The Central Series

The Academy

The Anathema

The Far Shores (2014)

The Outer Dark (TBA)

The Church of Sleep (TBA)

Other Books by the Same Author

The Night Market

Unknown Kadath Estates, Volume One:

Paranoid Magical Thinking

For my father, for reading me all of Lord of the Rings
aloud, with voices.

Copyright © 2012 by Zachary Rawlins

Cover photograph copyright © Vladimir Konovalov

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

978-0-9837501-2-3

Cover design by Dahlia & Poppy Design

Second Edition

TABLE
OF CONTENTS

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Prologue

Emily finished tying a bow on the present she had
selected for her father, a tiepin he probably wouldn’t like that she had bought in
antique store during a visit to Taos. She stretched and yawned, then pushed
aside the curtain to see if it had started snowing, and it officially became
her worst Christmas ever. This was, in all fairness, saying something when it
came to Emily Muir.

Not
because her father would dislike the tiepin. George Muir, after all, was not
very high on Emily’s list of favorite people, expressing disappointment in
Emily with such consistency that she had resigned herself to it. It was the two
people strolling through the quad holding hands who had ruined the holiday
season. She did not recognize either of them at first, but the hat the taller
wore was immediately recognizable. She had watched it take shape, after all. It
had been stuffed in the knitting basket Eerie carried when she visited Alex at
the hospital.

Numb
with surprise, Emily let the curtain drop back into place. She had been
preparing to go to Alex’s bedside herself – Eerie would typically leave about
this time, so if Emily timed her arrival right, she would avoid meeting her in
the lobby on the way out. Emily tried to be happy that Alex had finally woken;
if anyone had asked her, she would have claimed to be very happy, and
perhaps a part of her was. Nevertheless, most of her was too busy wishing all
sorts of terrible death on the blue-haired girl, who had somehow morphed from
an object of pity to her archrival, her adversary for the heart of a boy that
Emily was not certain that she actually liked.

Of
course, she did not have the luxury of such considerations. Her place in the
Raleigh Cartel, her entire future, rested on the whims of a boy two months her
junior. A boy who let his hair grow too long, who always wore headphones and
didn’t bother to remove them to have a conversation, a boy too nervous to even
try and kiss her. This was not a happy development, but Emily was used to that.
She had prepared herself years ago for much worse things.

Emily
pulled the curtain aside again, just a few inches, and peered out through the
frosted windowpane. Two people wandered aimlessly through the snow below the
dorm buildings. Emily pushed the turmoil in her head aside long enough to take
a good look, trying to see their halos: smoky, multicolored rings of light that
hovered above their heads. Alex’s halo was hardly visible. Eerie’s halo, on the
other hand, was entirely absent.

That
was the crux of the problem. Emily was an empath. Like every empath, she
perceived emotions in a different manner – for Emily, they manifested as halos.
For other empaths, emotions manifested as auras, melodies, or even fragrances.
Empaths typically swam in a sea of such impressions; many of them needed to
learn to filter the information so they could function normally. Emily was born
with only a shred of power, the least one could have and still claim to have
any at all, which meant that on her best day she could barely tell how someone
felt. Her protocol was too weak for the cartel to use her as a diplomat, a
negotiator, or a spy. Her most probable future was a glorified homemaker, given
away in a political marriage. Emily had just enough power to see that Alex was
starting to nurture a crush on the girl whose hand he held; his halo was all
soft optimistic pinks, with livid white strands of excitement and streamers of
deep red lust interwoven.

Emily
hefted the present experimentally and considered smashing it against the wall,
but she was too sensible for that, and too angry to cry. She settled for
putting the present carefully down on the table instead, and then pacing across
the room, swearing to herself, cursing whatever fate had dictated that Alex
would wake when Eerie was at his bedside.

“That
bitch,” Emily muttered, clenching her fists while she walked from one end of
the small room to the other, one side too warm from the ancient heater, the
other frigid thanks to ventilation problems in the old dormitory buildings.
“That selfish…bitch,” she finished lamely, having already exhausted her small
store of pejoratives.

The
funny thing was that Emily liked Eerie – or rather, she had felt sorry for
Eerie, who was a favorite target for bullying in their class. Eerie was a Changeling,
with one Fey parent and one human. Their daughter was an outcast from two
worlds, abandoned at the Academy when she was a child. Emily had a certain
sympathy for her circumstances, given her own difficult position in her family
and in the Raleigh Cartel; on principal, Emily didn’t like to see people
mistreated. She had always done her best to look out for Eerie – not that the
strange girl had shown any appreciation for her efforts. Now, Emily thought,
puffing up with righteous indignation, they were enemies.

The
target of her anger fluctuated between Eerie and Alex. Emily cut him more slack
– Alex was, after all, just a boy, and therefore helpless in the face of
Eerie’s dubious charms. Nevertheless, he had made a promise – actually more of
an agreement – to pretend that they were dating, for the sake of convincing
Emily’s handlers that she was making progress in her assignment to seduce and
acquire the boy for the Raleigh Cartel. Emily was, by this point, so well
conditioned to accept being pitied that she didn’t even resent the situation
that much. Moreover, she had been making progress. If Eerie hadn’t
intervened a few weeks ago, dragging Alex off to San Francisco on some sort of
bizarre date that left both Alex and Miss Aoki hospitalized – and poor Edward
dead – then Emily would almost definitely have replaced their agreement with an
actual relationship. She was certain of it.

Where
was the justice in that? Eerie had broken the rules, getting Alex hurt and
another student killed, playing her little games. Yet there she was, holding
hands with the boy as if she had a right to him. Emily stewed inside her
dormitory room, dressed for a hospital visit she was never going to make, her
blond hair done in painstaking curls that he wouldn’t see. All this because she
had been too nice.

Emily
stomped her foot against the cold stone floor to emphasize her frustration. She
wondered if they had kissed already. She wondered if they had slept together
when they were in San Francisco. Emily heard they checked into a hotel together
before Anastasia Martynova found them, and there were all kinds of stories
about Eerie. She didn’t think that they had done anything yet, but with the Fey
it was impossible to be sure. Emily got so wound up with jealousy that
eventually she had to sit down, flustered and dizzy. She stole a glance out the
window, telling herself that she didn’t really care. They were already gone,
and that also worried her.

She
wondered what Eerie was doing with him right now, what she was letting him to
do to her, and hated herself for it. Emily stayed that way for a while, staring
at the falling snow, her mind a blur of vindictiveness and recriminations. With
an effort, she put a stop to it, gathered herself, and considered her options.

Confronting
Alex directly was out. She was afraid she would come off as possessive and
controlling – after all, she wasn’t even really his girlfriend. Confronting
Eerie was probably equally pointless, though potentially more satisfying. Going
to the cartel or the Hegemony for help was obviously out of the question. They
would probably pull her from the Academy and send some other girl, or girls, in
her place. That did not mean Emily was going to keep playing nice, though.

Emily
thought it over, but she knew that she had only one real option.

She
felt a little better at having come to a decision. She changed clothes, the
blue floral-pattern skirt and soft wool sweater she had chosen for her hospital
visit put aside for a different time. She dressed in normal clothes and combed
the curls from her hair, taking a perverse pleasure in ruining her hard work.

She
looked in the mirror and managed to summon a smile. She decided it looked
brittle and gave up on it. Then Emily left to find the only person in the world
whom she trusted to help.

One

Todd Martinique had spent sixteen years planted
behind a desk. There was nothing about being behind that desk, sitting on
the terrible flat wooden chair, that he did not know. He had begun the job as a
young man with gelled brown hair and a body that he felt some justifiable pride
in, having devoted much of his spare time to the gym. He was warned during the
interview that the position was a dead end, a clerking job rather than a
security position; a day spent checking badges against names on a list,
watching pixilated security camera footage, and making a handful of routine
reports via email, with no hope for advancement. He hadn’t been concerned at
the time, because he hadn’t planned on staying; he intended the job to be a
small step on the road to better things.

It
did not turn out that way. Instead, he stayed and read the same names from the
same printouts that spooled out of the fax fresh every morning, watched his
belly grow and everything else sag and spread, and felt a tolerable level of
malaise. The fringe benefits helped assuage his regrets to a degree.

Todd
was busy doing what he usually did around three o’clock, when the afternoon
stretched out endlessly toward the close of business. Todd was occupied with
the feed for Camera Six, the camera that was supposed to focus on, of all
things, the employee parking lot. Two years earlier, one of the techs had
spliced in a satellite feed, and now Camera Six’s monitor never showed anything
except muted ESPN. There were never visitors if there were no names on the
list, and today there were no names. Todd was watching some feature about the
US Open, bored out of his mind, when the security door opened.

If
visitors were rare, then civilian visitors were an abnormality of the highest
degree. Yet every inch of the woman, from her faded blue jeans to the chestnut
hair that fell haphazardly to the shoulders of her grey sweatshirt imprinted
with the halo of the Anaheim Angel, screamed civilian. Todd had to admit that
she looked alright, even through a half-inch of bulletproof glass. She had warm
brown eyes, and when she smiled, he was bizarrely reminded of Mrs. Franklin, a
young teacher that he had nursed a crush on through junior high. He did not
feel optimistic about the circumstances, though, as she definitely was not on
the list, because no one was.

“Can
I help you, ma’am?”

Todd
straightened up quickly, setting aside his clipboard and doing his best to look
officious.

“I
bet you can,” the woman responded cheerfully, leaning her elbows on the little
platform jutting out in front of the security station. “I need to know if you’re
holding someone here.”

“I’m
sorry, ma’am, but can I see your identification? This is a secure area.”

“My
name is Rebecca Levy,” she said with an ingratiating smile, “and I don’t need
identification.”

Todd
felt tremendous relief on hearing this. He had already been envisioning some
kind of bureaucratic slipup, the tiresome paperwork it would generate. That was
not how he had planned to spend his evening, and he was happy to avoid trouble.
That Rebecca Levy did not need ID made his day a lot easier, and he appreciated
that. He resolved to help her any way that he could. Todd felt strongly that it
was the least he could do.

“Right,”
Todd said agreeably, giving the woman his best smile in return. “What can I do
for you today, ma’am?”

“I
need to know if you’re holding a prisoner here that I’m supposed to collect.
Tall woman with black hair, big tattoo with a tree and a Hebrew script on her
back. She may have been injured when she arrived, or unconscious, or in an
amnesiac state. Sound like anyone you have here?”

Todd
started to nod before she finished her sentence. He had seen what the woman
with the tattoo did to Miguel’s arm, after all, before they carted him off to
the hospital, and that would have been hard to forget.

“8B.”

Rebecca
frowned shortly.

“Excuse
me,” she said, leaning forward, her forehead pressed against the glass so she
could see his name tag, “Mr. Martinique.”

“Todd,”
he cut-in.

“Todd.
Of course,” she said, her smile broadening. “And you can call me Rebecca. What
is ‘8B’?”

“The
prisoner you mentioned. The woman with the tree tattoo. We don’t have a name
for her, so we use the cell number. Let me call back, and I’ll have them send
an escort…”

Rebecca
shook her head, and Todd’s hand froze on the phone’s keypad.

“That’s
okay. I’d prefer that you take me yourself.”

Something
in the firmness in her tone, the confidence in her sparkling brown eyes,
brooked no argument. He was torn between eagerness to please and a nagging
feeling that something was entirely wrong. Technically he wasn’t allowed in the
back, though after a few years smoking on break with the guys who worked there,
he had been invited down, strictly off the clock. They would certainly go
apeshit if they saw him back there on shift, and he obviously couldn’t leave
the desk unmanned. Besides, when did they start sending civilians to check on
prisoners?

“Ma’am,
I’m afraid that’s impossible. Now, if you’ll let me call…”

“Todd,”
the woman said, a palm pressed against the bulletproof plastic. “Why don’t you
come around and open the door for me? We can’t really talk through the glass.”

He
hesitated for a moment, then her brown eyes caught him and he couldn’t remember
why he had been troubled. What was there to worry about? It was hard to talk
through the barrier. He could trust Rebecca, and anyway, he knew what he was
doing. There was no one who knew more about being behind that desk than Todd
did. Which meant opening the door so that Rebecca could explain the situation.
He felt the utmost confidence that they would be able to work things out face-to-face.

The
magnetic locks gave way with their usual reluctance, snapping to the side and
allowing him to swing the steel-reinforced door open. Rebecca gave him an
appreciative nod and then walked in, glancing around his station with a vague
air of distaste before eventually settling herself on the edge of his makeshift
desk.

“Do
you smoke, Todd?”

Todd
nodded in the affirmative.

“Good,”
she said, pulling a pack from her sweatshirt pocket, along with a red plastic
lighter. “You don’t mind, right?”

Todd
shook his head, not reaching for his own cigarettes because, of course, it was
against the rules to smoke indoors. One of the other security guys who worked
the parking lots had been fired for sneaking off to a bathroom to smoke. He was
sure, however, that it was okay for Rebecca.

She
lit up, inhaled, and then exhaled with a sigh of relief. She grimaced briefly
and then urged him to step closer.

“Come
here, Todd. Come over so I can reach you.”

Todd
almost fell over himself in his attempt to cross the tiny room, to stand in
front of the woman with his hands twitching. She was beautiful, he had decided,
with those bewitching brown eyes, and he wanted her with the same urgency that
he wanted Mrs. Franklin in junior high. He was desperate for her to touch him…

“Ew,”
she said, frowning. “Tone it down, big guy.”

His
desire disintegrated like smoke in the wind, here and then gone, leaving behind
only a confused memory. He still adored Rebecca, but now there was something
almost familial about the feeling, like she was his sister. When she reached
for his forehead he closed his eyes automatically, instantly soothed by the
feel of her fingertips on his brow.

“Okay.
Here’s how it’s going to go. I want to go to cell 8B, Todd, and you want to
take me there. Now, now – don’t get worried. If anybody stops us, I’ll explain
things, and then they’ll understand. Like you understand. Okay?”

Todd
nodded in agreement, pleased that Rebecca would take responsibility for the
situation. He always felt better when somebody else was holding the bag.

“This
is important, Todd. This is a big deal for you. I might need you to do things
on the way. I also might have some questions for you. I want you to answer
quickly and honestly. Can you do that?”

Todd
nodded again, as content as a clam in its shell, his eyes closed, waiting for
instructions. He wondered when he last felt this secure and confident.

“Alright,
then. Lead the way, Todd.”

Todd
opened his eyes, smiled at Rebecca, and then led her to the sole door providing
entrance to the facility for people without bags tied over their heads. He used
his own entrance code, something he almost never did. When he went back
afterhours, he always used the dummy code the techs had doped up, so it would
not go on record. He knew that the system would log him opening the door in
violation of procedure, but he was certain that Rebecca could fix that. He just
needed to remember to ask her before she left. Right now his priority was
getting Rebecca to the cell as efficiently as possible. She was obviously important
– and who knew? Maybe there was the possibility of a promotion in this, even
for someone as unimportant as himself, if he was helpful enough. He led her
down the short hallway to the elevator, walking purposefully, trying to act as
if he did this every day, hoping to make a good impression.

“Hey,
Todd? Tell me something.” Rebecca dropped her cigarette casually on the floor
and then ground it out with the toe of her sneaker. “How come you know about
the tattoo? You don’t check in the prisoners, right?”

“No
ma’am,” Todd said, sweat breaking out on his brow. He pushed the call button
for the elevator again, to have something to do. “They bring in prisoners
through the secured area downstairs.”

“So,
what’s up with that?”

Todd
continued to hem and haw until the elevator arrived. Once inside, she put a
finger to his forehead, and asked again. This time Todd came clean. After all,
if he could not trust Rebecca, whom could he trust?

It
had all started five years ago, during a cigarette break with a couple of the guards
who worked in the back, Miguel and Reggie. They were scary guys, ex-military
with hard faces and ugly laughs, but they warmed up to Todd over time,
particularly after he revealed that he could cover for them when they clocked
out early. After a while, they started talking about what went on in the back.

There
were rumors, of course. Everyone who worked there knew it was a holding
facility for some corporate, quasi-governmental group called Terrie. Todd
wasn’t exactly shocked when he found out that Miguel and Reggie were part of a
team of interrogators who worked at the facility, or that their job amounted to
torture. Initially he was bothered by the way their eyes lit up when they told
him stories in hushed voices, descriptions of beatings and water boarding,
starvation and humiliation. After a short while, however, he found himself
looking forward to the little talks. He started imagining the stories while he
sat, watching endless hours of silent ESPN on a jumpy monitor. Eventually he
had the opportunity to fix something for Miguel, an unfortunate incident where
he had clocked in late and faced termination. Todd saw to it that the report
filed that day was incomplete, and suffered a demerit of his own for the
partial report. As a result, he earned the gratitude of the entire backroom
staff. Miguel invited him to visit the back after operating hours, and told him
about the dummy code.

No
one in those cells ever left the facility. Eventually they ended up in the
high-temperature furnace operating on the facility’s lowest level. The
prisoners were there to be interrogated and then disposed of. Some of the
female detainees were sort of pretty behind the bruises and terrified
expressions. A small circle of guards took advantage. The first time, the whole
elevator ride down, Todd had worried that he would be sick. In that
claustrophobic cell, stinking of piss and despair, he had felt something else
entirely…

Todd
was torn from his reverie by a feeling of dread. He knew that Rebecca was
glaring at him furiously before he opened his eyes. He wanted to explain, but
he could not find the words. He felt as if he had been caught masturbating by
his mother; shame, fear, and desperate belief that this could not actually be
happening.

“Did
you hurt her?”

“What?
Who?”

“8B,”
Rebecca said, through gritted teeth. “Was she one of the ones you ‘visited’?”

“It’s
not...It’s not what you think!”

Todd
raised his hands defensively and pleaded for the opportunity to explain,
feeling such tremendous fear and shame that he wet his pants without even
realizing, only noticing his damp crotch moments later.

They
had indeed ‘visited’ the prisoner in 8B. She hadn’t spoken a word since she
arrived at the facility. According to the guards, she lay on the floor of her
cell all day without moving. She was sort of freaky, with the tattoos and
tangled hair, a bit too tall and muscular for Todd’s tastes. They hadn’t gotten
a new girl in a while, though, so there was no way he was going to pass up the
invitation. She had been complacent, even apathetic, when Reggie ordered her to
strip, standing nude and indifferent in the filthy cell.

Then
Reggie tried to touch her, and she went after his eyes with her thumbs. She
probably would have blinded him, if her fingernails had not been removed a few
days earlier during interrogation. Miguel stepped in with his baton and managed
to knock her away before she killed Reggie, but she pinned Miguel’s arm to the
wall in the process and then hammered it with her knee, fracturing his arm at
the elbow. Todd intervened in time to prevent them from beating her to death,
but it was a near thing. They could have forced the issue, but any further
struggle might lead to the prisoner’s unsanctioned and premature death, and
that would bring serious consequences. They left to take Miguel to the hospital
(written up as a classic ‘trip-and-fall’ injury, probably the first in facility
history for a staff member), pausing on the way out to instruct the guards on
duty to deny her food or water until she felt more compliant.

That
was two days ago, and Todd hadn’t been back downstairs since.

He
hesitated while the elevator chimed to indicate their arrival at the holding
level. When nothing happened, he stole a fearful glance at Rebecca. She looked
impatient and disgusted, but not as imminently threatening as before. She waved
him out of the elevator curtly, and he obeyed, grateful and eager to please.

Todd
followed Rebecca down the halls, giving occasional directions. They passed
several security checkpoints where the guards were too busy screaming and
crying hysterically to challenge their passage. He wondered what could have
happened to create such extreme panic in the facility, but keeping pace with
Rebecca was his priority. Occasionally, curious functionaries or roving guards
would try to stop them, but Rebecca turned them all aside with a few brisk
words, at which point they would flee down the halls, sobbing and tearing at
their hair. It took only a few minutes to reach the holding cells.

They
were twelve dull metal doors arranged in a circle around a central chamber. An
interrogation platform, strewn with the tools of the trade, was positioned in
the middle of the room, where it could be seen from every cell. They didn’t do
any actual work there, Todd explained nervously, but it was effective
psychologically as a reminder of the prisoners’ eventual fate.

“Never
mind that,” Rebecca snapped, striding past him, walking the perimeter of the
room. He noticed that she trailed her hand along the cell doors she passed,
touching each, but he could not imagine why. She glanced inside the little
observation window inset in the metal door labeled ‘8B’, and then snarled at
Todd.

“How
do I open this?”

Todd
rushed forward, glad to be of use. He keyed the dummy code into the terminal
mounted flush with the concrete wall, and magnetic locks clicked open with a
sigh. Rebecca stepped inside, wrinkling her nose at the smell, while Todd
watched through the partially open door.

Prisoner
8B was lying on the concrete in the corner of the cell, as far as she could get
from the hole in the corner that served as the toilet. The sheet draped across
her shoulders was torn and dirty, her clothes underneath little more than rags.
Rebecca crouched down, brushing the woman’s tangled hair back from her face,
revealing black eyes and a bloody nose. For the first time, Todd noticed that
the prisoner’s hair was not actually black – there was a half-inch of pure
white at the roots, and he stared blankly, trying to wrap his mind around it.
The woman didn’t look much more than thirty, but the part of her hair was as
white as the paint on the walls.

“Oh
you poor thing,” Rebecca clucked, cradling the prisoner like a child. She
reached into her sweatshirt pocket and produced a black bandana that she tied
around the unconscious woman’s head. “That should protect your little secret,
you conceited bitch,” she said, with obvious fondness.

The
prisoner’s eyes fluttered open, and Todd felt a brief sense of genuine shame.
Then fear reasserted itself.

“Alice?
Do you recognize me?”

The
prisoner stared blankly for a long while, and then she gave a slow, hesitant
nod.

Rebecca
smiled and patted her forehead.

“You
don’t have to talk, sweetie, I can hear your thoughts just fine. You don’t have
to remember anything. My name is Rebecca Levy, and I am your friend. I have
been your best friend for years. I am here to take you back home, where I will
help you get better,” she said softly, her voice so soothing that even Todd
felt lulled. Despite everything, he had to suppress an urge to yawn. “Everything
will be alright, and nothing is going to hurt. I promise. I’m going to put you
to sleep for a little while, alright? You won’t dream, and when you wake, you
will feel better. Is that okay with you?”

