsuru abruptly begun to cry.

Gaul had taught Mitsuru years ago,
and in his own limited way, he liked her, despite the terrible things she had
done in the past. Moreover, he respected her abilities and potential.
Nevertheless, if it had been up to him, he would have had her put down years
ago, when it became clear that her liabilities outweighed her assets. Gaul
resented Alistair and Rebecca for preventing him from doing exactly that.
However, impoliteness was not Gaul’s style, and it irked him to have spoken so
harshly to a crying woman. Clearly, the events of the day were weighing on him.

“Operator Aoki,” he said formally,
standing up and looking away from her tears, out the window, toward the grounds
and the yellow moon. “Let’s return to the matter at hand, shall we? Were you
injured during the operation?”

“Not in any meaningful way,” Mitsuru
sniffled.

“Excellent. Then you can explain to
me,” Gaul continued, folding his hands behind his back, “how it is that you
managed to activate a protocol that was only partially downloaded, yes?”

She shook her head morosely, and
Gaul felt annoyed again. Mitsuru was almost mute. Normally, she was so detached
– this was the first significant emotion he had seen her show in years. And she
was moping? Ridiculous.

“Come now,” Gaul scolded. “You must
remember something. What made you think to try it in the first place?”

“I’ve never been able to raise
Central like that,” Mitsuru said, raising her blood-red eyes to look at the
Director’s back. “I don’t know how I did it, and I don’t know why. I just
felt…”

Gaul watched her reflection in the
window as Mitsuru struggled to find words, her hands making vague, abortive
gestures. He saw tears well up in her red eyes again, and fought down
frustration.

“I am not certain. I felt assurance
– as if I had threaded all the probabilities and arrived at an operational
certainty.”

“It didn’t occur to you that you
might fail?”

“No.” Mitsuru said definitively, and
shook her head.

“Or that the consequences of failure
would have been catastrophic?”

“Central requested intervention,
Director,” Mitsuru responded, in her usual flat voice. “Clearly, the analysts
felt the risk was merited. I do not question my orders, sir.”

Gaul winced at the knock on the
door. Firm, insistent. Could only be Alistair.

“Come in,” he said, sitting down
behind the desk and taking off his glasses so he could rub the bridge of his
nose.

Alistair opened the door, shot
Mitsuru a sympathetic look, and then took the chair next to her.

Alistair appeared to be in his early
thirties, with blond hair and a uniform tan. He was still dressed in wrinkled
fatigues, clearly the clothes he had worked in. He was a bit short, with a
broad chest and a narrow waist, and he moved with a compact grace that reminded
Gaul more of a dancer than a soldier. While Alistair had been on duty since the
night before, he showed no particular signs of being tired, which annoyed Gaul
all over again.

“Hey Gaul. What’s going on?”

Alistair had grown up some place
outside of D.C., in Virginia, and there was something lazy and drawling in his
speech that recalled it, though it was not exactly an accent. This also got
underneath Gaul’s skin, a gift Alistair had in abundance.

Gaul shrugged and gestured at the
file folders on the desk in front of him. Trapped at his desk for hours, Gaul’s
lower back had gone from a dull ache to a persistent spasm. Moreover, unlike
some other people, he was very tired.

“I am trying to make sense of what
happened tonight.”

It came out more defensive than he
would have liked. Gaul had never been clear whether his personal dislike of
Alistair was mutual. Alistair had always acted as if Gaul were a close friend –
then again, he seemed to treat everyone that way.

“Trying to make the pieces fit a
pattern.”

“You can’t force it, or you will
start seeing patterns everywhere. Well, then,” Alistair offered innocently,
“why don’t I debrief Mitzi, and give you and the Analytic Pool something to
chew on?”

Gaul nodded diplomatically, knowing
he had no other options. He was the functional head of the Academy, and he
could operate more or less how he liked, within reason. He could not demand a
field operative under the auspices of Audits deliver her report directly to
him, however, in violation of standard procedure – not without a reason to pull
Alistair from the chain of command. As little as he liked Alistair, Gaul knew
he would never give him one.

His Chief Auditor was smart,
careful, and above all, capable. Gaul would not have picked him for the job
otherwise.

“Fine. Send me your report as soon
as you’ve completed it,” Gaul said, waving dismissively at them and then
returning to the paperwork on his desk.

***

The
walk was not long, as only one barren hallway separated the Operations building
from Audits. The central office of the Audits department was mostly deserted
under flickering fluorescent lights, only a few determined technicians plugging
away at their workstations. The office was a mess, crammed from ceiling to
floor with partitions, file boxes, laptops, and piles of paper. There were
several full ashtrays on the main table, next to paper plates stained with soy
sauce, the remains of tempura shrimp, and flecks of fried rice. Alistair sighed
and led Mitsuru past the disarray to his small back office, which was
immaculate by comparison.

He sat her in one of the wide
leather chairs that faced his old walnut desk, and then busied himself at the
antique cabinet wedged behind it. A moment later, he handed her a short whiskey
and ice in a square-cut glass. He placed another on the desk for himself, and
then sat down across from her. He sipped his drink in silence, taking stock.

He had seen her look rougher. It had
been a while, though.

“Mitzi, what’s eating you?”

Mitsuru made a point of looking away.

“What happened to me tonight?”

Alistair hesitated for a moment,
trying to remember what he was and was not allowed to say. He had never cared
much for keeping Gaul’s secrets.

“That kid’s a catalyst, Mitzi,” he
said cheerfully, holding his drink up to the light. “I guess your probe
activated his innate ability, thereby enhancing the protocols at your
disposal.”

“Then it wasn’t me?”

Alistair smiled sympathetically.

“Not all of it, Mitzi.”

“Damn it to hell,” Mitsuru said, her
drink sitting untouched. “I thought… well, I’m not certain what I thought. But
it seemed…”

She trailed off, staring at her
hand, at the mostly closed wound in her palm.

“You are an exceptional Operator,
Mitzi. You were successful tonight, more successful than we had a right to
expect,” Alistair reassured, meeting Mitsuru’s red-eyed stare calmly. “With
time, we will convince them to make you an Auditor, I promise. You need to stop
worrying so much. You aren’t helping anything. You can’t jump to conclusions –
your situation won’t change in one night, not for the better.”

“I know.” Mitsuru’s reply was
emotionless. She abruptly remembered her neglected drink and drained it in one
go.

“A silver Weir, huh?” Alistair
mused, putting his arms behind his head and leaning back. “That’s pretty rare.
I haven’t seen one since Crimea, back in the Eighties…”

“Alistair? Who finished the
operation?”

“Some Hegemony guy,” Alistair said,
frowning with the effort of remembering. “North, I think.”

“Was anyone conducting an operation in
the area that I didn’t know about?”

Mitsuru’s tone was chilly, her
expression blank.

Alistair nodded unhappily. He had
wondered the same thing the moment Central was notified of North’s
intervention. He already knew what was bothering Mitsuru. There were less than
a hundred Operators of North’s caliber in total, and more than half of them
were in Central at any given time. The chances that he would be operating in
the same California city on the same night as Mitsuru by coincidence were
minimal.

“Central didn’t sanction any
operation on the West Coast in the last twenty-four hours, other than yours.
You know how it is, though. Doesn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t one, only
that the Hegemony didn’t bother to register the operation. What was your
briefing when you were sent out tonight?”

Mitsuru shrugged and brought her
feet up onto the chair, hugging her knees to her chest.

“Recon and field analysis. Analytics
knew about the pack, that they had been hanging around the area recently. They
wanted to determine the extent of the problem. They were wrong about the size
of the pack, though, and the reason they were there. The Weir were supposedly
hunting.”

Alistair finished his whiskey, then
collected the glasses and made them disappear behind his desk.

“The Weir were waiting for that boy,
Alistair,” Mitsuru said, biting her thumbnail absently. “Him specifically. They
knew he would come to that park. They sat and waited for him, like they had an
appointment.”

“Someone was running them,” Alistair
agreed. “They were probably running the kid somehow, too, if they were that
confident that he’d show.”

“North’s cartel, then? Or another
Hegemonic cartel? Do they even have those kinds of capabilities?”

“At this point, I’m not ruling out
any possibility, Mitzi. Using a pack of Weir for a removal, though,” Alistair
said, frowning, “that’s something that I’d expect from a Witch. There are
quieter, more deniable ways to take out one kid, if that’s what the Hegemony
wanted.”

“Is there any real chance this was a
coincidence?”

Alistair shook his head.

“I doubt it. Analytics say that it’s
highly unlikely, and I’m inclined to agree.”

“Then what?”

“It wasn’t a hit, Mitzi.”

“What?”

“The Weir were probably hired to
kill that kid, don’t get me wrong. They aren’t clever enough to fake it. I
don't think that was actually their client's intentions, though. This whole
scenario was likely intended to jar the boy’s talents into activation, in the
most traumatic manner possible. That’s my theory, anyway. And if you hadn’t
intervened…”

“Then they would have, whoever they
are,” Mitsuru said, dully completing his sentence. “Either they anticipated my
involvement, or they had someone else waiting in the wings and hung back when
they saw me intervene.”

“Could be.” Alistair nodded
thoughtfully. “North being present doesn’t necessarily mean he had any
involvement in the attack. For all we know, this was a Black Sun operation, and
North was keeping an eye on it for the Hegemony. Maybe he took the opportunity
to bail Central out when it arose. We don’t have enough data to say anything
for certain yet. Maybe Gaul will get more out of North when he conducts the
Inquiry.”

“What now?”

Alistair’s grin was more genuine
this time.

“Well, I’m going to need someone to
keep an eye on the kid for the time being. I’d imagine he’s destined for the
Academy. His name’s Alexander, by the way.”

Mitsuru’s expression was a mixture
of slow realization and dawning horror.

“Don’t worry,” he said comfortingly,
reaching forward to pat her shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll make a great
instructor.”

Seven

If there was one idea that life had taught Alex repeatedly, it was the value of avoiding unnecessary
confrontations. He did not like uniforms. Despite that, he put on the school
uniform, because he did not see any alternative.

There were certain things that were
going to happen – institutional life had taught him that. For example, you
would wear your uniform as directed. You would be in your cell by six. Lights would
go out at nine. You would be dressed and ready at eight the next morning. All
of these things were going to happen whether you felt like complying or not.
The only option on offer was whether he would prefer to have his teeth kicked
down his throat in the process.

He would have to be stupid to make a
choice like that. Supposedly, this was a school, and that was fine as far as it
went. In Alex’s experience, school wasn’t that different from any other
institution – uniforms, rules, privileges, dormitories, and grounds; principles
imparted and edges smoothed. He had been the target of such manufacture before,
and knew that he would gain nothing by becoming caught in the gears.

Tugging the sleeve of the starched
shirt awkwardly over the sheath of plastic that encased his injured forearm,
Alex reflected on the fact that Michael was one scary dude, smile or no. Alex
didn’t know many black people, but he didn’t think that made much of a
difference in this case. He had never met anyone who looked like Michael, with
the tattoos and the dreadlocks and then the suit. Even more surprising that he
apparently was some kind of teacher. This was clearly a very unusual school.

Alex fumbled the top button on his
collar into place, wondering if it was actually supposed to be that tight.
Maybe people usually left the top button undone? He couldn’t remember.

Michael seemed friendly, which was
interesting in and of itself. Alex hadn’t met many people who didn’t already
despise him, and he was not overly eager to make him angry. If he was going to
attend this school, or whatever it was, then Michael seemed to be in a position
to make it go easier. No point in an argument over a lost cause, Alex thought,
wincing as he pulled on the tight slacks. No profit in a fight that he would
inevitably lose.

He would practice patience, he
thought, tucking his shirt into his pants with his off-hand. He would treat
this the same way he had handled guards, administrators, psychologists,
teachers, all that noise – smile when they expected it and stay quiet when he
could. Whenever possible, he would tell the truth, because lies were more
complicated – lying meant being meticulous, consistent, remembering who he had
told what. That was a burden, at best; at worst, lies could ruin whatever
opportunities he might have here. That said, when he chose to speak, he would
try to make sure that it was what people wanted to hear.

Alex decided to keep his eyes open
for any opportunity to change his circumstances. Observation was important. He
knew that they had misjudged him, and he would play along with their
expectations. He almost laughed as he tucked his feet into the leather shoes,
because it was so clear that they didn’t get it – Alex didn’t lack social
skills because he came from a town that openly despised him. It took
extraordinary skills just to make it through the day under his circumstances.

It would probably be better if they
thought of him as a bit lost and naïve. They would be more likely to help him,
and Alex wanted help. He wanted it very badly indeed.

Alex didn’t trust Michael, but he
found him likable. Alex had no interest in further school, but the way he
figured it, someone would make him go anyway, here or back at home, for a few
more years. It could not possibly be any worse than repeating his junior year.

Alex looked himself over in the
mirror grimly. He looked battered, skinny, and the blazer and slacks felt
unfamiliar and tight. It wasn't exactly the first impression he was hoping to
make, but it was the best he could do in the circumstances. Whatever those
circumstances were. He would have to do his best, then, to avoid making those
kinds of impressions.

Alex shrugged and walked out the
door and into the hallway. He was so absorbed in trying to find his way to the downstairs
lobby that he did not notice when Michael started walking next to him, wearing
that smile that Alex liked but did not trust one bit.

“You look uncomfortable, kid,”
Michael said cheerfully. “Are you nervous?”

“Well, yeah,” Alex admitted. “Who
wouldn’t be? I didn’t think that the Academy would have uniforms,” Alex said,
gesturing at the blue blazer and slacks. “It seems kind of weird. Like a prep
school thing.”

Michael laughed and clapped Alex on
the back.

“Don’t worry about it too much – you
only have to wear it for lectures. The rest of the time you can dress however
you want.”

Michael led him to a bank of
elevators, and then pressed the down button. The door chime when the elevator
opened filled Alex with a strangely comforting familiarity. Elevators, at
least, he understood.

Well, okay. He did not understand
them at all. They were, however, a recognizable part of his world.

“What happened to my clothes,
anyway?”

The elevator started its descent
with an unholy squealing of metal on metal, and worn gears grinding, that
caused Alex to flinch, but Michael was unmoved.

“Sorry, but they were bloody rags by
the time you got here – the doctors cut them off you in order to operate,”
Michael said apologetically. “Someone went to your place, though, and collected
your things. I had them dropped off at your dorm room.”

Alex nodded a bit skeptically. He
wasn’t entirely sure what things Michael referred to – he lived in his
grandmother’s tiny trailer, and most of the things in it belonged to her. The
only things he really considered his were some clothes and his mp3 player, so
he was curious what had been salvaged. He had a vision of his grandmother’s
absurdly large gnome cookie-jar sitting on a desk waiting for him, and had to
choke back a giggle.

The elevator opened onto a lobby
that was identical to the lobby of every hospital he had ever been to. Only
Michael, towering over the bustling crowd of nurses and patients, dreadlocks
hanging down to his shoulders, looked out of place. He strode across the lobby
briskly, and Alex found himself struggling to keep pace.

The grounds outside the hospital
looked like a university – concrete paths winding through grassy areas, and a
number of angular buildings made out of a dull grey stone, set back discretely
from each other, surrounded by old oak and birch trees. It was warm fall
weather, not unlike California – and not for the first time, Alex wondered
where they were. Somewhere where the weather was similar to home, if that meant
anything.

They followed a meandering path
through the grounds, Alex trailing a few feet behind Michael. Occasionally,
they were passed by other students, or at least other people in uniforms
similar to his own. Alex did not seem to attract much more than passing
glances, though everyone acknowledged Michael with at least a nod, and received
a cheerful greeting in return. Alex was not particularly surprised to discover
that Michael appeared to be on a first name basis with all of them.

The building Michael led them to, a
few minutes’ walk from the hospital, reminded Alex of a church, or one of the
older government buildings in D.C. – made from the same grey stone he had seen
earlier, with ornate columns and a weird round overhang out in front. The
windows on either side of the giant wooden door were stained glass, done in an
abstract and colorful style. It was imposing, even in the mild afternoon
sunlight, dark wood with dull metal inlays, formal and a bit grotesque.

Alex wondered how they were going to
enter the building, given that the door appeared to be twelve feet tall and cut
from a single piece of wood, but as they got closer, he realized that the door
had a secondary, standard-size entry set in it, so close to flush that it was
invisible from a distance. Michael held it open, gesturing for Alex to enter.

It was cold inside the building, and
Alex shivered as he walked inside the enormous central chamber, a long expanse
of alternating black and white marble tile with curled stairways at intervals
along the hall, climbing up to the ornate girding of the second floor. The
hallway went far enough along in a straight line that Alex could not see the
end of it. The building appeared sparsely populated, as he saw only a handful
of people moving purposefully from office to office, dressed in typical business
attire rather than the school uniform.

“Welcome to the Administration
building, Alex. We have a few things to take care of here, regarding your
enrollment, and then we will see about giving you a look around the campus, and
get you set up in the dorms. Right through here…”

Michael led him down the hall, then
up the third staircase on the right, through a heavy walnut door, and into an
airy office with an excessive number of potted plants. There was a heavy-set woman
in a purple dress there, working behind a white-painted desk, who smiled
cheerfully when they walked in. Michael greeted her with a wave.

“Mrs. Nesbit, my secretary
extraordinaire. Alexander Warner, a new student. Could you prepare the
paperwork?”

She nodded and began tapping away at
her keyboard, while Michael led Alex through another door to a smaller back
office. He sat down behind a desk littered with books, piles of paper, and an
aged desktop computer, nodding wearily toward a comfortable-looking chair in
the corner of the room. Alex sat down gratefully, his back sore and his forearm
aching, even after his stay in the hospital.

“You have good timing, Alex. We are
between sessions right now,” Michael said, clearing an area in front of him by
moving what appeared to be a partially disassembled firearm, piece by piece,
into a desk drawer. “Most of the students are back at home. We will be able to
get you installed in the dorms and enrolled in classes from the first day.”

“What kind of classes?”

Alex spoke in monotone, unable to
hide his unhappiness at the thought.

Michael laughed.

“I doubt very much that you will
find them boring, Alex, but I can’t tell you much until we figure out what you
can learn, okay? We won’t try and teach you anything that you don’t need to
know.”

“I don’t get it.”

Michael seemed terribly amused by
Alex’s recalcitrance.

“Don’t worry about it. We will start
with general stuff and then move from there. First, there will be some tests,
to determine the proper placement for you. It will probably be a bit hard to
start with, but I think you will find that it isn’t that bad, once you get the
hang of how everything works.”

“Will everyone but me know what is
going on?”

“No, but you will be at a
disadvantage,” Michael said thoughtfully. “No use pretending otherwise.
Sometimes talent runs in families, but not consistently. Some of the students
here were born into a cartel, but most of the others are like you, orphans. We
discovered them out in the world at large, as children or early teens. It is a
bit unusual to be starting at your age, but it is not unheard of. You are
right, though. Most of the students will have a better grasp on things than
you.”

“You are going to have to explain
it, then,” Alex said firmly. “I’m going to need to know all about it, Michael.”

“I’ll do my best to explain,”
Michael said, as Mrs. Nesbit entered with a quick knock and deposited a stack
of folders on a recently cleared patch of desk. “Two coffees, Mrs. Nesbit. How
do you take yours, Alex?”

Alex hesitated for a moment. He had
never cared much for coffee. It made him nervous. Then again, given the
circumstances…

“Milk and sugar,” he decided,
because it sounded right to him. “Lots, please.”

Mrs. Nesbit nodded and bustled back
out to the main room, shutting the door behind her. Michael deposited a new
stack of paperwork on one of the already daunting piles and then sat back in
his swivel chair, folding his hands behind his head.

“Do you mind if I start with the
hard part, Alex?”

Michael’s smile folded up and disappeared,
and his big, brown eyes grew sad. Alex braced himself without knowing what was
coming, and then managed a nervous nod.

“Nobody likes hearing this, but most
of the time people have a bit more choice in the matter. You got the short end
of the stick, son,” Michael said, so sympathetic that Alex could not help but
wonder if it was genuine.

“We had no choice in the matter,
because of your injuries. You were dead by the time they got you to the
infirmary. Your heart stopped on the elevator. Even if the doctors had gotten
it going again, you had spinal trauma and massive blood loss, not to mention
impacted bone in your forearm. You would have died again on the operating
table. You need to appreciate that.”

Alex was not entirely convinced that
he did, but he let the big man keep talking.

“You were injected with almost two
ounces of water saturated with billions of particles of nanomachinery,
Alexander, programmed for replication and recovery protocols,” Michael said,
almost casually, as if it were a normal thing, regrettable perhaps, but
something to be expected. “Your heart started beating about twenty seconds
after the injection, and you started breathing again within a minute.”

Alex looked at his hands, at the
blue veins running just underneath the skin, and wondered.

“Are they still inside me?”

The question seemed somehow terribly
important, his throat dry and his voice hoarse. He had to fight the urge to
scratch at his skin.

“I’m afraid so,” Michael replied,
looking sadly at Alexander. “It’s not a reversible procedure, Alex.”

“Why would you do that?” He was
almost shouting, halfway out of his chair and onto his feet. “Who gave you
permission?”

“Sit down, Alex,” Michael ordered
sternly. “I won’t bother to repeat the ‘you were dead already’ part, since we covered
that. Let’s move to your second question – we would have done it regardless of
the injuries. Under normal circumstances, we would ask your permission first,
but I was watching you bleed out. If you prefer that I explain myself to an
unconscious child before deciding to attempt to save his life, well, I’m not
sure how realistic your expectations are.”

Alex glared at Michael, hands
knotted around the arms of his chair, for a long moment. Then he sat back with
a sigh.

“What exactly have you done to me?”

“It’s not as bad as all that, son,”
Michael said, his smile back. “They did save you, after all. Moreover, those
little machines, the nanites, they can do it again, too, if it becomes
necessary. You will find dying pretty difficult from here on out.”

Something in Michael’s tone
resonated with Alex.

“Do you have these machines inside
of you too?”

“Absolutely,” Michael reassured him.
“As do all the students at the Academy, and the entire faculty. For an
Operator, nanites are an absolute necessity.”

“Why?”

“You have a unique power inside of
you, Alex. We don’t know why, but you were born that way. Power, however, isn’t
everything…”

Alex shook his head, bewildered.

“Look at it like this,” Michael
said, leaning forward in his chair excitedly. “Electricity isn’t much good by
itself, right?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t simply build a power
plant and then sit back to enjoy artificial lighting. Electricity alone won’t
do it. You need light bulbs, too.”

“Light bulbs?”

Alex’s response was nothing more
than a weak echo.

“Power isn’t everything.
Application, that is what we are talking about now, son. Energy is meaningless
unless you can make it work for you, and you need tools to do work. You are the
power source, but the nanites are the tools. With them, you can apply energy, and
do work.”

Alex raised his head from his hands
to stare at Michael incredulously. Neither of them responded to the quick knock
and rapid entry and exit of Mrs. Nesbit, and neither reached for the mugs of
steaming coffee she left behind.

“What can I do? I have powers or
something, right? Because of these machines inside me. Can I fly or something?”

Michael laughed and picked up his
coffee.

“That is good, Alex. I’m glad you
asked about flying.”

“Can I?”

Alex almost jumped out of his seat,
gaping and incredulous.

“No, I am afraid not,” Michael said,
chuckling to himself. “But it is good that you asked. Normal people ask about
flying. Perverts ask if they can become invisible.”

Alex almost choked on his first sip
of too-sweet coffee.

“I’m just playing with you, son,
trying to lighten the mood,” Michael said, with an amiable grin. “You will be
able to do some interesting things, but we won’t know exactly what till we do a
few tests. And a lot of it, like I mentioned earlier, will be up to you.”

“I get a choice?”

Alex set his mug down on the edge of
the desk, hoping he had sipped enough to be polite. Apparently, an injection of
mysterious nanomachinery had not changed his opinion of coffee for the better.

“To some extent. What you are capable
of is predetermined, but what you do with it is going to be a compromise. Some
of it will be about what you want. Some of it will be about what we need from
you.”

“Oh?”

Alex did not bother to hide the
suspicion from his voice. Normally he would have been more diplomatic, but this
whole situation had shaken his reserve.

“Don’t make us out to be so
sinister,” Michael protested. “We are like any other organization. We have
operational needs, and we need the proper personnel to fill them.”

“What kind of needs?”

Michael stood up and looked out the
window at the trees, the top of the clock tower visible above the maples, the
green slowly eroding from the leaves.

“Central is a city, Alex, with all
that entails. Like any school, the Academy needs teachers. Our hospital needs
doctors. Our laboratories need scientists and engineers. Our network needs
programmers. But I can already tell that isn’t for you, son…”

The ‘son’ was starting to irk him,
but he suppressed it. Alex did not plan to embarrass himself further if he
could help it.

“Yes?”

“Yes.” Michael turned away from the
window to look at him benignly. “I have been doing this a long time. And I can
tell an Operator when I see one.”

“What’s an Operator?”

“Mitsuru is an Operator,” Michael
said by way of an explanation. “And, a long time ago, I was too. An Operator is
a field agent, Alex.”

“A soldier?”

“No, not a soldier. Soldiers fight
wars. Operators work, war or no.”

Michael frowned and looked back out
the window for a moment.

“The world functions within set
parameters, you know that, right? The science we call physics is just our best
guess at the rules we believe to govern the universe. To a varying extent,
Operators can modify those parameters. In particular, Operators are trained to
affect parameters relating to combat and intelligence work.”

“You mean they fight those werewolf
things?”

Alex tried to push the conversation
in a more prosaic direction.

“Weir, Alex. We call them Weir.
That’s not all – Operators fight the Witches, the Outer Dark, the Horrors from
within the Ether, the named and the nameless. All the enemies of Central.”

“I have no idea what you just said.
You want me to fight monsters?”

Alex could barely keep from laughing
aloud. He had already met werewolves, so it was not that he did not believe
Michael, not exactly. The whole thing sounded absurd, even in the face of
recent experience.

“I think that you want to, son. I
can see it in your eyes already. Unfortunately, Operators don’t spend all their
time fighting monsters. They spend a great deal of it fighting each other, or
worrying about having to.”

Alex eyes widened.

“Why?”

“We’re no better than they are,”
Michael said ruefully. “Normal people, I mean. Humanity. We create families, allegiances,
cartels – and then we scheme, Alex, we plot out agendas and attempt to advance
them, or try to stop others from doing the very same thing. Just like in the
real world, eh?”

“That’s pretty depressing,” Alex
observed. “All this power you keep talking about and the best thing you can
think of to do with it is fighting each other? Couldn’t we use it to help
people instead?”

“Seemed like Mitsuru helped you a
lot the other night, you know,” Michael said dryly.

Alex shook his head.

“That’s not what I mean. Fighting a
monster, that is one thing, whatever they are. But why fight each other?”

“It’s complicated, on one level. On
another, it is the same old stupid story – we aren’t enlightened, Alex. We
disagree, fall in love, and hate each other, the whole spectrum of human
experience. We have differences of opinion, and sometimes we can’t resolve
those differences peacefully. If a disagreement goes on long enough, and is
important enough, people start to take sides. Once people start taking sides,
conflict is inevitable. No different here than anywhere else.”

“Then what is all the disagreement
about?”

“How best to protect people,”
Michael sighed. “How to apply the power we have. It’s not a good-guy bad-guy
situation – we all agree that we have a responsibility to protect humanity. We
just have differing opinions on the most effective way to do that.”

“Different enough that you are
willing to kill one another?”

“Sure. Don’t tell me you can’t think
of anything worth killing over.”

Alex wasn’t sure what to say, so he
kept his mouth shut and reached for the vile, cooling coffee.

Eight

Blood crawled across the chain, red on black pitted metal, radiating out in coils from
where Mitsuru crouched, motionless in the center. She bled freely from the
reopened wounds on her palms, and the chain slid slickly through her hands,
moving of its own accord. Her nosebleed was a steady trickle, and her blouse
was red and wet. The floor was sticky, and there were smeared red handprints on
the white pine flooring.

Mitsuru felt the blood as an
extension of her nervous system, animating it, leveraging her will against
gravity through a headache so severe that it made her feel as if she were
looking at the world from a distance. She ground her teeth and the sound was
terrible, reverberating in her head, but she could not stop. Her jaw clenched,
and her body shook with effort. In her head, she raged against the Black Door,
pitted wood damp and swollen with blood, dull iron fastenings spotted with
rust, the whole of it wrapped and sealed in luminous threads that resisted her
assault. She tried to force it open, straining against the gossamer bindings
that shut the Black Door tight, the structure of her mind buckling with the
effort.

Against the constraints that bound
her, against the advice of those who cared about her, and at the potential
expense of her sanity and well-being, Mitsuru labored to open the Black Door in
her mind.

Twining itself along the chain, her
blood followed her commands, and for a moment, the coils of the chain stirred,
animated by force of will. Deep inside of Mitsuru, a few of the luminous
threads gave way with a high, musical sound, like violin strings snapping, and
the Black Door flexed and groaned. She heard the links of the chain jingle as
they rose, flowing and intertwining, moving in concert with her will and
volition. In that instant, she felt the chain as an extension of herself, a
cold appendage, a union of blood and steel. The chain moved like a living
thing, swirling around her like a cyclone of blood-slick iron, and in that
instant, Mitsuru recalled herself, before her restraint and diminishment.

Then suddenly there was no more, no
further to reach, no reserves to tap; the Black Door shut firmly, and Mitsuru
folded at the knees, and then fell gently to the floor. She cried out, so she
would not have to hear the sound of the chain as it hit the ground.

“You’ve turned this place into the
goddamn bloody chamber again, you troublesome bitch,” Rebecca said, with
resigned affection. “I’m gonna have to take your key away.”

Rebecca pushed the sliding door open
and dropped her bag just inside the room, kicking her sandals off next to it.
She was a few inches taller than Mitsuru, a shapely brunette somewhere
nebulously in her early thirties. Her accent and style was stereotypically
Southern Californian, complete with sun-bleached bangs and designer sunglasses,
but Mitsuru knew that she had been born in Argentina, to a Jewish family that
fled Buenos Aires for the United States after some sort of terrorist attack,
when she was only a child.

Rebecca walked across the room,
picking her way disdainfully through the maze of chain and bloodstains, and
stood in front of Mitsuru, folding her arms. She was dressed for the field, in
muddy fatigues and a black T-shirt soaked in sweat. Mitsuru found herself
unable to look her friend in the eye.

“I am serious, Mitsuru. Do you know
what would happen if the Committee-at-Large or the Board found out you were
trying to use your Black Protocol? They would put you down for real this time,
instead of hobbling you. Clean this shit up before anyone else sees it, okay?
We have to meet Alistair in twenty minutes.”

Mitsuru stirred.

“Alistair?”

“I knew that would get a reaction
from you,” Rebecca smirked. “It’s so cute it makes me kinda sick. Now go get
yourself cleaned up, and meet us up in his office, okay?”

Mitsuru nodded, and stood
unsteadily.

Rebecca grabbed her abruptly and
pulled her close in a rough embrace. Mitsuru felt Rebecca’s hand briefly run
through her hair, and then gently pat the back of her head. A sob escaped
Mitsuru’s throat, then she wrapped her arms around Rebecca’s waist, and they
stayed that way for a little while.

“You’ve got to get it together,”
Rebecca said firmly, holding her by her shoulders and looking into her red
eyes. “If you can’t do it for yourself, then do it for Alistair and me, okay?
We put our asses on the line for you – and I’m not doing you any favors,
Mitsuru, do not look at me that way. I know that you will make a great
Auditor. Like this, though, sweetie? You’re inviting them to decide that you
still aren’t in control, and it reflects poorly on us.”

Mitsuru nodded, biting back tears.
She knew it all already, of course, but she had not stopped herself, even when she
was not the one who would pay for her actions. She wanted so badly to use her
forbidden Black Protocol that any extreme seemed justified.

Rebecca released her hold and turned
to collect her sandals and duffle bag.

“I’ll see you upstairs, Mitsuru,”
she said, waving over her shoulder. “Try not to take things so seriously, okay?
The world can’t end every day.”

Mitsuru had enough time for a quick
shower and change before heading upstairs, through the smoky chaos of the
half-full Operations room to the equally smoky back office that Alistair had
taken over. She had replaced the bandages on her hands, as well, so that
Alistair wouldn’t notice that she had reopened the wounds.

Rebecca was already there, her hair
damp from the shower, wearing loose jeans and a blue UCLA sweatshirt, leaning
over a chart laid out in front of Alistair, across the desk. Her hair tied back
in a simple ponytail, and Mitsuru noticed the bruises on her neck and jaw for
the first time. Someone had tried to strangle Rebecca, and recently, too. She
wondered where she had been, and who had been stupid enough to try something
like that.

Rebecca Levy was Alistair’s
lieutenant, the Auditor’s liaison to the Committee-at-Large, and a Board
member. Mitsuru had been her classmate many years ago, and knew her to be
resourceful, tactically brilliant, and a peerless empath, justly respected by
most Operators, and perhaps less justly feared by almost as many. She was
rumored to have once Audited a rebellious cartel completely out of existence,
and while Mitsuru did not know the whole story, she would not have been
surprised were it the truth.

She also knew Rebecca to be a
cheerful drunk, a flirt, a fanatic collector of eighties hardcore punk LPs, and
by far the best friend she had ever had. Maybe the only one.

Alistair looked up briefly as
Mitsuru entered, and waved her to an empty chair. Alistair almost never looked
tired, but today he looked positively exhausted.

“There’s no way it could be anything
else,” Alistair said grimly, turning back to Rebecca, who sat on one end of his
desk, tapping a cigarette in the ashtray he had reluctantly provided. “This was
a set up.”

“Why do you say that?”

Mitsuru craned her neck to see the
chart between them.

It was probability matrix from
Analytics, a two-dimensional representation of precognitive threading, with the
most likely branches indicated by size and interval. It lacked the malleability
of the more complete digital models, but some of the older Operators liked to
work things out on paper. It looked something like a bizarre architectural
schematic, or a particularly convoluted electrical line diagram.

Mitsuru could read them, but she
wasn't particularly good at it. She had gotten used to the Etheric Network and
its immaculate simulations. Even in this antiquated format, however, she
recognized the overly precise cuts and joining of manufactured probability.

“What does this mean?”

“It is weird to see you get so
emotional, Mitsuru,” Rebecca remarked. “Something about this incident bother
you?”

Mitsuru shook her head, alarmed at
the obviousness of her lack of composure.

“They must have hacked it, Mitzi.
They sorted through probabilities, and then eliminated the undesirable
outcomes, one by one, channeling reality down to one specific set of extremely
probable circumstances,” Alistair explained patiently.

“Therefore, we can assume that every
aspect of the scenario – Mitsuru, the Weir, the kid, North’s timely arrival –
all intentional. It must have taken a lot of effort,” Rebecca mused, leaning
over the chart. “The manipulation is pretty obvious, though, once you take a
hard look at it. This couldn’t have been arranged in advance or it wouldn’t be
quite so crude.”

“Or they didn’t know how to do it
very well,” Mitsuru pointed out. “Perhaps they did the best job they were
capable of, and it just wasn’t that great.”

“It is possible,” Alistair allowed,
eyeing Mitsuru. “You have a hunch or something, Mitzi?”

“Nothing that solid. Nothing
specific. It is the other option, though. You have to admit the manipulation
doesn’t appear professional.”

Alistair looked at the probability
chart again and scratched his head.

“Whatever the case,” Rebecca said,
crushing out her cigarette in the ashtray, “I still think that the North Cartel
is an excellent candidate for ‘they’. Have you had a chance to talk with Lord
North yet, Alistair?”

“No. I don’t think I will get to
anytime soon, either. Gaul has taken an interest in the incident. I think he
will make a formal Inquiry. Maybe even call for an Audit.”

“Why?”

“Gaul and I think that this was a
trap,” Alistair said, his eyes on the desk in front of him. “To draw out
Mitsuru, perhaps encourage a violation of the Agreement, and thereby embarrass
the Auditors.”

Mitsuru could only look at the floor,
her cheeks burning.

“Don’t take it so hard, Mitzi,”
Alistair said encouragingly. “If that was their intention, then they chose
poorly. Unless I’m missing something important, we come out of this looking
pretty good.”

“He’s right, Mitsuru,” Rebecca said
slowly. “Audits looks good, and whoever put this together, assuming we read
this situation correctly, comes off pretty badly. For something that must have
taken tremendous effort to orchestrate, it sure didn’t pay.”

“Yeah. I’m skeptical about that
theory myself.” Alistair leaned back in his chair, and put his sneakers up on
one corner of the desk. “I think we have to assume that whatever happened, it
all happened because the responsible party wanted it that way. I’m not seeing
this as an operation gone wrong.”

Rebecca looked at him doubtfully,
but did not say anything.

“Until I hear otherwise, I’m
assuming that the same party was responsible for the whole thing – Mitsuru’s
presence, the Weir, the probability tampering, the kid deciding to take a walk
in the park.” Alistair smiled thinly. “At this point, I would be tempted to lay
the JFK assassination at their doorstep.”

“None of that is certain,” Rebecca
objected. “This could have been the result of competing factions pursuing
disparate agendas…”

“I don’t think that’s the case,”
Alistair said, frowning and studying the chart. “I don’t see any sign of
struggle or opposition; the manipulation looks blunt to me. The structure is
haphazard, but it’s congruous – I think this is the work of a single party,
even if it is clumsy work.”

“Which of the major cartels has the
resources for this kind of probability manipulation?”

“The Black Sun,” Alistair said
definitively, “Meier-Stoldt. Thule. North. Lao Xhin. I can’t think of anyone else, but there might be one
or two others.”

“Which one of them is it that you
think is this clumsy? Which cartel has this kind of power, but uses it with the
grace of an untrained child?”

“None,” Alistair admitted. “I don’t
get it either, Becca, but it’s the only conclusion that makes any sense to me…”

Rebecca pulled another cigarette
from the pack on the desk, and lit up, apparently oblivious to Alistair’s
disapproval. She drew on it with obvious satisfaction, and then blew smoke at
the ceiling.

“Maybe we’re coming at this from the
wrong direction.” Rebecca said, turning to face them again, suddenly animated.
“Why do you think it was that they wanted Mitsuru? What’s so special about
her?”

Mitsuru’s throat tightened, as if
she had done something of which she was ashamed. It took an effort to make
certain her response did not sound defensive.

“What? What do you mean?”

Alistair looked legitimately
confused.

“Well, look at the whole setup,”
Rebecca said, leaning over the chart to point with her cigarette. “I see two
clear points of intention – make sure the kid needs a rescue, and make sure
you’re the one who does the rescuing. I heard about the catalyst thing.”

Mitsuru looked at the bandages on
her hand speculatively.

“It was weird,” she said softly,
“I’ve never felt anything like it. I don’t even know where I got the idea do to
all those things, much less how I knew I could do them.”

“Remind me to try it sometime,”
Rebecca said dryly. “Anyway, we know why the kid is important, or at least
we’ve got an idea why he’d be important to someone. But why was it so important
that you be the one to save him, Mitsuru?”

“Maybe his power as catalyst is
limited,” Alistair speculated. “Maybe it had to be someone like Mitsuru…”

“What?” Rebecca crowed. “You mean
their plot hinged on the presence of a dangerously unbalanced lunatic, with
designs on the Audits department?”

Alistair grimaced at the sound, as
the door slammed shut behind the fleeing Mitsuru.

“You’re too hard on her, you know,”
he said grumpily.

“And you’re too easy on her – at
worst, I’m hurting her feelings. What do you think you’re risking, coddling
Mitsuru like that?” Rebecca slapped her hand against the table angrily. “Look,
I love the girl, I always have, and I died a little when they put her away, you
know? They had to do it, though. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

Alistair nodded slowly, as if he
were half-asleep.

“She’s dangerous, Alistair,
dangerous to everyone around her. Whatever they did to her while she was gone,
it didn’t help. I caught her a few minutes ago, trying to operate her Black
Protocol. It was gruesome. She can’t control it, she never could – you cannot
put much faith in her good nature, Alistair.”

Rebecca leaned close to him, deadly
serious. The mood was so rare on her that he had to look away.

“What would you have me do?”

“I support you in this
rehabilitation project, Alistair, wholeheartedly. Mitsuru is my friend, whether
she deserves the chances she’s getting or not. I have to know that you are
going to make her do this. You let her fail once before, Alistair,” Rebecca said
bluntly, hopping down from the desk. “I haven’t forgotten that.”

“Neither have I,” Alistair said, his
face ashen.

“She was my best friend, Alistair.
You guys were just fucking. It isn’t the same thing, so don’t act like you
understand. You were her mentor, and none of this ever should’ve happened,
because you should’ve put an end to it before it ever had a chance to become an
issue.”

Alistair gave her only the barest of
nods, his expression grim.

Rebecca opened his office door, and
then hesitated there, silhouetted against the light streaming in from the
window in the next room.

“I should have killed you then, but
you were too bright to lose.” Rebecca’s voice was soft, but deadly serious.
“You promised me that you would fix this, and I’m holding you to that,
Alistair. You screw this up for Mitsuru and whatever happens to her, I’m gonna
make damn sure happens to you as well. You should remember that.”

Nine

Alex wiped the palms of his hands discretely on his jeans. He was more than nervous – he felt like an animal on
display at the zoo. He was sitting on an overstuffed leather couch on one side
of the crowded office, and arrayed in a rough semicircle facing him were
Michael, an attractive woman wearing an Anaheim Angels T-shirt named Rebecca,
and two men he had not met before. On the left, a pleasant-looking blond man
named Alistair sat, next to an older man named Gaul who had Mitsuru’s red eyes,
and an even icier demeanor. It was cold in the room, since Alistair and Gaul
had insisted that Rebecca open a window if she was going to smoke. All of them
seemed to have nothing better to do than stare at him while Rebecca ‘prepared’.

Whatever Rebecca’s preparations
were, from where Alex sat, it looked quite a bit as if she had fallen asleep,
half-smiling, her head cocked to one side as if she were about to speak.

“Alex, right?” Alistair said his
name oddly, as if it were in doubt. “He doesn’t look like much.”

“Hey! I am right here, you know.”

“Alistair,” Rebecca warned, her eyes
firmly shut.

“Well, he doesn’t, anyone can see
that,” Alistair said sullenly, folding his arms across his chest. “The kid is
nothing special.”

“Don’t be obnoxious,” Rebecca
scolded, then opened her eyes and smiled at Alex. “Just ignore him, okay?”

Alex managed a nod. He was now
feeling resentful, on top of everything else. Who in the hell was this Alistair
person anyway? Why did he look so disappointed in him? He hadn’t even had the
chance to do anything yet!

“We should start soon,” Gaul said.
“I don’t want this to become public knowledge, and the longer all of us spend
in the same room, the greater the likelihood that someone will notice.”

“Alex, be patient with us for a
minute longer,” Michael said, nodding at him. “Gaul, you know that these things
can’t be rushed.”

“It’s cool,” Rebecca said, kicking
her sandals off into a corner. “I am ready anyway. Alex, I bet you won’t mind
if we skip the introductions, right? Since we already know each other...”

“Yeah, but, why is that? Why do I
feel like I know you?”

“Empathy, Alex,” Rebecca said,
walking across the office to sit down next to him on the couch. “I’m an empath.
My name is Rebecca.”

Alex jumped away when she sat down
near him. The crushed leather cushions seemed equally uncomfortable no matter
what part of the couch he sat on.

“Are you making me trust you right
now, or something?”

Rebecca chuckled good-naturedly.

“I don’t think you would have
flinched if I was forcing you to trust me. It is actually the other way around.
As an empath, I inadvertently make my own emotional state public knowledge. You
feel like you know me, Alex, because on an unconscious level, you already do.
Your reptile brain already knows everything it needs to know about me. You
trust me because I am trustworthy, Alex. You like me because I am extremely
likable.”

Alistair snorted.

“Keep ignoring him,” Rebecca told
Alex, patting him on the knee. “I’ve already told you what you need to know
about me, Alex, down where it matters. You know that, right?”

Alex nodded slowly.

“I do, actually.”

Rebecca smiled at him approvingly,
pulling her hair back into a quick ponytail and wrapping it in a rubber band.
Alex couldn’t quite figure her out – her accent was definitely Southern
Californian, and she looked a bit Latino, but there was something about the way
she spoke, something a bit exotic about her appearance that he couldn’t place.
She was right, though – he found her immediately likable, and utterly without
guile in her frankness. Rebecca was pretty, but she didn’t make him nervous at
all, even when she sat close to him on the couch, even in front of this
strangely intense audience, staring as if they expected to be entertained.

Actually, Alex thought, that part
might be the whole empath thing.

“Okay. That is good. I’m sure you
have a whole bunch of questions, and I promise I will do my best to answer them
later. For right now, though, I would like to move to our main business.”
Rebecca folded her legs underneath her, Indian-style, so that she faced him on
the couch, her bare toes pressing against the leg of his jeans. “Michael told
you that you are special, right?”

Alistair made a choking noise.

“I guess so. I’ve got some kind of
power, right?”

“More like a potential, right now,”
Rebecca agreed. “Today, I want to activate that ability, Alex. I would like to
wake up that power of yours, and find out what you can do. What do you think?”

Gaul glanced irritably at his watch,
but did not dare interrupt. To the best of his knowledge, Rebecca had never
lost her temper with anyone at the Academy. That didn’t keep Gaul, along with
the rest of the campus, from treading lightly when it came to potentially
upsetting her. That was probably a side effect of Rebecca’s empathic abilities,
Gaul thought, and not another cause for worry. Nevertheless, he did not plan to
find out by hurrying her.

Rebecca carried on talking to Alex
in a calm, reasonable voice, her face open and reassuring, and her hand resting
casually over his own. Neither of them seemed to be aware of the staring onlookers
crowded into the small office.

“I’m a bit scared,” Alex said,
surprised and embarrassed by his honesty. “But I guess I want to know, too.”

Rebecca lifted his hand up, and
clutched it between her own, smiling beatifically at him.

“I have your permission, then,
right?” She asked the boy, his eyes already drooping. “I promise to take good
care of you.”

“Okay,” Alex said, his speech a bit
slurred, his eyes half-closed, “okay.”

Rebecca smiled and squeezed his
hand, then set it neatly down on his thigh. She reached forward and ran one
hand across his face, gently closing his eyes.

“Would you like to lie down, Alex?”
Rebecca asked, speaking so softly that Gaul had to lean forward to hear it. She
patted her crossed legs cheerfully. “You can use my lap.”

Alex obediently lay his head down in
her lap, facing up toward the ceiling, his legs bent over the arm of the couch
and dangling a few inches off the ground. His eyes were closed, and his face
had an almost disturbing calm to it, as if he had been washed unnaturally clean
of all concerns, an involuntary Buddha. Rebecca bent over him, her eyes shut,
one arm draped across his chest, her other hand pressed against his forehead.

“Okay,” Rebecca said, her voice sounding
very animated. “Okay, he’s down and I’m in. And, oh my, this is very strange…”

“Rebecca? Is something wrong? Are
you alright?”

Rebecca nodded shortly, her face
flushed and red, her brow wet with sweat.

“Yeah, I’m okay, but touching this
kid, you understand. It’s incandescent, the effect he has. This is a tremendous
power. We are going to need to be very careful about who he is exposed to, here
at the Academy. I can barely manage it.”

Gaul and Michael both shifted in
their seats and leaned forward, while Alistair rolled his eyes.

“What’s his story? What makes
Alexander Warner tick?”

“Guilt.” Rebecca’s reply was prompt,
definite. “Barely contained anger. A sense of unfairness, resentment of the
most general kind.”

“Did he actually kill his family?”

“She’s an empath, Michael,” Alistair
said scornfully. “All she knows is how he feels about it. You want to find out
something about that kid, ask me.”

Gaul pushed his glasses back up on
his brow, glancing over at Alistair disapprovingly.

“That’s enough, Alistair,” Gaul said
mildly.

Alistair gave Gaul a challenging
glare, but settled back in his chair.

“Did he kill them?”

Michael continued his questions with
an almost placid patience.

“Hard to say,” Rebecca admitted,
biting her lower lip. “He certainly thinks so, but I can’t find any specific
memory of it. Maybe Alistair is right. Maybe you need a better telepath.”

“Personally, I’m not so much
concerned as to what he did or didn’t do,” Gaul said mildly, “but rather how he
feels about it now. How likely it is that we are going to have a reoccurrence
of that sort of behavior?”

“Well, he only had one family,
right?”

“This is weird, guys. I think I’m
going to need Alistair’s help after all,” Rebecca said, her brow furrowed with
concern. “Unless I’m reading this wrong, this kid has been tampered with –
extensively.”

Alistair stopped pouting and gave
Gaul an inquiring look, getting a small nod in response. Alistair closed his
eyes, his hands hanging loosely between his legs, as his entire body went
slack. There was a long silence, while Michael and Gaul looked from Rebecca to
Alistair and then back.

“She’s right,” Alistair affirmed
muddily, his face creased with effort. “This kid’s been manipulated. Tampering
doesn’t even begin to describe the extent of it. Every prominent memory was
subjected to alteration – and some of the memories may also be manufactured.
The manipulation is so widespread; I can’t make a determination between what’s
genuine and what’s been finessed.”

Alistair shook his head and opened
his eyes. Gaul looked worried, but Michael had a look of grim satisfaction on
his face.

“I thought so,” he said softly,
nodding, his dreadlocks shaking with the movement. “From the first time I
talked to him, I suspected as much. How could someone have such minimal feeling
about such a traumatic event?”

“There is guilt and anger, all of
what you would expect,” Rebecca allowed. “Without any real depth of feeling,
however. Nor do I see any kind of introspection – he doesn’t return to these
memories, even in dreams. And they are so hazy…”

“They must have been damaged by
manipulation,” Alistair agreed, holding one hand to his forehead and wincing.
“They are far too faded for his age. You would think these memories were fifty
years old. His head is a terrible mess – I already have a headache.”

Gaul leaned forward in his chair to
peer at Alex. The boy appeared to be asleep, his face empty and composed, brown
hair smoothed back from his forehead, where Rebecca rested her hand. He did not
appear to be dangerous or damaged, but Gaul had worked with children long
enough to know that it was not always possible to see their potential for
violence.

“Gaul, the night Mitsuru found him –
it wasn’t just the circumstances that were manipulated. This kid was subjected
to alteration as well.”

Gaul nodded, looking at Alex a bit
sadly as he did so.

“There is no doubt of it. Whatever
trap has been laid for us, and whoever was responsible for it, Alex Warner is a
part of that trap.” Gaul shook his head. “This makes his presence in the
Academy all the more problematic.”

“He isn’t a kid,” Alistair said
gloomily. “He is a bomb.”

“No,” Michael corrected. “He is a
child and a bomb.”

“Um, hello? I am getting a bit
tired. Do you want me to activate this kid or what?”

Gaul considered for a moment, ignoring
Michael and Alistair’s stares.

“We have come this far. Even if
young Alex is as you say, well, the threat a bomb poses is not determined
solely by location. It’s about when it goes off, and who is standing next to
it.”

He shrugged dismissively, the ghost
of a smile playing about his thin lips.

“Do it, Rebecca. Activate him.”

***

Alex
woke up slowly, his awareness returning to him piece by piece, a little like
waking up after a night of serious drinking, but without as much immediate
pain. First, he felt the soft cotton sheets bunched in his hands, and realized
he was in a bed. This was not his own bed, unless someone had replaced his
institutional bedding with high-thread-count sheets and added a bunch of
unnecessary pillows. He was comfortably warm, lying on his back, head propped
and arms folded neatly across his stomach. Then he became aware of smells: some
kind of incense, his own sweat, and then a hint of the soft, unmistakable scent
of a girl’s hair coming from the pillow beneath his head.

He was in a girl’s bed, then. Alex
thought briefly about opening his eyes, but he felt too tired to manage it. It
seemed pleasant, anyway, lying there, in the softness and the cozy warmth of
the bed, only languidly aware of his aching body. He felt strangely calm,
almost blissful, immobile and safe.

Perhaps he fell back asleep then. He
couldn’t be certain whether the sound of a lighter and then a protracted
coughing fit merely jarred him from his reverie, or whether it actually woke
him up again. The effect was the same, regardless – Alex was jolted from his
placid contemplation into awareness of his situation, his body’s litany of
aches and pains, and his presence in the strange bed. A strange girl’s bed.
With a certain amount of trepidation, Alex opened his eyes.

The room was dim, the single window
smothered by heavy blinds. Only a sliver of the late afternoon sun made its way
across the giant four-post bed that occupied much of the room’s available
space. A pair of old-looking bureaus made of dark wood and a dresser topped
with a muted television displaying commercials rounded out the furnishings. On
the other side of the bed, wrapped in a red Anaheim Angels–branded blanket,
Rebecca hacked and coughed sheepishly, red-faced, motioning for Alex to look away.

“Are you smoking pot?” Alex asked
skeptically, sitting up against the headboard and attempting to extract his
lower body from the tangle of sheets and blankets. He seemed to have picked up
a headache to accompany his body’s various pains at some point. “You are a
seriously terrible role model.”

“Give me a break,” Rebecca croaked.
“I have a headache. Anyway, it’s your fault.”

“What? How is that possibly my
fault?”

Rebecca shrugged and reached over to
the sideboard, retrieving a heavy blown-glass pipe and a cheap plastic lighter.

“Never mind. Do you smoke this
stuff?”

Alex shook his head.

“Fine,” Rebecca said, putting the
lighter to the bowl and taking a long hit. She held her breath for a moment, and
then exhaled a stream of dense, skunky smoke at the
ceiling. “Be a drag. Whatever.”

“Why do I feel so,” Alex paused,
searching for words, “um, bad?”

“That’s your fault, too,” Rebecca
said, making a face at Alex. “You started freaking out, when we activated you.
First, Michael tried to hold you down, and when that didn’t work, I had to
bliss you out.”

“Yeah. So, uh, bliss?”

“State of semiconscious ecstasy.
Nicest way I know to put somebody down. I’m an empath, remember,” Rebecca said,
rolling her eyes. “You sure you don’t want any of this?”

Alex looked warily at the bubbled
blue glass pipe. He started to refuse again, and then it occurred to him that
the routine drug tests he faced for so many years were a thing of the past. The
Academy probably did not have any such policy, he figured, if Rebecca, who he
thought was some kind of school councilor, was trying to get him stoned.
Moreover, his head really was starting to hurt.

“Fuck it. Sure. Why not?”

Rebecca chuckled and handed him the
pipe and lighter.

“Famous last words, right?”

Alex barely managed to get the bowl
lit before he started coughing, his throat raw and his mouth filled with spit.
Rebecca took the pipe from his limp hands while he coughed, then grinned and
pounded him on the back approvingly.

“You are such a baby,” Rebecca said
cheerfully.

Alex managed to stop coughing,
caught his breath, and then gave her his best sheepish, glassy-eyed smile. She
laughed and tousled his hair. He didn’t feel stoned at all, and he thought for
a moment about asking for another hit, but then decided to let it go. Alex
figured he had already embarrassed himself enough as it was.

“So, uh, why I am in your room,
Rebecca?”

Rebecca turned to glare at him, the
pipe still at her lips, the bowl burning cherry red.

“You owe me a new couch, you little
shit,” she said, blowing smoke at him. “I had that thing for years, too. It was
like a friend of mine. So many memories.”

“And you made me lie down on it?
That’s gross.”

Rebecca smacked at his head
playfully.

“It was clean, asshole. And leather
couches last forever… oh, shit,” she said, frantically searching through the
bedding. “Where is the fucking remote?”

“What?”

“Aha!”

Rebecca pulled the remote from
underneath the pillow next to her. She hit a button and the TV’s speakers
squawked to life.

“Rebecca?”

“Shh.”

Alex squinted at the television, and
then looked over at Rebecca in surprise.

“Are you serious –” he began, only
to be cut off by Rebecca waving at him to shut up.

“Hush,” she commanded, glazed eyes
glued to the television. “Survivor is on,” she said, helpfully pointing
at the TV with the remote. “You ever watch this show, Alex? They make them do
some pretty messed-up stuff, eat bugs and shit, you know?”

“I can’t believe that you watch this
crap,” Alex grumbled, settling back against the pillows behind him.

“Well, I do, and we are in my room,
so, you’ll just have to deal. Give it a chance. You should like it – half these
girls make a concerted effort to show America their tits.”

Alex briefly considered pressing her
for answers, and then gave up on the idea. Why take on a fight he was
guaranteed to lose? Anyway, he had to admit that she was right about the boobs
on display, even if they did appear to be mostly on the fake side. He waited
patiently for the commercial break, wondering if the dialogue on this show had
always been so vapid, or if he was just stoned and tired.

“Okay,” Rebecca said breezily,
hitting the mute button and silencing a detergent ad, “you have until the
commercials end. Knock yourself out.”

Alex felt a bit groggy, if not
exactly wasted, but his headache had receded a bit. In balance, then, he
figured he was no worse off than when he had woken, but it was still hard for
him to formulate the questions he wanted to ask. On the other hand, perhaps it was
simply that he had too many.

“So, what happened when you
activated me? I mean, except for being tired and a little sore, I don’t feel
any different.”

“Besides destroying my couch? Well,
we didn’t have much trouble activating you, but I guess we did a little bit too
good of a job. Normally, it’s a simple procedure, even for one of you rare
types. Technically, a telepath would work almost as well as an empath, but Gaul
likes to have an empath on hand, in case things go wrong. As it turns out, that
was a very good idea.”

Rebecca cleared her throat, and then
reached for the glass of water on the bedside table beside her and drank
deeply, making Alex acutely aware of how thirsty he was. He did not want to
interrupt Rebecca’s explanation, though, so he decided to deal with it for now.

“That catalyst effect of yours is a
pretty unpredictable thing, Alex. The moment I put you under, it started to
affect me.” Rebecca looked a bit uncomfortable to Alex as she spoke, and he
wondered what about the situation bothered her. “I thought I had it under
control, but it’s… intoxicating, you know? It’s all this power, right? And the
further down I pushed, the closer I came to activating you, the more intense
the effect became.”

Rebecca shrugged and gave him a
goofy grin, her eyes bloodshot and glazed.

“By the time I’d completed all the
preparations, Gaul said I was glowing.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“Just that. We had formed a closed
loop, Alex. I was using my power to improve your access to your own. You were
providing me with power to do so. Every step I took accelerated this process.”
Rebecca turned to face him, putting one hand on his shoulder, her expression
serious, maybe even concerned. “Alex, can you feel the Black Door?”

Alex intended to tell her that he
could not. He had even opened his mouth to do so. Then, it was as if his
perspective changed somehow, as if he were observing himself as a third party,
from a discreet distance but with great clarity. He could see the boy propped
up against the pillows on the bed, still half underneath the blankets, his long
hair hanging down in his eyes. He could see his vague, almost dull-witted
expression. On the face of the woman sitting beside him in the bed, he could
see concern mixed with resignation, and knew that she was afraid that something
bad might happen. Inside of her, pulsating out from underneath her T-shirt and
flannel pajama bottoms, from inside of her lithe body, he saw a multifaceted
light, burning like sunlight refracted in the heart of a gemstone. However, when
he looked inside of himself, all he could see was darkness; a darkness he knew
was frigid. Within it, encompassed by it, he could see a great Black Door,
heavy lacquered wood and tarnished silver hinges and door handle, the whole
thing coated with a generous layer of white frost.

When Alex became aware of himself
again, he was lying on his back. His eyes were open, and he wondered how long
he had been staring at the ceiling. Rebecca’s hand rested on his forehead, cool
and soft. He sat up gingerly, wanting to ask what happened, and then noticed
that the show was back on TV. Wisely, he decided to wait for commercial.

“Sorry ’bout that,” Rebecca said,
punching mute and turning to face him again, “but you kinda lost your shit
there for a minute. I don’t need you destroying my bed and my couch in the same
day. You disintegrated that thing on a molecular level, you little bastard.”

“Sorry,” Alex muttered, obscurely
embarrassed. “Guess I’ve been kind of a headache today, huh?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s my job.”
Rebecca smirked at him. “I guess I should warn you that, should you make a
habit of destroying girls’ beds, you’re going to have trouble scoring invites
in the future.”

Alex rolled his eyes.

“So, what’s that,” Alex paused,
shuddering slightly at the memory, “that thing inside me, Rebecca? The Black
Door or whatever you called it?”

“Not whatever. That’s what it is,
Alex. It’s a big fucking Black Door in your head. I suggest that you try not to
think about it too much. Sometime when I’m feeling better, I can do a better
job of explaining your situation.”

She looked at Alex with something
that looked suspiciously like pity, and for some reason, it bothered him.

“Okay, so, what does that –?”

Rebecca put one finger up to his
lips without even looking, her eyes already glued to the television, her other
hand hunting for the mute button on the remote.

“Shh. Survivor.”

Alex tried to watch in resentful
silence, but he was too comfortable, Rebecca was too easy to be around, or
maybe he was a little stoned, after all. He found himself raptly watching a
bunch of strangers plot, scheme, and preen for the cameras, and wondered how
long it had been since he had last watched television.

“Alex,” Rebecca said quietly, still
staring at the TV, “it’s probably going to be hard on you, you know? Up until
now, people have treated you like you didn’t exist, or like they wished you
didn’t. Now everyone will know who you are before you meet. They will probably
be extra nice to you, but you will always have to wonder about their
intentions. How does that make you feel?”

“As long as I can get a date out of
it,” Alex said with a sheepish smile, “I’m cool.”

Rebecca gave him an amused looked,
and then rolled her eyes.

“Boys. Hush,” she said. “TV show.”

Ten

“Director,
I must object. An Inquiry? Is all of this truly necessary? As I recall, my only
crime was rescuing a boy who is now a student here, along with one of your
Operators.”

“The Inquiry was deemed necessary
because your answers, on the face of it, appear evasive, Lord North. You must
understand that though your motivations may be pure, the explanation you’ve
provided for your proximity to the incident strains credulity.”

Mr. North crossed his legs and
looked thoughtfully at Gaul.

“And yet here we are. Director, you
should know by my reputation that if I wanted to deceive you, I would have at
least concocted a believable story,” North offered reasonably. Gaul had only
met him a few times before, at various Hegemony events where his attendance was
expected; he had thought him to be reserved and observant, but Rebecca told him
that if you actually got him to talk that he was a bore. After an hour talking
in circles with the somberly dressed man, he was inclined to agree. “That I
simply happened to be in the area on personal business may be a wildly unlikely
coincidence, but it is a coincidence that saved one of your people’s lives.
What more can I offer you?”

“And the nature of the business?”
Gaul asked doggedly.

“Personal, and private, and, as
judged by the Committee-at-Large, nothing that I must disclose to you, having
already done so to a panel of my peers.”

“You are putting me in a position,
Lord North,” Gaul said carefully, “where my only option to compel your cooperation
would be to expand the scope of a potential Audit of the matter to include your
private business.”

“If you feel that you must do so,
then by all means, Director. By all means. That I refuse to disclose private
matters does not mean that I have something to hide. If you instigate an Audit
into this matter, then I will be forced to lodge a complaint, and you will be
called before the Committee to explain your rationale. Tell me, sir,” North
said pointedly, “which part of my actions in this affair do you feel
jeopardized the safety of Central, or violated a tenet of the Agreement?”

Gaul tried a cold, long silence, but
North seemed unperturbed. Eventually, Gaul sighed, shuffled his papers, and
moved on. Even the mention of the Committee-at-Large, Central’s own
representative body and the theoretical counterweight to his own authority as
Director, irked him to no end. Gaul approved of democracy, at least in theory,
but only when it cooperated with him, something the Committee had never been
willing to do.

“Tell me about the Weir, then.”

“Had no idea they would be there,”
North said, brushing his dark brown hair back from his forehead and looking
huffy. “Never would have suspected such a thing, and in such a pitiful
backwater, no less.”

“And the silver Weir, Lord North?”

“Terrifying creature,” North said
sincerely, leaning forward as he spoke, “absolutely terrifying. I had thought
it dead, of course, after your Operator – Aoki, wasn’t it? After she shot the
Weir in the head, I assumed that it was dead. I had dealt with most of the rest
of the pack when the thing pulled itself up out of the mud, howled and then ran
off to who-knows-where, before I could stop it.” North paused and looked
contemplative. “Pity,” he said, after a brief hesitation, “the beast had a
magnificent pelt. It would have made quite the trophy.”

Gaul fixed the man with his best
unsettling stare. He had actually practiced it, after reading a book on human
psychology that discussed conversational gambits, and had found it quite
effective on the Academy staff. It failed, however, to invoke a reaction of any
kind in North’s regular, placid face.

“Have you ever encountered one
previously?” Gaul asked, hoping that he did not sound as tired as he felt. “A
silver Weir, I mean?”

North scratched his head and then
offered Gaul the faintest ghost of a smile.

“Odd that you should mention it,
Director,” he said, looking vaguely interested for the first time since Gaul
had met him, “but you are the second person to ask me that question recently.
The first, since you are certain to ask, was Mr. Cruces, head of the Terrie
Cartel’s operations in Asia. He asked me at the last Hegemony Executive
Committee meeting,” North said, squinting with the effort of remembering. “I
believe it was as an aside to anecdotes being shared regarding the Weir hill
tribes. He felt strongly, as I recall, that the silver breed were not as rare
as was generally thought, and that in some regions, particularly Cambodia and
Vietnam, that they could still be found if you looked hard enough. I thought it
odd, at the time, when he asked me if I had seen one. I got the distinct
impression that he had seen one, and recently, from the way he talked about
it.”

Gaul tried to digest the
information, and then decided that he could not stomach it. He felt like he was
being fed something, and he had never liked handouts. Still, he did not think
that he would get any more out of North, even if he decided to push him again,
so he elected against trying. He changed subjects.

“Lord North, investigating these
incidents would proceed more smoothly and, I might add, impede on your time and
liberty less, were the Committee-at-Large to approve the candidates the Board
submitted for the vacant Auditor positions over the last two years,” Gaul said
carefully, shuffling the papers on his desk into completed and incomplete
piles. “I would hope that this experience would color your thinking on the
subject.”

North smiled his faint replica of a
smile and folded his hands before he spoke. Gaul knew what he was going to say
before he started. Rebecca was right, he thought, exasperated. The man was
simply boring.

“I believe that I speak for the
Committee-at-Large when I say that we would be happy to expedite approval of
the candidates for the vacancies in Audits if you would be willing to review
our proposal to expand the selection process for Audits personnel, Director,”
North offered mildly.

“You are referring to the proposal
in which we add two more Auditors, selected by the Committee-at-Large rather
than the Board?”

“The very same. Surely, it would be
a mutually beneficial arrangement. You said yourself you need more Auditors,
Director.”

“An Auditor apiece for the Hegemony
and the Black Sun, then?” Gaul said darkly, pausing in his paperwork to fix
North with another practiced glare that was wasted on him. “That defeats the
purpose of the Auditors in the first place. They are meant to be impartial,
Lord North.”

“I resent the implication that the
Committee-at-Large is not capable of making an impartial selection,” North
said, not looking like he resented much of anything. “On the contrary, some
might be moved to call the Board less than impartial when it comes to approving
your own recommendations. After all,” North continued blithely, as if he were
reading the weather report, ignoring Gaul’s stormy expression, “you have
managed to get two of your Auditors onto the Board itself, sir! Certainly, that
is a violation of the spirit of the Agreement, if not the letter.”

Gaul held on to the glare a moment longer,
and then gave up on it, helpless in the face of total apathy.

“I must say, Lord North, that you
are either an exceptionally dangerous bureaucrat or a surprisingly genteel
Operator,” Gaul admitted reluctantly, returning to his paperwork.

North gave him a short, ambiguous
nod, and then stood up partway.

“A compliment, surely. I take it,
then, that you won’t need anything further from me?”

Gaul glanced up, pen poised above
the document laid out in front of him.

“Not at the moment, no,” Gaul said, looking
back down at the paperwork. “You may inform the rest of the Committee-at-Large
that I will consider their proposal. Please keep yourself available for
potential future inquiries in this matter, Lord North.”

North nodded again and turned for
the door.

“Certainly,” he said, pausing with
his hand on the doorknob. “But if I may ask, Director – I was wondering about
the boy. Alexander Warner, if my sources are correct. I have heard that he
shows some promise, and a rather unique protocol. You never told me, sir, if he
turned out to be worth all the trouble.”

Gaul did not even look up from the
document he was annotating.

“No, Lord North. No, I did not.”

***

Traffic
was light on Market Street for a weekday; the last time Mitsuru had been in San
Francisco, there had been talk about banning cars on Market, and until a
battered white Dodge van turned onto Spear Street, she suspected they might
have done it.

The sidewalks were moderately
crowded; it was late enough in the afternoon that the luckiest of the office
workers had managed to sneak out early, and they plowed eagerly through groups
of tourists and teenagers on summer break on their way to the train station.
The sun was bright above the Embarcadero, the clock tower of the gleaming white
Ferry Building also considerably changed since the last time Mitsuru had seen
it.

Mitsuru moved with the crowd, along
Market and then across the wide pavilion that adjoined the Embarcadero, picking
her way through crowds of shoppers from the nearby farmers market and clusters
of shirtless skateboarders. It was warm, and it felt good to her to be out in
the sunlight – something she had taken for granted, once. She had new
priorities, these days.

At the edge of the municipal
railroad tracks, she reversed herself, heading back toward Justin Herman Plaza,
with the strange, dry fountain at the far end, which Alistair claimed Enron
built as a donation to the city. Mitsuru doubted it, but Alistair often knew
strange things like that. For a moment, she considered reaching through the
uplink for the answer, but then she remembered that she was on mission, and
therefore rigged for monitoring. Not a good idea to let her mind drift, then,
given how hard a look Central had been giving her operational logs, in light of
her application to Audits.

Today felt good, though – working
her way through the crowd, elbowed aside by a tiny Chinese woman clutching a
bag of what looked to be lemongrass, noticing a brash smile from a handsome
Mexican teenager on a skateboard, and after a moment’s consideration, smiling
back. The black static that had been eating at her thoughts since the whole
thing in the park had lifted some, this morning, and she felt calm and in
control.

She could not understand how she had
ended up on the kill team – Alistair wasn’t one to indulge in revenge. In fact,
he considered it a vice, and a foolish one. Debts had to be paid, reputations
maintained, and that was it, as far as Alistair was concerned. The important
thing to him was that someone had attacked a member of the Audit staff, even if
she was only a provisional Operator, and that the rest of the world would be
watching, and learning from their response. Mitsuru saw where he was coming
from, even though she did not subscribe to that philosophy personally.

Alistair had no choice, the way
Mitsuru saw it. He preferred negotiation to violence, but in this case, he
needed to make it very apparent to anyone thinking about trying the same thing
that it would be a very, very bad idea. To be effective, the consequences of
such an attack had to be so dire that they would outweigh any potential gains.
Alistair had avoided requesting many sanctions since he had become Chief
Auditor, but he had been up late last night, drawing up the paperwork for the
sanctioning of the Terrie Cartel.

Mitsuru had not been, by her own
admission, a very good girl. Nevertheless, there she was, a sanction order for
an entire cartel falling right into her lap. Maybe, she thought brightly, her
luck was finally changing.

It had to be Gaul, she mused, pausing
to look at the chalk drawings of the Golden Gate and Marin Headlands displayed
by one of the vendors’ stalls at the plaza. Alistair was her friend and mentor,
two very good reasons he would not have brought Mitsuru along for this job. She
didn’t know what had gotten into Gaul, but she could have kissed him. That
Alistair had decided to manage the operation himself, clearly to keep an eye on
her, did not bother Mitsuru in the slightest. She appreciated his concern, and
found his presence reassuring, though she would have never admitted it.

None of her assignments had included
wetwork since her reinstatement, not since the thing in Singapore went so very
wrong. She was authorized to use force on occasion, but had only had a few
opportunities to do so. Mitsuru was not one to lie to herself. Breaking heads
was her favorite part of being an Operator, and until she had gotten this job,
she had not half-realized how much she had missed it.

She rode the escalator up one level,
into the semi-enclosed mall of One Embarcadero, a modern glass combination of
condominiums and retail space. She wanted a cup of coffee, but she was in San
Francisco, so she figured she could do better than the Starbucks franchises
that she had seen on virtually every block.

The crowd thinned on the second
level. Outside of a few groups clustered around some round metal tables, the
area was moderately clear. She saw the target almost immediately.

She thought of Alistair, then, as
loudly as possible, while moving casually across the walkway, ambling in the
same general direction as the target.

Mitzi?

Even after all these years, hearing
Alistair’s voice in her head creeped Mitsuru out. There was something intrusive
about telepathy, even when it was consensual. The idea of Alistair knowing what
she thought about him made her feel very vulnerable.

I have him. I am behind him now, on
the second level of Embarcadero One, heading toward Spear Street.

She slowed her breathing. She forced
herself not to look at the mark.

Good job. I am a couple blocks over.
Let me know where you hit street level, and I will meet up with you there.

Okay, boss.

Mitsuru hung back, pretending to
examine the display of truffles in the shop window in front of her. Behind the
window, a bored sales clerk talked loudly into her cell phone. The target, a
grey-haired man in his late fifties, wrapped in a dark coat, seemed not to
notice her. He was a slow walker, and she found herself struggling to hang far
enough behind him to avoid standing out.

Her disguise was purely Etheric,
installed by Gaul before the start of the job. He had wrapped her in
obfuscation and deception protocols, and as far as she could tell, eyes just
slid off her. She had started a subroutine when she had seen the target, and
now, discreetly and at intervals, her appearance shifted. The target was only
an E-Class Operator, so he should not have been able to pay much attention to
her, not with Gaul’s protocols around her. Still, it was best to be careful.

At Spear Street, the target
descended to street level, and Mitsuru informed Alistair. She waited until he
had turned a corner, counted to five, and then went down the same stairwell
herself. She hit the street, blinking at the sun, and Alistair caught up behind
her after a dozen steps, clearly hot and sweating underneath his heavy black
coat.

Alistair had made it clear during
the briefing that the Terrie Cartel were probably only the front for the whole
scheme – North hadn’t left much behind when he eliminated the Weir, but it
hadn’t taken Alistair long to run down who had put out the contract in the
first place, there were too many people who owed him favors.

The Terrie Cartel was a relative
newcomer to the Hegemony, with a reputation for unsavory human experimentation,
though all of their previous misbehaviors were deemed minor. They were
small-time, localized primarily in Geneva for the last thirty years, with
affiliated commercial firms in Paris, Macau, Jakarta, and San Francisco. In
recent years, they had made significant inroads into Southeast Asia, working
primarily in transportation, mostly of the extralegal variety. Mitsuru wondered
what kind of offer made the Terrie Cartel willing to risk conflict with
Central, and could not come up with anything. Everyone had heard stories about
the Al-Hajra, the last cartel proscribed by Central,
and Rebecca Levy and Alice Gallow Auditing them into extinction. What could
have made the Terrie Cartel think it would go any differently for them?

By the time they reached the corner,
the target had made it most of the way down the block, and was in the process
of jaywalking to the other side of the street. Observation on previous days
made his most probable destination the little park a few blocks up – he often
had his lunches there, according to the workup she had gotten from Analytics.
Mitsuru slid her arm through Alistair’s, their disguises morphing to become
complementary – suddenly, they looked like a college-age couple, casually
dressed, strolling in the sun. She acted as if it were an operational
necessity. They stayed as close to the target as was possible on the lightly
crowded street.

Mitsuru got a bit nervous, all of a
sudden. She thought for a moment, and then nudged Alistair.

This is wrong.

Alistair looked over at her and
raised his eyebrow inquisitively.

Why isn’t he worried, Alistair? Why
aren’t they preparing for some kind of retribution – the cartel has to know
it’s coming.

Alistair shrugged half-heartedly.

Are you suggesting we abort?

Mitsuru shook her head. She was not
about to take the chance that this job would be reassigned to someone else.

Mitsuru had a number of talents. She
was a skilled field tactician, a living node on the Etheric Network, capable of
making strategic decisions on the fly. She was a trained intelligence operative,
skilled in counterintelligence and espionage, and a competent field medic.
Additionally, when the mood struck her, she could make an acceptable curry.

Her strength, however, her heart,
had always been here – in the field, with a combat team. She felt better than
she had in years, and she hadn’t even had a chance to kill anyone yet. She was
not giving up on the operation, not when her chances at becoming an Auditor
could well ride on a positive outcome.

No. I still say we engage at the
park. Be careful, though.

Alistair chuckled and hurried her
along, around another corner, in time to watch the target walk into a Thai
takeout place across the street from the park. A quick check with the network
confirmed that this restaurant was one that he normally frequented. She and
Alistair paused to admire the dresses on display at a nearby boutique,
discreetly altering their appearance again to avoid suspicion. In the shop
window, Mitsuru and Alistair now appeared to be an elderly Asian couple,
grey-haired and dressed like tourists.

Mitsuru still felt a bit edgy, but
the adrenal rush of a combat operation about to execute had hit her, and washed
away most of her nervousness. While they waited for the target to finish buying
his lunch, Mitsuru activated her uplink to the network, and accessed the latest
probability projections from Analytics, as well as the target’s dossier. She
had read it before the operation, of course, but a quick refresh before things
got heavy couldn’t hurt.

His name was Luke Estelle, age
unknown, naturalized U.S. citizen, originally from France. An orphan, he had
been activated at puberty and trained at the Academy in operations and
intelligence, specializing in an energy manipulation protocol. He had
affiliated with the Hegemony before graduation, and had been recruited by the
Terrie cartel as an Operator almost immediately after. Estelle acted first as
an enforcer, gradually working his way up the ranks to become the Chief
Security Officer for the cartel, as well as becoming their top field agent.
With his experience, Mitsuru knew it would be a mistake to underestimate him.
Still, given that the kill team had three Operators and one Auditor, she did
not see many probable outcomes that left him alive.

Wait, Mitsuru thought, the last part
catching up with her. Not many outcomes?

There hadn’t been any, just hours
ago, during operation prep. She accessed her uplink again, and took a good look
at the analytical projections and the tangle of probabilities surrounding the
event.

Alistair?

Alistair looked at her reflection in
the window, obviously irritated by her pestering.

Yes, Mitzi?

According to the projections, there
is now almost a six percent chance that the target survives this encounter and
escapes capture.

Alistair looked at her for a moment,
and then his eyes went distant. Mitsuru knew that he was in telepathic contact
with Central, demanding answers. While she was waiting, Mitsuru noticed the
target leaving the restaurant, a plastic bag in one hand, headed for the park.

She felt the Isolation Protocol cut
them off from the city around them, heavy and definitive, a chill running down
her spine. She looked over at Alistair, but his face told her that he had not
invoked the field. It was powerful, suffocating in its intensity. Anyone outside
the field suddenly found compelling reasons to walk around it, or to skip their
business inside it. Those trapped inside the field simply fell into a sort of
trance, eyes open but unseeing.

It was clear that the target had not
been expecting the Isolation Protocol, either – he was scanning the streets
around him cautiously, his lunch thrown to the sidewalk, a puddle of chili
sauce and rice noodles in the gutter next to him. One hand hovered near his
coat pocket, which Mitsuru’s observation protocol advised her indicated a
firearm, as if she didn’t know from experience that it was unlikely that he
kept a bastard sword in his coat pocket.

Mitzi!

Alistair was already moving, away
from the target, back toward Market Street. He was excited, or nervous; his
mental communication was deafening, and it startled her a bit. Alistair was
usually unshakable during field ops. Something, Mitsuru knew, had gone very
wrong.

Take him, Mitzi! Forget about
questions – I will interrogate the corpse, if I have to.

Mitsuru quelled her impulse to ask
why. She did not need to know. Nor did she bother to respond – Alistair knew
she had understood, or he would not have gone running off in the direction they
came.

For a moment, she wondered what had
happened to the rest of team, what was happening behind them that had Alistair
so worried. Then, before she took her first step toward the target, she put it
all out of her mind.

It took no effort. There was no
difficulty. The world became smaller – there was only the environment around
her, her target, and her own capabilities, outlined in the luminescent rose
lettering of a ballistics protocol. Her hands drifted back of their own accord,
and found what they were looking for, nestled in the small of her back.

She moved for the target, who
appeared to not yet be able see her. She was running by the third step, trying
to close the distance between them. She did not bother with two semiautomatic
pistols strapped to the small of her back. Her hands closed instead around the
handle of the knife sheathed beside them.

She had intended to shoot him
originally, of course. Now that he knew that something was wrong, however, that
plan had gone out the window. Her uplink was active, and Analytics relayed
information through it, warning her that subtle atmospheric distortions around
the target indicated the presence of a powerful barrier protocol, which was
more than capable of stopping .45 caliber rounds, even point-blank.

Auditors did not take unnecessary
chances. They eliminated the risks that they could, and then minimized the
impact of the risks they deemed unavoidable. And, in this particular scenario,
Mitsuru needed to be certain that she could finish the target before he struck,
or he might well finish her, or worse, escape. That meant doing it close and
ugly. Designed to absorb the high-energy, low-mass impact of a bullet, the
barrier would be useless against a physical assault.

The knife she clutched was as long
as her forearm and broad, with a tapered point and a razor edge. Wrapped in
worn leather cord, the hasp fit her hand as if it belonged there. She had been
meticulous, rejecting a number of other knives before settling on this one, the
product of a small smithy in rural Arkansas that produced only a handful of
knives before shutting down sometime in the Seventies. It was not much to look
at, having lost its sheen decades ago, but the weight and balance were perfect,
and Mitsuru had fallen in love with it the first time she picked it up.

Mitsuru dispensed with caution,
charging across the crowded street, relying on the concealment protocol to hide
her from the target. Analytics guessed that she could close to within three
meters before the target got wise. They were a little off. At five meters, the
man spun to face her, pulling a revolver from inside his coat pocket.

At four meters, Mitsuru took a wrong
step, and her ankle turned.

His pistol was a long-barreled,
large-caliber, chrome-plated affair, most likely loaded with hollow-point
rounds designed to inflict massive tissue damage. The barrier protocol Gaul had
sheathed her in was tough, but it was not up to the task of blocking a bullet
that large and fast at such close range. When he spun to face her and pointed
it, the barrel of the silver pistol seemed enormous.

Mitsuru almost tumbled into the
gutter in front of him, next to his discarded Thai food. For a moment, it
seemed certain that she would, the pain in her ankle sharp and dismaying, her
balance badly skewed and her leg giving way beneath her. For Mitsuru, time
slowed, almost froze, while her Etheric implants worked, querying the network’s
servers, then processing the downloaded probability matrix, feeding her
numbers, likelihoods, odds. She would be too slow, now, even if she did not
fall. Her calculations were grim and infallible.

The gun discharged, and she could
see the bloom of hot gases as they escaped the pistol, fire and vapor. The slug
seemed huge as it wound its way through the air toward her, and she adjusted
her stance slightly, still in midair, to avoid it hitting her in the chest. She
could not dodge a bullet, no one that she knew of could, but she could try to
control where it hit her.

The bullet passed cleanly through
the bicep of her right arm, a burning line drawn through the muscle. For a
brief, brilliant moment, Mitsuru hung in the air, ruined arm trailing behind
her, captivated by the twined agony and euphoria that flooded her body. She
caught her breath, a rush of pain and pleasure running up her spine, as her arm
blossomed into a crimson flower, the shockwave destroying the tissue all around
the wound.

Mitsuru almost laughed then. The
fool had saved her by using metal-jacketed rounds. They were perfect for
tearing through barrier protocols, but tended to pass right through tissue.

The blood from Mitsuru’s arm swelled
and warped in a mass, but it did not go flying with the chunks of skin and bone
– Mitsuru reached for it, leaning against the Black Door in her mind, and with
a sound like violin strings snapping, a few more of the luminous threads that
bound the blood-soaked wood gave way. The door slid open with a strange,
moaning sound, and the trail that it left behind was wet and thick. For a
moment, her arm was in flux, partially disintegrated, caught between inertia
and Mitsuru’s will, and then finally bowing to the superior force.

Moving against prevailing motion,
her blood flowed backwards, coating her arm with a slick layer of fluid. It
wrapped around her arm like a cocoon, warm and gelatinous; Mitsuru could feel
it crawl across her skin, hardening, becoming an exoskeleton. Her body twisted
under the pressure of the outside forces, fighting momentum. As she passed by
the target in a barely controlled dive, she twisted and lashed out with her
knife hand, her damaged arm guided by the stiffened strands of blood like
puppet strings. Her heart sang as the blade passed his guard, cutting smoothly
through the target’s gun arm, severing it just below the elbow.

Mitsuru forced more power through
her body, then, wincing at pain comingled with a base ecstasy, as she forced
herself to land on her feet. Her right shoulder complained for a moment, then
gave way to momentum, dislocating at a troubling angle. Her right arm hung
useless at her side as she found her balance again. She tumbled into the man,
her left arm and her legs wrapping around him, dragging him down to the ground
with her, pulling his chin up and away from his throat.

Then, reflected in the glass of the
shop windows, there was the look – the thing that she lived for. His eyes went
wide for a moment, with shock, when he realized that he had failed to kill
Mitsuru, to defend himself. That he would die. That there was nothing he could
do, by force or by pleading, to change the outcome. Mitsuru could see it in his
eyes – surprise, fear, outrage, and buried somewhere beneath, a profound
regret.

She wondered, in the second before
she dragged the knife across his throat, which the regret was for – a lover, a
child? It did not matter.

The knife was truly a marvelous
blade. His throat offered no resistance, a single thread of blood trailing
behind the tip, his jugular exploding in a warm spray, drenching Mitsuru’s face
and chest in cloying stickiness.

She shook the blood from the blade
with a flick of her wrist, and then turned to look behind her. The Isolation Protocol
was still active. In the last few seconds, she realized belatedly, she had lost
her link to Alistair. Worse, she seemed to have company.

There were at least half a dozen of
them, wrapped in concealment protocols so powerful that she had not noticed them
until they were within a block of her. They were nothing but grey blurs to her
visually, but their Etheric Signatures were massive. Her implant crunched
numbers, and informed her helpfully that they were very probably hostiles, and
that she could do little to defend herself from them.

Blood was pouring from her arm,
mangled at the bicep and separated at the shoulder, hanging useless. She had
had reserves of power, but her Black Protocol had cost her more than she had
anticipated.

Laughing, Mitsuru assumed the most
fundamental of the one-handed fighting stances that Michael had taught her, the
tip of the knife pointed toward the rapidly advancing figures, her back foot
planted sideways, prepared not to give an inch before dying. Her uplink churned
out numbers, scenarios, strategies, but she rejected them all.

There was no way for her to survive.
Nevertheless, as she prepared her final protocol, Mitsuru promised herself that
they would not, either. After the carnal exultation of the wound and the
killing, she felt a strange calm. She reached toward the Black Door in her
mind, still warped and complaining from her earlier endeavors. She threw
herself at the threads that held the door closed, drawing up power from within,
a tidal force, up from her blood, up from inside her. She felt the familiar
pinpricks of pain and pleasure as her mind tried to disintegrate under the
pressure.

Abort!

The command arrived coupled with a
telepathic imperative that she could only obey in shock, her vision blurred and
her head filled with cotton. For a moment, she thought the world had gone off
kilter, the ground beneath her feet collapsing from the force of the broken
protocol.

Then she realized that Alistair had
somehow stepped behind her, without her noticing. He swept her up in his arms
and ran on. He had telepathically erased himself from the minds of everyone in
the area, doubtless, even her. He held her effortlessly in his arms, his eyes
sad and angry and relieved all at the same time as he looked down at her.

“Mitzi,” he said, breathing hard.
“We are out.”

It was only then that she noticed
that not all of the blood was hers, and how drained Alistair actually was. She
wondered what had happened.

Alistair dropped to his knees,
cradling Mitsuru with one arm, his other hand palm down on the head of the
target’s corpse. Then Mitsuru felt the terrible dislocation of an apport, but
she had no time to wonder where Alistair found the strength, as they hit the
Ether like a wall, and her consciousness disintegrated against it.

Eleven

Alex lay on his bed,
exhausted, and tried to wrap his mind around the idea – his bed, his room, his
school. That wasn’t really sinking in.

Michael had led him around the campus
for hours, but he hadn’t seen anything like the whole campus. He didn’t
understand how the Academy could be so big, and yet he had never heard of it –
but then again, why would he? Up until a few days ago, he had only been dimly
aware that there was more to the world than rural California.

He had seen a handful of students –
most were home, Michael had explained, finishing out a break that would end
tomorrow. He had been surprised by the range of ages – apparently, the Academy
taught everything from kindergarten through college, or some approximation of
it. Alex still didn’t have a clear idea what was going on.

Only part of what he had seen looked
like a school, and that bothered Alex. Parts of it looked more like a boot
camp. There was even a firing range in the basement of the science building,
which Michael had proudly described as state of the art, as if to reassure him.

The clothes, too. That had been
weird. Michael had taken him by the commissary, and after a few private words
with the staff, a flustered young woman had come out to take his measurements.
She was both hurried and excessively polite, and that had made Alex
tremendously nervous. He had left the building with a couple new uniforms in
his actual size, some workout clothes, and several pairs of fatigues. He was
too tired to ask questions by that point, something that Michael must have
noticed, as he had led him directly to his dorm.

It was a mixed dorm, Michael
explained, with alternating floors of girls and boys. The building was one of
the older ones, and therefore close to the center of campus, which would allow
him to get to class more easily, while he was still learning his way around the
grounds. Michael had led him to the fourth floor, down a silent, brightly lit
hallway, and then to his door.

Alex was surprised that he had
merited a single room – it was small, but he had lived in smaller spaces. The
room was nice enough, and Alex was surprised to find the wardrobe full –
someone had apparently returned to the trailer, and collected his clothes and
few belongings. When he saw his mp3 player sitting on the old writing desk in
the corner, he was so overwhelmed he almost cried. Michael showed him where the
bathrooms were, gave him the password for the wireless network, handed him a plastic
swipe key for the door, and then left, bidding Alex a good night.

He had expected to fall asleep
immediately, given all that had happened that day, but the moment he lay down
he felt restless, unnerved somehow. The dorms were nicer than any he had seen
before – wood-paneled walls, clean beige carpeting, and lots of windows – but
it was, in the end, institutional living, and that didn’t have positive
associations for Alex.

He tossed aside the covers of his
newly acquired double bed, and then examined the thoughtfully provided laptop.
He wasn’t sure what had happened to his old one, back at the trailer, but he
wasn’t actually worried – there was no important data on the laptop, because he
didn’t have any. Anyway, this one was obviously quite a bit better than his
ancient machine, a silver Sony with an LED-lit keyboard. He plugged in the
password Michael had given him, and accessed the Internet.

For a few minutes, he surfed at
random, plowing through news and video-sharing sites without paying much
attention to their contents. It was comforting in and of itself, to be able to
connect. It made him feel a bit like he was in the real world. He closed the
laptop and reached for his headphones, turning the player on at random. To his
surprise, it was still playing the same song from his attack the other night.
He hit skip, and in the interval of silence, realized that someone was knocking
at his door. Pulling out his headphones, he got up and answered it.

“Um, hello.”

If he had to guess, Alex would have
guessed that the kid standing there was roughly the same age he was. He was a
few inches taller than Alex was, with dark brown skin and bulky, plastic-framed
glasses. He wore some kind of black turban on his head, which made Alex wonder
if he was a Muslim, but he decided it would be impolite to ask.

“You are Alex, right? My name is
Vivik,” he said in perfect, American-accented English, offering his hand. “I’m
in the next room over. Michael asked me to check in on you.”

Alex shook his hand and then stepped
aside to allow him to enter, doing his best to mask his confusion. Alex sat
down on his bed, while Vivik pulled out his desk chair and sat down backwards
on it, facing Alex.

Vivik looked at him knowingly, and
then smiled.

“It’s pretty strange, huh?”

“Yeah. Yeah it is,” Alex admitted.
“Up until a few days ago, I had no idea any of this even existed, hadn’t a
clue. And now they tell me that I start class tomorrow.”

“Same here,” Vivik nodded.

“Really? You’re new here, too?”

Vivik waved his hand, obviously
embarrassed.

“Well, actually, this is the
beginning of my second session. I started a week after the first session began,
earlier this year, so I was just as clueless as you are. Don’t let it worry
you, Alex, most of the people here found themselves in your shoes at one point
or another.”

“I figured that all these people
were, you know, raised knowing about this stuff,” he said hesitantly, running a
hand through his disheveled hair, and wishing in a vague way that he was not in
his pajamas. Not that the T-shirt and sweats he had on were particularly ratty
or anything, but still, it was a bit uncomfortable, meeting someone while
dressed that way.

“Nope,” Vivik said, shaking his
head. “It’s fairly unusual for a family to pass the affinity down like that.
Most of the students here had normal parents, came from normal families, that
sort of thing. Up until whatever point they were activated, and then, like you,
they ended up here.”

“Weird.” Alex wasn’t sure what else
to say, though he felt a little bit better knowing he wouldn’t be quite as out
of place as he had imagined. After a moment of awkward silence, he asked the
first question that came to mind. “So, were you attacked by monsters, too?”

Vivik laughed jovially.

“Thank God, no. Nothing of the kind.
They do screenings, apparently, at public schools and institutions, when they
do all those hearing and vision tests. They flagged me right at the start of
the school year, pulled me aside, and explained it all to me.” Vivik looked
around the empty dorm room cheerfully. “About a week later, I was enrolled
here.”

“So you have a family back at home?
Aren’t they worried? About all this?” Alex gestured toward the window and the
school outside.

“Sure, I’ve got a big family,” Vivik
said, nodding. “But to them, when I received an offer to attend a prestigious
private boarding school, all expenses paid, they were so delighted that I
didn’t even have to come up with an explanation. I heard that they have the
telepaths smooth things over with some parents, but in my case, it wasn’t even
necessary.” Vivik shrugged, and looked a little embarrassed. “My parents are
kind of fixated on the whole college thing, you see.”

Alex looked at Vivik for a moment,
and then burst out laughing. Vivik looked at him, a little puzzled, and then
joined in.

“Actually,” he admitted, removing
his glasses to wipe his eyes, “my parents probably wouldn’t even care if they
knew what this place actually was. I mean, they wouldn’t like the guns and the
fighting and all that stuff, but it is a very demanding school.”

“That’s not good,” Alex said grimly.

“School isn’t your favorite thing,
huh?”

Alex nodded. He had a long list of
things he did not care for, and school was on it, but not at the top. It had
been his home, at first, and then the Youth Institution, for a while, but
lately ‘being eaten by werewolves’ had taken the top spot.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew he was at
a school. Alex had figured that with all the talk about monsters and fighting,
that the classes wouldn’t be, well, hard. Not academically, anyway.

“Who do you have for homeroom?”

Alex grabbed his schedule from where
he had tossed it on the desk, and then unfolded it.

“Mr. Windsor?” He read aloud
uncertainly, as if he were afraid to mispronounce the name.

“Thought so,” said Vivik, nodding.
“Me too. You’ll like him. Don’t worry. It’s a nice class, too. Not too many
fanatics.”

“What?”

Vivik looked embarrassed.

“Right, I keep forgetting you are so
new,” Vivik muttered. “Well, you’ll find out for yourself eventually anyway, so
I may as well tell you – do you know anything about the cartels?”

Alex shook his head, staring at
Vivik.

“They’re the factions, here in
Central. Almost everyone at the Academy will commit to joining one of them
before graduation. It’s against the rules to declare for a cartel until you
complete your second year, unless you were born into it, but a lot of the
students informally associate themselves with one long before that,” Vivik
explained, looking uncomfortable. “A lot of what goes on here revolves around
the politics between them.”

“Hmm…” Alex said, mulling it over.
“Do you belong to one of them, Vivik?”

“Me?” Vivik asked, amused. “Not a
chance. I’m doing the science track, and I’m going to join the staff here at
the Academy as a researcher, after I graduate. I’m not interested in picking
sides, or eventually having to fight the people I go to school with. It’s just
too petty.”

Alex nodded.

“It does seem that way. Is it really
such a big deal?”

“Can I see your schedule?”

Vivik held out his hand. Alex felt
some reluctance, but decided to hand it over anyway. Vivik read it carefully,
and looked thoughtful as he folded it and handed it back.

“I’m afraid it’s going to be a
matter of life and death, for you, Alex,” he said sadly.

“Why?” Alex looked at Vivik
suspiciously, wondering if there was some kind of implied threat in his
statement.

“Well, for one thing, the classes
that they’ve picked for you – you’re doing basic, Alex. You are going to be an
Operator. The Academy shares most of its research freely, so it is not a big
deal to the cartels when some scientist decides not to join up, and stays on
with the faculty here instead. An Operator, though? No way they’d let that
slide,” Vivik said reluctantly. “And then there’s another thing…”

“What’s that?”

“Forgive me, Alex,” Vivik hung his
head. “I can’t help it. I am going into Analytics, specifically remote viewing.
I did not mean to pry, but no one has taught you to mask your Etheric Signature
yet. I scanned it before you even opened the door, Alex, to make sure you were
awake.”

“And you found out what?”

Alex had to suppress a yawn, not
because he was bored, but genuinely exhausted.

“Alex, did they explain the
classification system to you?

“No,” Alex said shortly. “Michael
mentioned it…”

“Classes A through F, Alex,” Vivik
said matter-of-factly. “Class-A’s are so weak that they don’t even activate
them. Essentially, they are still regular people, who have dreams that come
true occasionally, or a talent for dealing with other people. F-Class, that is
at the other end of the spectrum. They are very powerful. I’m a B-Class, Alex,
with C-Class potential, if I work hard and I’m lucky.”

“And I am?” Alex motioned
impatiently, stifling another yawn.

“M-Class, Alex. Not potentially.
Already.”

Unnerved by the frank sympathy he
could see on his face, Alex swallowed hard. Was it really such a bad thing?

“That’s not alphabetical order,”
Alex objected.

“Because M-Class is different,”
Vivik sighed. “I suppose that’s why they skipped so many letters. The thing is,
no matter how powerful the ability, A-Class or F-Class, Operators are limited
by the amount of power their bodies can generate. It doesn’t matter how fast
you are, if you are already very tired, you could lose a race to a much slower
runner, right? Even the most powerful F-Class Operators will wear out if they
use too much energy. That’s the thing, Alex.” Vivik tapped his feet nervously
against the chair leg as he spoke. “Being M-Class doesn’t necessarily make you
more powerful – usually, not necessarily – but whatever degree of power you
have, you can use it almost endlessly.”

“I have no idea what you just said,”
Alex complained, clearly frustrated.

“You can’t use up your power, Alex.
No matter how much you use, there will always be more,” Vivik explained curtly.
“You don’t draw power from within yourself. Instead – somehow – you pull energy
in from the outside, from the Ether. No limitations. That’s what M-Class
means.”

“And that’s rare?”

“Extremely,” Vivik said, nodding.
“None of the other students attending the Academy presently are M-Class, to the
best of my knowledge.”

“That’s stupid, though,” Alex said,
staring at his hands. “I don’t even know how to do anything.”

“Alex, you’re in a different world
now. Central isn’t concerned with what you don’t know now – there are people
here who can read probability threads, Alex, and make determinations about the
future. They already know exactly how powerful you will become. They don’t have
to guess. They know.”

Alex and Vivik sat in silence. After
a few minutes, Vivik cleared his throat and pushed in his chair.

“Well, you are probably tired. I’ll
let you rest. Nice meeting you, Alex. Goodnight.”

“G’night,”
Alex muttered. He walked Vivik out of the dorm room, and then lay back down on
the bed.

His bed. His room. His school.

Alex rolled over and closed his
eyes. It would take some getting used to.

Twelve

The more Gaul looked at it, the less he liked it.

He was still fuming from his interview
with North, whom he had found to be insufferably arrogant, and far from
forthcoming regarding the reasons for his presence in the area. He had invoked
the Committee-at-Large, however, and that meant Gaul could not demand anything
more until he either got the approval of the Committee, or opened an Audit.
Beyond that, he was still angry that someone, anyone, would have the temerity
to attack one of his Operators, even if it was Mitsuru. Most of all, though, he
was furious with his Chief Auditor, who was currently sitting in front of him
and smiling politely.

It seemed like everything that day
had conspired to infuriate him. That, Gaul thought soberly, was an actual
possibility that required consideration. He had walked a razor’s edge since he
had wrested control of the Academy away almost forty years ago, and a single
mistake on his part could still ruin everything.

He had to admit that this did seem
like a long way to go just to ruin his day.

“We have a leak. A leak inside
Audits. How is that possible?” he wondered aloud, his tone indicating that an
answer from Alistair was expected.

Alistair rolled his eyes.

“I’ve handpicked every single member
of the Audits department, Gaul,” he said, his voice profoundly tired. “You know
that. If there is someone on the inside, they got past all our screenings, the
background checks, everything. You know how powerful an Operator they would
have to be to lie to my face?”

“Nonetheless,” Gaul said, shuffling
paperwork on his desk, “unless you are suggesting that I am leaking operational
information to outside agencies, there is no other way to account for two such
debacles in such a short period of time.”

“That’s a bit unfair,” Alistair
objected. “It’s not like we failed, in either case. Mitsuru saved that kid, and
she killed that target, what’s-his-name…”

“Estelle,” Gaul said coldly. “Have
you reviewed the recordings, yet?”

Alistair lowered his head.

“I have,” he said, reluctantly.

“Then I’m certain that you noticed,
near the start of the encounter, that Mitsuru allowed herself to receive a very
serious gunshot wound?”

“I’ve double-checked the probability
lines,” Alistair said guiltily. “It is as she said. She had no time to take
other action.”

“We are talking about a few seconds
difference,” Gaul complained. “What exactly did she expect to happen in that
time?”

“Perhaps she intuited exactly what
did happen, Gaul. You know, if Mitzi hadn’t done what she did, this operation
would have failed.”

“I do know that, and I agree with
you, actually. Mitsuru’s actions saved the operation. It’s her reasons that
bother me.” Gaul came as close to shouting as he ever did – he raised his
voice. “She is clearly still using Black Protocols. Her obsession with
suffering has cost us all in the past, Alistair.”

Alistair let it pass. He simply
smiled and waited. After a few moments silence, Gaul sighed.

“Moving on, then.” He shuffled more
papers on his desk. “The other two Operators, Walsh and Young, what about
them?”

“They never had a chance,” said
Alistair, shaking his head regretfully. “They were too close to the center of
the temporal warp when those Witches hit us. I turned around as soon as I felt
them porting in, knew they had to be flanking us, knew they would hit our
backup first. Walsh was dead before I could get there – I assume they used
balefire, with the sulfur and the charring.”

To Gaul’s eyes, Alistair looked
strange. Tired, yes, and battered, but given the circumstances, it was to be
expected. Still, something about this operation seemed to have taken something
out of Alistair. Gaul wondered what could have thrown his usually unflappable
Chief Auditor. It was not the first time Alistair had lost men under his
command.

“But Young, that was the weird
part.” Alistair hesitated before continuing, appearing to steel himself. “I saw
him get hit, right when I turned the corner. He was cut into a million pieces.
It had to have been the Shining Cloud Protocol. I could still see the traces of
it lingering in the Ether.”

Gaul paused for a moment, his head
cocked to the side. Alistair stared at his shoes while Gaul consulted the
Ether.

“Leaving aside the more important
issue, then,” Gaul said, adjusting his glasses, “finish off the encounter for
me.”

“I knew at that point that my
chances of getting out of there were slim,” Alistair sighed. “And I had to get
back to Mitzi, before they got to her. I didn’t have any time for subtlety.”

“You turned their minds off,” Gaul
said, with a trace of sympathy.

“No other choice,” Alistair said,
shaking his head. “Believe me; I had questions I wanted to ask them, maybe even
more than you. However, anything that only incapacitated them would have taken
more finesse, and more power, than I had to spare at that point. I still had to
activate an apport protocol, and that always takes it out of me.”

The two men were silent for a moment
while Gaul consulted his uplink.

“You’re right,” Gaul said,
robotically. “Preliminary analysis confirms it. Shining Cloud. I will have to
inform Young’s wife, later. I see no records of Walsh having any close family.”

Alistair continued to stare at the
ground. Gaul wondered how long it had been since his Chief last slept, but
could not summon much pity. When the uplink was originally implanted, Gaul's
sleep cycle was altered, and now he slept for an hour or two each night, at
most. When he dreamed, he could feel the vast currents of the Ether, flowing
through him, from everywhere and through everywhere. It was not restful.

“In any case,” Gaul asked, in his
normal voice, “which is it? Have the Witches learned to operate protocols, or
have a group of Operators allied themselves with the Witches?”

Alistair shrugged.

“I don’t even know how to guess.
Both are impossible, right?”

Many qualities contributed to Gaul's
exemplary performance as Director – and he was universally held to be the
finest in memory, even by those who opposed him – but his tendency to worry was
perhaps paramount.

Thanks to the Etheric computer
attached to his forebrain, Gaul could truly multitask, carrying on multiple
lines of thought simultaneously. Twenty-two hours a day, on average. Much of
that time, Gaul spent worrying.

Not the usual silly stuff – Gaul
wasn’t afraid of plane crashes, or serial killers, or being naked in public.
Gaul’s proficiency in reading probability lines was unrivaled, and he studied
them as often as possible, threading his way through alternatives, solutions,
and dilemmas.

Gaul had a virtually perfect
operational and administrative record, because anything that went wrong, he had
already worried over that possibility and planned a contingency. Every pitfall,
every personal failing, every operational difficulty and unforeseen event was
accounted for with mathematical precision and a fetishistic desire for organization.
Then, once solved, the solution shelved for a day of need. It was a tribute to
his pessimistic nature that he fully expected to use all of his schemes and
fallback plans eventually, were he lucky enough to live that long.

Witches were at the top of a number
of his ‘Things to Worry About’ lists. That was only natural. Witches were
smart, for one thing, not like the ravening packs of Weir or the mindless
Horrors. They made long-range plans, and they had inhuman patience when
carrying them out, spinning their webs over centuries. To some extent, and Gaul
didn’t know exactly how much, they had a kind of precognitive ability, and they
could manipulate energy and mass in a crude but effective manner totally
distinct from an Operator’s protocols. Witches could also manipulate people,
and they seemed to take a certain perverse satisfaction in doing so.

They were impossible to negotiate
with, because they had never bothered to tell anyone what it was they wanted in
the first place. After centuries of war, Central wasn’t even sure if forcing
the Witches to surrender was possible, or if only extermination would end the
conflict.

Gaul had done a great deal of
worrying about the Witches.

What he had not worried about was
the possibility of Witches learning to use protocols, given that it was thought
to be completely impossible. Activation, performed by a skilled telepath or
preferably an empath, was required, in addition to the initial infusion of
nanomachinery. Since he controlled the only source for said nanites, Gaul was
almost certain that it was an Operator who had used the Shining Cloud Protocol.

Which meant that, however unlikely,
only the second scenario could be true – Operators in league with Witches.

“This might interest you.”

Gaul handed a folder over to Alistair,
who opened it and scanned the contents, looked up briefly in surprise, and then
gave them a second, more thorough reading.

“This means…”

Gaul nodded.

“Multiple parties pursuing different
agendas. It has to be.”

“So our reality hackers didn’t intervene
in today’s incident,” Alistair mused. “I was almost certain that they would.
The circumstances even seem similar – I’ve been thinking about it, Gaul. Mitzi
said that the silver Weir she bumped into hid its Etheric Signature until it
was close. I didn’t put too much stock in it when she first told me, but the
same thing happened here today. Doesn’t it seem like someone is changing the
rules?”

“That’s been bothering me, too. If
the Witches have learned to hide their Etheric Signatures, every Operator is at
risk. If they learned something this critical, though, why use the advantage on
such a minor skirmish? Why not wait until they could use it to do some real
damage?” Gaul looked moodily at Alistair. “There was no tampering in today’s
events, and the meddling in the earlier incident was apparently to our benefit.
Someone tried to help us collect Alexander Warner from that park, but did not
intervene today.”

“Who? And why?” Alistair demanded.

“I don’t know,” Gaul admitted. “And
it bothers me very much to say that, but I can’t even guess as to who would
benefit from all this. But I will tell you this much.”

Gaul stood abruptly and walked to
the window. He spoke softly, watching the reflection of the trees waving in the
wind.

“There’s no way we’re dealing with
only one party. Too many conflicts for there to be a single motivation behind
it all. So it’s not that someone has decided to start attacking my Operators,”
he said venomously, surprising Alistair, “but that someone is using Central
itself as a pawn in their game. More than anything,” Gaul snarled, turning his
furious pink eyes on Alistair, “I hate being a pawn for anyone. There is one
game, Alistair, and we are the players, not the pieces. Someone needs to be
reminded of that.”

“What are you going to do?” Alistair
asked quietly, a bit taken aback by Gaul’s sudden display of emotion.

“We will find out exactly who is
responsible, and exactly how they have done these things – and yes, it may take
some time, but that will only give them more time to think that they’ve made an
impact, that they’ve rattled us. We will let them think they have a greater
advantage than they actually do, until we can mitigate the real one. If we play
our cards right,” Gaul grinned evilly, a ghastly expression that Alistair had
not, in the decades he had known him, ever seen, “they may even decide to make
a move here in Central, where we are strong.”

Gaul folded up the smile and his
face reverted to its normal dour expression, much to Alistair’s relief.

“We will draw them out, Alistair. We
will draw them out and then we will destroy them utterly. We will make an
example of them, whoever they are, and any cartel or faction that objects,
well, they will also become part of the example. There is no other way
forward,” Gaul said, calmly.

“What are your orders, Director?”

Gaul raised an eyebrow at the
formality, but made no immediate reply. He pushed another file folder forward
on his desk with a pencil. Alistair took it without looking at it.

“You will conduct an Audit into this
matter,” Gaul said crisply. “You will settle all outstanding accounts, in full.
You will act in this matter under my authority, and will use whatever personnel
or resources you deem fit in order to bring a close to this matter, within
certain constraints.”

“Those being?” Alistair asked,
flipping through the file.

“You will continue to use Mitsuru.
At the end of this matter, she will be evaluated as a candidate for Audits, or
she will be officially declined and reassigned.” Gaul’s voice was light,
dismissive. “And you can’t use the rest of the Auditors.”

Alistair snapped his head up.

“What’s that?” he snarled, his lip
quivering. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Gaul. All that big talk and then
you’re going to send me out with Mitzi to take care of it? Be reasonable,
Gaul.”

“I am being reasonable.” Gaul took
his glasses off and began polishing the lenses with a rag. “I need Rebecca
here, and the other two will be off making enough trouble to keep everyone from
noticing that you’re not out there, Alistair. Get your head on right, Chief
Auditor. You know full well what would happen if the cartels found out that all
the Auditors were occupied.”

“You ask the impossible,” Alistair
complained. “And then you say you need Rebecca to babysit the new kid? This is
bullshit, Gaul.”

“I will explain myself once more,
Alistair,” Gaul said, putting his glasses down on the desk and rubbing the
bridge of his nose. “I am not repeating the mistakes we made with Mitsuru. If
Rebecca has to hold Warner's hand and wipe his nose in order for this to work,
then that is exactly what she will do. She understands that. For the life of
me, given that you pretend to be Mitsuru’s best friend, I can’t see how you
don’t understand.”

“Enough,” Alistair snapped.

“Listen to me,” Gaul said patiently.
“You are right. I am asking the impossible, and I’m going to make your job even
more difficult. Because I need this done properly, Alistair. Everything needs
to be airtight on this Audit, to justify the outcome. If it takes time, then it
takes time, Alistair. But you cannot be wrong.”

Alistair nodded slowly.

“And the consequences?” Alistair
asked softly.

Gaul slid a red folder across his
desk.

“That’s a signed sanction on the
entirety of the Terrie Cartel and any allies that they might have, Alistair.
They are transferred to your jurisdiction, effective immediately. Invoke it at
your discretion.”

Alistair’s eyes widened. Gaul felt a
small pleasure in having surprised his normally unflappable Chief Auditor so
many times in one conversation. He handed him one final red folder.

“This is signed documentation from
me, absolving you of all responsibility for any action you may take in the
course of pursuing this matter.” Gaul straightened the remaining papers on his
desk compulsively. “I take full responsibility. Do whatever you see fit,
Alistair. Just make it perfect.”

“You’re putting a lot on the line,
here,” Alistair said gratefully. “I didn’t know you had this kind of faith in
me.”

“If you mistake reasonable oversight
for lack of faith, then that’s your problem,” Gaul objected. “I can’t have my
Operators looking over their shoulders all the time, not if they’re going to do
the kind of job I need them to. They need to know that they are protected. They
need to see it.”

Gaul looked moodily out the window
for a moment, and then continued in a quieter voice.

“And despite all expectations,” he
continued, “it appears that there are still people out there who need to be
reminded there is no profit in taking us on. Use Operator Aoki, and whomever
else you require from Operations. Go camp out at Analytics, run the forensic
boys into the ground, requisition labs and materials, shake down informants,
call in favors. And in the meantime, I will have the remaining Auditors try and
cause enough trouble to keep anyone from realizing that you aren’t minding the
shop.”

“And that Rebecca is busy
babysitting,” Alistair reminded him, standing up to leave.

“She’s not babysitting, you fool,”
Gaul said tiredly, motioning toward the door. “She’s making Alexander Warner
into a weapon. Do a good job on this Audit and I might let you pull the trigger
when the time comes.”

Thirteen

Michael appeared to be upside down, because Alex was standing on his
hands. This was a newly acquired skill. His whole body shook as he attempted to
straighten his legs and abdomen, trying to force himself into one firm vertical
line. This was a skill he was still attempting to acquire. As his arms trembled
and his core muscles cramped, Alex wondered how yoga could possibly be so
difficult.

He had spent the last three weeks
almost solely in Michael’s care. Though his schedule listed four courses aside
from homeroom, Alex could not tell the difference between ‘Unarmed Combat’ and
‘Physical Conditioning’ and ‘Fundamentals of Self-Defense’. Michael was the
instructor for all three of them, and they blended into a seamless flow of
exhaustion, struggle, and pain. The first day, when Michael had explained that
he would skip the first few weeks of homeroom, to give him time to get oriented
and to allow for his private tutoring, Alex had been happy. The less school, he
figured, the better, and it wasn’t as if he was in horrible shape. How bad
could it possibly be?

When Michael arrived at six a.m. the
next morning, dressed in running clothes and carrying a bag of the same in
Alex’s size, and cheerfully battered his door until he was forced to
acknowledge it, Alex had begun to reassess the situation. Four miles later,
when Alex got his first leg cramp, he was bitter. After another three miles,
Alex contemplated murdering Michael in between bouts of vomiting into a ditch
on the side of the road. Michael appeared to be unshakable; he smiled
throughout the run, and never appeared to be out of breath or tired. He wore a
tight nylon top that made it obvious that Michael was ridiculously built, with
a barrel chest and thick limbs wrapped in corded muscle.

Their route that morning took them
around the back of the Academy grounds, past some buildings Alex had never seen
before (but he was too out of breath to ask about), and then through a series
of low, grassy hills that eventually gave way to steeper elevations and
evergreens. It was sunny but Alex suspected that if he hadn’t been running he
would have found it cold. The path they ran along started out as sidewalk, but
petered out gradually into an asphalt track, then loose gravel, and finally
nothing more than a dirt rut running through the surrounding countryside. It
was beautiful, in a late-fall way, but Alex had no eyes for it.

He was too busy trying to breathe.

Alex had been surprised to find
himself still standing at the end of that first eight-mile run. He felt decent,
even a little proud of himself, and when he glanced over at Michael and saw the
grin on his face, Alex figured that he had earned some respect. Eventually he
would come to realize that the man was simply a sadist.

They ran two or three times a week,
never less than five miles. They visited the indoor pool at the fitness complex
not far from Alex’s dorm twice a week, and swam for an hour or so. Michael set
the pace and Alex struggled to keep up; more than once, Michael needed to teach
Alex the stroke that he wanted him to use. Alex liked the way the sound of the
water echoed in the tiled expanse of the gym, but he always thought that the
water was uncomfortably cold. He vaguely remembered enjoying occasional
opportunities to swim when he was younger, but with Michael calling the shots,
Alex came to hate the sight of his school-issued swimsuit more than the sight
of his school-issued running shoes.

After the first week, they didn’t
start with cardio anymore; instead, Michael began to teach him yoga. Alex
thought of it as something hippies did, some kind of pseudospiritual
meditative practice or something, but what he learned was profoundly different.
If there were philosophical components to yoga, then Michael ignored them,
instead focusing on body awareness, strengthening, flexibility, and breath
control. Michael was a patient teacher who never raised his voice, and seemed
capable of all the various positions with a casual grace that made them look
easy, though Alex rarely found them to be so. Nonetheless, after two weeks of daily
practice, Alex found that he could support the weight of his body on his hands
and bend over far enough to put his head flat on the ground while touching his
toes.

That was his mornings for three
weeks, six days a week. Five days a week, Alex came back to the fitness center
in the afternoons. They never did the same routine two days in a row, with one
day a week reserved for recovery and restorative yoga.

When it came to combat training,
Michael never bothered to explain what discipline a technique came from. He
never taught Alex any katas or forms, they did not
wear a gi or a belt, and none of the techniques Alex
learned seemed to have names or formal designations. Nevertheless, Alex found
Michael to be a genuinely remarkable teacher, and discovered that he was a more
receptive student than he had ever suspected.

Alex learned a variety of things in
those few weeks; a dozen different ways to put his opponent on the ground
without winding up there himself, a variety of techniques for controlling
wrists and arms up close, how to strike with the elbow and forearm. It went
deeper than techniques, however, as the education Alex received from Michael
was a process of refinement rather than revelation.

Alex learned that the looping
punches he favored he threw because they were powerful – but as Michael
demonstrated by cheerfully jabbing Alex in the face until his nose bled, were
also inaccurate, slow, and left him wide open to anyone with a little bit of
boxing ability. Along with a straightened punch, he learned that a few simple
changes in his footwork could provide him with the same power that the looping
punches had, without any of the disadvantages.

Michael taught Alex enough of the
fundamentals of ju-jitsu that he could defend himself on the ground, but Michael
also explained that weight and inexperience would work against him there, and
spent much more time teaching him to sprawl, to drop his chest and splay his
legs back to avoid being taken down in the first place. He learned a handful of
trips and throws for dealing with running tackles and rushes, and a number of
other ways to keep fights where Michael judged Alex most capable – standing and
striking.

Alex spent the first few afternoons
punching a heavy bag filled with water to mimic a human body, his hands taped
and in lightweight half-gloves, while Michael watched and made adjustments. He
seemed more concerned at first with Alex’s feet than anything he was doing with
his hands, and after scolding Alex for making a less-than-tight fist and
teaching him to square his shoulder and tuck his jaw, he turned his attention
almost totally to stance and footwork. After a few days, he convinced Alex to
stop punching off his back foot, and Alex noticed the bag reacting more
dramatically to his strikes.

The second week was more freeform;
much of it spent sparring with Michael in a boxing ring, with a mouthpiece and
head guard. Some of the time he spent working a pair of pads that Michael held,
shouting instructions, occasionally batting him about the head and body to remind
him to guard. It started to feel more natural to use his forearms and elbows
when he was close, and it got easier to use his long arms to jab and keep
Michael at a somewhat more comfortable distance.

He learned not to throw kicks higher
than the knee, because they were too risky to be effective. His own knees, he
learned, were capable of delivering truly powerful blows, more than he could
ever manage with his hands; like kicks, however, knees had drawbacks, namely
that they tended to leave him off-balance and exposed. Michael dumped him on
his head a dozen times, effectively curing Alex of the Hollywood-implanted urge
to throw kicks to the head.

His wrists, shoulders, and back all
hurt constantly, and he spent a considerable amount of time every day in the
fitness center’s gigantic spa, hoping that in the hot water eventually some of
his cramped muscles might unknot. Three afternoons a week, they ended with
weight training, done in rapid and exhausting cycles that left Alex broken down
and shaking. He got so used to vomiting in the plastic bucket that he kept
nearby that he stopped feeling self-conscious about it.

All of which, at the moment, was not
helping him imitate Michael’s handstand demonstration. With a tremendous
effort, Alex straightened out the length of his body, his abdomen shaking with
the strain, his legs wobbling but fundamentally straight. Then it all fell
apart, his balance shifted forward, putting the strain on his fingers, his legs
bent, and he allowed himself to crumple to the ground, which turned out to be
much more comfortable than he had anticipated. He decided to stay there.

“I don’t get it.”

“You don’t get what?” Michael asked,
sitting down beside him.

“What the point of all this is. I
mean, am I going to go punch a werewolf? Is that the idea, I’m going to go beat
these things up?”

Michael looked at him oddly for a
moment, and then laughed. Alex had a sneaking suspicion that the laugh might
have come at his expense, but he smiled anyway.

“That would be cool, but I doubt you
would survive,” Michael said, grinning and producing two bottles of Gatorade
from the kit bag he brought everywhere. It was impossible, Alex found, to keep
himself hydrated, though he drank constantly. “Your body is your most
fundamental tool, Alex, the only one you will always have at your disposal.
Everything starts there. If you don’t know how to use your body, then you are
never going to understand how to use any other kind of weapon. The idea is this
– we will teach you to use anything at hand to fight, and yes, we’re going to
spend a lot of time teaching you to use guns and bombs and protocols because
that’s what we expect you’ll be using. But just because that’s what we expect,”
Michael said, shrugging, “doesn’t mean that’s what it is going to be like. The
field has this tendency to surprise you.”

Michael paused for a moment,
kneading out a cramp in his calf, and looked almost sad.

“Anyway, we start with what we know
you’ll have with you. Once I’m confident you can use that, then we move on to
the more likely suspects.” Michael grinned at Alex. “That okay with you, Mr.
Warner?”

“You ask me like you care,” Alex
said, finishing his bottle and putting it aside.

The pace of the workouts was
exhausting, but somehow never quite past Alex’s utmost capabilities. Michael
offered constant instruction, critiquing his form and movement at all times,
tweaking and refining, patient and infuriatingly calm. Exhaustion muted Alex’s
frustration, along with a growing suspicion that something was not entirely
right. In the course of a few weeks, Alex gained a few pounds of muscle and a
much more prodigious strength. He was somehow faster, stronger, and more
capable than he had any right to be.

One day, after a particularly
grueling set of wind sprints, Alex asked Michael about it.

“It’s the machines, son,” Michael
said with his trademark toothy grin, panting beside Alex on the grass next to
the track. “All those little machines inside you, they’re latched on to your
nervous system, and they take instruction from your brain, as if they were part
of you. So they know what you’re doing, and they’re facilitating the process,
helping your body manufacture new tissue, augmenting your reflexes, repairing
all the damage that gets done to that sad little body of yours, my friend.”

Michael lay down near where Alex had
collapsed, hands behind his head, looking up at the sky and seeming, to Alex,
to be genuinely happy.

“For me, it’s the best part of the
deal. I played football, you understand, and I wrestled and ran track. I always
liked this stuff,” Michael said, sounding almost bashful. “And then when I came
here, they taught me how to fight, and it all came together for me. I can push
myself so much harder now, and those little machines clean it all up for me.
Our ligaments don’t tear, Alex, our tendons don’t snap, and if they did, why,
you would heal in a matter of weeks. As long as you give your body raw
materials, you won’t ever overheat or have glucose problems. The nanites also
enhance performance – they can carry oxygen, remove dead cells, and form seals
around injuries and subcutaneous bleeding. They can tailor nutrients and
deliver them. They can even process lactic acid and reduce muscle cramping.”

“Wow,” Alex said, looking dreamily
at the hand he held up between his eyes and the weak afternoon sun. “That’s
cool.”

“Yes,” Michael agreed, standing up.
“But they can’t do the work for you, Alex. Up and at them. We aren’t done
here.”

“I start class tomorrow,” Alex said.

Michael hesitated, surprised, then
nodded in affirmation.

“Was it like this, for you?” Alex
asked, looking stricken, his fingers knotting with anxiety. “Were you this
nervous when you started at the Academy, Michael? Did it all feel this weird?”

“Yes,” Michael said seriously. “I
think everyone feels that way.”

***

It took so much effort to get up off
the bed, to walk across the room on his aching legs, that Alex gave serious
consideration to the idea of ignoring the soft but insistent knock. He only
gave in because he was sure that Vivik would continue knocking gently at
intervals until the door fell down. Michael had told him to keep an eye on
Alex, no doubt.

Alex opened the door and then limped
back to the bed, leaving the door behind him open for Vivik. He barely had the
energy to keep his eyes open.

“You look terrible,” Vivik said,
taking the chair at Alex’s writing desk. “They must be pushing you real hard.”

Alex nodded wearily.

“I’m almost happy that class is
starting,” Alex said, “because that means only three days a week with Michael,
instead of six. I think any more of this might actually kill me.”

“I doubt it,” Vivik said, grinning.
“If you’re important enough for them to pull a Board member and department head
away from his classes for three weeks so he can personally tutor you, I doubt
very much that they would kill you and waste the investment. Or allow you to
die at all, for that matter.”

“Well, that’s a comfort. Not to be a
dick or anything, but,” Alex nodded painfully at his sprawled body, “since I’m
in a lot of pain here, and was thinking pretty hard about bed, did you have
anything you needed, Vivik?”

“What? Oh, no, nothing big,” Vivik
hedged, toying nervously with a pen from Alex’s desk. “Are you worried at all,
about tomorrow? I was pretty scared, my first day. And nobody knew who I was, or
anything.”

“Wait a minute,” Alex said,
attempting to sit up, and then abandoning the effort partway, when he realized
that inclining his head was the most of which he was currently capable. “Why
would that be any different for me?”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” Vivik
said, smiling nervously, “it seems that pretty much everyone knows that you are
starting class tomorrow, Alex. Most of them heard about it a couple weeks ago,
after your evaluation and ranking. That you spent the last three weeks in
seclusion, training one-on-one with Michael, just added to the mystique, I
think.”

Alex groaned.

“It’s not so bad, Alex. A bunch of
the girls want to meet you,” Vivik offered helpfully.

“Yeah?” Alex tried to make sure his
voice sounded nonchalant, but he wasn’t sure how successful he was, based on
Vivik’s sly smile. “Why would that be?”

“Please. You can’t be serious.”
Vivik did a double-take. “Wait. Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” Alex said, nodding as best
he could. “I don’t get it. Whatever it is.”

Vivik sat back in the chair and
crossed his legs, looking very much like he was planning on staying. Alex was a
little annoyed at the prospect, but he had realized a few days before that
knowing Vivik meant putting up with his somewhat deficient respect for personal
space.

“I heard about you before you left
the infirmary.” Vivik clearly relished the opportunity to tell the story. Alex
got the distinct feeling that Vivik did not get many chances to talk to people.
“Some guys were saying that they found you in L.A., that Mitsuru brought you
back after a fight with some Weir. They said you were an anomaly, an M-Class
capable of a unique protocol, something that no one had been able to do before
– and that all the cartels were interested in you. And that you were going to
be in our class.”

Alex perked up despite himself. It
couldn’t hurt to know a bit more about what he was getting into.

“Of course, they also said you were
big and tough and cool-looking,” Vivik said, smirking. “Obviously they got all
of that wrong. Things had been quiet around here for a while, though, and when
things get slow, people tell stories. I figured this was just another rumor,
and that you would turn out to be just like everyone else. But when I walked
into the cafeteria that morning, Alex, half the empaths and Anastasia Martynova
had rushed back home!”

Vivik paused for a reaction, and
then shook his head when Alex continued to stare blankly.

“You still don’t know anything, do
you? What is Michael teaching you, anyway?”

“How to hit stuff.”

“Great. That should come in handy
when you run out of things to say,” Vivik said, rolling his eyes. “They are the
important people, Alex, the whole future leadership of the various cartels.
They were brought back home in a hurry, to get or give instructions –
instructions about you.”

“Am I in some kind of danger?”

Vivik gave Alex a pitying look in
response to his confusion.

“Only of being wined and dined,”
Vivik said with a hint of scorn. “They don’t want to hurt you, Alex, they want
to recruit you. They brought back all those kids because they knew they would
be your classmates, and therefore the most likely to be your friends.”

“That’s kind of creepy,” Alex
observed, stretching out a yawn in the hopes it would serve as a polite
suggestion. “All that preparation.”

“You should get used to it,” Vivik
said sternly. “Because it’s going to be that way until you give in and join one
of them. Then everything will reverse.”

“Wait, what?”

Vivik sighed and stood up, finally
taking the hint.

“Everyone will love you while you are
a potential recruit. As long as you stay undecided, everyone in Central will
fall all over themselves to help you out. You need to be ready for what will
happen after you commit, though. As desperate as the cartels are to get their
hands on you, Alex, they will be even more desperate to make sure that no one
else does. At first, everyone will be your ally, your confidant and your
friend, but you won’t be able to trust any of them. Then one day, inevitably,
the tables will turn, and the people who have cared for you and been close to
you, well, they will betray you. I see things, Alex. I am a remote viewer. Does
that make any sense?”

Vivik waited for a response, but
Alex said nothing, his eyes hidden behind his folded hands. After a moment,
Vivik pushed the chair in quietly, shook his head at the sleeping boy, and left
the room, closing the door silently behind him.

Fourteen

“You seem disappointed,”
Vivik observed, leading him along a cement path through spindly birch trees, a
small creek gurgling beside the walkway.

Alex blinked uncomfortably as the
sun broke the through the leaves. It was bright out, and no one had thought to
grab his sunglasses from the trailer. Alex walked with his hands balled up in
his pockets, shoulders hunched in the unfamiliar blazer. The uniform still felt
weird to him, even if everyone around him was wearing a variation on it.

“I was hoping the skirts would be
shorter,” Alex mumbled, staring at a group of teenage girls sitting by the
creek side. The wind carried the muffled sounds of their conversation and
fragments of their laughter.

“You watch too much anime,” Vivik
grinned at him. “I think all uniform skirts are around the knee, no matter
where you go. I did the British boarding school thing for a while, you know.
Much worse. All guys.”

Despite the sun, Alex was enjoying
the walk. The campus was beautiful, and the Indian kid was friendly, something
to which Alex was still trying to adjust. Michael promised him a fresh start at
the Academy, complete with a wipe of his official record, should it ever
matter. He had even offered Alex the opportunity to change his name, and he
entertained the thought briefly, but could not imagine learning to respond to
anything else. Michael warned him that the wipe was not absolute, that someone
with the time, inclination, and resources could dig it up – but also assured
him that no one would care enough to bother.

So far, that had been true. Vivik
hadn’t asked him any questions at all about his past. Rebecca had asked a few
questions here and there, but she was the school councilor – or something like
that – so that was only natural. Rebecca was almost impossible not to trust by
her very nature, empathy be damned. Alex even felt like Michael was someone he
could trust a bit, that he was maybe even learning to like. Alex smiled to
himself. So that was three, already – three potential friends. Three times the
number that he had before he came to the Academy…or, wait, did that make sense?
If he had no friends before, then…

Alex was so caught up thinking about
this that he didn’t notice Vivik’s friendly chatter, pointing out interesting
sites along their walk, and he didn’t notice when he stopped talking, either.
Or that he was abruptly walking alone, Vivik having halted several feet back,
along with the rest of the people who were paying attention to what was going
on around them. He didn’t even see Mitsuru until he had practically walked into
her.

He managed to stop in time, a step
away from colliding with her. Mitsuru stood in the sidewalk, arms folded across
her chest, her expression stern. The uniform she wore was superficially similar
to his, but with a black blazer, rather than blue, and with a completely
different patch on her breast pocket. The last time Alex had seen her,
Mitsuru’s hair had been tied back, and now that it was down, he was surprised
at how long it was, hanging almost to her waist, silken black and utterly
straight. She looked at him emotionlessly with her unnerving red eyes.

“Boy,” Mitsuru said softly, “you
should learn to watch where you are going. It seems to be a reoccurring
problem.”

Alex was instantly petrified – the
list of people who had saved his life was very short, and there weren’t any
other attractive women with crimson eyes on it.

“Oh, um,” he mumbled, trying to collect
himself, “I think that, um, I think I owe you a thank you, for, well, you
know.”

Panicked at her blank expression,
his stuck his hand out.

“My name is Alex Warner,” he said,
his voice ridiculously small and squeaky. “Thank you for saving me.”

If Mitsuru had any opinions on the
matter, her face gave nothing away. She stared evenly at him. He let his hand
drop to his side in embarrassment. As Alex tried desperately to think of
something to say, his cheeks reddened under Mitsuru’s impassive gaze. When Vivik
hurried up next to him, he felt profound gratitude for the intervention.

“Miss Aoki, good morning,” Vivik
offered apologetically. “Have you met Alex already? Today is his first day of
class.”

Mitsuru gave Vivik a small nod, her
eyes never leaving Alex.

“I’ll see you on the seventeenth,
boy,” she said, abruptly striding past them, heading back the way they had
come. Alex could not help but watch her walk away. She looked better in a
skirt.

“What the hell was that?” Vivik
wondered. “You already know her, Alex?”

“Sort of,” Alex admitted, shakily
resuming his walk to class, trying not to notice that people were staring and
whispering.

“And what’s with seventeenth?” Vivik
asked with a huge, mischievous grin. “You haven’t even been to class yet and you
already have faculty asking you out?”

Alex felt a sinking feeling in the
pit of his stomach. He dragged a repeatedly folded class schedule from his
jacket pocket and read it grimly.

“Oh, fuck me. The seventeenth is the
first day of the ‘Applied Combat Fundamentals’ workshop, seven in the A.M. I am
so dead.”

Vivik nodded, and slapped Alex
companionably on the shoulder.

“’Fraid so. Miss Aoki has quite the
reputation…”

“For what?”

Vivik lowered his voice, and looked
seriously at Alex.

“I hear that she’s a psycho,” Vivik
confided, glancing around suspiciously to make sure no one was near enough to
overhear. “Rumor is that she killed another Operator a long time ago, so they
kept her locked up for years as punishment. She is supposed to be almost a
hundred years old…”

Alex looked at Vivik skeptically.

“She is supposed to be what? No way
she's a hundred years old.”

“You can’t rely on looks to make
that kind of determination here, Alex. Lots of Operators can control their
appearance, or even slow down the aging process,” Vivik explained patiently.
“It’s probably a bit much to try and absorb all at once.”

Alex just shook his head.

“Man, she is not a hundred
years old…”

“Yeah, okay,” Vivik admitted.
“You’re probably right about that.”

The rest of their walk was mercifully
uneventful.

“Here we are,” Vivik said proudly,
pointing to a four-story building constructed from the same monotonous
slate-grey stone as everything else, set back in a stand of middle-aged oak
trees. The creek burbled nearby, detailing a gentle curve around one side of
the building, then disappearing into an underground channel. On the other side
of the building, there was a large grassy field, vivid green under the bright
sun.

“This is much nicer than
Bakersfield,” Alex said to Vivik, grinning.

“I would hope so. I’ve been to
Bakersfield,” Vivik said, with a laugh. “Come on, let’s get moving. We are
going to be late.”

Vivik used his swipe card to open
the door, and then led Alex up a flight of stairs to the second story. The
interior of the building was cool and airy, with polarized glass in the windows
and buff-colored tile flooring. There were four classrooms on the floor, but
Alex only saw students crowded at the doors of two of them. Inside the nearer
one, there was a typical lecture hall – three rows of seats with attached
writing desks arranged in a half-circle around a raised dais with a podium. The
carpeting was a muted grey, and a bank of fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
There was a chalkboard and white board behind the podium, flanked by a table
with a laptop, projector, and a tangled mass of cables.

Most of the class had already taken
their seats, and Alex felt every eye in the room migrate to him as he and Vivik
entered the room. The students were lounging around in small groups, talking in
low voices – clearly, cliques and social rankings had already been established.
Alex knew with an ironclad certainty that he was going to be a very-odd man
out.

As Vivik led him to a seat near the
center of the room, Alex’s anxiety worsened. Vivik had greeted a couple of
students with nods on the way in, but no one had spoken to either of them, and
Vivik clearly intended for them to sit by themselves. It dawned on Alex that it
was very likely that the person Michael had picked to help Alex assimilate had
not made any friends himself. Alex resolved to have a serious discussion with
Michael on this issue, as soon as he got enough nerve to.

Alex was so gloomy over his social
prospects, sitting beside the now silent Vivik in the padded plastic seat, that
he did not notice the blond girl until she was standing directly in front of
them.

She was slender and almost as tall
as Alex, with long blond hair teased into curls and brilliant green eyes. She
wore the same uniform as everyone else, but it looked better on her, Alex
thought. Quite a bit better.

“Are you going to introduce me to
your friend, Vivik, or are you planning on keeping him all to yourself?” She
looked at Alex with a playful smile. “So unfair.”

“Not at all,” Vivik sputtered. “I
simply haven’t had an opportunity to introduce you, yet.”

“You have one now,” she said
sweetly, still looking at Alex.

“Alex, this is Emily Muir. Emily,
this is Alex Warner.”

“Pleased to meet you, Alex,” Emily
said, holding out one hand to him.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Muir,”
Alex said, wincing. He hadn’t ever, in his memory, referred to a girl his own
age as ‘Miss,’ and couldn’t imagine why he picked this particular moment to
start. The hand he shook was smooth-skinned, soft, and recently manicured. Alex
wondered if she was wealthy or just very concerned with appearances.

“Emily,” she corrected, her smile
revealing perfect teeth. “I have to admit that I knew that you would be joining
our class today. I think most people here have already heard some version of
the story.”

“What story is that?” Alex asked.

Emily’s grin widened as casually she
sat down next to Alex.

“Well, one version I’ve heard is
that you helped Miss Aoki fight a whole pack of Weir,” she offered cheerfully,
twirling a lock of golden hair around her finger.

“W-What?” Alex gasped. “You’ve got
to be kidding me! That definitely did not happen.”

“I didn’t think it was very likely,”
she said, winking at him from beneath immaculately styled bangs. “You don’t
look the type. Another version of the story went something along the lines of
Mitsuru saving you from being eaten by the Weir.”

“I think that’s probably closer to
the truth,” Vivik offered.

“Whose side are you on, here?” Alex
complained. “Seriously, though, she did save me. It was a one-woman show. I
didn’t do anything except fall down and bleed.”

“Oh, you poor thing!” Emily laughed.
“So, what was scarier – the Weir, or Mitsuru?”

“Well…”

Alex stammered doubtfully, rescued
by the arrival at the podium of what could only be the professor.

He was older, grey haired and
slightly disheveled, with several days’ worth of stubble on his chin and an
old-fashioned wool jacket, the same insignia on his breast pocket that Alex had
seen on Mitsuru’s blazer. He had a gigantic stack of books piled precariously
on his outstretched arms, the corners of more volumes jutting out from a
leather messenger bag slung over his shoulder. As he passed by Alex, he left a
wake of pipe tobacco.

“Come to order, people,” he said in
a crisp British accent, piling the books on a table to one side of the podium.
“Let’s find seats. We have much to do today…”

Emily put down her shoulder bag and
started digging through it.

“You don’t mind if I sit here?”

Her face radiated innocence. Alex
shook his head more emphatically than he intended.

“Please, go right ahead…” he said,
ignoring Vivik’s amused snort.

“Alright, that’s enough, people,”
the professor said, motioning for the class to be quiet. “We have a new
student, today – Alexander Warner, could you stand, please?”

Alex stood up hurriedly, bashing his
shin against the seatback in front of him in the process. He did his best to
act as if it didn’t hurt.

“Thank you.” The professor gave him
an amiable nod. “I am Mr. Windsor. These sixteen fine young men and women will
be your classmates for the duration of this lecture course. The duration of
said course to be defined, naturally, by your individual performance.”

Windsor motioned for Alex to sit
down.

“Very well. We have a great deal to
cover this session in order to keep this class on pace, and we must find some
way to accommodate our newest member. Mr. Warner is some weeks behind, and will
need assistance to catch up to the rest of the class. I believe, ah, yes...
Miss Muir?”

“Yes, Mr. Windsor?”

Emily answered demurely, as if she
had arrived next to Alex by chance, innocently studying the notebook in front
of her.

“Would you mind helping our new
student today?” Mr. Windsor powered up the projector next to him. “If you could
introduce him to his classmates during break, and help him through the
material, that would be very helpful. I would imagine he would need to share
your textbook…”

“Of course, Mr. Windsor,” Emily said
cheerfully, sliding her book over so that Alex could see it as well.

Mr. Windsor quieted a general
muttering with a stern glance. Alex noticed a black-haired girl who appeared
too young to be in the same class as him, glaring at Emily from one row down
and several seats over. She met Alex’s eyes with her own, and then shook her
head slowly, as if he had disappointed her.

***

“I am totally screwed,” Alex said
glumly, piling lettuce from the salad bar into his bowl. “What the hell was Mr.
Windsor talking about, anyway?”

“I felt that way at first, too,” Vivik
agreed, using tongs to pull hot rolls from a covered basket. “Just be glad you
didn’t join mid-session. I hear that last year Windsor made some kid take a
midterm a week after he enrolled.”

“Vivik!” Emily protested. “That did
not happen.”

“This cafeteria is alright, though,”
Alex allowed, puzzling over a variety of pasta.

He wasn’t kidding. The cafeteria was
actually nicer than most of the restaurants Alex had been to. The dining area
was huge, easily capable of seating a few hundred, though there were only
thirty or forty students eating now. One wall was fashioned entirely from
glass, and the afternoon sun filtered pleasantly through the trees outside.

Alex had been eating with Michael at
the staff canteen for the last few weeks, which they generally had to
themselves, and he had developed a fair amount of respect for the food, which
he ate in astounding quantities. He was surprised to find that the student
facilities were no worse. The food was institutional fare, with the same
over-reliance on casseroles, pasta, and salad common with every mess hall where
he had eaten, but the quality was considerably better than anything he had
encountered before. The lasagna that he heaped on his plate looked positively
edible, and the lettuce for the salad was neither wilted nor ancient.

“Don’t worry about it,” Emily said,
taking a carton of milk from a refrigerator. “You just need a little grounding
and you will be fine. It isn’t actually a difficult class, once you are
familiar with the subject matter.”

“It is much easier when you are
raised into it, isn’t it, Emily?” The owner of the grave voice was the
black-haired girl from class, who was standing behind them with a lunch tray of
her own. Alex was surprised at how small she was – she looked like a very
serious middle-schooler. She was flanked by a kid
Alex remembered from class, and another, older guy that he hadn’t seen before.
Alex could not think of a better way to describe her than severe, her hair
parted neatly down the middle and falling in a straight line along the back of
her ornate black dress. “Perhaps you haven’t had an opportunity to mention
that?”

Emily sighed theatrically.

“Well, I was going to introduce you
two anyway – Alex, this is Anastasia Martynova, the scion of the Black Sun
Cartel, along with her comrades-in-arms, Renton Hall and Edward Krylov.” Emily
picked up her tray and started to walk away. “Now, can we eat our lunch in
peace?”

Anastasia looked at Alex
thoughtfully. Her lace-fringed black dress looked too hot for the weather to
him, in an overly gothic sort of way. He wondered how much younger than him she
was, and why she was in the same class with him. She didn’t look more than
thirteen. Maybe she was a gifted student? Did they even have such things at the
Academy?

“Choose your company carefully,
Alexander. You spend enough time associating with Emily Muir and people might
start making assumptions.”

Alex nodded diplomatically, unsure
of what to make of her advice. Anastasia shrugged and then turned away,
motioning for the two boys to follow her. Renton – the older, blond kid –
grinned at Alex in a troubling way, while the younger Edward gave him a
friendly nod before departing.

Alex stared after them for a moment,
then gave up on figuring things out, and followed Emily and Vivik over to an
empty table to eat his lunch. He got in maybe five bites.

He heard the goon walk up behind
him, heard him snickering. Alex knew there could be no good reason for someone
to stand that close. Alex braced himself, and without realizing it, started to
hold his breath.

“Hey, new kid.” Alex turned to face
him, sighing. He was big, with deep-set eyes, and the cauliflower ears of a
wrestler. “Seems like you’re already pretty popular around here.”

Alex stared evenly back at the
sneering boy. He saw no benefit in responding, so he didn’t bother.

“You got something to say to me,
fag?”

He leaned close, and Alex winced at
his breath, wondering if he ever brushed his teeth. Alex tried to turn away as
casually as possible.

“No? You scared or something?”

“What is your problem, Steve?” Emily
asked sharply, impaling lettuce with a plastic fork. “Don’t you have anything
better to do?”

Steve’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“He one of yours, Emily?”

Alex noticed a hint of caution in the
idiot’s voice. Alex was starting to understand why orphans were so vulnerable
at the Academy. It was similar to the way things worked at the Youth Facility –
the only thing more dangerous than being in a gang was not belonging at all.

Emily shook her head.

“Alex just got here, Steve. Why
don’t you try and not make us all look like assholes this time?”

“Why don’t you stay out of my
business, Emily? If he isn’t Hegemony, then this isn’t any of your concern.”

“This is boring,” Alex said,
returning his attention to his lasagna. “You don’t have shit to say to me.”

Alex set his teeth before Steve
flicked his ear with the tip of his finger, determined not to make a noise. It
was painful, but controlling his temper was more difficult. Alex was tempted to
settle things then, but he reminded himself that it would be better to pick his
time.

“You are lucky, fag. One of these
days, though, your girlfriend won’t be around to look after you, and then we
are gonna have a little talk.”

Steve’s grin was dumb and obscene.

“I think we probably will,” Alex
said, trying to sound more confident than he felt, struggling to cut the crust
of the lasagna with a frustratingly dull plastic knife. “Watch your back,
asshole.”

“Whatever.”

Finally, Steve sauntered off to
bother someone else.

An uncomfortable silence settled on
the table, as Emily and Vivik stared at Alex. He shoveled food in his mouth
without paying it any attention, forcing his shoulders to relax, his jaw to
unclench.

“Emily, was what Anastasia said
true?” He kept his voice casual, trying to cut a roll in half with the
questionable plastic knife.

“Sure,” Emily replied, opening her
milk carton, obviously still concerned. “I was going to tell you. There is
nothing sinister about it. I was born into the Raleigh Cartel, on the opposite
side of the fence as Anastasia and the Black Sun. But since I’m still a student
here at the Academy, I’m unaffiliated.”

“Emily, come on,” Vivik chided,
around a mouthful of salad. “You aren’t being entirely honest with Alex.”

Emily set her milk back down on the
table and then glared at Vivik.

“How so? I haven’t made any
decisions yet. I’m not like Anastasia – my family isn’t particularly important,
and neither am I.” Emily looked pleadingly at Alex. “I’m not trying to recruit
you. I promise.”

“Not yet, anyway,” Vivik muttered,
tearing the foil cap from a container of yogurt. “Weren’t you going to do some
introductions?”

“I had hoped to finish lunch first,”
Emily complained, glaring at Vivik. “Since you are getting pushy about it, let
me see...”

Emily looked over the room briefly,
and then pointed to a nearby table where two boys and a girl sat, talking
quietly and seriously.

“At that table, those are the
Hegemony members from our class – the girl is Louise and the guys are Manuel
and Gary.” Emily twisted around in her chair, and then pointed to a set of two
tables in the center of the room, each with several students eating lunch at
them. The conversations here seemed to Alex to be a bit more natural, more
appropriate to the age of the speakers if not the setting. “Those are mostly
orphans over there. That’s Rise, Sujan, and Chris at
the near table, and William, Choi, and Marko at the far table. You already met
Anastasia and the Black Sun contingent…”

“What about them?”

Alex pointed at two people at a
table in the far corner of the room.

“Who?” Emily asked, turning around
to look. “Oh, bad scene.”

“How so?”

It was an unnecessary question. He
could hear the big guy’s tone of voice from here, and he did not like it. He
couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying, but Alex could read between the
lines.

“That bastard from earlier, his name
is Steve, and his hanger-on is Charles,” Emily said grimly. “They are bad news
for the girl sitting at that table.”

“The weird one with blue hair, we
call her Eerie, she’s half-Fey.” Vivik looked down at his food and shrugged.
“The one they aren’t bothering, the redhead, Margot, is a vampire. Which is why
they won’t bother her.”

“Wait, what?” Alex stared at Vivik,
his fork frozen halfway to his mouth. “Vampire?”

“It’s…complicated.”

“We don’t kill them?”

“Ha, uh, no,” Vivik sputtered. “Not
since blood banks were invented, anyway.”

“But they eat at the cafeteria? I
mean, like, food?”