She
didn’t get a response, because the prisoner had already fallen asleep. Rebecca
dragged her carefully out of the cell, laying her down on the cleaner floor of
the hallway. Todd made a motion to assist, but Rebecca batted his hand away
with a glare so fierce that he shrunk back against the wall, crouched with his
hands up as if to ward off a blow.

“You
don’t touch her, you bastard,” she hissed, advancing on him with a cold
expression twisting her face. “You should have run away. I might have forgotten
about you. You see, I have a present for you. A gift for what you’ve done to my
friend, and all the others.”

Rebecca
paused to light another cigarette from her pack. She coughed once, cleared her
throat, and then continued in the same sharp, angry tone.

“I
want you to understand, Todd – this is what I really do. My other job – my day
job, as it were – I’m a councilor at a school. I even have a degree in
psychology, for all the good it does me. Over the years I have seen many
lonely, hurt kids. A lot. Some of them I can help, and, some of them,” Rebecca
said, with a failed attempt at an indifferent shrug, “I can’t.”

She
loomed over him, her shadow seeming to fall down on him from high above. Todd
felt as if he were nailed to the ground, his limbs moving in a bizarre
pantomime of swimming as he sought enough purchase on the concrete floor to
crawl, to scamper away from this terrible woman and her blazing, unforgiving
anger. He muttered apologies that were incoherent even to him, begging for
mercy that he knew with certainty he would not receive.

“Kids
feel things more, you know? And I can’t forget all of it. I wish I could, let
me tell you. I would sleep better. What I can do, though, is share the pain,”
Rebecca sneered at him, and he felt as if he were the vilest, smallest thing on
Earth. He wished he had not left his .38 revolver back at the security desk,
because he could have used it to kill himself. “I’m actually a little relieved
to find someone who actually deserves it.”

Rebecca
pitched her cigarette at him. It bounced off Todd’s forehead, causing him to
cry out in surprise.

“You
have no idea how overwhelming it is to live with all that, even for me. Years
worth of trauma, abuse, and despair, extracted from the minds of too many
children to count. You’d be surprised what people will do to kids. It’s a sick
world. It amazes me, though, how tough children are, what they can survive,
what they can learn to live with. I doubt that you are as resilient, Todd. You
can scream if you want to. As it turns out, no one ever comes to save you.”

Todd
flinched from her hand, but Rebecca moved faster than he could, catching him at
the wrist. He was assailed by emotions, by the echoes of memories that were not
his own and yet were firmly embedded in his mind. It was like a yawning void
centered directly in his heart, a sense of betrayal and guilt and
disappointment so profound that he could not even cry out against it. He could
feel an inescapable weight, a violation of trust, confusion, and repulsion, and
his mind recoiled. He felt tiny and naked, shattered in the wake of fear and
self-hatred that ate away at the very foundation of his being, eroding his
identity as inevitably as a cliff disintegrating into the sea.

Rebecca
shook her head in disgust and walked away from the drooling, whimpering shell
of a man. She composed a narrative of the events from the moment she had
received the tip about Christopher Feld’s last whereabouts from the remnants of
the Syndicate three weeks ago until now, then thought hard in Alistair’s
direction. He must have been looking for her, because the response was almost
immediate.

Rebecca?
Where the hell have you been?

You’ll
have to read it off me. I’m too beat to manage an explanation.

There
was a moment of silence, a brief sting while Alistair probed her thoughts,
absorbing a record of her experiences, then another delay while he processed
the data. The lag in communication between two Operators with telepathic
affinity would normally have been unnoticeable, but Rebecca had expended the
majority of her energy in the last day and a half of hunting, and had exhausted
her reserves implanting the terrible emotional residue in Todd Martinique’s
shithole of a mind.

I
understand. What do you need?

I
need an apport to Central. I need a medical team for Alice on arrival. Then I
need Xia to come down here and burn this whole fucking place and everyone
inside to ashes.

Are
you…certain, Rebecca? What about the other prisoners?

Too
late, Alistair. There’s no one in the building that both deserves and wants to
live.

Two

Vivik wasn’t the kind of person to have many bad
days.
Nevertheless, today had been exceptionally good, even by his sunny standards.

At
breakfast, for example, the cafeteria had French toast, which normally happened
on Tuesday. He took two pieces, and then finished one from Emily’s plate when
she could not. Vivik loved French toast; plus, well, breakfast with Emily,
right?

Even
if Alex was with them.

It
wasn’t as if he disliked Alex – actually, he considered him something of a
friend. He was weirdly appealing, in a sleepy, distracted way. Alex had bouts
of depression and bad moods, and was particularly clueless about what not to
say aloud, but his tendency to loudly despair in the face of adversity was
actually somewhat endearing.

Then,
of course, there was the whole thing with Emily. The situation wasn’t strictly
Alex’s fault, but it remained a subtle point of contention.

Vivik
had Chemistry in the early afternoon, but the lecture was based on work with
acids and bases with which he was already familiar. Vivik was able to devote
the two hours to his private scheme, all the while diligently taking notes on
autopilot, just in case. He spent an hour in the library running down
references for his pet project, then returned to the cafeteria for lunch, where
he settled for pasta and salad with Renton, who was, as always, funny in a mean
way.

Vivik
had enough time left to go back to the dorms and take a nap before Calculus,
which was exactly what he did. He couldn’t always sleep during the day, but
this afternoon he got a solid forty-five minutes and went to class feeling
energized and cheerful. The lecture was new to him, and he liked his teacher.
Mr. Chan was a squat Taiwanese patriot with a heavy accent who often
interrupted his class to denounce mainland China, so the time flew by. Vivik
stayed late after with his study group, reviewing equations and cracking jokes
about comic books, Star Wars, and Internet parody videos related to
comic books and Star Wars. He left the classroom around six, satisfied
to have made it through an entire day – the third in a row, in fact – without
anyone asking him about his sullen new friend. He practically skipped all the
way to the dorm. He dropped off his books, washed his face and rewrapped his
hair, then changed from his uniform into jeans and a polo shirt. Vivik whistled
tunelessly to himself as he walked to the cafeteria, hoping for spinach
ravioli.

Instead,
three lurkers waylaid him the moment he stepped into the quad.

They
smiled when they called him over, and were friendly enough for Hegemony kids,
but Vivik knew what they wanted before they had a chance to ask. It took a
minute or two before they politely worked their way around to the question,
breaking the longest streak he had run since winter break, and souring his day.

Of
course, they wanted to know about Alex.

* * *

Renton was out of breath,
but tried to deliver his news anyway. Svetlana flitted annoyingly around him;
patting him on the back, cooing, and generally making a spectacle of herself.
Anastasia waved her away tersely and waited for Renton to stop wheezing and
explain what had him so excited. She popped up from her chair when she heard
his news, and even with heels and her hair up, she barely made it to Renton’s
chest. When she started to pace, the black Weir in the heavy silver collar that
had been dozing beneath her chair whined and followed at a discreet distance.

“When
did they get back? How did I not know about this?”

“They
were just in the quad, talking to Vivik,” Renton said, still a bit red in the
face. “I don’t know when they got back or how the precognitives could have
missed it. I came here as soon as I saw them.”

Anastasia
huffed, then turned on her heel, pacing away from him, lost in thought.

“All
three of them, back at the Academy,” she mused, clearly talking to herself. “I
suppose the Hegemony has finally lost faith in Emily. Now they are bringing in
the big guns. Grigori, Chandi, and Hope.”

“Chandi
wasn’t with them,” Renton said, shaking his head. “It was Hope and Grigori, and
some other guy I didn’t recognize.”

“She
is here at the Academy somewhere,” Anastasia said, pausing to glance at a
mirror on the wall and make minor adjustments to her intricately styled hair.
“Chandi is the only Hegemony precognitive powerful enough to block our own pool
in this manner. She would not delegate a situation of this magnitude to an
underling. She will handle this affair personally. The only question, then, is
where she will start – Alex or Emily?”

“Well,
they were asking Vivik…”

“Grigori
or Hope will talk to Alex, then. That means Chandi is looking for Emily
presently.”

Renton
nodded, his face returning to its normal ruddy color. His brown hair was
hopelessly in disarray and swept up in a cowlick; Anastasia clucked her
disapproval and sat him down in a chair in front of her. She produced a comb
from her tiny antique purse and ran it roughly through his unruly locks. Renton
winced when she pulled at the tangles, but he did not look particularly unhappy
at the attention.

“Has
Emily said anything to you yet?”

“Since
she asked about the cost? No, I believe that she is still torn. If the elite of
the Hegemony are here to light a fire beneath her, however, I would expect that
will change.”

“What
if Chandi and Hope decide to replace Emily?” Renton asked, gritting his teeth
while she tugged on a particularly stubborn knot.

“That
would be a waste of the time and energy they have already invested. Chandi will
not abandon Emily immediately. She will give her an ultimatum, and then observe
the results while she prepares contingencies. I am certain the Hegemony has
other options in reserve, supposing that Emily’s best effort does not succeed,
but Chandi stands to lose nothing by offering a final opportunity in the interim.”

Anastasia
straightened Renton’s head so that she could examine her work, then expertly
parted his hair down the middle in a perfectly straight line. After a brief
inspection, she smiled in satisfaction and released him. Renton stood up,
looking at himself at the mirror and patting his neatly combed hair fretfully.

“Okay.
What do you want to do, Ana?”

Renton
watched her reflection in the mirror as she wandered back to her desk with
Blitzen, the black Weir, firmly in tow, the embroidered hem of her dress
trailing along the tasseled edges of the carpet. Anastasia picked up one of the
Swiss fountain pens that her father had bought her and toyed idly with it,
spinning it between her small fingers. She was wearing a simple, sheer black
dress. It was Renton’s favorite, and not only because Anastasia never wore it
outside of the small home the Academy provided her.

“There
is still time,” Anastasia decided, setting the pen carefully down in its
matching gold-plated stand. “I will wait for Emily to come to me. Chandi will
meet with her and make all sorts of dramatic threats. Emily will be forced to
either compromise her virtue or deal with me.”

“Emily
won’t put out,” Renton said, adjusting the knot in his tie and wishing he could
rearrange his hair, but not wanting to upset Anastasia. “She’s a prude.”

“Is
that so?” Anastasia glanced over at him with laughter in her eyes. “You say
that because she refused you?”

Renton
blushed and turned his attention back to his reflection, too flustered to
formulate a response.

“You
may be correct,” Anastasia added thoughtfully. “I think she would prefer to get
in bed with the Black Sun than with a boy who cannot decide if he likes her.
This leaves only one outstanding concern – Alexander Warner.”

Anastasia
reached to pet the Weir practically sitting on her Christian Louboutin pumps,
begging for attention, while she considered.

“Grigori,”
she concluded, nodding to herself. “Chandi will use Grigori. Renton, I want you
to find Alex. If I know the boy, he is bound to upset Grigori sooner rather
than later. Let’s arrange for sooner, shall we? Oh, and call Katya, would you?
It is time to put her to work as well. Alex needs to learn something useful.”

“If
you say so. I still think using Katya is a bad idea. She’s unpredictable at
best. It’s your call, though. Are we just going to hang back and watch things
develop?”

“No,
silly boy,” Anastasia scolded, sitting back down behind her desk, which always
made her look even younger than she actually was. “We will do what we do best.
We will make friends.”

* * *

The girl across the
table from Emily was built like a bird, with narrow features and wrist bones
like sticks on her neatly folded arms. Her skin was an even, lustrous brown;
her hair short and fashionable, almost boyish. Small, round spectacles hung
precariously from the end of her nose. Chandi Tuesday was often mistaken, Emily
knew, for Indian, but she was in fact from Abu Dhabi.

“Emily
Muir.” Chandi spoke with a clipped British accent and a smile as perfunctory as
a fold at the end of a toilet paper roll in a motel bathroom. “So good of you to come.”

Emily
was too flustered to do anything but nod, smile, and take the proffered chair.
Chandi kept her waiting while she made a show of reviewing the files arrayed in
front of her. Emily knew that she must have already read them. Chandi had such
a reputation for exhaustive preparation that Emily would not have been
surprised if the girl already knew their contents by heart.

Emily
tried to see her halo, to no avail, as she had expected. Chandi Tuesday was
F-Class and already a full-fledged Operator, with rumors that hinted at the
potential for M-Class. Emily didn’t need to peak at the contents of the reports
on the desk to know the purpose of their meeting.

“I
have reviewed your reports in regards to Alexander Warner,” Chandi said,
looking down at the papers in front of her. “I have a few questions I’d like to
ask you. That is,” she asked, glancing up briefly, “if you aren’t too busy?”

“No,
not at all,” Emily said dishonestly, running one hand through her damp hair.
She had been showering when the summons had arrived, and hadn’t taken the time
to dry off before running over. She would regret that later, of course. Her
hair, if not dried properly, became insufferably poufy. “What would you like to
know, Miss Tuesday?”

“The
two of you seem to spend considerable time together,” Chandi said, running one
finger along a line of text. “It is not entirely clear to me, however, whether
the two of you have developed a romantic relationship. Tell me, what progress
have you made?”

“Well,”
Emily said, fluttering her hands in front of her, “as you said, we spend a lot
of time together...”

“Then
you aren’t dating Alexander Warner?”

Emily
hesitated for a moment, then shook her head reluctantly.

“Not
exactly. But we have been seeing a lot of each other! I have been tutoring him
for homeroom, and we eat breakfast and dinner together almost every day. We’ve
been on a few dates, and I’ve had him over to my house.”

Chandi
Tuesday raised one pencil-thin eyebrow, so that it peaked out above her
ridiculously mousey glasses.

“Then
your relationship is a physical one, yes?”

“Not
yet,” Emily admitted, biting her lip. “It’s not exactly easy. Alex is very shy,
and he’s never had a girlfriend before, so he isn’t exactly sure what to do,
and…”

Chandi
raised up a hand to interrupt her.

“You
are telling me that it is difficult to convince this boy to sleep with you?”

“Y-yes,”
Emily said, her cheeks burning. “I know how ridiculous that sounds, but it’s
true. I have been trying.”

“Really?”
Chandi said, looking skeptical. “I don’t mean to argue, but it seems a bit odd
that a girl of your charms would have such difficulty with a rather average
boy. In my experience, most girls have to try fairly hard to avoid male
attention.”

Emily
stared at the ground in front of her, blushing and feeling ugly, useless, and
very, very angry with the condescending, sanctimonious girl in front of her.
She wondered bitterly if Chandi’s marching orders had ever included having sex
with someone she had only just met.

“As
much as I hate to suggest such a thing,” Chandi said, not sounding as if she
hated it very much, “perhaps it is simply an issue of personal attraction? Is
it possible that you are simply not Alexander Warner’s type?”

Emily
blushed more furiously and wished desperately for a hole to crawl into, a
meteor to strike the building, a fire to break out – anything that would get
her away from this horrible conversation. She could see her chances of staying
at the Academy dwindling in front of her while they talked, and she scrambled
desperately for defenses, a rationale that would keep her here.

“I
am certain that he is...interested in me,” Emily insisted, feeling ashamed.
“But things with Alex are complicated.”

“Be
that as it may,” Chandi said, frowning, “we are here to deal with complicated
situations, yes? Could you perhaps explain to me who this ‘Eerie’ person is,
and why her last name doesn’t appear in any of my files?”

Emily’s
heart had already sunk, but at the mention of the Changeling’s name, her heart
fell through the floorboards, and she was not sure where it stopped. Emily
wondered who had ratted her out, and if there was any way at all for her to
stay at the Academy. The thought of returning to her home a failure was
poisonous, but once the fear of it entered her mind, the idea spread like
wildfire, sapping her of poise and confidence.

“Eerie
is a Changeling. I don’t know if she even has a last name,” Emily said, more
bitterly than she intended. “She is our classmate, and also friendly with Alex.”

“I
see,” Chandi noted primly. “Perhaps, then, the Changeling is the complication
in the situation? Warner appears to spend a fair amount of time with her, not
to mention that strange business in San Francisco...”

Emily
fought the urge to hang her head, blinked back stinging tears from her eyes.
She was not, she decided, going to give Tuesday the satisfaction of breaking
down. If she were going to cry, then it would not be here.

“Eerie
is interested in Alex, I suppose. She has certainly managed to get in my way
several times. However, she is half Fey – Eerie is not, well…sane or normal.
She isn’t even human! I can’t imagine that Alex would fall for her.”

“She
is your rival for Alexander Warner’s attentions, then?”

“You
don’t understand, Miss Tuesday…”

Chandi
interrupted her with her annoyingly confident and solicitous smile.

“Let
me tell you what I do understand, Miss Muir, and you may correct me
where I am mistaken.”

She
flipped rapidly through the pages in front of her, settling her finger on a specific
line, but Emily did not believe for a minute that she had actually needed to
refer to the material. The files were a prop, nothing more. After all, Chandi
Tuesday was a precognitive.

Emily
didn’t know much about how precognition worked on a practical level. Like all
the students at the Academy, she had studied probability matrices in homeroom,
and understood the basic theory. As Vivik had explained patiently to her during
one cram session, precognition wasn’t so different from empathy, in that precognitives
used diverse and individual methods to perceive possible futures. Some
precognitives experienced visions like ancient Catholic saints, often in the
throes of epileptic seizures. Others experienced prophetic dreams and woke
crying over potential tragedies, years away and still uncertain. Perhaps the
most coveted were precognitives who used a codified system of visualization
techniques, perceiving potential futures as a tangle of threads, a pattern of
multicolored lights, or even as wholly fictional roadmaps. There was one
important consistency – precognitives did not actually see the future,
but rather various possible futures.

The
main thing Emily had taken from Vivik’s lecture was the knowledge that
precognitives couldn’t interact with the world around them in a normal manner,
tormented by the burden of their abilities. They were bad with people, the
inverse of an empath. Vivik claimed that an abnormal percentage of
precognitives were subject to autism and schizophrenia. Certainly, it was rare
for one to attend the Academy. Assuming the rumors regarding the nature of
Anastasia Martynova’s mysterious protocol were incorrect, then Chandi Tuesday
was among a very few in the student body. The majority, according to the
stories she had heard, were kept in isolation, hidden away in old family manors
and behavioral institutions, working in seclusion or in ‘pools’ with other
precognitives. For all her arrogance and self-assurance, Emily was starting to
see that Chandi was no exception, that she also didn’t ‘get’ people.

“What
I understand,” Chandi continued haughtily, “is that your relationship with
Alexander Warner is nothing more than a friendship. I believe that you
overstated your progress in the reports you submitted to the Hegemony in order
to secure your position at the Academy. It also appears that you have failed to
report the advances of this,” Chandi paused distastefully, “Eerie, or her
success relative to your own. It seems entirely possible that your
misrepresentation has allowed this Changeling an opportunity to get close to
Warner, when another Hegemony operative might have had more success, had you
been forthright enough to inform leadership and step aside. Now, Miss Muir – where
am I wrong?”

Chandi
Tuesday was so smug and self-satisfied that she did not even notice the change
in Emily’s demeanor when she spoke. Emily didn’t have to bother trying to
perceive Chandi’s halo – she had already found a chink in her armor.

“Well,
Chandi,” Emily said, putting emphasis on her first name, “do you mind if I ask
you a question?”

“I
suppose,” Chandi allowed, peering at Emily suspiciously through her comical
glasses.

“Thanks,”
Emily said cheerfully, as if they were friends having a chat. “Tell me, have
you ever had a boyfriend?”

“What?”
Chandi said, gasping audibly.

Emily
felt a cruel satisfaction. Whatever precognitive abilities Chandi possessed,
they clearly had not helped her anticipate the conversation going in this
direction. Her confidence grew commensurately; after all, if Emily had
blindsided Chandi once, then she could do it again.

“No
offense,” Emily continued casually, twirling a lock of her hair in one hand,
“but I’m guessing you’ve never been with a guy, right?”

Chandi’s
hand froze halfway to her gaping mouth. Emily scored another point for herself
on her mental chalkboard. She had figured that any girl raised in Abu Dhabi
would have to be a prude, even if she didn’t wear a headscarf.

“Well,
Chandi, I have,” Emily continued cheerfully. “Believe me, I know when I have a
guy’s attention. Alex is definitely interested. But with that boy, things are
never simple.”

Tuesday’s
composure was slipping. If Emily needed any more proof than the blood draining
from her face, she could now make out the faintest indications of a halo over
Chandi’s head, thin and transparent, too faint to get a solid read, but
unmistakably visible. Emily said a brief mental apology to Alex for the
confidence that she was about to break, promised herself that she would make it
up to him, then charged ahead.

“Alex
has a history, Chandi. A bad one. Something happened with his family before he
came here, and he was blamed for it. Now he has trouble trusting anyone, much
less an empath that he knows has a stake in recruiting him. Despite that, I have
gotten through to him. We had breakfast together this morning, for God’s
sake. He is beginning to trust me. I know that he likes me. But this
relationship isn’t going to happen according to a timetable.”

Chandi
cleared her throat, looking uncertainly from one side to the other, as if she were
seeking support from invisible companions.

“That
all may be as you say, but your instructions were not to make friends with
Alexander Warner…”

“Alex,”
Emily said firmly. “He prefers to be called Alex. My instructions, as I recall,
were to build a relationship with him, to make him trust me – to make him fall
in love with me, if it all possible. And that is exactly what I’m doing.”

Chandi
appeared to be restoring her composure, little by little, her eyes seeking the
reassurance of the files in front of her automatically.

“But
if this Changeling girl already managed to spend the night with him…”

“Nothing
happened,” Emily said, shaking her head.

“How
do you know?”

“Check
the files; Anastasia Martynova was in that room with them,” Emily said, taking
a deep breath before saying the thing she would hate herself for later.
“Besides, Alex is a virgin.”

Chandi’s
eyebrow started its creep upward again. Emily couldn’t help herself.

“And
you know how difficult that makes these things,” she added sweetly.

Chandi
blushed, and then turned her attention back to the files, transparently playing
for time while she reviewed records. Emily shifted in her seat while she waited
for a response, wishing she could leave, not daring to try. She managed to keep
the guilt at bay for the moment. It wasn’t as if she had a choice in the
matter. Revealing Alex’s secrets was the only way she could see to stay at the
Academy.