“Well, yes,” Vivik said, brightening
up at the change of topic. “Just because they can’t produce hemoglobin on their
own doesn’t preclude them from having varied nutritional requirements.”

Alex glared, and Vivik sighed.

“Yes,” he confirmed tiredly. “Yes,
they eat food.”

“There is an understanding,” Emily
interjected, shaking her head. “The vampires have an embassy here in Central.
The young vampires come to the Academy for at least a few years, though Margot
has stayed a lot longer than that. The only Fey I know about is Eerie, so I
don’t know what her deal is, but she has lived at the Academy forever. They are
both students here.”

“Except they are treated a bit
differently than everyone else, right?”

Vivik was alarmed at the tension in
Alex’s voice, and tried to catch his eyes, but Alex refused to meet his gaze.

“Mostly, yeah,” Vivik admitted
sheepishly. “Some people give Eerie a pretty hard time. Nobody bothers a
vampire too much, particularly not Margot, but…”

There was a crash and then a
startled cry from the corner table. Alex didn’t even bother to look over.

“And Steve, he thinks he is a tough
guy, right?”

Alex stood up, staring at the ground
at his feet.

“He is the biggest, meanest person
here, right?”

“I guess so,” Emily said, worried.
“Anastasia must have left, because he wouldn’t pull a stunt like this while she
was around...”

“Alex, what are you thinking?” Vivik
asked with obvious concern. “The staff won’t let anything bad happen.”

“Right,” Alex said, abruptly walking
from the table. “That’s good, then.”

“Alex?”

Emily called after him, but Alex was
already halfway to the lunch line.

It was the same everywhere. Alex
could have written a book about it.

School. Mental hospital. Juvenile
Hall. Work camp. Halfway house. Every time, it was the same thing. Eventually,
he had become accustomed to it.

Someone always threw their weight around,
someone who intimidated everyone else. Alex lacked the obvious security that
came with cartel membership. Eventually, Alex would be targeted for being new
and friendless, and apparently Steve was eager to be the first to do so. This
sort of thing would continue to be an issue as long as he remained
unaffiliated.

Alex ran his eyes along the
cafeteria counter, currently in the process of rapid disassembly by a host of
white-clad staffers. Alex settled on a solid-looking metal tray.

“I’m going to borrow this for a
second, ’kay?”

Alex didn’t wait for an answer from
the puzzled worker; he headed rapidly toward the corner table before his nerve
gave out.

Alex spent some of the time after
his trial in a state hospital. Two weeks after he arrived, a couple Dominicans
in the kitchen where he mopped floors attacked him. He ended up half-killing
one of them with a cooking pot, and spent two weeks in the infirmary with a
hole in his gut where the other kid stabbed him. No one bothered him after
that. He even played cards with one of the Dominicans a few times, while they
were both in the infirmary.

The peace he had earned only lasted
until he transferred to a different institution, of course. The next time it
was his peckerwood cellmate, who had probably grown up ten minutes down the
road from Alex in some other white-trash hole. He tried to bash his head in
with a plastic chair one night. Fortunately, Alex was a light sleeper.

Well, he used to be a light sleeper,
anyway.

Alex was not thinking clearly, his
head was buzzing with anger and anxiety. Some of it might have had to do with
the training, too – in all honesty, he had been feeling jacked up for days,
looking for an excuse.

The Academy, in Alex’s eyes, was simply
another institution, and the rules of earning respect no different from any
other.

The redhead, Margot, was staring
down at the plate in front of her, ignored and seemingly oblivious. Even in the
heat of the moment, Alex could not help but notice that vampires ate a lot of
salad, or at least this one did. Near the end of the table, Steve and Charles
leaned over a girl sprawled out in spilled food and dishes. She was sitting
where she had fallen, her arms wrapped around her chest, and her eyes wide and blank.
There was red sauce splattered across her sweatshirt, and the majority of a
bowl of pasta sat on her skirt.

“Aw, poor thing,” Steve said,
crouching down beside the girl with an oafish grin. The other boy cackled. “It
looks like you had another accident. You have terrible balance, freak.”

Steve winked at Charles, who laughed
even harder. Alex was very sure the toady would not be a problem.

“Let me help you with that,” Steve
said, reaching toward the pasta, and then, casually, flipped her skirt up, exposing
her panties. Charles howled with laughter, while the girl gasped and shrunk
toward the wall, pressing her legs together.

“Hey, Steve…”

Charles tried, but his warning came
too late to help Steve.

Alex wanted to say something cool.
He was so angry that the tray shook in his hands, and he would have shared his
opinion of Steve, Charles, and his tittering classmates, but he was terrible at
words. Alex could only convey his message with a metal tray upside Steve’s
head.

He swung as hard as he could, catching
Steve solidly behind his left ear with a meaty thud. Steve cried out in pain
and surprise, and tried to turn around, but Alex had already pulled back for
another strike. The second blow hit harder than the first, connecting with
Steve’s temple, and warping the tray with the impact. Steve cried out again and
fell to the floor, clutching his head.

Alex stepped over his prone body,
and then raised the tray above his head. Steve opened his eyes in time for the
tray to hit him in the mouth. Steve shrieked and rolled on to his side,
spitting blood and teeth to the cafeteria floor. Alex dropped the tray with a
crash, briefly hesitated, and then kicked Steve in the side of the head for
good measure. He shot a warning glance over at Charles, but he had apparently
decided to let Steve fight his own battles, or at least the losing ones. He was
standing nervously several feet away, doing his best to appear uninvolved.

Alex walked over to the girl, who
was staring at him in frank astonishment. Well, he had to assume it was
astonishment – her expression hadn’t actually changed all that much. He was
surprised and pleased to see her face was dry, that she was tougher than she
looked. Or maybe she was used to it. Then Alex noticed that the girl’s striped
panties were still visible and he turned bright red.

He held out a hand, struggling to
simultaneously stare and avert his eyes.

“Here.”

For a moment, he thought the
blue-haired girl would just sit there and stare at him. Then he felt a small,
warm hand in his own, and he pulled her gently to her feet, the remaining pasta
splashing to the floor.

Alex wondered why she wasn’t
required to observe the dress code – her black skirt was part of the uniform,
and maybe the black knee socks as well, but she also wore a loose grey sweater
that hung off her shoulders that was clearly not.

“Are you okay? Can you walk? Do you
need help?”

The words tumbled out one after the
other, faster than he could think. They spilled from his mouth and into the
air, surprising and unfamiliar. His body felt very warm for some reason, and
the lights all had halos.

“You aren’t hurt, are you?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head and
releasing his hand. “Who are you?”

“The fuck are you thinking? You’re
the one who gets hurt, dumbass,” Steve snarled, one giant hand clutching the
side of his head, his bloody face contorted into a snarl.

Steve propped himself up on the
table with one arm, glaring unsteadily and swaying. Alex realized that the room
had gone silent, and everyone, excepting the vampire at the other end of the
table, was watching the scene develop. Left to his own devices, as usual.

“I couldn’t understand that, Steve.
You develop a speech impediment all of a sudden?”

Alex tried a cocksure smile, but his
voice squeaked as he walked forward, sure that he was about to get his ass
kicked.

“That’s it!” Steve howled. “You are
dead!”

One moment there was a jerk that
looked like a linebacker standing in front of Alex, and then the next, a living
statue. Where there was once skin, now there was something that looked like
rock, grey protrusions jutting from his torn uniform. When Steve took a step,
the linoleum cracked under his weight.

“Any other funny shit you wanted to
say?”

Steve’s voice had become a roar, and
the enormous hand wrapped around his forearm felt like granite, cold and
abrasive. The pressure was immediately intolerable, and it was all Alex could
do to avoid falling to his knees.

He watched the stone fist with resignation.
No way to dodge with the grip Steve had on him, and no point in even trying to
block the punch. What a strange way to die, Alex thought, his head spinning,
his eyes watering with pain at the intense pressure from his arm. Beaten to
death by a statue.

Alex wondered if that was an
improvement over being eaten by wolves.

“Steve? Alex? Any possibility of a
word with you gentlemen?”

Michael came striding across the
cafeteria purposefully, his smile sad and knowing. In his wake, the gossiping
students who had crowded around during the altercation rapidly found other
things to do. Steve released Alex’s arm, and Alex immediately hugged it to his
chest, both of them trying to act as if nothing had happened. His arm hurt even
more after Steve let go, and Alex wondered if it was broken. Steve had returned
to normal, outside of torn clothing. He was breathing hard, and obviously
enraged, but did not look, well, rocky.

“Steve? Please tell me that you
weren’t about to use a combat protocol on another student.”

Michael towered over Steve
disapprovingly. Alex was reminded again that, despite the smile, Michael was a
pretty scary dude, and wondered exactly how much trouble he was about to be in.

“Mr. Lacroix, sir, he hit me first!”
Steve shouted, red-faced, pointing at Alex. “He knocked my tooth out, sir! He
hit me from behind!”

“Terrible,” Michael said grimly. “Is
that true, Alex?”

“Well, yes,” Alex admitted. There
was no point in lying about it. “He left out the part where I kicked him in the
head, though.”

Michael looked down at the broken
dishes and spilled food, and then at the blue-haired girl, the remains of her
lunch still dripping off her sweatshirt.

“And, how did all this happen,
Steve? Anything you would like to say?”

Steve looked at the ground and
clenched his fists, unable to meet Michael’s gentle eyes, but he said nothing.

“I thought that might be the case,”
Michael said, with a tired laugh. “Alright, Steve, let’s take a walk over to
the Administrative building. Alex, I was going to have a chat with you after
homeroom already – I suppose we will have more to talk about. You can wait in
my office after class. Eerie, you can go back to your room and change. If you
hurry, you won’t be late. Margot, would you go with her?”

The pigtailed vampire-girl nodded without
looking at any of them, stood up, grabbed Eerie rather roughly by the wrist,
and half-dragged her from the cafeteria, still blank-eyed and silent. Alex
suppressed an urge to wave at her receding back, and wondered what had gotten
into him.

Michael sighed loudly and stretched,
raising his tattooed arms above his head.

“As if I didn’t have enough tying me
to that desk,” he complained to no one in particular. “Students are definitely
the worst part of this teaching gig.”

Fifteen

She had people call her Evelyn. No special reason – she had watched a movie once, so
long ago that she had forgotten the title, in which that was the name of the
main character. The film had not been particularly good, but it was the first
thing that came to mind for some reason, years later, when asked for her name.

Evelyn, then. She had called herself
that for almost five years now, which was the longest she had ever kept a name.
Evelyn wondered if that meant she was becoming sentimental in her old age.

Still. It was less socially awkward
than admitting she did not have a name of her own.

Witches are not even vaguely human,
though they look very much the same. Appearances, however, were where the
similarities between the two species ended. However different they may be from
humans, though, Witches need to sleep, and Evelyn hadn’t gotten any in two
days. In that time, circumstances had forced her to kill a number of people,
which always left her feeling a bit ill.

The safe house’s popcorn ceiling
crawled, shifting with the gentle afternoon light that snuck through the
blinds. She could hear a television faintly, from the adjacent room, and the
hiss of water running through the pipes. Her sisters were watching television
and showering, respectively. The air conditioner hummed, occasionally breaking
out in fits of coughing, only to kick over again and resume its work for
another interval. Evelyn could not close her eyes without becoming nauseous,
and could not sleep with her eyes open. As a result, she lay on her back and
watched the ceiling writhe and deform.

Evelyn was not suffering from pangs
of conscience – far from it. Witches maintain their existence with power drawn
from human suffering, so in order to survive, Evelyn had spent decades sowing
misfortune and grief in the people she encountered, and then harvesting the
resulting sorrow and pain. She didn’t feel bad about it – her nature was
parasitic, and she had no more choice in the matter than any of the other
parasites that preyed on humanity. Her only alternative, after all, was to
starve.

Cruelty was not part of her nature,
and she took no special pleasure in causing pain. Evelyn preyed on strangers
almost exclusively, which had allowed her to enjoy her relationships with the
humans around her over the years – she had occasional friends, in a limited
fashion, and lovers whom she had been genuinely fond of. As much as her nature
would allow, Evelyn had made every effort to do well by them. Kindness was a
luxury, however, and one she could not always indulge.

She felt no guilt, and she had shown
no mercy. Her species was not capable of either.

Tired of watching the ceiling,
Evelyn rolled to her side and stared through a crack in the blinds at the tired
sunlight. She knew the ocean was nearby, but she could not see it from here.
All she could see were tall pines, close to the building, waving in the wind,
and beyond that an expanse of green hills.

Her last assignment had been no
different from any other – she and her sisters received their orders and
traveled to Los Angeles. There, they worked their way into predetermined social
circles, romances, and jobs. All of their lives had a relationship in some way
to a specific import-export firm owned indirectly by the infamous Black Sun
Cartel, and they had wormed their way well inside the firm. They had taken on
local color, become invisible, indistinguishable from the rest of the herd.

She genuinely did think of humans as
a herd animals – and why not? She meant no slander by the association. Cows
were benign by nature, patient and useful. She did not consider the comparison
unflattering.

Evelyn and her sisters collected
information, made reports on the mundane activities of their day-to-day lives,
and waited for orders. Evelyn took a husband, an executive in the company that
she was surveying, and rapidly charmed and won over his two daughters from a
previous marriage. She spoiled them; Evelyn was too old for children of her
own, and she was surprised to find how much she enjoyed playing at domesticity.

It might have been different were
the children younger. Evelyn was not cut out for holding babies and attending
PTA meetings. Both girls were already teenagers, however, and while they were
initially wary and hostile, Evelyn won them over before long. There was no need
to resort to manipulating them with a Working – Evelyn was sophisticated,
indulgent, and fond of spending money and stylish clothes. She acted more like
a friend and less like a mother, taking them for manicures, spa treatments, and
shopping expeditions to Beverly Hills. Within a few months, she could sense
strong affection and even hero-worship from both girls.

Evelyn did not pity them; she was
not capable of empathy. Nevertheless, she felt badly for herself, as she had
enjoyed their time together; their laughter, whispered confidences, and shy
adoration. She had been happy in her pretend life, for a little while, and she
regretted its loss.

Orders were orders, though, and even
as she poisoned her family’s dinner, Evelyn was philosophic. She planned to live
for a long time, after all. There would be many more such opportunities,
stretched over as many years as she could manage. And some Witches grew very
old indeed.

Still, she was angry with her sister
Yolanda. The poison she had provided was meant to be quick and painless, but
instead induced cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, and then, finally, death. The
process had taken hours, and it had been a disgusting spectacle. The girls had
begged her to call for help almost up until the end, never once suspecting her
role in their suffering. Evelyn still felt a bit ill and burdened by the
distasteful memories, which might have been why she didn’t notice the shadow
until it was almost too late.

It could have been the other way –
since Evelyn was an experienced and cunning Witch, because she took precautions
and slept fully clothed, that her senses were sharp from the misery she had
consumed earlier. It was even possible that the Auditors were as terrifyingly
capable as rumor suggested, bypassing both the building’s defenses and her own
considerable additions without effort. Regardless, they were not quite good
enough to overcome her instinctual drive to survive.

Evelyn watched her own shadow on the
wall absently as it appeared to thicken and squirm. She blinked hard to dispel
the illusion, holding her eyes closed as long as she could manage the nausea,
and then opened them again.

A woman in black stepped neatly out
of the shadow on the wall, one foot on the safe house floor, the other
disappearing at mid-calf into the amorphous dark behind her. Her jet hair hung
in braids, knotted with trinkets and coils of wire, almost like a Witch
herself. She was even taller than Evelyn was, and wore something heavy and
cumbersome that was probably armor, along with heavy, blunt-toed boots. She
waved cheerfully at Evelyn, an automatic shotgun with a matte silencer and
collapsible stock held meaningfully in the crook of her other arm.

“Good evening, you miserable cunt,”
the woman said with a cheerful smile. “My name is Alice Gallow. I am here in
regards to an open Audit, under the authority of Central. Please do resist, as
I am in one hell of a terrible mood.”

Evelyn did not respond. She was
already too busy with a Working, or rather, a series of Workings.

She threw fire in the direction of
the Auditor, the air shimmering with heat. It was a minor Working, and Evelyn
had no illusions about its chances of doing anything other than distracting the
Auditor – but the illumination and the smoke gave her the opening to activate a
second, major Working, one that she had kept nearly complete for years, in
anticipation of exactly such a situation.

Evelyn dove through the wall, into
her sister’s room. An outside observer would have been forgiven for thinking
that she found a duplicate of herself watching television in bed in the
adjacent room – both she and her sister shared identical features, blond hair,
and ice-blue eyes. Even the loose blue gowns they wore were similar.

“Light,” Evelyn screamed at her
sister, the one who sometimes called herself Nadia.

Nadia looked up from the television,
clearly shocked at her sister’s sudden arrival.

“What do you mean? What’s
happening?”

Nadia reached into a pocket and took
out a small, rose quartz sphere.

“An Auditor is here – an apport
technician. She moves through the shadows,” Evelyn said hurriedly. She removed
a length of braided red silk from her pocket, and began tearing it at
intervals. “We need as much light as you can summon.”

Nadia shook her head, swallowing
questions, and closed her eyes. Her hand whitened as it clenched tightly around
the crystal, squeezing until a fine stream of dust poured from her fist, a
small pile of ground crystal accumulating on the shag carpet.

The room was bizarrely illuminated,
every surface burning from within; the walls, the bedding, even the carpet
shone with an internal radiance. The light was brilliant, and hurt Evelyn’s
eyes, but it left only the faintest of shadows. Evelyn finished tearing the
scarf as red smoke began to rise from it, coalescing in a halo that rotated
lazily around her head, describing a circle a meter wide in gently swirling
crimson embers.

“Are you certain that it is an
Auditor?” Nadia asked, inclining her head in the direction of Evelyn’s room.

Evelyn could only manage a nod, out
of breath from the effort of the rapid series of Workings. The woman must have
been an Auditor to bypass their defenses so casually; Evelyn had even heard
rumors of one who walked from shadow to shadow. Worse, it was unlikely that the
Auditor would have come alone. Evelyn knew there was no hope of defeating them,
even if she had ten of her sisters at her disposal. The question was where to
run, and how to make it that far.

“What about our sister?”

Nadia asked the question softly, as
if they were hiding from the Auditor. They were referring to their other
sister, who, just lately, had started calling herself Yolanda.

Evelyn shook her head.

“If Yolanda could have, she would
have made it here by now.” Evelyn’s glance kept darting to the door and the
window, and she wondered what to do. “But, if she were dead, we would know. So
we have to assume they have already taken her.”

Evelyn felt the ebb and flow of
power, as Nadia started another Working, probably some kind of attack. Apparently,
her sister had finally grasped the seriousness of the situation.

“Don’t think that I don’t appreciate
your position.” Evelyn recognized the mocking voice of Alice Gallow, coming
from somewhere in the hall, outside the room. “You’ve got to be wondering, ‘How
did we attract all this attention? What did we do to merit an Audit?’ Am I
right?”

Evelyn had been wondering exactly
that. Potential interference from Operators was an inevitable concern, and
Evelyn had anticipated trouble since she received orders to break up the job
before completion. The Auditors, however? What she had been working on
shouldn’t have been big enough to merit their involvement.

Well, to be completely accurate,
Evelyn had been wondering that, until she heard the Auditor’s voice,
glib and cheerful. Since then, however, she had mainly wondered if the Working
she held in reserve would be enough to stop the Auditor.

“You have to be worried about what
happened to your sister, right?”

Evelyn shuddered at the implication.

“Personally, I hate suspense. I’m
going to do you bitches a favor and answer that question right now. Xia, would
you do the honors?”

The window shattered inward,
spraying glass as something heavy came crashing through it. Yolanda collided
with the bed like a rag doll, and then crumpled to the floor, limp and
motionless. She was mostly naked, her clothes reduced to singed patches and her
hair to a smoldering ruin. Her skin was brilliant red over much of her body,
the color of lobster, and her hands and face were charred black.

Evelyn heard Nadia scream, and felt
her cast a Working in the direction of the window, a blue-white electric
current searing the hallway in a brilliant flash. Evelyn screamed for her to
stop, but it was too late. The light from Nadia’s Working flickered as it
collapsed from inattention. The room fell into the natural half-shadow cast by
the lamps.

Alice Gallow stepped from the
shadows in front of Evelyn, grinning, her face shining and unhealthily pale.
Evelyn released the Working, and the red halo became a burning serpent, a
crescent of fire that coursed through the air, simmering and howling as it
charged the Auditor. Alice waved one outstretched hand dismissively, and the
Working disappeared, swallowed up by the shadow her arm cast. The Working reemerged
from Evelyn’s shadow, knocking her to the ground before it sputtered and
disintegrated.

Evelyn knew with a grim certainty
that they had lost. The Working she had thrown was the most powerful available
to her. The serpent should have reduced even a capable Operator to ashes.
Instead, it failed even to touch the woman. Evelyn clutched her pounding head,
still reeling from the blowback of the destroyed Working, and wondered why in
the world the Auditor was here.

Alice Gallow was holding someone’s
hand, pulling a man into the room through the shadow. He was taller by a few
inches with neatly trimmed black hair, his face almost entirely obscured by
blue-tinted goggles and a blue surgical mask. Evelyn thought that he might have
been Chinese. He wore a heavy black coat that covered him almost to his ankles,
most likely armor.

“Alright, bitches,” Alice said
amiably, holding up a large pair of silver scissors with a grin. “One chance.
Your clothes, in a pile, right here in front of Xia. Then we do the hair.”

Evelyn heard Nadia choking. Alice
seemed pleased by their reaction.

“Otherwise we do it the way we did
your sister, right? And I don’t think you want that.” Alice giggled and sat
down on the edge of the bed, rolling the charred, stinking body of their sister
away with her foot. “Come on, give Xia a little show. Who knows when he last
saw any tits besides mine?”

Evelyn looked over at Nadia, still
crouched in the far corner of the room, staring wide-eyed at the Auditor and
hyperventilating. She fingered the glass idol in her left hand – the Auditor
must know she was holding it; there was no point in making a pretense. Of all
the emotions humans experience, the one that Witches could truly understand was
fear, and Evelyn felt a great deal of it at the moment. Witches also understand
pain and humiliation – perhaps more than a human could, as they are the
currency of a Witch’s world.

Evelyn did not understand the
Operators’ ‘Protocols’, but she knew the functional differences between them
and the Witches’ own Workings. Witches did not draw power from the Ether, but
rather consumed it from the suffering of the humans around them. This harvested
power was stored, in charms and in amulets, in a Witch’s clothes and her hair.
Evelyn had spent years weaving Workings into the fabric of the dress she wore,
and had been doing the same to her hair her whole life. It was the work,
literally, of a lifetime.

Without her clothes, without her
hair, Evelyn would be all but helpless.

“Auditor Gallow,” Evelyn began,
steadying her voice with an effort. “What guarantees do you offer in return for
our surrender?”

Alice leaned her elbows on her knees
and looked delighted.

“Witch, if you do what I say, just
like I tell you to, then I promise you will arrive uncooked at Central.
Whatever they decide to do with you, it will be less painful that what I have
in mind. Although,” Alice said, her eyes shining wickedly, “you are going to
have to cry a little for me.”

Alice’s laughter was cruel and
abrupt, then suddenly she was behind Evelyn, clutching her, one hand holding
her face tightly while the other caressed her throat.

“I saw your little family,” Alice
cooed, her smile frozen and grotesque. “Those were a couple nice little girls you
had there. It’s too bad that they had to shit themselves before they died. It’s
really unfortunate that it had to be like that. Now, I’m not that nice of a
person myself, right, Xia? Nevertheless, everybody has limits, even in this
business. Everybody has stuff that gets to them. No helping it.”

Alice knotted her fingers in
Evelyn’s hair and pulled mercilessly, forcing her head back to run black
fingernails delicately across her jugular vein. Evelyn’s breath came in ragged
gasps and she moaned involuntarily.

“It looked like they hurt,” Alice
said softly. “They must’ve cried, because it took them a long time to die. And
you ate it up, didn’t you, bitch? That thing you threw at me, that was some of
it, their pain, wasn’t it? Did they beg you for help? Did they call you mommy?”

Evelyn didn’t see any point in
denying or confirming it. Alice sighed and tossed her to the floor, leaving her
sprawled next to the twitching body of her burned sister. Alice sat down
heavily on the edge of the bed, and rested her chin in her hands, briefly glum.

“Enough of this.” Alice shook her
head and then smiled again. “I can see that amulet you’ve got in your hand,
creature. Is that a combat Working? Go ahead and try it out. I dare you.”

Evelyn drew her legs up beneath her,
but found herself unable stand, frozen by the Auditor’s awful smile. She was so
frightened that she almost didn’t notice when Yolanda’s consciousness
disintegrated, choking on her own burned lungs. It was horrible – the presence
that had been in her mind since she was born, her sister and companion for
decades, snuffed out like a candle. Evelyn let out another low moan and her
hand tightened around the amulet.

“You don’t stand a chance, you know.
I have killed more Witches than you’ve met in your whole life, honey. I know
all your moves, all the Workings, all your little tricks. I could eat you up
and spit you out if I wanted. You could use every ounce of power you’ve got,
you and your sister both, and you bitches wouldn’t even touch me.”

“Why not kill us now, and be
finished?” Evelyn demanded, seeing a glimmer of hope. “Wouldn’t you have done
it already, if you could?”

Alice shrugged happily.

“Obviously you can’t,” Evelyn said
triumphantly, smiling through her tears at the Auditors. “You need us for
something, right? You need to know something?”

“Nah,” Alice chuckled, exchanging a
knowing glance with her masked partner. “We’re just sending a message to your
bosses. Don’t get delusions of grandeur because we are here. You aren’t
anything special. Any Witch will do, as long as your corpses are ugly enough to
make the rest of you think twice.”

Evelyn gaped at the Auditor in
dismay.

“Why bother keeping us alive, then?”

“Because it’s good practice for the
kids in the science labs at Central to have a real live Witch to tear apart, so
they know how to do it when we catch one that knows something worthwhile.”
Alice’s smile was crooked, her eyes fixed on Nadia. “And because of those
little girls, Witch. That’s a score I want to even.”

Evelyn let the idol tumble from her
hands onto the carpet next to her.

“Enough with the bullshit. I am
bored, and we don’t need two of them. Burn the little one, Xia,” Alice said,
nodding at Nadia. “Make it hurt. We have time.”

Xia nodded shortly, then his eyes
narrowed, and he gave Nadia a hard stare.

It was a long while before Nadia
stopped screaming, her face reduced to charcoal and cinders. Then, when Nadia’s
mind went silent, Evelyn felt it like a balloon popping inside her. Her tears
started again, when Evelyn realized that she was alone inside her head for the
first time in her life.

She felt bad for herself. She liked
having sisters.

“Fucking hell, but that stinks.
Well, it’s a start,” Alice said, crooking a finger at Evelyn. “Now crawl on
over here, bitch. All fours.”

Evelyn did as she was told, tears
dropping from her cheeks to the scorched carpet. The room reeked of burnt
plastic and cooked skin, and she felt sick.

“Now strip,” Alice commanded smugly,
crossing her legs. “Clothes in a pile, along with anything else you might have on
you.”

Evelyn numbly began to unbutton her
dress. Her head ached horribly, where her sisters had always been.

“Xia, you are watching this shit,
right?” Alice asked, bright-eyed and cheerful. “Don’t say I never did you any
favors…”

Sixteen

“Do you want to talk about what happened this afternoon?”

Rebecca was perched on the front of
Michael’s desk, a cigarette dangling from her left hand. She was wearing a pale
yellow sweater and a loose cotton skirt, her hair tied casually back. She
looked tired and resigned, rather than angry.

“Not really. I mean, you already
know, right?”

Alex shifted uncomfortably on the
cushions of the aging couch in Michael’s office. It was so similar to the one
he had destroyed in Rebecca’s office that he started to suspect that every
office in the hulking Administration building was identically furnished.

“Sure. I wouldn’t be very good at my
job if I didn’t. I’m interested in what you think about what happened, though.
Steve is a piece of work – if he didn’t have such combat potential, we probably
would have bounced him – but your reaction seems a little…”

“Disproportionate?” Alex smiled
ruefully. “You are probably right. I’m not totally sure what got into me. When
I have to hit someone, though, I try to make it so they don’t get right back
up, you know?”

“You learn that in Juvenile Hall?”

He was not surprised she knew. Alex
suspected that he kept more secrets from himself than he did from Rebecca.

“I don’t want you to think I’m some
sort of psycho who goes around beating people up for no reason. I’d prefer not
to fight with anybody. This was, you know,” Alex paused, searching for the
words, “preemptive. I would have had trouble with Steve, eventually, and if he
knew I was coming, he would have kicked my ass. That is really all there is to
it.”

“What about Eerie? How does she come
into this little affair?”

“It’s true that I don’t like
watching that kind of thing. But this was about taking care of myself.”

Rebecca looked at him for a long
time, and then laughed.

“You’re the kind of kid who keeps
psychologists in business, you know?” She ground out her cigarette in the
ashtray, and then hopped off the desk. “I can’t fault you completely, either.
Steve was tormenting that poor Changeling girl. Not the first time he’s done that,
either.”

“Changeling? Is she like those
werewolves? What does she change into?”

Alex looked confused.

“That’s just the old name for the
children that the Fey leave behind,” Rebecca said, as if that explained
anything, sitting next to him on the couch. “Eerie has had a tough time. There
isn’t much of a place for her, here or with the Fey.”

“I don’t get it,” Alex said
miserably. “I’m really trying, Rebecca, but I don’t understand what is going
on.”

“I want to help, Alex…”

Rebecca looked at the clock and sighed.
She was clearly not making her afternoon appointments today.

“You say that, and I think it’s
probably true,” Alex responded, running one hand through his uncombed hair.
“But I’m not stupid, Rebecca. You are helping me because you want something
from me. Everyone here wants something from me.”

“Does that bother you, Alex? That we
want something from you?”

“Actually, I’m fine with it,” Alex
said, smiling shyly. “It’s nice to be wanted.”

Rebecca put a hand on his shoulder,
and sighed again.

“I’m sorry, Alex. I don’t have a lot
of time to talk about this today. Do you mind if we move on, and save this for
our next session?”

“Sure,” Alex said agreeably. “I
wondered why I was talking to you instead of Michael. I thought I was going to
get lectured.”

Rebecca frowned.

“I think that you’ll find the
consequences for today to be more severe than a lecture. However, I will leave
that to Michael. We have something we need to do.”

“What is that?”

“It is nothing bad. Do you remember last
time? When I built those shields in your head?”

“Yeah. I can still feel them,” Alex
gestured vaguely around his head. “It’s a little weird.”

“You will get used to it. Has anyone
explained protocols, Alex?”

He shook his head.

“Have you ever heard of a hypnotic
trigger?”

“Sure, I think so. It’s like, once a
person has been hypnotized, if they hear a certain word or something, it makes
them do stuff, right?”

“Sort of. Protocols are triggered in
a similar manner, Alex. Implanted behaviors and routines, just like on TV where
they make people think they’re a chicken, or dance around, or whatever. Except
we teach our students to trigger their protocols consciously. You follow?”

“I think so.”

“Good. Michael plans to show you how
to use the Absolute Protocol. We already know from your activation that you
have the affinity for it. He asked me to set up the routine to help you operate
it. We call the process implanting,” Rebecca explained patiently.

Alex thought about it for a while,
and then nodded.

“Okay, Rebecca. I trust you. Let’s
do it.”

Alex smiled at her, and was rewarded
with an even bigger smile in return. Rebecca leaned next to him on the couch,
resting her head on his shoulder.

“That’s good, Alex. And I know that
it’s the truth, too, I can tell,” she said softly, her shoulder pressing
against his own, her hair in his face. Alex felt almost as if he were melting.
“There’s nothing an empath values more than genuine trust and affection. May I
use your power, Alex?”

Alex nodded, his eyes fluttering and
his breathing growing deep, regular. Rebecca put the palm of her hand on his
chest and pressed lightly.

“Oh my…” Rebecca said, after a
moment, her voice dazed. “Alright. I’m going to implant the protocol now. It’ll
sting a little bit, and you might get dizzy for a minute, but that will pass
quickly, and I’ll be right here with you. Is that okay?”

Alex nodded slightly, his eyes fully
closed.

“Okay, Alex. This is the Absolute
Protocol. In three, two…”

Perhaps there was a ‘one’, but Alex
never heard it. He was only aware of where Rebecca’s palm met his chest, and
the copper-toned light that emanated from there. It shone so brightly that he
could see it through his eyelids, through Rebecca’s hand. The radiance grew
slowly, gradually encompassing his whole body, then both of their bodies,
illuminating the room with a dazzling array of sparks and metallic light. Alex
shook, writhed, and moaned like a child in the throes of a nightmare. Rebecca
increased the pressure on his chest, and the light flared and became entirely white,
with only a hint of crimson in the blinding, all-encompassing luminescence.
Alex could see nothing else, could feel nothing else but the searing radiance.

Then it was over. Alex’s head hurt a
bit, and he felt a little dizzy, but not bad. He took several deep breaths, and
then opened his eyes.

Rebecca smiled at him, patted him on
the leg, and then walked back to the desk. When she tapped a cigarette from the
pack, Alex noticed her hands shook slightly.

“Damn, kiddo…” she said after a
moment, blowing smoke at the ceiling. “Okay, the protocol is implanted. I also
reinforced those shields we built the other day – you should be good till next
week. Come back and see me on Sunday, and I’ll fix them back up for you.”

Alex rubbed the back of his head and
sat up.

“Can I learn to build them myself?”

“We will teach you soon. A couple of
weeks, at the outside,” Rebecca said dismissively. “Don’t worry about it now.
Start with the fundamentals, and then learn the applications, you know? Michael
is waiting out on the practice ground to show you how.”

Alex looked down at himself oddly,
then back up at Rebecca.

“This is it, huh? I’m actually going
to do this. Be an Operator or whatever, I mean.” Alex’s voice was filled with
wonder and doubt. “I’m kinda scared.”

“Don’t be.” Rebecca beamed at him,
her brown eyes warm. “Trust me, Alex. You’re going to be more than fine. You’re
going to be amazing. You are going to be better at this than you have ever been
at anything.”

Alex stood up. Despite himself, he
found that he was smiling.

“Thanks, Rebecca. I guess I’m ready.
Where do I go?”

***

Alex
was again awed by how huge the Academy was – he followed the map Rebecca had
drawn through a number of green practice fields, a handful of low stone
buildings, and one long stretch of what appeared to be rolling, forested hills.
It took him a quarter-hour to find Michael.

The gap cut crudely into the side of
a hill had obviously been a quarry at some point in the past, though it looked
to have been abandoned years before. Alex walked along the ridge on one side
and then down a hand-carved path into a deep depression that narrowed by long,
circular steps, with one narrow, uncut ridge rising in the center of the
quarry, about half the height of the depression. Michael stood on the edge of
that ridge.

The path was so narrow that Alex did
not feel comfortable walking up it. He didn’t think he would actually fall off,
but he felt as if he might, and it was a long way down to the still water at
the bottom of the quarry. The rough-hewn walls of rock all around blocked out
the sun, and it was quite cool. The pebbles that rolled away from Alex’s feet
rang musically against the limestone ridge, falling eventually into the dark
water below.

Michael stood at the edge of the
ridge, his arms crossed, smiling companionably. Alex was grateful to find that
the path widened out in front of him, and sat down with obvious relief on a
large rock next to Michael.

“How’s it going, Alex?” Michael’s
voice was hushed, but the sound still echoed within the old quarry. “How was
your first day?”

“It isn’t over yet, so it’s too
early to say. I’ve had worse, though.”

“Fair enough. Let’s talk a bit about
that altercation at the cafeteria. Did that work out the way you wanted?”

“What do you think? I mean, I knew
something like that would happen eventually, with all the stories everyone has
apparently heard about me. Maybe not quite so soon, though.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Alright, alright. I didn’t expect Steve
to turn to stone. That’s gonna be a problem, since he’s probably thinking about
killing me right now. Unless you were planning to teach me how to fight a
living statue?”

Michael looked at Alex oddly for a
moment, and then laughed.

“Not exactly what I had planned
today, no. You have anything else you would like to say about it?”

“Well, actually, I do. Why did you
pick Vivik to introduce me to everyone?”

“You don’t like Vivik?”

“He’s a nice enough guy. That isn’t
my point, though. He is clearly the least popular kid in the class, not
counting the two who apparently aren’t human. Why pick someone that everybody
already hates to introduce me to everyone? Are you trying to set me up? Or is
this some kind of test?”

Michael looked at Alex for a long
moment, and then had another laughing fit.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Michael
wiped his eyes and composed himself. “It’s good that you are thinking like
that, Alex. A little paranoia will take you a long way at the Academy. Using
Vivik would be a bit petty for me. I like to think my plots are slightly more
elegant.”

“Then, why pick Vivik?”

“I thought you would like him. He is
a smart kid. He has some ideas you might find interesting. I had to choose an orphan,
you know. Otherwise I really would have been setting you up.”

“Emily seems nice enough…”

“I warned you about this. Emily is
nice enough. I’ve been her teacher since she came to the Academy, and she is a
wonderful student and delightful person. She is also an empath, Alex, and a
member of the Raleigh Cartel from birth. They are one of the oldest and most
important cartels in the Hegemony, as I am certain you are aware. Did Rebecca
tell you anything about empaths?”

“She said that they tend to be in charge
of things.” Alex kicked at the ground nervously. “Because people can’t help but
like them.”

“That’s right. Even a moderately
powerful empath is pretty much guaranteed to end up in a leadership role in
their cartel – empaths are rare, and there are more openings than empaths to
fill them. They are inspirational and charming by nature, and impossible not to
like. Most are born leaders.”

Michael reached absently for a
pebble, and then tossed it out into the quarry, bouncing it off the rock face
and down into the water.

“Yes, empaths tend to rise to the
top. Except for when they are class-B empaths, that is. Like, for example,”
Michael rolled his eyes, “your new friend Emily.”

“Doesn’t that make her less of a
threat?” Alex brushed his bangs nervously back from his eyes. He needed a
haircut before he had arrived at the Academy, and he hadn’t had time to ask
about getting one yet. “If she is so weak, then I don’t see what the problem
is.”

“Emily’s future, as a class-B
empath, is that of a housekeeper and plaything for some middling-important
cartel functionary. Most empaths don’t have much in the way of combat
potential, and she is no good with the sciences – though she is an accomplished
humanities student and has excellent taste in literature. Good qualities aside,
Emily can look forward to a long and mundane life. Keep in mind that her father
is an important man in the Raleigh Cartel. She was raised as part of the upper
crust – a position that she cannot maintain as an adult without consenting to
an arranged marriage. That is,” Michael added slyly, tapping his forehead,
“unless she discovers a way to become the kind of empath who can’t help but
rise to the top. What do you figure the easiest way to find some extra power
might be, son?”

Alex felt ill in the pit of his
stomach. His interactions with Emily flashed before him in rapid sequence, as
he reinterpreted them all with newly suspicious eyes. She had seemed, in a
vaguely haughty way, quite friendly. Could he really have misread her so badly?

“Keep in mind that doesn’t make her
bad person. Actually, an empath might make a very good operations partner for
you, down the road. Your abilities would be complementary…”

“I don’t want to talk about this
stuff,” Alex said, troubled. He did not accept Michael’s interpretation
wholeheartedly, but he was shaken nonetheless. “I don’t want to think about her
– about anyone – this way.”

“Fair enough. Can I at least remind
you to be careful, Alex? You need to exercise restraint. You have tremendous
potential, son, but right now you can’t even defend yourself,” Michael said,
straightening up and yawning. “Try to only pick fights you can win, if you must
pick fights.”

“That’s it? That’s the whole
lecture?”

Michael grinned at him evilly.

“I already arranged for
consequences. You will know them when you see them. I guarantee you won’t be so
cavalier about knocking teeth out in the future, particularly when the
Academy’s kindergarten class could probably take you in a fight.”

“Maybe we should do something about
that. Why are we in a quarry, anyway?”

“To limit damage to the
surroundings. I think,” Michael said, his face lighting up, “that you are going
to like this part, Alex.”

***

Edward
knocked politely before entering her office. Anastasia appeared very small
behind her mammoth desk, a laptop open in front of her.

“The camera in the quarry is
online,” Edward reported quietly.

“And just in time,” Anastasia said,
with obvious satisfaction. “This should be interesting. Edward, please tell the
cook that I am ready for lunch.”

He closed the door so quietly on his
way out that she didn’t even look up.

***

Alex
stared at the crater in the quarry wall blankly. He opened his mouth as if to
speak, then glanced over at Michael’s outstretched hand, blue smoke trailing from
the palm, his fingers blackened from volatized carbon, and then looked back at
the smoldering indent in the rock.

“Holy fucking shit,” Alex said
breathlessly, turning back to face Michael with a shit-eating grin. “I mean,
like, fuck! Man, just… wait. Wait, wait,” Alex said, rubbing his forehead, “so
if you can do that, then…”

Michael let him trail off helplessly
before he took pity on the obviously overwhelmed boy.

“Why am I not in the field?”

His expression was gentle, rather
than was sad.

“Right,” Alex said, nodding. “I
mean, can’t you just blast those werewolf things, or something?”

“Good question, actually.
Until you got to the ‘werewolf thing’, anyway. I can only do that once every so
often, Alex,” Michael said, smiling and attempting to shrug off the ghost of
past embarrassment at the fact. “Whether I knock over a matchstick or level a
mountain, it takes me a long while to build it back up.”

“What,” Alex asked suspiciously,
reaching down to finger one of the quartz fragments that had been scattered all
around them by the force of explosion, “you mean like once a day or something?”

“I wish. It’ll be two or three days
before I’ll be doing anything like that again,” Michael said, rubbing his hands
against his pants to remove the soot. “So now do you understand what makes
being M-Class so significant? You might not necessarily be able to wield as
much raw power as me in a single instance, but you can do it over and over
again.”

Alex tossed the sparkling piece of
gravel in the air a couple of times, catching it midway down and then tossing
it up again. He looked like he was thinking about things as he did so, so
Michael let it be.

“That was telekinesis, huh?” Alex
asked.

“I prefer psychokinesis,”
Michael said, “but sure. It’s the same thing. Moving things by force of will
alone.”

“I still don’t understand how that’s
related to, well,” Alex tossed the rock away and frowned, searching for words,
“whatever it is that I can do.”

Michael had to think about it for a
minute before he started, trying to couch it all in a way that Alex would be
able to follow.

“I’m not going to ask you to
understand it all. You don’t have to understand it all to make it work for you.
There’s this Auditor, by the name of Xia. He is a pyrokine – basically, he can
start fires by thinking about it, right? Well, for a long time, they thought
that a telekine and pyrokine were two completely
different things, so when we were going through the Academy, Xia and I barely
even saw each other. These days, we would be in all the same classes. Turns out
what I do in my head, pushing against things, basically, isn’t so different
from what Xia is doing when he starts fires. He’s just exciting the molecules
within a flammable object until he gets them so energetic that they burst into
flames. Same root concept applies to the protocol I just showed you.”

Alex frowned, and Michael could see
he wasn’t buying it, at least not yet. He was thinking about it, though, which
was a good start.

“Okay, but every time we talk about
my protocol, you start talking about the Ether...”

“Right,” Michael said, nodding, “but
it isn’t actually the Ether that you manipulate. You punch holes in reality,
Alex, in whatever separates our universe from the Ether itself. Depending on
how you do it, that creates a vacuum on one side or the other. When the vacuum
is on our side, Etheric energy comes rushing over into our world to fill it.
Thus, the catalytic effect. When you create the vacuum on the Etheric side, it
pulls matter and energy from our universe into the Ether, like water down a
drain. If the hole is small, only energy will escape, which creates extreme
cold and eventually kinetic stasis as a side effect. A larger hole magnifies
the effect. Make the hole big enough, and…”

“The whole universe goes down the drain?”

“I don’t think so, but let’s not
tempt fate, okay?” Michael said mildly. He had to give Alex time to wrap his
head around it, he reminded himself, even if it meant going slower than he
would have liked. This wasn’t like teaching the kid to square his shoulders
when he threw a punch, after all. “I think that a small hole might actually be
more useful than a larger one. I think a tiny breach will be enough to pull the
radiant energy, all of the heat and motion, out of the surrounding area. Do you
know what happens when absolute zero is reached, Alex?”

“It’s impossible,” Alex said, with
surprising firmness. “Anastasia told me so. You can only get so close, and then
you are always a fraction short. You can reduce the fraction, but you can’t
make it go away.”

Michael covered his alarm with an
indulgent smile. Why, he wondered, was Anastasia Martynova talking to Alex
about absolute zero?

“True. But, if it was possible, do
you know what would happen?”

While Alex considered the question, Michael
worried over other concerns. Could the Black Sun Cartel somehow already be
aware of Alex’s affinity for the Absolute Protocol? Rebecca’s notes circulated
only among the upper levels of the Academy’s staff, and were the only source
for such information. Did Anastasia Martynova have access to internal Academy
documents? If so, then how?

She must have gotten them from a
staff member, Michael realized with a jolt. That was the only possibility.

“Everything would freeze, I guess?”

Alex frowned as he spoke, his whole
demeanor wary and tense.

“Well, yes.” Michael hastily put
aside his suspicions. “More importantly, however, everything would stop.
Alex, absolute zero is a completely non-energetic state – no motion, even on a
molecular level. So, potentially, you could freeze things in more ways than
one.”

Alex nodded slowly, but looked
doubtful at best. That was good enough for Michael, for now. Everyone had to
start somewhere.

“Okay. What do I do?”

Michael smiled encouragingly, doing
his best to put aside his concerns about Anastasia.

“Rebecca already implanted the
Absolute Protocol in your mind. Do you remember how to activate it? The
routine?”

Alex nodded slowly, clearly going
over something in his head.

“Okay, then let’s try it. Go ahead
and focus on that end of the quarry,” Michael instructed patiently, pointing at
the opposite side of the depression, close enough to see, far enough to be
safe. “You don’t need to do anything fancy. Let’s see how far you can reduce
the ambient temperature.”

Michael wasn’t sure of the nature of
the activation routine that Rebecca had implanted in Alex – they varied, after
all, depending on the protocol and the Operator involved. He based his own
routine on some Tai Chi movements that he found helpful for aiding focus. Alex’s
routine was apparently more subtle. All that happened outwardly was that Alex
sighed, shook out his hands, and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened
them again, took a couple deep breaths, and squinted at the rock face on the
far side of the quarry as if it were very far away.

Michael was prepared to wait.
Protocols were tricky to use, and even with the hypnotic routine implanted to
make them easier, students often struggled for weeks before they got the hang
of operating them on command. Alex apparently did not have that problem.
Michael was considering saying something encouraging, maybe suggesting a second
try, when he noticed the frost sparkling in the sun; a light, uniform coating,
glistening across the dull face of the rock.

“Excellent, Alex!”

Michael almost shouted, he was so
excited, but Alex did not appear to notice. He just continued trying to bore a
hole in the rock with his eyes, and all around where he stared, the rock
creaked and moaned while the air filled with a sound like tiny bells ringing.
It took Michael a moment to realize that he was hearing the water in the air
spontaneously freezing and then falling to the ground in crystals that
shattered on impact.

“Okay, Alex, that’s good. Shut it
down.”

Michael waited for a moment, but the
kid seemed to be unaware of him, locked into his bizarre staring contest with
the wall of the quarry. Amazingly, Alex seemed to be gaining ground, as the scree slope made ominous settling noises, and then parts of
it started to give way, small rivulets of gravel and sand running down channels
in the stone as the wall itself shifted to accommodate ice crystals forming
where water had been trapped inside the stone.

“Alex, stop. Stop now.” Michael
hoped that his voice sounded firm, not worried. Whatever he sounded like,
however, he was certain that Alex did not hear him. Michael reached for the
boy’s shoulder, meaning to shake him, but his hand stopped of its own accord
halfway. He looked closely at the wall, trying to confirm what he thought he
had seen.

The rivulets of sand and pebbles,
the streams of earth that had threatened only moments before to become a small
avalanche had halted in midair, halfway to the ground, hovering uncertainly,
each fragment slowly rotating in midair as it was caught in the impasse between
two opposing forces. Even though he knew immediately what was happening, it
took a moment for Michael to process it.

Something inside the rock face,
something Alex was doing, had created a force powerful enough to counteract
gravity, and the forces were balanced perfectly enough that the dirt dislodged
from the rock face was held in suspension between them, waiting for the
situation to resolve itself, equally pushed and pulled. And then, almost as
soon as he put a name to what he was seeing, the equation unbalanced, in favor
of the force Alex was generating, and the dust began to drift upward, back
toward where it had fallen from. The complaints of the rock face itself grew
louder and more urgent.

“Alex, stop this right now!”

Hoping to break visual contact and
disrupt his protocol, Michael turned Alex around forcefully, grabbing him by
the shoulder. The boy nearly toppled over when Michael put pressure on him, and
the eyes that Alex turned on him were blank and unseeing, rolled back in his
head so that only the whites were visible. Michael lowered Alex carefully to
the ground, then turned back to the slope, in time to see it draw in on itself,
the rock fracturing like glass and then disintegrating into sand. The wall of
the quarry fell rapidly into an invisible core somewhere within the rock,
disappearing from view. All around the collapsing quarry wall, frost had taken
hold, expanding out to cover half of the quarry with a furry white blanket.
Michael realized with a certain inevitable horror that he could see his breath,
despite the warmth of the day.

Michael grabbed the boy by his
shoulders, shaking him violently, and shouting at him. Alex’s head rolled back
and forth like a rag doll, his body slack and unresponsive. Michael thought
desperately, weighing his limited options. He was seriously considering
knocking the boy unconscious, but he was afraid that might not stop the
reaction, but rather allow it to spiral even further out of control. The
protocol had gone Black when Alex operated it. There was no other plausible
explanation. Rebecca would never have deliberately implanted a Black Protocol,
but some protocols, including Michael’s own, could turn Black in the right (or
wrong) Operator’s hands.

The rock face interrupted his
dilemma. It did not explode, though he felt the ground shake beneath him and
there was tremendous noise. Rather, the whole slope imploded with a whooshing
sound, all of a sudden, folding impossibly in on itself and then disappearing,
trails of dust falling towards nothing. All around the expanding cavity, the
frozen rock bent and crackled, clearly planning to follow suit. The air was so
cold that it was painful to breathe, and Michael’s hands were red and numb.

Michael said a small, silent prayer,
and hit Alex above his jaw on the right side, below his ear. For a moment,
Michael was afraid that nothing had happened, and that he would die feeling
weirdly guilty for having struck a student who was already laying on the
ground. Then, distantly, through the partially frozen clothing on his back, he
felt the heat of the sun, and he collapsed gratefully by Alex’s side. He lay
there in the afternoon sun, his head buzzing with frightening thoughts, while
his body slowly warmed.

Seventeen

Tung Do shifted nervously in his Aeron chair. It was the most expensive office
chair available five years ago, and something of a status symbol at the time he
bought it, even if it was second-hand. There wasn’t an enormous market for
high-end office furniture in obscure Philippine port towns. Tung bought it
solely for the mesh back, as it was supposed to reduce back sweat, a source of
great embarrassment for him. Generally, Tung liked to blame his nameless
American G.I. father and the godforsaken, roasting-hot Philippine climate for
his tendency to sweat like a pig.

Today, however, he blamed the
spreading dampness that had glued his chino shirt to his back on the three
people opposite his modern, blond-wood desk.

The Chinese man had not spoken and
refused to take a seat, instead standing behind the two women, wearing what
appeared to be a ‘clean-room’ style mask, goggles, and gloves. Then there was
the Japanese woman with livid red eyes, who didn’t talk much either, but stared
at him with an unnerving intensity. The woman in black, though, talking through
an obscenely smug grin, she was the worst.

She was the only one to accept his
offer of coffee – and despite the fact that it was Vietnamese-style iced coffee,
sweetened with condensed milk, she had insisted on adding several more
spoonfuls of sugar to it. Just watching her drink the stuff made him ill.

Tung had heard of Alice Gallow,
which meant the other two must be Auditors. What he had heard about Gallow,
well, that made Tung very nervous indeed.

“How is business, Mr. Do? It seems
like you are doing alright for yourself,” Alice observed, gesturing at the
plush office around her.

Tung attempted a modest smile. The
Auditors must have activated a translation protocol; when Alice spoke, he heard
perfect Vietnamese with a slight northern accent, exactly like his own.

“This has not been our best year,
I’m afraid.” Tung wanted desperately to shift in his chair, to fidget and
fiddle with his hands, and fought to suppress the urge while keeping a calm,
unworried expression on his face. “Exports to North America are down, what with
the bad financial climate, and it has had a negative impact on overall
revenue.”

“Huh,” Alice said, sounding
genuinely surprised. “I’d have figured people would be more interested in smack
during a recession.”

“Nguyen Exports handles a broad
range of products for an array of reputable clients,” Tung sputtered
defensively. “I do not appreciate the implication that we would deal in anything
untoward. Our firm has operated for decades and enjoys an excellent reputation,
here and in Central.”

The woman nodded and crossed her
legs. She was attractive, if a bit too pale and tall. Even Tung, who was not a
fan of Caucasians, had to give her that, with her long legs and lithe figure.
She would have been pretty, rather, if not for the ludicrous smirk plastered on
her face.

“You have no need to be concerned
about that, Mr. Do. The Audits department is well-aware of everything that your
company transports, even when it somehow doesn’t make it on the manifest,”
Alice observed dryly. “If we had a problem with it, we would have gotten
involved some time ago. Moreover, the quality of the services you provide is
universally recognized. At several points, we have contracted work to your
organization, as a matter of fact.”

“I hope the services were rendered
to your satisfaction?” Tung inquired politely. He was impatient to get the
Auditors out of his office, but saw no obvious means by which to expel them.
The right of an Auditor to compel cooperation during an Audit was absolute, and
he had already inspected their paperwork and found it disappointingly in order.
Tung shifted in his expensive chair, and wished he could go change his shirt.

“Yes.” Alice waved her hand
dismissively. “Enough of these trivial matters. You are a busy man, and I do
not wish to waste your time. I wonder if I might show you something, Mr. Do.”

Alice dug through the duffel bag she
brought in with her, and Tung panicked briefly. He hadn’t had the right to
demand a search of the bag – he could not interfere with an Audit – and he
tensed up, aware that he was being ridiculous and unable to stop himself. After
a moment’s search, Alice produced a stack of printouts, each page a photo
headshot of a Vietnamese or Cambodian man.

“Do you know any of these men, Mr.
Do?”

Tung made a show of putting his
glasses on, and then looking closely at each of the photos in turn. Alice’s
smile broadened a notch, and he felt slightly queasy, like the whole affair was
turning into a farce.

“I have never seen any of these men
before,” Tung said honestly. “I am sorry I cannot be of more assistance.”

“The first part is true,” Mitsuru
said, her voice devoid of emotion. Her entire contribution to the conversation
up until this point had been limited to occasional confirmations of what he
said – she was obviously running an Audit protocol, some kind of lie detector.
“But he isn’t actually sorry.”

“Good for you, Mr. Do!” Alice said
enthusiastically. “But if I had asked if any of these men had been clients of
yours, it would have been a different answer, right?”

“Nguyen Exports does business with
many different clients each year. Only a fraction of our clients deal with me
personally. And even then, many of our clients employ another agency as a
buffer, to ensure confidentiality,” Mr. Do explained patiently. “There is no
way for me to be totally certain that my firm has not contracted with these
men, indirectly, at some point.”

“It was a trick question, Mr. Do.” Alice’s
expression was smug. “These men are all members of a Hmong Weir tribe, one that
has done contracting work for your little operation before. Surely you remember
that little deal-gone-bad in Myanmar that they helped you resolve? We know that
your cartel recently arranged transportation for them to the United States, on
one of your vessels. That was a big mistake, Mr. Do.”

“Please. Do you have any proof to
support these outrageous claims?” Tung said indignantly, waving his finger as
he spoke. “Auditors or no, speculation of this kind is meaningless.”

“Shut up, Tung, before you piss me
off,” Alice said coldly, her smile bright and cruel. “Mitsuru isn’t here to
determine if you are telling the truth. I don’t need her help to figure that
out. She is acting as a conduit for one of the best telepaths in Central, who
has been quietly ransacking your brain during our little chat while I kept you
nervous enough not to notice.”

Alice stood up and slammed her hand
down on Tung’s desk, causing him to flinch backwards.

“Guess what we found, asshole? Any
ideas? Mitzi?” Alice glared down at Tung, eyes hard and brilliant.

“Don’t call me that,” Mitsuru said
coldly, her eyes focused and aware. She had clearly allowed her interrogation
protocol to dissipate, and for the first time, Tung felt the red eyes studying
him. It was not a good feeling.

“We have indisputable proof, Mr. Do,
of the Terrie Cartel’s involvement in the smuggling of Weir to California, and
additionally of your own personal involvement in said transaction,” Alice said
cheerily. “These Weir were used in the commission of an attempted assassination
of an Operator, which you have kindly confirmed was also contracted by the
Terrie Cartel.”

“This is outrageous!” Tung
protested, his eyes bugging out of his head, turning red in the face. “You
cannot simply invade my mind at your discretion! I have rights under the
Agreement!”

“Wrong,” Alice gloated, slamming a
document down on the desk in front of Tung. “This writ is signed by the
Director. As far as the purposes of this Audit go, your rights are suspended
until such a time as we decide to return them to you. Do you think I’m the kind
of woman who would return them, Tung?”

Tung looked at the woman, and her
terrible smile, his mind gone blank with panic. He hadn’t wanted in on the deal
the cartel had brokered in the first place – he had no love lost for Central,
but the whole affair seemed destined for trouble from the start. Despite his
apprehension, however, Tung had not anticipated a visit from the Auditors, with
a mandate in hand for the dissolution of his cartel from the Director, staring
at him as if he was a gift they were dying to unwrap.

He had not expected them to be so
damn unnerving, either. Beneath his desk, he slowly started to shift his foot.

“Let me make our position clear,
Tung.” Alice leaned over the desk, her face inches away from his, her grin a
mile wide. “Your whole damn cartel is dirty. We already have enough on you to
open an Audit – which means that somebody set you up for a fall, right? Because
as stupid as you are, there’s no way the whole Terrie Cartel decided to commit
mass suicide like this. Whoever hired you for the job, well, now they’re trying
to feed you to us. The bitch of the situation,” Alice continued gleefully, “for
you, anyway, is that we are very hungry. We could just eat you and your whole
operation up right now. You see, Mitzi over here…”

“Mitsuru,” the red-eyed woman said,
her voice icy. “Please.”

“Right, Mitsuru,” Alice said
dismissively. “Anyway, my very good friend here, she got caught up in your
little scheme. She had to bust up your trap, over in California, and she’s real
pissed about it. I’m sure you heard about those two Operators in San Francisco
– that was a real fucking shame, wasn’t it, Tung? We are none too happy about
that, either. Do you appreciate how precarious this makes your position?”

Tung nodded, sweat pouring down his
face. With one foot, he gradually eased the thing he needed into place. It was
good that he had prepared for all eventualities, even one as unlikely as this,
and fortunate that this Alice Gallow person liked to talk so much. If the
mirror weren’t in exactly the right spot, then Tung would be trapped in this
terrible situation.

“Please – there must be some way we
can resolve this,” he implored, nudging the mirror into place. “I am willing to
cooperate with your Audit. I will assist your investigation, if only you
would…”

“You will do exactly what I want you
to, Tung,” Alice advised, folding her arms. “What happens after that, nothing
you do can change.”

“You stupid bitch,” Tung spat,
red-faced. “That doesn’t give me much incentive to cooperate, does it?”

He inched the mirror into place, and
then dove underneath his desk. He saw understanding flash in Mitsuru’s eyes,
right before he dropped, and knew that she would be too late, even as she
stepped forward. He slipped underneath his desk, and then kept falling, through
the mirror he had hidden there, like breaking the surface of cold water. The
destination had been prepared in advance, so that he could operate the protocol
without thought; he passed through the rigid surface of the mirror, and then
beyond that, the stifling fog of the Ether. The apport was as efficient as he
could manage; he hung in the cold grey for only a moment, and then he was out,
standing up on the other side on shaky legs and brushing the dust from his
pants.

Tung hated the jungle, the humidity
even more than temperature. Not to mention the bugs that found him upon
arrival, and immediately set about making his life miserable. The camp was a
miserable collection of shacks and Quonset huts, populated by a large number of
shabbily dressed, heavily armed Philippine men. Most of whom were shocked to
see Tung emerge from the mirror that he had hung, suspended five feet above the
dusty ground, on the outside of one of the storerooms several months ago, as an
insurance policy.

“Get ready,” Tung hissed in mediocre
Tagalog at the nearest of the men, his coat and skin still steaming with the
vapors of his transit through the Ether, his chest laboring with the effort.
“We will have company shortly.”

***

After
Tung disappeared, Alice paused briefly, then giggled and walked casually around
the desk. Mitsuru stood in the middle of the room, halfway to where Tung had
disappeared from, and looked at Alice in confusion. Xia stood impassively in
the corner of the room, aloof and unconcerned.

With the worn toe of her heavy
boots, Alice pushed the mirror out from under the desk. It was a cheap bathroom
mirror, just wide enough to accommodate Tung’s plump frame. Uniformly smeared
with grease and warped in the middle, the mirror looked as if someone had run
their hand across the whole of the surface. At the very center, the glass had
already begun steaming and running, rapidly becoming a hissing pool of silvery
liquid on the office carpet.

“Amateur,” Alice laughed to herself.
“Calls himself a transporter, but still needs a mirror to do a port.”

The remains of the mirror continued
to boil and steam, gradually eating away at the floor beneath. The room filled
with the stench of melting plastic and burned carpet.

“Cooperate?” Alice spat, sounding
genuinely angry. “I didn’t want you to cooperate, asshole,” Alice said to the
vaporizing mass at her feet, “I wanted you to run. Are you really so stupid as
to think you could close the way behind you? This won’t even slow us down.”

Alice walked over to the desk,
nudging out several of the larger fragments of the mirror in front of Mitsuru.

“There should still be traces,” she
said firmly. “Tell me where he went.”

Mitsuru was as good as Alistair had
described. The time it took her to select the appropriate protocol and download
it from the Etheric Network was barely noticeable. The actual download itself
took bit longer, and looked alarmingly like a brief seizure. Mitsuru bent down
to her knees, her eyes furiously red, and peered into the broken mirror.

“Okay,” she said, after a few
moments, her eyes twitching rapidly. “I can see him. They broke the mirror on the
other end, after he came through, but one of the pieces is still big enough… I
think it’s the camp, the one Alistair was talking about.”

Alice nodded thoughtfully.

“Tell me again, Mitsuru, what was
the briefing on this place?”

Mitsuru looked up from the fragments
of mirror.

“The Philippine Army and the CIA
both believe it to be an Abu Sayyaf camp,” Mitsuru
said, voice dead as she consulted her Etheric uplink. “It isn’t, of course. The
Witches run it; the terrorist angle is just to keep the curious away. Satellite
shows fifteen structures, arrayed in a rough semi-circle, on the bank of the
river. The terrain around it is primarily jungle; the only road access is a
dirt track. They’ve got a crude airfield, too, big enough for private planes.”

Alice nodded again, and Mitsuru went
back to surveying the mirror shards, which were beginning to melt into the
carpet.

“The strip is empty right now,”
Mitsuru said distantly. “Barbwire around the perimeter. The angle is terrible,
so I can’t see much else.”

Alice inspected her chipped nail
polish critically.

“What kind of nonconventional assets
can we expect, Mitzi?”

The glare Mitsuru gave her went way
past insubordination.

“I told you already. My name is
Mitsuru. Alistair tried to scan it a couple times already – he says someone who
knows what they’re doing is shielding it. They definitely have some capable
Operators, to keep a telepathic barrier like that up twenty-four hours a day. I
can’t see anyone at all.”

“Could be a Witch,” Alice suggested.
“They make artifacts that do stuff like that. It could have been set up in
advance, or there could even be one there now, maintaining it.”

“That is entirely speculative,”
Mitsuru said woodenly, still connected to Etheric Network. “During attempts to
scan the site, Alistair reported a number of Etheric Signatures in the nearby
wilderness, very probably Weir.”

Alice gave Xia a look. He gave her a
very small nod in return.

“So, we’ll assume they have
Operators and Weir, at the very least. Witches are a possibility too – though
they tend to bail before things get heavy, unless they think they have all the
cards. Probably some conventional security as well.” Alice though for a moment,
glancing over at Xia, then nodding in agreement, as if he had said something.
“We’ll wait until twilight. They’re probably running around in a panic right
now, waiting for us to come busting in. Let’s give them some time to start
thinking that they got away. They’ll be more lax in a few hours.”

“Can we clear the camp on our own?”

“Xia could clean that place out by
himself,” Alice snorted. “I probably won’t even have to take my hands out of my
pockets. I brought you along,” Alice leered at Mitsuru, “’cause I like watching
you cut people up, baby. It makes me feel all funny.”

Alice winked at Mitsuru, who stared
at her, mouth half-open.

“Don’t be dense,” Alice said
sympathetically. “This is a big job. We’re not just going to take care of it –
we’re going to make sure that you are there with us, every step of the way.
When we wrap up this Audit successfully, no one is going to be able to argue
with Gaul making you an Auditor, Mitzi. So, try and be a good girl for a little
while longer.”

Alice giggled at her shocked
expression.

“Oh, dear me, I said it again,
didn’t I?” Alice gave her arm an affectionate pinch. “I swear, I meant to say
Mitsuru…”

***

As
the sun hid itself behind the low hills beyond the river, the camp fell into
shadow.

The air was so humid it felt dense,
and Alice felt the sweat bead on her neck the moment she stepped out of the shadow
of a storehouse on the eastern edge of the compound, near the fence. She
crouched and then surveyed her surroundings, her finger tight on the trigger of
her shotgun. She need not have bothered. Aside from the sounds of the insects
and the ever-shifting wall of vegetation, the area was deserted.

Even the best-trained guard will
fall into routines when patrolling the same ground every night – inevitably,
given the boredom inherent in the job, and the limited number of routes
available. The guards who protected the camp were sufficiently professional to
shift their patrol routes, but had fallen into a routine over time nonetheless.
The jeep that they were using to patrol was on the other side of camp; Alice
could see the mounted spotlight on the back from where she crouched. She
reached one hand into her own shadow.

She pulled Mitsuru from the shadow
first, but she emerged stumbling. Mitsuru shook her head several times, before
crouching beside Alice, disoriented. Alice reached down and rested her hand on
Mitsuru’s cheek, gently pressing the dizzy Operator’s head against her leg,
reaching back into the shadows with her other hand.

Xia stepped out a moment later, in
his heavy black coat and surgical mask, clutching Alice’s hand with his own
latex-gloved one. He glanced at the still-dazed Mitsuru, and then looked
questioningly at Alice. She nodded curtly.

At that moment, the silence of the
night shattered, with gunfire followed by panicked yells in a cacophony of
Tagalog, French, and English. There were two groups of guards approaching, and
in the distance, a gunman had climbed to the flat roof of one of the temporary
structures and was taking potshots with his AK-47. At that range, there wasn’t
much chance of him finding a mark, but Alice tugged the befuddled Mitsuru back
behind the protection of the outbuilding, just to be safe.

“Alright, Xia. No point in subtlety
now. Let ’em know we’re here.”

Alice helped Mitsuru to her feet.
She shook her head again, cautiously, and then nodded at Alice, apparently
steadied.

Xia walked casually out into the
open, rounding the storehouse corner and exposing himself to fire from both of
the patrols, as well as the rooftop sniper. The 7.62mm rounds made a strange
hissing sound as they hit the field of intense heat that surrounded Xia,
visible only by the distortion in the air around him, then flattened and melted
like solder into hissing pools on the muddy ground.

Xia closed his eyes, and then slowly
raised both of his arms until they were above his head, palms to the sky. Though
there was little wind, his heavy coat rippled and swayed, and the grass around
him wilted and charred. A white luminescence appeared at the ends of his hands,
and then slowly expanded, covering his entire body in a translucent shell. Xia
spoke then, just once, but what he said could not be described as a word.

One of the Jeeps caught flame,
burning from beneath its undercarriage. There were angry voices yelling in
Tagalog, as some of the guards attempted to douse the flames with an
extinguisher, while others milled about in confusion. The first explosion was
dramatic, a terrific bang that sent chunks of metal flying in all directions as
the jeep tore itself apart. The gas tanks on the other vehicles followed
shortly, all three detonating in rapid succession, each sending a ball of black
smoke and flame skyward. Looking through the filter of a combat protocol,
Mitsuru watched the guards’ Etheric Signatures snuff out, torn apart by
shrapnel, their bodies left to turn to charcoal in the flames.

The jungle around the camp smoldered
angrily, and then burst into a conflagration, the lush vegetation charred and
consumed by the furious blaze. In an instant, a towering wall of flame
surrounded them on three sides. Flickering orange gave the scene a hellish air,
as barbwire fences warped in the heat, and sparks drifted gradually across the
whole of the camp.

“You’re up, Mitzi,” Alice said
softly, watching the flames with a rapt expression. “They have to come this way
to get away from the fire. Put on a show for me.”

Mitsuru nodded, shifting her grip on
the wrapped handle of her sheathed knife, and then disappeared into the
shadows, moving in the direction of the nearest patrol.

Alice smiled to herself as she
watched Mitsuru’s Etheric Signature flit from building to building, her
movements accelerated to a blur by a downloaded alacrity protocol, almost
invisible in the flickering firelight.

The closer patrol had stopped to
have a panicked conversation – one was talking rapidly in Tagalog into a
walkie-talkie, while the other stared at the inferno, open-mouthed. Mitsuru
rounded an outhouse, then crossed the open space between them in a half-dozen
bounding steps, the only sound her cheap Thai sandals slapping against the
soles of her feet. She was behind them before either of the guards had time to
react, the knife reflecting the ghastly orange glow of the flame.

She slid the point of the knife into
the side of one of the guards, aiming for a breach between the Kevlar pads on
his vest, the tip sliding smoothly past the ribs. With a flick of her wrist,
she turned the knife in the shape of a C, the blade emerging red and
glistening from his side, slightly above his hip. The guard fell to his knees
and made awful, wet sounds, too stunned to scream, his arms wrapped protectively
around his ravaged and leaking torso.

The other guard yelled and spun
around, leveling his rifle at Mitsuru and pulling the trigger. The rifle was
firing at full auto, but the acceleration of Mitsuru’s protocol was such that
she heard each individual shot, and saw the flare of hot gas that punctuated
each shell’s ignition. She fell forward, under the arc of the bullets that
plodded toward her, and then rolled, her perception so agonizingly acute she
could see the wake of distorted air the bullets left behind. She let the
momentum of the roll carry her close to the gunman, and before he could lower
his rifle and aim, her knife darted out and in, cutting his ankles out from
beneath him. He cried out as he fell backward, but that was the last noise that
he made, as Mitsuru wrenched his arm aside and drove the point of her blade
into his throat. The gunman’s scream cut off, his hands clasping Mitsuru’s
blade, his eyes bugging out of his head. Blood trickled from his throat,
splashing weakly into the dirt beside him. Then the light went out in his eyes,
all at once, and his face went slack.

Mitsuru pulled the knife from his
throat and wiped the blade against the dead man’s shirt before sheathing it.
Information from a ballistics protocol permeated her vision; translucent text
and data boxes informed her of the positions of the six remaining guards. Four
of them had abandoned their gear and were moving in inhumanly low crouches,
spines contorted, skulls elongated and feral. The two in the rear moved to
supporting positions, taking cover behind the nearby buildings and scrambling
to maintain a clear field of fire.

Weir hated humans, so Mitsuru felt
safe in assuming that the two rear guards were Weir maintaining a human
appearance. That was unusual, as they preferred to fight in their swifter
lupine form, or the monstrous hybrid shape the other four guards had already
assumed.

They had Egyptian-manufactured
AK-47s, the same as the other guards and common to insurgencies the world over,
but even through the smoke and the flimsy Quonset hut walls, Mitsuru could see
the yellow glow of the bullets, radiating from the working that a Witch had
laid on each of them. There was no alternative source – only Witches were
capable of creating such artifacts – though to lavish such power on bullets was
unprecedented. The workings Witches created took time. Mitsuru had no idea how
long it would take to place one on each bullet in a magazine, but it hardly
seemed worth the effort.

Mitsuru walked calmly into the open,
right in the middle of the burning camp, exposing herself to the six guards
that remained. The four in the front came roaring around the corner of the main
building, their paws kicking up mud and pebbles, hundreds of pounds of rage and
sinew and yellow teeth. They charged immediately, fluid as shadows, smelling of
the jungle and death, their fur matted with clumps of dried blood. One howled
as it ran, a loathsome, high whining that set Mitsuru’s teeth on edge.

The two in human form were more cautious,
but only somewhat. They rounded the far corner of the building they were using
as cover, rifles at the ready, staying low to avoid fire.

Mitsuru smiled at all of them, and
held out her hands.

“I had rather hoped that the silver one
would be here, but still, I’m indebted to you.” Her speech was calm and
unhurried in the face of the charging Weir. “I can’t normally do this, you
understand.”

There was a slight glow at her
fingertips, a silvery aura, and the wind picked up from behind her.

“Compliments of Alistair,” Mitsuru
said, her eyes rolling back in her head with effort. The borrowed protocol
flooded through her mind in a wave of information and pain, the silvery
protocol writ large against the field of black that consumed her vision. “A
souvenir, from San Francisco.”

Mitsuru dropped her hands like a
conductor, and the strange silvery light radiating from her chest encompassed
her whole body. The wind tore at her clothing, and a fine spray of water from
the river behind drenched her.

“Shining Cloud,” she whispered, but
her words were lost in the localized gale that whipped past her.

A dense silver fog swirled around,
and then burst forth in all directions, the main part of it making a rapid,
twisting path toward the charging Weir. It passed through the two in front
before they had time to react, and they disappeared into the metallic fog,
little more than a few brief howls, and then a rapidly dissipating red mist.
The two Weir behind them had time to try to stop, talons scrambling for
purchase in the mud, before the fog encompassed them as well.