“I
see,” Chandi said, finally looking up from the files in front of her. “At the
very least, then, you believe that you have succeeded in becoming his
confidant.”

“Yes.
At least.”

“Which
leads me to believe that your chances might be better than I had originally
suspected,” Chandi said grudgingly. “I will be generous. You have until the
start of summer session.”

“What?”
Emily asked, shocked. “You’ve got to be kidding. That’s not even two months.”

“That’s
right,” Chandi confirmed, clearly enjoying paying Emily back for her earlier
brashness. “The Hegemony cannot wait any longer. In the meantime, we will put
contingency plans in place, in the unlikely event that you should fail.”

“You’re
already bringing in replacements?” Emily protested. “You’re not giving me a
chance…”

“On
the contrary,” Chandi said, closing the file in front of her emphatically. “I’m
giving you more of a chance than I am inclined. Whatever you are planning,
Emily Muir, I suggest that you do it soon.”

* * *

Vivik had a number of
extremely private fantasies that involved being alone with Emily in his room.
This particular moment was the most intimate contact he had ever had with her,
and they were very much alone. Together on his bed, no less – even if they were
sitting.

If
he was a little bitter that she was crying, quite literally into his shoulder,
then he also felt that he merited some forgiveness. Vivik patted Emily’s back
clumsily, overwhelmed with the normal male confusion and dismay in the face of
a woman’s tears, unable to put the fact that he could feel her bra strap
beneath her sweater when he touched her back completely from his mind. It was
hard not to feel conflicted when Emily was pressing her face against his chest,
while sobbing over his friend, classmate, and neighbor.

“There,
there…” Vivik cast lamely about for something comforting to offer. “Can I get
you a tissue or something?”

He
regretted the statement as soon as he finished making it, but Emily carried on
crying as if he hadn’t said anything, which was probably for the best. He let
her continue for a few more minutes before he tried again.

“Do
you want to talk about it?” Vivik asked hesitantly, secretly hoping that she
wouldn’t.

Emily
said something unintelligible, her voice muffled and her face still pressed
against his damp shirt.

“What?”

Emily
sat up, rubbing her eyes and then wordlessly accepted the tissue that Vivik
offered her, wiping her eyes and sniffling. Vivik made a conscious effort not
to look at the wet patch on his shirt sticking uncomfortably to his skin.

“Is
that it?” Emily asked him, her eyes wet and trembling, the tissue clutched in
her hands.

“Is
what it?”

“Her
chest!” Emily howled miserably, again burying her head in his shirt, this time
using the other shoulder. “Is that it? Is that why he’s so obsessed with her?”

Vivik
figured out what Emily was talking about and blushed furiously. He was glad
Emily was too busy sobbing to notice his reaction.

“Ah.
Well, we don’t really talk about that sort of thing,” Vivik lied. “But I don’t
think that is what’s going on. Anyway,” he said, hesitating when she looked
over suddenly, “Eerie’s not really that…you know. Endowed.”

“Then
what is wrong with me?” Emily demanded, looking up at him with bloodshot eyes
and a runny nose. He handed her another tissue automatically, wishing he could
change his shirt. “Why is he being so weird?”

Vivik
weighed his options. He had a strict policy of noninvolvement in cartel
affairs, one that had kept him moderately safe at the Academy. Emily, however,
was his friend. Moreover, Emily was the girl that he often found himself
thinking of right before he fell asleep. Vivik liked Emily, and had since the
first time he talked to her. Vivik wanted her to be happy, but he wasn’t sure
he wanted that badly enough to help her into Alex’s arms. Besides, Vivik told
himself, it wasn’t as if Alex was hurting for attention, feeling increasingly
comfortable with the idea. Alex often seemed to view Emily as a more of a
burden than anything else.

“I’m
just his friend. We don’t talk about girls much,” Vivik continued on, a little
stunned that lying had suddenly become so easy. “I honestly don’t know what’s
up with him and Eerie. Ever since Alex started the Program, he’s barely ever
around, and when he is, he spends most of his time sleeping. He doesn’t eat
with her, and he doesn’t sit next to her in class. Why are you so worried?”

Emily
sniffled and looked miserable; she curled her bare, tanned legs beneath her, on
top of Vivik’s neatly made bed.

“They
know, Vivik,” she said, crumpling the tissue in her hand with unneeded
vehemence. “The Hegemony. Chandi Tuesday showed up today to threaten me. They
want results, and they know all about Alex and Eerie. Vivik,” she said
intensely, seizing his hand in her own, “they are going to kick me out of the
Academy. My father will marry me off to some old man, and that will be that.”

Vivik
opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it. Emily was right, of
course, and that was part of it. Also, he did not want her to let go of his
hand. The way Vivik saw it, he wasn’t betraying Alex – after all, Alex had been
frank with Vivik many times as to his uncertainty when it came to Emily. Surely
Vivik was not doing anything wrong by spending time with the girl he liked,
regardless of her intentions. Was it even possible, he wondered, for Emily’s
obsessive quest to lead her in his direction?

You
never know, Vivik thought, until you try, reaching as subtly as possible for
the box of tissues.

Three

Alex was in the circle, and not at all happy to be
there.

No
one seemed inclined to ask his opinion on the subject, however, and Miss Aoki’s
crimson eyes were latched on to him, so he tried to keep his head clear, his
breathing slow, and his hands up. Steve was right-handed, and favored a lunging
uppercut or a right cross, so Alex circled left the way Michael taught him. It
was impossible to tell how long they had been fighting; time had a way of
stretching out in the circle. That didn’t matter, anyway – no one left the
circle until Miss Aoki was satisfied.

It
was funny without being funny, the way a crudely painted red circle on the
floor of an empty room had become his least favorite place.

Right
at the moment, though, Alex liked what he was seeing through hands wrapped in
blood-smeared tape to protect his knuckles. Steve was bigger and stronger, and
they were about the same height, but Alex’s arms were a few inches longer.
Michael had taught him to use his reach to create distance, working his jab
from just outside Steve’s range, peppering him in the face with fast shots and
then stepping back. The jabs weren’t particularly damaging individually, but
their cumulative effect was written all over Steve’s face, from his bleeding
nose to the mouse growing beneath his left eye. Steve’s bulk was beginning to
work against him, stealing oxygen from his blood faster than it could be
replaced. He was sweating like a fountain and sucking wind, his face flushed
with exertion.

“You
can’t win on points, Alex.” Miss Aoki chided him from the periphery of the
circle, Margot to one side looking bored, Renton on the other with a smug
expression. “You actually have to hurt him.”

Alex
didn’t rise to the bait, and he didn’t let Miss Aoki distract him from what he
was doing. Contrary to popular belief, Alex actually had a plan.

Well,
it wasn’t really his plan. Michael had helped him formulate it. After two weeks
of getting beat by Steve, over and over, being taken down and battered until
Miss Aoki decided he’d had enough, Alex became frustrated enough to ask for
help. Telepathic simulation or no, it still hurt. Alex appealed to Michael’s
competitive spirit, and as a result, he spent the next week drilling Alex
exclusively on the techniques that he was using right now.

His
jab wasn’t enough to end the fight. Steve would simply walk right through it,
eating a couple of shots until he got close enough to do damage, then mauling
Alex up close. Michael had pointed out something else that Alex had going for
him besides long arms: sharp, protruding elbows. A week of practice taught him
the peculiar strike-and-drag motion that turned a close elbow strike into a
cutting tool. Alex learned how to shift seamlessly from the jab to the elbow,
so that he could switch from one to the other in the same motion when his
opponent came forward.

Alex
started using the elbow strike in the circle two days earlier, and it had
turned Steve’s face into a bloody mess. Steve had tried to bull through the jab
to get inside his guard. Alex’s elbow had opened a big cut above Steve’s right
eye, allowing Alex to batter him mercilessly from his blind side until Mitsuru
called a stop. Clearly, the big asshole wasn’t as stupid as he looked, because
today he was careful when stepping inside or shooting for a takedown.

“What
is this, modern dance? I’m falling asleep over here. If this were a real fight,
you’d both be dead by now.”

Alex
ignored the criticism and stuck to the plan. Steve advanced cautiously, eating
a quick right jab that caught him on the cheek, his own wild punches falling
short. Alex stepped back outside his range and resumed circling, throwing jabs
whenever Steve tried to close. He wasn’t trying to wear Steve down. Alex was
aiming to hurt him, but he needed to goad Steve into going for a double-leg
takedown. The scoop-and-tackle maneuver was the favored method of putting an
opponent on the ground in freestyle wrestling, in which Steve had an extensive
background. Frustration was evident in Steve’s increasingly rushed and wild
movements. Everyone gets tired of being punched, after all.

More
careful footwork, pumping his jab into Steve’s swollen face. His patience cost
him a stomped foot and a bloodied nose from a punch that just grazed him, but
Alex finally saw what he was waiting for.

He
had seen it a week earlier, when Michael convinced Alex to utilize the jab that
Alex had previously regarded as ineffectual. There was always the temptation to
swing for the fences, particularly when Steve (and Miss Aoki had a sadistic
tendency to pick out Steve to be his ‘partner’ for these exercises) was the
person at the other end of his fist. Instead, Alex walked him all over the
place that day, backing away and wheeling and counterpunching, no real plan,
just hoping to tire him out. It worked for a while, then the big goon got
inside, dropped Alex with a body shot, grabbed him in a full nelson, and drove
him into the ground. Before that happened, though, Alex saw something that he
knew was interesting, even if he didn’t know exactly what to do with it – he
saw Steve misstep.

When
he was tired, Steve had a tendency to step over his own foot, particularly when
Alex moved consistently to the left. Alex consulted Michael again, then spent
days practicing the plan they came up with. For a week, he absorbed terrible
beatings, trying to figure out how to tire Steve out. When he brushed his teeth
at night, he visualized technique; before he fell asleep, he imagined how the
fight would play out. There was a certain dreamlike quality when he finally saw
Steve’s footwork get sloppy from exhaustion.

His
heart leapt into his throat, and Alex had to stop himself from jumping forward
in a frenzy. He followed Michael’s plan instead. Alex stepped to his left,
coiled his legs beneath him, and waited to pounce. Alex knew that if Steve
didn’t misstep, he wouldn’t be able to do much to defend himself.

But
Steve got lazy.

Steve
stepped across his own foot, the tip of one trainer scraping the laces of the
other. Alex launched himself at Steve, leading with a wide, looping punch that
started too far back for Michael to approve and ended with a satisfying smack
below Steve’s ear, right above the base of his jaw. Steve grunted and fell to one
knee, the first time he had ever even been dizzied by one of Alex’s punches.
Alex was sure he had broken his hand in process, as it immediately started
throbbing, but that didn’t matter in the heat of the moment. He continued his
attack.

Alex
drove his right knee into the side of Steve’s head as hard as he could manage.
Steve went limp and fell sideways, his eyes weirdly defocused. Alex felt a
brief moment of triumph before he collapsed in a heap himself, uncertain
whether to clutch his bruised knee or his broken hand.

“Reset.”

Steve
shook his head, spat, and then stood up. He stumbled out of the circle, a
yellowish-purple bruise already forming on the side of his head. He wobbled his
way to bathroom, and everyone politely ignored the sound of his retching.
Gustav watched from his corner looking amused – assuming that his eyes were
actually open. Alex writhed on the ground, his arm held close to his stomach
and his body curled around it. Miss Aoki watched without comment. Anastasia
sighed from the doorway, then shook her head.

“Alex
seems to have reinjured his arm,” Anastasia said reluctantly. “Do you want me
to have him taken to the infirmary, Miss Aoki?”

“Alex
must learn to ask for help. Alex must learn there are consequences to his
actions. These are all important lessons that he is being taught by this
experience.”

“I
see,” Anastasia said quietly.

Anastasia
sat down quietly next to Mitsuru Aoki, and they remained there, side by side,
watching him thrash and moan, while the rest of the class filtered out quietly.
Renton waited patiently in the corner, smirking. After what seemed like a very
long time, Alex struggled into a sitting position.

“Is
the implication that if I ask, then somebody will help me?” Alex asked through
painfully gritted teeth.

“Yes,”
Miss Aoki affirmed, nodding.

“Then
please help me, for fuck’s sake,” Alex said, almost whining. “I think I messed
up my arm again.”

Miss
Aoki nodded a second time, then stood up, brushing imaginary dust from her
loose brown cotton pants.

“Now
you may help him,” Miss Aoki said generously, nodding to Anastasia and heading
out the door without looking back. Anastasia waited prudently until Miss Aoki
was gone and the door shut solidly behind her.

“She
does not need to be so unpleasant. Renton, if you would.”

“Sure,
milady.”

Renton
helped Alex gingerly to his feet, lifting him from his left side, opposite his
injured arm. The worst of the pain subsided, but everything from his bruised
fist all the way up to his elbow ached insistently. It didn’t make sense to
Alex. Every injury he had incurred since being injected with nanites had
healed, rapidly and completely – but the wound left by the teeth of the silver
Weir never fully recovered.

“What
do you care?” Alex demanded shakily, glaring at Anastasia with suspicion. “Why
are you even here? You aren’t in the Program.”

“The
lack of gratitude in modern youth is saddening. Don’t you think so, Renton?”

“That
it is,” Renton agreed.

“Always
assuming the worst.” Anastasia complained behind a very slight smile. “On a
completely unrelated note, Alex, would you mind making a brief stop on the way
to the infirmary? There is someone I would like you to meet.”

“You’ve
got to be shitting me,” Alex moaned. “I think I broke my goddamn arm. Do you
have any idea how much pain I am in? Can’t it wait?”

Anastasia
clucked her tongue disapprovingly. Even after seeing it several times a week
for months, Alex couldn’t adjust to seeing Anastasia in gym clothes. They were
no different from what any other girl wore to the gym, but he was used to Anastasia
wearing outfits that wouldn’t have been out of place in Victorian-era England,
assuming there was some sort of Goth scene back then. The two tight braids that
held her hair neatly in place looked even odder. Normally, Anastasia’s hair was
elaborately styled; Renton had confided that she employed a servant whose sole
job was managing her hair. With her curled twin-tails, she looked like a
junior-high-school student on her way to P.E. class.

“Alex,
you big baby. Renton, could you assist our sensitive friend?”

“Of
course,” Renton said, smiling at Alex. Renton’s smile was as questionable as
the person who lived behind it – friendly on the surface, but the longer Alex
stared, the shadier it looked. “You mind dropping those shields, Alex? I could
bust through if you insist, but then we’ll both end up with a headache.”

“What?”
Alex demanded, his suspicions renewed. He had needed Rebecca to build the
shields that protected him from telepathic and empathic manipulation for the
first several weeks he’d been at the Academy. Only lately had he started to
build them himself. Alex recalled Rebecca warning him never to drop them, even
for the most innocuous request. “Why would I do that?”

“Renton
is a telepath, Alex,” Anastasia explained, tapping her foot impatiently. “He
can alleviate your distress. Telepathy won’t heal your arm, of course, but it
should stop your whining until we deliver you to the infirmary.”

“Oh,
come on…”

“Alex,
work with me on this,” Anastasia suggested firmly. “I have assisted you in the
past. Have I ever lied to you? Or threatened you? Have I ever took action to
harm you?”

“Actually,
I find everything you say to be vaguely threatening,” Alex admitted warily.

“I’m
the only person in Central who is completely honest with you.” Anastasia spoke
without a trace of humor. “Are you certain it would be wise to alienate me?”

“Friends
like these…” Alex muttered. Then he gave in, shoulders slumping. There was a
sense of decompression as the shields dissipated, as if Alex had kept his head
wedged between invisible blocks of Styrofoam, only aware of them as they fell
away, leaving him feeling sort of naked and vulnerable. “Alright, let’s get
this over with.”

Renton
tapped one finger against Alex’s forehead. Thanks to Rebecca’s tutoring, Alex
knew that most telepaths needed physical contact to use their protocol
effectively, but it still creeped him out when Renton touch him. He couldn’t
complain about the results, though – the pain in his arm throbbed weakly, then
sensation disappeared so thoroughly that Alex touched his damaged forearm to
reassure himself that the appendage was still there.

“Wow,”
Alex said, entirely unintentionally.

“Right?”
Renton smirked, picking up Alex’s gym bag along with his own. “No need to thank
me, dumbass.”

“Come
along, boys,” Anastasia said, heading for the door. “Let’s take a little walk.”

* * *

“This whole house is
yours?”

“In
a sense. This house is set aside by the Academy for the current scion of the
Black Sun, which, at the moment, happens to be me,” Anastasia said modestly,
leading him through the dark wood and antique furniture lining the entry to her
home, back into a formal and overfurnished office. The desk she sat behind was
impressively carved from heavy, stained wood and ornately detailed, but in
Alex’s opinion it made Anastasia look tiny and slightly ridiculous. Alex nearly
tripped over a Weir that lay on a lavish Persian rug in the center of the room.
He heard a menacing growl and stopped just short.

“Ah!”
Alex yelped involuntarily, jumping back. “What the hell?”

Anastasia
gave him a surprised look that he suspected was manufactured, and then offered
a small, apologetic smile.

“Oh.
Terribly sorry. That is Donner. No need to worry – he won’t bite.”

“That’s
not really comforting,” Alex said, staring at Donner suspiciously. “Is that a
Weir or a normal wolf?”

“Donner
is a Weir, but the collar prevents him from changing.” Alex leaned as close as
he dared, and saw that Donner wore a heavy collar that appeared to be made of
tarnished silver. The Weir gave him another warning growl, then stalked away to
curl around Anastasia’s feet, behind the desk. Anastasia nodded to Renton, who
moved a chair in front of the desk, gesturing for Alex to sit. “Blitzen should
be nearby. And, no, before you ask – I did not name them. You can thank
my little sisters for that.”

“Whatever,”
Alex said, sitting down and clutching his damaged arm protectively, though it
didn’t hurt at all. “What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until after I
got patched up?”

“You
must realize, Alex, that I have a great many responsibilities,” Anastasia said
broadly, with barely disguised glee. “With so many things for me to worry over,
your safety and security can no longer be among those concerns, I’m afraid.”

“Well,
that’s a relief.”

“Don’t
be obnoxious,” Anastasia scolded. “You have no idea to what lengths I have gone
in order to keep you safe. Be that as it may, I am handing over the
responsibility to someone else. As you are aware, I recently found myself one
bodyguard short of the quota required by cartel bylaw.”

“Yeah.
I know.” Alex was still raw from the experience, and his voice caught as he
spoke. “I’m sorry about that. Really. About what happened to Edward.”

“These
things happen,” Anastasia said, shrugging.

“No
one is interested in your apologies,” Renton said contemptuously.

“Hey,”
Alex objected, turning toward Renton and glaring. “What does that mean?”

Renton’s
expression was unreadable, a plastic smile and permafrost eyes. Alex had known
him for months, spoken to him on a daily basis, and still did not understand
him at all. Edward hadn’t talked enough while he was alive to make it clear
whether he was Renton’s friend or simply a coworker, so Alex was uncertain
whether Renton actually resented him, or was giving him a hard time for the
hell of it.

“Enough,”
Anastasia said mildly, her eyes snapping over to Renton in an obvious
chastisement, and then returning wearily to Alex. “I am very tired. Let me
finish what I have to say. Then you can go to the hospital and I can have tea
before I go to bed. As I was saying, because you are an idiot, taking care of
you is a full-time job.”

“Could
you lay off, Anastasia? My arm hurts.”

“No
it doesn’t, but it could. Or, I could just kill him and then hide the body,”
Renton suggested. “I’m certain no one would care.”

“Since
I already have a full-time job, as does Renton, and as I am currently short one
bodyguard, I decided to kill two birds with one stone.” Anastasia stopped,
considering. “Perhaps it would be better described as simultaneously killing
two birds with two stones. No matter. One of our subsidiary cartels, Kiev
Oblast, paid tribute to the Black Sun years ago in the form of two children
pledged to our service. I have transferred them from Mr. Cole’s class into our
own. The boy will take Edward’s place as my bodyguard. I have no use for his
sister at the moment,” Anastasia said frankly. “Therefore, she will be looking
after you. Katya is my second cousin, incidentally, so try to be nice to her.”

“Hold
up, just slow the fuck down. What are you talking about, Anastasia? I don’t
need a bodyguard.”

“No?”
Anastasia asked, looking surprised. “The last time you went on a date you
needed a great many, as I recall. Moreover, my dress was ruined in the process.
I am being proactive this time around. Besides, I think you will like her.
Renton, would you go get Katya for me?”

Renton
nodded and left the room, leaving Alex glaring at Anastasia, and Anastasia
ignoring him completely. After a while, Alex gave up. It was like water off a
duck’s back, anyway.

“I
don’t need a bodyguard,” Alex repeated sullenly, crossing his arms and then
flinching when he remembered his painless injury.

“Katya
won’t be one, then,” Anastasia reassured him. “Think of her as a caretaker.”

“What
does that mean?” Alex complained. “I like that idea even less.”

Anastasia
shrugged, scratching the great black wolf behind its ear as it lay its head on
her lap, black eyes locked onto Alex with definite malevolence. He shuddered at
a number of memories that he would have preferred to stay suppressed.

“Like
it or not, I simply cannot let you run around kicking things over to see what
happens,” Anastasia explained tersely. “Katya is multi-talented. I think you
will find having her nearby to be very beneficial, in any number of ways. I
will instruct her to be discreet,” Anastasia promised. “She won’t behave like
Renton, making puppy-dog eyes and following you around everywhere.”

“Hey,”
Renton objected as he walked back into the room, looking hurt.

The
girl beside him was nearly as tall as Renton and probably a bit older, with
short auburn hair and lightly tanned skin. She kept her eyes modestly on the
ground, and her school uniform was fitted and pressed, but she didn’t seem
particularly humble or even nervous to Alex.

“This
is Katya Zharova,” Anastasia said, gesturing for the girl to join them, Renton
hurrying over with another chair. The girl bowed her head to Anastasia
modestly, and then sat down in the chair next to Alex, giving him a perfunctory
smile that he was in no mood to return, even if she was kind of cute. “Katya,
this is Alex Warner. We have already discussed your instructions. You will be
looking after Alex for the foreseeable future. Keep him safe, and do your best
not to let his complaints bother you. That is a character flaw that we must
tolerate for the time being.”

Katya
gave her a short, serious nod.

“When
do I start, Ana?”

Anastasia
stood, and Renton hustled over to the door to open it for her.

“Immediately.
I believe our Mr. Warner has a rather pressing desire to go to the infirmary.”

Alex
opened his mouth to argue, to say any of the dozens of things he had come up
with while sitting there, fuming and ignored. Renton, however, chose that exact
moment to turn the pain in his arm back on. Alex doubled over, clutching his
forearm and wishing an unpleasant death on Renton, Anastasia, the whole human
race.

Four

Every street in Shanghai was crowded. Margot had been walking around the
city for hours, casing her designated grid according to the pattern the
Analytic Pool had generated. Broad avenues choked with cars and bicycles
alternated with claustrophobic alleys where vendors in makeshift booths lined
the walls. Concrete and glass towers draped in neon hid the night sky.
Everything was in motion, a frantic race with no obvious goal; a consuming
hunger for change, for profit, for the new world they were building out of
concrete and dreams and exports to the fading West. Margot assumed that New
York must have felt this way once, back when the skeletons of the skyscrapers
were first erected by an army of immigrants, hustling for their part of the new
prosperity. All the light and movement had given her a headache.

Any
luck, Margot?

Alistair’s
voice in her head, something else that she did not appreciate about her new
situation. At the Academy, even Renton didn’t have the balls to try to violate
the privacy of her own well-shielded mind. Vampires have an innate resistance
to psychic interference, one that most telepaths found insurmountable.
Apparently, however, that did not apply to Alistair.

None
whatsoever. My feet hurt, my head hurts, and I am getting very cranky. Thus
far, I haven’t seen a single Caucasian, much less the people we are looking
for. If you’re asking me, then I suppose that the others have come up empty?

Margot
knew that the delay meant Alistair was debating what to tell her, and took that
to mean that she was correct in her assumption. She felt a certain satisfaction
at guessing the motives of the Chief Auditor.

That’s
not exactly true, Margot. Xia reported an encounter a minute ago; we just
aren’t sure what to make of it…

Margot
turned down the next alley, waiting for Alistair to elaborate, surprised when
he did not. She thought hard in his direction, visualizing the snapshot of him
that she been forced to memorize to aid the uplink, but it availed her nothing.
She tried for Rebecca Levy, an admitted long shot given her limited telepathic
abilities, and got nothing again. Margot halted in the middle of the narrow
alley, a vendor pitching knockoff sportswear to one side, a sneaker vendor on
the other. She puzzled over the wall in front of her, which created an
unexpected dead end. She consulted the map of the city that Alistair had
implanted in her mind and confirmed that it should not be there. Margot cursed
her own stupidity and scrambled for cover.

There
was no time to dodge the attack, but she managed to roll with it, diminishing
the force of the blow. The Weir’s claws gouged her shoulder to the bone, the
impact sending her tumbling backward. She hit the ground rolling, trying to
give herself some distance to work with.

They
must have been supremely confident in their advantage. They let her get back up
to her feet.

Her
attackers hadn’t bothered with an isolation field, probably to avoid tipping
off Margot or the other Operators scattered about the metropolis to their
presence. Foregoing the field meant casualties and chaos among the citizenry,
something that was not an apparent concern for her adversaries. Three Weir in
varying stages of transformation ambled cautiously toward her in a loose group.
The alley was filled with the wreckage of shattered stalls and mutilated
bodies, some still able to move and cry out. Margot knew there was nothing she
could do for them. She never even considered trying.

Behind
the Weir, a western woman in a fancy black cocktail dress and too much gold jewelry
watched the scene unfold, her hair braided with jewels, stones, and clasps of
platinum and jade. Margot felt the involuntary grin, lips pulling back as her
razor teeth extruded a few centimeters, a defensive reaction as primal as a
lion’s roar. She had never met one before, but she knew it by instinct –
Anathema. This was no Witch. This was an exiled, heretic Operator, and she
could feel the Ether recoil at her presence.

Margot
stood, putting one hand to her chest to check the damage. Her hand came away
sticky, but the wound had already coagulated, the bleeding slow and thick. In a
few minutes it would heal completely, without leaving so much as a scar. Just
another part of her gone quiet and dead, porcelain-white silicon where there
had once been flesh. Nothing Margot wasn’t used to. Nothing that would stop her
or even slow her down. Mixed feelings about Alistair and loneliness for the
Academy aside, Margot wanted the job. She was going to be an Auditor, no matter
who or what got in her way.

Starting
with this lot.

The
Weir that had struck her was licking her blood from jagged talons, long purple
tongue snaking grotesquely through furred paws. The other Weir lagged behind,
advancing cautiously. They looked hungry and eager. Margot charged, weaving between
the wooden stands of the vendors and frantic passersby who could not decide
which way to run. She kept her head low and moved as fast as possible, though
she wasn’t certain the precaution was merited until the head of a nearby
shopper exploded like a wet balloon.

Margot’s
eyes narrowed, searching the rooftops automatically for the sniper, hoping to
see light reflect from the scope, but she had no such luck.

It
didn’t matter. Margot hit the lead Weir running, driving her shoulder into the
matted fur of its chest, bowling it over and then stepping over it, grabbing
the Weir to the right by its arm and the scruff the neck. The creature bit and
clawed, tearing out chunks of the flesh above her ribcage and out of the side
of her head, but Margot ignored it, using her momentum to spin the thing
sideways, up and over, headfirst into a wall. She did not have time for
technique; she just muscled him around and swung like a hammer throw, the crown
of its skull breaking through the cinderblocks, leaving a crater several inches
deep. The Weir convulsed and leaked disgusting fluids from the remnants of its
head. The remaining monsters exchanged what was obviously, even from a Weir, an
expression of worry.

The
alley was crowded, and Margot kept moving, so she got lucky again – the
sniper’s second shot went wide, sinking deep into the new asphalt roadway just
behind Margot. She ducked underneath a broad swipe from the closest Weir, and
then landed a kick solidly to the side of its knee. The Weir didn’t try to
dodge her attack, and she didn’t really blame it – normally, an Operator could
not hope to damage a Weir hand-to-hand. Margot was different, though, as life
never failed to remind her. The Weir’s leg bent like a eucalyptus tree in the
wind, and the Weir shuddered and howled. She used the opportunity to close,
wrapping her hands around its long, muscular throat, greasy fur sliding beneath
her hands as she squeezed. The Weir desperately raked her back with its claws,
but she ignored it, pressing her thumbs into its trachea. By the time the last
of the Weir made up its mind to charge, she had collapsed its companion’s
throat and was back on her feet.

The
Weir moved too quickly for her to dodge, so Margot braced herself for impact.

The
impact never came.

The
creature fell limp to the ground in front of her. A split second later, she
heard shots and rolled, hoping to evade the sniper’s scope. Margot saw muzzle
flare from a nearby roof, but again, she didn’t have time to do anything but
dodge.

As
it turned out, she didn’t have to.

A
shadowy figure tossed the sniper over the side of the building. He flailed his
arms helplessly the whole way down, crashing through the roof of a car next to
Margot. She heard the sound of crunching plastic and bone, then he didn’t move
again. Mitsuru Aoki ported down a moment, appearing next to Margot in a flash
of sparks and light, a belated isolation field surrounding the alley, silencing
the bedlam around them, the cries of the dying and the wounded.

Margot
remembered to look around, but the Anathema had already fled.

Mitsuru
gazed at her with burning red eyes, giving her an appraising look. Like Margot,
Mitsuru wore  a heavy jacket made of woven Kevlar, but Mitsuru’s coat wasn’t
shredded and punctured and hanging off one shoulder by a thread like Margot’s.

“Report,”
Mitsuru snapped.

Margot
reported, crisp and concise, as she had been trained to do.

Everything
was blurred since she had gotten off the plane. Margot went straight into the
field, no time for sleep, only a telepathic briefing from Alistair. He
implanted an annotated map and images of the targets in her mind, along with a
dossier of relevant information and a working knowledge of Cantonese and
Mandarin. Then she had been set loose on the back alleys of Shanghai. Margot
hadn’t seen anything even vaguely suspicious until she had been attacked,
without even the pretense of an isolation field, a nicety that even the Witches
never dispensed with. She briefly outlined her concerns about who they were
actually fighting – the Anathema – but Mitsuru nodded as if she had expected
that.

“Are
you alright?” Mitsuru asked, nodding at her shoulder.

Margot
poked at her shoulder experimentally. The wound had crusted over, and part of
the scab came off when she touched it, revealing cold, white skin underneath.
She pressed it with her razor-sharp fingernail until she drew blood, but Margot
didn’t feel a thing.

“I
am very difficult to injure,” Margot said, considering whether or not to
abandon her shredded jacket. She wasn’t entirely sure that the Lycra
long-sleeve that she had worn beneath it was still capable of preserving her
modesty. “My fighting style is easy to misinterpret.”

“I
understand,” Mitsuru said, with surprising sympathy. “Can you move? The car
should be here any moment.”

“I’m
fine,” Margot said, nodding, deciding to hold on to the remains of the jacket,
settling for tearing the tattered sleeves off, making it something like a long
vest. “Where are we going?”

“We
were hoping to draw them out,” Mitsuru admitted, walking briskly toward the street.
“This attack was the break we were waiting for. I acted as a telepathic conduit
for Alistair, and he cracked that Anathema wide open. Alistair is tracking her
remotely. Even if she suspects that we are following her, eventually she will
have to return to base. Central will send a team to clean things here, make
sure nobody remembers this.”

Margot
nodded, following Mitsuru back out to the street. There was a definite
satisfaction in knowing that she had been the one to flush the Anathema out. It
had to be another gold star in a folder somewhere, wherever the records on the
candidates for Audits were kept. Margot knew it was possible. Mitsuru had been
elevated barely two months ago. With Alice Gallow out indefinitely and Rebecca
Levy only sporadically available, the Audits department was desperately
shorthanded. Shorthanded enough that she’d been working for them more often in
recent weeks. Margot’s feelings on this were more mixed than she would admit
publically.

She
missed the security of the Academy; she missed the students even if she didn’t
like most of them. She missed listening to Eerie tell her about the crazy
dreams she had the night before while she breakfasted on pink and green Pixy
Stix, Margot sticking with dry toast and black tea. She wondered if Alex was
keeping his hands to himself. She wondered if Emily Muir had worked up the
nerve to be a bitch yet. She missed her room, even though she still slept there
on occasion. But the only thing Margot knew how to do was keep moving forward.

“You
are stronger than you look,” Mitsuru observed neutrally. “You did well.”

Margot
nodded and followed her out into the exhaust, the neon, the endless traffic of
Shanghai, pulsating like a fiber-optic jewel on the coast, surrounded by choppy
black seas. She moved through the motion and noise as if it were water, as if
she were born to it. Margot’s head swam with impressions and hazy memories:
half-understood appreciative shouts from construction workers across the
street, jetlag from the long flight from Vladivostok via Tokyo, twelve and a
half lost hours, a series of plastic cups filled with ice water, a Russian
novel she bought in the airport but couldn’t bring herself to read, turbulence
over the China Sea. She could almost feel the promise of the neon signs, the
business cards jammed in the phone booths advertising hookers and loans, the
Cantonese pop music carried by the wind. The breeze was still damp and fresh
from wherever it had come, and she had to imagine it was a better place, not so
thoroughly poisoned with light.

She
could have been any number of things, of course. Margot knew that as well as
she knew her own name. Her fundamental nature, however, was inescapable. She
couldn’t be sure if she had always been this way, or if it began the day that
she woke up screaming on a slab in the morgue, cradled in the arms of a
laughing, old vampire. Margot would not pretend that she was doomed to the life
she lived, though. Nothing had been inevitable. She had made each decision of
her own accord.

Most
of her kind chose to join the Syndicate. The almost-pervasive information-gathering
society managed to stay far enough ahead of the cartels to make a business out
of it. It was the most natural employer for a vampire at large. Her guardian, a
much older vampire named Christopher Feld, had approached her with that very
offer not long ago. She had rebuffed him angrily, without knowing exactly what
had upset her. Margot had been told that the guardian relationship was meant to
be important among vampires, but apparently Feld didn’t hold to that
philosophy. She had hardly seen him, until he came to attempt to recruit her.
Still, when she heard of his death, she locked herself in her room and stared
blankly at a wall, unable to recall precisely how he had looked.

Anastasia
Martynova had knocked on her door that night and invited herself in to listen
sympathetically. Then she made Margot a most extraordinary offer; an offer that
sounded preposterous, even from Anastasia: the opportunity to be a new kind of
Auditor, a sponsored representative of the Black Sun. To become part of the
emerging inner circle of the most powerful cartel, something no vampire had
ever achieved.

There
had been no need to think the matter over. Margot knew exactly what she wanted
to be. There were any number of futures that could have been hers. She could
feel them falling away from her like dead leaves, possibilities she shed and
abandoned. The sensation was exhilarating and terrifying.

The
night flowed around her like water – light, code, and language. Margot moved
through it with the brutal grace of a tiger shark, a grey shape flitting across
the swirl of color that surrounded her; the promise of violence, an implication
carried in the subtle chill of the wind. Margot felt that if she ever stopped
moving, she would suffocate. Their ride arrived, a boxy van manufactured in one
of the factory towns that had sprung up across the countryside; she could make
out the white of Xia’s mask inside, pulled tight around his mouth and nose, the
reflection of the city lights in his polarized goggles.

Margot
continued forward, the only way she knew.

* * *

Sitting in Alice’s
diary room, her legs folded neatly the way Mitsuru had taught her, Rebecca
intertwined her hands with Alice and thought about stargazing.

Rebecca
was sure that nobody else knew her secret, unless Alistair had done more
digging around in her head than he would admit to. She was struck with a sudden
reminder of the question her first combat instructor had asked: “What kind of
idiot would trust a telepath not to read minds?” The impact of this statement
was somewhat diminished by the fact that this same combat instructor was now
sitting opposite her, Rebecca’s hands in her lap, with blank eyes and an
equally vapid facial expression. The old Alice Gallow, the one Rebecca
remembered from when she arrived at the Academy, had been a wolf just barely
wedged into a woman’s clothing.

For
most people, peace was a place, a physical location, and Rebecca was no
exception. In moments like these, when she needed to generate a calm, a state
of gentle fulfillment, she thought of a certain night, spent alone in the Swiss
Alps, lying on wet grass in a meadow and staring at the stars. It was a private
memory, a secret from everyone; she kept it sacrosanct, sharing only the way it
made her feel, not the where and why of it. Rebecca had extended this
feeling to Alice twenty minutes ago, and then nurtured it when she felt it take
hold, like blowing on a coal to start a fire. She had the process going
smoothly by the time Alistair arrived, cultivating peace into Alice and drawing
strength from it herself, a feedback loop that Rebecca occasionally suspected
could lead to Nirvana. She followed it so far and no farther (except once,
accidentally, with the infinitely troublesome Alex Warner) because she was
afraid she would not come back. As it was, Rebecca barely noticed when Alistair
came in and sat down beside them, taking one of each of the women’s hands in
his own.

Because
they had agreed upon it, years ago, Alistair spoke with his voice instead of
his mind. Alice claimed to trust his voice more, but Rebecca had mixed
feelings.

“Hello,
Alice. My name is Alistair, and I am a friend, an old friend and a student who
is happy to see you. I am Rebecca’s friend as well, so you know you can trust
me. Isn’t that right, Rebecca?”

Rebecca
nodded and oozed trustworthiness. She had arrived two hours earlier and
discreetly dyed Alice’s hair her usual matte black, and then washed her hair,
amazed the entire time that Alice allowed the procedure without registering a
protest. When she’d helped her shower, Alice’s body was as lovely and youthful
as always, taut with perfect, unscarred skin, and Rebecca marveled over it,
over the crisp black tattoos that crawled over her back and arms, as perfect as
the day she’d gotten them. She couldn’t imagine Alice allowing anyone to touch
her like this under normal circumstances, and while she felt an almost maternal
satisfaction in caring for her, it was somehow troubling. Rebecca had clamped
down on the emotion, to avoid infecting Alice with it. She hoped that Alistair
wouldn’t notice the black dye that still stained parts of Alice’s scalp. Alice
might have changed a lot since they first met, but she was still vain and
sensitive about her age.

However
old she actually was.

“Now,
Alice, you probably won’t remember, but this has happened to you before. We
made a plan to help you get better, in case it happened again,” Alistair
continued softly, his voice as tender as Rebecca had ever heard it be. “You’ve
lost part of your memory, but don’t worry – we made a copy, and we put it
somewhere safe.”

Somewhere
safe was inside Alistair’s head. Lacking his breathtaking telepathic abilities,
Rebecca couldn’t explain how he had done it; she only knew that he had copied a
chunk of Alice’s memories, and then somehow stored them in his own mind for
future use.

“You
won’t remember everything, but you will know the important things. You can use
the diaries to help you recall anything that doesn’t come back to you.”

Rebecca
kept pumping Alice full of contentment and optimism. She knew that Alice’s
memories weren’t actually erased by her Black Protocol, but rather, she simply
lost her access to them. With sufficient time and explicit reminders, Alice
could recall some of the things she had forgotten. However, she seemed to
remember less and less with each passing year.

“If
I have your permission, Alice, I have something that I have been holding,
something that’s rightfully yours. Something that belongs to you. May I return
it?”

Rebecca’s
eyes were screwed shut, concentrating on keeping Alice happy, secure, and calm.
But she could feel, through the empathic link, the weight of memory descending
on Alice’s fragile mind, years of thoughts and experience making her gasp like
cold water hitting her skin, like flame tearing through dry summer grass.
Rebecca absorbed the pain and terror that Alice felt, the horror of her past
and its resurgence, and replaced it with peace and serenity, while Alistair
labored beside her, tethering the memories to Alice’s psyche, forcing synapses
to fire and activating dormant neural pathways. It was psychic surgery, with
Alistair holding the scalpel and Rebecca acting as the anesthetic, and they
worked at a fever pitch, trying to stop Alice’s mind from hemorrhaging its way
back into blankness.

The
process went on for a little bit more than an hour, and at the end of it,
Alistair was white-faced and exhausted. Rebecca was half-blind by a migraine,
with Alice resting peacefully in her lap, mercifully rendered unconscious by
the final moments of the procedure. Rebecca didn’t bother to ask if they had
been successful, because she was afraid that they hadn’t been, afraid that
saying that aloud might actually make it come true. She didn’t say anything
when Alistair rose to his feet and stumbled out of the room, punch-drunk and
weaving. She waited there, the migraine slowly receding into a pulsing pain in
the back of her neck. Alice’s eyes fluttered in a slow, sleepy movement, and
then closed again. A moment later, they snapped open in wordless horror, and
Rebecca had to calm her again, drawing from her almost depleted reserves.

“Oh,
God,” Alice said, her voice thick and rough from lack of use. “Fucking hell.
What – what happened? What happened to me? Why is my head all – ah, Rebecca?
Why are you crying?”

Five

“I’m thinking that I might have made an ass of
myself back there.”

“You
think so?”

Alex
looked away while the nurse swabbed his forearm with iodine, prepped a needle,
and then, without so much as a warning, gave him a numbing injection. Alex
yelped in protest, but the nurse ignored him. She collected her tray, informed
them that the doctor would arrive shortly, and then left, the door swinging
slowly shut behind her.

“Well,
the thing is…” Alex continued, kicking his heels against the examination table.
“When we first met I may not have done everything I could to make a good first
impression.”

“Oh?
Do tell.” Katya’s expression was serene and her tone amused. She sat across the
room from Alex, in the uncomfortable molded plastic chair that haunts every
doctor’s office. “That would be when you referred to me as a ‘bitch’, right?”

“Um,
yes, technically,” Alex said, hanging his head. “But I wasn’t really talking
about you as much as I was…”

“You
were pointing at me when you said it,” Katya noted.

“Okay,
that’s true,” Alex admitted. “I wasn’t actually upset with you, though. It’s
just that, you know, I’ve had issues with Anastasia, issues with the girls at
this school in general, and…”

“Which
is it? Do you have a problem with my boss? Or a problem with girls in general?”

“Uh,
it isn’t exactly like that…”

Katya
leaned forward, but he wasn’t sure if she was concerned or amused at his
expense.

“Are
you gay, Alex?”

“What?”
Alex said, flustered, shaking his head emphatically. “No! I mean, not that I
have a problem with gay people, but no. Ah, crap. Is there any way I can
apologize and we can just start over?”

“Sure,”
Katya said, sitting back and shrugging. “Go for it.”

“Okay,
then,” Alex said, nodding uncertainly. “I’m, uh, sorry for being rude. I was
mostly yelling at Anastasia. She tends to interfere in my life, and I wasn’t
prepared for her to spring the whole ‘bodyguard’ thing on me, and the last time
she got involved in things…”

“She
saved your life, right?” Katya asked, inspecting the muted burgundy paint on
her nails. “That’s what I heard.”

“That’s,
well, yes. You could look at it that way, I suppose,” Alex allowed, helplessly.

“I
see why you’ve got a problem with her,” Katya said flatly.

“Are
you messing with me?” Alex sighed. “I can’t even tell anymore.”

“No,”
Katya said, and then laughed shortly. “Well, maybe a little bit. You didn’t do
much to win me over when we met, and you do have something of a reputation for
being a wimp.”

“Yeah,
I’m sorry about…hey, wait a minute. I have a reputation for what?”

“You
were clutching your arm and moaning a minute ago.”

“No,
you have it all wrong! I have this chronic injury – I hurt my arm a few months
ago, and for some reason, it never seems to get all the way better.”

“What’s
wrong with it?” Katya asked, inclining her head to indicate the forearm he was
still holding, despite the fact that it was chemically numbed.

“Actually,
a werewolf bit me, and it hasn’t been right since.”

“Ah.
Remind me to stay at arm’s length during full moons.”

Alex’s
jaw dropped.

“Really?
But, it’s been a while and nothing like that…”

Katya
laughed again.