They had more than enough time to
howl and cough wetly; trying in vain to expel the millions of tiny sharp
particles they had inhaled. One even tried to transform as he was cut to
pieces, spitting his insides onto the mud as he died, not quite human, not
wholly wolf.

One of the remaining guards
abandoned his position, dropping his rifle and running, struggling to free
himself from his bulky bulletproof vest so he could transform. The other was
either braver or more foolish, and opened fire at Mitsuru with his rifle, or at
least in the last place he had seen her before a mist of nanometer blades
obscured her from view.

It did not make any difference.

The rapidly advancing silver cloud
shredded the bullets into powder. A moment of contact reduced the gunman to a
pile of horribly uniform small pieces of meat. The runner made it the furthest,
to the edge of the camp before he came up short, faced with the wall of flames.
He hesitated there, torn between the fire in front of him and the glimmering
silver cloud that pursued him.

The first tendrils of the fog licked
his back, and where they touched him, they left deep voids in the flesh,
gouging through bone and muscle. The Weir screamed and leapt into the fire,
caught somewhere between his human and lupine forms. Mitsuru dispelled the
protocol with a sigh of relief, and listened to the screams of the Weir as
Xia’s inferno finished it.

Alice walked up next to Mitsuru, who
was dripping with river water and smeared with someone else’s blood, and leered
at her. After a brief hesitation, Mitsuru gave her a small smile in return.

“You’re a nightmare, Mitzi,” Alice
enthused, her kohl-lined eyes shining. “I got all excited just watching.”

Mitsuru blushed.

“The Shining Cloud Protocol was a
gift from Alistair,” she admitted. “He implanted it directly before we left. I
can’t manage something like that yet.”

Alice patted Mitsuru affectionately
on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it, Mitzi.”
Alice’s grin was wolfish. “We have time. We’ll make an Auditor of you yet.”

Mitsuru winced, and opened her mouth
to correct her.

Tung dropped the camouflage protocol
that he had activated the moment the Auditors had arrived. One moment, there
was a 50-gallon black metal drum standing next to Alice, and the next, Tung
stood there, wheezing and gasping, a 12-guage double-barrel shotgun leveled at
her head.

“You bitches are all out of time,”
Tung snarled, still struggling to catch his breath. He had been holding it
since they stopped next to him. The camouflage protocol was designed to conceal
such things – but Tung preferred to avoid the risk. “And truly weird, I might
add.”

“Don’t act like such a big shot,”
Alice said casually, her body language completely unconcerned. “You aren’t capable
of concealing yourself from me. Who set that up for you?”

“Miss Gallow, you aren’t in any
position to be asking questions. So how ’bout you get that freak in the mask to
turn the fire off, and then me and your little Japanese friend, we’re going to
take a little walk in the woods, alright? I know that you’re an Auditor and
all, but there’s no way you’re going to be able to do anything before I pull
the trigger on this thing, and at this range, no barrier is gonna save you.”

Tung fished something out of his
right pocket and held it, clenched in his fist.

“It was nice of you to leave me one,
Mitzi,” Alice said gratefully. “I like to feel useful, after all.”

“I am a kind-hearted woman,” Mitsuru
agreed. “Now, please stop calling me that.”

“What is it with you people?” Tung
pushed the muzzle of the shotgun up against the side of Alice’s head. “One last
chance here, Miss Gallow. Call off your dogs, and we can both walk away from
this.”

“Did you actually think,” Alice said
coldly, closing her eyes, “that you could get the drop on me, with power that
you borrowed? Do you know my reputation, Tung? Do you know how I got it?”

Tung tried to pull the trigger, but
it was already too late. Tung looked down at the weapon and saw something,
something a bit like a crude hand that had reached up from the weapon’s shadow
and wrapped around the firing mechanism. Other hands were forming, from
somewhere deep inside his own shadow, and reaching for him.

Alice turned around to face the gun
with her ghastly smile. She folded her hands in front of her like an obedient
schoolgirl.

“Oh, my dear Mr. Do,” she said
sweetly, patting him on the forehead. The many dark hands clutched him tightly,
now, and he could not move away. Everywhere the little hands had attached, Tung
felt a strange aching sensation, and then nothing at all. He struggled against
them, but his efforts came to nothing more than straining and grunting. “Thank
you so much for showing us your little camp, your doggy-friends, and your Witches’
toys. You’ve answered all sorts of questions for us.”

Alice giggled, and then swayed
coquettishly up to the frozen, horrified man.

“It was kind of you to cooperate
with our Audit, Mr. Do.” Alice smirked. “In regards to your own personal
circumstances, I’m happy to report that our investigation is at an end. You
didn’t know much of anything, so I’m happy to say we’ve got no reason to hold
on to you.”

Tung tried to desperately to crush
the eggshell-thin ceramic idol in his other hand, to activate the dormant
Working inside that the Witches had left with him, the one he had been warned
to only use in desperation, but his hand would not close. When he looked down,
most of his hand was gone, neatly disassembled. The little hands had been
working him over, tearing away small pieces from his hands, his feet, and his
chest, and then withdrawing into the shadow. It caused almost no pain, and left
behind nothing at all – the skin at the edge of the void was smooth,
featureless, without blood or obvious injury.

Tung screamed, but it was hard to
tell, because so much of his mouth was gone.

Alice leaned over what remained of
the man’s face, her black-rimmed eyes staring directly into his, her expression
rapt and hungry.

“My name is Alice Gallow, Mr. Do,”
she whispered. “And I’d like to show you something special. To be entirely
honest,” she added, batting her eyelashes, “I’ve developed quite a thing for
you. Would you like to see?”

Tung wanted to scream, he really
did, but there wasn’t enough of him left to manage it.

Eighteen

“Imagine the universe as something extreme large, with definite boundaries, okay? It’s really big, but
finite. You understand the distinction?”

“Imagine a big universe, but not an endless
one, I got it,” Alex muttered. “Just answer the question, Vivik.”

“I am answering it,” Vivik countered
happily. “So, our universe is actually in a stack of universes, layer upon
layer. The farther down you go, the older they get, and therefore colder and
less energetic. Further up, it’s the opposite, newer and faster, okay? With me
so far?”

“Big pile of universes,” Alex said,
nodding tiredly.

“The best part is listening to Alex
summarize Vivik’s lessons,” Anastasia said quietly, nudging and startling
Emily. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m actually losing my ability to comprehend
things I already know.”

Vivik glared at Anastasia, but Alex
refused to acknowledge it. Anything else he did only encouraged her.

“These universes are discrete,
right? There can’t be any overlap, because every particle, the very nature of
matter, is fundamentally different in each of these universes, and any kind of
contact would be mutually destructive, so there has to be a mechanism to hold
them apart, right?” Vivik continued without waiting for any input from Alex,
his face flushed with excitement at the subject. “Well, the ideal boundary
mechanism would be some kind of superfluid. Something
dynamic, that can expand and contract to deal with vast volumes and massive
thermodynamic variations. But whatever serves as a barrier, it would have to be
energetic in nature, because matter, any kind of matter, couldn’t possibly
survive the conditions involved.”

Alex put his head down on his desk
in despair.

“Not only did you lose me,” he said,
his voice muffled by the book, “you actually made me hate the idea of knowing
the answer. Thanks to you, I now despise this subject, which I still know
nothing about.”

“The Ether, Alex,” Vivik said,
gripping Alex’s desk, “that’s what the Ether is. It holds the universes apart.
It’s the barrier that keeps the colder subverse below
and the more energetic superverse above separate from
our own.”

“Or so he says,” Anastasia offered
primly from where she sat, one seat over from Emily. “Vivik is very persuasive,
but he can’t prove any of this. Besides, subverse is
a made-up word.”

“True,” Vivik allowed reluctantly.
“But, the majority of the theoreticians at the Academy subscribe to this
notion.”

“And before that, they were always talking
about entropic energy and waste heat accumulation and alternating frequency
vibration,” Anastasia said, rolling her eyes. “Go ahead and tell Alex the
truth. Nobody knows what the Ether is. We live right next to it, but we
understand it about as well as you understand, say, geometry. That is to say,
we know it exists, and that is about it.”

Alex nodded slowly, and when he
spoke again, he sounded almost hopeful.

“Then it’s like everything else with
science. Lots of rules, but nobody understands it. Right?”

“Exactly,” Anastasia said, grinning.

“Not at all,” Vivik protested,
flustered.

“I don’t think either of you is
helping Alex catch up very much,” Emily said disapprovingly. “I’m not even sure
if you’re trying, or if you just like arguing with each other.”

“Our universe is like a drop of
water suspended in oil,” Eerie said quietly, surprising Alex, who had not
noticed that the girl was still there in the classroom. She wilted when
everyone turned toward her, looking down at her desk and clearly regretting
saying anything. When she spoke again, Alex could barely hear her. “You know
what I mean, don’t you? The universes are the drops of water, and the Ether is
like, well, the oil? Does that make sense?”

Eerie looked over at him hopefully,
while Anastasia appeared to laugh quietly behind the hand that discretely
covered her mouth.

“Is this going to be on a test of
some kind?” Alex asked despairingly, clutching his head in his hands.

Emily laughed and patted him on the
back comfortingly.

“Don’t worry,” she said
reassuringly. “It’s not like you can fail homeroom, no matter how bad you do.”

“What’s the point, then?”

“Evaluation,” Anastasia said,
working her nails over with an emery board. “To gauge our interests, aptitude,
and most importantly, sanity and durability. They throw everything at us, not
because we need to know it, but because knowing it might help us not turn into
lunatics. Where do you think Eerie learned about knitting, anyway? They do it
for the same reason that everyone has to go see Rebecca once a month – because
as badly as Central needs us, they are even more frightened of us.”

“Why?”

“Because of people like you,”
Anastasia said, shrugging. “Unpredictable students with combat-grade protocols
which exceed their ability to control or understand them. At best, you are a
wildcard. At worse, you’re a threat to everybody around you.”

“Some days I really hate you,” Alex
said, putting his head back down on the desk. “Does everybody go to see
Rebecca?”

“Everyone except for her,” Emily
said, pointing at Anastasia. “But, nobody goes as often as you do, Alex.”

“Why don’t you have to go?”

Alex seemed more impressed by this
than by anything else he had learned about Anastasia. She held up her nails to
the light, inspecting them critically.

“Because they are even more afraid
of me than they are of you,” Anastasia said, without a trace of modesty or
sarcasm. “Furthermore, I simply don’t want to.”

***

Mitsuru
was battering a heavy bag when Rebecca came into the staff gym. There was no
way for anyone to mistake what was going on for a workout. Mitsuru left bloody
knuckle marks all over the leather of the bag.

Rebecca suppressed a sigh at her
friend’s self-centered display of melodrama, and went to go pay her the
attention she obviously wanted. That was the reason she had come to the gym,
after all.

Like hell she was doing the stupid
cardio-kickboxing class.

“Hey, Mitsuru, sweetie, what’s
wrong?” Rebecca was careful, putting her hand on Mitsuru’s sweat-slick
shoulder. Even a muzzled dog can be dangerous. “What’s got you so worked up?
Did something happen in the field?”

Mitsuru stopped her assault, her
shoulders heaving as she caught her breath.

“You saw the report?”

The question was rhetorical. Rebecca
saw every report, even the ones that were marked for Gaul’s eyes only. That was
her job. Everyone knew that.

“Sure. It went well. Alice even gave
you a few backhanded compliments, and that means something, coming from her.
What do you have to be so upset over?”

Mitsuru finally turned around, her
red eyes wet with intermingled sweat and tears. Rebecca felt taken back despite
herself.

“I saw Alice’s protocol.”

“So? She ports. She’s an apport
technician, M-Class, the very best. What’s the problem?”

Of course, Rebecca already knew what
the problem was. She had known from the moment she read Mitsuru’s field report,
before she finished editing it for public consumption. One of Rebecca Levy’s
less official duties was to make sure that everyone who saw Alice’s Black
Protocol firsthand received her personal attention. Otherwise, they would
notice that Alice’s abilities were completely inconsistent with any known
protocol.

They had nothing to talk about, at
least nothing that Rebecca hadn’t heard a dozen times before. Everyone knew
what a protocol looked like, after all. Alice’s little displays looked nothing
at all like that.

“What did she do to Tung? What was
that?”

Mitsuru’s voice shook, but Rebecca
was already inside her head, soothing, reinforcing. Creating little spaces for
doubt to erode away.

“I’m not sure, hon,”
Rebecca said with a tired smile. She was actually glad to have the opportunity
to tell the truth, for once, since Mitsuru wouldn’t remember a thing. “Nobody
knows. Alice Gallow has been here longer than we have. Whatever Alice Gallow
does is a secret, even to her. Even to me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No one does.”

“I don’t like it. It makes me
nervous.”

“It made you nervous,”
Rebecca corrected cheerfully. “It doesn’t anymore.”

“But, it could be dangerous…”

Mitsuru barely managed that, in a
dreamy, half-removed voice. Rebecca pushed a little harder.

“That’s what everyone thinks.
There’s no danger, though. Not while I am here. You see, I know something about
Alice Gallow that no one else does.”

Mitsuru’s eyes fluttered closed. She
barely moved her lips when she spoke.

“What?”

“It’s our secret, silly. I can’t
even tell you. She is my best friend, after all. Now, why don’t you forget
about all of this,” Rebecca encouraged, patting Mitsuru on the arm, “and go
wash up? While you are at it, go back to feeling good about the operation,
okay?”

Mitsuru stood in silence, her eyes
fluttering, before an internal signal spontaneously animated her. She stretched
and blinked, then smiled at Rebecca as if she had not seen her in some time.

“Hey ’Becca,” she said fondly. “Are
you here for cardio-kickboxing?”

***

“I
never understand the point of his lectures,” Alex complained. “I tried to take
notes today, but how the hell can I take notes when I’m hearing all of this
stuff for the first time? I don’t even know what the important parts are. This
is the dumbest class I’ve ever taken.”

Vivik laughed, peeling his orange in
the shade of one of the massive HVAC units crudely grafted to the stone
building. It was warm on the grey slate of the roof, and Alex was glad to be
outside. The three-hour-long class had felt endless.

“It’s only been a few days, Alex.
Did you take a look at the study guide I made you?” Vivik squinted up at Alex,
half-blinded by the afternoon sun. “And do you have to keep pacing like that?”

Alex stopped, and realized that
Vivik was right. He had been pacing since they had come to the roof for lunch.
He sighed and sat down next to Vivik in the shade.

“Sorry – and no, I, um, haven’t had
time yet,” Alex said guiltily. He had tried to look over the guide the night
before last, and ended up falling asleep before he finished the first page. It
wasn’t that Vivik’s study guide was bad, or even that the subject matter was
boring. Rather, since arriving at the Academy, Alex had been extraordinarily
tired, falling asleep not long after sunset most evenings.

“It’s not a big thing.” Vivik popped
a section of orange into his mouth. “I think it might help you get up to
speed…”

“Ha. You are worried about homeroom,
when you should be worried about next Friday,” Anastasia smirked at him, around
her the straw from her juice box. Edward and Renton, who did not eat, flanked
her, as always. “Miss Aoki is going to make hamburger out of you.”

“That isn’t helpful, Anastasia.”
Alex grimaced at the reminder of ‘Applied Combat Fundamentals’. “I’m not
exactly overflowing with confidence right now.”

“Well, you seem like a nice enough
guy, Alex, so I’m sorry to see you go.” Renton gave him a toothy grin. “But,
you had a good run.”

“What was good about it? I must have
missed that part.”

Emily produced a number of sealed
plastic containers from her purse, divvying them up between her and Alex.

“What did he ever do,” Vivik complained,
looking enviously at Emily’s cloth lunch sack, “to deserve you making him
lunch? I’ve been helping you with your biology homework since I got here,
Emily.”

“And I fixed it so that Steve and
Charles can’t seem to remember that you are in our class,” Emily said
cheerfully, peeling a hard-boiled egg. “We are square. Alex is new here, and
anyway, the poor thing is an orphan. It would be irresponsible of me not to
look after him a bit.”

“There is a cafeteria, you know. He
doesn’t need you to make him lunch.”

Anastasia scowled, looking angrily
at her own lunch, which as far as Alex could see was composed entirely of raw
vegetable slices.

“I was at my sister’s last night, so
I had a kitchen available. Moreover, you brought your own cook to the Academy with
you. When did you start eating up here with us, anyway, Anastasia?”

Emily smiled sweetly. Anastasia made
a face in return. Renton laughed quietly to himself. Edward didn’t react at
all, which was par for the course, as far as Alex’s experience went.

“Well, I do appreciate the lunches,”
Alex said quickly, trying to prevent the daily fight between the two. “But,
how’d you make Steve forget about Vivik, Emily? I thought you were an empath.”

“Most empaths have some telepathic
ability as well,” Emily shrugged. “I have a little bit myself.”

“Emphasis on the little,”
Anastasia said acidly. She pointed at Emily with her nibbled baby carrot. “It’s
a good thing that you can cook, Emily.”

“That’s mean, Anastasia,” Emily
complained, unwrapping the plastic around her sandwich. “I’m doing the best I
can with what I have. We can’t all be child prodigies.”

“You are only one year older than
me,” Anastasia protested, waving her carrot in outrage. “I am hardly a child.
As for being a prodigy – well, it would be foolish to deny it.”

Alex decided to focus on the turkey
sandwich Emily had given him, which turned out to be unreasonably delicious,
despite the fact that he never liked turkey previously.

“I have to get going to the Science
building,” Anastasia announced, standing up and gathering her things. “I have a
lab to finish. Are you coming, Vivik?”

Vivik nodded and stood up,
collecting the trash from his lunch in a paper sack for disposal. He had told
Alex the night before that he was a Sikh, from somewhere in India, where his
parents owned land, and Alex was still processing the information. Alex wasn’t
sure exactly what a Sikh was, though he thought it was a religion, sort of.
Vivik’s explanation had been unclear. It did explain the turban he wore all of
the time, however.

“Yeah, I’ll walk with you.”

Vivik looked over at Alex, who
realized he was staring openly, and found something else to do.

“You want me to help you go over the
homeroom lecture, later on?”

“Maybe,” Alex shrugged, staring off
into the woods that bordered the building, for lack of a better option. “I was
thinking about talking a walk or something. I’ve been feeling really cooped up
today.”

“That’s perfect,” Emily said,
looking at Alex hopefully. “Do you feel like taking a trip into town with me? I
have something I want to show you.”

“And what would that be?” Anastasia
demanded, suddenly face-to-face with Emily, glaring up at her. Alex had to
stifle a laugh – Anastasia never looked younger or shorter to him than when she
was near Emily. “Don’t you ever have to go to class?”

Emily glared right back, tossing her
head indignantly.

“Nothing that you need to concern
yourself with, Anastasia. It’s none of your business what I do. You are always
going on about how clever you are, so why don’t you figure it out for
yourself?”

Emily turned and put one hand
lightly on Alex’s shoulder.

“Is it okay, Alex? I would really
like you to come, if you’re not too busy,” Emily said sincerely, her expression
anxious.

The realization that Emily expected
Alex to reject her stunned him. This girl, who was obviously smart and
beautiful, was accustomed to rejection to the point that she anticipated it
even from a brand-new student. It must be a very bad thing, he thought
solemnly, to be B-class.

“Sure,” Alex said, trying not to
sound resigned. “I didn’t really have any specific plans, anyway.”

Anastasia shrugged, exasperated, and
then stomped off down the stairs, followed by a smiling Renton and an
expressionless Edward.

“Be careful, Alex,” Vivik whispered
as he walked by. “Think about what you’re doing.”

Alex nodded amiably. As far as he
was concerned, Alex didn't think it was any of Vivik or Anastasia’s business.
Particularly since he wasn’t entirely sure what it was that he was doing.

***

“Do
you want me to –?”

“Hush,” Anastasia commanded,
hustling down the stairs. “When I want you to do something, Renton, I will tell
you as much.”

Ten steps. He was quiet for ten
steps. She counted them. An old habit.

“But, don’t you think that Emily is
going to try and, well… seduce him?”

Her laughter echoed back up the
stairwell, no doubt confusing Vivik, somewhere above her. It was not often she
managed to make Renton feel uncomfortable, though, and she was determined to
enjoy it.

“Is that what the kids are calling
it these days?”

She laughed again, quietly, this
time. She couldn’t help it. The idea was just too funny. It was easy to forget
that Renton was much older than he looked, most of the time. Occasionally,
however, it would shine through in his speech.

“I wish her the best of luck, then,”
she said honestly. “And I do think that she will need it.”

She hurried ahead, so that Renton
had to rush; and poor Edward, as well.

Anastasia liked to make them run
after her, occasionally. It was a good reminder of place and role, she felt.
For everyone involved.

***

It
wasn’t far to the front gate, where Emily wanted to meet him, though Alex had
never made the walk previously. She had wanted to change out of her uniform
before they left for Central, so she gave him directions to the front gate, and
then headed back to her room, telling him to meet her in about half an hour.

The Academy’s grounds were enormous,
it was true, but most of the classrooms, faculty offices, and student dorms clustered
near the front gate. It only took a few minutes for Alex to get there with the
meticulous directions that Emily had given him, on a piece of off-white
stationery, each step written out in lovely flowing cursive. It was so elegant
that Alex found himself reluctant to fold it or throw it out, and he was still
trying to figure out what to do with it when he rounded the last of the staff
buildings and saw the Commons, and beyond that the front gate.

The Commons were like a bigger
version of the quad between the student dorms; a large open space with
carefully maintained green grass, a handful of stately old oaks and willows, a
few strategically placed benches and tables, and a motley collection of
students and faculty enjoying the weak afternoon sun. It was a nice scene,
bordering on idyllic.

The gate behind it was impressive,
an ornate piece of stonework that looked to Alex to be ancient, though he
doubted that he could tell decades old from hundreds of years old. Like all of
the major structures on the campus, it was made of tightly fit angular blocks
with no obvious mortar, the same dull grey stone as the Academy walls, which
stretched off in either direction for miles, perhaps twice as tall as Alex and
thick, but in poor repair. In many places, the wall had partially collapsed,
and in numerous others, the wall bent and bowed. The gate, however, had either
aged more gracefully or seen more consistent maintenance. Some of the carvings
appeared to have fallen off or been worn away, and a few of the capstones were
gone, but as a whole the great stone arch was intact. Alex could not decide if
the inscription on the gate arch was a language he did not recognize or simply
a collection of abstract scribbles, but he found the whole thing a touch
foreboding.

All of this paled in importance for
Alex, next to seeing Emily in her street clothes for the first time.

Emily was pretty in the uniform,
Alex wasn’t about to deny that. In a simple white dress that looked a bit light
for the weather, however, she looked amazing, blond hair curled and radiant in
the late-afternoon sun. Then she smiled at him, maybe a little bit shy, and he
became very nervous indeed.

“Did you make it okay?”

She was anxious, leading him out of
the gate and to the road outside, as if she weren’t beautiful. As if she had
anything about which to worry.

“Were the directions alright?”

“They were very, um, accurate,” Alex
said lamely. He realized he was still clutching the scrap of paper and shoved
it in his pocket. The dark grey hoodie he had worn seemed a bit incongruous
with Emily’s dress, but Alex doubted that any of his clothing was appropriate
for this sort of thing.

The road itself appeared to be one
uniform piece of worked stone, but when Alex got closer, he realized that it
was made of the same tightly interlocking blocks as the walls of the Academy,
worn smooth with age and traffic. The stones had begun to buckle slightly, and
the road’s surface was not as even as it appeared from a distance.

“Who built all this?”

“No one knows,” Emily said, shrugging
and leading him toward what appeared to be a conventional bus stop, with a
colorful route sign, and a glass and metal enclosure complete with system map.
Alex felt a profound sense of dislocation as they walked toward it.
“Supposedly, it was all like this when the Founder discovered Central, empty
and waiting. The road and the wall, the Academy Main Hall, Analysis and
Operations, all the major structures, they were all here already. At least,
that’s what they tell us in class.”

“There is a bus?”

Alex ran his fingers across the
plastic covering a small system map, showing three separate lines, each with
half a dozen stops.

“Well, yes. It’s pretty hard to get
anything big through the Ether, and it’s not like we have a factory here or
anything. We have a few diesel buses. I hear they had to disassemble them, and
bring them over piece-by-piece.”

He knew that Central was located
somewhere in the Ether – Alex had gotten that much from Windsor’s lectures –
and had somehow been found, rather than built. He couldn’t tell if its location
was a secret or a genuine mystery, but without an apport protocol, he knew
there was no getting in or out, a thought that caused him a certain amount of
late-night anxiety akin to claustrophobia. Even if he knew that, it was jarring
to hear it said aloud, the casual practicalities of an abnormal way of life
that he barely even noticed most of the time.

Alex studied the map. The area
depicted was not large enough to call it a city. Central was more like a large
town, arranged in a rough crescent. The built-up neighborhoods clustered in an
area to the east of the Academy. Alex was surprised to see that the Academy and
its grounds constituted a full third of Central, and that a good portion of the
remaining space appeared to be open.

“There aren’t that many of us,” Alex
guessed.

Emily shook her head sadly.

“No, and there seem to be less every
year. Only a few people live in Central full-time. We could all move to
Central, if we wanted to, and there would still be space to spare. I would
swear there were more people here when I was a kid…”

Emily seemed sad, so Alex hunted for
something else to talk about.

“What’s this?”

Alex tapped at the greyed-out area that surrounded the town on the map.

“Wait and see,” Emily said, smiling
playfully.

The bus arrived a few minutes later,
a green-painted diesel that reminded Alex of similar vehicles he had seen in
photographs from Europe. Emily refused to say anything about where they were
going, responding with a smile and a ‘wait and see’ when he asked. Alex
eventually gave up that line of inquiry, but it didn’t turn out to matter much
– he had his eyes glued to the window the entire trip, while Emily amused
herself by playing tour guide.

It took a few minutes of winding through
the hills around the Academy before they entered Central proper, while Alex
tried to remember the last time he had been in a motor vehicle of any kind.
Only a matter of weeks, but it felt like much longer.

The Academy was two-thirds of the
way up the peak of a massive hill, and Central sat in a partial ring around it,
about halfway down the slope. Below the city, at the base of the hill, there
was a great blurred space, the vastness of the Ether stretching out like an
endless lake in all directions, Central rising out of it like an island. After
a few minutes of descending the winding road, they crossed an invisible line
and the sun disappeared behind the pea soup–thick fog that covered the town.
Emily told him that the skies here never cleared, unlike the Academy, which was
set high enough on the hill that the fog broke. Central itself started as a
series of low grey buildings, no more than two stories tall, each set slightly
apart and surrounded by small yards and clusters of elm and oak trees.

“We think they were probably houses
to begin with, though the proportions are a little strange,” Emily commented,
leaning over his shoulder. “Some people still like to live in them for the
privacy, but they get wretchedly cold in the winter.”

The road curved to follow the bank
of a fast-moving creek, both sides of the road surrounded by the individual
stone homes. Electric lines and various utility cables were grafted to the
structures, he realized, rather haphazardly in some cases, and he speculated
again at the logistics of transporting materials to Central. For that matter,
he wondered, where did the electricity come from? He hadn’t seen anything that
looked like a power plant.

After a while, the structures
gradually became larger and started to fuse together. Initially, the distance
between them reduced, but then the structures began to include points of
interconnection. By the time they descended into the city proper, the buildings
began to meld into gigantic structures. Some were five or six stories tall, though
Alex was beginning to notice the issue with proportions that Emily mentioned –
the stories appeared to be a bit too tall, as did the windows and the stairs.

“People live in apartments they
carved out from the open space,” Emily explained. “They knock out walls and put
in dividers to create some sort of congruent living space, and then install
fixtures for kitchens and bathrooms. Even though the walls are old, it takes
some effort to bore through them to add chimneys, plumbing, and the like. The
advantage of the big buildings is that they have central heating and a sewer
system. If you live in the outlying areas, you’re on your own, so to speak.”

The buildings they passed grew
larger and denser, with more ornate detail work and filigree appearing on the
buildings as they drew close to the city center. The road was no longer
singular; a number of different roadways, all paved in the same ubiquitous grey
stone, intersected in what Alex could only describe as a downtown. Their own
route was circuitous, passing by buildings which were almost level with each
other at roughly ten stories, forming solid urban walls that the road wound
around and through, sometimes in the form of brief mossy tunnels, and at other
times crude breaches in the structures that clearly had been created with
explosives.

Alex found the whole scene
oppressive – the monotony of the stone, the lack of sun between the walls of
buildings, damp and cold under the weak light that filtered through the fog. If
Emily had not made the effort to point out the sights, Alex was unsure whether
he would have known that there were any. Every structure appeared
monolithically uniform. They passed the main administrative offices for
Central, set on a rare open plaza, each great building surrounded by an interconnected
warren of smaller sub-buildings. It was bleak under the perpetual fog, and Alex
found himself unsure of this strange city and of his own place within it, among
great grey buildings that seemed so foreign. The buildings looked capable of
holding thousands of people, maybe more, but the streets around them were
nearly deserted.

Gradually, though, as they passed
through the center of town and on to the western tip of the crescent that
Central described, he discovered that people did in fact live there. It started
with a few lone pedestrians, and gradually expanded until there were crowds of
people, and even rudimentary traffic made up of bicycles and motorcycles. This
was the area selected for habitation by the first cartels to arrive in Central,
and as Emily explained, it remained the choicest and most exclusive
neighborhood. Only those connected to the more powerful cartels could afford to
keep offices and accommodations in this neighborhood, locally referred to as
the Ring, for the circular edifice that towered over the rest of the
neighborhood, a third higher than any other structure in the area.

The bus came to a halt just outside
the Ring, and Emily led him out onto the street besides the giant round
building. It was almost impossible to tell how large it was, up close, as it
appeared to be a subtly curved exterior wall, encompassing whole blocks in its
bulk. The most striking feature was not size, however, but rather the paint job
– a white lacquer applied to the surface of the stone in a thick uniform coat.
In contrast to the grey buildings that they had passed, it practically gleamed.
The buildings surrounding the Ring on the three sides Alex could see were
varying shades of cream and brown, along with a scattering of more brilliant
hues. The scene was practically cheerful in contrast to the depressing monotone
of the rest of Central, and Alex had little trouble understanding why those who
could afford it lived here.

“This way,” Emily said, taking his
hand gently and leading him along, around part of the Ring and then a few
blocks further west, down a side street where the subdivided buildings were
each painted a different Easter-egg pastel hue.

“I know,” Emily said, laughing at
his expression. “It isn’t exactly the most tasteful street. But, we are – I
mean to say, that the Raleigh Cartel – well, it’s just that,” Emily gestured
haphazardly and blushed furiously, pausing on the lower steps of a baby-blue
staircase, “we aren’t exactly wealthy. Not anymore.”

“Seems like you’re doing okay.”

“Well, I suppose that it’s all
relative. Never mind. Why don’t you come inside?”

Alex followed her up the stairs,
which seemed unreasonably steep and high to Alex. The ironwork that bordered
the stairs was a later addition and clearly handmade. The apartment door was
carved from a red wood that Alex did not recognize, with greening brass
fixtures that looked ancient. Emily fished in her purse briefly, then used a
bulky set of keys to open the door, ushering Alex through and then closing it
behind him. This left them almost face-to-face in the cramped quarters of the
entry, under a dim light, surrounded by a jumble of coats and umbrellas. For an
instant, looking at her freckled cheeks and coy smile, he was certain that
their faces did not actually need to be so close, that the space was not that
small. Then she stood on her tiptoes to tap the light bulb, fixing the lighting
and ending the moment. She hung up her sweater and he found a hook for his
hoodie, full of regret and confusion.

Following Emily up the stairs into
the apartment, Alex could not help but watch her perfectly shaped calves flex
underneath the fringe of her white dress – and then, for some reason, he
remembered Rebecca’s warnings about the reception he would receive. He somehow
managed to be simultaneously hopeful and embarrassed.

“So, you live here?” They emerged
into what was clearly the living room, a large space with white stucco walls
and an unusually high ceiling. The room was crowded with a table and wooden
chairs, a couple of couches, a large entertainment center, and a number of
bookshelves. It looked homey and oddly approachable to Alex. He hadn’t really
expected Cartel families to have books lying all over the kitchen table, or
half-dead houseplants, or a sink filled with unwashed dishes. “I mean, I know
you live at the Academy right now, but this is where you grew up, right?”

“Mostly,” Emily said, as if she were
admitting to something, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the disarray. “Only
my sister lives here full-time right now. Which explains the mess, I suppose.”

Emily sighed and marched toward the
kitchen.

“Please have a seat, Alex. I just
want to straighten up a little. It won’t take a minute.”

Alex glanced around skeptically,
thinking that it might take quite a bit longer than a minute, eventually
settling on an uncomfortably high chair set on the other side of a long kitchen
counter, opposite the sink. On the other side, Emily made a face at the
accumulated dishes, then turned on the hot water and reached for the dish soap.
It took Alex a moment to realize that she was furious.

“I’m sorry,” she said, a few minutes
later, after she had managed to clear enough room to get to work. “My sister
can be quite…inconsiderate. She has lived here a long time while the rest of us
haven’t been around quite as much. She has made herself very much,” Emily
grimaced, “at home. As you can see.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alex said
reassuringly. “I lived in a damn trailer. My standards aren’t that high. Um, so,
I was wondering… not to be rude or anything, but why did you invite me over?”

Emily glanced at him shortly. Alex
wasn’t certain, but he thought she might have been annoyed.

“Well, you hadn’t seen anything of
Central, outside of the Academy, for one, and clearly no one was going to make
the time to take you.” Emily spoke over the clatter of washing dishes. Alex had
to admit that what she said was true – the staff had been so busy trying to get
him into fighting shape that they had pretty much neglected to cover any
fundamentals of life in Central. He had been forced to hit Vivik up for help
finding the laundry room earlier in the day, and still had not figured out who
to talk to about getting his hair cut. “Also, I thought I might make you
dinner, since you’ve eaten at the cafeteria pretty much every meal since you
got here. I cook, you know.”

“I didn’t know that. Well, I mean, I
did, because of the lunches, you know, but…”

Emily laughed.

“Well, I do. I was raised with a
full suite of domestic skills – something my parents seem to have neglected
when it came to my sister,” Emily said, elbow deep in soapy water. “Different
children for different functions, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

Alex folded his arms on the counter
and then leaned his chin on top, staring over at the girl washing dishes,
completely puzzled.

“Why would they treat you
differently?”

“They would have told you about me,
I’m certain,” Emily said plainly, her smile rueful, her eyes vague and faraway.
“The Academy staff, I mean. Someone would have warned you before we ever met.”

“Yeah.” Alex nodded, feeling
slightly guilty. “They warned me about everyone.”

“Of course. Still, because of
my…circumstances,” Emily said, blushing, “they would have warned you about me.
It was that obvious that I would approach you. Because I am an empath, but an
exceptionally weak one. Because my family is part of the Hegemony. It’s a bit
embarrassing, honestly, to have it all be public knowledge.”

Alex found himself at a loss.
Fortunately, Emily didn’t seem to require a response, or even seem as if she
was talking to him in specific. She continued to dry the plates with a hand
towel, then set them carefully in the drying rack.

“My father is a powerful man. My
family has been among the elite in the Raleigh Cartel since its founding,
though the cartel itself has seen better days. My mother is a diplomat and a
powerful empath. My older sister graduated from the Academy with honors, and
now handles the cartel’s representation in Central. Which is why she’s always
here, not cleaning.”

Emily spoke without a trace of
bitterness, her smile fixed and brittle.

“The old families – and the Muir
family is very old – still use marriages to establish alliances. It’s very
feudal, like medieval Europe,” she joked mirthlessly. “To a man like my father,
there’s only one possible use for a daughter who is such a weak empath – my
talents aren’t good for much, Alex, but I would make some important man a very
satisfying wife, wouldn’t I? Don’t you think I’m pretty, Alex?”

Alex nodded slowly, his mind
reeling. He had assumed, when he met her, that Emily would be one of the
popular girls at the Academy. She was obviously upper crust, and yes, pretty –
but this…

“That’s good, because that’s what I
was raised to be. I talked my mother into letting me come to the Academy,”
Emily continued sadly. “I told her I wanted the chance to develop my abilities,
to learn useful skills that could aid me in my marriage later on. I think that
she felt sorry for me more than anything, but she talked my father into it
anyway.”

Emily smiled at Alex, but the smile
was painful.

“Do you know why I wanted to come to
the Academy, Alex?” Emily continued before Alex could have even attempted an
answer, even if he had one. “I wanted some time before I became a bargaining chip
for my father, before I was bartered off to someone. A few years to just be
myself.”

She was so accustomed to
counterfeiting her smile that it hardly looked false.

“I got to the point where I actually
thought I had accepted it. Then, a few days before the start of second session,
I got a message from my father, and I had to go rushing back home to learn all
about you.”

Alex could only stare at her in
shock.

“Do you know how weird it is, Alex,
when you’ve only seen your father at family events for the last several years,
to have him suddenly pulling you into his office for little chats with the
cartel advisors? When they act like you’ve always been there with them, as if
you have always been important?” Emily paused to brush her hair back from her
eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was more composed. “It’s not as if it was
all bad.”

She put the dish down in the rack
with more force than she intended, and the clattering made Alex jump.

“For the first time in my life, my father
was taking an interest in me.” Emily laughed as if it were funny, sponging off
the water on the countertop. “Suddenly my mother was doing my hair and
confiding with me about whether to seduce you or to try and make you feel sorry
for me, or both.”

Alex felt numb. He could not think
of a thing to say.

“It doesn’t really matter how I feel
about you, or how I would feel about doing something like that, or how you
might feel. Not to my parents. That’s the world I was raised in.” Emily shook her
head sadly. “You arrived here, Alex, and my whole life was turned upside down.
I thought I had at least a few years at the Academy.”

The bottom fell out of Alex’s
stomach. He had not understood until now, but it was obvious – Emily had come
to the Academy to put off her inevitable arranged marriage. Emily had not yet
finished a full year of school when he showed up, and…

“I’m really sorry, Emily,” Alex said
quietly, helplessly ashamed.

“That’s sweet,” Emily said brightly.
“What do you have to be sorry about? It’s not as if you had any choice in the
matter. You are like me, Alex. Do you realize that? We are both pieces in a
game that someone else is playing. Maybe I am only a pawn, and maybe you are a
more valuable piece. But we won’t ever get to make our own moves.”

Alex looked around at the living
room around him, not sure what to say. Emily looked up at him expectantly a few
times, but after he failed to meet her eyes or respond, she went back to
finishing the kitchen. After a moment, she leaned across the counter and handed
Alex a half-full watering can.

“Can you water the plants for me,
Alex?

He nodded and took the can
gratefully, heading across the living room to the first bunch of very dry
houseplants. In the cluster, he was certain that the two nearer unidentifiable
brown plants had given up the ghost, but he watered them anyway, grateful to be
doing something. The rubber plant and the ferns behind them appeared to be in
somewhat better shape, and he gave them a more generous drink to reward their tenacity.
He was still leaning over the last plant, tugging off some of the dead leaves,
when he heard the front door open, and saw Emily go stiff as a board, her hands
full of trash, hovering just over the garbage can.

“Emily?” The voice that drifted up
from the entry way was unmistakably similar to Emily’s, but there was an edge
to it that Emily’s voice never had. “Did you come home today?”

“I’m in the kitchen,” Emily called
out to her, “and we have a guest, Therese.”

“Who’s that?”

The woman who emerged from the
entryway stairwell was a bit older than he expected, probably somewhere in her
late twenties. She had the same blond hair as Emily, but she cut it short and
had it tied back in a rather severe ponytail. She wore glasses and a
well-tailored pantsuit, and looked very much as if she might have just come
from working in an office somewhere. Alex could not help but find her
appearance incongruous with their surroundings.

“This is Alex Warner, from my class.
I told you about him. Alex, this is my sister, Therese,” Emily said, standing
beside Alex and drying her hands with a kitchen towel. “Who, I might add, has
abandoned all pretenses of housekeeping.”

“Nice to meet you,” Alex said,
offering his hand and getting a polite handshake and a terse smile in return.

“And you too. You haven’t been at
the Academy long, right? How do you like it?” Therese wandered into the
kitchen, ignoring Emily’s work, and started digging through the refrigerator.

“I’m sorry, but how do you know who
I am already?”

“All part of the job,” Therese said,
“didn’t Emily tell you? I am the Raleigh Cartel liaison to Central. I work in
Operations. We all heard about the incident with Operator Aoki. That must have
been a rough introduction to our world. I’ve heard stories about her. People say
she’s nuts.”

Therese emerged from the
refrigerator with a can of coffee.

“What’s for dinner?”

“You can starve for all I care,”
Emily said cheerfully, gathering the papers that covered much of the open space
in the living room into one giant pile. “I’m definitely not making you dinner.”

“Don’t let her attitude fool you.
She’s really an excellent cook,” Therese said to Alex conversationally. “You
should try and get her to make us dinner.”

“I am making him dinner,
Therese, not you,” Emily said huffily. “You’re on your own.”

“That’s mean,” Therese complained.
“You’ve always been a mean sister.”

Finding no sympathy, she turned to
Alex.

“Hey, Alex, you smoke?”

Alex shook his head.

“Well, I do,” Therese said, looking
around for the purse she had dropped on her way in, “but when Emily is here, I
have to go out on the balcony. So, come keep me company.”

Therese found her purse and started
up the stairs, with Alex following, a bit reluctantly.

“Therese…”

Emily trailed off questioningly, the
papers she had collected held bunched to her chest. She looked to Alex like she
expected to be disappointed.

The look Therese shot Emily was
disapproving.

“Don’t you worry about your big
sister.” Therese’s tone was curt, dismissive. “I’m just going to have a quick
smoke and a little chat with your friend here, and then I’ll get out of your
hair.”

Alex was sure Emily would protest.
He was certain that the fight that he had felt coming since Therese had arrived
was about to start. However, Emily just watched, looking more frightened than
anything, and then hurried back into the kitchen. Therese headed up the stairs,
completely disregarding her sister. Alex looked after Emily, wondering about
the fear he had seen in her eyes, and then shrugged and followed Therese. He
had only just met her, but Alex didn’t think Therese was the kind of person who
would tolerate much of argument.

There were four rooms upstairs, but
only Therese had the door open – or Alex guessed it was her room, judging by
the pile of clothes spilling into the hall. Alex followed the hall between the
rooms, surprised at how small it all was, though the ceilings were abnormally
tall. Despite the size of the buildings in Central, he was coming to realize,
livable space was still at something of a premium.

He found Therese at the end of the
hall, through a set of ornate glass doors and out on a wrought-iron balcony
that overhung the street below. She had shed her jacket, purse, watch, and
belt, all left in small piles that marked the route she had taken through the
hall. Alex stepped around them carefully, but Therese was not concerned,
seemingly enthralled by the view below her, her unlit cigarette dangling from
one hand.

“Come on out here,” Therese ordered,
her face composed and serious. Alex decided that heading out to the balcony was
the diplomatic thing to do. “Let me get a good look at you, Mr. Alexander
Warner.”

The way she lowered her glasses to
look at him made him wonder if she needed them in the first place. Another
thing that he had noticed during the handshake – Therese was strong. Unusually
strong for someone who dressed as if they worked behind a desk. Unless, of
course, they didn’t always work at one.

“Do you work for that Alistair guy?
Is that how you know about me?”

Therese’s jaw dropped, and then she
laughed, hard, but not exactly unkind.

“That’s actually not too bad of a
guess,” she said, patting him on the shoulder as she ushered him out next to
her, leaning on the balcony railing. There wasn’t much view to speak of – the
Easter egg–colored street stretched out before them, and beyond it, just the
tip of the Ring and then the monotonous bulk of Central beyond. “But you’re
exaggerating your own importance, and you’re mixed up on who my boss is.”

“Yeah?”

Alex did his best to sound nonchalant.

“Yeah,” Therese said, smirking.
“Everything I told you was true. I heard about you as an anecdote to the
Mitsuru Aoki situation.”

“There’s a Mitsuru situation?”

“Mind your own business,” Therese
said, staring out at Central moodily. “I don’t work for Central, Alex; I work
for the Raleigh Cartel. I most definitely do not work for the Chief
Auditor, thank you very much.”

Alex shrugged and then nodded.

“Okay, I got it, you work for the
cartel. Can you please tell me why we are having this conversation?”

Therese glanced over at him, her
expression unreadable, and then went back to staring off at the city.

“Do you like her?”

“What?”

It was the timing, rather than the
subject, which puzzled Alex.

“They brought my sister back home for
coaching, because the precognitives said that you would probably like her.”
Therese’s tone was dull, and she spoke so quietly Alex had to lean forward to
hear her over the wind that whistled through the channel between the great
stone buildings. “They gave her a sixty-six percent chance, depending on
circumstances. So, do you?”

Alex tried to formulate a response,
while she finally remembered her cigarette and lit it.

“She seems cool,” he managed, after
several moments of thinking. “We met pretty recently, and everything, so it’s
not like I know her that well...”

“It took you a very long time to
come up with ‘she seems cool’.”

“Sure, okay,” Alex said, running his
hands through his hair. “So, are we all done here? I don’t really need to have one
of these weird conversations right now.”

“What weird conversations? Who are
you having weird conversations with?”

Therese looked at him sincerely.
Alex found her even more inscrutable than her sister.

“Did you have something you wanted
to talk to me about?”

Alex’s statement hovered somewhere
between demanding and begging. Therese tilted her head to look at him over the
top of her glasses again, and then smiled. For a moment, she didn’t seem very
different from Emily after all. Alex wondered why in the world she kept her
golden hair tied back that way.

“It probably seems like I give her a
pretty hard time, right? And I do,” Therese said, her elbows resting on the
iron railing, her smile a little sad. “I do give her a hard time, because the
world is always going to be hard on my poor little sister. Her hand was bad
from the start, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I’ve tried to
make her as tough as possible, because I can’t make her life any easier.”

Therese paused for a while, and Alex
let the silence be, not only because he couldn’t think of anything worth
saying.

“Did you ever date a girl with a big
brother, Alex?” Therese asked, not waiting for a response, sparing Alex the
embarrassment of admitting that he had not dated anyone, ever. “Emily doesn’t
have a big brother. All she has is me. Normally, I would be doing the big
brother thing right now, intimidating the boy she brought home from school. Do
you know why I’m not doing that, Alex?”

Alex shook his head, too confused to
try to guess.

“Because I got a call a few weeks
ago from my father, who was extremely excited at his tremendous luck regarding
his most disappointing daughter.” Alex was starting to realize that though
Therese seemed calm, that she was actually quite possibly angry, something he
did not particularly want to experience firsthand. “Never mind that it’s my
baby sister, because I work for the cartel and it’s all about what the cartel
wants. So I can’t be the big brother, and tell you to keep your hands off her.”

“Because it’s in the cartel’s best
interest?”

“For all I know it might be in
Emily’s best interest. Lord knows that nothing I’ve done or will ever do has
made things much easier on her.” Therese looked gloomy. “So father says that I
have to be nice to you, and stay out of Emily’s way. Actually, when he finds
out that I came home anyway tonight, he’s going to be furious.”

“I kinda wondered if you did that on
purpose,” Alex admitted. “Did you leave stuff all over the place to upset her?”

Therese laughed unexpectedly. When
she laughed, Alex noted, she looked even more like Emily, but not nearly as
reserved. Therese was prim and serious, Alex realized, but also much less timid
than her younger sister.

“No, I’m just a slob,” Therese said,
wiping her eyes and then replacing her glasses. “But you’re a funny guy. Let me
say this,” she said, flicking the remainder of her cigarette onto the
slate-grey road below. “I hope that you can help my sister, and I hope that you
join the Raleigh Cartel, I really do. I promise that if you make that decision,
you will find yourself enthusiastically welcomed by everyone, myself included.
However, until that point, Alex, you had better be nice to my sister. If you
decide that you don’t like her, then you had better make that very clear, and
you had better be nice about it. If you string her along, I can and will make
your life miserable. Do you believe me?”

Alex stuck with nodding. It seemed
like the fastest way to put an end to the conversation.

“Okay, then,” she said, brushing
past him on her way back into the house. “Let’s find out what we’re eating.”

Sure enough, Therese stayed and ate,
ignoring the icy stares that Emily aimed in her direction, chatting away
casually and not seeming to care that neither Alex nor Emily had much to say in
return. The meal was excellent, and Alex was particularly surprised at the
pan-fried fish, not something he normally ate, which was moist and delicious
and not at all, well, fishy, but the atmosphere left something to be desired.
When Therese put her napkin on the table and made to leave, Alex practically
wanted to embrace her in gratitude, but to his surprise, Emily grabbed her arm
and pulled her toward the kitchen.

“Therese, help me with the dishes
before you go,” Emily said, her grip on her sister’s forearm tightening.

“Aw,” Therese moaned, collecting the
plates and then shuffling half-heartedly after Emily into the kitchen, shutting
the door behind her. Alex wasn’t certain what was said in the moments that
followed, because someone had turned the kitchen sink on full blast before the
conversation started, but from the tone of the voice, he guessed that there was
some disagreement. He stared into his empty wine glass as heated voices turned
to shouting, and then eventually escalated to what sounded like dishes breaking
on the tiled floor. Alex thought about getting up and going to check on the
sisters, maybe attempting to broker some kind of peace, but then his sense of
self-preservation kicked in, and he decided to remain where he was.

Alex jumped in his seat when the
kitchen door swung opened and Therese stalked out.

“Why do you have to ruin
everything?”

Emily’s shriek came from somewhere
inside the kitchen, her voice full of tears.

Therese winced and quickly shut the
door behind her, then leaned against it, taking a deep breath and then giving
Alex a shaky smile.

“Alright, I’m off for the evening.
It was nice meeting you, Alex. I’m sure that I will be seeing you around
Central.”

“Right,” Alex said, half-standing up
from the table. “Uh, do you think I should…?”

Therese waved him off, wedging her
feet into the shoes she had discarded by the front door and collecting her
purse.

“Don’t worry about it. She’ll feel
better as soon as I’m gone,” Therese said curtly, as she reached for the door.
“You think about what I said.”

She shot him a warning glare as she
closed the door behind her. Alex decided not to notice that she was crying. He
sat quietly at the table for a while, and then when nothing happened, he
decided to clear the rest of the table. Alex entered the kitchen cautiously,
his hands filled with glasses and silverware.

“Emily, are you okay?”

He eyed Emily carefully as he
entered the kitchen, ready to turn around if she was still a mess. She was
crouching down with a broom and tray, sweeping up the remains of what looked to
be a broken plate, her face streaked with tears and her makeup smudged. She
smiled thinly at Alex and nodded, then returned to sweeping. He suppressed an
urge to give her a hug, and headed to the sink instead.

He rinsed off the dishes
methodically, trying to give her time to compose herself. It felt a bit strange
to him, being back in a kitchen. Even though it had only been a few weeks, he
had gotten used to having access the cafeteria. Of course, he had never cooked
for himself as much as he had warmed food in a microwave, and there was a
certain familiarity with the institutional feeding scheme.

“Dinner was good,” Alex said,
keeping his attention on the dishes in the sink. “Those little potato things…”

“Fingerling?” Emily offered,
sniffling.

“Right, the fingerling potatoes were
great, and the fish was, um, very… great. Also.”

Alex heard Emily’s muffled laughter
from behind him and felt a little bit better about the situation. Watching her
cry made him feel weirdly helpless.

“Did she tell you things about me?
Was she at least nice to you?”

“Who’s that? Your sister?”

Alex glanced over his shoulder at
Emily, who appeared to be more in control, though he had a feeling that the
wrong answer could well prompt another crying binge, if he wasn’t careful.

“She was pretty nice, yeah, in a
weird sort of way. She was way harder on you than she was on me. We didn’t talk
about anything in particular – I think she’s just being protective of you.”

Emily smiled half-heartedly, picking
up a drying cloth and starting work on the dishes that Alex had finished
cleaning.

“She seems to think I’m in imminent
danger of having my virtue compromised,” Emily said, a tad bitterly, “if I’m
left alone with you. That is a bit unexpected.”

“Oh?”

Alex tried not to get his hopes up.

“She’s always known,” Emily said,
blushing and looking down, “what would be expected of me. My father has been
very clear on what role I would eventually play in helping rebuild the Raleigh Cartel’s
fortunes. I don’t know why she’s acting like she would bite your head off if
you touched me.”

After a moment’s consideration, he
decided that probably wasn’t a veiled invitation.

“I’m not sure,” he said hesitantly.
“Therese seems… capable.”

Emily giggled.

“That’s one way to put it,” she said
more cheerfully, shelving dishes. “And you’re right. Therese is one of the top
Operators in the Hegemony, and certainly the most, how should I say… capable in
our cartel. But, if you were to compromise my virtue, I wouldn’t be that
concerned with Therese’s reaction.”

“Really?”

Alex braced himself, wondering how
much worse it could get.

“No, I would be more worried about
my father,” Emily said, her smile unhappy. “He might collapse in sheer joy and
disbelief.”

They finished the kitchen in
silence, and then moved to the living room. Alex was careful to sit down first,
on one end of the couch, so that when Emily decided to sit down next to him,
rather than leaving a buffer between them, it wasn’t awkward. He took a sip
from his wine glass and hoped that it looked like he had done that before, and
ransacked his mind for something to say.

“You must think I’m a mess,” Emily
said, sighing and leaning back into the overstuffed leather cushions. “My plan
was so much cooler than this.”

“Really? Because this has been
pretty cool. I’ve never really been over to anyone’s house before.”

Emily was openly skeptical.

“Never?”

Alex shook his head. On the balance,
he figured it could be worse – he didn’t really want to talk about himself, but
even more than that, he didn’t want to sit in silence.

“Well, I mean, I’ve been inside
other people’s houses, obviously,” Alex explained, frowning as he tried to
remember. “But, I don’t think I’ve ever really been invited over to hang out
like this. I’m sure that no one except my grandmother ever cooked me dinner.”

“That sounds sort of lonely,” Emily
said, looking at him with what he desperately hoped was not pity. “Maybe things
haven’t gone too well tonight because I’m sort of in uncharted territory
myself. I don’t normally do this sort of thing.”

“Can I ask what your plan was?” Alex
asked, looking away, cheeks burning.

“Oh. Well, honestly, I thought you
would be all over me as soon as we were alone, so I didn’t think I would have
to do that much,” Emily said nervously, her cheeks tomato-red. “I didn’t
realize how weird this would feel. I’ve known it was coming for years, since I
was little. And I worried about all sorts of things, really, but now that it’s
happening, I can’t even tell if you like me or not.”

“Do you like me at all?”

Alex evaded the question, still
unable to look at Emily directly.

“I don’t really know you,” Emily
admitted, after a short delay.

“Well, same here.” Alex shrugged in
relief. “It isn’t that I don’t like you. I just don’t really get what is going
on, yet, and it seems really important that I figure things out. That, and,”
Alex said, instantly regretting having continued on, “I’ve never, that is to
say, well, this is all new to me. All of it.”

Emily looked stunned. Alex was
certain that she reached for her wine glass to buy herself time, rather than
out of thirst.

“Are you being serious?”

She leaned forward when she asked,
trying to look him in the eyes. Alex blushed, and wished he had been able to
turn invisible after all.

“Yes,” Alex said, hanging his head.

“All of it?”

Emily’s expression was somewhere
between incredulous and pitying.

“My upbringing was not exactly
conventional,” Alex said morosely, “and I was not quite as popular at my last
school as I appear to be at this one.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Shit,” Alex said softly, rubbing
his palms against his jeans, “this is exactly what I didn’t want to talk about
out.”

Emily reached over and patted his
hand, her expression pained.

“Don’t worry about it,” she urged.
“We can talk about something…”

“My family died in a fire,” Alex
said quietly, staring at the floor. “The general consensus was that I set it,
though I can’t say that I remember doing anything like that. Anyway, I spent a
long time in various institutions, after. The overall opinion of me back at
home was, well, understandably low.”

Alex waited for a moment, and then
when nothing happened, he snuck a look over at Emily. She was lost in thought,
absently brushing her hair back behind her ears.

“Should I go?”

He had no desire to leave. That had
to be obvious in his voice, to say nothing of empathy.

“You knew, right?” Emily asked,
speaking slowly, her eyes unfocused. “About me and my situation, I mean? And
you came anyway.”

“Sure,” Alex said with a shrug. “I
was hungry.”

Emily laughed and slapped his arm
playfully.

“It doesn’t really matter to me,
what you did or didn’t do before you got here,” Emily said, with what appeared
to be sincerity, or a perfect facsimile thereof. “And I’m not planning on
asking any more questions that you don’t want to answer. But, I do want
something from you, Alex.”

The wariness must have been obvious,
because she flinched.

“Oh?”

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s
nothing bad. I wondered if you would consider coming to an arrangement with me.
Maybe we could help each other.”

Nineteen

“The quarry seems a bit different than the last time I saw it.”

“Different how?”

“Well, there’s a lot… more of
it, for one thing. That whole area over there, for example. Since when is that
nothing but gravel and sand?”

“Since this afternoon, roughly
three-ish?”

“And then there’s the frost. It’s
just like my poor couch.” Rebecca pinched her lower lip and looked at Michael
disapprovingly. “Did you freeze the quarry? Why did you freeze the quarry,
Michael?”

“I didn’t do it,” Michael protested.
“Alex did. Or rather, that was a side effect of what Alex did.”

“Alex blew up that whole rock face?”

Rebecca pointed incredulously at the
ruined slope, at a deep crater that exposed the bedrock, covered with a fine
layer of gravel and chipped stone.

“No, that was me,” Michael admitted,
shoulders slumped. “I showed him the Vacuum Bomb Protocol, to give him an idea
of what was possible, given the right control…”

“You were showing off,” Rebecca
said, staring grumpily at the quarry wall. “And then what happened?”

“He activated the Absolute Protocol
that you implanted. Then he started dumping all the local energy directly out
into the Ether. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“What does that mean? What ‘local
energy’?”

“Everything. First thermal energy,
then radiant and electromagnetic as well.”

Michael picked up a pebble and threw
it toward the quarry wall, but it came up short, diving down early toward the
black water at the bottom of the quarry and colliding with the ice on the
surface with a crunching sound.

“I tried to get him to stop there,
but he seemed like he was in a trance or something. Next thing I know, the rock
where he was staring starts to disappear into the Ether.”

Michael gestured at the frost around
him, as if it had just arrived, to his shock.

“I think all the cold is only a side
effect, you know?”

“You mean he was creating a vacuum?
You are kidding, right?”

“I think so,” Michael said. “I think
all the time, without even realizing it, Alex creates a localized void in our
world, and Etheric energy leaks through to fill it. I think that is where all
that catalytic power comes from. When he activated the protocol, he created a
much larger void in the Ether, so energy went rushing out of the world to fill
it.”

“You could use that, maybe,” Rebecca
said slowly, lost in thought. “The cold might be easier to control than an
actual energy or mass transfer. Less dangerous for Alex, probably more
effective.”

“No,” Michael said, almost sadly,
shaking his head.

“Why not?”

“He can’t control the protocol, and
he can’t stop it, once it starts.”

Rebecca frowned doubtfully.

“Okay, what then?”

Michael looked moodily at the
frost-covered hole in the quarry wall and sighed.

“It’s like Mitsuru all over again,”
he said, turning to face her, with an expression full of grief and frustration.
“We can’t let Alex operate that protocol. He’ll kill everyone around him.”

***

Alex
lay on his back, on top of the comforter, still wearing his shoes and uniform,
and wondered why someone enrolled in the combat program had to study any math
at all, much less the exact same math that had been kicking his ass back in the
real world.

He looked idly over at the stack of
books on his desk, the study guides that Vivik and Emily had made for him
sitting on top. Vivik’s notes were typed, bullet-pointed, and exhaustive to the
point of being incomprehensible. Alex often found the textbook’s explanations
to be shorter. Emily’s notes were handwritten, concise, and easy to understand
– but equally useless to Alex. They only made him worry about her, and their
little ‘arrangement’.

The ceiling proved more interesting
than the books. He realized drowsily that he wasn't going to be doing any
studying tonight. He fished his headphones out of his pocket and hit play on
his mp3 player, finding himself halfway through a Portishead
album.

Alex turned the volume up earlier
when he had gone for a jog on the Academy’s surprisingly modern
synthetic-surface track. Alex wanted the exercise, even if it was an off day,
but every time he went running on the grounds, he got lost. The music was too
loud now, in the quiet of the dorms, but he did not bother to reach for the
volume, letting the lushness of the sound obliterate his thoughts, his skull
reverberating with the slow, looping beats.

He could not have fallen asleep. Not
like that. Alex was a light sleeper, a very desirable trait for those who
planned on surviving incarceration. He had trouble falling asleep almost every
night, and even small noises tended to wake him up. He could not possibly have
fallen asleep with his earbuds still firmly in place, blaring music.

Still, Alex could have sworn that
for a moment somewhere in the album’s final tracks, his head heavy and swimming
with worry, that he felt the warmth of another body besides his own in the tiny
dorm bed, a small hand resting on the pillow above his head. The illusion was
so complete that he was aware of the smell of her hair, the weight of her head
from where it rested on the hollow of his shoulder. He felt a tremendous sense
of comfort and gentleness, and he lost himself in it.

He did not wake then. He could not
have woken, because he had not slept. He opened his eyes. Nothing had changed.
He was alone, and the place beside him on the bed was cold. The MP3 player had
moved along to Massive Attack, but he felt too agitated to listen anymore. He
pulled the headphones out of his ears as he sat up, puzzled and angry for reasons
he could not articulate.

There was no way for him to know how
long they had been knocking on the door. He had not slept, and he did not feel
sleepy at all. Until that moment, however, he didn't hear a thing.

Alex got up with a sigh and opened
the door, expecting Vivik. He liked the Sikh kid quite a bit; actually, he was
really good-natured and upbeat. However, Vivik liked studying, as in he seemed
to do it for fun, and sometimes he wanted to tutor Alex a bit more than Alex
wanted tutoring.

It was not Vivik. It was Renton, and
a Chinese kid from class whose name Alex could not remember.

“Hey, Alex,” Renton asked, smiling
mischievously, “why are you still in your uniform?”

Alex looked down at himself, and wondered
the same thing. Had he slept, then? Had he dreamed?

“I’m not really sure,” he admitted,
rubbing his head. “I guess I was asleep. What time is it, anyway?”

“A bit after eleven. I’m Li,” the
Chinese kid said, extending his hand to Alex. He had a firm handshake and a
smile that seemed friendly enough. “We have homeroom together.”

“Right,” Alex said. “You’re a friend
of Renton’s?”

“Don’t think badly of me for it,
though,” Li said, grinning. “It sort of worked out that way.”

Alex laughed, and then stifled a
yawn, wondering how anyone could tolerate Renton on a consistent enough basis
to be friends with him.

“Get yourself changed, Alex. Put
something warm on,” Renton suggested, leaning against the wall. “We’ll wait out
here while you change.”

“Where are we going?”

Alex was wary. He wondered if the
Academy had hazing rituals or something.

“The roof, Alex. Believe me, you
want to come with us to the roof,” Renton said, his voice dripping with
sincerity.

***

“I
will not notice,” Rebecca told herself firmly, up to her chin in rose-scented
bathwater.

The room was so thick with steam
that she couldn’t see the shower curtain. Pink-tinged bubbles floated across
the water’s surface. Her hair was secured with a red towel, and a mask stuffed
with lavender lay across her eyes.

“I will not notice.”

Rebecca thanked whatever God that
there might be that the founder of the Academy had been Japanese, and had a
fondness for his native country’s baths. She had made certain that everyone in
Central had forgotten the bathhouse except herself and the staff that cleaned
it. The bathhouse was built from cedar, the wood darkened with age and
moisture. The bath was big enough to stretch her legs out without touching the
side of the tub. The only sound Rebecca could hear were the branches scraping
across with the outside wall with the wind.

“I am not going to notice anything
they do at their stupid party. I don’t care what those little monsters get up
to tonight. I am not going to feel any of it.”

The worst of it was the flirting,
the falling in lust or in love. She could feel that from a mile away.

She had always planned to bring a
lover to the bathhouse, Rebecca remembered bitterly, back when she had
occasionally had one. When she found someone special, someone worth rewarding,
she had intended to bring them here. She had planned it all out.

How many years ago had that been?
Three? Four?

“I will not notice. I will not.”

Rebecca let herself sink into the
steaming water up to her eyeballs, letting the hot water massage her brain.

It helped a little bit.

***

There
were around thirty people up on the roof. Most of them were strangers to Alex.
He shyly migrated back to where a cooler sat, perched on top of one of the old
chimneys that dotted the roof. A beer, he figured, might help relax him a
little, make talking to people a bit easier.

Alex stared into the cooler in
dismay.

“Seriously?”

Renton looked over at him from where
he was hitting on some curly-haired first-year student, confused.

“All this power and technology; a
secret school in another world,” Alex recited numbly. “Plus, some of the people
here are really rich! So, how could this be?”

Renton looked at him with a puzzled
expression. Alex reached into the cooler that he held open.

“Keystone,” Alex said sadly. “Still
warm.”

Renton laughed as if Alex had made a
joke. It was obscene, unpleasant, and probably designed to be exactly that.
Alex was starting to realize that Renton had mastered that art of being
friendly and despicable at the same time.

“It’s like fucking Bakersfield in a
can, you realize,” Alex said to no one in particular. Then a nasty idea
occurred to him, and he turned to confront Renton. “Is this some kind of joke,
Renton? Should I take offense?”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is
to get beer when you’re stuck in the Ether, you ungrateful little shit?”

Renton extracted a can from the
cooler for himself, smacking his lips with satisfaction.

“We can’t even bring it in the
dorms, you know. They have a protocol on all the student buildings, it puts you
to sleep if you try and bring this sort of thing in.”

“Same thing if you try and get it on
with a girl in the dorms.”

The speaker was a chubby
upperclassman named Todd that Alex had met only recently. He seemed like a nice
enough person, though he had a bit too much of the white-boy hip-hop act going
for Alex, but maybe that was an East Coast thing.

“You try some shit, you both wake up
to find the staff member on duty standing over you.”

“Really? Even if she was only there
to study or something?”

“Study. Right,” Li said with a grin.
“That’s a good one. In that truly unlikely scenario, nothing would happen. Not
until one of you tried to take your clothes off, I guess.”

Alex laughed nervously while he
considered the implications. He hadn’t realized what an opportunity he had
blown at Emily’s place.

“It happened to a girl in my hall,
last year. She was so embarrassed when the teacher came to get her in the
morning.”

Alex turned to look at the new
voice. Anastasia, wrapped in a surprisingly cutesy winter coat and fringed scarf,
was glancing at the contents of the cooler with obvious contempt. Behind her,
Emily laughed cheerfully, wrapped in a tailored coat, heavy woolen skirt, and
felt boots. She was walking with a plump, dreadlocked blond girl he did not
recognize.

“You do realize that you’re staring,
don’t you?”

Anastasia hissed at him as she
walked near, stopping a discreet distance away.

“Sorry,” he mumbled into his beer.
“I was surprised to see you here, that’s all.”

Anastasia made a sour face at him.

“Aren’t you going to introduce us,
Ana?”

The dreadlocked girl interposed
herself between Alex and Anastasia, looking indignant.

“Alex, meet Serafina Ricci,”
Anastasia said, sounding as bored as she looked. “Serafina, meet Alex Warner.”

“Call me Sarah, everyone does. How
do you do?”

Sarah greeted Alex with a smile.
Alex nodded back, and took a sip of his wretched beer to cover his discomfort.
He was never sure, meeting a new girl, whether he was supposed to shake her
hand or what. It seemed so inappropriately masculine, somehow.

“I have, of course, heard all about
you.”

She said it as if he would find that
reassuring.

“Seems like everyone has,” Alex
agreed. “Saves time on introductions, I guess.”

“Serafina is a second-year student,”
Anastasia explained. “And her cartel, I might add, has the bad taste to
associate itself with the Hegemony. Despite her poor social choices and awful
hair, she is my second cousin, and therefore my responsibility.”

Sarah looked scandalized.

“Your friend, as well, I would hope.
Anyway, I’ve told you a million times to call me Sarah. After all I’ve done for
you…”

“Please,” Anastasia said, her voice
deathly bored. “I only came because you made me promise to introduce you to
Alex. With that done, I am afraid that I have better things to do with my time.
Do enjoy yourselves…”

Anastasia breezed off, brushing by a
puzzled-looking Emily on her way to the door. Alex sipped from his can as
sparingly as possible and felt tremendously out of place. How could beer be
warm when it was this cold outside? It defied logic.

Alex grabbed Renton by the arm as he
walked by. Renton met Alex’s look with slightly glassy eyes. Alex realized the
boy was probably already a touch drunk.

“Okay. Why the party?”

“We are sort of the welcoming
committee,” Vivik admitted, emerging from the group of people behind the tangle
of pipes near the center of the roof. “We would have done it sooner, but you
fall asleep at eight o’clock every night, so it’s been a little tricky.”

“Vivik!” Alex exclaimed. “I didn’t
realize you were here.”

“Don’t look so surprised,” Vivik
said, obviously hurt. “I’m not that big of nerd, you know.”

Renton winked at Alex.

Emily approached and tried to say
something, but Renton cut her off, shouting a greeting and then pushing his way
through the group. Alex watched in astonishment as Margot, the vampire from the
day before, floated up from the side of the building and over the retaining
wall, coming smoothly down in front of the cheering Renton.

“Shush.” Margot’s voice was prim and
icily precise. “One of the staff has to be doing rounds, Renton.”

She held out a brown paper bag,
which Renton promptly snatched.

“It’s Rebecca tonight, so we’re
cool. You are great, Margot. I appreciate this.”

Renton was looking at the contents
of the heavy paper bag with obvious satisfaction. Given the clinking noise it
made when he moved it, Alex was pretty sure he had just seen how the beer had
made it to the roof in the first place, without tripping any of the Academy’s
security measures.

As Alex approached them, he realized
that he had been wrong – Margot had not actually landed. She was still
floating, her bare feet dangling lazily, centimeters above the concrete and
rebar, her long brown skirt around her calves, teased by the cold wind.

“Am I done?” Margot said, looking
vaguely annoyed. “I have Eerie waiting down there…”

Renton chuckled to himself, and then
looked at Alex evilly.

“Why don’t you bring her up, then,
and hang out for a while. You can have a beer with us or something.”

Margot looked at him, clearly taken
aback.

“I can’t drink alcohol, because of
my metabolism, and Eerie’s pathologically shy, because she’s a nutcase.” Her
intonation made it obvious that she was not making excuses; rather, Margot was
just stating the facts as she saw them. “What kind of party are you having,
exactly?”

“That was a pretty big favor that I
did you, right?” Renton said softly, his smile wide and mean. “And while I do
appreciate you bringing all this stuff up to the roof for me, maybe you should
consider if things between us are really squared. What do you think, Margot?”

Margot’s eyes narrowed, and for a
moment, Alex wondered if she was going to attack him. She was, after all, a
vampire, right? He had been planning to introduce himself, but found himself
standing by nervously, not sure what to make of the conversation. The mood did
not seem right for him to interrupt.

“Very well.” Margot bowed her head
for a moment, and then continued evenly. “I can’t speak for Eerie, though. She
will probably just go home by herself.”

“I really don’t think you should let
that happen, Margot,” Renton said reasonably. “Besides, you can tell Eerie that
I have a bunch of candy up here for her.”

Again, Margot paused and appeared to
try to compose herself. Alex looked at the serious, pigtailed vampire, and
wondered why Renton was being so hard on her. He had already known him long
enough not to like him, but he didn’t think he was stupid or fond of wasting
time. Alex sipped his awful beer, and wondered what Renton’s angle was, with
Margot, with Eerie, with himself.

“It was a mistake to fall into your
debt, Renton.” Margot turned and began to float away. “And you had better be
serious about the candy. You don’t want to disappoint Eerie.”

Alex looked at Renton and wondered.
Renton had gone out of his way to be friendly, in his own weird way, since Alex
had arrived, but unlike Emily and Vivik, his motives were far more obscure.

“He’s been like that since I met
him,” Emily observed, looking over Alex’s shoulder. “Renton can be kind of a
dick, and still confuses picking on girls with flirting, but he’s not really as
bad as he would like you to believe.”

Alex spun around, startled, and
found himself face-to-face with Emily. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, and
she held her beer gingerly in sparkly blue gloves.

“Are you sure?” Alex said, only
half-joking. “Sometimes I wonder if Renton’s really such an okay guy.”

“Well, he did throw you a party,”
Renton pointed out from behind his beer. “That should count for something.”

“I guess. Are you seriously
blackmailing that vampire just to get beer onto the roof? That seems like a bad
idea.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Margot said
dismissively, floating neatly over the retaining wall, Eerie held casually in
her arms, as if she weighed nothing. “I don’t bite. I’m the nice kind of
vampire.”

She actually came all the way down
to the ground, this time, and Alex wondered if her bare feet were cold against
the stone, and shivered in his jacket. She set Eerie down carefully next to
her.

Eerie wore a red and white sweater
with a pleated black skirt and black knee socks. Her exposed shoulders were
perfectly round and bone-white, and the edges of her hair brushed against them,
haphazard and uneven. Similar to the vampire, her outfit did not seem to take temperature
into account, but neither girl appeared particularly bothered by the cold. She
carried a basket filled with yarn and carefully wrapped knitting needles tucked
under one arm.

Alex made a mental note to ask
someone where he could get a haircut before the party ended. It seemed like the
Academy really needed an orientation or a tour, or something. Maybe that sort
of thing happened at the beginning of the school year, and he had missed it.

“That’s pretty rare,” Sarah
observed. “Margot has come to these things once or twice, but I’ve never seen
Eerie come to anything. You have to admit that Renton has a remarkable way with
people.”

Ways that included blackmail and
bribery. Something worth knowing, Alex thought. Eerie ran over to Renton, and
held out her hand expectantly.

“Where is the candy?” Eerie’s voice
was strange, with a musical, singsong quality. The way she spoke gave him the
impression that English was not her first, or best, language. “Margot said.”

“Here,” Renton said, taking a paper sack
from one of his coat’s inner pockets, and handing it to Eerie. Alex was
astounded to see Eerie pull a package of Skittles from the bag and tear it open
with obvious relish. “Don’t make yourself sick, okay? Rebecca will kill me.”

“It never even occurred to me that
there would actually be a bag of candy.” Alex shook his head and Emily laughed.
“I figured that was slang for some kind of drug.”

“Do you want me to introduce you to
Eerie and Margot?” Emily offered. “I know both of them pretty well.”

“You’re an empath,” Sarah said,
laughing. “You know everybody pretty well.”

Alex finished the last of his beer
and collected Sarah and Emily’s empties. He made a trip to the cooler and got three
new cans, depositing the empty cans in an already half-full plastic bag. There
were more people on the roof now, and a lot of them, maybe even most, were
girls. Alex stood there for a moment, before he realized that much of the
party, subtly or not, were watching him, and hurried back over to where Emily
and Sarah were chatting.

“Alright. What the hell. Introduce
me to your friends.”

Sarah laughed and patted him on the
shoulder.

“Try not to look so nervous, Alex,”
Emily admonished, leading him over. “This way… Hey, Margot? Eerie?”

Emily skirted the periphery of the
party, to where the two girls stood against the edge of the roof, and Alex
tagged along. He was going to feel bad about what had happened with Steve until
he got Eerie to talk to him, no matter how much of weirdo she might turn out to
be. He still felt kind of like an ass, having tried so hard to look cool in
front of her. He wondered if she hated him already, and was surprised that he
cared.

“Emily.” Margot acknowledged her
with a nod from where she leaned against the wall, arms folded across her
chest, her face blank and impassive. “Alex. Renton was supposed to introduce
us, but he wandered off, chasing after that redhead from Herzog’s class.”

It was not an altogether bad
reception, Alex reasoned. The vampire was at least civil, if not friendly.
Eerie was staring at him, he realized, hand frozen halfway to her mouth, a
number of multicolored candies in her palm.

“Hi! I’m Alex,” he said, raising one
hand stiffly in greeting and wondering what in the hell it was that he was
doing. His voice sounded odd to him, forced and artificial. “Nice to finally
get to talk to both of you.”

Margot said nothing. Eerie held
absolutely still for a moment, and then, slowly, lifted the remaining candy to
her mouth.

“Alex is being nice, you guys,”
Emily admonished, shaking her finger and glaring at them. “I thought Rebecca
made the two of you promise to be more social this year.”

“Don’t worry,” Sarah offered
encouragingly. “No one ever knows what to say to either of them, Alex. Keep
trying. You’re already doing better than most guys.”

Eerie’s eyes widened, and then she
shook her head, looking as if she were going to speak. After a brief struggle,
her expression went slack again, and she simply looked down to the ground.
Margot glanced at her, and sighed.

“I think we should go somewhere
else,” Margot said as she walked past, dragging Emily along behind her, despite
her feeble protests. “Eerie has been talking about this boy since the other day
in the cafeteria.”

Emily went silent, and then gave
Alex a panicked look as the vampire dragged her away. Sarah followed behind,
laughing at the whole scene. Despite the cold, Alex felt himself break out in
sweat. Had he really been left alone with a girl who had not managed to say
anything coherent to him, one who wasn’t even human? And all of this in front
of Emily?

Alex had serious doubts about the
soundness of the whole situation.

“I don’t get it.”

Eerie’s voice was oddly melodic, but
vaguely inhuman, like a reproduction of a human voice made by a beautiful but
wholly alien device.

“Um…you don’t get what?”

Alex scratched the back of his head
nervously, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

“Margot says that you are an idiot.
She says that you fought with Steve the other day because you are stupid…”

She trailed off shyly, one hand
toying with the edge of her skirt.

Alex nodded slowly.

“That’s a distinct possibility,”
Alex admitted. Eerie finally met his eyes – and Alex was stunned to discover
her pupils dilated to such an extent that her irises were millimeter-thin
colored rings around a reflective black space. “I prefer to think of myself as
impulsive, though.”

Eerie crumpled and discarded the
Skittles wrapper, and then started to dig through the bag again, seemingly
oblivious to Alex’s presence.

“It, uh, seems like you and Margot
are pretty good friends, huh?”

Rather than look up, Eerie continued
rummaging.

“Friends? I don’t really get stuff
like that,” she said quietly, pulling a handful of red licorice twists from the
paper bag. “Margot and I both live in the same place.”

Alex took a sip from his beer, and
rapidly considered his options. Renton and Vivik had disappeared, along with
Margot, Sarah, and Emily. In fact, the entire party was conspicuously distant.
He was obviously on his own, and needed a good reason to excuse himself from
the conversation. He settled on finishing his beer as fast possible, and made
another attempt at conversation in the meantime.

“You seem to really… like candy,” Alex
observed, lamely casting about for a topic, any topic.

Eerie seemed to give the question
serious consideration, nibbling on a Red Vine, before nodding solemnly.

“I have been practicing eating other
food, though. Actually,” Eerie added thoughtfully, “that’s why I was in the
cafeteria the other day. I don’t usually go there.”

Alex felt mildly encouraged. He was
starting to get the hang of her bizarre intonation, and her last statement had
been reasonably coherent. This, Alex thought proudly, was communication.

All of a sudden, Eerie was standing
very, very close, on her tiptoes to look him in the face. Her pupils were
glittering and huge, his ghost image reflected within, appearing more nervous
and less cool than he would have liked.

“You’ve only just arrived. It’s
already started, though, hasn’t it?”

Alex backed away a step, and then
shook his head.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Eerie took another step forward,
dropping the paper bag into her knitting basket and then clutching the basket
handle with both hands.

“Don’t you remember, Alex? Hasn’t
this happened already?” Eerie’s voice was distant, her eyes wet and unfocused.
“Are you dreaming now, Alex? Isn’t it hard to tell?”

Alex shook his head, utterly
dumbfounded. He had no idea what the girl was talking about, but at the same
time, her words had a certain resonance. Something he had dreamed, maybe, or a
sense of déjà vu…he was not certain. He was, however, certain that Eerie was
standing too close to him, and he half-stumbled a few steps away.

“I don’t understand.” Alex felt hot,
almost feverish. A strange buzzing sound seemed to emanate from the back of his
neck, like static from the base of his skull. “Why are you asking me all these
questions?”

“Can you feel it already?” Eerie
asked softly, swaying rhythmically, as if to music only she could hear. “The
slippage. Dislocation. Oh, so very lonely. Haven’t I already told you my
secret?”

Eerie’s eyes were half-closed, her
arms wrapped tightly around herself. She stumbled, dazed, nearly falling onto
Alex in the process. He caught her clumsily, attempting to simultaneously push
her away and stand her upright. Neither venture was particularly successful.

“The Church of Sleep, Alex.” Her
melodic voice was barely a whisper, and he had to strain to hear it. “Surely you’ve
noticed. Don’t you fall asleep earlier and earlier, since you came to Central?
Do you remember going to bed, when you wake?”

“Yes,” Alex replied, his throat
hoarse, “and no.”

Eerie clutched herself even tighter,
the folds of sweater pulled snug across her chest in a way that he found quite
distracting. Her skin was flushed, and icy cold where Alex’s fingers brushed
against her shoulder. She pressed her forehead against his chest, and he was
afraid that she really would fall over; she seemed so out of it.

“And when you wake up, sometimes,
you feel like someone is there with you.” Eerie’s voice had lost all of its
interrogative qualities, replaced with something that sounded more like a bald statement
of fact. “And sometimes, when you wake up, you know things that you didn’t know
before. But you’ll never remember another dream, now that you’ve come here.”

“H-How,” Alex stammered, “how is it
that you know these things?”

“The Church of Sleep, Alex.” Eerie
looked at him as if she had answered his question in full. “When we sleep, we
are programmed. What else could sleep be?”

Li put his hand on Alex’s shoulder,
and the strange atmosphere deflated, Eerie retreating from him hurriedly, as if
she had only now realized how close they were. Alex felt confusion as well as
relief.

“Try not to overwhelm Alex,” Li said
to Eerie, patting her on the head affectionately. “You can’t tell him
everything all at once.”

Eerie’s shoulders slumped and she
looked distraught, and for some reason, Alex immediately felt guilty. What was
it with this girl? He didn’t understand anything. Nevertheless, his head was
clearing, and whatever disconcerting effect the girl’s words had on him was
already fading.

“I’m sorry, Alex.” Eerie looked
unaccountably sad. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

“Everything is fine, Eerie,” Alex
insisted. “Nothing bad happened.”

Eerie looked one way, then the
other, and then leaned in close so that Alex could hear her whisper.

“I’ll help you out with something,
then, to make up for it.” Alex felt a bit nervous with her standing this close,
but this time he did not pull away. Whatever it was Eerie had to say, he was
sure he wanted to hear it. “Walking in the snow, under a grey sky, you will
wonder if it is okay. I won’t be able to say it, then, because I am shy. Alex,”
Eerie whispered, her lips so close to his ear that he could feel her breathe.
“It’s okay with me.”

Eerie straightened back up and
smiled at him. Her oval face brightened when she smiled, and Alex was struck by
a misplaced feeling of familiarity, almost nostalgia. He could only stare at
her and wonder dimly at what she said.

Alex shook his head in an attempt to
clear it. Had this all happened before? Why was he thinking about a cloud
of golden butterflies, wheeling and diving in rough unison under brilliant
afternoon sunlight near Half Moon Bay? Had he ever actually seen that?

“Something bad is coming, Alex.
Right now. It’ll hurt some,” Eerie said sadly, kicking at the ground absently,
“but you’ll have to make it through without my help. Don’t worry, though,” she
said reassuringly. “I know you will.”

Where Eerie had stood, there was
only a puff of golden smoke, dissipating in the wind, smelling delicately of
sandalwood. Alex turned back toward the rest of the party, intending to ask
someone what had happened.

The party had become a still-life
portrait. Sarah was frozen in conversation with Renton and a black girl he
whose name he could not remember. Li stood right behind them, along with Vivik,
Todd, and two other guys that Alex vaguely remembered from class. All were
rigid, flesh-colored statues silently arrayed across the jumbled surface of the
roof. Alex took one hesitant step toward them, and realized that even the beer
in the bottle Renton was drinking from was inert, held in perfect suspension in
the neck of the bottle.

There was an unfamiliar metallic
sound from behind and above him, and Alex spun around to confront it. Hovering
several meters over the roof of the building, a monster that he could not stand
to look at directly loomed over him with many terrible eyes, and screamed.

The scream had nothing in common
with any sound that Alex had heard previously. He felt revulsion from the very
depths of his being, and was immediately sick, choking back bile as his stomach
contracted and heaved. The howl the creature produced was like a terrible
reverberating siren, battering his mind and thoughts into fragments. His chest
and abdomen contracted and seized randomly, and his legs twisted and collapsed
beneath him. Alex spilled helplessly to his contorted back, pinned down and
immobilized by the sheer chaos and impossibility of the monster hovering above
him, gradually rending the world with its awful cry.

A sudden wetness on his face,
followed by the belated revelation that his nose was copiously bleeding. His
vision blurred, an impression of the monster seared into his retina. The light
refracted around it bizarrely, disorienting Alex, filling him with a formless
and intolerable anxiety. The scream drilled into him and ate
away at everything around him, corroding reality. The world would not tolerate
an existence such as the monster above him, and in its desperate attempt to
purge the abomination, the world itself was unraveling.

Alex felt the roof crumbling beneath
his hands, the stone rejecting the monster’s existence on a molecular level.
The air swirled and smoked around the monster, and the building began to
shudder and fracture. The awful thing was translucent, but even the moonlight
that eked through the glutinous mass was corrupted and ruined. The monster was
so fundamentally abominable that Alex could not help but understand: the world
around him was dying rather than accept the existence of this creature, and if
he stayed there too much longer, he would as well.

The impulse flashed through the
front part of his skull like a migraine, an internal vertigo as his mind
executed implanted instructions. He reached without his hands, somewhere into
the recesses of his mind, a place inside his head of which he had never been
aware, until Rebecca had shown it to him. Alex reached for the Black Door. It
did not matter that he could not move, or even as much as blink. As the
oppressive presence and sound beat down on him, peeling his soul away by
layers, like an onion, he felt the Black Door creak open, spilling a chilly
radiance into his mind.

The cold light burned, and he
breathed it in like smoke. He filled rapidly with the frigid radiance, which
bled out from the core of him, a luminescent sheen extending millimeters beyond
his skin, sheathing him in brutal cold. The air hissed and steamed, agitated by
the heat above and the utter absence below. He managed to get one knee
underneath him, bent by tremendous pressures, wracked with tension as his whole
body tried to tear itself apart. Alex forced the Black Door open, and the flood
of cold light reinforced him, pressure flowing outward from within.

Alex struggled to his feet, heedless
of the blood that trickled from his nose and the corners of his eyes. All along
his skin, as the air passed through his lips, he soothed and slowed the air
molecules, bleeding the heat off into the Ether. He pushed further, and reached
outwards, stripping the surrounding atmosphere of its kinetic energy, siphoning
it directly into the Ether, where it dissipated like steam. Alex could not
remember anyone teaching him how to do this, but he found it was surprisingly
easy.

Alex raised his arms to either side
of him, surrounded by a bubble of cool, still air, the stone frozen solid
beneath him. A glimmering, blue-white light radiated from his chest. Frost
crawled across the roof, radiating out from where Alex stood. There was a
tinkling sound as water molecules in the air froze, falling to the ground to
shatter musically on stained concrete.

Alex was unaware of any of this, as
the terrific pressure from the thing above him beat down on his unprotected
mind. Though he was bleeding the heat and motion out of the surrounding area,
he could not do anything about the crushing gravity that threatened to reduce
his skeleton to powder. His breath was a dense fog, and it was impossible to
see through the layer of superheated mist roiling at the edge of the bubble.

Alex pushed harder, until his mind
filled with the brilliant cold.

Then there was no more, or no
further, and he faltered momentarily. It was enough. The bubble collapsed
around him and Alex felt the full force of the monster’s scream. His legs
crumpled beneath him, and Alex collapsed backwards into Rebecca Levy’s arms.
She gathered him up like a child, and the moment she touched him, the terrible
pressure receded, along with the sound of the awful scream. Alex could see the
illuminated script of the barrier protocol that surrounded them clearly, a
purple-hued dome of beautiful and unreadable words that arced over them.

“Shh…Alex,
you're okay…” Alex realized he was screaming, and stopped. Rebecca hugged him
tightly to her chest, her arms hooked underneath his own, supporting him. “I’ve
got you, now.”

Her next words were louder, and
clearly not directed at him.

“I’ve collected Alex, whenever you
less sociable types want to earn your pay,” Rebecca shouted. She then grinned
down at Alex, who was still trying to get his legs to hold him up again. “I
hope you had a nice party, anyway.”

Alex discovered that, in Rebecca’s
arms, he could look at the thing. It hovered in midair, writhing and amorphous,
like a gigantic amoeba, extending tentacles and formless limbs in every
direction. Some of the limbs ended in things that looked like mouths, if
flowers had mouths – brilliant red and wet, cellulose ridged with teeth hooked
like thorns. Other limbs ended in floral blooms, a cluster of black eyes like
an insect at the center of each. The air burnt and smoldered along the
periphery of the monster. The entire world recoiled, Alex realized, and had he
not activated the Absolute Protocol, his body would have done the same.

A cluster of arms drooped down from
the creature’s misshapen bulk, stretching in a way that made Alex nauseous. The
flower heads blossomed at the end of the tentacles, exposing flat black eyes
and toothy, gaping maws. The limbs trailed a viscous trail of yellow-tinted
slime, and the stone crumbled and sizzled where it dripped. Alex wanted to
scream again, but felt Rebecca in his mind, her hand on his chest, and the fear
began to dissipate. He watched the arms descend down toward the barrier that
protected them with an odd feeling of curiosity, nothing like the fear of
impending death.

The nearest limb disintegrated
before it could make contact with the barrier, dissipating into a mist of
disconnected tissue.

“What is this thing?”

Michael asked the question casually,
as if unaware of the tendril of smoke drifting lazily from the palm of his
outstretched hand. Alex blinked his eyes, trying to clear his vision, which
insisted that Michael’s tattoos were now luminous, his upper body wrapped in a
mass of fluctuating indigo light.

“It’s a Horror,” the old man
standing next to Michael said conversationally, without looking up from the
heavy leather-bound book he carried open in front of him. Several rings of
luminous text orbited around him, spinning and reversing direction, their color
unfamiliar, though he would remember it later as similar to violet. “Or it was,
at any rate. This Horror is imminently near death. We are fortunate, in that
sense, as the effective radius of its scream is considerably reduced. Though
most of the students are caught within a stasis field, they have also been
spared the brunt of the assault. I’m not sure about the nature of the stasis
field, because it isn’t mentioned in the literature,” Vladimir said, frowning.
“However, I think we can assume that it is a defense mechanism. Horrors are so
rarely encountered…”

“A defense mechanism aside from the
screaming, you mean? I appreciate the natural history lesson, Vladimir,”
Michael said, shoving his fingers in his ears and shouting. “Since we aren’t in
class, though, can we skip to the part where you explain how to kill it?”

All of the Horror’s mouths opened
simultaneously, gaping red and disturbingly intimate, and Alex’s headache
revived itself. Rebecca closed her eyes, and a wave of contemplative silence
washed over him. Judging by Michael’s expression, Alex assumed that the
screaming had grown louder. The roof was starting to buckle, and Alex realized
that he was lying in a shallow pool of sand, as the building disintegrated into
its base components.

Vladimir waved one hand lazily at
the Horror, and for a moment, the rings of letters around him strobed and increased
the speed of their rotation. The Horror shrieked and wailed, and the sky around
it burned. Vladimir looked disappointed, and then waved his hand at the
creature once more.

As far as Alex could tell, nothing
happened.

“Fuck,” Rebecca said quietly, slumping
down against the retaining wall behind them, Alex sprawled in her arms, almost
sitting in her lap. He felt languid and weak; he could barely even move his
fingers, and worse, the scream was growing audible again, despite the barrier.
“That didn’t work at all. Vlad is getting feeble.”

“Okay, asking nicely doesn’t do the
trick,” Vladimir observed. “And Rebecca’s hands are full. It seems that it’s
down to you, Michael.”

“I hate doing this stuff, you see,”
Michael said to no one in particular. “Since I’m already up, though, I might as
well put this to rest.”

Michael raised his hand, indigo
light pulsating from inside him, the air charged with static and rippling, his
skin dark in contrast to the vivid lines engraved across it.

The Horror managed the first few
dissonant notes of a new shriek. Then its body rippled, expanding outward as
pressure swelled within and flesh warped. A massive contraction followed, one
that forced the Horror’s mass in on itself. The amorphous body flexed and
struggled briefly, racked and twisted by contrary momentum and internal
tensions.

There was a wet sound, and a muffled
but powerful explosion, which rattled the building and resonated in Alex’s
chest, wind whipping around the barrier that surrounded him. A series of thuds
punctuated the scene, as chunks of the monster battered the wall of violet
light around them.

“So fucking gross,” Rebecca
observed, watching amorphous pieces of undifferentiated tissue splash against
the barrier. “You alright, Alex?”

She smiled down at him, but Alex was
already fast asleep, his head resting in her lap, his breathing slow and
shallow. Rebecca reached down to brush the hair away from his eyes, studying
Alex with a mixture of affection and pity.

“Sleepyhead,” she said softly, as if
it were a warning.

Twenty

“We’ve only had a couple sessions together,” Renton said, “because Michael keeps
teaching him solo, or having one of the student instructors work with him
one-on-one. I think he has only been with the general class a couple of times.
I don’t get it. Why are you asking me? You and Ed are in homeroom with him.
Don’t you see him in class?”

Anastasia and Edward shared a look,
then Edward gave the smallest possible shake of his head and Anastasia shrugged
helplessly.

“That won’t work,” she said
despairingly. “The boy hates class, and he is so far behind that no one can
really do anything about it. He stares off into space during lectures, on the
days where he doesn’t accidentally nod off. In breakout groups, he is either
silent or he asks inane questions, and then complains that he does not
understand the answers. Attempting conversation with him in homeroom is
pointless.”

Edward nodded, and then returned to
attempting to feed scraps from his lunch to one of the tamed Weir that lay
around Anastasia’s feet underneath the dining room table. Great black monsters
wearing tooled metal collars designed to prevent transformation, she had tamed
them in Norway when she was twelve, back when she had been more concerned with
appearances. Capturing and taming a wild Weir had been something of a tradition
a century or so earlier in the Black Sun’s history, and Anastasia had been very
concerned with tradition and symbolism when she was younger. She did not bother
with such things anymore, but she had since become devoted to the two wolves,
named Donner and Blitzen by her younger sister, and had insisted on bringing
them to the Academy with her.

As the future head of the Black Sun,
Anastasia had her own small cottage reserved for her on campus, large enough to
house the servants and the security staff that such a position entailed. The
Weir were confined by Director’s orders to the cottage, or else Anastasia would
have brought them everywhere with her. Edward seemed to love them, whereas
Renton appeared to hold them in slightly greater distaste than he did
everything else around him.

“I’m not sure what to say,” Renton
said, his forehead creased with effort, trying to recall anything of use. “He’s
not too terrible, for someone who hasn’t done any of this stuff before. He has
long arms, so he has decent reach, but he doesn’t hit very hard. Wrestles for
crap. Gets tired quickly, takes lots of breaks.”

Anastasia shook her head, motioning
for the hovering maid to clear the table of the remains of lunch. Renton and
Edward had eaten roast chicken and potatoes with salad, while Anastasia had
picked at an appealing-looking but ultimately disappointing vegan ratatouille
that she vowed to discuss later with the chef. She was certain that it did not
have to be so boring.

“This isn’t what I’m after, Renton,”
she said crossly. “I’m trying to get to know him, not trying to figure out how
to beat him up.”

“One day in class he had some
trouble with sparring with a girl,” Renton said, after some thought. “There was
kind of a scene, till Collette, that Algerian chick, she planted his ass a
couple of times. He seemed to warm up to the idea after that.”

“So he’s a boy who doesn’t like to
hit girls,” Anastasia said softly, “what a revelation, Renton. That helps a
great deal.”

“I’m sorry, Ana, I said that I don’t
know,” Renton objected, his face reddening. “What do you want me to say? It is
a combat class, for Christ’s sake! It’s not as if we sit around chatting about
our childhoods or something. Look, Ana, you want somebody to figure the kid
out, I’m the wrong person to ask.”

For a moment, Anastasia and Renton
glared at each other, like two children holding a staring contest. They were
still that way when Edward unexpectedly broke in.

“You should try Vivik or Emily,” he offered
in his quiet, high-pitched voice. He had spoken so rarely in the two years he
worked for her that Edward's voice still struck her as unfamiliar. “They talk
with him the most.”

Anastasia paused to consider Alex's
unlikely pair of friends. The Weir who wasn’t refusing to eat from Edward’s
hand shoved its snout into her lap, whining, and she petted it absently while
she thought out the various ramifications of the situation.

“Okay,” she said slowly, as wheels
in her head turned, “I have an idea. Edward, would you find Margot and bring
her here? She and Vivik have a class together this session, I am fairly
certain. Vivik might not be inclined to share with me, but I doubt he will be
so reticent with Margot.”

Edward nodded, dropped the scraps on
the floor, gave Anastasia a quick bow, and then was on his way.

“What about Emily?” Renton asked,
looking at her expectantly. “If you want, I could see…”

Anastasia shook her head, staring
into the eyes of the black wolf whose head lay in her lap.

“No need. I have other errands for
you to take care of. I’ll handle Emily myself.”

***

“Is
it really so complicated?” Margot shook her head. “Okay, one more time – the
Academy controls the source of the nanomachines, so
if the cartels want to activate new Operators, then they have to abide by the
Academy’s rules, hence, the Agreement. For any activation that doesn’t result
in death, one student must enroll at the Academy.”

“What is the source, anyway?”

“Shit, Alex,” Margot said through
gritted teeth, “do you really think they go around telling everyone their most
closely held secret?”

“Okay, I guess,” Alex allowed, “but
then why all the infighting? Couldn’t the Academy just, you know, tell
everybody to stop?”

“It’s a two-way agreement. In return
for almost total control of the students while they attend the Academy, the
cartels have free reign over their own internal affairs. There is only so much
to go around, in terms of space, money, and people. It’s usually easier to
fight another cartel than the Witches, and often more rewarding. Plus,” Margot
said, shrugging, “people sometimes disagree. Violently.”

“Alright, but why don’t the cartels
attack the Academy and take whatever it is they need? I mean, aren’t there a
lot more Operators in the cartels than employed by the Academy?”

“Sure, but look around you. How many
cartels do you think would cooperate long enough to complete such an
undertaking? What do you think would happen after? They can’t trust each other,
and as long as they are divided, the Academy holds the majority of the power.”

“For now,” Anastasia added brightly.
“Besides, the Black Sun would never condone an attack on the Academy.”

“I don’t get it,” Alex said lazily,
staring up into the sky.

Sitting cross-legged in a pool of
afternoon sunlight, Margot looked over at Emily despairingly.

“I will never understand. What do
you see in him, Emily?”

“Hey!” Alex objected, lying on his
back in the grass. “I can hear you, you know.”

“She sees the same thing everybody
else does,” Anastasia said absently from where she sat in the shade of the
nearby tree, reading. “A great deal of power attached to not so much brain.”

“Hey!” Alex said again, weakly. He
had been lying in the sun for a while now, and it had lulled him into a state
of complacence. He was not about to rise to the bait and mess up his potential
afternoon nap.

“Power,” Emily agreed, smiling, but
not looking up from the notes she bent over. “That’s part of it. Alex does have
some good qualities, though, once you get to know him. Besides,” Emily said
cheerfully, “he’s just so pathetic; who wouldn't feel moved to help him?”

Anastasia laughed but did not say
anything. Alex reddened, and wondered how the conversation had gone in this
unfortunate direction. Homeroom had been a nightmare, and the lecture went over
his head. As if that wasn't enough for one day, Emily’s suggestion to sit on
the grass in the quad and relax had turned into this. Alex didn’t remember
anyone extending an invitation to Anastasia and her cohorts. Anastasia and
Emily, despite their frequent tiffs, seemed to get along very well for two
people destined for opposite sides in a conflict, to Alex’s eyes.

“She has a point,” Anastasia
acknowledged, removing a Tupperware container from her bag, and carefully
selecting a carrot stick from it. “He does have this lost puppy feel to him.”

Alex opened his eyes and turned his
head, so he could glare at Anastasia. This meant she had won their little game,
as usual. It was, however, a surprising development – after all, when was the last
time that Anastasia agreed with Emily on anything?

“Why always carrots?” he demanded, a
bit more testily than he intended to. “Are you a vegetarian or something?”

Anastasia looked back at him with
cold eyes, taking a bite from her carrot and then chewing it slowly,
deliberately, before answering him.

“My lunch did not work out. Neither
did my last cook, for that matter. Or, maybe I just like carrots,” she said
finally, her expression blank and ominous. “What is it to you, exactly?”

Vivik looked up at the two of them,
smiled tiredly, and then looked back down at his book.

“She’s a vegan, Alex,” Vivik said.
“A vegan who is going to have serious trouble on the test this week, if she
keeps skipping study session to focus on her evil plots and schemes.”

“My plots aren’t evil,” Anastasia
corrected, “Mostly. They are mostly not evil plots. Moreover, I have got that
test under control, thank you very much, Vivik. It’s not like you’re working on
it either,” she added accusatorially. “That’s Alex’s textbook you’re
annotating, right?”

Vivik sighed and put down the
highlighter.

“It’s not really the time I’d pick
to do this,” Vivik allowed. “But whenever I come by his dorm room he’s asleep,
or so he says. He won’t answer his door, anyway.”

“Very suspicious,” Emily said
gleefully. “What is it that you get up to in the evenings, anyway?”

Alex was not entirely sure how to
answer her question. He had been falling asleep early most nights, ever since
he had come to the Academy, often waking in the morning without having changed
out of his uniform, without any memory of going to bed in the first place. Alex
had always been a light sleeper, and he found this change worrisome, more so
since the strange conversation with Eerie that he could not fully remember.

“I wish it was something cool,” Alex
said, sitting up reluctantly. “But there’s nothing to it. I keep crashing out
early, that’s all. It’s not like a deliberate thing, it just kind of happens.”

Emily looked at him pityingly, her
golden hair curled into tight, perfect ringlets. She wore a plain grey sweater
with a maroon skirt, her legs folded beneath her, effortlessly beautiful. Alex
remembered their ‘arrangement’, and then tried to find something else to occupy
his attention.

“That’s sad, Alex,” Emily teased.
“You should find better things to do with your evenings.”

Anastasia’s expression was
poisonous.

“I think I’m going to pass on
commenting on that,” she said, gathering her books and shoving them into her
backpack. “I have class soon, and I have some things I need to take care of
before that.”

Renton and Edward began gathering
their things, Renton grumbling all the while, Edward silent and efficient. Alex
wondered how Edward could look so neat in his uniform after sitting in the
grass for an hour, and how it was that the exact same uniform could look so bad
on Renton. Vivik sighed and handed Alex the text he had been highlighting.

“That means I’ve got to get going
too,” Vivik said, standing and stretching, “which is too bad. Since I stayed up
and studied last night,” and here he shot Alex a significant glance, “I could
really use a nap out here in the sun.”

“That’s what you get for being
smart,” Alex said sleepily.

Margot stood up with Vivik,
startling him with her proximity.

“Actually, I came here to talk with
you, Vivik,” she said, collecting her bag. “Do you mind if I walk with you to
the Science building?”

Alex gave Vivik a questioning
glance, but if Vivik had any idea what was going on, he kept it to himself. He
agreed readily enough, but the confusion was obvious on his face. Anastasia
nodded at Alex, opened her black parasol, and walked purposefully off in the
direction of the Science building, flanked by Renton and Edward, Vivik and
Margot lagging behind.

“Hey, empath-girl. Make yourself
useful. Explain what just happened for me,” Alex commanded, looking at Emily
expectantly.

“You are so bossy,” Emily
complained, still engrossed in her notes. “Remember, they’re all pretty decent
at hiding stuff like that because they’ve already been through the training.
You’re getting better at it yourself, by the way.”

“Rebecca’s been teaching me.”

Alex was secretly pleased with the
praise. He had been practicing shielding his thoughts and emotions, but so far,
no one had commented on it, except for Rebecca gently making fun of his efforts,
during the lessons.

“Anyway, if you want my guess, I
think Vivik has no idea what Margot wants to talk to him about.”

“Okay,” Alex said, drawing his knees
to his chest and looking at Emily curiously. “What about Margot, then? What was
that all about?”

Emily put her pen down and frowned.

“That was pretty weird, wasn’t it?”

She twisted a lock of hair absently
between her fingers, her nails painted mother-of-pearl. Her hair caught the
afternoon light, golden and red.

“Margot’s emotions are muted, so I
never get much from her. I do know she wanted to talk about you, though.”

Alex started.

“What? Why? I barely even know
Margot…”

“I’m not sure why,” Emily said,
shrugging. “Common sense, really. Vivik seems to know you best of anyone, so if
she had something about you she wanted to know and she didn’t want to ask you
directly, then Vivik’s probably the one to ask, right?” Emily returned to her
paperwork. “Besides, Vivik’s easy for girls to push around. Even Margot has to
have noticed that. And this is creepy, by the way.”

Alex shook his head.

“Wait, what? What’s creepy?”

Emily smiled but did not look up.

“Asking me to spy on people this
way. It isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I suggested our arrangement.”
Emily tapped the eraser on her pencil absently against the textbook while she
read. “It’s not like I’m helping you out, or something. It’s more like I’m
spying on your friends.”

“I’m not sure that I’d call them my
friends,” Alex said crossly. She was probably right, he supposed, but he had
felt constantly at a loss since he had arrived. Emily had laid it all out very
simply, that night in her living room – if he would spend time with her, she
would help him out, dealing with people at the Academy. Just hanging around
Emily was enough to show her superiors that she was doing her job somewhat
successfully, or so she claimed. Alex was unsure how long the cartel would be
content with this situation, but he acceded to Emily’s request. There was no
polite way to refuse.

Of course, he was hoping for things
between them to go further. At least a little further.

Then again, he had been certain that
she would ask him to spend the night when he had come to her house for dinner,
and that hadn't exactly materialized. There had been a moment after the ride
home, at the Academy gates, before they headed back to their respective dorms,
when Alex was certain that he could have kissed her. Should have kissed her. As
usual, though, he chickened out, and had been beating himself up over it ever
since.

“Does your arm hurt?”

Alex looked up in surprise, shaken
from his ruminations by Emily’s voice. The concern in her eyes was obvious.

“Ah, well,” Alex muttered, realizing
that he had been cradling his left elbow and jerking his hand away, “it might have gotten tweaked in class yesterday.”

Emily scooted over until she was
sitting next to Alex, and then grabbed his elbow and inspected it, causing Alex
to yelp and try to pull away.

“It looks a bit swollen,” she said
sympathetically. “I thought Michael was your instructor? He did this to you?”

Alex shook his head. He had class
with Michael three times a week, not counting the morning workouts. Alex
couldn’t imagine him injuring someone. Not by accident, in any case.

Michael had decades of discipline,
training, and combat experience. Beyond that, he was a patient and genuinely
gifted teacher. Despite the other twelve students in his Wednesday afternoon
class, Alex suspected he got more than his fair share of personal instruction.
He still spent half of every Wednesday in the less capable hands of various
student instructors, however, and that could take a toll.

He was certain that Margot had not
intended to hyperextend his elbow – in fact, he probably should have tapped the
moment he felt her lock in an arm bar. Alex had not figured on her being so
strong, though, and thought he might be able to tear his arm out of her grip.
That did not happen, and for the first time since he met her, Margot looked
pleased. She tended expertly to his injured arm until one of the instructors came
to examine him.

“No, it was some student
instructor,” Alex said, bending the sore elbow experimentally. “I got it
checked out; they said it would get better on its own. It’s never really been
totally right, since that thing with the Weir, actually.”

Emily frowned at him, and then poked
at his elbow experimentally.

“Have you been icing it?”

“Sure,” Alex lied. “Just last
night.”

“Really?” Emily looked at him
skeptically. “How long are you going to keep lying to me, Alex? I’m an empath,
after all.”

Alex sighed, and Emily smiled
good-naturedly.

“You are no good at keeping
secrets,” she observed, continuing to poke at him.

“That makes me pretty unique around
here,” Alex said darkly, looking up at the blue sky and the clouds passing
overhead, and wishing that any of it made him feel even slightly more at ease.

Twenty-One

Alex really tried to stick with homeroom. At first.

It wasn’t so bad, most days, because
they spent much of the three-hour class in breakout groups or with student
instructors and guest lecturers, which were usually interesting. They passed
the time, if nothing else.

A Punjabi researcher from Analytics
taught the class to read a simple probability matrix. The depiction of
potential futures radiated out from a baseline of functional certainty,
branching and becoming less likely further from the center, implying other
dimensions and bewildering Alex. A suddenly vivid memory of a TV show startled
him, in which monks with saffron-colored robes delicately arranged sand into
elaborate mandalas. He had not understood the purpose of it in the slightest,
but found himself captivated by the evolving beauty of the designs they drew
with dyed sand.

On a different day, Alex and the
other combat-track students spent the period sitting on the grass, listening to
Rebecca lecture of the basics of psychic self-defense. Rebecca insisted on
holding the class outdoors, and apparently refused to teach if not allowed to
smoke. That was the idea, according to the syllabus anyway, but what actually
happened was Rebecca showed up hungover and grumpy, and talked about the topic
at hand for less than half an hour. They spent the rest of the period in an
induced but contented silence, while Rebecca took a nap in the sun.

One entire morning was devoted to a
short Mongolian professor, whose name Alex never did catch, lecturing
semi-coherently on relaying coded field information via Internet message boards
and social-networking sites. Another afternoon consisted of tiny Mr. Huang
demonstrating in rapid order how to open a dozen different models of locks with
improvised tools, while the class watched in astonishment and envy. An alarming
number of people stayed after.

And that was only the practical
stuff – unlike, say, the two hours they spent with a cheery empath named Mrs.
Lovett who encouraged them to hurl paint at a roomful of blank canvases, or Mr.
Brosnik’s interminable lectures on chess and a
Japanese game called Go. There were various other sessions on gardening,
ceramics, and even Civil War reenactment.

As far as Alex could tell, there was
no pressure on the students to learn what the guest lecturers taught, but for
anyone who showed interest, further instruction was available. Accordingly,
Alex was careful never to show any, particularly for the history teacher who
showed up in full Union regalia.

The core course, and Mr. Windsor
along with it, was another matter entirely. For one thing, the lectures were
frustratingly broad and vague, the kind of topics that Alex associated with the
questions that novels sometimes included in the back for book club discussions.
Mr. Windsor was always encouraging them to ‘consider’ – to consider, for
example, the nature of the Ether itself, or the oddity of Central being located
inside of it, or what effects repeated transit through it might have on the
human body. Alex played along for a while, until he realized that Windsor
didn’t have any real answers – he seemed to think that any sort of discussion
was a desirable thing in and of itself. Alex resented questions to which there
were no answers.

Then Anastasia informed him that
passing homeroom was not a requirement in order to graduate from the Academy.
Apparently, Mr. Windsor’s role was more advisory than anything, and homeroom
designed more as a yardstick to measure the student’s progress and interest
level than to teach any one thing. That was still buzzing around in his head
when Mr. Windsor asked him to stay late after class one Friday. Alex had an
afternoon training session with Michael looming, and precious little time before
it began.

“Can I ask what the problem is?”
Alex demanded, as soon as the rest of the class had filed out, Emily glancing
over her shoulder sympathetically at him before she left.

If Alex's tone surprised Mr.
Windsor, then he did not show it. He simply carried on stowing his laptop away
in the brown leather messenger bag he carried with him everywhere, the same
defocused smile plastered on his face that seemed to be an almost permanent
feature.

“I wanted to discuss your progress
and your comfort level with the material, Alex,” Mr. Windsor said reasonably.
“Our most recent test was not your finest effort to date, particularly on the
subject of classification of protocols. Moreover, your essay on the founding of
Central, a topic that you selected, I might add, is now quite overdue. Can I
ask why?”

Alex refused to be thrown off by the
diplomatic approach, though he had anticipated a lecture.

“I guess I have too much other stuff
going on that seems more important than this class,” Alex said curtly. “No one is
going to shoot me in the head for not knowing how the Black Sun rose to
prominence, or when the Agreement was expanded to include vampires, or whatever
random topic we’re working on right now.”

Mr. Windsor, against all
expectations, laughed and gave Alex a knowing nod.

“It’s true, and I do understand, the
Operations track is an intensive and difficult one,” Mr. Windsor said
sincerely. “But, it is important for you to understand that you are not
attending the Academy solely for the benefit of Central. The Academy exists to
help you become a more complete person, Alex, and no amount of physical
training or combat experience can create a whole, rational, functional being.
Operators function under tremendous stresses, and some of what we discuss here
provides you with tools to understand and cope with that stress. The topics of
the class may seem haphazard, I admit, but I am trying to provide you with a
gloss, an overview of the principles by which the world you live in functions,
and the alternatives available to you. The rest of the Academy teaches you to
obey and to execute, and they do an admirable job of it. I am allowed a few
hours every week to try to teach you to think critically. Do you see why this
is so important?”

Alex sighed and shook his head.

“Look, I don’t understand how a car
works, or an ATM, okay? But I can use both of them just fine.”

This was actually untrue. Alex had
never driven in his life.

“I’m not here to teach you how
things work, Alex, I am here to help you understand why they work. Don’t
you want to know why things are the way they are?”

Alex had to stop to consider it for
a moment.

“I guess,” Alex admitted
reluctantly. “It isn’t like you have any real answers, though – no disrespect,
Mr. Windsor.”

“Ah, but that’s just it!” Mr.
Windsor cried out, as if thrilled by Alex’s answer. “Are the only questions you
are interested in those that have already been answered?”

Alex snorted and turned to gather
his things.

“You’re talking in circles, Mr.
Windsor,” he said impatiently. “Any chance I can go? I might still have time
for a shower and a meal before I have to go back to the gym.”

Mr. Windsor looked at him and
smiled, the look on his face sad enough that Alex almost relented, until he
remembered that this man was trying to teach him.

“What are you interested in, Alex?”

“What?” Alex snapped, exasperated by
his persistence.

“It’s a simple question,” Mr.
Windsor said expansively. “And any answer at all will do. In thirty years of
teaching, I have yet to meet a student who wasn’t interested in something, Mr.
Warner.”

Alex thought about it. He thought
about it for a while, and then he got a bit worried. Eventually, there was no
other option but confession.

“I can’t… um. I can’t really think
of anything, Mr. Windsor.”

Mr. Windsor shook his head.

“Come now. There must be something…
I notice that you wear headphones every day when you come into class. You must
like music?”

“I guess,” Alex shrugged. “I mostly
like not having to talk, or listen to people, you know?”

“How about games, Alex? What kind of
games do you play?”

Again, he had to stop to consider.
It didn’t take long, though. There isn’t much to see in a blank sheet of paper.

“What do you mean? Like, video
games, or something? Nah, I don’t really play games. I mean, I have played
cards and stuff, and I could probably remember dominoes or checkers if you gave
me a board and a few minutes. But, I can’t say that I’ve ever really been into
them much…”

“Alex, I don’t mean to pry, but
you’ve been institutionalized, haven’t you?”

Mr. Windsor’s voice was soft and
kindly, but to Alex, it sounded treacherous. He looked longingly at the exit,
wishing he could simply walk out the door and never come back.

“Now, now, don’t be angry,” Mr.
Windsor said soothingly. “I have no idea what happened to you, and I don’t need
to know. I am familiar enough with the signs to recognize them when I see them.
You are hardly the first student at the Academy with a difficult history. That,
however, is beside the point. You must have had a great deal of time to kill,
then, in the institution. What did you do with it, Alex?”

Alex thought about it for a while,
resenting Mr. Windsor the entire time. Why should he bother trying to please a
teacher who could not fail him? One who taught a class about nothing?

Especially, Alex thought, especially
when he had such a terrible headache. Why did he have to get one now, of all
times? He had to go to the gym in a little while, and now he felt like crap...

“Well, I, I mean it wasn’t like
there was nothing to do, but…”

Alex’s mouth was dry, his hands were
numb, and his fingertips tingled. The area behind his eyes ached like a tooth
gone bad, an ice-cold spike driven through his cerebrum. His mouth seemed to be
working by itself, in the absence of any sign of his mental faculties
returning.

“There wasn’t any one thing that I
did especially…”

Alex had to go lie down. He was
suddenly certain of it, and the very thought of putting his head on a pillow
sounded so good then he actually felt better, just thinking about it. He
had to go lie down, he knew it, the way he knew that the sky outside was blue.

“I have to go lie down,” he mumbled,
waving one hand in a vague sort of acknowledgment, or dismissal. Mr. Windsor watched
him go stumbling out the door with a pained smile.

Alex shambled right past Rebecca,
who sat with her eyes screwed closed in the front row of the lecture hall,
without even a shred of recognition on his face. He almost tripped over her
outstretched foot without acknowledging her existence. She did not open her
eyes until after the classroom door slammed shut behind him.

“That was much worse than I was led
to believe,” Mr. Windsor said plainly, taking off his glasses and rubbing the
lenses against his shirt. “Did you send him away?”

“That was fucking dangerous, is what
it was,” Rebecca grumbled, standing up. “You were told not to engage him
unnecessarily. You’ve been warned about bringing up Alex’s past, or pushing him
too hard.” She shook her head irritably. “Why did you bring me here today?”

“Why did you choose to hide your
presence from him?” Windsor countered. “When did you learn how to do that? I am
a bit impressed, actually. I thought it outside your capabilities.”

“I don’t answer your questions,
Gerald,” Rebecca snapped. “You answer mine. Do not forget who you are talking
to. What did you want me to see here?”

“We are failing him,” Mr. Windsor
said, hanging his head with the admission. “Surely it is obvious to you?
Alexander Warner isn’t even a fraction of a person, not yet. He is hardly even
a beginning. We aren’t giving him the kind of opportunities he needs in order
to become whole. He is not capable of developing on his own; his disconnect
goes too deep for that. Alex needs a gentle introduction to the world around
him, with patience and compassion. We aren't doing anything of the sort, as you
well know. We are just teaching him how to kill people. Something he is almost
certain to do, I might add, unless we give him the opportunity to do anything
else with his prodigious talents.”

Rebecca tapped her foot impatiently.

“So, that’s it, huh? Remorse for a
hypothetical lost childhood? Or do you have some sort of rational reason for
staging this little scene?”

“I thought you should know,” Mr.
Windsor said plaintively. “Alex trusts you more than anyone else he’s ever met,
you realize that? Rhetorical question, of course you are already aware.
However, do you take the responsibility that comes with that trust seriously?
I’ve never been sure with you, Rebecca.”

“Everyone trusts me because I am
trustworthy, Alex included. You know, this was my favorite class when I was at
the Academy,” Rebecca said fondly, sitting back down in the front row chair,
“and you were my favorite teacher.”

“Then help me teach him, Rebecca,”
Windsor pleaded. “At least give me the opportunity.”

Rebecca pursed her lips and looked
away. After a little while, she shrugged uncomfortably, as if she wished she
were somewhere else.

“Don’t waste your time,” she said
curtly. “Worry about the ones that can be helped. Make Alex’s homeroom
experience as easy as possible. You understand me? Nothing challenging, no
difficult questions.”

Mr. Windsor shook his head sadly,
moving again to wipe his fogged-up glasses.

“Say,” he asked curiously, “did it
get cold in here a minute ago?”

***

“Do
you want to sleep for a little while, now, Alex?”

Alex’s face slowly contorted with
the effort of thought. Speech was an even more involved process, and he managed
little more than a grunt.

“Okay,” Rebecca nodded from where
she sat, eyes closed, her knees pressed against Alex’s, holding both of his
limp hands tightly. “You rest now, Alex. You don’t have to go to sleep if you
don’t want to, and if you do decide to sleep, you can wake up whenever you feel
ready. And when you wake up,” Rebecca added, opening her eyes and smiling at
the boy affectionately, “do me a favor and feel better, okay?”

Alex may have nodded. Michael wasn’t
sure, as he couldn’t see very well from where he sat with his chair tucked in a
corner of Rebecca’s cluttered, homey office. It might have simply been that she
responded as if he had nodded.

Rebecca shook her head, and stood
up, unsteadily. Michael fought back an urge to help her – he knew from long
experience that was the last thing Rebecca wanted. She took a few deep breaths,
then walked the short distance between the new couch Alex sprawled across and
the desk where her cigarettes sat, one hand running along the wall for support.
Michael waited in polite silence until she was sitting with a lit cigarette in
her hand.

“Well? Anything?”

Rebecca blew smoke at the ceiling
and shook her head curtly.

“You know it didn’t work,” she said
crossly. “We’ve been at this for three weeks, Michael, and you know perfectly
well that I would be freaking out right now if I had managed to implant even
one working protocol in that poor boy’s head. For fuck’s sake, Michael,” she
snarled, “how much further are you planning on taking this?”

Michael smiled thinly and crossed
his legs.

“Maybe if we tried a stronger
imprinting…”

“We can’t,” Rebecca said tiredly.
“I’m already using Alex’s as a catalyst to try and implant through his innate
resistance – I push any harder, we run the risk that he doesn’t know anything but
the protocol afterwards.”

Michael rubbed his smooth chin
thoughtfully.

“What does that catalyst effect feel
like?” Michael asked, changing subjects. “I’ve read about it in theory, the
feedback loop and all, but watching you…”

Rebecca was quiet for a moment, her arm
hanging in the air in front of her, frozen in the act of bringing the cigarette
to her mouth.

“It’s as intense as it looks,
probably more,” she admitted, eyes averted. “The longer I hold on, the more
difficult it is to break the connection.”

“That must be frightening,” Michael
observed.

Rebecca glared at him.

“The frightening part is that every
time I do it I’m a little bit less inclined to try and break it at all.”
Rebecca brooded, hugging one arm around her waist, looking absently in Alex’s
direction. “My sanity is on the line, here, Michael, and you would do well to
appreciate that fact when I ask you again, how much longer do you plan on
pursuing this?”

“The boy must be trained,” Michael
said flatly, his face determined and his eyes serious. “He has powerful
enemies, and that’s not likely to change. He needs to be able to protect
himself. He needs to be able to operate protocols. Conventional protocols.”

Rebecca flicked ash into the crowded
tray on her desk. She looked at the day’s worth of paperwork, neatly piled in
its manila folders in two parallel stacks, pristine, totally untouched, and
sighed.

“There’s no precedent for this,
Michael. No one has ever overcome this level of resistance. The only protocol
I’ve been able to implant is Absolute, and when Alex operates it, it’s Black,”
Rebecca’s voice was surprisingly gentle when she said this, looking
thoughtfully at Michael. He stirred in his chair uncomfortably. “Before they
augmented Mitsuru, it was the same deal with her.”

“Someone broached the Academy
Barrier last night. They did… whatever they did to that Horror, and then sent
it here dying, so close to dead that the Barrier failed to register it. That
Barrier has never been broken, Rebecca, not in fifty years, and they did this
just to get at that boy.” Michael leaned forward and met Rebecca’s eyes. “That
boy has enemies, and he needs to operate a protocol, in order to defend
himself.”

“If only there was more than one way
to skin a cat, eh, Mikey?” Alice said playfully, sticking her head in through a
gap in the door. “How long are you going to hold on to him, anyway?”

Rebecca sighed and waved Alice into
the office.

“Are you guys planning on having
another fight?” Rebecca asked, stubbing out her cigarette and then reaching for
the pack. “Because I am so not interested.”

“I’m serious,” Alice said
insistently. “When are you going to start teaching him something, Michael?”

Michael’s expression was stormy. He
glared up at Alice, who took no apparent notice, settling behind the desk in
Rebecca’s chair, putting her combat boots up in the two shallow grooves that
Rebecca had worn in the desk’s surface, doing the same thing. Rebecca looked
over at Alice as she slouched in her chair, sighed again, and then moved to the
windowsill, lighting another cigarette and pointedly looking out at the
evening.

“I am teaching him,” Michael said
curtly. “And in affairs involving the students, I don’t have to answer to you.”

Alice smiled and leaned forward in
her chair.

“I know, I know. This is
professional curiosity here, Mikey, one colleague to another, looking for a
little information,” Alice said, throwing her hands up innocently. “Wanted to
figure out how long you plan on dicking around, using
up Rebecca and the kid’s time, implementing standard protocols that you know
perfectly well aren’t going to work.”

Michael gritted his teeth, his hands
tightening around the knobs on the arms of his chair, while Alice settled back
in her chair and smiled. Rebecca sighed theatrically from across the room, but
neither of them appeared to pay her any attention, they were so focused on each
other. The staring match continued for a while, but Alice’s smirk was
unflappable.

“Why would Alex’s training be part
of your concerns, Auditor?” Michael asked acidly.

Alice hooted.

“Oh, you want to make it formal?”
Alice asked. “That’s fine. I am within my rights. The boy’s an obvious
candidate for Audits, you must have noticed.”

“What?”

Michael’s disbelief seemed forced to
Rebecca.

“Sure, come on,” Alice said,
laughing, “power like that, and with unconventional protocols? He’s a natural.”

“Unconventional?” Michael almost
spat, standing up and pointing at Alice. “You want him to use Black Protocols?”

“Are the conventional ones working,
then?” Alice asked innocently. Michael glowered at her, his face contorted with
anger.

“The boy is a powerful catalyst
already,” Michael said, gesturing defiantly. “In his own right, he is already a
considerable asset. Until we have exhausted all other options, even discussion
of Black Protocols is premature.”

“Rebecca?” Alice asked over her
shoulder. “Have all the other options been exhausted?”

They both turned and stared at the
petite brunette sitting on the windowsill smoking and looking unhappy, one leg
dangling out in the evening air.

“Alice, you’re such a bitch,”
Rebecca said, tired but not malicious. “I told you not to drag me into your
bullshit.”

“But I’m asking for your
professional opinion, here, Rebecca,” Alice objected, feigning innocence.

Rebecca looked over at them briefly,
her eyes lingering sadly over the both of them in turn, and then returned her
attention to world outside her window.

“I don’t think that Alex can use
conventional protocols,” Rebecca said grudgingly. “The imprint with the
Absolute Protocol was successful, but it isn’t conventional when he operates
it. Don’t hate me, Michael.”

Alice turned back to Michael and
smirked.

“Just like Mitsuru, remember? You
know the documentation as well as I do, Mikey. He is a textbook case. Just like
me.”

Michael stood up angrily, his body
shaking and his hands clenched.

“Did you remember that for yourself,
Alice?” Michael’s voice was tight and cold, his face angry and miserable at the
same time. Rebecca winced and put her head between her knees as if she were
dizzy. “Or did you have to look it up in your diary?”

Alice frowned briefly, and then
shrugged.

“You don’t have to be a dick.” A
troubled look crossed Alice’s face, briefly, before her normal confidence
reasserted itself. “Since you clearly think that you’ve got the moral high ground,
why don’t you tell me what your grand plan is for training a student who can’t
use conventional protocols? Will he be beating Weir to death with his bare
hands?”

Michael sat down heavily, as if he
were angry at the chair.

“I’ve had enough of your shit,
Alice,” Michael said, rubbing his forehead. “This conversation is over.”

Alice stood up slowly, pushing the
chair in behind her, and walked up close to where Michael sat, bending down to
look in his eyes, her face grave.

“This is the last time I will ask
you, Michael,” she said softly, almost sadly. “If you don’t give me an answer,
then I will have to address the matter as an Auditor. And,” she added
thoughtfully, “then I won’t be asking at all.”

Michael looked up at her, his face
contorted, and then turned away.

“Guys,” Rebecca said, breaking the
tense silence, “you are aware that both of you have offices of your own,
right?”

She looked at them hopefully, but
neither acknowledged her presence. Rebecca swore to herself quietly in a stream
of jumbled English and Spanish.

“As I said earlier,” Michael began,
his face composed and his voice calm, if tinged with regret, “the boy’s ability
as a catalyst is unprecedented. With the right partner, or even group of
partners, he could be a formidable…”

“Battery,” Alice cut in grimly,
sitting down on the edge of Rebecca’s desk. “You want to use Warner as a
battery, because you’re afraid of what might happen if you actually let him
develop those powers, right?”

“That’s not it!” Michael sputtered.
“You know what kind of potential the boy has! You should know the consequences
of that boy using a Black Protocol. We had this conversation about Mitsuru,
once, and look how that turned out. Or have you,” Michael added pointedly,
“forgotten about that too?”

Alice winced, and then, after a
moment, gave Michael a bitter smile.

“You are afraid, in other words, and
because you’re afraid, you want to deny him the opportunity to choose for
himself. Pathetic.” Alice looked down at him coldly, her smile wider. “And he’s
not ‘the boy’. His name is Alexander.”

Rebecca started, giving Alice an
appraising look.

Alex made a show of yawning and
stretching, sitting up slowly, well aware that all the eyes in the room had
immediately shifted over to him the moment he stirred.

“Alex, please. And he’s awake,” Alex
said disinterestedly. “Been awake for a while now.” He looked up at Alice, and
grinned at her sleepily. “You must be Miss Gallow, right?”

Rebecca’s eyes narrowed.

“Alex,” she asked softly, in a tone
that could not be ignored, “how do you know about Alice?”

Alex laughed and ran his fingers
through his hair, brushing his bangs out of his eyes.

“Because everyone talks about an
Auditor named Alice Gallow who they are all afraid of, who wears black all the
time,” Alex said, a bit sheepishly. “And she’s arguing with Michael like that’s
no big deal, so...”

Alice shook her head, stifling a
laugh.

“This kid isn’t half dumb,” Alice
observed. “I might be able to like you, Alex Warner.”

Alex nodded solemnly.

“I am difficult not to like, Miss
Gallow,” he agreed. “Actually, I’m hopeless. There’s no teaching me anything.”

“I told you,” Alice said, looking
over at Michael with a mischievous grin, “Alex and I are like two peas in a
pod.”

“And that’s exactly what worries
me.” Michael said flatly, arms folded.

Rebecca pitched her cigarette butt
out the window and then occupied the chair behind her desk, for variety’s sake.

“Actually, that worries me, too,”
Rebecca said thoughtfully. “What do you think about all this, Alex?”

Alex’s expression went suddenly
blank, and he shot quick looks at both Alice and Michael before answering
cautiously, his expression strained as he choose his words carefully.

“Michael has been training me since
I got here, and I’ve learned a lot from him, so I don’t really think it’s for
me to say.”

Alice guffawed, and then shot him a
look of utter disappointment.

“That what you think, Alex? Maybe I
was wrong about you, kid. Maybe you aren’t in the right place, after all, if
you are that eager to play good soldier.”

“What?”

Alex’s jaw hung open in frank
astonishment.

“Michael isn’t going to fight for
you, or even with you,” Alice said bluntly. “Michael is going to teach you what
he can, and he’ll do the best possible job of it. Once you are in the field,
though, Michael will be here at the Academy with the next generation of
promising youngsters. Nobody can make this kind of decision for you, no matter
how good their intentions. You have to take ownership of your life eventually.”

Rebecca nodded, looking sadly back
at her pack of cigarettes, sitting where she had left them, on the windowsill.

“Alice is right,” Rebecca said.
“This is something you have to decide for yourself, Alex.”

Michael looked helplessly from one
woman to the other, eyes blazing, but neither would meet his eyes. Alex shook
his head and grimaced.

“Well, then I don’t know enough
about it to make the decision. It’s not even a fair question. I do know that if
you smoke another cigarette in here, Rebecca, then I am leaving.”

Rebecca froze, her expression wounded.

“Why is it that no one respects my
office? First people start coming here to have arguments, now students are
telling me I’m not allowed to smoke. What’s next? Mandatory naps?”

Michael stood up.

“Well, I think this is settled for
now…”

“What is settled, exactly?”

Alice’s tone was jovial, but Alex
was starting to notice something about the tall woman’s smile. It was off,
somehow. Whatever a smile was supposed to be – warm, bright, inviting,
comforting, whatever – Alice’s expression was the polar opposite of that. The
last thing you wanted to see.

The last thing, Alex reminded
himself, that any number of people had seen, if even half the stories he had
heard about Alice Gallow were true.

Michael paused on his way to the
door, but did not look back.

“Alex said he doesn’t understand
what we are talking about,” Michael said calmly. “Until he does, further
discussion is pointless.”

Alice sat down next to Alex on the
couch, and gave him a friendly pat on the knee.

“I will make it simple,” Alice
suggested. “Alex, you remember the Weir who attacked you and Mitzi in the
park?”

Rebecca’s jaw almost hit the floor,
though again, no one seemed to notice. The expression was wasted without an
audience, though, so Rebecca quietly closed her mouth.

“What did you call Mitsuru…?”

Again, no one paid her any
attention. Rebecca had to fight the impulse to go and check to see if her name
was still on the door.

“Did you like that?” Alice asked
Alex, inspecting his face as if she actually expected him to look happy. “Lying
there and bleeding while Mitsuru did all the work?”

Alex stared at her, eyes wide.

“Um…” he muttered, shaking his head.
“I don’t really…”

“Damn it, Alice.”

Michael glared at Alice, but she
paid him no mind.

“Are you comfortable being saved all
the time, Alex?”

Alice pushed one finger against his
chest playfully.

“It makes things a whole lot easier
when you are the victim. Everything is black and white, and nobody ever expects
anything from you.”

Alex pushed her hand away, clearly
annoyed.

“Of course not,” Alex said, his
voice trembling. “I didn’t want any of that stuff to happen, for Mitsuru to get
hurt. What could I have done about it, though?”

Alice stood up and smiled at Michael
triumphantly.

“If he gets his way,” Alice said
ominously, pointing at Michael, “that’s exactly how things will stay. You will
never have any options. You will never be able to protect anyone, Alex, not
even yourself. Instead, you will watch your friends die protecting you.”

Michael’s fist slammed into the
doorframe, causing everyone but Alice to jump.

“No need to get pissy,” Alice said
lightly, rummaging briefly through her coat pocket before coming up with a
folded piece of paper. “I already talked to Alistair and got permission. You
keep training him however you like, Michael,” she said, eyes sparkling. “I’m
going to have Mitzi put him through the Program. Out of your jurisdiction.”

“Not a chance,” Michael said firmly.
“I’ll go over your head, straight to the Director if I have to.”

“Then go talk to Gaul,” Alice said,
shrugging. “He’ll back me. We all know that this is too personal for you to
make an impartial decision.”

“Uh, what Program?” Alex asked
softly, afraid to interrupt. “Is that bad? Am I in trouble?”

“Alice, you’re insane,” Michael
growled. “Rebecca, say something.”

Rebecca smiled ruefully.

“Actually, I have been talking
pretty much the entire time…”

Rebecca trailed off when she
realized that no one was listening. Alice dropped the paper on the floor in
front of Michael, shrugged, and started for the door.

“It’s quite simple, Alex,” Alice
said over her shoulder. “You can do things Michael’s way. You don’t have to
make a choice. However, if you want out of the Program – and you will – then I
suggest you find a way to impress me with your personal development. Because it
will not end until I say. And I won’t say, until you’ve learned to take care of
yourself, at the very least.”

Alice turned back towards the door,
and motioned for Michael, frozen with his fist pressed against the door jamb,
to stand aside.

“Move it, Mikey,” Alice said,
jerking her thumb to the side. “I’ve got things to take care of.”

“Thanks for stopping by, you guys,”
Rebecca hinted.

Michael’s arm did not move, but his
hand shook where it pressed against the old wood of the doorframe.

“Off to practice being a cunt?”

Michael spoke through gritted teeth,
his arm falling reluctantly to his side.

“You think I still need practice?”
Alice asked, smiling as she squeezed past him and out into the hall.

Twenty-Two

Emily’s hair was up in curlers, and she was halfway finished with her eyebrows, when
Margot came into the otherwise empty dorm bathroom, wrapped in a bathrobe and
looking like she had just woken, and wasn’t too pleased about it, a yellow
plastic basket with her toiletries hanging from one hand. She walked over to
the long faux-marble counter and set her stuff down on the sink next to Emily,
giving her a nod. Emily smiled at her and then went back to tweezing her
eyebrow. She waited until Margot had started taking the top off a bottle of
facial cleanser before she snuck a look at her halo.

There were all sorts of ways, as
Emily understood it, for empaths to realize their talent. Some of them saw
emotions as colored auras surrounding people, others heard music associated
with a specific emotional state, while some particularly unlucky empaths even
experienced a mirror image of the emotions that they sensed around them. Emily,
being only moderately unlucky, saw what she called halos – a roughly circular
hollow ring of colored smoke that floated above people’s heads. She could not
see them all the time or without effort. She had learned how to look for them
gradually, with much practice. At the Academy, seeing halos was even more
difficult, as almost everyone was taught to resist such things. Nevertheless,
if Emily tried hard, most the time, she could see it, at least a little bit.

Margot’s halo was thin and reedy,
almost broken in places, but that was normal for her. Her halo was a uniform
grey-blue, which in Emily’s own personal interpretation, indicated either
apathy or a tremendous ability to control her emotions. For Margot, this too
was normal.

Then Sarah came breezing in,
greeting both of them cheerfully and then walking over to the sink on Emily’s
opposite side, the tiled space echoing with the sound of her sandals. Emily did
not need to check Sarah’s halo. As always, it was a ring of pulsating rose-pink
light, which for Emily indicated optimism, goodwill, and excitement, which was
Sarah’s default emotional state. But there was something a bit unusual about
it, in that it was shot through with the silvery metallic tone that Emily
associated with curiosity, curiosity she was certain was directed at her, when
she noticed Sarah glancing over while she got her hairbrush out.

“So,” Sarah said, her eyes locked on
the hair she was brushing as if it required her full attention, “when were you
going to tell me about your little date with Alex?”

Emily did her best to look composed.
She had guessed at the source of her curiosity, of course, and she kind of did
want to brag about it. Only kind of, though, because it hadn’t gone exactly how
she’d hoped. Then she saw herself in the mirror and realized she was blushing,
and that made it all worse.

“We didn’t go on a date. I made him
dinner, that’s all.”

“At your house,” Sarah offered,
smiling eagerly.

“At my parent’s house,” Emily
corrected.

“But, they weren’t there, right?”

“How did you know that?”

Sarah waved her hairbrush
dismissively.

“I didn’t think you’d invite Alex
over to meet your mom on a first date. Come on, tell me, how was it?”

Emily put away her tweezers, and
then started to remove the curlers from her hair. She hoped her hair came out
looking all right, because sleeping with the curlers in had been a pain. The
Raleigh Cartel’s precognitives had told her that Alex would like her hair
better this way, so she had been dutifully curling her hair since the session
had started. She thought it looked good, but she was getting a little tired of
all the work entailed.

“It was pretty good. I mean, Therese
showed up, even though she wasn’t supposed to be there, and she made a scene,
as usual. But, it could have been a lot worse.”

Sarah glanced over sympathetically.

“Therese still does that, huh?
Doesn’t she ever get tired of scaring your boyfriends off?”

“Did she?”

Emily turned to Margot, who was
filling the sink while watching her in the mirror, surprised that she asked
anything at all. She thought that she and Margot got along fine, for two people
who barely ever spoke to each other, but she could not remember the vampire
showing any previous interest in her personal life. Margot was looking at her
expectantly, so Emily couldn’t risk peaking at her halo to try to figure out
her motivation.

“Did she what?”

“Did she scare off Alex?” Margot
asked, putting one hand in the water briefly to check the temperature. “Or is
he your boyfriend now?”

The curler in Emily’s fingers at
that moment slipped from her hand and clattered off the counter and onto the
ground. Sarah picked it up for her, and then set it down next to the rest of
Emily’s toiletries on the counter.

“Well,” Emily stalled, trying to
reason out some kind of answer, “not exactly. She didn’t seem to scare Alex
off, though it was a little bit weird after she left. And no, Alex isn’t my
boyfriend. We don’t even know each other that well, yet. But,” Emily said
slowly, enjoying saying it aloud, even if it wasn’t exactly the whole truth,
“well, we are kind of seeing each other.”

This was not exactly a lie. Alex had
agreed, after all, to see her again, and to spend more time with her. Of
course, she told him it would help convince the Hegemony that she was doing her
job, and therefore make them leave both of them alone. That was a detail, and if
it was an unpleasant detail, it was a minor one. The important thing, she
reminded herself, was that she had made progress.

“Really? That’s awesome,” Sarah
enthused, grabbing Emily’s shoulder and squealing. “I was worried for you. He
seems a little...shy. Spacey, too.”

“He is,” Emily agreed cheerfully. “I
mean, I don’t know that much about him, but given how he got here, and what it
must be like, with everyone knowing who he is and all, I don’t think it’s too
surprising that he’s a little nervous. It’s okay. It’s even sort of cute.”

Margot looked up from the towel she
was using to dry her face.

“Do you like him?”

The vampire’s voice was flat and
devoid of interest. Emily wanted badly to take a quick look at her halo, to
look for the reassuring silver flash of curiosity, but Margot intimidated her.

“Maybe. I think that I might,” Emily
answered, being as upbeat as possible while still telling the truth.

“Did he spend the night?”

Sarah nudged Emily, her eyes
sparkling.

Emily’s pride and pleasure at being
the center of attention wavered.

“No,” she admitted reluctantly,
trying very hard to put Alex’s confession of inexperience and the bizarre story
about his family out of her mind, as thinking about it made her feel weirdly sweaty
and nervous. “I was kind of upset. Therese and I got into a fight, and I didn’t
want to be there when she came back, so we came back up to campus.”

Sarah looked puzzled.

“But, I thought that your plan was…”

“It was,” Emily acknowledged,
freeing her hair from the last of the curlers, and then frowning at her
reflection in the mirror as if it had done something to her. “But, the mood was
all wrong, and anyway, I don’t want him to think that I’m… oh, I don’t know.
Desperate or something. I wanted it to be, you know, good.”

Sarah’s hair brushing became more
agitated.

“Are you sure about that? Don’t get
me wrong, but you need this to work, right?”

“Well, yes,” Emily said, feeling her
cheeks burn, unable to look up from her lap. “But… well, I’m not… not like
that.”

“Come on. I know perfectly well what
you’re like,” Sarah said, sounding a bit exasperated. “Remember that boy at the
start of last session, what was his name? Kurt something? He followed you
around for like two months before he finally gave up on you because he thought
you weren’t interested, and I know you liked him. You have many good points,
Emily, but being assertive isn’t exactly one of them. Did you even let Alex
kiss you?”

“He didn’t, uh, he didn’t try,”
Emily said, trying not to sound discouraged or pathetic. “Actually, I thought
he would. I was standing right there. I would have let him.”

“He is shy,” Margot observed,
carefully squeezing toothpaste onto her toothbrush.

“Look, don’t take this the wrong
way,” Sarah said carefully. “I know that this is a weird situation. And I know
that you like to take these things slow. You have to factor the rest of the
world into your thinking, though. This is not some boy you are crushing on; he
is a strategic asset for the cartels to fight over. Anastasia and the rest of
them are serious about recruiting this kid, you know?”

“I know,” Emily acknowledged
quietly.

“And just because you want to wait
for the right time and make sure that you have feelings for each other and
everything is special, that doesn’t mean that some other girl won’t hop right
into bed with him, you know? It’s probably not going to be roses and
candlelight dinners.”

Sarah looked at her with what Emily
pretended was not a trace of pity. Sarah was her friend, Emily reminded herself
firmly, and she was trying to help.

“He’s a guy, Emily. You know how
guys are.”

“I know,” Emily acknowledged, in a
steadily meeker voice.

“I’m not saying you have to throw
yourself at him, but if he thinks you're never going to put out, some bitch is
going to steal him from you. I’m not trying to be hard on you,” Sarah said
firmly. “That's how it is, hon. You know that, right?”

“Yes,” Emily said, fighting off a
looming wave of self-pity.

“There are a bunch of other Hegemony
girls who are waiting for you to fail so they can take your place. And there is
nothing that Anastasia will not do to get what she wants,” Sarah said urgently,
putting one hand on Emily’s shoulder. “She will have no trouble whatsoever
finding someone who will do whatever it takes to get Alex to join the Black
Sun, if Anastasia decides that’s the way she wants to handle it.”

“Why do you think Anastasia hasn’t
done that?” Margot asked, only somewhat intelligible through the toothpaste.

It was always weird to watch Margot
brush her teeth, because it was the only time Emily could actually see her
oversized, pointed canines. Not that she was scared of Margot or vampires in
general; well, not very afraid. Her teeth, however, were the starkest
reminder of how very different Margot was.

“No idea,” Sarah admitted. “You’d
know better than I would – you still work for her sometimes, right, Margot? I
don’t try and out-think cousin Ana, I am just glad my branch of the family
stayed with the Hegemony. She probably has some other plan for Alex. Even if
Anastasia doesn’t interfere, somebody else will. You know how many power-hungry
bitches there are here at the Academy? You do your usual good-girl routine,
Emily, and you’re going to get lost in the shuffle.”

“I know. I know you’re right,” Emily
said, doing her best not to sound miserable and failing. “But, I already
screwed up my chance. I don’t know when I can get the house to myself again,
and I don’t know if he’d even come over again...”

Sarah looked stricken, and patted
her on the shoulder sympathetically. For a moment, she said nothing, and then
she suddenly cried out excitedly.

“Of course!” She grabbed hold of
Emily’s shoulders as if she were going to shake her. “I’ve got it. A perfect
opportunity!”

“What?”

“Hey, Margot, when does Alex start that
class with Mitsuru? You know, the bad one?” Sarah asked, nodding excitedly as
she spoke. “The one on the combat track everyone hates?”

Margot’s response was
unintelligible, due to an excess of toothpaste. They had to wait until she
rinsed her mouth before they could hear her answer.

“You mean the Program,” she said
curtly, looking, to Emily’s eyes, unhappy about something. “And he starts this
week.”

“Perfect!” Sarah enthused. “What you
do, is on his first day, you get the proctor to let you into his room while he
is in class, right? You will be waiting for him when he gets out. Say that you
were worried about him, boys like that. His proctor is Li, so it won’t be any
big deal getting him to help you. He'll think it's funny. Anyway, I hear that
class is pretty messed up, especially at first. Don’t you think he might want
some company after, Margot?”

“Yes,” Margot admitted, speaking a
little too loudly, her flat voice echoing throughout the tiled bathroom. “It
would be a good idea for someone to be there for him. It is difficult for many
people, at first.”

“If we are in the dorms,” Emily said
slowly, “and we…”

“Right!” Sarah crowed. “You can’t,
so you don’t have to, but you don’t come off like a prude, either. He will know
about the dorm rules, so he won’t expect you to do anything. It’s perfect,
right?”

“I guess so,” Emily said, thinking
it through, and wondering if Sarah might be right. “I mean, it’s not like I’d
get in trouble just for kissing him or something, right? And even Margot said
he shouldn’t be left alone…”

“No, he shouldn’t,” Margot said,
again speaking more loudly than was necessary, gathering her things and heading
for the door. Sarah’s scheme occupied Emily so thoroughly that she hardly
wondered why the vampire left the bathroom without showering, though it seemed
that had been her original intent. “Someone should definitely be there.”

It was cold in the bathroom, and
Eerie had started trembling long before Sarah and Emily finished chatting and
gossiping and finally left. She had been standing in one of the shower
enclosures, wearing nothing besides a bath towel, shivering in silence since
Emily arrived, somehow unable to face the girl that Alex had gone home with.
Eerie stayed motionless until they left, except for her chattering teeth. She
did not even dare reach for her bathrobe, afraid that they would hear her open
the shower door to reach for it. Eerie waited until she was certain that they
were gone, and then she turned on the water as hot as she could stand. She was
grateful for the warmth pouring down her back, but it was a while longer before
she stopped trembling.

***

“I’m
not trying to force you into making up your mind. I understand that this is a
difficult decision.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t want you to feel like we
are talking you into anything.”

“You aren’t.”

“Good.” The kid composed himself and
looked as if he were about to continue on, then the other kid, the quiet one,
nudged him. “Ah, right. Then, if it is acceptable to you, can I move on to the
substance of our visit?”

Alex fought the urge to laugh at
them. Alex toyed with idea of throwing a punch at the kid, what’s-his-name,
Nathan something. There was no way that Michael would let him get away with
something like that, however.