“No,
not really, Alex. Humans can’t become Weir. In fact, Weir aren’t even humans –
they are wolves who do a good imitation of a human. You don’t pay much
attention in class, do you?”

“Not
really.”

“It
shows.”

The
silence stretched out while Katya sat, pointedly not looking at him, until Alex
gave up.

“I’m
really sorry about what I said,” Alex said, shaking his head. “I’ve had a
difficult night, and I wasn’t at my best at that particular moment.”

“Don’t
get all gloomy,” Katya scolded, unfolding her arms and slouching back as far as
the unyielding material of the chair would allow. “I’m not actually upset. I
wasn’t too happy myself when I heard the news from Anastasia earlier today. I
was hoping for something a little more prestigious when she brought me over
from Mr. Cole’s class. No offense, but looking after you isn’t exactly what I
had in mind.”

“Oh
yeah! I meant to ask…your parents gave you to Anastasia?” Alex asked, unable to
repress his curiosity. “Was that some sort of punishment?”

“Are
you kidding me?” Katya asked, eyeballing Alex as if he were a lunatic. “My
original cartel is tiny, Alex, and my parents had seven kids, just to be sure.
Most of the other cartel members did the same. How many positions do you think
there are to inherit? I don’t think that the Kiev Oblast has ever had more than
thirty members…”

“Why
did they all have so many kids?”

“You
haven’t noticed yet? Man,” Katya said, whistling. “You really are dense. Being
an Operator isn’t exactly hereditary. The trait is passed down from parent to
child maybe once in three times, so every family here has some completely
normal members. That’s where all the day-to-day personnel come from, the maintenance
staff and the lawyers and the bookkeepers and whatnot.”

“Oh,”
Alex admitted, fascinated and ashamed to admit that he had never thought about
it.

“You
aren’t too observant, are you, Alex? Take Anastasia, for example. She has four
siblings, and only her older brother is an Operator, and not much of one at
that. My parents figured on the same odds, and they wanted to make sure the
family business would be secure. Most people don’t show the potential for
activation until they hit puberty, more or less. So, my parents had a bunch.
And, as it turned out, six of the seven were Operators, a great many more than
they needed.”

“Wow.”

“A
man of few words,” Katya observed coolly. “That used to mean fights over
succession. Back in the old days, we probably would have killed each other off
fighting over potential inheritance. Fortunately, the Black Sun has a system to
prevent that sort of thing. My parents pledged my brother and I to the Black
Sun’s service when we were twelve, freeing them from the need to pay Academy
fees or find us jobs in the cartel. In return, their own standing was enhanced.
It was a good deal for us, too, because we have a better chance at advancement
and prestige in the Black Sun. Everyone knows that Anastasia will take over in
a few years. All the precognitives swear it. I hear even her father thinks that
it’s a foregone conclusion and plans to step aside voluntarily. All the
subsidiary cartels are trying to get on her good side.”

“That
does seem to be the usual reaction,” Alex agreed ruefully, poking at his numbed
arm. “What about her brother? You said she had an older brother.”

“He
put his claim aside. Anastasia had a couple cousins who tried to challenge her
position as heir apparent one time. Then there was an incident, and after that,
nobody heard anything from that entire family again.”

“Are
you supposed to be telling me all this stuff? I’m not part of the Black Sun or
anything.”

Katya
shrugged, tossing her hair. In the fluorescent light of the examination room,
Alex could see that her hair was actually dyed with fine streaks of red and
dark brown, intermingled so that it appeared auburn at a distance. Alex
wondered how it could have taken him this long to notice that she was cute, in
a quiet way. Something about how Katya carried herself, the lines of her body
beneath her uniform – she gave off a general air of indifference, as if she weren’t
concerned with being seen as attractive.

At
least, not by him.

“None
of this is a secret, Alex. Also, Anastasia told me that you would join eventually.
If she says so, then it’s inevitable.”

“I
bet she did,” Alex said sourly. “Look, no hard feelings – but I don’t need a
bodyguard.”

“Are
you sure about that?” Katya asked, standing up from the plastic chair, her
expression hardening. Alex followed her eyes to the open door of the
examination room.

“You
don’t look like a doctor,” Alex observed, with a certain amount of trepidation.

That
was true. Grigori Aushev looked nothing at all like a doctor. He was built
solidly, but not like Michael – it was as if he had the frame to be tall and
skinny, but had managed to pack a bunch of muscle on in defiance of nature’s
intentions. He moved with a grace that belied his bulk. He appeared unhappy,
but the face beneath his uncombed dark hair seemed incapable of expressing
happiness, so Alex wasn’t sure. He had Slavic features, three days worth of
stubble on his cheeks, and flat brown eyes that refused to acknowledge the
light. He spoke with a thick accent and a voice so deep that Alex had to lean
forward to hear him.

“Alexander
Warner? Grigori Aushev. We need to talk.”

“Oh,
for God’s sake,” Alex muttered, his head in his good hand. “Can’t any of you
people at least wait until I see the doctor?”

* * *

“You’re going to have
to explain that to me.”

Anastasia
was brushing her teeth, so hadn’t heard him approach. It wasn’t like Renton to
come into her wing this late in the evening, and it wasn’t like Donner and
Blitzen to ignore the intrusion. She was surprised. Surprised enough that her
she accidentally poked herself in her gums with her toothbrush, the sting
making her eyes water, though she had enough composure to make sure it didn’t
show. Anastasia was decidedly less than happy with Renton when she turned
around and made an interrogative noise, her mouth full of toothpaste.

“Sorry,”
Renton said, leaning against the door frame and looking anything but. “I’m
curious, though. Timor I understand – he’s done some personal security courses.
I think he will make a decent bodyguard, even if he is a bit inexperienced. But
Katya trained as an assassin, Ana.”

Anastasia
said something that apparently sounded enough like ‘And?’ that Renton
understood.

“I
looked up Katya’s records,” Renton admitted, with a guilty look. Anastasia knew
from experience that the expression was entirely for show. Renton rarely made
mistakes, and he never felt bad for anything he did. “She’s formidable in her
own way. Six years worth of tradecraft and combat training. Her aptitudes are
all solid. Her proficiency is for wetwork, though. She is academically,
diplomatically, and socially unfit for the position. She doesn’t know the first
thing about personal protection. Katya is nothing more than a killer, and
emotionally unstable to boot. Why pick her, when you have so many other
options?”

Anastasia
closed the door in Renton’s face, ran cold water from the tap, and finished
brushing. She did not normally bother with mouthwash at night, but she did
tonight, delaying to make a point. When she finally opened the door again,
Renton was still there, with the same false, apologetic smile on his face.

“Did
you learn anything else interesting about Katya?” Anastasia demanded haughtily,
acting as if she weren’t in her nightdress with her hair down in preparation
for bed.

“Well,
she does manage to look alright, even in the uniform…”

“Do
you have to say things of that sort, Renton? Her appearance has nothing to do
with her assignment. Katya’s protocol, you fool. Do you think she could, for
example, kill Alex with it?”

“I
could kill Alex with a mean look,” Renton said smugly.

“When
he is at full power?” Anastasia asked, her voice dripping with contempt. “When
he is using his Black Protocol? I am not so certain, Renton. I am not sure that
you could get close enough to try. While you are poking around records that you
are not supposed to be in, review the footage of what happened when Michael
encouraged him to activate that protocol for the first time. It is quite
alarming.”

“If
you say so, but…”

“I
assigned her to Alexander as a favor to someone worth doing a favor for, someone
who wanted to take out a bit of protection while hopefully providing him with
an educational experience. Katya may be a terrible student, but she will excel
in the Program.”

“Oh,”
Renton said, nodding. “Then it’s just a coincidence that’s she’s…”

Anastasia
gave him her fiercest glower. Renton trailed off and appeared chastised. She
was certain that wasn’t the case.

“Nothing
I do is unintentional, Renton,” Anastasia snapped. “I hoped you would have
realized that by now. Whatever happens with Katya, I assure you, it will be
exactly what I intended.”

“It
would be easier to accept that if you weren’t wearing those,” Renton said,
pointing down at her feet. They both paused to glance at her plush brown
slippers, and then Anastasia looked back at him, twitching with fury.

“These
are Domo slippers,” she said menacingly. “Don’t you dare mock Domo.”

“Of
course,” Renton said, holding his hands up in faux surrender. “Whatever you
say.”

“Speaking
of whatever I say, what are you doing here? What did I tell you about coming to
my room? Or using telepathy to keep my dogs from eating you?”

“Something
encouraging, I hope.”

Anastasia
shook her head and then sighed.

“Enough.
Renton, I am about to get upset,” she said quietly, but with feeling. “I
suggest that you find somewhere else to be. Maybe you could find a girl who
actually appreciates you showing up unannounced in her room.”

Renton
took a couple of steps back. Donner was suddenly between them, his heavy black
body wedging them apart, almost standing on her slippers. He snarled in
response to his mistress’s mood, his instincts overriding whatever suggestion
Renton had implanted.

“Okay,
I got it, Ana. Message received,” Renton said, backing away with a smile. “I’m
already gone.”

She
watched him all the way to the door, Blitzen tracking every step. The Weir’s
low snarl sounded like the revving of a rusted engine.

“Since
you’re feeling curious,” Anastasia called out after him, “go see what’s
happening at the infirmary. It will probably be interesting. You can tell me
about it in the morning.”

“Right,”
Renton said, flashing her a weak smile before he closed the door on the
growling Weir.

Anastasia
sighed heavily, then spent a minute petting Donner and Blitzen, calming them
down. She hadn’t given the surveillance job to Renton because she needed his
perspective, but rather as face-saving measure. Renton would have done it
anyway, to satisfy his own curiosity. It was probably time, Anastasia thought
regretfully, to do something about Renton, in case he got to feeling even cleverer
than he already did. Anastasia returned to the bathroom to brush her hair
again, too agitated for sleep.

* * *

“Okay, things got a
little heated. We’ve all just met for the first time. No big surprise that
there was some miscommunication. Now…why don’t we just, you know, put down the
scalpels and stuff and start over?”

He
looked over at Katya hopefully. She stood in front of him, a couple
nasty-looking surgical tools pillaged from one of the drawers in her hand.
Their companion pieces, two quivering scalpels, were imbedded in the wall on
either side of Grigori’s head. Katya glanced back at him in confusion, her face
flushed and shoulders heaving. She stared in disbelief for a moment, then
shrugged and set the tools down on the counter, conspicuously still within
reach.

“That’s
good,” Alex enthused, turning to Grigori. “Okay, you stop whatever that
glowing-hand thing is that you’re doing.”

“I
don’t work for you,” Grigori objected, still attempting to burn a hole in Katya
with his eyes. “And this is hardly the first time I’ve met Katya Zharova.”

“Alright,
that’s great,” Alex agreed. “On the other hand, I only just met you, yet I
prevented her from stabbing you in the eyes. Maybe you could consider doing me
a favor in return, huh?”

Grigori
looked at Alex in stunned silence, but the crackling blue energy that was
emitted by his right hand gradually diminished.

Alex
figured he could put this in his ‘win’ column.

“This
is all very civilized,” Alex said, sitting down on the examination table with a
sigh of relief. “Alright, Mr. Threatening-Russian-Guy, what is so important
that it merits scaring away the doctor, whose help I desperately need?”

“The
rumors were true,” Grigori sneered, his face flushed and ruddy. “You are a
fool, Alexander Warner.”

“You
probably could have waited to tell me that.”

“Are
you insane?” Grigori demanded. “There is a Black Sun assassin beside you right
now!”

“What?”
Alex said, glancing around. “Oh, you mean her? This is Katya. She’s not an
assassin.”

“I’m
his bodyguard,” Katya offered gleefully. “Anastasia Martynova’s orders,
courtesy of the Black Sun Cartel. Alex here needs protecting.”

“She’s
not my bodyguard, either,” Alex sighed. “Look, do you think this could wait?
I’m supposed to be getting an injection.”

“You
cannot possibly be this stupid,” Grigori insisted. “Martynova installs one of
her agents in your life, an assassin no less, and you simply accept it? Are you
already their creature, Warner? Do you belong to the Black Sun?”

“You’re
the excitable type, aren’t you?” Alex asked, lying down on the examination
table. “Look, not like it’s any of your business, but you’ve got everything
wrong. Anastasia is my classmate, not my boss. I don’t work for her. I’m not a
member of any cartel, not even the delightful one you are a part of, whichever
that is. And I haven’t accepted help from anyone, much less a volunteer
bodyguard – something that, by the way, you are doing a stellar job of
convincing me that I actually need. Anyway, Katya’s totally not an assassin,
right?”

“Totally,”
Katya agreed, deadpan.

“See?”

“I
never completed the training,” Katya continued blithely. “I’m about nine-tenths
of an assassin.”

“That
is not helpful,” Alex complained. “I am trying to make the angry guy go away.”

“Sorry
about that,” Katya said, watching Grigori, her body tense and her hand hovering
near the shining instruments. “Bad habit of mine.”

“What
is wrong with you, Warner?” Grigori demanded, clearly dumbfounded. “I came to
warn you about a threat to your life, based on the positive reports on your
character I received from Emily Muir. Instead, I find you cracking jokes with
the threat? This is simply too much.”

“Wait,
Emily gave positive reports about my character? What did she say?”

Katya
moved on the balls of her feet like a cat, walking circles around Grigori.

“I
never liked you, Grigori, and your accent makes you sound like my grandmother,”
Katya said deliberately, just out of his reach. “I spent a lot of time in Mr.
Cole’s class thinking about what I would do to you, if you didn’t have the
Hegemony standing behind you. Well, now I have a job to do. You get close to
him,” Katya said, pointing at Alex, “and I’ll do what I have to do. It will be
my obligation.”

“Ahem.”
Rebecca Levy cleared her throat, fingering the scalpels embedded in the wall
with obvious trepidation. Behind her, a doctor and handful of nurses peered out
in suspicion and hostility. “I’m just going to say it – everyone in this room
is in a lot of trouble.”

Six

“Am I,” Eerie said slowly, searching for words, “in trouble?”

“That
would be the gist of it, yes,” Gaul said patiently. “Quite a bit.”

He
gave her a minute to let the news sink in. Eerie said nothing, a vacant smile
on her face, her head cocked to the side and her eyes focused on something he
couldn’t see. The silence stretched out to the point of ridiculousness.

“I
don’t want to be,” Eerie concluded.

“Ah.
Yes,” Gaul agreed slowly. “Yes, I would imagine so.”

Again,
the silence stretched out until Gaul felt practically compelled to cough.

“Uh,
I’m – I’m sorry?” Eerie said hopefully, her hands clasped between her knees.
“For whatever?”

“You
can’t rectify this situation simply by apologizing, Eerie. In this particular
case, it might be more appropriate to…” Gaul trailed off when he realized that
Eerie had her hand held up politely above her head, waiting to be called on as
if she were in a classroom. “Yes, Eerie?”

“I
am very sorry,” Eerie said firmly. “A lot sorrier than before.”

“Yes,”
Gaul said, coughing. “I do understand. However, I think that…”

“Eerie,”
Rebecca cut in, leaning over Gaul’s shoulder, from where she perched on top of
one of his filing cabinets. “Why San Francisco?”

Gaul
had to combat the urge to bury his head in his hands, to shout at either of the
infuriating women who had occupied his office and turned this conversation into
a farce, but he did not. Not the least because he was not entirely sure what he
wanted to do about Eerie in the first place. If Rebecca had any kind of
solution, it was worth tolerating her interruptions.

“You
don’t like San Francisco?”

Eerie
rubbed her temples and looked puzzled.

“No,
why did you want to go to San Francisco?”

“Oh.
I wanted to shop, and then go dancing.”

“Right,
but couldn’t you do that anywhere?” Rebecca persisted. “Why there
specifically?”

“In
San Francisco,” Eerie confided, “no one cares how I look, no matter where I
go.”

“I
see,” Rebecca said patiently. Gaul didn’t see at all, but he passed on
speaking. He could feel the Ether ripple as Rebecca reached for Eerie
empathically, the probe both subtle and profound. His interest perked up – his
understanding was that empathy worked poorly on Changelings, due to their alien
consciousness and neural chemistry. “Why did you bring Alex along, Eerie?”

To
Gaul’s surprise, Eerie looked away suddenly.

“I,
uh, I wanted to go dancing,” Eerie said evasively, scuffing her sneakers on the
wooden floor of Gaul’s office. “You know. With him. But it didn’t work out.”

“You
mean because the Weir…”

Eerie
shook her head, then was forced to push her unruly blue hair back behind her
ears.

“Because
he wouldn’t dance,” Eerie said, pouting. “It’s hard. Alex is scared of lots and
lots of things. He got two beds.”

“He
did what?” Gaul asked, trying very hard to follow along.

“At
the hotel,” Eerie said, shrugging. “He didn’t even ask me first.”

“Really?
Wow,” Rebecca said earnestly, looking mortified. “That’s pretty lame.”

“Rebecca!”
Gaul snapped.

“Right,
sorry,” Rebecca said, shaking her head and returning to the task. “Eerie, why
did you ask Anastasia for help?”

“Oh.
Easy one,” Eerie said, seeming pleased. “She said to.”

“She
told you to ask her for help?”

“Yes.”

If
Rebecca was trying to draw her out, then it didn’t work. Eerie waited
patiently, tapping one foot alternately against the ground and her chair leg.
Gaul poured himself a glass from the carafe of water that his secretary left on
the desk, in order to have something to do while Rebecca frowned furiously.

“Why?
Why would she do something like that?”

“Ask
her,” Eerie suggested. “When I want to know something, that’s what I do.”

Rebecca
looked at Eerie hard, but she didn’t flinch. Gaul could feel the power in the
room, every atom in the air energized, attracting and repelling in a frenzy of
ozone and negatively charged ions. He couldn’t tell if Eerie was affected at
all. Her eyes remained blank and wet, and her body language placid to the point
of being slack.

“Eerie,
I need to ask. Did you know that Alex was coming here? Before he actually
showed up?”

“I
heard stories,” she said, nodding in confirmation.

“No…before
that. Before we knew about Alex, here at the Academy. You knew about him,
didn’t you?” Rebecca said, leaning forward, so involved that she hadn’t even
touched the cigarette that burned in the ashtray Gaul kept specifically for
her. There was no one else, after all, that he would have tolerated smoking in
his office.

Eerie
looked away again. Gaul and Rebecca exchanged glances. This, he thought,
sipping his water, was something.

“I
don’t have to talk about it,” Eerie said, the music disappearing from her voice
abruptly, which became flat and miserable instead.

“How
did you know that, Eerie? Precognition?” Rebecca pressed on. “Was that how you
knew about Alex?”

“I
don’t have to talk about it and I don’t want to talk about it,” Eerie said,
suddenly animated. Gaul blinked hard, trying to clear his vision, but it looked
the same no matter what he did – the air around Eerie was filled with
translucent golden motes moving in lazy, counter-clockwise circles, trailing
golden dust that slowly dissipated. Despite Rebecca’s cigarette, he could smell
a distinct odor of sandalwood. “If you don’t stop leaning on me, Rebecca, then
I am going to cry. Then I am going to complain, because you cannot do this to
me, because I am not the same as you, and because I have always done my best,
since I was little, and because you don’t have the right to peek inside my
head. It is wrong that you are trying to make me okay with telling you things
that I am not okay with telling you, and there are two of you and I am
all alone. I am trying to make friends because you told me that I had to make
friends, and now that I am trying you are angry with me, and this is not fair
and – ”

Gaul
stood up and clapped his hands together. Both women snapped their attention to
him, and after a moment, the charged atmosphere receded as the women returned
to their respective corners.

“Enough.
Rebecca, Eerie is correct. She has made the request. She has a right to
privacy. There will be no further attempts to influence you, Eerie.”

“But
it isn’t right that she – oh. Uh,” Eerie hesitated, flustered. “Well, good
then. Can I go now?”

“No,
Eerie,” Gaul said gently. “You are still very much in trouble.”

“Oh.”
She hesitated, tugging at the hem of her skirt the same way she had when she
was a child. “I’d rather not be, if that’s okay with you.”

Gaul
sighed deeply, wishing that a deity he didn’t believe in would note his
suffering and take appropriate action to alleviate it. Possibly via lightning.
As usual, nothing happened, so he was left to muddle along in his own way.

“Eerie,
would you mind waiting outside with Mrs. Barrett until I call you? Rebecca and
I need to have a discussion…”

“Yes,
please,” Eerie said eagerly, jumping from her chair and heading for the door.

He
waited until she was out of the room before he turned to Rebecca, which gave
him time to get his temper under control. Gaul wasn’t opposed to his
subordinates showing initiative – as long as they were successful.

“I
am your boss, Rebecca,” Gaul reminded her sternly. “You are supposed to ask me
before you do crazy things.”

“Sorry,”
Rebecca said, realizing her cigarette had burnt to ash in the tray and lighting
a fresh one. “I blew it. I thought I could influence her, maybe figure out
whether she was telling the truth. I had no idea she would be able to sense my
protocol. I thought I had that whole part of her brain shut down. Fuck, Gaul,
what does that kid use for a mind? I can’t begin to describe what it’s like in
there. Poor thing.”

“Let’s
hold off on Eerie for a moment,” Gaul said, wishing that he didn’t need to have
this discussion, but circumstances were what they would be. He had seen the
situation coming this morning, during his shower, but that didn’t make the
reality of it any more pleasant. He preferred not to get involved in the
personal lives of his subordinates, but sometimes the barrier between personal
and professional inevitably became altogether too thin for his tastes. “What
exactly is going on with you?”

If
Rebecca’s surprise wasn’t genuine, then he was no judge of her emotions at all.
She looked stunned by the change in direction the conversation had taken.

“What
are you talking about?”

“What
you just attempted with our resident Changeling, for example, or the stunt you
pulled with Alexander in front of Gerald Windsor a few months ago – yes, of
course, he told me about it. Or, three days ago, when you attempted to erase
the part of my memory that tracks your sick days. You have accrued a hefty
deficit, I might add.”

Rebecca
swore profusely and then kicked one of his filing cabinets, paining him. She
didn’t seem to notice or care about his disapproval, but eventually her
histrionics became hysterics, and she laughed herself back down.