“You mean you didn’t come down here
to hold the bag for me?” Alex asked, gesturing with one gloved hand at the
water-filled punching bag that Nathan was holding cautiously, almost fearfully.

“Err, no. Well, not wholly,” Nathan
said seriously. Alex had thus far seen no evidence that Nathan had even a shred
of a sense of humor. “I am here as a representative of the Drava Cartel, and
Frederick is here as a representative of the Gehrig-Moore Cartel. Our cartels
are members of an alliance known as the...”

Alex threw a left-right-left
combination at the bag, making as much noise as possible when his gloves
smacked the leather bag, startling Nathan and rocking him backward a bit as he
struggled to hold it in place.

“The Hegemony, I know. That’s a stupid
name, by the way.” Alex shuffled his feet, trying to change stances the way
Michael had shown him yesterday. It did not work. “I thought the cartels were
forbidden to conduct business at the Academy?”

“We are here in an unofficial
capacity, of course!” Frederick shrieked, his brow shining with perspiration.
It was just a guess, but Alex doubted that the moderately rotund German saw the
inside of a gym too often. Not that Alex had made a habit of it before he had
come to the Academy, of course. Michael and the machines in his blood had
conspired to make some serious changes in him over the last several weeks,
though.

“Right, and?”

Alex tried a couple more straight
right hands, more for the way the noise made them jump than anything.

“Well, we wish to discuss,” Nathan
said, and then frowned, and leaned close to whisper conspiratorially. “We wish
to discuss your plans for your future.”

Alex laughed, and Nathan paused,
looking indignant.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said cheerfully.
“But, I have to know – what exactly is it you want me to do? I mean, which
cartel do you want me to join? Yours,” he said, pointing at Nathan with his
gloved hand, “or his?”

He nodded amiably in the direction
of Frederick, who continued to watch in open-mouthed dismay.

“Well, that is to say that I –”

“You brought him for moral support,
right, Nathan? I get that. It’s always easier to face rejection with more
people to spread it around. That makes sense. But, if I understand all of this
correctly,” Alex said, sitting down on the mat in a heap, dripping in sweat and
not in the mood, “then your boss won’t be too happy with you unless I sign on
with your outfit. I mean, it’s not as if I can just join the Hegemony, you
know? Did they even tell you anything about me at all?”

“What’s that?”

Nathan looked panicked, but
Frederick had turned positively green.

“Your cartel didn’t send you, did
they?” Alex laughed, and then shook his head. “You aren’t the first to approach
me on your own, you know. I guess a bunch of the half-bright but all-the-way
ambitious types thought that might be a good idea. But you are the first to
bring a wingman along, my friend.”

“May I ask a question?”

Alex looked over at the girl who had
walked into the gym, and his good mood evaporated instantly.

“Yes,” Alex said reluctantly.

“Those ambitious types who
approached you. They were members of the Hegemony?”

“Yes.”

Anastasia put her hand to her mouth
in parody of shock.

“Oh my. I suppose that makes it my
turn, then, doesn’t it?”

***

Alex
tried not to stare across the mat at Anastasia, focusing instead on stretching
his calves. He had never seen her wear anything that did not fit her Gothic
Lolita aesthetic, usually corseted dresses in black, with elaborate bows and
ribbons and lace. He had even seen her carrying a parasol on sunny days. Her
shoes were always expensive-looking, with precarious heels, and her black hair
was always elaborately coiffed.

The girl stretching on the worn gym
mat across from him was dressed casually, in a T-shirt and yoga pants that cut
off at the knee, her hair in two tight braids that poked out on either side of
her neck. She looked like any girl that you might see in the facility. She was
Anastasia Martynova, future head of the Black Sun, however, and this whole
situation ran contrary to Alex’s expectations.

“Are you sure about this?”

He eyed her warily, trying to gauge
exactly how bad of a situation he found himself in.

“You have been doing this for how
long, now? A few weeks?”

“More than a month,” Alex said
defensively.

“Right,” Anastasia said, smirking.
“I have been practicing judo and jiu-jitsu since I was five. You truly do not
stand a chance.”

Alex looked at Anastasia doubtfully.
It was not that she was a girl; even if he had had notions about that sort of
thing, Collette, one of the student instructors in his ju-jitsu class had
disabused him of any such thoughts by throwing him around like a ragdoll. That
did not even factor in the damage that Margot had done to him. Rather, it was
that Anastasia was at least a foot shorter than he was, and built like
junior-high student.

That she was the future head of what
was reputed to be the most terrifying cartel of all did not help even slightly.
Alex had a feeling that if he accidentally hurt her, the consequences would be
grim. When she had left to change into her gym clothes in the locker room,
Edward Krylov had appeared from somewhere, given Alex a polite nod, and then
cleared out Nathan and Frederick, too petrified by Anastasia’s arrival to
register protest. Edward took up a position at the gym door, arms folded,
seemingly staring off into space. Alex never saw him send anyone away, but no
one came into the heavily used gym during the time Anastasia was there. Later,
he would come to realize that things always worked like that, whenever
Anastasia was involved.

“Let me make sure you are clear,”
Anastasia said, standing up and twisting from side to side. “I throw you three
times, and you listen to whatever I have to say, for as long as it takes me to
say it. We are only doing tachi-waza, though. I do not feel like rolling
around on the ground with you. Yes?”

“Standing only, I get it. And I only
have to throw you once to get you to go away?” Alex asked doubtfully. “That
doesn’t seem fair.”

“Nothing is ever fair, not if I have
any say in it.”

“Whatever,” Alex said, shrugging and
taking his position. “When you’re ready.”

Anastasia grabbed Alex’s shoulder
and behind his neck, and he adopted a similar grip on her. When they were this
close, he was very aware of how much bigger he was than her and he felt
reluctance. Then she smiled, and the casual contempt in her face erased that
reluctance. He cautiously attempted to exert force on her shoulder, attempting
to shift her balance onto her back foot, where he would have superior leverage.
For a moment, he thought he was succeeding, but then Anastasia twisted and
reversed his grip on her arm. He fought to free himself from the hold, but his
center of gravity shifted. He struggled to redistribute his weight and counter
the momentum, but it was already hopeless. Anastasia pivoted effortlessly,
executing a perfect shoulder throw, flipping him over her back and planting him
solidly on the mat, shoulder first. The impact drove the air from his lungs.

“Ippon!”
Anastasia said, smiling down at him and offering her hand. “Two more?”

Alex ignored the hand, sitting up
and rubbing his shoulder. He attempted to look indifferent, and then abandoned
the effort. He was certain he appeared as embarrassed as he felt.

“Actually, I think you made your
point,” Alex panted. Anastasia wasn't really stronger than him, but Alex knew
that the difference in their skills was so great that any further attempt would
only yield him more humiliation. “Why don’t we skip to the talking part?”

“You big baby,” Anastasia scolded. “After
I warmed up, too.” She sat down cross-legged a few feet away from him on the
mat. “It seems to me that you have been a popular boy, since you arrived at the
Academy.”

“I guess so,” Alex said, giving up
on massaging the kink out of his shoulder. “It’s mostly been stuff like this
afternoon. Some idiot approaches me and tries to get me to have a private talk,
which always ends up being a half-assed recruitment speech.”

“And your suitors. Are they always
from the Hegemony?”

“I told you already. Always. Why is
that, anyway?”

“I would be upset, were it any other
way,” Anastasia said. “The Black Sun has a centralized leadership structure.
When we make a recruitment approach, we do it as an organization. Whereas the
Hegemony is, at best, a loose affiliation, and any cartel that gets the idea
will try to approach you independently. Nevertheless, do not think too badly of
them. It is primarily an issue of timing. With Hope Eckhart and Chandi Tuesday
out on Field Study until winter session, there is a leadership void for the
Hegemony at the Academy. After the New Year, I am certain they will make a
formal attempt.”

“And that doesn’t bother you? I
thought that they were your enemies.”

“I do not give the Hegemony enough
credit to let them worry me,” Anastasia sniffed. “In any case, the Black Sun
does not have enemies. At worst, there are other cartels with which we have
philosophical disagreements.”

“You sure about that? Because
everyone seems to be very afraid of you.”

Anastasia smiled briefly. It was not
a pretty thing, severe and a little malicious, but at least it made her appear
a touch more human.

“As they should be,” she said,
sounding satisfied. “Would you like to know what makes me different from
everyone else who has approached you thus far?”

Alex nodded wearily.

“I am the only one who doesn’t need
you, Alex.” Anastasia leaned forward, and spoke with sincerity, her manner
composed and serious. “Neither I, nor the Black Sun, need you in order to
fulfill our ambitions and goals. My cartel’s dominance and my own position
within it are assured. We would hardly turn you away, should you desire a
further association with the Black Sun – to the contrary, we would welcome you,
as you have the potential to become quite useful. Wanting and needing, however,
is not the same thing. Do you see the distinction?”

“Yes. Very flattering. Are you
really so confident in the Black Sun?”

“Of course,” Anastasia said,
appearing a touch surprised at the question. “You needn’t take it from me,
though. Ask Emily what she thinks the next time she tries to take you home –
oh, she may couch the language a bit more, but I assure you her assessment will
agree with mine.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“The Black Sun Cartel is roughly the
same size as the entirety of the Hegemony. Including our affiliate cartels, we
enjoy numerical and tactical superiority. We have no internal divisions or
disputes in the Black Sun. Unlike the Hegemony, we do not waste our energy with
infighting.” Anastasia glanced briefly up at the clock on the wall, and then
back to Alex. “With the Academy’s current enrollment, there is an average of
two students affiliated with Black Sun for every student affiliated with the
Hegemony. Time and demographics are both on our side, Alex, and we are patient.
We have been waiting for generations for the time to be right, and we will not
move until it is. The tide is predictable, however, and I am not the only one
who can see it changing.”

“That all sounds great. I’m really
happy for you. If you don’t need me, though, why are we having this
conversation?”

Anastasia gave him a more predatory
smile, and he liked this one even less.

“We are, of course, not overlooking
your considerable potential.” Anastasia paused and cocked her head to the side.
“Admittedly, I cannot simply allow you to join the Hegemony.”

“Oh?” Alex said, grimacing. “And how
would you stop me, assuming I even wanted to do that?”

“I will not attempt the sort of
persuasion your friend Emily Muir favors, if that is what you are thinking,”
Anastasia laughed. “No offense. I was going to try reason, actually. I doubt
you would want to join the losing side in a fight, assuming you had other
options. The more you learn about the Hegemony, the less, I think, that you
will find yourself sympathetic toward them.”

“And if reason doesn’t work? What’s
after that? Vaguely worded threats, maybe?”

“No,” Anastasia said emphatically.
“I don’t make threats. I have never seen the point. The next step would be
bribery, to be perfectly frank. If you have no interest in doing the right
thing, then perhaps you would be interested in doing right by yourself. If a
number were to pop into that vacant head of yours, feel free to come and speak
to me directly. I will be happy to make it happen.”

“You mean, like, money?”

“Yes, Alex.” Anastasia confirmed,
amused. “I mean money. In virtually any amount that you care to name.
Alternatively, if you prefer, any sort of material possession. Cars, houses,
those black boxes with blinking lights that boys love so much, whatever you
like.”

“Wow,” Alex said faintly, his head
swimming. “I have to at least give you points for honesty and forwardness, if
nothing else.”

“Go ahead,” Anastasia encouraged.
“Pick a number. Surprise me.”

“Not right now,” Alex said, then
caught Anastasia’s superior look and hurriedly added, “maybe never.”

“In my experience, the only things
in this world that don’t have a price are those without value. Despite
appearances to the contrary, you certainly do have value. Let us assume,”
Anastasia said reasonably, “that I am simply offering to pay you with the wrong
currency. Shall we talk for a moment about your little friend Emily? She has
certainly found a receptive audience in you.”

“What?”

“Surely you have noticed that,
lovely though she is, Emily is hardly the only girl on campus.” Anastasia’s
eyes were full of cruel laughter. “I mentioned that the majority of the
students here are destined for membership in the Black Sun after graduation,
which means they will inevitably find themselves under my jurisdiction. I am
certain that I could make any necessary introductions, should the need arise.
Similarly, I can assure you that any advances you might make would be well
received.”

Alex looked at her with obvious
shock and distaste.

“That is going a bit too far.”

“Would you prefer that I invite you
home? Make moon eyes at you during class?” Anastasia said mockingly. “I am
trying to make a point, Alex. I don’t want you on my side as much as you want
to be on my side. I can make things very easy for you. Everything.”

“And I’m guessing that on the flip
side, you could make things very hard for me, right?”

Anastasia appeared to consider a
moment before responding, and in the interval, Alex noticed her eyes dart over
to the clock again. If she had another place to be, he wondered irritably, why
did she not simply leave?

“I suppose I could,” Anastasia
allowed, looking displeased at the notion. “I don’t care much for that sort of
thing, however. I don’t need to make you do anything. Particularly not
something I have the utmost confidence you will eventually do of your own free
will.”

“How can you be so sure?” Alex
wondered aloud. He found Anastasia’s tremendous confidence unnerving – her
demeanor was so self-assured and authoritative that he had to stop himself from
nodding along in agreement as she spoke. “Are you one of those people who can
see the future, or something?”

“No one that I’m aware of can ‘see
the future’. If you are referring to precognition, then no, I am not a
precognitive.” She smiled almost wistfully, much to Alex’s surprise. “That
would be much more convenient, though. Have you ever read a report written by a
group of precognitives who are collectively trying to out-think other groups of
competing precognitives?” Anastasia clucked disapprovingly. “It borders on
utter gibberish.”

“Fascinating,” Alex muttered.

“Oh, don’t be sullen,” Anastasia
scolded. “My offer was to provide all the money, power, and dalliance that you
could desire. How can that possibly be such a bad thing? Do you perhaps prefer
Emily’s recruitment tactics?”

“You seriously need to stop bringing
that up,” Alex said petulantly. “I barely even know her. No one is recruiting
me into anything.”

“Certainly. I assume that it is
normal for you, then, when arriving at a new school, to have the prettiest girl
in class fascinated by you from day one, then. Does that sort of thing happen
to you often, Alex?”

Alex’s brow furrowed for a moment
with confusion, and then his gaze hardened.

“Wait. Are you threatening Emily?”

“Honestly!” Anastasia scoffed,
clearly scandalized. “How often must I remind you? I do not make
threats, Alex, and I am certainly not threatening poor Emily Muir. If you wish to
see her, what is that to me? Even if she is an empath, there is no guarantee
that you will fall in love. Even if you were to go as far as to marry her, it
still would not change a thing.”

“What?” Alex said, putting his head
in his hands, frustrated. “I thought – I mean, Michael said that she was part
of the Hegemony, and…”

“Michael Lacroix is a superlative
teacher, but he lacks political savvy,” Anastasia said with conviction. “If you
feel like taking Emily up on her rather obvious offer, please do so. I have
heard good things. It isn’t as if you automatically join the Hegemony because
the girl you are dating happens to be a member. Do you plan to spend the rest
of your life with the first girl willing to sleep with you? For that matter,
who is to say that Emily Muir will remain in the Raleigh Cartel?”

Alex wanted to smack his hands down
on the mat, to push her away from him, to stand up and yell until he was
hoarse. Alex did none of these things, because he was not stupid, and this was
not the first time something of this nature had happened to him.

He could not remember the man’s
name.

Nothing in the facility, which was a
sort of cross between a mental institution and a juvenile lock-up, could happen
without the deeply tanned Mexican’s hands getting involved. Alex had the bad
fortune to meet him in person, something that rarely happened to anonymous
white convicts, but the ‘murdering your entire family’ thing seemed to resonate
with him on a level that Alex found profoundly disturbing. Alex did not want to
talk about that, did not like the man’s warm smile and dead eyes, and in any
other situation, he would have simply left. He had taken a number of beatings
in the past for doing exactly that, and he was not afraid of another.

That man, however, frightened him.
Not because of anything he did or said. In fact, he had been cordial. He had
not threatened or spoken harshly, even when Alex admitted that he remembered
little about his life up until the point of the fire, and virtually nothing of
the actual event. The Mexican had been polite on the two occasions following
that they had encountered each other, and Alex had passed his time peacefully
in that particular institution.

Alex had been afraid of the man
because of the way he looked at him, as if he saw what was going on in his head
and pitied him for it. There was something in his disconcertingly perfect smile
that implied an absolute assurance, such a complete and total advantage that it
didn’t merit contention, just surrender. Alex had seen it in the faces of the
people that surrounded and fawned all over the Mexican, inmates and guards
alike.

He could see the same thing in
Anastasia’s eyes, and in the faces of people who looked to her. Picking a fight
with her would be worse than pointless. It might even be impossible. Alex
understood now why people were afraid of the Black Sun – and it was not the
cartel.

It was the girl sitting in front of
him, glancing at the clock impatiently.

“I figured that the cartel thing was
for life,” Alex said, shrugging, fighting down the urge to ask why she kept
looking at the clock, if there was some place she would rather be. “Emily said
she was born into it.”

“Certainly, as I was into the Black
Sun,” Anastasia acknowledged coolly. “Nevertheless, nothing obligates us to die
where we were born, Alex. We make a choice when we leave the Academy, the same
choice an orphan makes when they graduate from the Academy. Sometimes there are
surprises, even defections. Don’t you think it reflects poorly on the Hegemony
that all they see in Emily Muir is a future homemaker? I am certain I could
find her more meaningful work.”

“I get it,” Alex said, shaking his
head. “I don’t think she would turn on her family, though.”

“What is to stop me from recruiting
the entire cartel?” Anastasia glanced at her fingernails, looking vaguely
disappointed in the glossy surface. “I don’t have to worry about problems of
scale. Therese Muir is much more practical than Emily, and she would most
likely be receptive to the right offer. I am certain she would bring her
beloved baby sister along.”

“You would go that far,” Alex asked,
wonderingly, “to get me to join your cartel?”

“It’s not all about you, Alex,”
Anastasia said dismissively, standing up and walking to the door to open it for
a very startled Emily, a water bottle in one hand, her iPod in the other. She
looked blankly from Anastasia to Alex, and then back.

“Hello Emily,” Anastasia said
casually, smiling at the stunned girl. “Care to join me for the three o’clock
Yoga session?”

***

“If
you ever plan to pay attention, then today is the day,” Mr. Windsor declared.
“This is the single most important piece of work that we will do this session,
though I realize that, for some of you, this will be a lecture that you have
had before…”

“Several times,” Anastasia said
quietly, sounding bored.

“…but this does not in any way
reduce the value of a return to the topic! Please pass this around... thank
you... do you have enough for everyone? Good, then.”

Alex took one from the stack of
documents that Emily handed him and then passed it on to Vivik. Emily looked
terribly disinterested, and even Vivik seemed less than thrilled. Alex took a
closer look at the stapled document.

Seven pages long, with nearly twenty
numbered articles, followed by a block of text composed of a run-on sentence
using the word ‘whereas’ at least four times. Alex immediately gave up on
reading it. He tossed it on the desk in front of him distastefully, then looked
up at Mr. Windsor, and was surprised to see him smiling at the unhappy class.

“It is a formidable document, yes?
It was not designed, I am afraid, for a casual readership. Don't worry, though.
I will not ask you to read it – though I would add that anyone too lazy to read
the document defining their fundamental rights cannot claim to be surprised
when said rights disappear – but I do want you to have at least a concept of
the intent behind the Agreement. Now, those of you who have been with us
through grade school, I want you to share what you have learned with the
newcomers in our class. The Agreement, you see, has four main functions. Miss
Martynova, could you tell the class one of them?”

Anastasia rolled her eyes and
answered in monotone.

“The Agreement established a
universal code of conduct and applied it to all Operators and cartels
equitably. Now, I am going to sleep until this session is over. Please do not
call on me again.”

Alex was hardly surprised that Mr.
Windsor let it go with a smile. He was getting used to the way people treated
Anastasia.

“Very good. Miss Martynova is better
than a textbook, class. There is little that I can add, except that this code
of conduct will be utterly critical to your life. Ignorance will not be
considered an excuse if you take action outside of the Agreement, and the
punishment for violation is dire. Now, Eerie,” Mr. Windsor said, turning to and
clearly startling the Changeling. “Can you state for me another function of the
Agreement?”

Eerie nodded hopefully, and then her
face gradually fell when it became clear that more of a response was required.
Eventually, Windsor took pity on her and repeated the question, followed by
another long pause while she considered it, and the class giggled and
whispered. Alex found the way her forehead wrinkled and her eyebrows scrunched
while she thought to be unaccountably endearing.

“You know,” Eerie said, so quietly
that Alex could barely hear, as if she were humming to herself. “Government and
stuff. The Committee and the Board. All of that.”

“Very good!” Mr. Windsor enthused.
“The Agreement does indeed set up the foundation for a formal government in
Central, providing centralized rule over the cartels, as well as a mechanism to
impart the universal code of conduct Miss Martynova mentioned earlier. For
those who subscribe to the notion that this was a bad idea, allow me to remind
you that cartel feuds would have killed off the majority of you before your
eighteenth birthdays, were it not in place. Now, Margot, a third, if you
please?”

“The Agreement set out the terms and
conditions under which Central could intervene and regulate the affairs of the
cartels, and established the Auditors to enforce the Agreement. The Auditors
have broad powers, and act largely at their own discretion,” Margot responded,
sounding no more or less disinterested than she always did. “They act primarily
on the Director’s orders, but the answer to the terms of the Agreement.”

“Yes,” Mr. Windsor affirmed with a
nod. “This was perhaps the most contentious part of the Agreement. Cartel
politics had previously held precedence over everything in Central. Before the
Agreement…”

Alex tuned him out.

He didn’t see the relevance to any
of what they discussed in homeroom – other than agreeing to join the Academy,
and allowing his activation, Alex hadn’t been offered much in the way of options,
and that seemed unlikely to change. No one had asked him if he wanted
nanomachinery injected into his blood in the first place.

Alex was jarred from his ruminations
by Emily, who pushed her notebook over on her desk until it was in his field of
vision. It was a moment before he realized that the note on the top corner of
the page was intended for him.

“If Windsor had told the class in
advance,” Emily’s immaculate cursive read, “everyone would have ditched today.
Most of us have the Agreement memorized.”

Alex pushed his own notebook into
place, and then thought for a moment, chewing on his pen cap without realizing
he had started. He stopped in mute embarrassment when he realized what he was
doing.

“Can we still ditch?” Alex wrote
hopefully, his pitiful scrawl next to Emily’s very feminine penmanship.

Emily’s eyes widened, and then she
frowned at Alex, who decided to return his attention to the notes on Mr.
Windsor’s projector. He was blushing furiously, he knew, and he wished that he
hadn’t asked, even as part of him still hoped that she would agree.

“…that’s right, Choi.” Mr. Windsor
continued cheerfully, unaware or unconcerned with the class’s complete
disinterest. “The final intent of the Agreement is to define Central’s
relationship with the outside world, establishing the parameters of a unified
foreign policy. Please pay special attention to the various amendments that
concern the Society, the Fey, the Anathema, and other associated…”

Emily shrugged, and then smiled
weakly at him. Alex felt uncomfortable, as if he had suggested something
inappropriate. He was sure that she would refuse, and why wouldn’t she? Emily
actually wanted to go to the Academy, after all. Who was he to interfere,
because he was bored? He was, however, very tired of homeroom.

“Wait a few minutes after I leave,
and then meet me outside by the drinking fountain.”

He hadn’t noticed her write the
note, but it was unmistakably hers, purple ink and a little circle instead of a
dot over the i. He tried to catch her eyes,
but Emily had already stood up and quietly excused herself, as if she intended
to visit the restroom. Alex sincerely hoped that no one but him noticed the way
she was blushing, but the combination of an amused look from Anastasia and an
elbow digging into his side from an indignant Vivik disabused him of any such
notions.

“Dude, what the hell?” Vivik hissed.
“What is going on?”

Alex gave him a lame smile and then
went back to staring blankly at Mr. Windsor, doing his best to ignore Vivik’s
fuming and Anastasia’s smirk. It was a long four minutes, but that was as long
as he could manage. He excused himself as quietly as possible, stepping over
Vivik’s legs, ignoring the way the Indian kid looked at him. Vivik’s crush on
Emily, Alex told himself firmly, was not his problem.

Emily, he reminded himself on his
way out of the classroom, was his problem.

She was waiting for him by the
drinking fountain, with a fragile, uncertain smile. She kept sneaking furtive
glances toward the classroom, worried that Mr. Windsor would come looking for
them.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, walking up
to her with his hands buried in his pockets. “I don’t know why I made you do
that. All our stuff is still in the classroom, too, so Windsor is bound to
notice.”

Emily shook her head, and the motion
of her blond ringlets as they bobbed along with the gesture fascinated Alex.

“He won’t say anything,” she said,
reassuringly, putting her hand on his arm. “And I am sure that Vivik will
collect our things at the end of class.”

“I’m not so sure about that. I think
he is probably mad. He likes you a lot, you know?”

Emily sighed and frowned.

“I know, silly. Of course I know.”

She said it gently, but Alex felt
like an idiot. Somehow, he kept forgetting that Emily was an empath, she seemed
so normal. Of all the people he had met in the Academy, he thought, she was the
most like a real person – not that he was entirely sure what he meant by a
‘real person’ in the first place.

“He has been like that since last
session. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so friendly with him, but, well,” she
fluttered her hands helplessly, “everyone was being so mean to him, what
else could I do?”

Emily sighed again, and Alex racked
his brain futilely for a change of subject.

“Anyway, what’s done is done,” Emily
said, tightening her grip on his arm and guiding him gently away from the
classroom. “We should make the best of it. Let’s go somewhere, okay?”

Alex let himself be led along,
obliging when she linked their arms. He was very aware of the side of her chest
pressed against his arm, and he found it difficult to think about anything
else. That was probably why he missed the first time she asked.

“What?” Alex said, shaking his head
and trying to focus on the conversation and not the girl beside him. “Did you say
something?”

“I asked if there was anything you
wanted to do,” Emily said, obviously repeating herself.

“Uh, not really,” Alex admitted. “I
hadn’t actually thought about it. I’m sorry. This is lame, isn’t it? I just
wanted out of there.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Emily said,
clutching his arm and snuggling closer. “I don’t mind. I was going to say, that
if you don’t have anything in particular you wanted to do,” she added shyly,
averting her eyes modestly, “we could go back to my place and hang out. I know it
was weird last time, but Therese is working today, and she won’t get back until
late. I could make lunch or something…”

Alex might have been slow, he was
prepared to admit that, but he wasn’t stupid; at least he didn’t think
that he was stupid. He had already opened his mouth to agree when he noticed
the tall woman in black walking toward them, near enough that he could see her
toothy grin, and he didn’t bother to say anything at all. Emily waited a
moment, then nudged him when no response was forthcoming, then finally looked
over at him in annoyance. Emily tensed up when she noticed Alice Gallow
standing in the path in front of them, arms crossed across the scrawled Emperor
logo emblazoned on her T-shirt, her eyes hidden behind Porsche sunglasses.

“Well, well,” Miss Gallow chuckled.
“I thought I would have to go all the way to Mr. Windsor’s class to find you,
Alex Warner. You must have gotten out of class early, huh? And Emily Muir, you
must have been helping him find the Administrative building, right?”

“Oh dear,” Emily said, one hand
coming up to cover her mouth. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here, Miss
Gallow.”

“Yeah,” Miss Gallow agreed
tolerantly. “I get that a lot. Thanks for bringing him this far, Emily. If you
hurry back you should have plenty of time to make it to class before lecture is
over.”

“Right,” Emily said, nodding
helplessly, then slowly backing away, looking sadly at Alex before she turned
away. “Maybe I could bring your books by later, okay?”

“Sure,” Alex said, licking his lips
nervously, somehow afraid to take his eyes off Alice Gallow long enough to say
goodbye.

Alice stood there, until Emily was
out of sight. Then she slapped Alex’s shoulder and laughed uproariously.

“I’m sorry,” she managed, a minute
later, still out of breath. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“That sucked, Miss Gallow,” Alex
said, trying like hell not to sound like he was whining. She looked cheerful
enough this morning, but Alex couldn’t totally put all the stories he had heard
about Alice Gallow out of his head when he spoke to her, and it made him
cautious. “I hope you actually have something you needed to talk to me about.”

She laughed again quietly, then
walked over to a nearby low wall, and sat down on the sun-warmed stone, patting
a space nearby to indicate Alex should also sit. After a moment of ineffectual
and half-hearted glaring, he joined her.

“Pretty self-righteous for someone
ditching class to get all cozy with Emily,” Miss Gallow observed. “But, yes,
not to worry, I am not here to waste your valuable time. Have you thought about
what we talked about the other day?”

Alex was about to reply to the
negative when he realized that wasn’t strictly true. He had actually given it a
great deal of thought, without coming to any firm decisions. He had, at best, a
rudimentary understanding of Black Protocols, so it had been a bit difficult to
formulate an opinion. When it came to Alice Gallow, however, honesty was
definitely the best policy.

“Yeah, I did,” he admitted slowly,
considering. “But, I’m not really sure that I have an answer for you.”

The Auditor looked at him with
something that was either amusement or contempt. Either way, it made Alex feel
profoundly uncomfortable.

“Emily’s a pretty girl, isn’t she?”

Alice Gallow asked the question quietly,
from behind her inappropriate smile, kicking the heels of her boots against the
stone wall as if they were chatting about the weather.

“What?”

The confusion is his voice had
already started to change into worry.

“The girl you were just snuggling with.
The blond,” she reminded him helpfully. “Pretty, right?”

Alex nodded. That seemed like the
safest bet.

“Pretty helpless, too,” Miss Gallow
continued blithely. “I truly hate that, you know. So, what would you do if I
decided that I hated her so much that I was going to do something about it,
Alex?”

“Is this hypothetical,” Alex asked
carefully, “or do you actually hate Emily?”

“Does it matter?” Her voice was like
ice water, sending shivers up his back. “What if I wanted to hurt Emily? Would
you try and stop me?”

Alex shook his head and inched away
from Alice on the wall. Alice Gallow exuded menace, grinning like a lunatic and
asking questions that were really threats.

“Could I?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Miss Gallow
said firmly. “Either you would try or you wouldn’t. Nobody’s asking you to
succeed.”

“Sure,” Alex said, shrugging and
doing his best to look unconcerned. “I mean, if I could, and if you were
actually going to do that, then sure, I’d want to stop you.”

Miss Gallow patted him on the leg
approvingly and stood back up. Just like that, the threatening atmosphere
dissipated.

“Good enough for me. We were going
to put you through the Program no matter what, truthfully, but I’m glad to hear
you’re willing. You should probably go back to class, now. Still plenty of
time.”

“That isn’t what I meant when I
said…”

Miss Gallow put a finger up to her
lips.

“Shh. How
else you gonna stop me, Alex? A strongly worded letter? Make a call to your
member of Congress?”

“Wait,” Alex said, scratching his
head, “you said something about putting me in a program, right? What are you
talking about?”

“Not a program. The Program. You’ll
find out tomorrow in your Applied Combat Fundamentals class,” Miss Gallow said,
walking off, waving without looking back. “Say hi to Mitzi for me.”

Alex watched her walk away,
dumbfounded. It was a minute or so before it all clicked into place for him. He
was, of course, doomed. However, Alex found that he was still confused on at
least one significant point.

“Wait, Miss Gallow,” he called out
after her. “Who is Mitzi?”

Twenty-Three

Miss Aoki sat cross-legged on the floor of a long, wood-paneled room. Behind her were the inactive
shooting lanes, battered targets hanging forlornly. The distant pops of rifle
training at the outdoor range punctuated the passage of time. In front of her,
on a green cloth, a matte-black .45 caliber Glock-36 semiautomatic pistol sat,
with Alex bent over it. He wiped sweat from his brow and wished that he had
ditched class, or, failing that, could find the recoil spring that he had set
aside a moment ago.

He did not bother to look up when
the door opened. He only hoped that it would be someone who would interrupt the
firearms drills.

“Gustav, thank you for coming,” Miss
Aoki said. “You are early, but we can go ahead and start. This one is hopeless
when it comes to firearms.”

Alex muttered something obscene. A
split-second later, he found was sprawled on his back. Miss Aoki crouched above
him, a handful of his hair knotted around her fist, suggesting that he repeat
himself. She had hit him, Alex realized belatedly, from the way his jaw ached,
but he had never even seen it. It was as if he had fallen over by himself.

Alex attempted a variety of sullen
apologies, and then, after her grip tightened on his hair and brought tears to
his eyes, a much more sincere one that seemed to satisfy Miss Aoki. She
released her hold and stepped off him, resuming her former position on the
floor.

“I am not Michael. This is not his
class. Michael coddles you and cares for you. I will not. Whatever he has
taught you, it isn’t enough to keep you alive and make you useful,” she said
flatly, her red eyes cold and disinterested. “You will ask questions whenever
you need too, here, but you will do so respectfully. Otherwise, I do not wish
to hear you speak. Do you understand all this?”

“Yes, Miss Aoki,” Alex said, rubbing
his head resentfully. “I guess I do.”

“Very well. Then let me introduce
Gustav Esteban, who will assist in your instruction,” Miss Aoki said, pointing
at the wizened old man who was currently setting up a folding chair beside
them. Alex nodded at him, but the white-haired man did not give any indication
that he had noticed. “He’s a telepath, a very special kind of telepath, and the
Academy values him far more than we value you. As a result, you will kindly
ignore the fact that he is a horrible bastard.”

“I see,” Alex said, staring at the
smiling man in his pressed suit, who was grinning from ear to ear, his face so
wrinkled that it was difficult to tell if his eyes were open. “A telepath,
huh?”

“Do you have fun in Michael’s class,
Alex? I know that it is hard work, but it is a rewarding kind of work, don’t
you agree?”

“I guess,” Alex allowed, figuring
that resenting all classes on principle was a responsibility of a student.

“That’s because Michael’s class
isn’t about fighting, Alex. It’s only training. While training is important, it
isn’t remotely similar to combat. Actual combat is frightening and painful.
Most Operators enjoy some aspect of training, whether it is yoga, swimming, or
judo. Nobody likes combat, however, except for Alice Gallow. And she doesn’t
count,” Miss Aoki added thoughtfully, “because she is a total psychopath.”

“Right,” Alex said uncertainly.
“That is the most I’ve heard you say so far.”

“Ask a question or shut up and
listen,” Miss Aoki said, eyeing him.

Alex elected to shut up and not be
hit.

“On to the business at hand. Do you
know what the problem with beating you to death is, Alex?”

“Well, I can think of several,
actually,” Alex said, smiling tightly and shifting uncomfortably against the
floor. He wished that someone had told him about the folding chairs in the
corner when he came in, like the one Gustav had. He had been waiting for a good
opportunity to get one for himself, but none had yet arisen – he really did not
want to interrupt Miss Aoki while she was talking. Particularly not if she was
serious about the beating thing.

“You wouldn’t learn anything from it,”
Miss Aoki said ruefully. “Unfortunately. Because trying to explain is so much
more difficult. As far as learning incentives go, there is nothing like having
your life on the line.”

Alex finished reassembling the
pistol, snapping the slide into place, working the action, and then slotting
the magazine and checking the safety. He set it down in the center of the green
cloth, and looked up at Miss Aoki for a reaction. He didn’t get one – she was
looking at someone behind him with obvious frustration.

“You are late,” she said icily. “Do
I need to remind you how much I disapprove of tardiness?”

“Sorry, Miss Aoki,” Steve grumbled,
making a face at Alex as he walked by him. “It won’t happen again.”

“It had better not,” Miss Aoki
agreed.

Alex glared furiously at Steve, who
offered him the finger in return. He was about to speak when he realized that
Gustav had somehow disappeared from the room, complete with his chair.

“What the hell is going on?” Alex
demanded, looking around him. “Why the hell is he here?”

Miss Aoki stood up, and then picked
up the Glock from where it lay on the oilcloth. She inspected the action, and
then sighted down the barrel. After a moment, she grunted her approval.

“It is a bit abnormal,” Miss Aoki
admitted, nodding to herself. “Normally, we start with a stranger, someone
neutral and anonymous. It is easier on the students, or so the theory goes. Of
course, if they wanted you to have an easy time, then they wouldn’t have made
me your teacher.” She set the pistol down delicately on the floor, right in
front of Alex’s hands. He took it from her without intending to do so. “I
needed someone you wouldn’t mind shooting, Alex. Before I even had a chance to
look, Miss Gallow showed up with a volunteer.”

Miss Aoki motioned at Steve, and he
sauntered roughly ten meters away, and then turned to face where they stood.
Steve’s expression was contemptuous and eager.

“I been thinking about this, fag,”
Steve sneered. “Ever since the first day I met you.”

“And you are calling me a fag?
Because that is pretty much the gayest shit anyone ever said to me,” Alex said,
glancing nervously at the pistol in his hand. “Just saying.”

Steve started forward, but halted
mid-step when Miss Aoki cleared her throat. Her demeanor was unfamiliar, a
break in the distance she maintained between herself and the class.

“That is enough, boys.” Miss Aoki’s
bloodshot eyes were both serious and disconcerting. “This isn’t a complicated
exercise, Alex, but many people find it to be very difficult. All I need you to
do is to take the gun, chamber a round, and then shoot Steve in the head.”

Alex blinked and stared blankly at
the Glock.

“You want me to shoot Steve?”

He was incredulous, gesturing wildly
in panic and outrage.

“Could you stop waving that thing
around?” Miss Aoki said, looking warily at the Glock in his hand that Alex had
almost forgotten. “It doesn’t count unless you shoot him on purpose, and if I
get shot today, I will be very cross.”

Alex looked at the gun in his hand,
not comprehending, and then blushed and set it carefully down on the patch of
green cloth.

“No way,” he said defiantly, folding
his arms. “He may be an asshole, but I’m not shooting anybody because you told
me to. Wait, fuck that – I am not shooting anybody who isn’t one of
those monsters, okay? This is bullshit.”

She didn’t bother to look at him.
Instead, Miss Aoki shrugged indifferently, and then sat back down on the floor.

“Steve, Alex doesn’t seem to want to
shoot you,” Miss Aoki said, sounding confused and disappointed. “I can’t
imagine why.”

“I was counting on it,” Steve said,
cracking his knuckles and grinning.

“Persuade him otherwise, would you?”

Steve’s grin widened as he walked
toward Alex.

“I say this one’s fag the whole way
through, Miss Aoki,” Steve snarled, advancing on Alex. “But, I’ll do my best.”

Alex turned to stare at Miss Aoki
pleadingly, too shocked to even formulate an objection.

That turned out to be a mistake.

Steve lunged at him with deceptive
speed. Alex barely had time to duck under his outstretched hand. Steve latched
on to a clump of Alex’ hair, tearing it out with an awful ripping noise, like a
Velcro strap detaching from his head. Alex gasped and reeled backwards,
grabbing at his head, only to eat a straight jab square in the nose, bringing
tears to his eyes and blurring his vision. He could not see well enough to
identify the next few punches, aside from a right hook that knocked him down.
It caught him below the ear, the impact rattling the teeth in his jaw and
folding his knees beneath him. He fell to the ground and moaned, having just
enough presence of mind to cover his face with his arms, to ward off any
further blows.

Steve laughed and kicked playfully
at his chest and stomach a few times, then dropped down and grabbed a hold of
one of Alex’s flailing arms. Alex realized that he was putting him in a
wristlock a moment before it happened and struggled to prevent it. In his
panic, however, Alex forgot everything that Michael had taught him about
escapes and counter-wrestling. Alex only managed to wriggle fruitlessly while
Steve locked the hold in. Steven bent his wrist backwards far enough for it to
hurt, leered at Alex, and then bent it further.

Alex howled, and somewhere during
the howl, he heard something snap. Steve maintained pressure on the hold, and
Alex was certain that nothing had ever hurt quite so bad. It sapped any
strength he might have had to fight him; frankly, he couldn’t even bear to look
at it. His legs kicked and jerked as he struggled blindly. He was aware of the
noise he was making, a kind of whimper, and he was ashamed, but he could not
seem to stop.

“Enough,” Miss Aoki ordered, from
somewhere above them. The pressure on his wrist ceased, and Alex immediately
clutched it to his chest. His breath came in ragged gasps, and his pulse raced.
“Open your eyes, Alex.”

After a moment, Alex did so. Steve
stood a few meters away, pacing and shadowboxing, looking happy with himself.
Miss Aoki crouched over Alex, her face blank, her eyes bloodshot and serene,
the gun stretched out to him, still on its bed of green felt.

“How do you feel, Alex?”

“Fucking bad!” Alex shouted, voice
quivering. “What the hell is going on?”

Her calm was impenetrable.

“Do you feel like shooting Steve
yet?”

“No,” Alex said, shaking his head.
“Fuck that. And fuck you, Miss Aoki. No way.”

Miss Aoki shrugged and walked away,
setting the gun down and the sitting down beside it.

“Let’s try it again,” she said, to
no one in particular. “Reset.”

The transition was so abrupt that it
made him nauseous. To Alex, it seemed as if he was lying in a heap on the floor
one moment, bleeding from the face and clutching his broken wrist, and then the
next, he was standing where he had started, facing Steve with the pistol in his
hand. He looked down at the Glock, black, compact and menacing, and at the hand
that held it. His wrist seemed miraculously whole, though it was an angry red
hue, and quite sore. Alex touched it with one finger, marveling at the bruised
but intact flesh, contrasted with the mess a moment ago. He put his hand to his
face, and his hand came away bloody, but not as bloody.

“This isn’t real,” he said
uncertainly.

“This is very real,” Miss Aoki
corrected sternly. “If you get killed, you will be very dead, make no mistake about
it. The pain and the consequences here are all real. The only difference is
that I have more discretion about when I let you die. That’s all.”

“This is Gustav doing this, right?
Some kind of telepathic illusion or something?”

Miss Aoki sighed.

“This isn’t some kind of show or
trick, Alex. Don’t delude yourself. Because this part of the Program is done in
simulation, I can have Steve hurt you forever,” Miss Aoki said, nodding at the
goon. “You won’t die until I let you. If I let you. Which I probably will not.
Now pick up the gun.”

“So, if I shoot Steve, that won’t be
real, either?” Alex asked, staring at the pistol in his hand. It felt very
real.

“Steve, Alex thinks this is an
illusion. Disabuse him of the notion.”

She sounded disgusted, as if Alex had
failed her on a personal level.

“Sure, Miss Aoki,” Steve said with
his monkey grin, walking lazily toward Alex.

“Wait!” Alex cried. “Why are you
doing this?”

“Are you ready to shoot him?” Miss
Aoki asked evenly, holding up a hand to stop Steve, who suddenly looked
nervous.

“Will he die?”

Alex was unable to look away from
the gun in his hand.

“That’s generally what happens when
you shoot someone,” she replied gravely.

“No,” Alex said shakily, letting the
gun clatter to the floor. “No way. That’s not me.”

“Christ,” Miss Aoki started,
wincing. “You need to be more careful with loaded guns, kid. I am teaching you
an important lesson about being a soldier. You and I, Alex, are both the same
in this – we do not ask why when we are told to pull the trigger. You will get
yourself killed, worrying about that. Let the bosses be concerned with who and
why. It will take everything you have just to survive the process. Understand?”

“No,” Alex said miserably.

Miss Aoki sighed and rubbed her
head.

“The lesson is simple – there’s no
point in teaching you to shoot, Alex, if you aren’t going to pull the trigger
when you are told to,” Miss Aoki explained, clearly frustrated. “No point in
sharpening a blade you aren’t going to use. We aren’t going to wait until you
are in the field, until your life and the lives of other Operators are on the
line, to see you pussy out. Suck it up, pull the trigger, and then we both can
go home.”

Alex looked down at the ground. His
nose still ached a great deal, and it was bleeding consistently enough to make
him sniffle.

“I’m not cut out for this,” Alex
said a moment later, biting his lip. “If that’s what this all means, then I
don’t want any part of it. I quit, okay? I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m
fucking done.”

“Alex, Alex,” Miss Aoki chided. “We
already know that you are cut out for this. That is what precognitives are for.
What you want is irrelevant. We’re concerned with what you can do, not what you
want do,” she said, shaking her head. “There would never be enough soldiers if
we asked for volunteers. Most Operators would prefer not do what they do. They
can, and the need is there, so they do what they have to – it is that simple. We
do what we have to, Alex. We are weapons, both of us. The purpose of a weapon
is to kill. Don’t you want to have a purpose, Alex?”

“This is messed up, right here,”
Alex said slowly, staring at the pistol in his hand as if it would speak to
him. “Do Rebecca and Michael know that you are doing this shit to me?”

Miss Aoki tittered, and Steve burst
into laughter.

“I would think so,” she said, with a
smile. “They’ve both completed the Program themselves, after all. Rebecca Levy
helped design the Program.” Miss Aoki shook her head. “Okay, question time is
over. Are you ready to do what you have to do?”

She looked at Alex, hard, for
several moments, but he refused to look up at her, transfixed by the weight,
the sheer reality of the gun in his hand.

“No,” he said, softly. “Why should
I? Why should I do anything?”

“Because you must,” Miss Aoki said,
looking mildly disinterested. “Again.”

“Right,” Steve said, from
immediately behind Alex.

Alex jabbed an elbow back, digging
it into Steve’s midsection, but he just grunted, his arms wrapping around Alex,
one forearm reaching across his neck. Alex tried to lower his head, to put his
chin between Steve’s arm and his throat, but he was too late for that. He
stomped on Steve’s foot, several times, with all the force he could muster,
grinding his heel against the boy’s instep. He drove a few more elbows into his
body, but he couldn’t put much power behind them. Steve’s forearm crushed
steadily into his larynx, and soon all he could hear was the ghastly wet sound
of strangulation.

Alex woke on the floor, with his
face in a shallow pool of vomit, unable to swallow and struggling to breathe.
Miss Aoki stood above him, the pistol presented like a gift. He brushed her
away with one arm, and then everything reset.

This time, he did not bother with
conversation. When Miss Aoki asked him if he was ready to shoot, he ignored
her. He put the echoes of the pain and the fear out of his mind, as best he
could. He focused solely on Steve, who stood a few meters away, looking as if
he hadn’t broken a sweat. Alex was ready when he came forward this time.

He was ready for Steve’s jab, too.
He had gorilla-like arms that gave him a reach advantage, but Alex kept his
hands up and his head moving, and Steve couldn’t do anything more than clip
him. Alex was patient, protecting his head, absorbing the occasional shot to
the side or the arms, waiting for his chance to close.

Steve threw a combination that ended
in a right hook that was a little off, and Alex saw his footwork was bad, that
he was punching while he backpedaled. Alex blocked the punch with his left arm,
and then stepped inside, putting everything he had into a hard right that sank
into Steve’s kidney.

Again, there was no apparent
transition. Steve was simply one thing, and then he was the other. Alex didn’t
even see it before he made contact. His hand crumpled against Steve’s rocky
skin, folding and tearing like paper where it collided with the stone, and then
he fell to the ground, while Steve kicked him with his heavy stone foot and
laughed his booming laugh. Alex closed his eyes, protected his face as best as
he could, and waited it out. He kept his eyes shut tight, because he did not
want to see what he had done to his hand.

When he finally did, he saw Miss
Aoki beside him, offering him the gun.

Alex refused three more times, and
it ended horribly, three more times. Then he gave in.

The pistol was somehow louder with
that shot than it had been when he shot at the range, the trigger much more
difficult to pull. Alex stood and stared at the intact remainder of Steve’s
head, damp pink solids dripping off the far wall. Miss Aoki put her hand on his
shoulder like a friend.

“Combat isn’t fun, Alex,” she said,
with surprising gentleness. “It hurts, and it is frightening. This is not
training, Alex. It isn't theory or philosophy. This is fighting and surviving,
or it is fighting and dying. Nothing more. And it is the only thing that
matters.”

She gently prized the Glock from his
fingers, and then activated the safety.

“Welcome to the Program. When we are
done with you,” she said, her bloodshot eyes full of sincerity, “you won’t even
recognize yourself. Reset.”

***

Alex
heard the door close behind him, and congratulated himself on not running.
Mitsuru’s ‘class’ had turned out to be an eight-hour nightmare; Alex hadn’t
seen Gustav again until right before Mitsuru dismissed him. Alex still wasn’t
sure exactly what had happened, but he was certain that much of it had been due
to the old man’s purported telepathy.

Whatever they had done, though, it
had consequences – Alex had bruises forming along his chest and above one eye
and across the bridge of his nose, and he felt lingering pain just about
everywhere. Steve had left looking untouched, and Alex suspected that the mess
at the end of the session had been solely for his benefit. Mitsuru had bemoaned
his performance, but Alex didn’t feel like he had done too badly.

After all, it was his first time
killing anybody. That he could actually remember.

Steve was not about to let himself
be shot, of course. His disposition had become grimmer, after the reset, but he
seemed angry more than traumatized, which gave Alex the feeling that this was
not an entirely new experience for Steve. After that, Alex confronted an
enraged, moving target, and he only managed to tag Steve once in the entire
rest of the day. The remainder of the time, Alex fought a losing battle up
close against an opponent who was bigger, stronger, and more experienced.

Given the circumstances, it could
have gone worse. In general, things had ended with Steve bashing in his head, either
with his elbows or against the floor, and Steve’s obvious wrestling background
made this kind of close-quarters ground fighting particularly hopeless for
Alex. Near the end of the day, though, Steve got sloppy while setting up a
choke, and Alex used the opportunity to wedge his thumb into Steve’s eye
socket, forcing it in as far as possible. Steve howled and reeled away from
him, clutching his face, and Alex had time to pull himself to his feet, wipe
the blood from his eyes, and find the Glock that Steve had knocked to the
ground when he tackled him.

He hadn’t shot him. He had intended
to do so, of course, but instead he had walked up behind the blinded kid and
struck him in the base of the skull with the butt of the gun. He didn’t stop
hitting him when Steve fell down, or when he stopped moving.

He only stopped when he heard
Mitsuru laughing.

Alex stepped out of the hallway, and
into the chill of the evening and the setting sun, never quite so grateful to
be out of a classroom.

“Hi.”

She sat on the low fence that
bordered the walkway outside the building, striped tights and shiny black shoes
dangling, her nails painted to match her hair. Her face was impassive, her eyes
wet and shining. She put aside her knitting and looked at him expectantly.

“Hi, Eerie.” Alex’s hand froze in
the process of putting his headphones in his ears, and then they hung there,
apparently determined to linger, useless and in the way. “What are you doing
here?”

“I am waiting for you,” Eerie
explained, hopping down to stand beside him. “Vivik said you weren’t in
homeroom today because you had Mitsuru’s class, and Margot said you’d be messed
up afterwards and that someone should keep you company. I am company.”

Alex starting walking slowly down
the path, and Eerie fell in beside him.

“Wow. I’m surprised.”

“Surprised that we knew? Surprised
Margot said that?” Eerie was staring up at the changing leaves of the ancient
trees that bordered the path, walking just out of reach. Every word had a
ringing, musical quality to it. “Or surprised that it was me, and not Emily?”

Alex thought for a moment, trying to
give an honest answer.

“No offense, but all three. If
anybody was going to wait for me outside of class like some kind of…”

“Stalker?” Eerie offered.

“Right,” Alex said uncertainly. “It
seems like Emily’s thing, you know?” He hesitated for a moment, then winced.
“Hey, don’t tell her I said that, okay?”

Eerie walked along beside him
quietly, while Alex worried that he had handled the conversation very clumsily.
She was short enough that when he looked down at her, he could see a
quarter-inch of blond where she parted her hair, and he wondered absently
whether she was changing colors, or was lazy about dyeing it.

“I will tell you a secret,” Eerie
said finally. “Emily is waiting for you, back at your room. She has been
planning this for days. She was very,” Eerie frowned, “loud about it. So I
decided to meet you here.”

“I see. Okay.”

Alex realized that his hands were
trembling, an aftereffect of the class, and buried them in his pockets. There
was something about Eerie’s silence that seemed to imply to him that she was
about to speak at any moment, and the anticipation stretched on for minutes.
Alex stared at the diminishing blaze of the autumn leaves, gradually washed
away by increasingly frequent rain, and tried to calm himself.

“You went to Emily’s house, Alex.
She talked about it,” Eerie said, her frown deepening. “She talks a lot, that
girl.”

Alex shrugged, too surprised to
formulate a clever response.

“She doesn’t seem like the type.”

“Not to you,” Eerie said, shaking
her head sadly. “Because Alex is stupid.”

“What?”

Eerie glanced at him, her pupils
massively dilated even in full daylight, her expression innocent and detached.
He could not help but wonder why she was here, what she saw with her strange
eyes when she looked at him.

“She wants you to feel sorry for
her, I can tell. She doesn’t say it, but it is obvious, even to me. And you
must be stupid,” Eerie said angrily, “to pity a pretty girl.”

“Huh?” Alex said, puzzled. “Are you
mad at me, Eerie?”

She appeared to think about it for a
while.

“Not really,” she said, shaking her
head. “You are just a boy, after all. But…I do want to know. Why did you go
home with her, Alex?”

“I don’t know,” he said, as
truthfully as possible. “Because she asked me to, I guess.”

“You don’t like her?” Eerie asked,
clutching her knitting basket in front of her, fingers tight around the handle.
“You aren’t seeing each other? Or kind of seeing each other?”

“What are you talking about? No.
It’s not like that,” Alex said guiltily, his eyes on the concrete path in front
of them. “I don’t even know her that well.”

“You went just because she asked?”

“I guess,” Alex admitted, shrugging.
“What can I say?”

“Then, you’d go somewhere with me,
if I asked?”

Eerie spoke casually, refusing to
meet Alex’s eyes when he looked over at her, one hand picking absently at the
hem of her skirt. Alex looked at her with a shocked expression for a little
while, hoping for a reaction, then gave up.

“Sure.”

“For real?”

Eerie glanced at him uncertainly, as
if he had promised her something she was hesitant to believe. His hands
trembled for reasons of their own.

“Sure,” Alex repeated, surprised and
a little embarrassed. “Yeah, I would.”

Eerie stopped in her tracks, and
then slowly turned to face him.

“Will you go somewhere with me?”

“Um, sure,” Alex said, laughing.
“When did you have in mind?”

Eerie smiled and grabbed his arm,
fortunately not picking the one that still ached from class.

“Now,” she said, pulling him away
from the dorms, toward the center of campus. “Right now.”

***

“I’d
really like to go and change my clothes first,” Alex complained to Eerie, who
dragged him along determinedly by his sleeve. “I didn’t think that I’d be going
anywhere, you know?”

Eerie glanced back at him.

“Emily is in your room, remember?”

“Oh,” Alex said, blushing. “Right.
That would be. Um. Yes.”

Alex felt, quite frankly, like an
asshole. His first day in the Program had left his brain violated and muddled,
his body tired and battered. When he closed his eyes, he saw Steve’s broken
head, the vile mess against the wall behind him, the gun in his shaking hands.
He did not feel like going somewhere with Eerie as much as he felt like going
somewhere and being sick.

His room was no longer an option,
apparently, and not just because Emily might be waiting for him there.

Alex wanted out of the Academy, for
the first time since he had arrived. He had thought that any world would be
better than the one he had left behind, but after Mitsuru’s class, he wasn’t so
sure. Despite what had happened to his family, and the role he had played in
it, Alex had never thought of himself as a killer. After all, he had no
memories of committing any crime, no hatred toward his family, no recollection
of the abuse his father had supposedly visited upon him. If pressed, Alex would
have had to admit that he could not remember his parents’ faces without the
photograph his grandmother had kept on her bureau in the trailer. How could he
feel like a killer? He didn’t remember killing anyone. Most of the time, he
didn’t even remember the people that he was supposed to have killed.

Steve walked away, after the class
was over, sneering at Alex as he left the classroom. He knew he hadn’t killed
him, the same way he knew that he had killed his family – because other
people told him so. Steve felt no more alive than his parents felt dead,
though, and in the back of his mind, he could see the contents of Steve’s skull
spreading slowly across the blond wood floor.

Alex followed Eerie numbly through
the campus, into one of the cavernous Administrative buildings, then through a
series of corridors and hallways, doing his best to think about nothing,
haunted by the afternoon. He was glad that she didn’t want to talk, because he
wasn’t sure if he wanted to say any of the things he was thinking aloud. They
walked out the back of the building, and then across a dark, secluded
courtyard, overhung with the grey branches of ancient willow trees. Alex
remained heartsick and oblivious to his surroundings, to the extent that he
almost tripped over a tombstone.

“Holy shit!” Alex exclaimed,
attempting not to fall over the mossy, fractured limestone underfoot. “Is this
a graveyard? Why is there a graveyard at a school, anyway?”

“Quiet,” Eerie shushed. “We aren’t
supposed to be here.”

“I sort of guessed that.”

Alex brushed the moss from the
tombstone without thinking about what he was doing. The carving on the stone
was in kanji, and unreadable to him, but it looked like someone important.

“Shh.”

Eerie led them on a winding path
through the headstones. It was chilly and dim beneath the leaves and the high
walls that surrounded the courtyard, the path overgrown and dotted with white
marble benches that looked cold and uninviting. Alex shivered and hurried along
behind Eerie, who continued to ignore his questions. The courtyard wound on and
on, passing by glass-enclosed terrariums and rooms that, through leaded glass
windows, appeared to hold endless shelves of books in varying states of decay.
Above them, uniform slate-grey stone stretched up to shut out most of the sky,
with only the silhouette of the occasional stovepipe to break the uniformity.
They came to a rounded platform lined with broken columns, limestone
bas-reliefs, and the faint remains of white marble inlays. The columns were
thin, fluted, and utterly unlike anything Alex had seen in the Academy, fragile
and almost alien in their design, in their strange lack of symmetry.

Renton leaned against one of them, a
dour girl in a blue dress standing discreetly behind him.

“Welcome, welcome,” Renton said,
grinning expansively and motioning Alex and Eerie over. “Sorry for making you
come all this way, but this is, well, profoundly against the rules. Now then,”
he said conspiratorially, putting his hand on Eerie’s shoulder in a familiar
way that Alex did not like, “who wants to go to San Francisco?”

Twenty-Four

“You did not have to do that crap with Alex and Steve. I had intended for them to spar
with each other to work out their differences, not this fiasco. You know
better,” Michael said firmly, “and I want an explanation.”

Mitsuru looked up from her soup,
annoyed.

“How did you hear about that
already?” She sighed and dropped her spoon back in the bowl. “Never mind, I already
know. Rebecca and her bleeding heart, right?”

Michael pulled out a chair and sat
down across from Mitsuru at the staff cafeteria table, arms folded across his
broad chest. The faculty occupying the adjoining tables universally decided
that now was a good time to visit the cafeteria line, and disappeared in a
rustle of whispers and the clatter of hastily gathered dishes.

“I’m serious, Mitsuru. It wasn’t so
long ago that I was your teacher. And I don’t recall doing anything like this
to you.”

“What did you think happened,”
Mitsuru asked, eyes downcast, “when I went down to see Alice Gallow for
‘Applied Combat Fundamentals’? It’s the Program, Michael, and they run it on
all the prospective Auditors. You know that. They’re just getting an early
start with Alex.”

“I know what happened when you were
with Alice,” Michael said sadly. “I remember the Program myself. It isn’t
right. I don’t like watching you do it to someone else, Mitsuru. Alex isn’t a
candidate for Audits or anything else, not yet. I haven’t even had a chance to
get him into shape. I am doing you the courtesy of asking before I go to Gaul
and lodge a complaint. Why are you doing this?”

Mitsuru flipped through the binder
next to her lunch tray, and pulled out three plastic sheathed documents. She
passed them across the table to Michael, who inspected them.

“No point in going to Gaul,” Mitsuru
said, shrugging and picking her spoon back up. “My orders came direct from
Alistair, and he’s got carte blanche from the Director. It’s all above board.
The plan is to make Alex an Auditor, remember? Gaul doesn’t want to wait; it
creates too many opportunities for the Hegemony and the Black Sun. We don’t
have the luxury of letting him make the wrong decision.”

“This will force Alex into making
the wrong decision; worse, it will make him useless. The Program ruins people,
Mitsuru, you should know that.”

“I do,” Mitsuru acknowledged,
unblinking. “No one knows it better, except mad old Alice. That changes
nothing, however. Alex Warner will be an Auditor, and a Black Protocol user. He
will complete the Program as the rest of us of did, Michael. Gaul wants another
tame monster, and I intend to hand him one, gift-wrapped and ready to go to
work. I’ve heard about your reputation for squeamishness. Don’t expect the same
from me. I need to know that you’ll do your part,” she said, re-collecting her
documents and looking at him seriously. “I need to know that he’s being
properly trained, so that I don’t have to worry about that aspect of the
situation.”

“So you can make him into a
monster?”

“You said it. The useful kind. Like
me.” Mitsuru nodded and then spooned some of the noodles from her soup into her
mouth. “Can I count on you to make him ready? Duly noting your objections, of
course.”

“I wouldn’t want to disappoint you
all,” Michael said sourly. “Of course. I will try to make him ready. And you,
my dear, you should know – you sound more like Alice every day.”

“Good,” Mitsuru said tersely,
returning her attention to her soup.

***

“Where
are we?”

Alex glanced around at the
neighborhood. He had spent a shaky few minutes in an alley behind some
dumpsters after the apport, jarred by the abrupt transition and nauseous, but
it passed quickly, and he felt better now. He wondered if it had been that bad,
when Mitsuru had apported him to Central, that first night. Maybe Svetlana
Rostoff, the Black Sun apport technician who had sent them here, simply wasn’t
very good.

“The Mission,” Eerie answered,
pulling Alex along by the arm. “There are some places I like around here. We’ll
be able to find clothes and stuff.”

The Mission was an older
neighborhood, grimy and dignified, poor and yet overflowing with optimistic
entrepreneurs and vividly colored street art. The majority of the people on the
street seemed to be Latino men, but there was fair representation of hipsters
and young families on the busy street as well. They passed a flower stand
staffed by a Vietnamese family, and Alex returned a smile from a cherub-faced
little boy, who stood on top of the counter his grandmother worked. Outside, on
the sidewalk, a half-dozen enterprising homeless had laid out blankets, and
were selling second-hand books and knickknacks. The neighborhood was bustling
and vibrant, the air thick with exhaust and the smells of a dozen different
cuisines. After his time in Central, it seemed fantastically crowded and loud
to Alex.

Eerie dragged him a couple of blocks
up Sixteenth, turning at Valencia Street. She released Alex’s hand in front of
a skate shop, explaining that she wanted to visit the boutique next door, which
only did women’s clothing. Alex dug through the stock at the skate shop for a
while, coming up with a couple black T-shirts, a pair of baggy drab-green
pants, and a heavy, dark-grey sweatshirt for the evening. The sullen, heavily
tattooed man at the counter took the money Eerie had given him with an air of
bored resentment, slowly counting out change and then haphazardly shoving his
purchases into plastic grocery bags. Alex stepped out of the skate shop, and
glanced at the boutique. Eerie was nowhere in sight, and he assumed that she
was trying something on in the back.

He wandered down the block and then
across the street to a discount clothing store, where he bought a package of
generic tube socks and a couple pairs of boxer shorts. By the time he returned
the boutique, Eerie was waiting for him, a bag shoved underneath one of her
arms.

“What now?” Alex asked, scratching
his neck. He wanted to go somewhere and change, as he was tired of wearing
dirty clothes, and it was too windy for pants with a hole in the knee. The
breeze coming off the San Francisco Bay appeared to be every bit as cold as he
had been led to believe.

“I still need to go to some more
places,” Eerie said with a frown. “Are you finished already?”

Alex shrugged.

“Sorry, I guess I didn’t think too
much about it,” Alex said, feeling a touch embarrassed. “I bought the first
things that fit, and looked alright, you know?”

Eerie bounced from one foot to the other,
hopping around oblivious pedestrians in the pursuit of some private game, while
a disturbing thought occurred to him.

“Hey, do you think I need to buy
anything special for tonight? I mean, like, clothes? Do they have a dress code
or anything, wherever it is you want to go?”

Eerie smiled at him, clearly amused.

“Alex will be fine in whatever,
because he is a boy, and no one cares what boys are wearing. But, I still have
to do some shopping.” Eerie pondered for a moment. “I don’t come to San
Francisco often…”

Alex sighed inwardly, but fixed a
smile on his face.

“Well, lead on, then,” he said with
forced cheerfulness. “I’ll carry your bag for you.”

To his surprise, Eerie turned away
and tucked her bag further under her arm.

“Well, no,” Eerie mumbled, her back
to Alex. “That wouldn’t be good. If you are done shopping, would you like to
find a place to wait for me?”

Alex found himself abruptly
abandoned at a small, green Formica table, in front of a café, waiting for a
cappuccino to cool. Eerie had deposited him there rather firmly, leaving him
money and instructions to stay until she got back. Alex leaned back in his
chair and closed his eyes, stretching out his legs and trying to convince
himself that the weak sunlight was somehow warm. He dug his headphones out of
his pocket and put them in, letting the music play at random. The song that
came on was ambient, electronics simulating the distant rumble of thunder and
the chattering of insects over a textured, looping wash of static. By the time
the vocals kicked in, Alex was half-asleep.

Alex drifted, letting the world pass
him by, his head resting against the cool brickwork of the building, his legs
stretched out underneath the table. The battery in his mp3 player must have died
at some point, and he must have nodded off, because when Alex woke, Eerie was
talking to him.

“You have a bad habit of falling
asleep whenever you’re left alone,” she scolded. She wore a new T-shirt, a
white jersey with three-quarter sleeves in red. Her black skirt hung in folds a
bit above her knees, and her black socks cut off a little below. Alex rubbed
his eyes and tried to compose himself, hoping he hadn’t drooled while he slept,
or anything. Eerie twirled in front of him, her skirt flaring. “What do you
think, Alex?”

“It’s…you look very cute.” Alex
stammered. “Um, yes. You look good.”

Eerie nodded seriously, and Alex was
relieved that he had apparently said the right thing.

“Okay,” she said cheerfully. “And I
have flyers, also.”

“Alright,” Alex said, nodding
uncertainly. “You have flyers?”

“For tonight,” Eerie clarified.
“Also, this is for you,” she said, tossing him a disposable Korean cell phone.
“My number is already programmed in. Just in case.”

“Good idea,” Alex said approvingly.
“Glad you thought of that.”

Eerie mumbled something and
appropriated his coffee, sipping at it and then making a face.

“Bitter. Cold. How long were you
asleep, anyway?”

Alex shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said, yawning.
“How long were you gone?”

Eerie looked embarrassed, and then
laughed self-consciously.

“I don’t know either. Hours, I
guess.”

Alex nodded uncertainly, wondering
again about the girl. She was so dreamy, most of the time, tempered with
strange periods when she could be alarmingly perceptive. He wondered if this
was simply good fortune, or if Eerie had her own reasons for desiring his
company. It was hard to imagine that he had done anything to deserve it.

“Did you get everything you needed?”

He tried not to sound hopeful,
putting the phone in his pants pocket and gathering his bags from underneath
the chair, pleased to find they had been left alone during his nap.

“Pretty close,” Eerie affirmed,
glancing through the bags she was holding. “Let’s go get a room at a hotel,
Alex. We’ll need some place to shower and change, anyway, before we go out.
Don’t worry,” she said reassuringly, misreading his expression. “I can afford
it. Money’s not a problem for me.”

Alex spent so long contemplating the
amazing ramifications of her suggestion that, by the time he got moving again,
he had to hurry after Eerie, who was already halfway down the block.

***

Alex
woke to the ringing of an alarm, and he came up fighting, struggling with a
mess of sheets and blankets that he had wrapped around himself in his sleep in
a protective cocoon. It took him a minute or two to remember where he was, to
find a clock to inform him that it was a little after seven in the evening, and
then another to be grateful that Eerie had apparently woken up before the
alarm, and headed off to the shower, thereby missing the spectacle of his
awakening.

Stumbling and cursing, he made his
way to the room’s secondary bathroom, itself an impossibly immaculate expanse
of faux marble countertop and chrome fixtures, and inspected himself in the
acres of mirror there, deciding that he didn’t look a whole lot different than
he had on arrival. His chest was yellow and purple with bruises, and his arm
had settled into a periodic dull throb. He felt a sense of profound
disappointment, and a great deal of embarrassment, every time he thought about
the girl in the other bathroom.

He took a hot shower, more to help
stretch out his sore muscles than anything else, washing his hair and cursing
his failure to find a barber while Eerie had shopped, resolving to get it taken
care of tomorrow. Alex stayed under the hot water for an extra few minutes,
letting it beat down on the back of his head, thinking about Eerie. He wondered
where she fit in the whole power struggle in Central, if she had a side, or
allegiances of her own.

Alex doubted that she was completely
uninvolved in the conflict, which seemed to consume the whole of Central, as
Eerie had lived there since she was a child. Even so, it was hard to imagine her
as one of Anastasia’s lot, and though he had not met too many people from the
Hegemony yet, he had even more trouble with the idea of Eerie fitting in with
them.

They had taken a BART train to the
Hilton that afternoon, after she had finished shopping, a glass tower embedded
in an otherwise commercial neighborhood. Alex had requested a room with two
queen beds, to be on the safe side, paying with the stack of bills that Eerie
had given him earlier. The clerk at the counter had found that amusing, and Eerie
had laughed when she opened the room door, causing immediate and total regret
in Alex. He did not intend to spend his time at the Academy rebuffing the
advances of cute girls, whether or not they were weird. Or insane. Or not
human. Circumstances had forced him to spend a good portion of his life in
strictly all-male institutions, after all. Clearly, his understanding was
lacking.

Napping on their respective beds,
Alex was acutely aware of Eerie sleeping a few meager feet away. If he held his
breath, he discovered that he could hear her breathing. He tossed and turned,
wondering what would have happened had he requested one bed, wondering what
would happen if he got up and went over to her. Helpless, he cursed the
stupidity and fear that kept him from finding out.

He had not slept all that well, Alex
thought, feeling profoundly sorry for himself.

***

“Have
a seat, Miss Martynova,” Gaul said mildly, gesturing at the plush office chair
in front of his desk. His hands were steepled in
front of his face, his expression unreadable. Behind him, Rebecca scowled from
her perch on the windowsill, circles underneath her eyes, dangling a cigarette
out the open window.

Anastasia took the offered seat
without comment, smoothing her silk dress carefully across her lap as she sat.
Then she waited in polite silence, her hands folded neatly, resting on her
knees.

“I’m certain you know why we’ve
called you here today, Anastasia,” Gaul said from behind his hands, the glare
from his glasses hiding his eyes.

“I’m not so certain,” Anastasia said
dismissively, inspecting her immaculate black nails. “Are you going to tell
me?”

“Where’s Alex?” Rebecca demanded,
her voice tight and her frustration obvious. “Where’s Eerie?”

“I don’t know,” Anastasia said,
sounding bored. “Are we finished, then, or do you have more?”

Gaul turned briefly in his seat to
glance at Rebecca, who gave him a curt, angry nod.

“The students in question appear to
have departed the Academy sometime this afternoon,” Gaul said mildly. “We have
reason to believe that members of the Black Sun Cartel assisted them in this
endeavor.”

“Is that so?” Anastasia shrugged and
gave them a wan smile. “I am afraid that I am unaware of any such thing. If
this was done by members of my cartel, as you suggest, then it was done without
my knowledge.”

“You expect me to believe that your
cartel members acted on their own initiative?” Rebecca made a face. “Not
likely. You run too tight a ship, Anastasia.”

“Believe me or don’t, Miss Levy. I am
telling the truth. I am not sure what else I could offer you…”

“Help us to understand,” Gaul
suggested. “If you didn’t approve it, how could this happen?”

“Well, I am not certain in regards
to Eerie, but I told Alex that the resources of the Black Sun were at his
disposal,” Anastasia explained matter-of-factly. “I have instructed my staff to
provide him with anything that he might ask for, no questions asked. Perhaps,
then, he requested transportation? My people would not have sought my approval,
because I had already given it in advance.”

“Why would you do that?” Rebecca
asked, surprised. “What did Alex promise you in return for that?”

“Nothing,” Anastasia said, shaking
her head. “I did not ask him for anything, and no promises were made. Perhaps I
simply enjoy helping others. Perhaps I took pity on him. Perhaps I am that
confident. You are the empath, Miss Levy. You tell me.”

“You little witch!” Rebecca
exploded, flicking her cigarette out the window. “How is that you keep me out
of your head?”

“I have my ways,” Anastasia said
lightly. “You can question my staff, if you like. They will of course
corroborate my statement. Is there something else I can do for you?”

“Can you find Alex for us?” Gaul
asked patiently.

Anastasia stood up, her smile compact
and mocking.

“Is that all?” She asked cheerfully.
“Ask me directly next time. You know how eager I am to do favors for the
Administration, after all. As crass as it is to mention, however, if you
require a favor from me, then, as it turns out…”

“You little brat,” Rebecca snarled,
only to be cut off again by Gaul’s arm. “You’re still a student here,
Anastasia.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Anastasia
said, nodding.

“What will it cost us to get Alex
back?” Gaul asked, pushing his glasses back up on his nose. “And Eerie too, of
course.”

“Of course,” Anastasia deadpanned.
“My terms are simple, and I hope, not too objectionable. If you want me to find
Alex and Eerie, I will. It will be the Black Sun that collects them, however,
and not Central.”

Anastasia waited while Gaul calmed
Rebecca down, who was fuming and swearing behind him. She managed not to laugh
aloud, not right then, but as a reward for her self-control, she promised
herself that she would laugh later.

Last, to be specific.

***

It
wasn’t a club, but it wasn’t what Alex would have called a rave, either, based
on his vague understanding of what constituted a rave.

This was a couple hundred kids
packed into what might have been an indoor basketball court, judging from the
painted wooden floor that Alex could see peeking out from underneath the black
foam mat. The DJ was in the far corner of the room, spinning tribal-infused
trance at a deafening volume, the sound system massively oversized for the
space. A few long cloth curtains and a handful of black lights seemed to
constitute the whole of the décor for the otherwise naked building.

The promoters had seemed leery of
police attention, given the number of hoops they had jumped through to get
there. From the back of a flier Eerie selected from the stack she had collected
while shopping, they called a number, which rang endlessly until after nine.
Then a voicemail message provided directions to what turned out to be an alley
in the Tenderloin. Alex found the whole thing sketchy, walking between dark brick
buildings and past overflowing dumpsters, the narrow alley reeking of urine and
rotting food, up a set of stairs and into a small, enclosed parking lot. There
they bought tickets, and got a sheet of photocopied directions from a Mexican
in a Raiders jersey and a blond girl with at least a dozen piercings in her
face.

The ticket location was several
blocks from the party, so they elected to take a bus back to SoMa, Eerie leaning her forehead against the window,
staring out into the intermittent darkness on Market Street. Alex stood beside
her, clutching an overhead pole, wondering how long it would take them to get
to the party, and if the bus driver planned to let them live that long. Alex
stopped counting, but it was several stops before Eerie abruptly stood and
grabbed his arm. She dragged him wordlessly from the bus and then down a side
street. There was a short line in front of the building, which looked like an
old, anonymous commercial property. While waiting, Alex noticed that the SF
police impound lot was directly next door, a couple of uniformed officers
lounging by the closed gates, laughing at the partygoers’ attire. He swore to
himself and wondered what the purpose of all the subterfuge had been.

Eerie seemed pleased, however, and
started bouncing up and down as soon as they were admitted into the
flyer-strewn lobby, eyes sparkling and pale skin flushed.

“Uh,” Alex said, hands shoved deep
in his pockets, casting about desperately for something to say. “Do you want a
drink or something?”

Eerie laughed, pulling the lollipop
out of her mouth so she could talk.

“Alex, they don’t sell alcohol
here,” she chided him, amused. “Those big guys by the door, they sell drugs.”
Eerie gestured around them. “Pretty much everyone here takes them. That’s why
we came.”

Alex looked around apprehensively.
The crowd was a strange blend of club kids and hippies, most of them covered in
glitter and shining with sweat, dancing with abandon on the makeshift dance
floor, despite the oppressive heat. They looked a bit loopy, Alex decided, but
pleasant enough, and they did seem be to having a good time.

“Okay, so, do you want me to go buy
some of…those?” Alex asked, unable to keep the nervousness out of his voice.
Thanks to years of court-ordered supervision and unscheduled drug testing, he
had very little experience with getting high. Outside of smoking pot a few
times while he was in the Youth Facility, and once with Rebecca, he hadn’t
taken any drugs at all. He was not sure what kind of drugs would be available
here, or how much they might cost.

Eerie looked at him thoughtfully.

“You could do that,” she said
mischievously. “Or, if you wanted, you could try something else.”

Eerie held out her lollipop
expectantly, holding it in front of Alex’s face, near his mouth. Alex recoiled,
and looked aversely at the wet, rounded piece of red candy.

“W-why exactly would I…” Alex looked
at Eerie desperately, but she continued to stare blankly, while offering the
lollipop. “What is it?”

“It’s a Blow Pop.”

“No, I mean, you know,” Alex protested.
“What is it?”

“It’s cherry,” Eerie said flatly.
“Do you want it, or what?”

Alex looked at Eerie, and then
hesitantly took the proffered candy from the smiling, sparkling girl, trying
not to make a face as he stuck it in his mouth. He sucked on it cautiously, but
it tasted like any other cherry-flavored candy. He wanted to ask her again what
it was, what it was she had given him, but she was already pulling him toward
the dance floor, closer to the giant stacks of speakers and the devastating pulse
of the bass, her hands wrapped around his own.

Alex shook his head, confused, and
tried haplessly to pull away. To him, somehow, it appeared that Eerie was
sheathed in a soft golden light, a gentle luminescence that pervaded her,
radiating out from a core that smoldered somewhere within her. She stepped
backwards through the crowd thoughtlessly, somehow never touching anyone in the
press of bodies, pulling him along through the haze of golden dust that trailed
behind her. He gave a worried glance at the people around them, but none of
them seemed to find anything unusual in the glowing girl trailing luminescent
dust in their midst.

Alex wondered again about the candy.
For some reason, he found himself thinking about the cloud of monarch
butterflies from his dream, orange wings against a blue sky, somewhere he could
not remember visiting, somewhere he could hear the ocean. There was sadness in
the memory, a sweet kind of sadness to which he was not entirely adverse.

He managed to extricate himself when
they reached the dance floor, batting her away gently and making excuses,
eventually making his way alone to one arm of the speaker array, sitting down
on top of the vibrating pile of speakers, next to an intertwined couple and a
passed-out teenager in drag. They all seemed very young, somehow, Alex thought,
though he probably wasn't much older. It might have actually been more
embarrassing to sit there than it would have been staying on the dance floor.

Eerie pouted briefly, tapping her
foot and glaring at him. Then she shrugged, and turned away from him, gliding
to the center of the humid floor, and then spinning around in a slow circle,
her eyes closed. Alex sat with his legs dangling off a column of stacked
woofers, the surface beneath him pulsating with the music, his skull
reverberating with the bass beat, and he watched Eerie dance.

Later, he would not be able to
describe it, although he would remember it clearly. She was not, he would say
haltingly, an amazing dancer, not exactly. Not that he would know, having never
danced in his life. Though he felt an exhilarating combination of calm and
elation that he could only attribute to drugs, it wasn’t as simple as that. No,
he would try to explain, there was something special about Eerie dancing.

Margot would tell him much later
about other nights the same thing had happened; at retro-styled swing clubs in
Los Angeles or hip-hop clubs in Baltimore, in the parking lot of a Phish show
outside Phoenix, minutes before closing at a basement club in London, where a small
crowd of puzzled transvestites had watched her dance to electro. Eerie, she
would tell him, simply liked to dance.

Also, Margot would add, frowning,
she has a thing for fucked-up people.

However, he found out those things
later, after he had watched her dance, after he had fallen for her a little
bit, in that intense and irrevocably irrational way that even Alex knew was a
hallmark of total naivety. That awareness did not change anything. Watching
Eerie dance, knowing that eventually she would come back to sit next to him,
that was the first truly good thing that had happened to him since his home had
burned to the ground. Maybe before that, too.

She spun and twirled and the light
around her had the quality of honey, warm and amber-toned, ambient and soothing.
Her composure as she danced came as something of a surprise, as did the subtle
grace of her movements. Her hair hung down in front of her eyes, her sweatshirt
slipped down to expose the gentle slope of her shoulders, the rise of her
collarbone above her tight black top. Watching Eerie dance was a peculiar
revelation.

People should have stared. They must
have seen the sparkling girl, making slow revolutions through the dance floor
as if she was alone on it, in the midst of the press of bodies but never
actually touching anyone. She was vibrant, gleaming with an inner radiance, a
honey light. They must have seen her.

Alex couldn’t see anyone or anything
else. He stared, his head pleasantly spinning, his heart filled with a benign
euphoria, a mild intoxication. The world softened, became universally warm and
gentle. The light around Eerie seemed to pass right through him, like a current
of warm water, or the sound of a summer wind brushing over long brown grass. He
tried to hold up his hands to the light, and he could not, or he did not want
to. There was no way to be certain. He sat and watched Eerie dance.

Eventually she came back to him,
smiling and breathing hard, her face flushed, soaked with sweat. Alex reached
for her without thinking, watching it happen without a trace of panic or
anxiety, and she took his hand and squeezed it with her own for a moment,
before letting go with a smile.

“What…” Alex croaked, pausing to
drink greedily from the bottle of water that she offered him. “What was in the
candy you gave me?”

Eerie laughed and patted him on the
head. Her smile was benign, tolerant, and amused. She beamed at him
indulgently, like a favored child.

“Bubble gum, Alex.” She paused, and then
her expression turned suspicious. “You didn’t swallow it, did you?”

“What? No,” Alex shook his head,
confused. He found himself wondering what he had done with the gum, anyway. All
he had in his mouth was a soggy paper stick. “I didn’t mean that. What made me
all fucked up?”

“Oh,” Eerie said with concern,
sitting down next to him on the speaker. “Is it bad?”

She peered into his eyes, concerned,
and Alex could not help but grin at her until she smiled back.

“No, not at all,” he said earnestly.
“I was wondering, you know, because I don’t really have a lot of experience
with this sort of thing.”

The words tumbled out of Alex’s
mouth too fast. Eerie looked at her hands shyly.

“It’s just me, Alex.” She smiled
hesitantly. “Because I…because it was in my mouth, you see? Because my whole
body is like a drug, Alex.”

“No shit?”

At the time, anyway, it sounded
reasonable enough.

“Uh-huh,” Eerie said, nodding. “For
normal people, anyway. That is how the Fey communicate with each other.
Chemically. Pheromones and particular compounds in…you know,” she said, clearly
embarrassed. “Sweat. Saliva. That sort of thing.”

Eerie blushed, and Alex wished he
could think of something cool to say to change the mood. Alex snuck a look at her
out of the corner of his eye. Her small round face was earnest, and it was easy
to see how nervous she was. His eyes drifted down to her lap, to the strip of
thigh that showed between the hem of her skirt and the top of her knee socks,
and for a moment, his train of thought disintegrated. Then he caught himself,
and quickly looked back up at Eerie’s face, but she did not appear to have
noticed anything. She was staring at the still-packed dance floor, the crowd
increasingly disheveled, energetic, and sweaty.

“Is this like empathy?” Alex asked
doubtfully. He had no special awareness of Eerie, her thoughts, or her
feelings; rather, a general sense of well-being, a fading physical high, and a
strange, benign fuzziness.

Eerie shook her head emphatically.

“No, not at all. It’s all chemistry.
I like being around parties. They make me happy. When I’m happy, the people
who, you know, come into contact with me, they are too.”

Alex sat next to her, his mind
helplessly and pleasantly blank. Eerie sat restlessly beside him, kicking her
heels against the speaker, watching the people dance with obvious desire to
rejoin them. He wished he could have thought of a good reason to make her stay
there, beside him.

Eventually, she climbed back to her
feet, brushing off the back of her skirt where she had sat, and smiled coyly at
Alex.

“I’m going to go dance now. Will you
come this time?”

She held out her hand to him.

Alex shook his head, smiling weakly.

“You’ll regret it, you know,” Eerie
admonished him, obviously disappointed. “You will wish that you had, Alex.”

She walked off to the dance floor
without looking back at him.

I already do, Alex thought, brushing
hair away from his eyes and feeling bitter. I already do.

Twenty-Five

“I haven’t seen you in some time, Alice. How have you been?”

Alice’s smile reminded Chris of the
Cheshire Cat. Except much more frightening.

“A busy girl is a happy girl. But
I’m certain that you’ve heard,” Alice cooed, sitting down across from him at
the café table. “Unless you’ve lost your touch for these things?”

“Hardly,” Chris said, smiling back
at her tiredly. “I’m afraid that there is still very little that goes on in our
sordid underworld that I am not eventually made aware of. Word is that you have
been working quite a bit these last few weeks. Saigon, Los Angeles, Manila,
Paris… all operations targeting the Terrie Cartel, if I’m not mistaken.”

The waiter was clearly unnerved by
Alice, delivering the coffees Chris had already ordered in a hurried manner
that made it abundantly clear that they would not be seeing the boy again.
Alice seemed vaguely amused by this.

Chris had to admire their waiter’s
keen sense of self-preservation. Not everyone was so quick to spot Alice for
what she was.

He had first met Alice in Berlin,
during the strange and exciting years after the First World War, not long
before she had started working as an Auditor. Alice had changed little since –
her hair was dyed black, now, and a faint white scar was etched along one
cheekbone, but she did not seem to have aged at all. Even her clothes weren’t
much different from the first time he’d met her, at a friend’s party in a flat
in Fredericksburg, in a slinky black dress and high-laced shoes with pointed
toes, though she’d ditched the dress and shoes in favor of tight black jeans
and motorcycle boots. The coat she hung over the seatback was too heavy and
long for the weather, so it had to be armor.

Chris liked to flatter himself by
thinking that he looked much the same himself, except that his hair had faded
to white a few decades ago. He dyed it for several years, before he had lost
interest in the pretense. Otherwise, like Alice, the body he inhabited appeared
to be somewhere in its early thirties. Even the fantastically expensive
cream-colored suit that he wore was fundamentally similar to the things he had
worn in the heady days of the Weimar Republic, though tailors had been better
back then. One of the tragedies of the modern world.

“You aren’t mistaken, Chris.” Alice
blew on her coffee, then set the cup back down, apparently deciding it was too
hot. “But it’s more than the Terrie Cartel that I am dealing with. Witches, and
Weir, and who knows what else.”

“I heard about some of that,” Chris
said, idly stirring the coffee he had ordered out of politeness. “Even for me,
that’s a bit hard to swallow – Operators working with Witches. I thought your
people were conditioned to make that kind of thing impossible?”

“We thought so, too.” Alice
shrugged. “Not the first time Analytics has been wrong, you know.”

Chris nodded uncertainly, brushing
an imaginary crumb from the front of his immaculate white blazer.

“Quite. Still, such a thing has
never happened before. I would not have believed it to be possible, under
normal circumstances.”

Alice shot Chris an inquisitive
look.

“What, exactly, makes the current
circumstances abnormal?” The question sounded innocent enough, but Chris knew
better than to think that Alice would ask for anything. Alice took. It
was what she did. “We’ve had rogue cartels before, after all. The Terrie Cartel
is probably the biggest we’ve ever had to sanction, but it’s hardly a unique
situation.”

Chris spread his hands innocently
and put on the face that had sold more stories than he could count.

“I’m afraid that we’ll need to come to
some sort of accommodation before we can discuss that any further,” he said, as
if he regretted the necessity. “Of course, if it were up to me, I’d tell you
gratis, but that would be bad for business, you understand.”

“I do, actually.” Alice blew on her
coffee and sipped at it cautiously, then set the cup carefully back down in the
chipped white saucer. “I appreciate your position. But, I wonder if you
appreciate the significance of mine.”

Chris looked at Alice thoughtfully
for a moment, and then gave her a tired smile.

“Believe me, I know that if you want
to, you can force the information out of me,” Chris admitted. “I’m something of
a coward when it comes to pain, after all, and I do intend on living a long,
long time. While you do have a certain amount of leverage, give some thought to
this, Alice – won’t you have questions you need answered, in the future? Whom
will you turn to once you have used me up? Who else would talk to an Auditor?”

Alice sipped her coffee again, and
then grinned at him over the cup.

“Don’t worry about it, Chris. For
reasons I do not understand, I have a certain misplaced affection for you. What
is it going to cost me?”

“Well,” Chris hedged, “what do you
need to know, exactly?”

“Everything,” Alice answered flatly.
“I need to know everything that the Terrie Cartel has been doing for the past
several years, what the Witches have to do with it, the Weir, everything. Gaul
says that the store is open on this one.”

“He wants it that bad?” Chris asked,
too stunned to hide his surprise. Gaul was notorious for his cheapness.

“He has a hard-on for this like you
wouldn’t believe,” Alice said glumly, setting her coffee aside. “I don’t think
I’ve ever seen him so worked up. I need to know anything I might need to know,
okay? You can start by telling me what it is that you want in return.”

“Two things.” Chris considered his
coffee, and then decided against it. He could drink the stuff, but the last
time he had, it gave him heartburn for days. “I want a favor from Central, and
I want a favor from you.”

“Oh, Chris,” Alice said, putting one
hand on her chest, and fluttering her eyelashes. “I’m here in a professional
capacity…”

Chris did his best to look appalled,
rather than hurt and saddened. He preferred to avoid making Alice aware of the
times when her memory failed, even if he was mildly wounded that she had
forgotten the nights they had been together. The Russian embassy in Prague; on
the porch outside a cottage near Hamburg one balmy weekend in June; a hotel in
Copenhagen so expensive that they never even saw the employees – fresh towels
and meals simply appeared, as if by some kind of domestic magic. Chris could
not imagine forgetting all of it, but that had always been the score with
Alice.

“I’d never try and blackmail you
into it, my dear,” he said with a pained grin. “I’m certain that eventually
you’ll succumb to my charms. I think you’ll find that what I want you to do is
more along your usual line.”

Alice shook her head in mock
resignation.

“Your loss. But I can’t offer
anything, until I know the particulars.”

“I want Central to assume total
responsibility for Margot’s education and upbringing,” Chris said abruptly,
moodily pushing his coffee away. “I did make promises to provide her with
mentorship and financial support, but it has become quite a burden.”

Alice smiled at him.

“Times are hard all around then,
Christopher?” Alice pursed her lips briefly. Chris knew from experience that
meant she would agree – reluctantly, of course. He had seen that face during
that bad business in Moscow in ’53, and then again, decades later in Serbia.
Alice was extremely concerned about something, and he had a good idea about
what. “You’re gonna break that little vampire’s heart, if she finds out you are
shifting the responsibility. And what do you want from me?”

Chris folded his hands in front of
his face as if in prayer, and tried his best to look beneficent and thoughtful.
Not that he could hope to fool Alice, who knew him well enough to spot an act,
even without using the Inquisition Protocol she had access to as an Auditor. It
was a habit that helped him feel more confident in his presentation, his game
face.

“It will probably get heavy,” he
admitted. “But, you know I wouldn’t bother you for anything that wasn’t.”

“I’d probably get bored with
anything else,” Alice said, gradually shredding a discarded sugar packet into
dull pink ribbons. “Get to the point, please, Chris.”

“I need you to watch my back on a
job,” Chris said plainly. “It’s something personal, it isn’t Society business.
I can’t use my normal channels to handle this thing.”

Alice leaned back in her chair and
looked at him with the most open confusion he had ever seen her express,
already starting to morph into anger.

“And now I am supposed to say ‘Just
like old times’, or something, right? I am an Auditor, Chris, not a hired dog.
I don’t do favors. I certainly don’t help you deal with your ‘personal
business’.”

Chris held up his hands pleadingly.

“Credit me with a bit more
intelligence than that, Alice. I know perfectly well with whom I am speaking. I
wouldn’t have bothered to make the request, but the fact is…”

Chris hesitated for a moment, then.
It was like looking down off a height, right before he jumped. It didn’t change
anything, other than reminding him to be terrified. He still had no options
other than a leap of faith.

“The fact is that this job pertains
to your Audit, Alice, and I think you’ll be very interested in it.”

“I already am,” Alice said grimly,
her smile suddenly gone. Chris had forgotten how much scarier she was without
it. “Have you done something ill-advised, Chris?”

Chris shook his head and sighed.

“I wasn’t planning on trying to hide
it,” he said guiltily. “We don’t have nice jobs, Alice, and they aren’t easy,
either. I’ve made a mistake.”

Alice leaned forward even further,
taking his ice-cold hand in her own. It was a friendly gesture, but with an
underlying firmness. He knew better than to flinch from her touch.

“What did you do for the Terrie
Cartel, Chris?”

He heard the edge in her voice, and
knew that it could go either way, but Chris faced it down with the nerves of a
lifelong gambler.

“Remember, when I took the job, they
were still a cartel in good standing!” Chris protested. “The suspension only
came down a few weeks ago. This all started almost three years ago.”

When he realized that no reaction
from Alice was forthcoming, Chris sighed again, more out of habit than
anything.

“The Terrie Cartel approached us,
the Society, wanting to buy all kinds of intelligence – anything at all on the
Witch cults, those Anathema freaks in the Outer Dark, the movements of the Weir
tribes and population estimates, that sort of thing.” Chris shook his head, and
wished that he could take his hand out from under hers. “It’s obvious to me,
now; they were interested in how much we knew, and by extension, how much
Central was likely to know, rather than the information itself.”

Alice nodded grimly, but she
released his hand, much to Chris’s relief.

“You provided this information?”

Alice tapped her fingers on the
table expectantly.

“Of course,” Chris acknowledged,
feeling a bit foolish. “There was nothing proscribed, nothing outside the
boundaries of the Agreement. We continued to provide intelligence for them up
until we heard about the attacks. The arrangement was terminated before Central
proscribed the Terrie cartel.”

Alice’s grin returned. Apparently,
she had caught the emphasis on the last part of the statement, the proactive
termination of the relationship. Weeks could mean everything. Nothing was
trivial when Alice Gallow was sitting across the table, and Chris was not about
to assume any more guilt than he had to.

“What happened once you heard about
the proscription?”

Alice finished the better part of
her coffee in one swallow. Chris found himself wondering idly what his chances
were of surviving the encounter, and then put it aside. There was no point in
worrying over what was out of his control.

“I told them the arrangement was
dead, of course,” Chris said, immediately regretting his choice of words. “They
told me that ending the arrangement would be a very serious error on my part,
that it could have consequences for the Society. I walked away, never even
looked back.”

Chris wondered if Alice had
activated the Inquisition Protocol. He couldn’t read anything from her Etheric
Signature, but it was certainly possible. He hoped that she had. He desperately
needed her to know he was not lying.

“Why are you so cold, Chris? Why are
you starving?”

Alice put down her empty cup on the table,
ignoring the saucer, and the porcelain clattered against the glass tabletop.

“The entire London branch of the
Society is gone for certain,” Chris said, hanging his head. “They moved on us
two days after they were proscribed. There was a bombing, at our central
office. It did a lot of structural damage, but no serious losses. We followed
the standard evacuation procedures, split up into small groups and headed for
the safe houses, to wait for the all-clear. They were waiting at the safe house
when we arrived, I assume it was the same for the others,” Chris continued, his
voice tired, wooden. “They looked like they had been there for a while. They
had killed the human servants… unkindly. There were Witches with them, and
Weir, and there were only four of us. It wasn’t even a fight.”

Chris’s hand shook as he remembered
Evelyn screaming while Paul and Miguel died, devoured by the maws of horrible,
malformed wolves.

“Evelyn and I both activated emergency
apport protocols, with randomized destinations to elude telepathic tracking.
There was nothing else we could do.” Chris could not look at Alice. He could
not stand the thought of what his face might show. With an effort, he recalled
fifty years of professional composure. “I woke up in Amsterdam, near the docks,
with a half-dozen bullets still lodged in me.”

“What about the Amsterdam lodge?”
Alice asked, fruitlessly searching for their waiter, who had fled long ago.

“Nothing more than a burning building,
surrounded by things in police uniforms that weren’t human,” Chris said sadly.
“I got myself patched up by my own means, and then I went underground. I have
kept moving since then, trying to find a safe place. It’s the same everywhere –
Brussels, Paris, Madrid, and Barcelona.”

“Barcelona is the largest lodge in
Europe, right?” Alice looked skeptical.

“It was. All I found was more
rubble, and a package sitting in front of it with my name on it.” Chris felt an
absurd urge to laugh. “Nobody watching. Obvious that they wanted me to have
it.”

Alice looked sadly at her empty
coffee cup. Chris wondered if maybe she was mellowing slightly with age.
Perhaps, after all this time, Alice was finally capable of dealing with small
disappointments without resorting to homicide. Perhaps.

Otherwise, Chris sincerely hoped
their waiter never came back.

“I didn’t open it, at first. I tried
peeking at it a number of different ways, but no matter how I looked at it, it
came up clean. Eventually I cut the thing open in my hotel room. There was a
cell phone.” Chris looked around them nervously, checking the faces at the
surrounding tables, and then continued. “There were videos, the things they had
done to the others. I saw members of a dozen different lodges – Alice, I think that
they’ve destroyed most of the lodges in Europe!”

“And?”

Alice stared at him patiently,
clearly aware that he was still skirting the main point.

“They have Evelyn, Alice. They have
her. My wife.”

He dug a cheap Korean cell phone out
of his pocket and slid it across the table to her, hoping she would overlook
his wet eyes.

“There are photos of her on the
camera. They want me to give myself up, the bastards, and they don’t even
bother to make any assurances that she’ll be alright.”

“You aren’t worried about paying for
Margot’s education,” Alice said, slipping the phone into one of the side
pockets of her long black coat. “You’re making arrangements for her to be cared
for in your absence. Taking care of your obligations.”

“I’m her sponsor, so I’m responsible.
My obligation is to the Society, not to Margot. It’s nothing personal,” Chris
said darkly. “I’m not so naïve as to hold out hope for finding Evelyn alive.
Moreover, I understand that even if I survive, that I will have to face an
Audit of my actions. I am prepared for that eventuality. Alice, please...I know
where they are. The people holding her have to be the same people who are
attacking Central. I cannot let her disappear down some Weir’s den. She
deserves a clean death, at the very least. And, you couldn’t help but learn
something about your enemy, right?”

Alice looked at him for a long time
then, considering. Chris sat and waited, not attempting to sway her. If he had
not already, then there was no point in trying further. There was no bargaining
with Alice Gallow.

After a long hesitation, she dug her
cell phone out of her pocket.

“Xia,” she said into the phone, her
voice cross and efficient. “I’m going to need to use the closest London safe
house to where I am now. King’s Cross? I remember where it is. Have them send
my usual things.”

Alice met Chris’s eyes for a moment,
and then gave him a toothy smile.

“I’m going to be plus one for the
time being, Xia. Christopher Feld. You can find his info on the network, go
ahead and request it from Central. He will need a full kit, clothes, the works.
We’ll also need IV equipment, and several pints of O negative. Can you make it
happen this afternoon?”

In the time that he had known Xia,
he had never heard him speak. However, Alice certainly acted as if she had
received a response.

“You’re a life-saver, Xia. We will
have to take the tube for a while, to make sure Chris hasn’t picked up any new
friends. Let them know we will be there in a couple hours, okay? Everything
going well in Saigon? Pat Mitzi on the head for me, won’t you? Okay, then.”

Alice hung up, and then folded up
her cell. Her eyes wandered down to her still empty cup, and she looked
disappointed.

“I guess we can stop somewhere on
the way,” she said, standing up from the table and motioning for Chris to do
the same. “Since they finally have a damn Starbucks in this town. If I don’t
get another cup of coffee, I’ll get a headache, and be bitchy all day.”

I certainly do not want that, Chris
thought, following Alice out the door and into the chilly London afternoon.

Twenty-Six

“Do not tell me that your entire plan consists of waiting for
that little bitch to produce Alex and Eerie, Gaul. Tell me you have something
better than that.”

“I have something better.”

“Well, what is it?” Rebecca demanded.
“Tell me, dammit! I’m freaking out over here.”

Gaul sighed and shook his head,
trying unsuccessfully to walk fast enough to avoid Rebecca’s pestering. It was
always like this when she caught him in the hall – he was a half-foot taller
and still couldn’t outdistance her when she decided that they were going to
talk.

“Could this possibly wait until we
are in my office, Rebecca?”

Rebecca muttered something
unintelligible, but she shut up, so Gaul decided that would have to be good enough.
She managed to wait until they were in his office, door bolted behind them, and
Gaul installed behind his desk before she starting badgering again. He felt
better about it here – it was always easier when he was behind the desk.

“That fucking little monster! She
gets right under your skin, doesn’t she? I can’t believe the Black Sun saddled
us with her. Such a goddamn princess, you know? And she looks at you with
those,” Rebecca threw her hands up and gestured vaguely, “eyes of hers, like
she knows things. Given half a chance, I would make her feel like
Ophelia, rather than just dressing the part. She is so fucking lucky that she
is exempted from counseling sessions.”

“Apparently,” Gaul said dryly,
reaching for his pen and opening the folder nearest to him. He wrote two words,
and then Rebecca hopping up onto the corner of his desk jarred his pen across
the page.

“How is it that we know nothing
about the protocol that the most dangerous student at the Academy operates,
anyway?” Rebecca demanded, lighting a cigarette despite Gaul’s frown. “Even the
precogs can’t seem to get a handle on her, you know. That’s bad news right
there, if you ask me. Never happened before.”

“You are still referring to
Martynova, I assume, and not Alex?”

“For fuck’s sake, Gaul,” Rebecca
said, nudging his trashcan into place with her boot and then knocking the ash
off her cigarette into it. “I’m talking about the ice queen that just ran us
around in circles. Alex might be a wildcard, but he is hardly the calculated
menace that Anastasia Martynova represents. The Black Sun was already dangerous
without her. With her?”

Rebecca blew a stream of smoke at
the ceiling, and it wasn’t clear to Gaul whether the faraway look in her eyes
meant she was operating her protocol, or simply contemplating possibilities.

“With her, the Black Sun is a danger
to everyone, not only the Hegemony. Anastasia plays for keeps, I can tell that
much even if I’m not allowed to peak around in her head. She will put the
détente at risk, that’s a damn certainty. The rumor is that she operates a
Deviant Protocol, and nobody knows what kind. She could be some kind of mutant
precognitive, Gaul, for all we know. She worries me.”

“Do you honestly believe Martynova
has one up on me?” Gaul asked, finishing the document with his compact,
economical signature. “Is that your professional opinion?”

Rebecca’s eyes lit up with interest.
She propped her chin on her elbows, facing Gaul.

“I don’t know. You gonna tell me I’m
wrong?”

“Anastasia is no precognitive.”

“We don’t know anything about her!
She could operate all sorts of protocols and we wouldn’t know a thing.”

“One precognitive recognizes
another. Whatever Miss Martynova’s secrets, precognition is not among them. She
is incredibly devious, no doubt, but I promise you that she is not running a
game on me. Whatever she thinks that she is doing, you must understand that it
is all in our best interests, or I would have prevented it.”

“Eerie and Alex are gone, and we
don’t know where,” Rebecca complained, her voice grating. “We need Anastasia’s
help to get them back, protecting the Black Sun from any potential consequences
while putting us in her debt. This is assuming she actually does know where
they are, and decides to bring them back. Where are our best interests in all
this?”

Gaul sighed and set his pen aside.

“We need to get Alex into the field
sooner rather than later. If we are responsible for everything that must be
done in order to make him an Operator, there is an excellent chance that he
will end up blaming us, blaming the Academy. If we are lucky, he will end up
blaming Anastasia or Eerie for this experience,” Gaul said, flicking his red
eyes up at Rebecca, and then back down to the paperwork in front of him.
“Anyway, Alex and Eerie are somewhere in San Francisco right now.”

Rebecca jumped off the desk and
started pacing excitedly. Gaul sighed more deeply.

“How do you know that? It takes
weeks of analysis to read probability threads that broad and vague, assuming you
know where to look, and there was no time to track every apport,” Rebecca said
accusatorily. “Did you know about this in advance, Gaul?”

“I am a precognitive,” Gaul
said, mildly offended, scratching away at the next document. “I had the
Analytic Pool on this possibility two days after Alex got here, along with a
dozen other ways things could go wrong. Over the last two weeks, I have
arranged circumstances that have removed all of Martynova’s transporters from
Central, except for Svetlana Rostoff. We knew that she wouldn’t do anything
herself, not directly, in order to maintain deniability. Edward is too new,
leaving only her lieutenant, Renton Hall, to arrange matters. Svetlana Rostoff
and Renton Hall only cross paths rarely, so it was easy enough to alert
Alistair to monitor when that happened.”

“Wow,” Rebecca said, sitting back
down on the corner of the desk. “Sometimes, you can be pretty cool, you know?”

“While we are on the subject, I
should mention that Mitsuru Aoki has been in San Francisco since earlier this
morning, arranging an alternative exit, should it become necessary,” Gaul said,
frowning. “I would have preferred it to be Alice Gallow, but she and Xia are
needed elsewhere right now, keeping the Witches off-balance and settling
matters with the remnants of the Terrie Cartel. Operator Aoki was the best I
could manage without anyone noticing.”

“Okay, I feel stupid,” Rebecca
acknowledged, pinching out her cigarette and tossing it into the trash. “If you
knew, though, why didn’t you stop this from happening?”

Gaul’s pen came to an abrupt halt,
and though he did not look up from the paper in front of him, Rebecca could
have sworn she saw the slightest indications of embarrassment.

“Putting aside the disturbing
implications from his past, Alex Warner has been alone his entire life, and
that degree of isolation is worrisome. I don’t need another dysfunctional
operator on my staff, or a repeat of what occurred with Aoki. As he has found
someone with whom he feels comfortable, it did not seem advisable to interfere.
I will admit, however, that I wish it wasn’t Eerie.”

“Are you saying in the most obtuse
possible manner that you thought it might be a good idea if Alex got laid?”

Rebecca continued to stare at Gaul
for a moment, and then started laughing, her face turning red, until she
doubled over at the waist.

“I’m sorry; it’s just that I keep
underestimating you…”

“Please get out of my office.”

***

Maybe
there were signs, and Alex did not notice. He was tired, after the party, still
buzzing but very much into a tired afterglow, a long gentle comedown. Eerie had
leaned against Alex on the taxi ride home, asleep with her head nestled in the
hollow of his shoulder, her hand resting lightly next to his thigh, and he
hadn’t been able to focus on much of anything else from then on.

It could have been that there were
scratches on the lock. Maybe his key did not swipe right the first time;
perhaps the door was already ajar when they arrived. There was no way for him
to say for certain.

Alex took two steps into the
darkened room, chattering nervously at the silent girl behind him, when he
heard breathing. He paused briefly, straining at a noise that he wasn’t
entirely sure he had heard, and then something rushed him from inside the room,
grabbed him by the throat and propelled him backwards. The hand was huge and
powerful, and when Alex tore at it to free himself, one of his hands was cut by
a talon fixed to its index finger. He almost had time to say it before his head
and neck collided with the far wall, hard enough to leave a noticeable indent
in the drywall.

Weir.

One of them must have turned the
lights on, and another shut the door behind him. There were five of them in
all, wearing identical, badly tailored suits. Changing to human form had done
nothing for their smell – they all emitted scents of mud and decay like
perfume. Four of the Weir had identical red ties, but one of them had a silk
blue tie, the one who had planted Alex’s head in the wall. He looked vaguely
familiar to Alex, with his silver hair, and he had a good idea as to why. He
was certain that he had met Mr. Blue-Tie before.

Then he noticed that, somehow, Eerie
was not in the room with them, so that was one good thing.

Then Mr. Blue-Tie leaned close, all
weathered skin, halitosis, and nose hair, his yellow teeth gritted and his
hands balled into fists, and grabbed Alex by the shirt, hauling him partway to
his feet.

“Where is the girl?”

He shook Alex like a rag-doll, as if
he weighed nothing, and Alex’s head whipped back and forth painfully. Dimly,
Alex remembered his protocol, but activating it was impossible under such
painful circumstances.

“What?”

Alex gasped for air, trying futilely
to free himself from the elongated, bestial hands.

“The girl,” Mr. Blue-Tie hissed, picking
Alex up by his hair and throat, so that is his toes barely scraped the ground.
“The one you came in the building with. She didn’t get off the elevator with
you. Where is she?”

Alex belatedly realized that Eerie
had indeed been very quiet on the way to the room, and was grateful for her
disappearance. Then the Weir released his hold on Alex’s hair, and grabbed him
instead by the ears. Alex pounded futilely on his forearms, but it stung his
hands as if he was striking wood. Mr. Blue-Tie grinned, and then shook Alex’s
head violently, until blood gushed from his nose and he was thoroughly
disoriented. Alex lay crumpled and gasping on the floor, curled into a ball,
unable to stop the world from spinning or cope with the rushing sound in his
head, while the Weir muttered incoherently somewhere above him. Improbably, he
heard the sound of someone running a bath. Alex had little time to wonder what
was going to happen to him.

Mr. Blue-Tie came back from wherever
he had gone, and kicked Alex savagely in the midsection, leaving Alex wheezing
and cursing. The other Weir must have come up behind him while he was still
blind with pain, because they managed to get a canvas bag over Alex’s head
before he even realized what was going on. The burlap wrapped around his head
stunk of fear and old vomit. He tried to struggle free, to pull the bag from
his head, but this also turned out to be futile. Without much trouble, they
wrenched his arms behind his back, and then handcuffed his wrists together.

“I’m sure you remember me, right?
You know what I’m capable of. I’m going to ask once more, nicely,” Mr. Blue-Tie
said, delivering another devastating kick to Alex’s stomach. It was only
through an act of tremendous self-control that he avoided throwing up inside of
the bag over his head. Instead, he retched involuntarily and tried to curl up
tighter, half-crazy with claustrophobia and panic. “Then things are going to
get ugly real fast. Where is the girl?”

Alex was glad that he didn’t know. He
had no confidence in himself, not in this terrible situation. He was very
afraid; terrified on a fundamental level about what he knew was going to happen
to him. It made him physically ill he was so frightened. At least he couldn't
betray Eerie under whatever torture they had planned, because he didn’t know
anything. That made it a bit easier to face.

“I have no idea,” Alex said
honestly, pressing his knees as tight to his chin as he could manage. Even
thinking the word ‘torture’ had started him shivering uncontrollably. “I
thought she was with me.”

“Okay then,” Mr. Blue-Tie said with
obvious relish. “Don’t say that I didn’t warn you, shithead.”

Two of the Weir grabbed Alex and
carried him forcibly into the bathroom, banging his head into what seemed like
every available surface on the way. In the suffocating confines of the bag,
Alex could not anticipate the impacts, which made the whole experience that
much worse. Eventually, they got him wrapped around one side of the bathtub,
one Weir standing on either side of him, with their feet on the backs of his
knees, his thighs pressed up against the cold of the tub wall.

“Now, to refresh your memory,” said
Mr. Blue-Tie, his voice made resonant by the small bathroom’s acoustics. “The
question of the moment is: where is that little bitch we saw you with, earlier?
No need to answer right away. I’ll give you a minute to think about it.”

When Alex felt the hand on the back
of his head, he stiffened his neck against the pressure, but it was hopeless.
The water was ice-cold, and the shock of hitting it almost made Alex gasp
involuntarily as he his head went under. The fabric of the bag soaked through
immediately, and the rough burlap clung to his face, increasing the feeling of
suffocation. Alex could see nothing at all, even when he opened his eyes, and
he could feel nothing except the water around his head, the unyielding force of
the hand on the back of his head, and the dull sound of his own legs pounding
desperately against the side of the bathtub. He wondered how long they would
hold him under, and the question repeated itself in his mind, became obsessive,
and made him acutely aware of the agonizing passage of time. Again, he reached
desperately for his protocol, and once again, terror and pain denied him
access.

Inside the bag, under the water,
Alex’s existence was defined by a consuming panic, an increasingly urgent need
to breathe, and his eroding self-control. As Alex tried to count the seconds
ticking by in his head, the dull pain in his chest grew sharper, more intense,
his lungs seeming to contract, to collapse in on themselves. More than he could
remember wanting anything, ever, more even than he wanted to breathe, Alex
wanted the bag off his head. Drowning didn’t seem as bad, outside the stifling
confines of the sack.

The seconds crept along
imperceptibly, and Alex started to wonder if they were going to kill him, after
all. His chest was on fire, and his throat had started to make convulsive
motions. He held his mouth closed, unsure if he could stop himself from
breathing in if it were open. It was impossible, he decided. Maybe Eerie had
shown up at the door, maybe she had stopped by reception or the ice machine or
something, and now they had her, and they didn’t need Alex anymore, so he would
die here, drowned in a stinking bag in some hotel bathroom.

Then they pulled his head back out
of the water, and his chest convulsed, trying to force air through the
waterlogged fabric that had worked its way inside of his mouth and clung to his
eyes and nostrils. The pain in his chest was soon matched by one radiating out
from somewhere behind his eyes. Through the bag, the lights of the bathroom
were dim and strange. He spat, coughed, and squirmed helplessly on the hotel
tile, frantic to pull the wet, suffocating fabric from his face.

“Was that a minute? I don’t even
think it was that long. We aren’t too good at counting, Alex,” snarled Mr.
Blue-Tie, his breath tickling Alex’s ear with the intimacy of a lover. He could
barely hear him over the sound of his own labored gasping. “We almost lost you
there. You feel like telling us anything, or do you want to test our math
again?”

Alex wondered, even as he twitched
against the bathroom floor like a fish out of water, his chest so tight that he
couldn’t seem to breathe any better now than when he had been underwater, how
it was that Mr. Blue-Tie knew his name. He finally drew in a long, shuddering
breath, gagging as the bag worked its way still more deeply into his mouth.

“Nothing, huh? Well, that’s great,
as far as I’m concerned. You see,” Mr. Blue-Tie confided, pulling Alex up by
his shoulders, and leaning him against the side of the bathtub, “we don’t
actually need you to tell us anything. We’ve got this area locked down, and
your girlfriend isn’t going anywhere, not without running into us. And when we
find her,” he hissed, grinding his crotch against Alex obscenely, “well, maybe
we’ll start with you, so you don’t have wonder what we are going to do.”

Alex felt the stiffness pressing
against him and was horrified, a further level of panic and dread somehow
opening beneath him, impossibly worse than the prospect of being drowned in an
anonymous hotel bathtub. He wanted to say something, anything; Alex knew with
cold certainty, if he had anyone to sell out, he would have done so in a
heartbeat. He would not have been able to help himself, and that hurt to know.
In the moment, however, he had nothing to say, and no breath with which to say
it.

Abruptly, his head was underwater,
and it happened so fast that he was still gasping when he hit, water flooding
his mouth and nose, burning his sinuses. Without thinking, he panicked and blew
out the little air in his lungs. The heavy fabric and the cold water beyond
pressed in on him. Then, with an almost surreal horror, he felt fingers hooking
inside his belt, tearing his pants down and away from his waist. He tried to
buck, to shake the Weir from his back, but the feet on his knees and the hand
on the back of his head remained intractable.

Alex decided to breathe in. He had
no interest in living through this nightmare – it was easier and better simply
to give up. He relaxed his chest and throat, opening his mouth under water. For
a moment, he felt no fear at all, just disgust, regret, and profound
disappointment.

Then Alex realized that he could not
make himself inhale water. His body simply refused to obey him. Despite the
horror and shame, despite pain in his chest that defied description, Alex could
not decide to drown. He struggled against the hand on his neck, and then
finding his legs suddenly free, he kicked frantically at the Weir behind him,
struggling like an animal in a trap. He knew with a clarity that surprised him
that he was dying from lack of oxygen. Alex decided to die fighting.

He thrashed about as much as was
possible, kicking his legs frantically when he found them free. The world
dimmed, receding to the extent that he was unsure if his flailing legs collided
when anything at all. Alex struggled as much against the lack of oxygen as he
did against his unseen tormentors.

Belatedly, he came to realize that
the person behind him was altogether too small to be Mr. Blue-Tie, or any of
the other Weir he had seen in the hotel room. Then Alex noticed that the other
Weir who held him down on either side seemed to have disappeared. Slowly, it
became obvious that the hand on his neck was attempting to pull him up and out
of the water, not pushing him into it. This task was made all the more
difficult by his ongoing struggle.

Alex tried to cooperate with the
effort, and found that he could do little to influence affairs. The whole thing
seemed rather impersonal, as if he were observing the struggle from a cinematic
remove.

Then he was out into the air again,
and that was ridiculously good, even if his chest rattled and wheezed as he
gasped, even if the air burned his throat and he could not see for the bag on
his head. A moment later, his head was free of the wet canvas, and that was
even better. Lying on the floor with the bathroom tile cool against the side of
his face felt like heaven.

Alex looked up at Eerie, her face
streaked with tears and her mouth moving, and smiled adoringly at her.

Then his expression froze and his
face twisted as he struggled for breath, clutching at his throat and writhing.
The air was wrong, unless it was a trick of his vision – it was dense and
faintly discolored, and it burned his eyes and mouth, and the inside of his
nose. It was even worse in his lungs, and he found that he could not hold the
air in. Every breath became a coughing fit, and his throat contracted.

It took a little while for Eerie to
pin his head down, her knees on his shoulders, and longer to force his mouth
open and wedge something inside it. It was sweet, too sweet, sickeningly so,
and Alex thought at first that he might be ill, the candy floating syrupy and
huge in his dry mouth. Then, slowly, his chest and throat began to relax, and
the burning in his sinuses receded.

“Sorry, Alex,” Eerie apologized,
blushing for reasons he could not understand. “I know it’s gross, but please
keep this inside of your mouth until I tell you, okay?”

He lay on the bathroom floor for a
few minutes, caring only about breathing, about the simple luxury that he had
never appreciated fully before, while the candy disintegrated in his mouth. It was
almost gone before he realized that it was a toffee. Then, almost reluctantly,
he opened his eyes.

“Do you feel better, Alex? I’m sorry
I had to poison you, too, but I couldn’t figure out any other way to help.”
Eerie leaned him against the side of the bathtub, and then reached over his
head to empty the water from it. Alex shuddered when he heard the splash. “You
can spit out the candy now, if you want,” she added shyly.

Alex didn’t really want to, not
anymore. He was surprised how much better he felt, how amazing it was to be
able to breathe, free of the awful weight of the Weir and the suffocating bag.
Maybe it was shock, but Alex felt surprisingly okay with the situation, despite
his physical distress.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Eerie said,
patting his back and fretting over him. “I’m so sorry that I couldn’t stop
them. It took a long time for me to poison the entire room with something that
would kill the Weir but not you.”

Alex shook his head, his tongue
swollen where he had bit down on it. He couldn’t imagine Eerie feeling bad for
anything. In his book, she was a candidate for sainthood.

Eerie bent down next to Mr. Blue-Tie
and dug through his pockets. He was unresponsive, and judging from the trouble
that she had moving his arm, Alex figured he was probably dead. A moment later,
Eerie produced a key ring from his pants pocket, and then used it to free
Alex’s aching wrists from the handcuffs.

“Are you starting to feel better?”

Alex nodded, still unable to speak.
Eerie ducked back to the room and rummaged for a moment, then returned,
twisting the cap off a bottle of mineral water that she gave to Alex.

“Eerie,” he managed, after a few
sips of water. “Eerie, what did you do?”

“I did not want you to see that. I
have never...” Eerie stopped and then turned, her face streaked with tears.
“Alex, I have never done anything like this before. I’ve never even thought
about doing it. This is not, it’s not me.” Eerie shook her head despondently.
“This is not the kind of thing that I do.”

“This was like the other night?”
Alex asked groggily. “At the party? Except…”

“Except that was how I felt then,”
Eerie said, hanging her head. “And this is how I felt watching them hurt you.
Now, you will be afraid of me, because of what I am, like everyone else.
Because I am not like Alex. Do you hate me?”

“Hate you?” Alex said, coughing.
“Eerie, as far as I’m concerned, you’re Mother Teresa. I’m not afraid or angry.
I’m super fucking grateful. What you interrupted – that was,” he added
thoughtfully, inclining his head in the direction of the dead Weir, “quite
possibly the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. You saved me, Eerie.”

Alex tried to get Eerie to smile,
but she just stared over his shoulder, transfixed by something behind him. It
took Alex a while to manage turning around, as his back and neck seemed to have
seized up.

Renton was peering in through the
doorway, a nickel-plated H&K semiautomatic pistol in his left hand. Behind
him, barely visible, Margot peaked around the corner. In front of both of them,
Anastasia stood, arms folded across her chest, immaculate in a frilly black
dress. She seemed terribly amused by the situation.

“Well, I can see why you would want
to stay here,” she said, running a finger along the doorjamb and then
inspecting it for dust. “This is a very nice room. Perhaps you would consider
the alternative of staying the night at my suite? The hotel where I am staying
is of better quality, for one. Also, there are significantly fewer dead people
in the bathroom.”

Twenty-Seven

“I heard that you and Eerie went on a date.”

“I’m not sure that it was a date.
Exactly.”

“But you did go dancing with
her.”

“Did Eerie tell you all this stuff?
It was more like she went dancing, and I sat there and watched.”

“Huh. Very smooth. Quite the
lady-killer.”

“Shut up, Margot. Why do we have to
walk halfway across town to make a phone call, anyway?” Alex complained,
hurrying after the vampire, who set a rapid pace. “Don’t you have a cell phone?
There was a phone in the hotel room, too. At the very least, if we had to
leave, we could have driven...”

“I need a pay phone, and it has to
be far enough away from where we are staying that no one will find us if they
trace the call. Besides, these days, it’s pretty hard to find a pay phone in
the first place.” Margot threaded her way through the crowded street, talking
without looking back at Alex, sounding bored and impatient. “I figured you
could use the walk to clear your head.”

“Really? Pardon me for doubting your
concern for my well-being, but…”

Margot stopped at a closed-down
strip mall, glanced around for cameras, and then strolled over to a bank of
phones lost in the shadows cast by a flickering streetlight. She inspected the
phones from a distance with obvious distaste, and then pulled a set of latex
gloves from her pocket and slid them on.

“Okay, okay,” Margot said, looking
at the phones reluctantly. “Renton had an errand to run, and procedure demands
that none of us be alone, until we are out of the field. Edward went with him,
and Anastasia hates to walk, so I got you. Lucky me, right?”

“I don’t understand why this is such
a big deal,” Alex complained. “I mean, Eerie already killed those Weir,” he
said, immediately regretting having brought it up. “We are good, right?”

“Are you kidding me?” Margot stared
at him in disbelief, and Alex felt very small indeed. “There have to be more.
And anyway, I doubt that the silver one was dead.”

Margot shook her head, as if he had
saddened her.

“I knew that was him,” Alex said
with conviction. “I knew I had seen that bastard somewhere before. But, he sure
looked dead…”

“Bet he did after Mitsuru was done
with him, too, and look how that worked out. I’ve never actually seen a silver
one, Alex, but they are supposedly very hard to kill.”

“Do we need, like, silver bullets,
or something?”

Margot shook her head dismissively.

“More like a train to hit him with,
or a cruise missile. Or,” she added, reaching for the handset, “Mitsuru,
assuming you plan on letting me make this phone call.”

***

“Where
did Renton go? And the cute one who never talks?”

“Edward?”

“Right. Him. Where did they go?”

Anastasia continued to stare at the
television, a financial channel playing on mute. The information was so far out
of date already; she could hardly believe anyone watched the evening news.

“I sent them on an errand,”
Anastasia said, glancing over at the Changeling lying on the plush bed opposite
her own, and then pressing the power button on her remote. “There was something
I wanted to talk to you about, anyway.”

Anastasia sat up and turned to face
Eerie, smoothing the wrinkles from the lap of her silk dress. Eerie blinked
with surprise, propped her head up on her elbow, and then started to talk
rapidly in her musical voice.

“Really? Because if this is about
the cartel thing, then it’s very nice of you to offer, but…”

Anastasia waved her off, looking a
bit distracted.

“No, Eerie, nothing like that,”
Anastasia said. “I am not trying to recruit you.” Anastasia paused, and then
smiled for effect. “Not at the moment, in any case.”

Eerie stared at her blankly.
Anastasia sighed, and shook her head.

“I will be direct,” Anastasia said
unhappily, her hands folded in her lap in front of her, her posture rigid, her
eyes boring into Eerie. “What is there between you and Alex?”

Eerie turned an immediate bright
red, and hurriedly looked away. Anastasia had to stifle a laugh. They were too
easy, Alex and Eerie both. She simply could not help herself.

“N-nothing,” Eerie sputtered,
looking conspicuously away from Anastasia with all the guile of a guilty child.
“We are just friends. We only met recently, and…”

“Why did you ask Svetlana to send
the two of you to San Francisco?” Anastasia asked patiently. “That is out of
the ordinary, even for you, Eerie.”

Anastasia waited, her eyes fixed on
Eerie. The impasse was not long. Eerie hung her head in resignation.

“You’re scary, Anastasia,” Eerie
hummed quietly. “I am helping Alex. I didn’t do anything bad.”

Anastasia sat up, and reached over
to pat Eerie on the knee. She noticed that Eerie had found time to obtain cute
patterned pajamas. She wondered what kind of underwear she had bought for the
evening, with a brief internal smirk.

“Why Alex, though? Why are you
interested in helping him?”

Eerie got flustered again, but this
time, she did not look away.

“Well, he helped me,” Eerie said
reluctantly. “And he is… interesting. Don’t you think so, Anastasia?”

“Very.”

“And also,” Eerie continued,
quietly, almost as if she were talking to herself, “he seems nice, don’t you
think?”

Anastasia felt momentary pity for
Eerie, and then squashed it. Now was not the time to be sentimental, she
reminded herself. She decided to risk pushing a little harder.

“No, Ériu, I don’t think so,”
Anastasia said casually. “But, if you do, then shouldn’t you consider what
being close to you could do to that ‘nice’ boy? Affairs between Changelings and
humans generally do not end well for the human half of the relationship, as you
are well aware. Or have you forgotten your own family history?”

Later, she would applaud her own
composure, masking the surprise she felt, maintaining an impassive facade. In
the moment, however, Anastasia was too stunned for self-congratulation.

The Changeling stared at her,
sitting at the edge of the bed, her posture rigid and her expression stormy,
eyes as clear and cold as the stream near Anastasia’s childhood home. She
emitted a subtle, shifting radiance; as Anastasia watched, Eerie’s irises ran
the gamut between bright blue and murky hazel, one shade blending into the
next. Around the Changeling, tiny motes of light spun and danced, making
periodic lazy half-revolutions. Each mote left behind brilliant, multicolored
trails, each particle a moving piece of a golden cloud, a shifting, fluid
expanse of light.

Anastasia thought that maybe her ploy
had worked a little too well.

“Mistress of the Black Sun or not,
be careful what you call me,” Eerie warned, her voice cool and subtly menacing.
The musical quality to her voice normally was replaced by a composed frigidity.
“I cooperated with you because our interests in this matter aligned. That does
not make us allies, Anastasia Martynova.”

Anastasia smiled, her suspicions
confirmed. She had never seen Ériu personally, after all. All of their previous
dealings had been through indirect communication. Even the acquisition of her
name had been an act of subterfuge. This was the first time that Anastasia had
witnessed Eerie’s rumored other.

“You finally come out to play,
Ériu.” Anastasia looked impressed. “I had an inkling, of course, but it was
difficult to believe without proof. Tell me, then, what do you have planned for
dear little Eerie? And what of Alexander Warner? I never would have imagined
the Fey to be so romantic. Or is all of this for the benefit of your host?”

Eerie’s eyes narrowed, her irises
changing hue like an oil slick in the sun, her skin translucent and radiating
an amber luminescence.

“You understand nothing of my nature
or my intent. I will not answer your questions. I am not one of your servants,
child, and I do not care how long your shadow has grown.”

The Changeling’s face contorted into
an inhumanly rigid sneer, so different from Eerie’s normal expression that
Anastasia could hardly see the resemblance. Anastasia felt pity for Alex,
whenever he managed to discover her true nature, mitigated by a certain feeling
that he deserved what he got.

“Take my warning to heart, whelp.
You have been compensated in full for your part. I am under no obligation to
share my designs with you, regardless of our previous collaboration. I advise
you not to interfere in my affairs, with the boy or in any other fashion. We
will not speak again.”

“Fine,” Anastasia said airily,
pressing power on the remote. “You don’t have to be a bitch about it.”

The light around Eerie dissipated
and her eyes slowly refocused. She sat back on the bed, looking self-conscious,
and then turned her attention back to the mute TV screen and the crawl of
symbols representing an abstraction of the world economy. Anastasia joined her
in silent contemplation of the stream of numbers.

“So, you do like him,”
Anastasia remarked cheerfully. “I thought as much.”

She managed to keep the smile off
her face until Eerie stomped off to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
Like children, she thought. All too easy.

***

Alex
looked at the streets around him, confused, and then over at Margot Feld.

“Hey, Margot? Is this the way back
to the hotel?”

Margot seemed to find something in
the buildings across the street that required her urgent attention.

“Round about,” Margot said finally,
still avoiding eye contact. “Wanted to check and see if we picked up any
company before we took it back with us. And,” Margot added, reluctantly, “there
was something I needed to talk to you about. Eerie isn’t who you think she is.”

Alex sighed, and looked over at
Margot. The bar behind her made heavy use of blue and pink neon, providing
Margot with a weird illumination as she walked beneath the signs, almost
otherworldly. Literally otherworldly, Alex corrected himself.

“Do we have to talk about this? Did
Anastasia put you up to it?”

Margot seemed perturbed, stepping
neatly around the blankets and cardboard boxes of a homeless encampment that
extended out from the alcove of a gated electronics store to encompass the
inner half of the sidewalk. Alex looked away from the eyes he saw there,
shining in the darkness, feeling obscure and fleeting shame.

“I’ve known Eerie since she was
little. We’ve been neighbors since we arrived at the Academy, and because no
one else would talk to us, we spent a great deal of time together.” Margot
frowned shortly, as if troubled by her memories, and then shook her head and
continued. “I am working for the Black Sun right now, Alex. It is a temporary
arrangement, however, a contract job. I am not one of Anastasia’s creatures. I
render assistance, in return for an appropriate fee. You probably don’t realize
this, being a scholarship student, and a potential asset, but the Academy is
quite expensive.”

“I’ve always wanted to ask,” Alex
said, with more malice than he had intended. “Why didn’t you do something about
Steve, that day in the cafeteria? You were sitting right next to her, after
all.”

Margot was silent for a while after
that, and Alex started to wonder if he had gone too far. In the near distance,
a woman or a child screamed, starting high and piercing, like a siren, and then
slowly modulating down and trailing away to nothing. The silence that followed
was more disturbing than the scream.

“We aren’t friends Alex. Eerie is
simply someone that I have known for a long time. My profession does not allow
for much in the way of personal relationships. Neither does my nature. I am not
about to start compensating for Eerie’s social inadequacies. If Steve were a
real threat, I would have taken action. He is nothing more than a petty bully.
Not my concern.”

Alex laughed and looked up at the
moon, livid and round, like that first night, the night that the world opened
up to reveal another world inside of it, like one of those little Russian
dolls. It seemed wrong that the moon would look the same when everything else
felt so different.

“Are you sure? It doesn’t look that
way to me.”

Margot shook her head. Alex was used
to her wearing pigtails; with them, she looked more conventional, as well as a
bit older.

“Are you any different, Alex? We are
all essentially mercenary. The work is the same as being a soldier, but the pay
is a whole lot better. If you are particularly lucky, you may even decide on
your own terms of sale. That is all there is to it. Eventually, the cartels
will find a way to buy you. You should be happy that they are so interested.”

Alex shrugged and gave her a
half-hearted smile to cover his confusion. They walked along in silence through
a block crowded with small restaurants and bars, spilling patrons and cooking smells
out onto the sidewalk.

“Do you know what vampires are?”

Margot’s eyes were cold as she
looked at him. Alex laughed, the sound carried away by a rush of passing
traffic. He had been in Central so long, San Francisco felt strange and
crowded.

“Sorry. It’s just hard to believe
questions like that are serious. Please, go ahead and tell me.”

Margot’s stare was icy.

“Remember the injection of nanites
that saved your life?” Margot’s eyes narrowed as she spoke, but her tone
remained flat. “Well, the same thing ended mine.”

Alex looked at Margot blankly.

“Didn’t they tell you beforehand?
Activation is fatal about a third of the time. The average would be worse, but
the precognitives sort out those most likely to survive in advance. Some sort of
malfunction in the nanites procedures.”

Alex shook his head, feeling a bit
ill. Michael had mentioned that there was a mortality rate, of course, and he
had even said that it was high – but Alex had never suspected anything along
those lines. He fought a bizarre desire to scratch at the now invisible spot on
his upper arm where the IV attached.

“That’s why the Hegemony objects
strenuously to the Black Sun’s philosophy of mass activation of the populace at
large. They are imagining a few billion corpses.”

Alex failed to keep the horror off
his face, which seemed to amuse Margot.

“Obviously, to the Black Sun,
casualties go with the territory,” Margot said, shrugging. “In the event that
the body rejects the nanites, cardiac and respiratory arrest begin almost
immediately, rapidly followed by brain death. Fast and irreversible. But they
can’t just bag the body and call the morgue.”

Pausing for effect, Margot seemed to
soak up the curiosity and repulsion she could see on Alex’s face.

“They trundle the bodies on down to
the basement of the medical building, where the only vampire on staff works, an
old guy named Jorge who has had the job for decades. I don’t blame him for not
wanting to give it up; after all, it seems pretty damn easy as long as you
aren’t squeamish, and don’t mind the hours.”

She deftly maneuvered her way
through a crowd of smokers outside of a packed, faux Irish-themed pub, carving
a path through drunks and underdressed girls, her voice raised so Alex could
hear.

“Jorge keeps an eye on the bodies.
Weird guy. Observation lasts for three days, twenty-four hours a day, with
everyone who rejects the nanites. And most of the time, that is his whole job –
staring at corpses.”

Margot turned and looked over her
shoulder, giving Alex an almost feral grin. For the first time, he noticed that
she did in fact have fangs – a pair of subtly elongated canine teeth, the
points peeking out from beneath her pale lips.

“Jorge gets a lot of reading done.
Except, of course, when one of the bodies sits up and starts screaming.”

“How often does that happen?”

“Not that often,” Margot said,
slowing her pace as the sidewalk cleared. “In the time I’ve been at the Academy
it has only happened twice.”

“You woke up thirsty for blood after
a three-day coma? That seems a little unlikely.”

Margot laughed dismissively.

“Hardly. There was no coma. I died,
Alex. I died, and then three days later, the nanites woke me up. They had
repaired the damage to my body, and made a few other small changes while they
were at it, like an apology to make up for what they had done.”

“Are you… you know,” Alex asked
hesitantly, looking at her with a certain amount of trepidation, “dead? You
don’t seem...”

“That is hard to say,” Margot
admitted. “I don’t feel dead. My heart beats, I need to breathe, I get hungry –
I even have hay fever in the spring. It isn't as simple as that, though.
Something is…wrong.”

Margot shook her head and looked up
at the night sky. Maybe her eyes were different from Alex’s, but he couldn’t
see anything but a dull humidity reflecting the ambient light, a moist grey
blanket hovering over the city with the fat yellow moon hidden behind it.

“I remember agreeing to be
activated,” Margot said, quiet enough that Alex had to walk closer to her to hear.
“I remember that it burned, in my arm, where they put in the IV. I could tell
from the look on the doctor’s face that was something was wrong, I remember
Michael yelling something. Then there was a terrible pain in my chest, and then
after that…”

Margot trailed off for a moment,
frowning.

“When I woke up my chest didn’t hurt
anymore. And nothing else has much since then.”

“Wow. That is all kinds of fucked
up. I tend to think the shit that happened to me was pretty damn bad, but that
is really a whole lot worse…”

“Thanks. I guess.”

“I don’t really understand, though…”

Margot stepped deftly around an
assortment of broken glass and sleeping transients. The sidewalk was stained
brownish-red, for reasons Alex preferred not to think about.

“The nanites inside you,” Margot
said, pointing at Alex. “They repair and maintain your body, right? If you get
hurt, they help you heal, if you get sick, they help fight the disease. Did you
know that you are more-or-less immune to cancer? I think the administration
started playing that part down lately, to discourage smoking.”

Margot smiled slightly, and then
hooked a thumb at herself.

“Those same nanites malfunctioned
inside me, Alex. Not only when they killed me, but afterwards, when they
brought me back. Your body is permeated with nanites, but mine is contaminated
with them,” Margot said grimly. “Among other changes, the nanites purged the
marrow from my bones and replaced it with a mass of nanoassemblers.
No bone marrow, no hemoglobin.”

“And that’s why you drink blood...”

“What are you talking about? I’ve
never ‘drank’ blood in my life. I get transfusions at a hospital, like a
civilized being.”

“Why can’t the nanites make
hemoglobin? Michael said they can manufacture tissue and stuff...”

“That nanites inside you can,”
Margot said, bitterly. “Mine can’t. Mine can’t produce any kind of living
tissue. Nothing biological.”

Alex had a whole series of alarming
thoughts.

“If you can’t heal when you get
hurt, and the nanites can’t repair the damage, then what happens?

“Synthetic replacements.”

The vampire held up one arm in the
sickly light of a flickering streetlamp, looking at her limb wistfully, the way
people look at a childhood photo.

“Two years ago, I was working an op
in Tbilisi, clearing out a Witch coven. While we were purging the old cemetery,
a Ghoul took a big chunk out of my arm.”

“What the hell is a Ghoul?”

Margot paused to glare at him for
the interruption, then continued.

“I probably would have bled to death
if not for the nanites. When I woke up, my arm was rebuilt from synthetic
materials, doped with nanites. I can’t feel anything with it now. The lab says
it is mostly silicon.”

They walked in silence for a moment,
and then Alex shrugged.

“Okay, all of that sucks,” Alex
said, with a callousness he had not intended. “But I don’t know why you are
telling me all this...”

Margot spun around so fast Alex
didn’t have time to put his hands up, her long black coat flaring as she spun.
She pressed the tip of one finger firmly against his solar plexus, her face
contorted with barely suppressed anger.

“I am trying to tell you,” Margot
said, with a quiet intensity, “that I am a reanimated corpse filled with tiny
machines displacing everything organic in my body. As weird and frightening as
that makes me, Alex, that is nothing compared to how strange Eerie is.
At least I was human being, at one point.”

Margot dug the point of her
fingernail into his chest, not quite hard enough to break the skin. Then she
shook her head, brushed her hands absently against her coat as if she had
touched something dirty, and walked away.

“You might want to do a little
reading on the subject,” Margot suggested evilly. “Find out what happens to
people who get involved with a Changeling, before it happens to you, too.”

Margot moved fast, leaving Alex
standing by the side of the road, his mouth hanging open. She was a
considerable way down the street when he finally caught back up to her.

“Something to think about, before
you get too cozy with something that isn’t even human,” Margot said, her voice
casual, her pace steady and unhurried. “Are you coming or what?”

***

“I
have never seen so many hipsters in one place.”

Anastasia snorted contemptuously.

“You should go to Brooklyn. It is a
bit like this, but the whole island.”

Alex checked to see if she was
kidding.

“That sounds a little scary.”
Anastasia solemnly nodded her agreement, and then returned to observing the
park below them. The space they occupied had been offices at some point in the
recent past, though it was currently gutted, part of what seemed to be ongoing
renovations throughout the building.

“Anastasia,” Alex blurted. “Can I
ask you something?”

Anastasia looked from the window
again, and arched one eyebrow curiously.

“The Black Sun Cartel, your ideology
– you want to introduce nanites into everyone, right?”

He flinched at the crudeness of his
own words, but Anastasia simply nodded and waited for him to continue.

“Well, what about all the people who
would be killed? I heard that, like, a third of the people who get injected
with them die.”

Anastasia appeared to consider this
for a moment.

“Do you know what a cartel is,
Alex?”

“Don’t ask me,” Alex complained,
rubbing the back of his neck and looking petulant. “You’re in one, right?”

“A cartel is an agreement between
competing parties to control a specific concern for mutual benefit,” Anastasia
said, ignoring Alex’s rolling eyes. “An open conspiracy, if you like. We are
all inherently competitors in the same business, each of the cartels. We have
simply agreed to limit competition from outside parties. Flowery rhetoric
aside, the Hegemony is no different from any other cartel. Did Margot tell you
the Hegemony’s alternative to mass nanite introduction?”

Alex shook his head, not at all
surprised that she knew the details from his conversation with Margot the night
before. He was starting to adjust to the idea that Anastasia always seemed to
know what was going on, even the things that happened when she was not there.

“The Hegemony wants to come to an
accommodation with the Witches,” Anastasia said acidly, her voice dripping with
contempt. “They are willing to consign a percentage of humanity –the majority,
if you are curious – to serve as livestock for the Witches in perpetuity, for
uncontested Hegemony rule in Central and the cartel-controlled areas.”

Anastasia took evident satisfaction
from the disgust in Alex’s face.

“What price for peace, no?”

Alex rubbed his jaw absently,
staring at a point above Anastasia’s shoulder, trying to digest it all. The
Hegemony had seemed more benign than the Black Sun, and to be truthful,
Anastasia’s demeanor had not helped. It would be a mistake, though, to confuse
the messenger with the message, no matter how pretty the messenger.

“That makes more sense,” Alex
allowed, reluctantly. “But, still…”

Anastasia waved him off, pressing
her face close to the glass, reminding him of a child entranced by the view.
Alex looked down as well, but saw nothing other than the same mass of
picnickers, dogs, umbrellas, and coolers that had crowded the hilly green
patch, since they had taken their perch in the disused office space more than
an hour before. On the table beside Anastasia, her cell phone buzzed
discreetly. She punched the speaker button.

“Boss? Are you watching?”

The connection was bad, tinny
sounding, and it was hard to make out the voice. The wording, however,
obviously belonged to Renton. No one else would address Anastasia with such
familiarity.

“Do you see what I see?”

Anastasia peered through the window
at something Alex could not find for himself, much to his frustration.

“Yes. What do you want me to do?”

Anastasia considered for a moment
before she responded.

“Stay where you are. I’m going to
collect Miss Aoki.”

Alex continued to look out the
window for whatever had attracted their attention, seeing nothing but a crowded
city park in the late afternoon.

The plan was made without his input
– Anastasia, Margot, Renton, and Edward had left him and Eerie to watch TV, while
they held a hushed conference in the hall outside the room. Alex had resented
it; actually, he was still resenting it. At the same time, though, even he
understood their reasoning. He was virtually defenseless, after all, and Eerie
was bat-shit crazy. It irked him a bit, though.

Eerie hadn’t seemed slighted by
being left out, but she’d been weirdly reticent all morning, hardly speaking at
all, and going out of her way to avoid him. Admittedly, lodging in Anastasia’s
suite for the afternoon had been awkward for both of them, despite its
spaciousness, but was a symptom of the situation, not the cause.

On the cab ride here, Eerie had made
it obvious that she was trying not to sit near him, practically insisting that
Renton take the back seat instead, resulting in near-constant knowing glances
from him for the whole drive. Now she wandered around on the other side of the
vacant office, walking aimlessly from room to room. She occasionally paused to
examine where the walls had been crudely torn open to strip the wiring, or to
rummage half-heartedly through the personal effects and scraps of paper that
remained, abandoned with the office furniture deemed too worthless to sell. She
hadn’t spoken since they had arrived, the hood of her sweatshirt pulled up, and
it seemed as if she was making a special effort to remain at a distance.

Alex tried to follow her stare
through the glass, hoping to pick out which part of the park she was looking
at. He nursed the suspicion that Anastasia had sent him out with Margot to make
that phone call last night with ulterior motives. He hadn’t given it any
thought at the time, but when he’d come back to the hotel, Renton and Edward
were bringing a bunch of heavy duffel bags up to the room, so he knew that
Anastasia had worked things out to be alone with Eerie. Whatever had happened
between the two of them, Eerie seemed reluctant to interact with him as a
result.

He snuck a look at Anastasia out of
the corner of his eye – she was somewhat pretty, he had to admit, in a young
and overly rigid way. She had pulled her hair back in a tight bun, and her
dress was excessively formal for the occasion, frilly and fringed with ribbon.
Her sober demeanor and her childish appearance were painfully at odds with each
other. When she was focused on something, as she was now, he could pretend she
was a regular teenager – a bit spoiled, maybe, and probably awkward around
people, the kind of bookish girl that he usually felt sorry for.

Something about the idea of pitying
Anastasia struck him as amusing, and he found himself grinning. Anastasia
caught it in the reflection, and shot him a look that combined curiosity with
annoyance, but Alex didn’t care. Lately, he had been feeling that he was
spending too much time worrying about what Anastasia thought.

It was funny, in a way. He had
always thought of himself as independent, maybe even a bit headstrong, but then
things got scary. Then, all of a sudden, it became very easy to take orders,
when the person giving them sounded like they knew what to do. If they were
good at it, like Anastasia was, Alex worried that he might not even notice
himself obeying.

“Found her.” Renton’s voice crackled
through the hiss of static. “She’s parked herself. As far as I can see, we’re
all clear.”

Anastasia pursed her lips for a
moment, looking out the window. This time, Alex was able to follow her gaze, to
a figure shaking out a red picnic blanket, not far from the near edge of the
park. Miss Aoki wore trainers and a white T-shirt, her eyes hidden behind
overly large sunglasses, the kind they sell in the drugstore, wandering
uncomfortably amid the sun and crowds.

“Boss? Are you sure that you want to
meet her? Ed says that he is closer…”

“No,” Anastasia said curtly into the
radio. “No, I’m going.”

“But, what if this is…”

Anastasia looked angrily at the
radio, as if it could convey her glare.

“If it is,” she said firmly, “then
we already discussed how to deal with that. Follow the plan, Renton. Everything
will be fine.”

Anastasia put the radio down on the
desktop, and then sat up, brushing off her dress and looking mildly perturbed.

“Very well,” Anastasia said,
gathering herself and dispelling any trace of nervousness. “I shouldn’t be
long. If things go poorly, take her,” she said, pointing at Eerie, who was
still sulking at the far end of the office, “and run. Get out of the state, to
a city, somewhere big. Check into a hotel, and call Alistair. He’ll bail you
out.”

“Right,” Alex said, nodding.

“No ‘What about you guys?’ No worry
over your friends, or desire to play the hero? We are here to rescue you, after
all.”

“Friends? No,” Alex said firmly. “I
can’t imagine there’s anything out there more dangerous than you, Anastasia.
And if there is, you can be sure that I’m not going to try and fight it.”

Anastasia shook her head, as if she
had tired of tolerating his foolishness.

“What, haven’t you met Miss Aoki?
Don’t be so dramatic, Alex. They come worse than me, I assure you.”

Alex waited until the door shut
behind her before he went back to looking out the window. Despite the big talk,
he did feel nervous, and yes, a tad bit guilty. It was not that he had some
particular desire to risk his life; in fact, he was still scared after his last
encounter with the Weir. But, the idea of watching people that he knew fighting
and dying in front of him, even if he couldn’t exactly call them his friends,
well, that made him very uncomfortable.

Of course, he would still run if
things looked bad. He would worry about feeling guilty over it later.

Alex turned his attention back to
the window. He knew that Renton was on the roof with some sort of scoped rifle.
Edward had gone up with him initially, probably to help with the bags, and then
had come down a bit later, alone and empty-handed. He wasn’t sure where Edward
had gone since, but it could not have been far. Alex got the impression that it
was rare for Anastasia not to be under the watchful eye of at least one of her
guards. There was no way, he knew, that they were letting her walk out alone
and unprotected, no matter how it looked to him.

Alex had to admit, however, that was
exactly how it appeared.

Anastasia seemed a bit tentative
when she stepped outside, before squaring her shoulders and crossing the
street, marching firmly through the throng on the sidewalk at the edge of the
park, ignoring comments from a group of teenagers clustered near a fire
hydrant. Alex couldn’t decide whether she was actually worried, or whether it
was an act, for the benefit of their unseen observers.

“Anastasia looks jumpy,” Eerie
observed, causing Alex to start and glare at her resentfully. She was standing
next to him with her fingers pressed up against the glass, staring down below
them. “She’s not into being out in public.”

“Go figure. I thought you weren’t
talking to me?”

Eerie looked surprised, and then a
bit sad.