“I’m
sorry, guilty as charged,” Rebecca admitted, wiping her eyes. “I got a swelled
head and started messing around in Alistair’s backyard. No need to ask, boss –
I swear off any further unauthorized telepathy.”

“Did
you really think I would let the matter drop so easily? I see patterns,
Rebecca, the overall fabric of events. You know that. Do I need to spell things
out for you? How many times have you had individual sessions with Alexander
Warner?”

“Once
every other week over the last couple months,” Rebecca said, fidgeting and
tapping her cigarette against the desk more than was necessary. “At least once
a week when he first arrived. The kid is all kinds of fucked up, Gaul. Keeping
him functioning is half my job these days.”

“Then
the scope of your responsibilities has diminished greatly. How often is the
feedback effect from his catalytic ability part of your therapy?”

“Every
time,” Rebecca admitted hollowly. “Pretty much.”

“I
think it is safe to assume that your protocols have grown more powerful with
each session. You were always an amazing empath, Rebecca, but you were never
more than a capable telepath. Disappearing? Probing a Changeling? Tampering with
your boss’s mind, when your boss is a precognitive and knew about your plan a
week before you did? None of that is normal behavior for you. This increase in
your abilities doesn’t completely fade when you break contact with Warner, does
it?”

Rebecca
smoked quietly for a moment, assessing.

“The
immediate boost drops off pretty fast. There is a more subtle lasting effect,
though, that persists for days after. I didn’t even really notice it at first.
And while we are on the subject, there is…something else you should know.”

“Yes?”

“I
figured it out a week or two after my first session with Alex. The more I
operate a protocol under his catalytic influence, even one beyond the normal
limits of my abilities, the greater the chance I will be able to use it later,
on my own.” Rebecca made the admission with the air of one confessing a sin. “I
wanted to tell you. But…”

“I
understand your enhanced telepathic protocol now,” Gaul observed dryly. “You
were correct to keep this quiet, though. From Mitsuru Aoki in particular. You
are clear on this, right?”

Rebecca
nodded, obviously feeling guilty. Gaul pushed aside his malaise with effort.

“How
many times have they come into contact?”

“Only
on that first night. They’ve interacted since, of course, because she’s running
Alex through the Program, but his protocol shouldn’t have become involved.”

“Are
you sure?”

“I’m
fairly sure,” Rebecca hedged, biting her lip.

“I
want to be certain. Have Aoki in for a session, as soon as possible. Pull her
from the Program and limit her contact with Alex Warner to a minimum. I will
have Alistair shift her into the field rotation, full-time. Monitor Mitsuru for
any changes in behavior or ability, anything to indicate that she may have been
affected.”

“We
are already short-handed,” Rebecca protested. “Who’s going to run the Program?
Me? Alex won’t ever trust me if I show my face near that building. Michael? You
know he objects to the entire idea on,” Rebecca gestured, making a vague figure
in the air with her cigarette, “moral grounds, or whatever. Alice is still up
there in her diary room, trying to remember who she is. You don’t even have
enough field agents.”

Gaul
tried to imagine how Rebecca had possibly drawn something resembling ‘moral
grounds’ in the air, but the idea made his head hurt. He turned his mind back
to more practical matters.

“I’m
promoting Margot Feld to provisional status. She will be an Auditor in three
months, possibly less. Her combat potential is staggering, and she has a
remarkable tactical affinity.”

Rebecca
started swearing, and Gaul briefly worried that she would kick his file
cabinets again, but she restrained herself.

“Gaul,
Margot hasn’t even completed her Academy courses...”

“A
formality. Michael is already using her as a student teacher. She can pick up
the rest as she goes.”

“A
lot of people get killed out there before they can figure it out. Are you sure
you can get the vote through the Committee?”

Gaul
nodded, feeling a twinge of discomfort.

“I’m
certain of it. Anastasia Martynova will support the promotion. She will bring
the Black Sun in line. Her candidacy should pass easily.”

“I
bet Anastasia will support her – you know she’s had her hooks in Margot for
years. That vampire is as close as you can get to recruiting a Black Sun member
in good standing as an Auditor. But you already know that, so I assume you know
what you are doing.”

“Don’t
I always?”

“I
hope so. What about the Program? We will need a new instructor.”

“We
can have Alice Gallow run it for the time being. She needs something to do.”

“Gaul,
you can’t be serious! She has barely recovered physically! She’s not ready for
this sort of responsibility…”

“We
don’t have the luxury of waiting for Alice to feel better. We need to
accelerate the process. Working with the students could help her along. Nothing
like returning to where she started to jog the memory, eh?”

“Cut
the crap. You don’t know where Alice started anymore than I do. And you know
she’s unstable. What gives?”

Gaul
tossed his pen down in frustration. They both froze and stared at it, the only
concrete evidence of him losing his temper. It had been an exceptionally long
day, in what seemed like a lifetime of long days.

“Manpower,
Rebecca. What do you think? I have three Auditors available for fieldwork on a
good day, as I need you here. Circumstances were difficult enough when I had
six,” he said, speaking deliberately. For some reason, it felt important that
Rebecca understand. “I need the bodies, Rebecca. I need soldiers.”

“And
you still think I should be here?”

“I
think you are the only reason this school doesn’t fall apart. I need Alexander
Warner combat-ready as soon as possible – and I need him to turn out like Alice
Gallow, not Mitsuru Aoki. I’ve arranged for the appropriate training, but he
must stay in one piece during the process. In lieu of better options, you are
the woman for the job,” Gaul explained, seeing no use in sugarcoating. “Though
I have to admit that it was interesting, watching you in the field again. Time
and working with children have done nothing to mellow you.”

“Triage
is bloody work,” Rebecca said, stubbing out her cigarette. “To the issue at
hand. What about Eerie?”

“Well,
I was thinking of suspending her, but since she lives at the Academy, I suppose
that field study would be a more appropriate – what? What is it?”

Rebecca
looked at him, eyes wide.

“I’m
serious…what about Eerie? Where is she?”

“I
sent her outside to wait with Mrs. Barrett. What do you mean?”

Rebecca
opened the door to the outer office, spoke a few cheerful but urgent words to Gaul’s
secretary (who, for no reason he could understand, took Rebecca’s side in
everything), then thanked her and returned, looking glum.

“Eerie
told her that we were finished, and that she had to go back to class,” Rebecca
said, clearly exasperated. “She left as soon as we sent her out there.
Obviously, she figured out what was going on. You, on the other hand, are a
terrible precognitive.”

“Why
would she do that? And where would she go?”

“I
don’t know. Use that fancy computer in your brain and figure it out,” Rebecca
ordered, without a trace of humor in her voice. “Check today’s lecture
schedule. Where is Alex right now? Please tell me that he’s in class…”

Gaul
reached without moving, taking hold of the Etheric uplink that followed him
everywhere he went, a lattice of information, a psychic fishhook embedded in
his brain. The data spilled from the Academy servers like waking to a bright
light, his mind submerged in a flood of data.

“Alex
used his keycard fifteen minutes ago, at the main gym,” Gaul said woodenly.
When he was connected to the Etheric Network, his voice was simply another tool
to be manipulated, rather than an organ operated by instinct. “Conditioning,
per his normal schedule. Michael should have finished his rounds approximately
two-and-a-half minutes earlier.”

“She
probably knows where to find him,” Rebecca said, reaching for her black bomber
jacket and shrugging it on. “That’s probably where they left from. If Alex uses
his keycard, think in my direction. Actually, do that if Vivik or Anastasia
or…I don’t fucking know. You’re the genius. Tell me relevant things as you
learn them.”

“What
is it that Eerie is doing?”

“Seeing
the future isn’t everything, I suppose. Sometimes it’s better to look back.
Eerie is doing what I would have done in her situation, when I was about her
age. She’s looking for the person that she knows we’re going to prevent her
from seeing, for as long as she can get away with it,” Rebecca said, smoothing
her hair back in the mirror Gaul kept near the door as a courtesy. “Read my
file if you don’t believe me. There is a disciplinary note. I pulled something
like this my first year. I’m going to find her before she manages to do...well,
pretty much anything.”

Uncharacteristically,
curiosity got the better of Gaul.

“What
did you do that incurred disciplinary action?”

Rebecca
paused, made another vague gesture, then quickly looked away.

“I’m
going to go do my job. Be ready to turn in a more credible performance as the
Bad Cop when I bring them back, okay? Read the damn file if you really want to
know.”

Rebecca
opened the door, stepped halfway into the hall.

“And
then don’t ever, ever mention it. To me, or anyone else.”

She
slammed the door. Gaul turned off the lights in the office, so he could fully
appreciate his headache. In the back of the marvelous machine that his
multitasking mind was, a new Bad Cop routine was being formulated. His face
muscles twitched, approximating a grimace, while he searched the Etheric
Network for Rebecca Levy’s disciplinary file.

Seven

“That went well.”

They
felt like the most genuine words Margot had ever said, her hands sticky with
blood. There were bodies scattered all about in various states of
dismemberment. Their enemies had been smart enough to post guards on the roof,
but the guards clearly hadn’t expected to face a pair of Auditors.

“I’ve
seen so many silver Weir in the last couple days, the novelty is wearing off.”

“If
Godzilla showed up every day, he would just be a big lizard that made it a pain
to fly into Tokyo.”

Mitsuru
considered from where she crouched, watching the scene beneath them. Margot
already regretted her words, but it was too late to stay quiet. It was nerves,
pure and simple.

“I’m
not sure that I follow you.”

“Don’t
worry about it. I get that a lot.”

Mitsuru
frowned and stood, giving Margot a quick appraisal before moving along the
rooftop, trailing the figures below, motioning for Margot to follow.

“You
are more talkative than I was led to believe,” Mitsuru observed coolly.

“I
get that a lot, too. Because of the vampire thing. People have expectations. We
have a mythos to live up to.”

Mitsuru’s
impassive face and red eyes held no hint of a response. Margot was glad when
she decided to return to observing the Anathema below.

“I
want to take them after they leave the building. This bunch won’t lead us any
further.” Margot glanced off the side of the building, the perspective both
dizzying and exhilarating. Part of Margot briefly exulted in the perverse idea
of jumping, of plunging into the open air. “I downloaded an apport protocol
earlier. We will wait for them to try and leave, and then we will eliminate all
but two. I’ll see if Alistair will do a remote scan, so we know which ones are
the most important, then we will gut the little fish. Are you going to be
alright watching my back? Or should I call for reinforcements?”

Margot
gave Mitsuru a curt nod that disguised her pride, then returned to her attempts
to patch together her tattered clothing.

“I’m
good. I will need to sleep eventually, though. How many more jumps do you
anticipate?”

“The
precognitive pool said three,” Mitsuru said, frowning. “But we are at four
already. We must be close. Alistair will be joining us shortly, and he can take
care of any fatigue issues. It’s a bit odd, but after the implant you will feel
as if you slept last night.”

“The
Chief Auditor is coming here? Then this must be the place…”

“Yes,
he should be arriving with Xia. I think he’s bringing Chike as well, the backup
transporter. Do you know him?”

“Not
really,” Margot said, frowning as she attempted to hide the gashes in the back
of her shirt and jacket. “I met him at orientation, when I got provisional
status. We’ve never worked together.”

“He’s
nice enough. They promoted him to the support team about a month before you
joined us. I think he said he was Nigerian. His protocol is restricted to
point-to-point transfer, but his range is incredible.” Mitsuru checked the time
on her cell phone. “The Anathema are spending a great deal more time in this
building than the last.”

“Seems
that way,” Margot agreed. “Say, is there any way that Alistair could maybe
bring me some clothes? I’m afraid these are going to fall off, and I have a
complex when it comes to fighting naked.”

“You
have a complex?” Mitsuru asked, staring. “It’s come up often enough that you
developed a complex?”

Margot
sighed and sat on one of the aluminum vent shafts that lined the roof. Her
hands went to check her hair automatically, before she remembered that she had
Eerie cut it before she left the Academy, so it stopped at the nape of her neck
and stayed well out of her eyes. It had been a sacrifice, because her hair
hadn’t grown at inch since she had become a vampire, but Margot wasn’t taking
any chances. She meant to be an Auditor.

“I’m
not much with protocols. None of us are. I’ve never met a vampire who operated
a protocol of any kind. Eerie says it’s because our nanites are different, but
I don’t know if that’s true. What I do know is that I heal rapidly from any
injury, and I am pretty strong. I tend to fight up close,” Margot shook her
head and looked unhappy. Mitsuru wondered privately about her definition of
‘pretty strong’ – earlier, she had seen Margot lift a Weir and throw him,
something she would have thought impossible. “But even if I can take a beating,
my clothes, even body armor, can’t take the same abuse. I’ve had two
unfortunate experiences with that. I’d rather not make tonight the third.”

“What
happened?”

Margot
didn’t appreciate this line of questioning, but as Mitsuru was her senior and
evaluator on this assignment, she responded as if the subject were of no
particular concern.

“Did
you know that Witches can manipulate fire?”

“If
they have prepared the right working, sure. Why?”

“No
one told me,” Margot said humorlessly. “That was the first time.”

“And
the second?”

“I
got ambushed and overrun by Ghouls in a Serbian cemetery – it was a dog pile,
basically. I was actually buried underneath them at one point. They were
tearing each other apart in desperation, trying to get at me. God, those things
are stupid.” Margot’s eyes looked distant. “You have no idea how bad it stank.
I fought my way out, but they bite and scratch. I was fairly intact when I
extracted myself, but my clothes, not so much.”

“That
is truly disgusting,” Mitsuru said, shaking her head.

“I
don’t know,” Alistair said, his hair standing on end, and the air around him
crackling from the apport. “A naked woman is a naked woman, even if she is
covered in goo from the insides of corpse-eating monsters. I, for one, refuse
to remember it badly.”

Alistair
was wearing armor that had seen better days, and one of his hands was wrapped
as if it were broken. His hair was matted and greasy, and his skin was covered
in a sheen of rapidly drying sweat. Mitsuru felt herself perk up the moment he
arrived, even though she had promised herself that she would stop doing that
now that she was officially an Auditor, and Alistair her direct superior. Xia
stood to his side, silent and masked. Chike flanked him on the other side, the
transporter looking every bit as tired as Margot felt, his normally bright eyes
dimmed with exhaustion. Clearly, his skills had been in high demand for this
operation.

“You’re
a pig, Alistair,” Margot snapped, glaring at him.

“What,
I’m supposed to forget the first time I met you?” Alistair asked, with what
sounded to Mitsuru like forced good humor. He tossed Margot a neatly wrapped
package. “Gaul said to bring this. Sometimes I’m not at all sure that
precognition is a sensible ability.”

“You
try fighting wearing nothing and then tell me that,” Margot retorted,
disappearing behind one of the whining HVAC units, presumably to change.

“Anything
new?” Mitsuru asked hopefully, walking over to stand near Alistair, but not too
near. Their unfortunate history was too public for her to be anything other
than prudent.

“Not
particularly,” Alistair said, bending down to tie a bootlace that had come
undone. “I’ve been running this down for months. There’s no doubt – whatever is
left of the Terrie Cartel relocated its operations here before the shit hit the
fan. Now we arrive to find the place overrun with Anathema…”

“What
about the local cartel? Shin-Tsen, right? I haven’t seen any of them in any of
the patrol groups…”

Alistair
shook his head, looking grim.

“Nobody
home at the HQ, no response to telepathic broadcast, nothing,” Alistair said
sourly. “The popular theory at the moment is they were either killed by or
joined with the Anathema. The Hegemony claims not to know anything about it.”

“That’s
probably what the Terrie Cartel did as well. They’ve turned traitor…” Mitsuru
mused.

“Maybe,”
Alistair said, glancing off the side of the building himself, then retreating
swiftly to a safer vantage. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

Chike’s
eyes widened in shock.

“I
think we may have a problem...” Chike said softly, his face creased with
concern and effort, staring into his own faint shadow as if it held a secret
only he could see.

Right
about then, the first bomb went off.

* * *

Alice Gallow gave them
space to be sick. Mass apports weren’t easy on anyone, and this hadn’t been one
of her prettier efforts. There had been little time to work with, and Alice
wasn’t feeling her best this evening. If Chike hadn’t been there to help, Alice
doubted that she could have handled the crowd. She leaned against a
conveniently placed chimney while she caught her breath, waiting until they had
a chance to reorient themselves.

“Hey,
boss,” Alice said, behind the smile that was her calling card. Even she could
remember that. “Long time, no see. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything
important?”

Alistair
smiled thinly in return, his legs still shaking. Part of his mind was in shock,
reeling from the concussive blast and the stink of cordite and burning plastic,
but here, wherever here was, the air was fresh and cold.

“Alice
Gallow,” Alistair said, yawning to pop his plugged ears. “I have rarely been
happier to see anyone.”

“It’s
good to see you again,” Mitsuru said shyly, offering Alice a small half-bow. She
was still intimidated by the legendary Auditor. Mitsuru had heard so many
stories about Alice Gallow that it felt like working with a mythological
figure. “I was worried.”

“Mitzi!”
Alice yelled, grabbing the shorter woman and wrapping her in a bear hug. “Gaul
told me – I knew you’d make it to the big leagues. How do you like the top of
the food chain?”

“Catch
up later,” Alistair commanded, wiping blood from his nose. “We don’t have time
for it now. Who else made it out?”

“I
grabbed you and Mitzi. Chike got Margot. He can only do point-to-point apports,
so they must be back in Central. We’re about a quarter-mile northeast from
where we started,” Alice said, spinning around until she found what she was
looking for, then pointing to indicate a burning building in the near distance.
“The whole breach team is gone, not sure about the surveillance crews. The
Anathema came out of the woodwork. They hit everybody simultaneously, right
after they tried to blow you up.”

“How
did you know?” Alistair asked, watching the orange glow emanating from the top
of the building he had been standing on a moment before. “Not that I’m
complaining.”

“Gaul,
natch,” Alice said, shrugging. She hadn’t the time to get kitted out before she
left, so she was wearing a tank top and worn blue jeans and shivered every time
the wind blew. “He saw it coming a few minutes before it happened. Had me
scrambling all over Shanghai to find everybody and pull them out in time. I
found Rebecca’s team first, then Forrest and that Chinese girl over by the
river. I started to worry that I wasn’t going to find you, honestly.”

“Alright,”
Alistair said, rubbing ash from his forehead. “Give me a minute to pull myself
together, then…”

“No,”
Alice said, shaking her head. “You give me a minute to catch my breath, boss,
then we’re off to Central. Gaul wants everybody back for some major confab.
He’s even inviting reps from the Hegemony and the Black Sun. This operation is
concluded per Director’s orders.”

“But
what about the rest of them?” Alistair demanded. “We had four teams in the
field here, and you’ve only accounted for three of them…”

“Do
a scan, Alistair, then see if you still feel like arguing,” Alice said,
shrugging.

Alistair
did that. It only took a moment, but when he opened his eyes again, they were
horrified.

“Shocking,
isn’t it?” Alice commiserated. “We didn’t even know the Anathema had enough
personnel for an operation of this scale. This was probably a trap from the
very start, rigged to pull in as many Auditors as they could lure. The Anathema
will already be dogging any survivors, hoping to draw the rest of us out of
Central. They’re probably on their way here, right now. That was a crude
apport. There’s a trail, if they care to follow it.”

“How
did everything go so wrong?” Alistair asked, looking out to the city lights in
utter exhaustion. “How could this happen?”

Alice
patted him on the back comfortingly.

“I
don’t know. But, if I were you, I’d start trying to come up with an answer,
Mister Chief Auditor. Because Gaul asked me the same question before I left,
and he didn’t look happy.”

Eight

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

“You
always look as if you’re thinking about something, but when I ask, you always
say ‘nothing’,” Eerie scolded, crouching down so her mad eyes were level with his
own. Alex was currently confined in the uncomfortable grasp of an intricate
Japanese exercise machine. “What do you keep inside that head?”

“Nothing.
Seriously. So, I, uh, don’t think I’ve ever seen you here before. The gym, I
mean.”

“Alex
is a jerk,” Eerie proclaimed, folding her arms, more agitated than he could
remember seeing her. She was talking fast and loud, and didn’t seem to realize
it, her cheeks flushed with emotion. “I swim every morning, two hours before
you wake up.”

“You
know when I wake up?” Alex asked, alarmed.

Eerie
nodded hesitantly, then wandered to a neighboring machine while Alex took the
opportunity to extract himself gratefully from his own. He grabbed his towel
and dried off hurriedly, wishing Eerie could have picked a different, less
public time to arrive. Sarah Ricci excused herself from a machine nearby,
pausing to give him a pointed look, assuring him that Emily would soon find out
about this.

“Of
course. Are you busy?”

“I’m
not sure how to answer,” Alex said, waving his arm in the direction of the gym
behind him. “I was doing something, but it can wait if you need me…”

“That
is good, because I definitely need you,” Eerie said, sounding reassured,
squeezing the handle of her knitting basket.

“Okay,”
Alex said hesitantly, feeling as he always did when talking to Eerie – slightly
over his head, as if he had agreed to something he didn’t understand and could
only hope that it would turn out for the best. “I’d really like to take a
shower before I go anywhere, though. We aren’t going to San Francisco this
time, right?”

Eerie
poked his chest experimentally, causing him to start back involuntarily and
yelp, and then wish, immediately and wholeheartedly, that he hadn’t done that.
Pretty much everyone in the gym had stopped what they were doing to stare. In
the free weight section, a number of early-morning lifters were openly
laughing.

“You
aren’t that sweaty. Can you please just change and come with me? I don’t have a
lot of time.”

“Are
you in some kind of trouble, Eerie?” Alex asked, toweling off the back of his
neck. “Because if you are, I can try and help you…”

“Good,”
Eerie said, urging him toward the locker room. “Because I am in trouble.”

Alex
couldn’t get anything more out of her. Eerie was obviously nervous and eager to
leave, so he settled for a quick rinse in the shower. He put his clothes back
on, wishing he had worn something a little nicer than track pants and a sweatshirt.
He did his best to ignore the stares from the rest of the gym.

Eerie
was waiting in the lobby when he came out of the locker room, so nervous that
she was literally hopping from one foot to the other in a little shuffling
dance while she stared out the window, clutching her knitting basket as if she
were afraid someone would try to take it from her. For all Alex knew, that was
exactly what she was worried about. She wasn’t aware of it, but almost everyone
in the gym had stopped making even a pretense of working out, they were so
absorbed by Eerie’s bizarre performance. Alex was feeling raw about the situation
until she smiled as if she were truly happy to see him, and his resentment
evaporated. Eerie latched on to his arm and practically dragged him from the
building, only relaxing when they were out of sight of the building, heading
toward the crest of the hill on which the Academy sat.

“Eerie,
what’s going on?” Alex asked, wondering how a girl so much shorter than him
could set such a demanding pace. “Are you okay?”

“I
am in trouble,” Eerie repeated, as if she were describing the weather outside
as sunny. “I am okay,” she said, taking a deep breath and then launching into a
breathless tirade. “But Rebecca is mean, Gaul is mean, and they are mad at me!
They are mad even though they told me to make friends! I am trying to make
friends! Rebecca tried to make me do things, but I said ‘no’, and then Gaul
looked all scary. Then they said they would stop, but I had to wait outside,
and when I was waiting outside they started talking about suspending me! I
don’t want to be suspended and I don’t want to be in trouble and it isn’t fair
because I didn’t do anything wrong…”

“Uh,
Eerie? You’re talking too fast. I’m not sure what you are trying to tell me.
Are you in trouble with Gaul and Rebecca?”

Eerie
nodded, her eyes moist with frustration.

“Because
of San Francisco? You know, what happened to Edward?” Alex was certain that he
already knew the answer. He had been waiting for weeks to hear the inevitable
consequences of their unauthorized trip.

Eerie
nodded again, and Alex was suddenly angry. He realized that they intended to
punish Eerie, but not him. Probably because they didn’t want to upset him.
Because he was valuable and they viewed him as fragile. The unfairness of it
made him puff up with indignation. Not that Alex wanted to volunteer to be
punished or anything, but still…

“What
are you thinking about?” Eerie asked him again, making him realize that they
had been walking up the hill in silence for an indeterminate period of time
while he was lost in thought.

“You.”

Eerie
looked at him sharply, checking if he was joking. He wasn’t, but he found
himself unable to meet her strange eyes.

“That
is a good answer,” she said, clutching his arm tightly.

“It’s
true,” he said, trying to play it off as no big deal. “What did they say they
were going to do?”

Eerie
let her hand drift down, until it came to rest inside of his own. He took it
automatically, intertwining her cool fingers with his own. His clammy palms
embarrassed him, but she didn’t notice or didn’t mind, and he felt obscurely
grateful.

“I
left before they told me,” Eerie admitted. “But, they are going to send me
away, I’m sure of it.”

“But
where would they send you, Eerie? Isn’t the Academy your home?”

Eerie
hesitated so long that he wasn’t sure that she intended to answer. When she
finally spoke, her voice was so small that Alex had to lean close to hear.

“Away
from you.”

“What?”

Eerie
stopped and looked at him oddly. He wondered, as he often did, what she saw
through her dilated, teary eyes.

“They
are going to send me away because they don’t want me to be near you,” Eerie
blurted out, looking distressed and anxious. “They are afraid of you, Alex, and
they are more frightened when we are together.”

Alex
followed as she led him away from the path, into the gnarled oak trees that
lined it. Eerie’s hand clutched his own, and he tried very hard not to get
angry. Alex remembered his talk with Rebecca when he had woken in the hospital,
after his protocol had put him to sleep for more than a month. In particular,
he thought of Rebecca’s bizarre offer to extend his sleep to allow Emily to be
there when he woke, her concern about him associating with Eerie. He was so
engrossed in his thoughts that he hardly noticed when they stopped beneath a
particularly craggy and ancient oak.

He
squeezed Eerie’s hand and smiled at her until she was able to smile back. Alex
was going to say something, but then thought better of it. The mood seemed
good, and Eerie was standing right in front of him, looking as if she wanted to
be comforted. He put his hand on her shoulder and she slid forward so that she
was standing against him, one of his hands on her waist, the other resting
behind her neck. She went up on her tiptoes, eyes closed, and he did what
seemed like the right thing to do.

After
an awkward moment of mashed lips, she extracted herself.

“Uh,
Alex,” Eerie said, pushing him gently away, “that kind of…hurts. You’ve never
done this before, right?”

Alex
was too embarrassed to look at Eerie. He managed a nod.

“Well,
then, let me teach you.”

This
time he let her take the lead, responding gently to her swollen lips instead of
crushing them to him. The mouth that pressed against his own was warm and
impossibly soft, and Alex knew nothing but the sensation and his own sweet,
laconic response. She kissed him harder, nibbling his lower lip, and he tasted
raspberries and honey. He wasn’t sure what to do, but to his relief, she moved
slowly and seemed to expect very little. Without realizing, he knotted the back
of her blue hair around his fingers, but she didn’t seem to mind. When he bent
to kiss her, he breathed in the scent of sandalwood, aromatic and pervasive,
and it made him slightly dizzy. His skin tingled, pins and needles along his
bare arms and all the way down his back. His other hand crept gradually down
her waist to run along her skirt and the soft curvature beneath, hesitantly at
first, and then more forcefully when she responded.

They
found their way to the ground by stages, the logistics of which he was only
barely aware, the grass crushing down beneath his back and poking him through
his T-shirt. Eerie lay on top of him, her legs tangled with his, her breasts
pressing against his chest. Her strange, wet eyes sparkled above his face when
she smiled, brushing a blue lock behind her ears, and then she bent to kiss him
again. His hands wandered across her back, her skin warm through the thin
cotton of her tank top. His hands lingered on her legs and the immaculately
smooth skin of her thighs. The world swam pleasantly, a swirl of colors and
impressions and golden motes that caught the light in fascinating ways. His
world gradually became tactile, the rush of sensation from his fingertips and
lips rooted him to the ground as he had grown out of it, beneath the girl as if
he belonged there.

“Alex,”
Eerie whispered in her strange, melodic voice, one small hand pressing against
his chest, “I like you. I like you so much.”

She
squirmed on top of him, nestling closer, kissing along his neck, and Alex
sighed involuntarily, his vision blurred and his hands trembling while he ran
his fingers down the length of her spine.

“I –
I like you too,” Alex managed, his voice catching in his throat.

She
yielded when he grabbed her shoulders and pressed her to the ground,
misunderstanding his intent when he rolled on top of her. She looked confused
when he threw himself on top of her like a football tackle, sending both of
them tumbling. Then she must have seen what was on the other side of the
clearing, because she froze in place, a deer in illogical and utterly
unexpected headlights. The air crackled with static discharge and the air was
thick with the smell of scorched grass. The spot beneath the old tree where
they had lain a moment before was blackened and smoldering, a black scar that
exposed the soil.

Alex
managed to speak first.

“Edward?”

* * *

Edward Krylov? But,
he’s dead! We confirmed it. His Etheric Signature went out. How can he be in
Central?

I
have no idea. But someone used his keycard fifteen minutes ago to access Alex’s
dormitory building, then at the main academic building a few minutes after that.

Shouldn’t
that card be deactivated?

I
have never been able to bring myself to disable a deceased student’s account.
It is a personal failing.

Getting
sentimental in your old age, Gaul?

Getting
tired of burying children.

Somehow,
Gaul managed to sound grim even through the unemotional, machine-assisted
telepathic uplink. It was a gift, Rebecca decided.

“Alright,”
Rebecca said gritting her teeth. “No more fucking around.”

She
came to a halt gratefully on the sidewalk, not too far from the gym she had just
finished searching, and paused long enough to stop wheezing. Then she closed
her eyes and reached out to the world around her.

Empathy
normally requires line of sight to work, at the very least, and touch is
necessary for all but the most basic operations. Rebecca was in a place that
was familiar to her, however, and surrounded by students and faculty who had
done sessions with her, so she knew each individual Etheric Signature. They
made a web of signposts and waypoints, empathic telemetry radiating out from
where she stood, a map of an invisible country with which she was intimately
familiar. Rebecca was looking for one of the few emotions that stood out with
the intensity of burning magnesium, radiant as white phosphorous. Distance was
not an issue. Lust, particularly teenage lust, was the emotional equivalent of
wildfire, and Alex and Eerie shone like beacons from a clearing not too far
from her.

Rebecca
could barely see the thing that inhabited poor Edward’s body. It radiated only
the faintest traces of emotion, far less than any living thing. Even the savage
Ghouls, barely sentient on an individual level, had a greater degree of
consciousness and autonomy than this abomination.

There
was no two ways about it. Whatever it was, it was dead. Dead and walking.

That
gave Rebecca all sorts of unpleasant ideas.

Rebecca
did something that she reserved for emergencies. She ran.

* * *

Alex helped Eerie back
to her feet, trying to keep himself between her and what could not possibly be
Edward, while simultaneously keeping an eye on it, whatever it was. He managed,
but it probably could have gone better. Since the smoking hole in the ground
was next to them, rather than through them, he didn’t figure on many
complaints.

“Eerie,”
he said, trying to calm down enough to remember how to activate the protocol he
hadn’t used since October. “Do you know what kind of protocol Edward operated?
What it does?”

Eerie
pointed at the scar burnt along the grassy hillside.

“It
does that,” she offered, appearing confused but not at all frightened.

“That’s
very helpful.”

Edward
had looked better. His whole body was hideously wounded, teeth marks distorting
his arms and neck, his scalp hanging loosely to the side, connected by a thin
strand of tissue. His face had an unhealthy wet sheen, and his color was off –
vile greenish-grey below the surface of his skin that permeated his straw blond
hair like mildew. His eyes were uniformly black, twin pools of tar, leering out
of a face that wouldn’t cooperate, too rubbery for a normal range of
expression. His jaw hung open comically and his overall posture was slack and
clumsy, as if his limbs were unfamiliar.

“Holy
shit. Edward, are you a zombie? Eerie, are there real zombies?”

“I –
I don’t think so, but I’m kind of…well, failing, so…”

“I
think we should run. Because, if he is a zombie, he’ll be really slow, right?”

“Enough
stupidity,” Edward slurred, black goo leaking from his distended jaw. “I’m not
a zombie, Alexander Warner.”

Edward
hadn’t talked much when he was alive, but Alex was sure that wasn’t his voice.
It was harsh, vaguely feminine, with an accent that Alex couldn’t place. It was
utterly vile coming from the mouth of corpse. Alex shrunk back, and felt Eerie
do the same behind him, but it wasn’t anything that Edward said. It was the
voice, grating, harsh, and inhuman, something that hit him right in the base of
his stomach and made his own throat protest in sympathy. Alex couldn’t remember
the sound of the Horror’s scream, but he did remember his reaction, the
instinctual drive to purge and divest from its influence, primal horror.
Edward’s voice didn’t provoke quite as extreme of a response, but the sensation
was similarly traumatic.

“I
liked you better when you didn’t talk,” Alex said cautiously. “What kind of a
thing are you now? Wait. Are you a werewolf? Do people become werewolves when
they get bit by –?”

“You
have got to be kidding.” Edward spat thick black fluid that dribbled down his
chin and across his chest. “Do I look like a damn Weir?”

“This
is why I don’t ask questions,” Alex said, urging Eerie toward the brush. “What
the fuck is that stuff, anyway? Are you filled with oil or something?”

“Just
die, kid,” Edward snarled, stretching out his arm, moving with fluidity that
belied the awkwardness of his stance. A blue flash left Alex half-blind, then
there was a rapid sequence of loud snapping sounds. He actually saw the
lightning arc first into the ground, then stretch toward them. He felt Eerie’s
hand on the back of his neck, and was certain she said something in her musical
voice. He couldn’t make out any of the words, though, not over the sound of
shrieking protest as the Black Door was forced open.

With
the sound of ice fracturing, the world gave way. Alex felt the tremendous mass
of the Ether pressing against the walls of reality, the delicate balance of
forces underlying the whole of the universe like a skeleton. There was a shift
in perception that was at once subtle and dizzyingly profound.

Alex
saw the lightning crawling through the air as if it moved through a clear,
heavy syrup. Beneath, there was the underlying electromagnetic disturbance, the
rough progression of an energetic waveform. There was no need, Alex realized,
for something as crude as the massive vacuum effect he had used previously. The
Absolute Protocol operated with ludicrous ease, as automatic as lifting his
arms or crossing his legs. Alex vented the lightning into the Ether discreetly,
disturbing nothing else, without the fuss and bother of opening anything more
than a microscopic breach in the walls of reality. Edward raised his hand a
second time and again Alex felt the nascent gathering of electromagnetic force.
That was even easier to shunt into the Ether before it fully manifested,
allowing Alex to push Eerie to the tree line, while Edward stared accusatorily
at his hand as if he expected it to answer for his protocol’s failure.

“At
some point we need to talk about how you did that,” Alex said reassuringly,
urging Eerie into the woods. “Right now, I need you to find somebody,
preferably Miss Aoki or Miss Gallow, and bring them back. Fast. Before I die.
Please.”

Eerie
nodded seriously and charged away through the brush. Alex turned to find Edward
leering, as best he could with his distended jaw.

“I
let her run, you know. Makes it easier,” he said, in his sickly, shrill voice.
“Without your little girlfriend, you’re as good as dead.”

“Why’s
that?”

“Because
you don’t know how to operate your protocol,” Edward said, putting both arms
up, palms to the sky. “Once more with feeling, Alexander?”

He didn’t
see an arc this time. He felt it surging through him instead, for a bare
instant, hot at the point of contact near the center his chest; equally as hot,
for some reason, in his left foot. There was brilliant pain, the whole of his
nervous system crying out simultaneously. Then his legs gave way, and he went
crashing helplessly to the ground. Alex could see a trail of smoke rising from
his ruined, partially melted sneaker, and found it strangely captivating.

“I
told you,” the thing that used to be Edward croaked. “You should’ve had the
Changeling stick around. She was keeping you alive.”

Alex
managed to roll over, but he couldn’t speak. His chest and diaphragm seized,
and he could not breathe. He fought off panic and forced himself to inhale,
attempting to will his lungs into service. He managed one shallow breath,
followed by a shuddering and painful exhale, then another. Edward lifted Alex
by a handful of his shirt, pulling him up as if he weighed nothing. Alex’s arms
hung at his sides, numb and unresponsive.

“I
thought you deserved an answer before you die, you ignorant shit. Edward is
gone. They brought me his body, and hollowed him out and poured myself inside,
like a worm in an apple. Exactly like I’m going to do to you. It shouldn’t
bother you much. I know it won’t bother your girlfriend.”

Alex
tried to say Eerie’s name, but all he managed was a strange noise. He still
counted it as progress. Edward let him drop back to the ground unceremoniously,
chuckling.

“You
really haven’t noticed? Do you even know what a Changeling is? That girl is
like a cuckoo. A doppelganger.”

Alex
attempted speech again, with better results.

“I
have no idea what you mean. A cuckoo? You mean she’s crazy?”

Alex
managed to sit. He felt this was a moral victory.

“You
really are dumb. Better take a close look at a girl before you get too excited,
boy. You can’t think with your balls, or every woman you meet is going to lead
you around by them. Of course, you won’t have a chance to use that advice,”
Edward gloated.

“That’s
a shame,” Katya opinioned, giving Alex a friendly pat on the back that startled
him. “It was such good advice, too.”

Edward
howled and clutched at his face and neck, batting at invisible insects, fending
off a private fire.

“I’ve
perforated a number of cerebral arteries, causing hemorrhaging through your
brain,” Katya said unhappily, as if Edward were a profound disappointment to
her. “You really should have the courtesy to die. What exactly are you?”

“This
was Edward. He died, but now he’s become some sort of lightning-zombie,” Alex
explained, gradually picking himself up off the ground.

“What
kind of school is this?” Edward hissed, his face hidden behind his hands.
“Don’t they teach you brats anything?”

Edward
raised his hand skyward, but there was no lightning; instead he shrieked again
and clutched his arm. It took Alex a moment to work out that the flashes of
silver he kept seeing were a handful of thin needles run through Edward’s arm
in several different places. Alex shuddered when he put it together.

“Tell
me the truth,” Katya said, advancing with a handful of long needles protruding
from between her fingers. “Are you a student here? Because I don’t want to get
in trouble for killing another student…”

Alex
didn’t bother to try to stand, even though he thought he might be capable of
it. He didn’t think punching Edward would do any good. However, that didn’t
mean he was going to just sit there and watch Katya fight, either. It wasn’t as
easy this time, opening the Black Door, not with Edward’s words buzzing in his
head, but he pushed them aside with an effort and reached for the frost-covered
handle in the back of his mind. There was no finesse, no careful siphoning of
energies. Instead, Alex tore blindly at the fabric that separated the world and
the Ether, creating breaches surrounding what once was Edward, opening him and
the world around him to the void. Edward examined the sheen of frost that
covered him in disbelief, and then turned his jet eyes on Alex.

Alex
had a perfect view of her protocol in action this time. Katya didn’t throw the
needles. She opened her hand as if she were letting the wind take seeds and the
needles were gone, lodged in Edward as suddenly as they disappeared. One
pierced him like a gag-shop arrow, running from temple to temple, while the
remaining two crossed each other, perforating his chest through the solar
plexus. Edward stumbled backward and coughed wretchedly.

“Would
you mind telling me where you keep your vitals?” Katya asked, circling away
while she dug another handful of smaller needles from the lining of her blue
surplus coat. “I’m all out of the acupuncture needles, but I still have a whole
bunch of sewing needles. If you don’t speak up, I’ll have to keep trying till I
figure it out.”

Alex
decided he preferred not to watch. This thought was followed by a series of
ghastly squishing noises that reinforced his decision to look away. A moment
later, Katya made a dissatisfied noise, and then the sounds repeated
themselves. Alex found, to his relief, that the holes he had torn to the Ether
mended quickly enough when the Black Door closed.

“You
are such a baby,” Katya said contemptuously, touching his shoulder. “I saved
you, already. Are you ever going to stand up?”

“And
you are a terrible bodyguard,” Alex countered angrily. “Where were you when the
dead guy showed up? He could have killed me, like, three times before you got
here!”

Against
all expectation, Katya reddened and turned away.

“Yeah,
sorry about that,” she muttered. “I wasn’t really watching all that closely, to
be honest.”

“You
were watching us?” Alex asked in disbelief.

“I
already told you,” Katya shouted, “I wasn’t! I left as soon as you guys
starting making out, okay? I didn’t want to watch that shit. I only came back
when I saw the flash.”

Alex
levered himself slowly to his feet, inspecting the burn marks on his T-shirt
and the melted sole on his shoe grimly.

“You
really suck, you know that?” Alex said, his hands shaking furiously. “Not only
did you watch us from the bushes, but then you show up late to bail me out? At
least have the decency to save me immediately if you insist on stalking me!”

Katya
swore, crossed her arms, and then looked away.

“You
told me to stay away,” Katya said sternly, staring in the opposite direction.
“Anastasia told me to watch you. Who do you expect me to listen to? You’re
right – I suck at this. I don’t know fuck-all about protecting people, but you
aren’t exactly making it easy. I didn’t want to watch you make out with your
stupid girlfriend. I tried not to intrude.”

“Don’t
think I’m ungrateful for your help. I’m...well, uh...I guess I’m ungrateful,
actually.”

“Seems
that way,” Katya confirmed sullenly. “I did save your life, moron.”

“Are
you sure Edward is dead this time?” Alex asked, leaning against a nearby tree
for support, his legs wobbly and unreliable. “I thought he was dead when the
Weir dragged him off in San Francisco, but then he showed up here…”

“Oh,
he’s dead,” Katya assured him. “Whatever possessed him, it had to use his autonomic
nervous system, right? And now that is full of sewing needles.”

“Good
to know,” Alex said, sickened at the thought.

“Would
have been nice to know about five minutes ago, smartass. Say, was that you,
with the mild chill a minute ago? Was that some sort of attempt to defend
yourself? Or were you just sitting there looking pretty?”

“No,”
Alex said slowly. “No, that was me.”

“Very
helpful,” Katya sniffed, tossing her hair. “What a useless protocol. You
couldn’t fight your way out of a paper bag if they gave you the month lead-up
you need to activate it. No wonder Anastasia thinks you need a babysitter.”

Alex
opened his mouth to reply, probably to say some more things he would regret
later. Instead, he found himself standing there with his mouth open, staring.
It would have been embarrassing, possibly inspiring another hostile observation
from Katya, but she was doing the same. At the other end of the clearing,
Rebecca leaned on one of the trees, panting, her face so red that Alex wondered
if she was having some sort of attack.

“Don’t
tell me that I ran all this way,” Rebecca wheezed, “for nothing.”

Nine

“Now you’ve got Katya following you around wherever
you go?”

“I
guess so,” Alex said, sipping from the bottle and making a face at the taste,
then handing it along to Vivik. “I barely ever see her, but I assume she’s
around. I can’t blame her, really. Anastasia told her to.”

“Nothing
you can do about that,” Renton said his voice full of sympathy. “She’s probably
watching from the bushes right now.”

“Look
at the bright side,” Li offered, lighting a cigarette. “She could have assigned
Renton to follow you around. That would be creepy.”

They
all laughed, and Vivik handed the half-full bottle back to Renton. He took a
long pull from it, drinking bad whiskey without even a wince.

“Shit,”
Renton said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’ve got no idea.”

Everyone
laughed again, but this time, it was more tentative and uncomfortable.

“Speaking
of which, Renton,” Vivik chimed in. “Are you going to fail again this year?”

“Absolutely,”
Renton said, nodding.

“What?”
Alex looked from one to the other in confusion.

“Renton
and I are both in the final class,” Li explained mischievously, “but Renton’s
already been there three years. He knows all the material, but deliberately
fails the tests so that he has to repeat, instead of graduating.”

“Why
would you do that?”

“I
work for Anastasia, remember?” Renton said, clearly annoyed with the question.
Alex was surprised; Renton was usually unflappable. “I can’t protect her if I’m
not close to her. I won’t leave the Academy until she does.”

“You
just fail over and over?”

“Yeah,”
Renton said, eyes narrowing. “You have a better idea?”