“Not talking to Alex? No,” she said,
shaking her head emphatically, “I talked to you this morning at breakfast.”

Alex turned to her and stared in
frustration.

“You asked me for the salt,” Alex
objected. “That doesn’t count as talking to me, damn it!”

Eerie glanced over at him and raised
an eyebrow.

“Picky. Alex is so sensitive.”

Alex winced before he could stop
himself. He wanted to yell, but he bit his tongue, and forced himself to calm
down. It was difficult to say if his irritability was circumstantial or the
result of outside manipulation, but Alex couldn’t discount the notion that
someone preferred him angry and impulsive.

“Whatever. What did Anastasia say to
you last night, anyway?”

Eerie pointed at something outside
the window.

“Anastasia and Miss Aoki are coming
back,” she said, nodding at the window. “Are you supposed to be watching?”

Alex shrugged.

“My only job was to run away with
you, assuming things went south,” Alex said wryly, sitting down on an abandoned
desk, his back to the window. “Given the lack of screaming and dying, I think
it is safe to say that won’t be necessary.”

Eerie stared at him, her expression
unreadable. After a moment, Alex averted his eyes, feeling unaccountably
embarrassed.

“Run away with me? Alex gets all the
good jobs.”

Alex stared until Eerie finally
cracked a smile, and then started giggling. Alex had to laugh himself, partly
out of relief, and partly from shock that Eerie had made something resembling a
joke.

“What’s so funny?” Anastasia
demanded crossly, leading Mitsuru into the vacant office, Edward trailing a few
feet behind them, smiling affably.

“Nothing,” Alex said, waving her
off. “It’s good to see you, Miss Aoki.”

Mitsuru looked up from where she had
dumped her bags on a vacant, dangerously listing desk, clearly a bit surprised.

“Right,” she said, shrugging and
opening a bag that, to Alex’s eyes, appeared entirely full of guns. “Let’s talk
about how we get you kids home.”

Twenty-Eight

“Where is this place, anyway? What is up with all the
trees? Are we even in the city?”

Anastasia shook her head, trying to
ignore Alex’s complaints, trying to match Mitsuru’s relentless pace through the
brush and hilly ground. She held the edges of her skirt primly, determined to
avoid snagging it on the bushes, sprinklers, and debris that littered their
path. She was sympathetic to the boy’s point, at least to an extent. Her dress,
after all, was an expensive, one-of-a-kind piece, custom-made at a little shop
in the Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo that specialized in such things, and
therefore delicate and irreplaceable. Certainly, Mitsuru had said nothing about
traipsing through the woods on their way back to Central.

Nevertheless, the endless stream of
questions and complaints that he had produced over the last hour were beginning
to strain Anastasia’s composure, something for which Alex seemed to have a
particular gift.

“This is the Presidio. It used to be
an army base, I think, years ago. Now it’s a park," Margot said, from
somewhere behind her. She did not sound thrilled at the situation, either, but
then again, Margot never did. “Now would you please shut up?”

“I don’t think so,” Alex responded,
a touch out of breath. “I want someone to tell me what the hell is going on!
I'm tired of going along with whatever I'm told, without knowing why. This is
all a bunch of crap, as far as I’m concerned.”

Anastasia ignored the commotion
behind her. Margot had seemed more than usually edgy with Alex all day, and
from the sounds, had resorted to violence to get him to shut up. Not that
Anastasia had any problem with the vampire slapping Alex around a bit. Still,
Anastasia was surprised to see Margot so worked up, and could not help but
wonder how much Eerie’s obvious fascination with the boy played into it.

She stepped gingerly over a
half-rotten log, and then threaded her way carefully through a series of muddy
puddles, wincing when one of her patent leather shoes sunk into the marshy
soil. Anastasia was so distraught by her ruined shoe that she did not notice
Renton behind her, not until he had swept her up in one effortless gesture, one
arm hooked underneath her bunched skirts, the other behind her shoulders.

“Renton!” she hissed, trying to keep
her voice down. “What are you doing?”

Renton smiled and shook his head,
plodding through the mud indifferently.

“Your dress will get ruined,” he
said lightly. “I would not have the Mistress of the Black Sun embarrassed or
discomfited by such a small thing.”

He smiled at her, in a way that was
both indiscreet and completely inappropriate.

“Particularly when she is so easy to
carry.”

Anastasia grimaced, but relaxed in
his arms. She knew from experience that there was no point in arguing – he
would agree, of course, and do whatever she told him to, but she would have to
make a scene in order to make that happen. Moreover, he was right – appearances
were part of her responsibility, after all, even if Renton’s motivations were a
bit less than proper.

“At least make sure they don’t see
us,” Anastasia grumbled.

Renton had done this for her often,
growing up, but that was when she was a child. He hadn’t changed much at all,
she thought, her head leaning against his chest, overcome by a wave of memories
going back almost as far as she could remember.

Joseph Martynova, her father, had
called her into his office, the first time she had ever been there without her
mother, or a nanny, to look after her. It was a vast, book-lined room with deep
red carpet, an imposing walnut desk placed in front of a giant bay window facing
east, oriented so that the sun rose directly behind it much of the year. Her
father was a man who appreciated the value of symbolism, something that was not
lost on his daughter.

He had barely looked at her,
speaking in his low voice while writing something with a beautiful antique pen,
sounding tired and distracted. He explained to the four-year-old that she lived
in a dangerous world, and though she was not the heir to the Black Sun, she was
expected to hold a position of prominence. This would, he explained
indifferently, make her the target of all sorts of potential violence,
blackmail, intimidation, and kidnapping attempts, something her father could
attest to, since he was an expert at using those very same techniques to subdue
rivals. Anastasia had not fully known what to make of it, at the time, but she
was already smart enough to know when not to speak.

Then he had called Renton Hall into
his office. Renton walked in and stood nervously in front of her, obviously
uncomfortable in his formal attire, his posture stiff, and his bow deep and
clumsy. Renton Hall, her father explained, would be her bodyguard for the next
few years. The second-eldest son of one of the minor cartels in the Black Sun’s
orbit, he was pledged into their service as a sign of his cartel’s loyalty, and
therefore Anastasia’s father was obligated to find a function for him. If she
was satisfied with his performance, he said, she could elect to continue his
employment in this capacity when she left for the Academy. Then her father had
motioned for them to leave, and Renton had offered her his hand, his smiling
face then exactly the same as the one that she saw now.

It was like that, sometimes, after
activation. The nanites affected the aging process in inconsistent and
unpredictable ways – some Operators appeared to age normally, while others aged
only until a certain point, and then simply stopped, seemingly not aging a day
until they died. Some Operators had lived for more than a hundred years,
according to the Black Sun’s archives, while others had died in their teens of
what appeared to be old age. Renton had been a young-looking twenty when he
first became her bodyguard, and only his hairstyle had changed since, generally
at his mistress's whim.

The subject worried Anastasia more than
she would have cared to admit. She had not grown at all since she was thirteen,
more than three years ago. She knew that happened to girls, sometimes, and that
it did not necessarily mean anything – she could have been a late bloomer,
after all. However, Anastasia did not find the thought of going through life
appearing to be a flat-chested teenager to be an
attractive one. It was a horrible thought, actually, the only one that ever
kept her up at night. Though nothing was certain yet, she knew that it was a
very real possibility. Alice Gallow appeared to be in her late twenties, after
all, but the archives said that she was much, much older. Maybe even the oldest
Operator on record, having first come to the Black Sun’s notice during the
Spanish Civil War.

Then again, there was a big
difference, Anastasia thought grimly, between being young forever, and being in
puberty forever.

“Ana, what’s our next move?”

Renton looked worried, but his
question broke the cycle of her own worries. He was good for that, at least. He
might have been insolent and disrespectful, perverted and low-minded, but
Renton knew her better than anybody else did, and he when it mattered, he
always seemed to do the right thing, without even thinking about it.

It was that quality, above all
others, even loyalty, that had made Renton rise in rank, to become her
lieutenant. It was his effectiveness, however, that kept him there.

“Wait and see,” Anastasia said,
leaning back to look at the starless sky. “I have some ideas, but the picture as
a whole is still unclear. Something about this situation is very wrong, and I
will not make any dramatic moves, not until I know for certain who is
responsible.”

“Are you sure? We have resources in
this area. I can call O’Brien at the Marin compound, and arrange an exit. For
all of us, if necessary. Even Alex.”

“Not yet. Not until the trap is
sprung.”

Renton ploughed through the rest of
the marshy area in a straight line, not attempting to avoid the puddles, his
feet squelching and sinking into the mud with every step. It did not appear to
bother him, though it was hell on his tailored suit.

“You think this was all a setup?”

“Yes. Only gross incompetence or
deliberate planning could have put us in this mess, and I am not inclined to
think that Central is incompetent.”

Anastasia frowned.

“At least, not this incompetent.”

“Then, who do you think…”

Anastasia cut him off with a look.

“Shush, Renton,” she scolded. “This
isn’t the time or the place.”

She looked around them
significantly.

“And you can put me down, now. It is
much drier, here.”

Renton grinned, and set her down
delicately on her feet. The ground was indeed much drier, and the brush had
started to open up to pine trees surrounded by patches of brown grass.

“There is going to be a fight. I
knew I should have prevented Katya from leaving on Field Study,” she said
moodily, walking beside Renton. “The Weir will find us before we can be
extracted.”

Renton looked over at her, his eyes
sharp and worried.

“Who is their target? All of us?
You? The new kid?”

“I’m not sure,” Anastasia said,
shrugging. “I think we will find out soon, however. Don’t worry so much, Renton
– that is my job. You focus on returning us safely to Central.”

“Milady,” he said, nodding.

“And try not to be so forward in the
future. Even when we are alone.”

“As you say.”

His face was absolutely, utterly
somber. She was genuinely tempted to smack him.

“Renton!”

“Up here,” Mitsuru’s voice rang out
in the dark, from somewhere in the clearing up ahead. “This is where we’ll do
it.”

***

Anastasia
was fretting over the damaged hem of her dress, her skirt spread out across her
legs in front of her, when Alex sat down heavily beside her. She was a bit
surprised, as he had lapsed into sullen silence after Margot had smacked him
around earlier, and he hadn't said a word during the hour or so of preparations
that followed their arrival.

“Uh, Anastasia?”

He spoke quietly, leaning forward
and trying to catch her eye.

“Can I ask you something?”

Anastasia carefully threaded a needle
with black silk, not bothering to look over at him. She was not particularly
capable at this sort of thing, but not because she lacked interest. Having too
many servants and lacking in basic domestic skills was a kind of occupational
hazard.

“Ask away."

“Okay,” Alex said, sounding a bit
puzzled. “What exactly are we doing here?”

Anastasia made a first few clumsy
stitches, and then held the hem of the skirt up to examine the torn fringe
critically.

“We are going home, Alex, back to
Central.” Anastasia glared at the offending lace. “Mitsuru brought a beacon
with her, a piece of stone from Central, so that they can lock on to us. Once
she activates it, Central can start opening a way between here and there,
through the Ether. It takes a little while, though, and the minute that beacon
activates, every Witch and Weir within a hundred miles is going to know where
we are, and what we are doing.”

“And you think that they’ll get here
in time to try and stop us? It seems like we are kinda out of the way, here.”

Anastasia resumed her repairs,
trying to reaffix the fringe to the hem of her skirt.

“I’m certain at least some of them
will be nearby,” she said firmly, still engrossed in her work. “They have a
sort of precognition, as well. They must have anticipated this.”

Anastasia felt a sharp pain in her
index finger, and dropped the needle and thread, immediately losing them in the
grass beneath her in the dark. She stuck her wounded finger in her mouth,
fuming.

“So… couldn’t we go somewhere
further away? I mean, we could rent a car or something, and drive out to the
middle of nowhere, right? Then they couldn’t possibly get to us, not in time to
stop us from going home.”

Anastasia looked moodily at Alex.
She was mainly annoyed about the dress, but she still had to curb the urge to
bite his head off. Even when he was trying, and he was clearly trying right
now, the boy aggravated her to no end.

“The protocol Miss Aoki used to hide
our Etheric Signatures will dissipate in a few hours,” she explained, sighing.
“That aside, it is only a matter of time until we are tracked down. We do not
have any resources or allies here, or a real chance of defending ourselves
against a determined attack. If we were to attempt to flee, their precognitives
would likely anticipate our destination. Wherever we went, we would step out of
the car and walk straight into a Weir’s mouth. Understand?”

Alex nodded slowly.

“I guess so,” he said, his brow
furrowed. “Why here, though?”

He gestured at their surroundings: a
low place in between two small hills, surrounded by brush and blackberry bushes
and a handful of eucalyptus trees, a half-fallen chain-link fence, and a
crumbling concrete building frame. It was little more than a bare concrete pad
and three walls, perforated where there had once been windows and doors,
wrapped in a blanket of multicolored, indecipherable graffiti.

“Because I’ve been setting this
place up all day. I have mines and shaped charges strung along the only
approach. We’ll have some options, here,” Mitsuru said, sitting down next to
him them, and taking a long drink from a bottle of mineral water. Anastasia was
surprised that her fatigue was so obvious, and wondered exactly how exhausted
she was. In all probability, Mitsuru had been working another assignment when
Central redeployed her. Anastasia could only hope that she had enough left in
her to bring them all home.

Actually, she could hope and
make contingency plans.

“Once the beacon is activated,
Central will need about thirty minutes to lock on to our position and prepare
an apport. I’m not certain how long it will take before the Witches find us –
the precognitive pool says that most of their forces are arrayed in the urban
core, or along the periphery to keep us from leaving the city,” Mitsuru paused
to drink again, and then frowned. “Assuming we can trust the precognitives,
then the Weir shouldn’t have time to come down heavy on us before we’re out of
here.”

“I don’t see why they didn’t send
Alice Gallow to retrieve us…”

Mitsuru glared at Anastasia
bitterly.

“Think she might have something
better to do?”

Anastasia shook her head.

“I doubt it very much.”

For a long moment, Mitsuru looked
like she might lose her temper, and Anastasia wondered if her needling had been
a little too effective. Then she shook her head, and the tension dissipated.

“It is what it is,” Mitsuru said
levelly. “No other way for all of us to get home.”

Anastasia looked at her dress
unhappily.

“Well, this isn’t salvageable,” she
said quietly. Mitsuru and Alex both gave her looks, clearly uncertain whether
she meant the plan or her dress. Anastasia decided to let them wonder.

“That place has a basement,” Mitsuru
said, inclining her head in the direction of the ramshackle structure. “The
noncombatants can stay inside there, up until the transfer is ready.”

Anastasia saw Alex stiffen, and then
sit up straight, and she had to suppress a smile.

“Who, exactly, are you talking
about, Miss Aoki?”

Alex faced Mitsuru as defiantly as he
could manage. She met his stare with her impassive red eyes.

“Eerie and you,” Mitsuru said, with
a hint of a shrug. “Anastasia can take care of herself, whatever she decides to
do.”

Anastasia turned and smiled at Alex,
still staring at Mitsuru in shock over her very understandable disregard of his
ego.

“Maybe you could hide underneath
Eerie’s skirt,” Anastasia suggested helpfully. “Kill two birds with one stone.”

Alex barely acknowledged Anastasia,
or her jibe. He just lowered his head, balled his fists, and stood there, his
eyes locked on Mitsuru as if they were locked in psychic combat.

“I am not hiding,” Alex said
quietly, with a determined voice that made it very difficult for Anastasia not
to laugh. “I’m going to stay here and fight.”

“You don’t know how to fight, Alex.
Renton, Margot, Edward and I are all combat veterans,” Mitsuru reminded him,
looking a bit annoyed. “If you want to help, then stay out of the way, and let
us do our jobs.”

Alex shook his head slowly, glaring
definitely at Mitsuru.

“I am not hiding in that hole,” he
said firmly, pointing at the dilapidated ruins.

Mitsuru stood up, brushing the dead
grass from her jeans, and then walked over to stand close to Alex. Though she
had to look up at him, she was no less intimidating for it.

“My job is to bring all of you home.
All of you. You and Eerie cannot even defend yourselves, Alex; much less help
the rest of us. The two of you are going in that basement,” she insisted,
raising her voice slightly. “And that is final.”

Mitsuru stopped and then shook her
head in disbelief when Eerie cleared her throat politely, from right behind
her. She had been asleep, or pretending to be asleep, underneath a nearby tree
since they had arrived in the valley. Anastasia could not understand how she
managed to cross the clearing and walk up behind Miss Aoki without her noticing
– frankly, she had not even seen her get up from under the tree – and Anastasia
felt a trace of annoyance over it.

Then she went back to being just a
touch amused. It always made her feel upbeat, watching a plan come together,
even if it did not all go exactly the way that she had expected.

“I am not going in the basement if
Alex isn’t, Miss Aoki,” Eerie said shyly, her hands clenched in front of her,
her eyes downcast.

Mitsuru turned around, looking more
surprised than angry.

“You too, Eerie? Look, both of you,
this is not up for debate. I am not asking you to do it, understand? I’m
telling you.”

Renton and Edward entered the valley
from the south, moving briskly over the damp ground, their movements fast and
tense. Renton ran over to Anastasia and whispered his report to her. Anastasia
listened for a moment, then nodded and turned back to Mitsuru, who was moving
quickly from impatient to infuriated.

“We may not have time for
discussion, Miss Aoki,” Anastasia said brightly. “Renton says that he
discovered a number of feral Etheric Signatures nearby, approaching rapidly.”

Mitsuru turned from Eerie to
Anastasia, and then threw up her hands, looking exasperated.

“How could they have found us so
quickly? We haven’t even activated the beacon.”

Anastasia shrugged half-heartedly.

“Okay, no choice. Eerie, do you know
how to activate a beacon?”

Eerie got all tongue-tied, but
eventually she managed to nod at Mitsuru.

“Then do it. There’s one over there,”
Mitsuru ordered, pointing to the pile of mostly empty bags leaning against one
wall of the concrete building. “And keep your head down. Renton, you and Edward
know what to do. Where is Margot?”

“She’s already in place, Miss Aoki,”
Renton said, a little out of breath. “Waiting for your signal.”

Mitsuru nodded gravely, pulling the
belt that held her pistols from the bag at her feet. She clicked the buckle
into place, one hand absently confirming the presence of the twin pistols
strapped to the small of her back.

“Alright, you do the same,” she
said, nodding at Renton and Edward as she added a sheathed knife to her belt.
“Let me know as soon as you determine which direction they are going to
approach from, especially the big one.”

Alex grabbed Mitsuru’s arm, and
everyone froze in shock, midway through their preparations, Renton holding a
forgotten assault rifle only partially removed his bag, even Anastasia standing
wide-eyed and staring.

“That’s the silver Weir, right?”

Everyone exchanged surprised looks.
Mitsuru simply nodded, instead of exploding, and brushed his hand distastefully
from her arm. Her restraint disappointed Anastasia.

“Yes, I would imagine so,” Mitsuru said
grimly, turning away from Alex and walking toward the edge of the valley. “If
the plan works, however, you won’t ever see it.”

“What should I do, then?”

Mitsuru shrugged and kept walking.

“I don’t know. What can you do?”

***

Alex
was not even sure how to operate the gun he had been handed. The snub-nosed
submachine gun was a deceptively heavy mass of black carbon fiber stock and
tooled metal, and with a fully loaded magazine, very difficult to aim, despite
the illuminated amber reticule of the reflex sight. The front end was too heavy
for the grip, and tended to drift down unless he paid attention. Renton had
showed him how to fire short bursts from the MP-5, and that was the best Alex
could manage, firing bursts at the nearby brush when it moved suspiciously.

It had taken him an embarrassingly
long time after the shooting had started to find and deactivate the safety. Not
that it made much difference – Alex was certain that he hadn’t shot anything
besides the surrounding flora.

From where he crouched, behind a
chunk of discarded concrete from some ancient foundation, Alex could see Renton
and Edward standing further out towards the edge of the clearing, exchanging
fire with targets that remained stubbornly invisible. Alex wondered how many
bullets he had left in the magazine, and exactly what he was supposed to do
when they were all gone. Run and hide, probably.

Alex already heartily wished that he
had done that from the start. Eerie was crouched somewhere behind the remains
of the concrete structure, with Anastasia keeping an eye on her. Miss Aoki and
Margot had disappeared as soon as the shooting started, and he had not seen
either since, though during the occasional breaks in the gunfire he could
sometimes hear distant howling. He was suspicious that Miss Aoki and the
vampire-girl had something to do with that.

It never occurred to him that he
could be killed here, not in a real sense, until a group of Weir came pouring
out of the tree cover like a feral tide, all teeth and claws and knotted muscle
beneath matted fur, making a sound somewhere between a scream and a howl. Alex
did not bother to aim. He just pointed the MP-5 in the direction of the Weir
and pulled the trigger until it bucked in his hand.

Alex noticed an odd thing, then, his
mind operating with a strange clarity despite the sheer horror of his
surroundings. As the mass of Weir advanced, moving as far as the withering fire
from Renton and Edward would allow, they streamed past Renton’s position as if
he were not there.

Alex watched as Renton calmly lifted
the rifle to his shoulder, and then fired a quick burst, hitting one of the
Weir in the chest, hollow-point shells mushrooming when they impacted, creating
great bleeding craters. The remaining Weir turned and spun in place, trying to
locate the sound, to pinpoint their attacker’s position, apparently oblivious
to the fact that he stood among them. After a few moments of halfhearted
searching, the Weir seemed to lose interest, returning to their forward push
only to have another of their number picked off by Renton.

The fighting continued for what
seemed to Alex to be a very long time – the Weir advanced into the clearing,
where they were exposed to fire from all angles, and eventually were driven
back. Renton continued to pick off the beasts quietly, secure in what Alex
could only assume was some kind of telepathic invisibility. Alex managed a few
clean shots, and thought that one or two might even have actually have hit
something, which made him both sick and proud.

Without warning, the Weir pressed
forward, and this time, the fire against them wavered. Edward was the closest,
and therefore the first to go under. He continued firing to no perceptible
effect, even as the Weir overwhelmed him. He tossed aside the assault rifle at
the last moment, and Alex clearly felt the Ether ripple with an attempted
protocol, but whatever he had tried to do, it was too late. Edward’s screaming
was mercifully brief, his mauled body dragged into brush and darkness.

Alex watched in numb horror as a
surging wave of beasts crossed the empty ground in front of him, his empty MP-5
hanging useless from his hand, paralyzed by a feeling that had not quite had
time to coalesce into fear. The small portion of his brain not consumed with
terror was instead concerned with the frivolous hope that he could simply avoid
wetting himself before death. This seemed very important, for some reason.

He assumed that he was dead when
Renton grabbed him, pulling him forcibly back toward the ruined building by the
collar of his shirt. It took a little while before Alex’s brain processed what
was happening, then he stopped struggling with Renton and started running, away
from the howling, away from the teeth and hot breath he imagined on his heels.

The force of the explosion threw
Alex to the ground. There was a lost interval, dead time, punctuated by the
merciless ringing in his ears.

He opened his eyes, when he
remembered how to do that, and his vision slowly returned to him, in the form
of crudely defined silhouettes, then a semblance of the world he remembered
before the concussive wave. If there were multiple explosions, as he had been
led to believe there would be, then Alex could not tell – there was simply a
terrific force that knocked him and everything around him to the ground, the
trees nearby bending and cracking, and one huge noise, a sound for which he
could find no comparison. He recovered enough to find his way to his feet,
wondering if the nanites would be able to repair his hearing, or if he would
stay deaf forever. The silent, smoky world that confronted him was so different
from what he remembered that he was tempted to dismiss it as a violently
surreal dream. Then he saw Miss Aoki.

Though he would have been too
embarrassed to admit it, Alex had in fact had a few dreams about Mitsuru. They
had never involved her bleeding like a stuck pig, however, or fighting a great
silver wolf-monster.

Alex’s brain tripped, like a stalled
engine finally turning over, and the scene in front of him swam into focus.
Mitsuru barely managed to dodge the silver Weir’s charge, and her attempts to
return fire were wild and erratic. The Weir spun to face her, apparently
unhurt, while Miss Aoki regarded it calmly and bled. Alex’s feet started moving
before his brain became aware of the plan, which was probably for the best –
had he been thinking clearly, he probably would not have done anything.

Miss Aoki had not dodged the Weir’s
strike, Alex realized. Its talons had grazed her, and the resulting wound across
her chest was deep and ugly. He wondered how long she had been fighting the
Weir, and if things were actually going as badly as it looked to him. He could
see minor wounds on her left arm and the back of her head, and she was
struggling to move with an injured left leg, her foot dragging when she walked.
Miss Aoki’s expression was as collected as ever, her blazing red eyes fixed on
the monster, a 9mm in one hand and a long knife in the other, but Alex saw
something he didn’t like in her stance. He ran harder toward them, tossing
aside the useless submachine gun as he went.

Anastasia’s outstretched arm smacked
into his chest, bringing him stumbling to a halt, ten meters from Miss Aoki and
the Weir. A layer of fine dust had settled on her, and her dress was in shreds,
but she appeared unhurt. Anastasia glanced at Alex, and he was surprised to see
pity in her eyes. She put one hand to the side of his head, and then showed him
the blood smeared across her palm. Alex reached up himself, and realized that he
was bleeding from both ears.

Anastasia tried to say something to
him, but all Alex could hear was a painfully insistent ringing. She swore in
frustration, and then tried yelling, with no more effect. Alex shrugged
helplessly, distracted by the blood leaking from the side of his head.
Anastasia stomped her foot, then grabbed Alex by the back of his head, and
yelled directly in his ear. Alex could not be sure, but he thought he heard the
phrase ‘Black Protocol’. Initially this made no sense to him, but then he
looked at the fight and realized what Anastasia had in mind.

Miss Aoki was slowing down; there
was no doubt about it. The Weir leapt at her, crossing the distance between
them in an instant, arms spread wide, savage talons stained red with her blood.
Mitsuru rolled clumsily to the side, barely avoiding the monster’s claws. She
did not even bother to try to counterattack, either because she lacked the
energy or the ammunition. Alex did not have time to worry. He was busy tearing
at the Black Door in the recesses of his mind.

For a panicked moment, he scrabbled
helplessly against the frosted wood of the door, dark and unyielding. Then he
remembered the protocol that Rebecca had installed inside of him, the routine
for operation of his ability. Alex exhaled, not even aware that he had dropped
to his knees, or that Anastasia was crouched beside him, holding him up. With a
tremendous effort, Alex activated the Absolute Protocol.

His body seized up, his eyes rolled
back in his head, and his body temperature dropped dramatically. As Anastasia
watched, his lips and eyelids started to turn blue, and she had to hold a hand
up to confirm that he was still breathing. Then she felt the Ether seethe and
roil around them, and she knew that his Black Protocol had activated. She
patted him on the cheek, secure in the knowledge that he would not remember.

“Sorry about this, Alex.”

The Weir did not appear any the
worse for wear at first, but when he charged he was not nearly as fast as
before, and even in her debilitated state, Mitsuru managed to dodge the attack
by dropping beneath it. The Weir landed in a heap a few feet beyond her,
striking the ground with surprising force and then whining. Mitsuru wobbled
back to her feet, watching the Weir with obvious confusion.

“You…”

The Weir snarled through its jumbled
mass of teeth, holding its frost-covered paws out accusatorially.

“What is this? What have you done to
me?”

Mitsuru said nothing, watching a
thin veneer of frost gather on the Weir’s silver coat.

The Weir lumbered forward, making a
pitiful whining noise, a sheen of frost extending across its torso. With every
step, bits and pieces of frozen flesh broke free and shattered on the ground.
One paw clutched feebly at its chest while the Weir attempted a sort of
shambling run at Mitsuru, howling in outrage and pain.

Mitsuru stepped to the side
casually, her wounded leg dragging on the ground behind her. She tucked and
rolled, then came up firing, emptying her pistol into the side of the Weir. In
some places, the bullets created normal wounds, but elsewhere the flesh
shattered on impact, leaving behind great cavities sparkling with pinkish-red
ice crystals.

The Weir dropped to its knees,
clutching at its wounded side and moaning.

“Trickery,” it hissed, even the
slobber at the edges of its jowls frozen and sparkling. “This fight was mine,
whore.”

“Maybe it was,” Mitsuru said
lightly, limping toward the Weir. “Sure isn’t now.”

The Weir fell to the ground, gasping
like a fish out of water. Lying helpless, it coughed clumps of slushy,
partially frozen blood onto the soil. It blinked and tried to look up at
Mitsuru as she stood over it, eyes blinded by a rime of frost that stretched
across the tissue, one eyelid sticking to the surface of the retina. Air hissed
between the jagged teeth; perhaps it tried to speak, but all it managed to do
was expel more of the reddish slush. Mitsuru stood above the Weir, the silver
pelt now thoroughly covered with a thick layer of frost.

Anastasia watched as Mitsuru brought
her knife down, Alex fast asleep on the lap of her ruined dress.

Twenty-Nine

Alex woke with a start,
seized with a formless anxiety, a sense that he had missed something important.
He tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes and heard an IV stand rattle, his skin
pinched by the tubes taped to his arm.

Even in the dim confines of what he
now recognized as a hospital room, Alex could hardly keep his eyes open, and
the light spilling underneath the door was impossibly bright. Alex tried to
sit, and managed after a certain amount of coaxing and waiting out muscle
cramps. His whole body ached, and he was alarmingly thinner than he remembered.

How long had he been asleep?

His went to his face in the darkness,
and he was surprised to find that he had the better part of a beard. For a
moment, Alex panicked completely, not sure what was happening, wondering if
this was part of a particularly realistic dream. He leaned forward in the bed,
and the movement inadvertently tore the tape attached to his forearm, ripping
hair from his arm and bringing tears to his eyes. He winced and rubbed his
wrist. At the very least, Alex was now certain that he was awake.

As his eyes adjusted, Alex came to
realize that he was not alone. He could hear gentle, rhythmic breathing from
somewhere near the bed, a jumble of shapes and objects it took him a few
minutes to identify.

Eerie was fast asleep on two chairs
she had pushed together beside his bed. She lay across awkwardly across the
chairs, her legs curled in a ball in her heavy black tights. She had tucked her
sneakers neatly beneath the chair, beside the basket that contained her
knitting supplies. She looked as if she had been there for some time.

Alex tried to speak and managed only
a croak, his throat parched and terribly painful when he swallowed. He looked
around him for a call button, something to summon a nurse like on TV, but he
could not find anything of the kind. He had resolved himself to standing up and
attempting to make his way out to the hallway, maybe finding a nurse or
something, when there was a soft knock on the door.

“Alex?” Rebecca’s voice was gentle
from the other side of the door. “Close your eyes, okay? I’m going to come in…”

Alex obediently screwed his eyes
shut. The room lit up, and it was brilliant even behind his eyelids. He managed
to open first one eye and then the other, Rebecca standing over the bed and
beaming down at him, surrounded by blazing white light like the portrait of a
saint, teary-eyed and flushed.

“You stupid fucking idiot,” Rebecca
said sweetly, putting one hand on his forehead, “I knew you’d wake up, hon. I
knew you would.”

Alex attempted to smile at her,
tried to form words. She put a finger to his lips.

“Don’t try to talk yet,” she said,
heading for the sink. “I’ll get you some water. I am reading your thoughts, so
don’t worry about trying to talk to me. Just think clearly and slowly.”

She brought Alex back a glass of
water, which he took from her with a certain amount of difficulty, holding the
plastic cup in clumsy hands. He raised it slowly to his lips, and managed a
single noisy sip, then spent the better part of a minute coughing it back up
while Rebecca patted him on the back. After he recovered, he drank a bit more
of the water, keeping more of it down this time.

He tried to compose his thoughts,
looking at Eerie significantly.

“Oh dear,” Rebecca laughed
good-naturedly. “Generally you don’t have to use your eyebrows so much to
communicate telepathically.”

Rebecca sat down on the chair next
to the sleeping girl, running her hand through her faded blue hair, and smiling
at her with an almost maternal affection.

“She’s been here almost every night.
Emily has been here every day too, mostly in the evenings and mornings.”
Rebecca patted Eerie on the head affectionately. “I think they have some kind
of system worked out, because they are never here at the same time. That's
pretty funny, because I heard that they aren’t speaking to each other. Safe to
say you are responsible for that little tiff. Emily is going to be upset when
she finds out that you woke up when she wasn’t here.”

Alex finished the water, and then
looked pleadingly at Rebecca and shook the empty cup.

“You really suck at telepathy. You
know that, right?”

Rebecca took the cup, smacked him in
the forehead, and then went to refill it.

“Good thing you’re better at
surviving, huh?”

Alex drank most of the water in the
cup in one go, and then set it down on the table beside the bed. He was already
starting to feel better, and had to suppress his urge to remove the IV gear
from his arm.

“What…” Alex croaked, and then
stopped and cleared his throat, before trying again. “What day is it?”

Rebecca became abruptly nervous,
sitting back down next to Eerie, who continued to sleep on, completely
unaffected.

“Uh, well, Wednesday.” Rebecca said,
looking at the floor.

“Oh,” Alex said, puzzled, trying to
remember what day it had been when they fought with the Weir.

“The Wednesday before Christmas,
that is.”

Alex glared at Rebecca, but when she
met his stare, her eyes had become moist again. It was very clear that she was
not joking, and Alex suddenly found it very difficult to breathe. It had to be
a joke, didn’t it? Then again, if it wasn’t, if Rebecca was serious, then…

Then he had been asleep for weeks.
More than a month.

Alex lurched forward, tearing the
tape from his arm, the IV tube stretching and pulling against his skin. His
eyes were wide with panic, his skin flushed and covered in cold sweat.

“No way,” Alex whispered, gritting
his teeth, forcing himself up with his arms, “No, this can’t…”

Rebecca sighed, and then patted him
gently on his knee. Alex’s expression froze in a rictus
of fear and mania, and then he quietly folded back into the pillows behind him,
his face gone placid and serene, his eyes wet but unworried. He felt a
tremendous sense of calm, of assurance, like being wrapped in blankets on a
cold day, a memory he did not have of his mother’s hand resting on his forehead
when he was very young.

“Sorry about that,” Rebecca
apologized, “but if you freak out right now, you’re going to do yourself some
harm. Plus, you’re going to bring down the whole of Central on our heads, and
you definitely don’t want that.”

Alex put his head in his hands,
feeling oddly empty, drained of the panic that he could only vaguely remember.

“Oh shit. Edward. What happened
to…?”

Rebecca shook her head slowly.

“He didn’t make it. The rest of them
are fine, more or less. Nice of you to ask. Miss Aoki stayed down the hall from
you for a week or so.”

“How could this happen?”

Rebecca shook her head and reached
reflexively for her cigarettes. She had the pack halfway out of her pocket
before she remembered where she was, looked around sadly, and then slid it back
into her jeans.

“You used the Absolute Protocol,
Alex. You helped Mitsuru to kill that Weir, from what I hear. You basically
froze him solid. I already told you this, but there is a price to pay for using
any Black Protocol. I hope that it seems worth it.”

Alex looked at her sad expression
incredulously.

“I slept for a month? That seems…”

Rebecca looked downcast.

“I know. That is why Michael doesn’t
want you to use the protocol at all. The price for a Black Protocol is always
greater than what you get from using it, if you ask me. You know you aren’t the
only one here in Central who uses them, right?”

“Well, Miss Gallow…” Alex said,
nodding.

“Right,” Rebecca nodded. “Alice
Gallow forgets things every time she uses her protocol, Alex. The more she uses
it, the more she does with it, the more of her memory is gone forever.” The
stare Rebecca fixed him with was hard. “Do you know what she does when she’s
not out being an Auditor, Alex?”

Alex shook his head. The calm that
Rebecca flooded him with earlier had started to ebb, and he was having trouble
following what she was saying, even with only the edges of the panic he had
felt nagging him.

“She has a room full of diaries,
Alex, hundreds of them. And she spends most of her time reading them, or
recording the day’s events.” Rebecca smiled unhappily. “It’s not as if she
doesn’t know anything about her life, because she has read about some of it. Of
course, she keeps forgetting the things she reads, too...”

“I don’t get it,” Alex said, closing
his eyes and leaning his head back onto the pillow, still slightly damp with
his sweat. “Why? Why does this happen?”

“We don’t know. Decades of research,
and we still don’t have any idea. However, every M-Class Operator on record has
the same circumstances. Unlimited power, a Black Protocol, and an exorbitant
cost for using it.”

“Who in the hell makes up all these
rules?”

Rebecca patted him on the leg.

“Alice is an extreme example. Not
every M-class has problems on that scale, okay? She insists on using her
protocol all the time, maybe more than any other Operator I have met, despite
the consequences. Other people handle it better.”

Alex thought for a moment.

“Um, so, Miss Aoki’s scars, then?”

“You little shit,” Rebecca said
approvingly. “How did you figure that out?”

“Well, she cut herself when she
saved me, that first night. Before she used the barrier protocol. Then with
what you just said… It doesn’t seem like you would let someone that...unstable
work in the field unless they had some truly exceptional abilities, right?”

“Yeah, more or less,” Rebecca
admitted grudgingly. “Mitsuru is unique, though. A long time ago, there was a
plan to help her avoid needing to use her Black Protocol. An experimental
procedure, a radical new surgical technique. The implant in her brain. The
whole idea had, you know,” Rebecca paused and looked briefly angry, “mixed
results. It won’t be repeated, that’s for sure.”

“Wait, what?”

“Another time,” Rebecca said, shaking
her head. “We don’t have all night, and I came here to talk to you about
something important. I can’t be the only one in Central who knows you woke up,
so it will be common knowledge soon.”

“What’s up with Eerie? Why doesn’t
she wake up?”

Rebecca smiled and stroked Eerie’s
cheek gently with the back of her hand.

“I fixed it so she won’t wake up
until we are finished. She’s fast asleep, dreaming about something that makes
her happy,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “Actually, this is one of the things
I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Making Eerie happy is one of the
things you wanted to talk about?”

Alex fought off the urge to pinch
himself to be sure this was not an extremely odd dream.

“Sort of. You see, I have known
Eerie since she could walk without falling over, and I have never seen her
latch on to someone the way she has with you. I think this is probably a new
experience for her, and I’m not sure what to make of it – she’s not human,
after all.” Rebecca frowned, pulling her feet up onto the seat, clutching her
knees to her chest. “I don’t know what it means, that Eerie is acting this way.
I mean, she is not completely abnormal. I know she has been interested in boys
before, but none of them held her interest for any length of time. Alex... you
didn’t,” she asked, her voice tolerant and frank, “you know, do anything with
her while you were in San Francisco, did you?”

“N-no,” Alex stammered. “Nothing
like that. I’m not even sure that she likes me, you know. She doesn’t always
act like it.”

Rebecca nodded sympathetically.

“Girls will do that to you. I’m not
sure that has finished making her mind up about what she likes. That is beside
the point, though,” Rebecca said, leaning closer. “Eerie has put a lot of
effort into being the first thing you see when you wake up, you know? And her
reaction when it happens is likely to be, well, intense.”

“…and?”

“And I’m wondering if you want that
to happen.”

“Huh?”

“Alex, I can help you sleep for a
few more hours,” Rebecca said glumly. “That way, you will wake up when only the
nurses are here. Or when Emily is around, for example.”

“Wait, what? Why does it matter?”

Rebecca shrugged.

“If you don’t care, then I don’t
care. Just wanted to give you fair warning. Girls take this sort of thing
seriously.”

Alex scratched at his arm, where the
tape had torn away, leaving behind red, irritated skin.

“Consider me warned. I am not going
back to sleep, not for any reason. Besides, I thought I was supposed to be
staying away from cartel girls.”

“Eerie presents her own set of complications.
I’m not interested in keeping you away from anyone, though, and I’m sorry I
gave you that impression,” Rebecca said, looking upset. “I’m trying to give you
options, okay? Eerie seems to be fascinated with you, and that is already kind
of a dangerous thing. If she decides that she really likes you, well, then we
are in unexplored territory. You are the only person I have to worry about.”

Alex held his hands up in surrender.

“Okay, sorry, I didn’t mean to be a
jerk,” he said apologetically. “I’m still out of it and in shock, you know?
Don’t take me too seriously.”

“I don’t, in general.”

“What is so scary about Eerie?”

“Well, let’s start with the
obvious,” Rebecca said, looking at him doubtfully. “She only has one human
parent, Alex.”

“Yeah, and? I don’t mean to be rude,
but around here, that doesn’t seem all that odd.”

“Being part of the same species is a
minimum standard most people apply in dating,” Rebecca said, resting her
forehead on her hand. “Beyond that, you have noticed that she has some biological
quirks, right?”

Alex nodded.

“Sure. The whole ‘my body is a drug
factory’ thing, right?”

Alex paused while he recalled the
room of dead Weir, and his somewhat fuzzy recollections of the rave beforehand.
Both seemed a touch surreal now, each for different reasons.

“Yeah, that thing,” Rebecca said,
smirking. “What do you think will happen if you act as a catalyst for her
abilities?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said,
scratching his head. “What?”

“I don’t know either,” Rebecca
admitted, spreading her hands. “And that’s the whole problem.”

Alex yawned and sat up in his
hospital bed.

“This is all kind of a moot point,
because I’m not going back to sleep.” Alex shook his head. “I can’t believe I
have been asleep that long.”

Alex felt a bit of the panic he’d
felt earlier, then, like he could feel the shape of the thing out there,
emotionally, but it was still somehow distant, something to be objectively
observed, but not necessarily something to be concerned over. He could not help
but wonder how long this particular perspective would last.

“Yeah, that must be disconcerting,”
Rebecca said, putting her hand against Alex’s forehead. “You seem totally
healthy, though, if a bit undernourished. Are you feeling any better?”

“Thanks to you,” Alex said. “But, it
isn’t a brand new experience for me. You lose a lot of time, locked up. It’s
weird, actually – every day seems to stretch on endlessly, but when you look at
a calendar, you realize you’ve lost weeks or months, with no specific memory of
the time passing.”

Rebecca smiled at him.

“It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? What
we can tolerate, if we have to. It’s always more than you think you could deal
with, in the abstract.”

Rebecca looked affectionately at the
sleeping girl curled beside her, reaching over to tuck an errant faded blue
lock back underneath the hood of her sweatshirt.

“You’ve already changed a lot, Alex,
since I met you. I am interested to see what happens from here. But you’ll be
okay, you know that, right?”

“Why in the world is Eerie wearing a
Pittsburgh Penguins sweatshirt? Do not tell me she is a big hockey fan.
Is she from Pittsburgh? Are there Fey in Pittsburgh?”

Rebecca laughed, standing up and
brushing the wrinkles from her jeans.

“She just says she likes penguins.
I’m going to stay out of your way, okay, Alex?” She leaned close to him, and
then, much to his surprise, kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll stop meddling in
your affairs. You seem to have everything under control.”

“Do I?”

Alex gratitude was obvious in his
shining eyes.

“No, not really,” Rebecca laughed,
patting him on the head and then heading for the door. “But I think you are
doing okay, all things considered.”

Alex sat there for a while, after
she left, wondering what she had actually come for, why it was that Rebecca
kept such a close eye on him, and why she got so nervous anytime he mentioned
Miss Aoki. After a few minutes, he decided to put it aside, no closer to a
solution than when he had started. He would have to find out what the deal was,
eventually, but he could let the matter rest for now.

He lay back against the pillows, his
eyes half-open, and let his mind drift. It felt good, at that moment, to lie
there with nothing he had to do, nothing to worry about, no expectations to
meet. Somehow, Alex felt so tired, and that bothered him, on a fundamental
level. What had been the value of all that sleep, if he had not rested?

He frowned, trying to remember,
something about sleep, something Eerie had told him. Something about what sleep
actually was, what happened while he was asleep…

“The Church of Sleep,” he said
softly, turning the phrase over in his mouth like sour candy.

Had he heard someone say that
before? Alex was not sure. It still didn’t mean anything to him, but there was
a certain…resonance, maybe. A quality of dislocation. A memory from the time
before words, like something passing nearby in darkness, evident only in the
displacement of air. He felt uncertain, reluctant to follow his thoughts any
further in this direction.

Alex wondered if he had slept. Had
he dreamed? Had this all happened before?

The headache was so brief, it was
over before he realized that it had started, accompanied by a piercing shriek
that reverberated in the back of his skull, echoes of a pain he had forgotten.
It went on and on, much longer than he could stand, even though it was over
before he realized it had begun. The silence that followed was beautiful.

Alex tried to remember what he had
been thinking about for the last few minutes, and then he gave up.

He looked down at his hands, blue
veins under the pale skin of his palms, and flexed his fingers. He was awake.
Alex ran his fingers along the cold rounded steel of the bed frame, and bunched
the starched sheets in his hands. This was real.

There was nothing to be afraid of
here, he thought, opening his eyes and smiling at Eerie, curled in her giant
sweatshirt with her head peeking out from the gaping hood, the pink of her
slightly parted lips. Nothing to worry him, nothing he had forgotten.

She stirred, shifting her hips,
drawing her knees close to her chest, mouthing words that he could not hear but
recognized intuitively, and almost understood. He watched her chest rise and
fall, let his eyes linger on the curvature of her white calves, moving against
each other with furtive languor. Alex watched Eerie sleep, and felt something
like peace, wondering what her dreams were like.

In the half-light of the early
morning, in a room that was not quite cold, on top of a bed that was not his
own, Alex watched Eerie breathe, her face untroubled by whatever passed for a
Changeling’s dreams. He waited for her to wake, for her to open her eyes and
speak to him, to say his name and make everything real.

Thirty

The two guards behind the desk didn’t seem to like Alice’s cheerful
smile much.

They appeared to think even less of
the heavy duffel bag she dumped on the faux mahogany desktop with a metallic
clatter.

From Chris's point of view, I didn't
seem as if Alice was working. She looked as if she were reveling in the moment,
relishing every action.

To say that her job was her life
would be to trivialize it. The reality was, the only time that Alice honestly
felt like Alice was when she was she was in the midst of an Audit. Chris
had seen it a dozen times, in various places, and it never got less unnerving.
He did not blame the guards for stammering and hugging the wall. He pitied
them.

“My name is Alice Gallow, and I’m
here in regards to an ongoing Audit of the Terrie Cartel, as ordered by the
Director,” she gushed, grinning at the bank of cameras above the security
guards’ heads. She unzipped the bag, one of the guards leaning cautiously
closer to peer inside. She upended it onto the desktop, pouring dozens of heavy
green German anti-personnel grenades, their pins daisy-chained and attached to
one end of a carabiner with wire.

“I don’t have an appointment. Is
that going to be a problem?”

Both of the guards moved in unison,
one reaching for his holstered M&P, the other trying to meld himself with
the marble-paneled wall behind him, his mouth moving in some kind of desperate
plea or prayer, his eyes mad with panic. Alice paused a moment to relish it,
before yanking on the carabiner. The pins gave way in
rapid succession, a satisfying chorus of near-simultaneous clicks. Alice fell
backwards through her own shadow just ahead of the blast wave.

The detonation itself was deafening.
The wall panels buckled and rattled, and the air was suddenly dense with particles
of glass and wood, and bits of the unfortunate guards, all deformed by the
velocity of the force that propelled them. The desk area itself simply
disintegrated, the larger chunks tossed straight up toward the white-painted
ceiling, leaving behind a pile of splintered, smoldering wood.

Next to Chris, huddled behind a
retaining column near the glass frontage of the office building, Alice laughed
until she wept, pressing her face into her folded arms and rocking back and
forth. Chris looked away, carefully removing the fragments of safety glass from
his hair, the front windows and doors having shattered with the shockwave of
the explosion.

“I do hope the rest of your plan is
better thought-out,” Chris said, standing up and wiping soot and dust from his hopelessly
stained suit.

Alice smiled back at him, her
expression satisfied and benign, her cheeks streaked with tears that had left a
trail behind them in the ash and dust that smeared her face. Chris clucked his
tongue, fished a handkerchief from his inside pocket, and proceeded to wipe
Alice’s face an approximation of clean. Alice simply allowed this to happen,
grinning cheerfully up at him.

“You ready?”

Chris examined his handkerchief
sadly. For a moment, he looked as if he were going to return it to his pocket,
but then he thought better of it and tossed it aside.

Alice nodded and stood up, brushing
the front of her coat absently.

“Of course, Chris,” she said
quietly, patting him on the shoulder and then walking past him. “This is the best
part of the job. You’ll see.”

After a moment, Chris followed her
across the ruined entryway, around the charred remains of the front desk, and
up to a bank of shining brushed-metal elevators.

“If you say so. I never actually wanted
to see it, though. Are we simply taking the elevator?”

Alice shrugged and pressed the call
button.

“Why not? They must know I am here
and who I am. I did announce myself and my business,” she said, gesturing at
the remains of the security cameras.

“Quite,” Chris said dryly. “This
isn’t my usual stock in trade. Alice, dear, I don’t know how much help I am
going to be.”

She looked over at him briefly, the
dreamy smile fixed on her face, her blue eyes smoldering.

“I have a pretty good idea how much
harm you’ve done, Chris,” Alice said brightly. “I’d suggest that trying to do
me at least that much good is probably your best strategy right now.”

Chris straightened his tie with
thin, white fingers, and smoothed his hair in the reflection of the polished
brass that framed the elevator, frowning slightly at his appearance.

“Very well. If that is how it has to
be. I warn you, though, that this is an ineffective, and in all probability,
wasteful use of my services.”

Alice nodded, tapping the toe of her
boot against the brushed aluminum doors of the elevator, leaving small dents in
the surface.

“You’re probably right,” Alice
agreed. “I don’t have any virgins I need attacked in their beds at this
particular moment, though.”

The elevator chime rang and then the
doors slid smoothly open. Inside, the elevator looked like a narrow brass
bullet, all contoured lines and burnished metal. Alice walked in and Chris
followed, and a moment later the doors slid shut behind them, with a sound that
was oddly like a protracted sigh.

“Actually,” Alice said thoughtfully,
as the elevator began its almost imperceptible ascent, “if I did, I’d probably
take care of that myself.”

Chris attempted to buff his
cufflinks, and then gave up in despair when he realized that one had already
been lost.

“That’s always been the problem with
you. No sense of when to delegate.”

Alice chuckled, and then they were
silent for a while, watching the slow climb of the red numbers on the LCD
screen mounted above the door.

“And when we get to the top…” Chris
proffered, looking at Alice warily.

“You kill everyone we find up
there,” Alice said, her tone cheerful. “Don’t worry; I’ll be watching your
back, so you can concentrate on convincing me that your little dalliance with
our enemies was, in fact, accidental.”

Chris stared back in horror.

“You don’t believe me? Why would I
have approached you for help, then, I wonder?”

“So I would look to you to watch my
back, silly, and then you could stab me in it,” Alice said mildly. “And you’ve
had your hand in enough black ops to do it, too.”

Chris shook his head.

“This is insane, Alice! I am not
like you! I can’t do this,” Chris pleaded. “You are going to get me killed.”

Alice took him by the shoulders and
rested her forehead against his own, her eyes huge and, he could not help but
realize, quite mad.

“No, I am trying to bail you out.
You were dead the moment you set us up, Chris, no matter what your intentions
were. I’m not just making an exception for you here; I am making a huge,
once-in-a-lifetime, never-again-to-be-offered bargain.” Alice lowered her
voice. “This is the hugest favor you will ever receive, Chris. Like getting
laid and winning the lottery at the same time, you know? You are the luckiest
man – or whatever – on earth. No more bitching, or I will change my mind about
giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

Alice slapped Chris lightly on the
side of the face, and then released him. Chris rubbed his cheek, looking sadly
at his reflection in the brass. The extra muscles in his fingers flexed,
bending at the first joint, fingernails extruding like claws, five centimeters
long and razor sharp, yellow as old bone.

“What’s at the top, then?”

Chris’s words were slightly slurred
by the fangs protruding from behind his upper lip.

“For you?” Alice hugged her matte-black
USAS-12 automatic shotgun to her chest with obvious affection. “Opportunity.”

***

When
the elevator chimed its arrival on the thirty-fourth floor, the assembled
security personnel were smart enough not to wait for it to open. As soon as the
alarms had gone off downstairs, heavy weaponry was issued, along with
permission to use it. Truth be told, a number of them were eager to do so. Most
of them worked as site security, after all, so opportunities to use their M4
rifles outside of an annual trip to the company range for recertification were
rare.

The veterans in their ranks had seen
more than enough gunfire for a lifetime, and took positions a prudent distance
down the marble hall, watching the scene unfold through magnified scopes and
illuminated reflex sights.

There were half a dozen guards
clustered around the elevator bank, and each put the better part of a thirty
round magazine into the thin metal doors, the door mechanism whining and then
grinding to a halt, the door partially open. After a moment’s hesitation, the
guards emptied their remaining rounds into the smoky interior of the elevator.

They were smart enough to reload.
They were smart enough to wait until the smoke cleared. Nevertheless, from
where Chris was standing, it looked like they did not notice the small pile of
oiled cloth and foully smoking plastic that Alice had made him light in the
front corner of the elevator, just to the side of the entrance.

They certainly did not notice the
shaped Octol charge that Alice had left, attached to
the far wall of the elevator with a suction cup, in an innocuous plastic case
resembling a light fixture. Chris had been doubtful when he had seen it, both
about the effectiveness of such a small charge and about the dubious housing.

As it turned out, he was wrong on
both counts.

The security guards filed cautiously
into the elevator, one at a time, two inside, the rest clustered around the
doors. Several meters down the hall, concealed behind a bulky reception desk,
Chris watched Alice muffle a giggle.

The explosion was impossibly loud,
even from a distance, and Chris had to fight the urge to cover his ears. It was
like a wall, coming out of the elevator, concentrated into a column of flame
and debris and concussive force, tearing apart the men, the furniture, and much
of the elevator banks itself. The shockwave hurled fragments of the elevator
doors down the hallway, sending the partially concealed mercenaries scurrying
for better cover.

Chris gave him time to scream. Why
not?

Chris stepped through the guard as
he tried to turn his M4 in Chris’s direction with a look of confusion and fear,
his hand whipping across the man’s throat almost as afterthought. The man fell
to his feet, clutching his throat as it came apart, the wound across his trachea
opening like a deep red mouth. Chris could hear the man gurgle and hiss as he
dove for the next two guards, his arms spread wide, moving impossibly fast, his
feet barely even touching the floor.

He hit the first guard running,
driving him into the wall with his shoulder, and then tearing his throat with
the talons on his left hand, stepping neatly to the side to avoid the spray
from the severed jugular. The other guard opened up with his rifle, and Chris
felt the rounds tear through his abdomen, each burning a hot channel through
the flesh, agonizing despite his diminished nervous system. He ignored the
damage with an act of will, knocking the rifle from the guard’s hands with a
swipe. Before he could react, Chris seized him by the neck, squeezing until he
felt his spine crack. Alice Gallow stood beside him, emptying her shotgun into
the remainder of the security unit, turning two men into mincemeat before they
could react.

Chris inspected the ruins of his
jacket with an air of resignation.

“They aren’t trying too terribly
hard,” he observed, wiping at the blood splattered on his shirt with a strip
torn from one of the guards’ uniforms. “Why do you think that is?”

Alice ejected the spent magazine
from her shotgun and reloaded with an expression of almost feral glee.

“Only one reason I can think of,”
she said, glancing down at the mangled bodies with an artisan’s pride at a job
well done. “They want us to get wherever it is we are going.”

“Doesn’t that worry you?”

“I’m an Auditor, Chris,” Alice said,
hoisting the shotgun up to rest across her shoulders, behind her neck.
“Cooperation always worries me.”

They followed the main hallway, an
expanse of patterned blue carpet stretching out for much of the length of the floor,
sprouting adjoining offices, glass-fronted meeting rooms and any number of
rooms filled with shoulder-height cubicles, each with an identical workstation,
all showing an identical screen saver. Chris shuddered a bit, looking at it. He
had never been able to understand how humans could tolerate working in such
places year after year, in such cramped conditions. Vampires are horrified by
monotony, as a general principle.

Alice glanced down at the ruin of
her Kevlar coat, mangled by the earlier explosions and a number of .223 rounds
fired by one of the mercenaries before she gunned him down. She shrugged out of
the heavy coat and let it fall to the ground beside her before continuing on,
her pace unhurried and her body language casual and loose. She wore a black
tank-top with spaghetti straps, dense tattoo work stretching from the center of
her back to cover both shoulders; the cabalistic tree of life in black ink, the
furthest boughs curling around the pronounced line of her collar bone, Hebrew
script interwoven in the design. It made Chris remember several cold weeks
spent in Prague, almost thirty years before, when the ink had still been a
fresh, vivid black, the skin still red and swollen. He remembered what the
little room they shared had felt like, what her hair had felt like when he ran
his hand through it, her terrible fits of obscene laughter.

Alice had been dangerous then,
dangerous and alluring. Chris had found her fascinating in a way that he never
had with a human, Operator or no. She was no less lovely now, he thought, and
perhaps even more dangerous. Still, something about the fragility of her inked
shoulder blades, the way her hair always refused to stay tied back, even the
sheer lunacy of her impossibly white smile – all of this, somehow, saddened him
more than it frightened him. As he hurried after her, Chris felt the knife in
his pocket as a tremendous burden, a millstone around his neck, pulling him
under water that he found increasingly cold. His fingers tightened around the
knuckled and slick metal of the hilt painfully.

He glanced around, at the thin walls
and the acoustic tiling along the ceiling, and then cleared his throat, loudly,
twice.

She had turned her back to him, he
realized. Whether because she knew already (and she must know, he was
certain) or because she had forgotten, he was not sure. Perhaps the baring of
her back had been a display for his benefit? Perhaps, he thought, perhaps Alice
remembered more than she had let on…

He sighed and pulled the knife from
his pocket.

The Weir that he drove it into
seemed surprised. Chris could not blame him. He batted away the pieces of
splintered plywood that flew from where the beast broke through the
partitioning, a snarling half-ton of corded muscle and elongated canines. Chris
had trouble believing that he was the agency behind what was happening,
watching himself push the blade up through the creature’s jaw, and piercing
through the mouth and into the skull as if someone else were doing it.

He felt the disturbance in the air
behind him, heard the low growls and the sound of heavy padded footsteps on the
carpet, and knew that the larger group had come from behind. He had time to
activate the Thorns protocol before he felt the claws rake his shoulders, the
stench of the beast as it carried him down to the ground, stinking of blood and
rotting flesh, its teeth working their way inexorably towards his jaw. Chris
grabbed the Weir, one hand pressed against its moist and slimy snout, the other
scrambling for purchase on its lower jaw. As he tried to force the creature’s
head away from his throat, his hand slipped on the drool-slick rolls of hair
and flesh that surrounded its mouth, the ends of his middle and index fingers
slipping into the gaping maw of the Weir, and then disappearing almost
painlessly in a flash of yellow teeth.

Chris worked one leg out from
underneath the crushing weight of the thing, hooking his toes underneath the
Weir’s rear leg, pushing himself up, trying to work his head away from the
snarling mouth. His mangled hand flailed uselessly around its lower jaw, too
slippery with blood and saliva to find a grip. He managed to work his other
thumb up and into what he hoped was the Weir’s eye, jamming it in and pushing
as far into the wet, gelatinous tissue as possible. The Weir’s howl, coming
only inches from his face, was deafening. Chris thought that maybe his other
hand, the wounded one, might have drifted back to the creature’s mouth again,
but he couldn’t feel it anymore, and all he could see above him was the
struggling bulk of the Weir, its weight crushing the air from his lungs.

He tried to breathe and found
himself unable to force air into his chest. His vision was overwhelmed with
brilliant white points, gradually expanding until he was half-blind, seeing
only blurred movement and strange lights. Hot blood dripped down onto his face
and neck, but he was not sure whether it was his own or the Weir’s. He worked
the thumb he had forced into its eye socket, trying to widen the wound, tearing
and pulling at the glutinous flesh. He could feel the Weir’s breath on his
neck, and knew that he did not have much longer.

The shotgun blast was like a bomb
going off next to his head, a concussive sound that immediately deafened him,
the flash of light and heat so close that it seared his hair and scalp. He
watched Alice roll the corpse of the Weir off him in the strange silence that
followed, adding to the dreamlike feel of the entire scene, the woman in black
clucking over him and helping him sit up. Chris stared down blankly at the remainder
of his right hand, little more than the palm, thumb, and a single, dangling
finger left. The jagged wound that the Weir’s teeth had left behind bled
freely, and for a short time, Chris wondered why Alice made no move to try to
stop it.

He felt Alice wrap her arms around
him, pulling him backwards, leaning his back against her chest, her muffled
voice telling him to relax. As his wits and hearing slowly returned to him, he
glanced down at his chest, and realized with a sober, detached judgment that he
was already dead. His chest was a hideous mess, gouged and shredded by the
Weir’s scrambling forepaws, and in two places, fractured ribs jutted out from
the torn skin, stark white and horrifying. Most of the blood pooling on his
chest and running down his abdomen, however, was leaking from the wound in his
throat.

“Oh, damn it,” Alice said, and Chris
was amazed to see that she was crying, her face contorted and miserable. She
held him tightly to her from where she crouched behind him, her arms wrapped around
his shoulders, his head leaning against her chest. He thought briefly of asking
her not to squeeze so tight, and then realized with an abstract fear that it
did not even hurt. “Why, Chris?”

He tried to laugh, but it turned
into a wet, racking cough. He tried a smile, his face too numb to be certain he
had accomplished it.

“Prague,” he sputtered, his voice
barely audible. “You don’t remember it at all?”

Alice sobbed and then shook her head
reluctantly.

“I know that you mean something to
me, Chris,” she said simply, almost apologetically. “But, I can’t remember why.
I’m sorry…”

Chris tried to pat her on the arm,
but he could not move, or even see her clearly, as his vision slowly darkened.
He almost laughed again, but at the last moment thought better of it, and
settled on trying another smile.

“No, that’s okay. You remember the
important part, at least.”

“What?”

He could taste the salt of her tears
on his lips when he licked them. Chris wanted to tell her he felt cold, but the
effort required was too great.

“Chris, I would have found a way to
save you…”

He tried to shake his head. He was
not sure if anything happened.

“No,” he whispered, Alice pressing
her ear to his bloodied mouth to try to make it out, “It’s better like this. I
never liked you Auditors, anyway. But, Alice…”

She held him, clutched to her chest,
just like that, until he grew cold and heavy, until she was certain that he
wasn’t there any longer, wishing desperately that she could remember this man
that she had felt compelled to save, whose death drove her to tears. When she
finally set him aside, she did so gently, laying him out a few feet from the
corpse of the Weir, his arms folded over his wounded chest, his diminished hand
tucked underneath his elbow.

She looked at him, for a while. It
looked as if she wanted to say something. The only sound was the moaning of the
one Weir who had survived the Thorns protocol, pinned against the other members
of its pack, impaled by half a dozen different spikes that had grown out of the
walls and ceiling, both lungs punctured multiple times. She decided that she
was pleased with its suffering, and left the Weir to it.

She looked over at the Weir that
Chris had stabbed with the knife he had concealed, most of its body already
rendered into a foul soapy liquid, pieces of hair and flesh floating across the
top of the bloody gel.

“Nasty,” she observed, kicking at
the knife with toe of her boot experimentally. “So that’s what you had in mind
for me, eh?” She said to no one in particular. “Such an idiot. Like he could
have stabbed me.”

Alice collected the knife and her
shotgun, absently loading cartridges from one of her belt pouches, not
bothering to wipe the tears and blood from her face. Her gait was confident and
unhurried as she walked towards the great stained teak doors at the end of the
hall.

She met no further opposition, nor
did she expect to. The door opened easily when she turned the tarnished silver
knob, as she had expected it to.

The room on the other side was
large, so large that she suspected that a number of interior walls removed to
create the space. The acoustic tiling had been stripped from the ceiling, and
in its place was a tangle of exposed wiring and lighting rigs, half of which
still functioned. Someone had started the process of installing off-white
carpeting in the room, but there must have been an interruption. Alice could
see rolls of unused carpeting and exposed floorboards all around the periphery,
only a few feet from where the mob of Weir stood, slobbering and hissing in the
relative darkness. She did not bother to count. What difference did it make?

There was a single desk in the room,
a great ancient thing carved from some kind of deep red tropical wood, empty
apart from a single lit candle and an antique rotary dial phone. The man behind
it rose when she entered and remained standing, the top of his face hidden by
the excessive folds of the purple robe that he wore. He was clean-shaven,
olive-skinned, and perhaps middle-aged, she guessed.

“Purple?” Alice said skeptically, cocking
her head to one side and grinning, the heavy gun again resting across her
shoulders, one hand wrapped loosely around the grip. “That’s what you went
with?”

The part of the man’s face she could
see smiled back.

“Purple was once reserved for
royalty,” he said softly. “Purple is also the color of magic.”

Alice’s grin broadened.

“You might want to go with something
a bit more contemporary,” she offered. “These days, a guy in a purple bathrobe
might seem a little gay.”

When the man laughed, the silken folds
of his robe flexed and bent, moving gently as if in the wind, the metallic
thread that constituted the fringe catching the light in odd ways. When he
spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper, but she had no trouble hearing
it, even from across the room. On the desk, the lone red candle guttered,
little more than a nub, its flame buffeted by a wind that she could not feel.

“Do you really not remember me at
all, Alice?”

The man asked the question softly,
the same half-smile on his face, ambiguous and somehow off-putting.

Alice shrugged, unconcerned.

“Look, I already had this
conversation once today, with someone I would have actually liked to be able to
remember, so can we just,” Alice gestured impatiently with her free hand, “get
on with this?”

The man smiled, briefly, gently.

“You’ve always been impatient,
Alice,” he said affectionately. “And I am sorry to delay you, but I have to
admit this reunion is something that I’ve been looking forward to for some
time. You see, my dear, you work for me.”

Alice laughed.

“Right. Whatever you say, boss.”

“No, I’m telling the truth,” the man
in the robe said insistently. “You were one of my very best.”

“If I work for you,” Alice said
acidly, “then why is it that I am here conducting an Audit on Central’s authority?”

“Because that’s what I asked you to
do,” the man said, shrugging, a gesture that sent ripples down the length of
the purple fabric. “More than two hundred years ago. I needed you to become an
Auditor, Alice, and you have done so very well for me. I am truly grateful.”

“Right, fuck this,” Alice snapped.
“Since I’m on official business, I’ll need your name. You can tell me, or I can
have Alistair interrogate your corpse. No big thing to me, either way.”

The man chuckled softly.

“We used to be lovers, you know? It
hurts my pride very much that you don’t remember me. I will not tell you my
name, because you already know it. If you truly cannot remember, however, then
you can call me the Rosicrucian.”

Alice lifted the shotgun off her
shoulders, leveling it one-handed at the man’s head. Around her, she heard the
heavy footfalls and the deep guttural intakes of breath from the restless crowd
of Weir, nervous and uncertain. Behind the gaping barrel of the gun, Alice’s
face lit up with pure, feral ecstasy.

“Whatever you say,” Alice said,
leering. “In that case, try and get me off, before I finish you.”

The Rosicrucian raised his arms up,
only his olive fingers visible poking out from the generous sleeves, small
purple sparks dancing around him in strange, contrary rotations, snapping and
sparking in the air around him.

“You can’t possibly win, Alice,” he
said, almost pleaded. “This isn’t necessary.”

Alice smile widened by a millimeter.
Then she pulled the trigger.

Thirty-One

“It snowed.
When did it snow?”

Eerie frowned and brushed a strand
of hair out of his face that had somehow freed itself from the confines of his
new knit cap. He had been a bit surprised that it fit him perfectly, until it
occurred to him that Eerie had knitted it while he lay unconscious, and that
she probably had ample opportunity to get the size right.

“It started snowing almost two weeks
ago,” Eerie said with a concerned smile.

“Wow,” Alex said, wincing. “It’s
still hard to believe that it is December. Last I remember it was a week before
Halloween.”

Alex looked around the quad, stunned
at how much had changed while he slept. An ankle-high layer of snow blanketed
the campus, with more falling in fat white flakes. A layer of powder covered
everything, even the sides of the buildings and the ornate stonework.

“I was worried,” Eerie admitted,
“especially during the first week. But, Rebecca came down to see you every day,
and she told me that you would definitely wake up.”

The only snow Alex had ever seen had
been closer to hail, one particularly cold winter in Bakersfield. It had melted
as it hit the ground, hard round balls of ice that turned brown and
disintegrated into the mud. This was nothing like that, and it reduced him to a
state of something like awe. Without even thinking about it, he found himself
sticking his tongue out to catch the snow on, something that he had only read
about in books.

“I’m a little surprised that
everyone worried about me so much,” Alex said, looking up at the dense grey
sky. “I didn’t really expect that…”

“Not everyone was worried,” Eerie
said mischievously. “Anastasia never even asked about you.”

Eerie laughed and twirled around
next to him, her sneakers making only a slight indention on the snow as she
walked along the top of it, as if it had simply never occurred to her that she
was supposed to sink.

“You missed the Winter Dance,” Eerie
added shyly, looking away. “I wore a dress.”

“Oh,” Alex stammered. “Um. I am
sorry I missed it. I wish I could have seen that.”

Eerie’s cheeks burned.

“Maybe some other time…”

They walked along the cleared path
in the quad, Alex staring at the clumps of brown grass that peeked through at
the edges where the snow was thinnest. He wondered if the grass was still
alive, despite the brown, despite all the snow, just waiting for the right time
to let everyone know it, and felt strangely envious.

“Alex is happy to be back,” Eerie
observed warmly, her eyes sparkling. “The Academy starts to feel a bit like
home, doesn’t it?”

Alex crouched down and grabbed a
handful of the snow, attempting to mold it into a snowball, disappointed to
find that it was too dry and would not stick together. He looked up at Eerie
and smiled, tossing the snow aside.

“I guess,” he said, standing up to
walk beside her. “I’m not sure that I know what home feels like, to be honest.
But, I feel, I don’t know… that I want to be here,” Alex said, struggling for
words, “or something like that. I think I have friends here. I guess I’m closer
to happy here than I’ve been anywhere else.”

Alex was quiet for a moment, lost in
thought, walking beside Eerie, his own sneakers crunching through the snow and
slowly soaking through, Eerie padding along beside him almost silently. She was
cute, he thought, with bits of snow caught in her tousled blue hair, almost an
inch of blond showing at her part, wrapped in her oversized sweatshirt. She
caught him looking at her and smiled at him, causing him to blush and look
away.

“What about you, Eerie?”

Eerie appeared to consider it for a
moment, hopping up onto the edge of a concrete planter that bordered the quad,
walking along the edge, one foot in front of the other, her arms spread for
balance.

“I have two homes already,” she said
finally. “But I’ve never been happy there. So I like it better here, too.”

Alex looked over at her, as she
hopped down at the edge of the planter, her cheeks flushed, her hands hidden
inside her voluminous sleeves, her grey skirt flaring up around her as she
landed lightly on the snow. He fought off the urge to turn away, to make a
joke, to run off on some kind of contrived excuse. He swallowed hard, and then
took a step toward her, so they were walking slightly closer.

He waited for a moment for some kind
of reaction, but Eerie continued to walk on next to him, seemingly lost in the
scenery of the snow-covered campus. After a moment, he took another cautious
step closer, bringing them almost side by side. He felt his cheeks burning, and
it suddenly became a bit hard to breathe, his heart pounding in his chest and
ringing in his ears. It was awkward, walking this close, and he started to
worry that he would walk into her.

Eerie did not move away. Did not
flinch. Did not even look at him.

Alex took a deep breath, wiped the sweat
from his hand against his jeans, and then reached for the strange girl’s hand.

Her hand felt fragile and warm,
despite the cold. Their fingers tangled awkwardly for a moment, but then she
intertwined them, wrapping his hand around her own, as casually as if she had
been expecting it. Alex realized he was holding his breath, and exhaled in
relief.

Alex walked beside Eerie in silence,
her hand seemingly the only warm thing in the perfect, frozen world.

***

Anastasia
sighed and let the window curtain fall back into place, obscuring the view of
the pair walking across the quad, hand in hand, much to Renton’s evident
disappointment.

“My, my. That boy is terribly
predictable. He always does the exact opposite of what I tell him,” she said
fondly, reaching absently down to scratch underneath the jaw of the fawning
Weir nearest to her. “Merry Christmas, Alex. I hope you like my present.”

Renton looked up from the desk where
he sat, puzzling over the disassembled parts of an Austrian automatic pistol,
his hands spattered with a light coating of gun oil, his face composed in a
parody of sincere concern.

“Do you want me to…” he began,
wiping his hands clean with a nearby towel.

Anastasia waved him off, yawning.

“No,” she said, standing up and
walking towards the door, “let it go for now. Our agreement with her has been
satisfied. Everything worked out the way I expected. We have plenty of time,
and I am tired. I am going to bed, Renton. Good night. And…Merry Christmas.”

Anastasia turned rapidly, and walked
out with two wolves trailing behind her. Renton smiled and returned to the
broken-down Glock, waiting until he heard the door click closed behind him
before he returned to the window.

He looked out at the snow, the tall,
awkward boy and the blue-haired girl, walking across the deserted white campus,
holding hands. The window reflected his smile back at him, and the smile that
he saw was ugly. For a moment, he watched them and their clumsy, self-conscious
progress across the snow. Then he returned to the table, to the machined metal
and oil and rags laid out on it.

“Merry Christmas, Ana,” Renton said
softly, sighting down the barrel at the fire roaring in the fireplace, with a
ghoulish smile. “And a Merry Christmas to you, too, Alex.”

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR

Zachary
Rawlins lives with
his lovely and amazing wife, Chloe, and their genius Corgi, Ein, in an 80-year
old Tudor in Oakland, California. During the day, he works in the environmental
industry. In his free time, he enjoys hiking, photography, building computers,
and writing books like this one.

He
can be reached at spook_nine@yahoo.com, or at the Facebook
group for The Central Series, should you wish to offer comments, suggestions,
or lucrative publishing deals.

Thank
you for reading The Academy! The action continues in the second
volume of the Central Series, The Anathema, and the third volume, The
Far Shores, both currently available on the Amazon Kindle
Marketplace.

Please
consider checking out the first volume of my light novel series, Unknown Kadath
Estates, Paranoid Magic Thinking, and the standalone novel/prequel, The
Night Market, both currently available on the Amazon Kindle Marketplace.