Li
snatched the bottle from his hand, already half-drunk. Alex huddled deeper in
the coat he’d thrown over his sweatshirt, rubbing his cold hands together,
wishing he owned gloves, wondering if he could convince Eerie to knit him a
pair.

“Man,”
Alex complained. “It is fucking freezing out here.”

They
were sitting on the roof of the gym on plastic chairs someone had dragged here
years earlier. They were pockmarked with cigarette burns, and the one Alex was
sitting in had a leg that was shorter than the others so that it rocked when he
shifted his weight. They roof wasn’t that high, but the gym building was off by
itself, set back from the rest of campus on a little-used path, and Renton
assured them that no one came by there late night. By unspoken agreement, they
never went back to the dormitory roof after what happened during Alex’s welcome
party.

“Drink
up,” Li advised, handing over the bottle. “I don’t feel cold at all. Say,
Renton, you ever wish the Black Sun would assign you to someone besides
Anastasia?”

Even
Alex thought the inquiry was a bad idea, and he was notoriously dense. Renton’s
relationship with Anastasia was…intense. It wasn’t a subject that anyone in
their right mind would have broached. However, Li was boisterous when he was
drunk, as Alex had learned in the last few months, and liked to ask
uncomfortable questions.

“I’m
not sure I follow,” Renton said reasonably. “She’s the future head of the Black
Sun Cartel. Why would I want a different assignment?”

“You
know. Somebody hotter. Maybe somebody who actually has tits,” Li said, stopping
to laugh at his own joke. Alex and Vivik didn’t dare make a sound for fear of
what might happen, but they also couldn’t look away.

“I
like Anastasia just fine the way she is,” Renton said stiffly.

“That’s
a little weird, man. Doesn’t that make you a pedophile? Even if she isn’t one,
she sure looks like a twelve-year-old. And you are what, twenty? Twenty-five?”

“I
don’t mean it that way,” Renton said, pursing his lips distastefully.

“Sure,”
Li said, laughing. “Because you have such a reputation for being ‘friends’ with
the girls here.”

“Really?
No way.”

“It’s
true,” Vivik nodded, sipping gingerly and then making an even more unhappy
face. “Renton gets around.”

“I
do okay,” Renton said, with a grin that was anything but modest.

“Yeah,
but I wouldn’t put Anastasia past you,” Li said cheerfully, clearly lacking any
sense of self-preservation. “I saw you hit on Margot one time, and that’s
definitely…definitely, uh, what’s the word I want here, Vivik?”

“Probably
necrophilia?”

“Right,
that’s it!” Li agreed. “If it had worked, that would have been necrophilia. You
like the weird ones.”

“Maybe
I just have an open mind,” Renton suggested.

That
provoked howls of laughter.

* * *

“How much of this did
you see coming?” Vladimir asked, hobbling around the room, still on crutches
from his most recent knee surgery. Gaul wished sincerely that he would sit
down, but he knew Vlad was too agitated.

“All
of it, but only right before it happened,” Gaul admitted. “They did such a good
job disguising the possibility that I might not have noticed at all, had I not
been looking for something of precisely that nature.”

Alistair
looked up from the table, which was covered in equal parts documentation and
Indian take-out. He had a probability matrix spread in front of him, and was
making arcane scribbles on it with a black marker.

“This
isn’t like the last time, that night when we found the Warner kid,” Alistair
said, leaning his head against his hand. “The manipulation isn’t crude, it’s
surgical. I don’t think I would have seen it without you telling me where to
look, and I really hate admitting that. Whoever did this knew exactly what they
wanted, and they planned far enough in advance to cover all the angles. It’s
kind of impressive.”

“Except
that the attack failed,” Rebecca said, from behind her cigarette, sulking in
the corner of the room. “The night we found Alex, the manipulation was clumsy,
but completely successful. This time, the manipulation was sophisticated – but
we only lost, what, four Operators in Shanghai?”

Alistair
looked over with wounded eyes.

“I
know, I’m sorry, it’s terrible,” Rebecca added hurriedly. “But think about it.
They didn’t get a single Auditor. How many Weir did they lose? How many
Operators? What kind of resources did they have to put in Shanghai to make this
work? You can’t tell me they did all this to wound us. You guys,” she said,
nodding toward Alistair and Mitsuru, “were supposed to die in the blast,
right?”

“They
didn’t know that Alice was back in circulation,” Alistair said, shrugging.
“It’s not that surprising. I didn’t know either until she saved my ass. They
miscalculated.”

Rebecca
pitched her lit cigarette out the window, ignoring a glare from Gaul.

“I
don’t know. They captured Alice in the first place, right? At least that’s what
we think happened. Since they left her alive, we have to assume they knew her
return was a possibility.”

“What
about Edward?” Vladimir asked, finally levering himself into one of the
available seats, to Gaul’s obvious relief. The last thing he needed was for
Vlad to take another tumble before he finished healing from the last one. It
seemed like the consequences from Vlad’s Black Protocol were accelerating, of
late. “That wasn’t a Wight. He wasn’t forced from his body while he was alive;
that was a dead body being animated by…something. Someone. An Operator, I
think. Someone who could activate dead nanites.”

“I
doubt it,” Alistair countered. “I’ve never heard of a protocol like that.”

“They
managed to breach the barrier a second time,” Gaul pointed out tersely. “This
time, they used the body of a student. We are going to have to reconfigure the
barrier or we’ll have all of our casualties coming back to haunt us. All this
to get at Alex.”

“Again,
unsuccessfully.” Rebecca said, clicking her lighter. “Because they’re being too
cute about it. Why not have Edward shoot Alex in the head and be done with it?
Why the predilection for exotic threats?”

Gaul
made a noise, as if he was about to say something, then shook his head.

“What?”
Vladimir demanded.

“Nothing.
I just had a bad thought,” Gaul admitted. “What if they aren’t trying to kill
Alex at all? What if they are trying to get him to use his protocol?”

“Why?”
Vladimir asked, his voice a little too loud. “Is there something special about
it?”

“I
don’t know,” Gaul said reluctantly. “I’m not sure. The Absolute Protocol isn’t
completely unknown, but we haven’t had an Operator use it since we started
keeping records. Certainly, none of the previous information links the Absolute
Protocol to any kind of catalyst effect.”

“Perhaps
Warner operates more than one protocol?”

“The
thought has occurred to me,” Gaul admitted.

“Are
we totally certain,” Vladimir questioned, his browed furrowed, “that Alexander
wasn’t activated when we found him?”

Everyone
took turns avoiding Vladimir’s look.

“Pretty
sure,” Rebecca said softly, rubbing her head.

“Well...”
Alistair trailed off when he realized everyone had stopped what they were doing
to stare at him. “What? I was just thinking that Mitzi encountered the catalyst
effect before he was activated.”

“Oh,
crap. That’s right. But he had so much unreleased potential, we thought he was
only partially activated...”

“Wonderful,”
Vladimir said, ruefully shaking his head. “For all we know, Warner has had two
separate nanite injections. If that is the case, we have no idea what it might
have done to him.”

“But
who would have introduced nanites into Alex’s system?” Rebecca asked ruefully.
“When? And where did they get nanotechnology in the first place?”

Everyone
turned to Gaul expectantly.

“Don’t
ask me,” he grumbled. “You all know we have a monopoly on nanites. If Alexander
Warner arrived already activated, then I’m as far in the dark as the rest of
you as to how that could happen.”

“It
does seem unlikely...”

“It
is more than unlikely. It is impossible, unless someone in this room is aware
of a source of nanites that is a mystery to me,” Gaul said defensively. “This
is nothing but speculation, and we have enough problems as it is. We can worry
about it another day.”

“I’m
not sure we know anything for certain about what happened today,” Alistair
said, shrugging. “We don’t have enough information to do any kind of analysis.”

“I’m
certain that Alex would have died today if Katya hadn’t been skulking around.
That’s the other pattern I’ve noticed,” Rebecca said moodily, gesturing at the
probability matrix in front of Alistair with her cigarette. “Anastasia bailed
him out again. She’s been putting people at the right place and time, when it
comes to Alex.”

“You
think she has something to do with this?” Alistair asked, munching on a cold
pakora while he studied the matrix. “You think all of this is some sort of
massive Black Sun operation? Could be.”

“I
suspect that little monster of being involved in everything,” Rebecca snapped.
“You can’t underestimate her.”

“Nonetheless,”
Gaul said forcefully. “We have been lured into a trap on two separate
occasions. The first one netted Alice Gallow for unknown purposes. The second
nearly managed the assassination of all of the Auditors in the field. Two
carefully planned and orchestrated traps, but neither achieved a clear goal.
Then we have four attacks on Alex in the last six months – the night we found
him, in San Francisco, and twice at the Academy. All of these operations
involved significant expenditures of time and resources. Most of them entailed
absorbing casualties as well. There must be a pattern in this somewhere.”

“Or multiple
patterns,” Rebecca pointed out. “I think the first incident is different.”

“Go
on,” Gaul said gruffly.

“The
manipulation on that first attack in the park was more primitive, but the
intent of the attack seems different too. They didn’t fuck around – those Weir
really were trying to kill Alex. Without Mitsuru’s intervention, they would
have been successful.”

“You
think they weren’t trying to kill him in San Francisco?” Alistair asked
doubtfully.

“Maybe,
maybe not,” Rebecca said, shrugging. “They had the chance, but those Weir
seemed more interested in hurting him and asking questions. Why in the hell
would they bother to interrogate Alex? That kid spends his free time sleeping
or staring at a wall. He’s been here half a year. What did they think he would
know?”

“He
said they were looking for Eerie,” Gaul said woodenly, lost in the consultation
of the vast, cold uniformity of the Etheric Archives.

“I
don’t understand that either. Why would they care about finding her? The Weir
were after Alex, right? And they found him fast, faster than we could.
That doesn’t work unless they were waiting damn close to San Francisco. Think
of it like this – you find your target, a high enough priority to have an
entire pack of Weir just sitting around California, waiting for him to show.
You capture him without incident, in private.” Rebecca stared around the room
challengingly. “Which one of you would perform a field interrogation because
you lost an inconsequential companion who wasn’t on the target list? Would you
risk killing your primary or discovery for that?”

“They
are Weir,” Alistair countered, shaking his head. “What do you expect? They are
always unnecessarily cruel. You ever see the aftermath of a Weir attack?
Sometimes they even do shit to the corpses…”

“Of course
I have,” Rebecca snapped, glaring at him fiercely enough that Alistair quailed
and held up his hands to mollify her. “That doesn’t wash for me, not here. They
had already succeeded, and they had to know that we’d be coming. If they wanted
to be thorough, they could have left a team behind to find Eerie. All they had
to do was take Alex down one of their holes and then they could have done
whatever they wanted to him. We never would have found him again.”

“Not
necessarily,” Alistair objected. “You found Alice Gallow.”

“Right,
and why?” Rebecca demanded. “We don’t even know exactly how that happened. She
was hunting Witches and winds up imprisoned by rogue Operators? Then they throw
her in some kind of clandestine interrogation center and keep her on ice till I
show up to collect her? That is all wrong.”

“I
thought you said they…” Gaul said, frowning.

“That
was the guards,” Rebecca said hurriedly, frowning. “That was for fun. Not
official policy.”

“A
fascinating list of questions.” Vladimir snapped. “Are you going somewhere with
this?”

“Yeah,”
Rebecca said sourly. “I’m not sure that we are fighting who we think we are
fighting. I know they use Weir, and there are some Witches involved, but this
isn’t their normal M.O. We can’t fight them effectively because we don’t know
who our enemy is.”

“Then
let’s put your theory to the test,” Gaul said firmly. “We’ve been in defensive
mode, reacting to their moves, for too long. Let’s try some moves of our own
and see how they deal with that. Rebecca, I want you to go light a fire under
the Committee-at-Large, get them to authorize new Auditors. When you are done
with that, put Alice Gallow back together enough so that she can get out there
again. I want a full complement of Auditors as soon as I can have them. I’ll talk
to Michael about accelerating field training for our current crop of
candidates.”

“Alice
might take some work,” Rebecca said hesitantly. “And I still need to deal with
Alex and Eerie…”

“Then
you will be busy,” Gaul snapped. “Borrow people from Operations, if you need
them.”

“Aren’t
I supposed to be in charge of this stuff?” Alistair asked, then caught Gaul’s
stony expression. “Never mind, never mind – what is it you want me to do?”

“Set
up a hit team,” Gaul said, lifting one of the files on his desk and handing it
to his Chief Auditor. “Whoever you want to use, except Rebecca. This is the
largest coven of which we are currently aware. We’ve been letting them run for
surveillance purposes, but no more. I want a full Audit, an accounting, and
prisoners.”

“Right,”
Alistair said, glancing at the file’s contents.

“Get
to it, then,” Gaul said, urging them out of his office. Rebecca grumbled and
protested, but Alistair was already absorbed in the details of the file.
Vladimir stayed silent until they were gone.

“You
are worried about the barrier,” Vladimir observed.

“I
am worried about the barrier,” Gaul agreed. “Vlad, if Central isn’t safe, if
the Academy isn’t safe, then we have nowhere to retreat. We lose a critical
psychological advantage. My people need to feel safe here. I need to know…”

“Yes?”
Vladimir prompted.

“I
need to know whether our enemies are finding ways around the barrier, or
whether it is getting weaker over time,” Gaul said slowly, wishing that he
didn’t have to say a word of it, didn’t have to ask the question in the first
place. Not to the only person that he honestly cared for. “I read the doctors’
reports, Vlad. You are getting worse. I need to know how much longer you can
keep protecting us.”

“What
do the doctors know?” Vlad asked contemptuously. “Didn’t they say I’d be gone
last spring? I’m fine, Gaul. I wish I could tell you that this was just me
losing a beat, a step or two in my ‘old age’. They are clever bastards, that’s
all. I’ll revise the barrier, try to close some of these loopholes. I never
anticipated the dead attacking us, you know.”

“Vlad…”
Gaul insisted, feeling bad.

“Don’t
worry so much, Gaul,” Vladimir said comfortingly. “I’ll keep all of you safe
until I’m dead, I promise. It’s about all I can do these days. And I’ll try and
give you two-weeks’ notice before I kick, so you can put out an ad for a new
barrier technician.”

Gaul
smiled, but there was no feeling behind it. The cancer slowly eating away at
Vladimir’s brain was a constant weight on Gaul’s shoulders, nagging him every
time he saw Vlad, weaker and sicker than the last. Gaul hated very few things.
Nevertheless, as irrational as the feeling was, he hated the rioting cells in
Vlad’s poor brain, and the Black Protocol that indirectly caused them, more
than anything else he could think of. But they needed his barrier, consequences
be damned. Gaul didn’t say anything else while Vladimir made his slow, clumsy
way out of the office. Anything he could have said would only have embarrassed
both of them even more.

Ten

The heavy bag was obstinate, defying Alex’s best efforts to move
it. He punched from his legs, from the motion in his hips, he put all of his
weight behind them, but nothing worked. He had lost count of the attempts when
he hit it wrong, aggravating his injured forearm, causing him to grab the arm
and holler – partly from pain, partly out of frustration.

“You
are never going to be a boxer, son,” Michael observed, from the other side of
the bag. He glanced dispassionately at Alex’s arm.

“There
go all my hopes and dreams,” Alex replied, shaking his arm out in a vain
attempt to stop the pain. “I’d be happier if I never had to fight anybody
again.”

“We
would all be happier, son, but that isn’t the world we live in,” Michael said,
with surprising melancholy. “All we can do is the best we can do. The rest is
in God’s hands.”

Alex
was suddenly, dramatically uncomfortable – the same way he felt every time
someone he respected unexpectedly displayed religious convictions. Not that he
had anything against faith, exactly. It was more like he hadn’t ever really
considered it as a possibility. After all, what would any of the major
religions have to say about him, about what he’d done? Better just to hope for
nothing at all.

“I’m
not really sure if I believe in God,” Alex said cautiously, wary of offending
Michael.

“Then
you don’t have to worry about whose hands it’s in, right? Now get ready to
punch the damn bag…”

The
bag was punched many times, but never to Michael’s satisfaction. Then there
were weights, and a heavy leather ball thrown back and forth. Finally, and
worst of all, outside for hurdles in sets, one hundred agonizing meters. It
would be wrong to say Michael allowed him to stop at that point. Rather,
Michael acknowledged the inevitability of stopping once Alex couldn’t stand any
longer.

Alex
lay on the grass, under a sun not yet hot but starting to hint around at it,
while his muscles twitched and complained. Michael sat behind him and drank
water from a plastic squeeze bottle, seemingly content to be working out.

“How
much trouble is Eerie in, anyway?”

“Technically,
you’re in trouble too,” Michael advised him cheerfully.

“But
with you,” Alex pointed out.

“Right.”

Alex
rolled onto his stomach and reached for his own water bottle.

“So
I’m in ‘extra laps’ kind of trouble. What kind of trouble is she in?”

“She’s
in ‘embarrassed Rebecca in front of Gaul’ trouble.” Michael said, shaking his
head ruefully. “Which is the worst possible trouble.”

“Really?”
Alex asked, pausing to squirt water in his mouth.

“No,”
Michael said, laughing. “For most people, though, that would be a very bad
thing. When Rebecca came to the States, she was a kid with an accent and a
different religion, so she had a hard time at first. She’s still sensitive
about being embarrassed. Eerie grew up here at the Academy, though, and believe
it or not, Rebecca loves that girl as a surrogate daughter. Eerie will be
alright.”

“Oh,
good.”

“Eventually.”

“Oh.”

“Now,”
Michael said, standing and stretching his shoulders. “About those extra laps
you owe me…”

* * *

Rebecca sat on the
couch with her legs tucked against her chest and her chin resting on her knees,
a cigarette dangling from her left hand. The ashtray teetered precariously on a
couch cushion in front of her, while Eerie sat behind Rebecca, patiently braiding
her hair.

“What
was all that about, Eerie? Why’d you run? You know I wouldn’t let Gaul do
anything bad to you…”

“I
don’t know,” Eerie said quietly, in a small voice that sounded almost like she
was humming to herself. “I thought you would decide it was dangerous for Alex
to be around me. Everyone kept saying I would get kicked out of the Academy.”

“Who
is everyone?”

“You
know, everyone,” Eerie shrugged, plaiting a lock of Rebecca’s chestnut-brown
hair into a fine, even braid. “The other kids. And you can be scary when you
want. You did that thing to me. I could feel you poking around in my head.”

Rebecca
drew from her cigarette and exhaled smoke, wearing a sheepish expression she
was glad that Eerie couldn’t see. The Changeling always represented a particular
challenge for Rebecca, in that everything to do with her was unprecedented. The
Academy hadn’t had a Changeling student for two decades before Eerie. The
longest previous stay was about four years. According to the notes Rebecca
read, no serious effort had been made to understand or integrate previous
Changelings with the other students. One of the quirks of empathy that no one
understood, though, was it tended to be a two-way street. Rebecca also had
private reasons to sympathize with Eerie.

“Yeah.
That was bad,” Rebecca allowed reluctantly. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“You
didn’t have permission,” Eerie scolded. “That isn’t like you.”

“Hey,
who’s in trouble here?”

“Right,
sorry,” Eerie mumbled, returning her attention to braiding.

Rebecca
decided to finish her cigarette before moving on. Eerie was comfortable with
silence, as she knew from years of familiarity, and would let it continue as
long as Rebecca allowed. It would help calm the girl, as would the process of
braiding her hair, and Rebecca wanted her calm. Another incident like the last
and Gaul would take on the task of punishing the girl himself, and Rebecca
would be unable to intervene. Rebecca had mixed feelings on how to handle the
whole situation anyway.

Eerie
wanted, on a deep and fundamental level, to be useful to the people around her.
Given how casually she was dismissed by almost everyone, even the infinitely
patient Michael, the desire didn’t surprise Rebecca. That was probably the
reason Eerie took up knitting when she was thirteen. Eerie made gloves for
everyone in her class and all of the staff members she interacted with. Even
the kids who picked on her received gifts. Rebecca thought you could tell a lot
about a person in late November, when the wind grew chilly, and gloves became a
necessity. Many people moved from Rebecca’s ‘good’ list to her ‘bad’ list, and
vice versa, based on their choice of cold-weather gear. In fact, she was still
trying to honor a personal resolution to be nicer to Gaul, since he had quietly
worn the scarf Eerie had made him every day through the whole of the winter.
Eerie never would say what she thought about it, but then again, she seemed to
like Margot Feld more than anyone else at the Academy, and Margot looked like a
hippie every winter, burdened with numerous handmade wool accessories.

The
first time Rebecca met Eerie, it was in this room, the office she had occupied
for the better part of twenty years. The Changeling’s mother lived on
disability and food stamps in a house her parents owned, in a dreadful
subdivision on the fringes of Tracy, rural California. The mother hadn’t asked
questions or needed persuading when the Academy’s recruiters came for Eerie.
She was so pathetically eager to get the child, generally diagnosed as
autistic, off her hands. Rebecca didn’t blame her too much. She wasn’t sure how
a Fey and a human went about producing a child, but she understood that a daily
reminder might not be appreciated.

An
attendant had brought the little blond girl in, probably old enough for kindergarten
but barely able to walk and unable to talk. Rebecca had no idea what her age
actually was, because her mother seemed uncertain. Rebecca also thought she was
autistic initially, but when she interfaced telepathically with the girl, she
found her perfectly aware and fully cognizant, but struggling with the concept
of spoken language. Beyond that, Eerie’s perceptions were so badly addled that
she struggled to keep her balance or see things clearly. Rebecca’s degree was
actually in child psychology, as she was a late bloomer – she hadn’t been
activated until she was twenty, allowing her to complete courses at UCLA before
coming to Central. In addition, Rebecca had an incident in her past that she
preferred not to remember, which had led to a doomed and entirely secret
premature birth during high school; Kaddish and the limitless grief of the tiny
casket, six weeks in the hospital; and her parents scorn.

Rebecca
had given the child a name, but she couldn’t bear to remember it. She probably
wouldn’t have looked anything like Eerie, Rebecca had told herself that
morning, more than a decade before, studying the little girl sprawled on her
office floor. Nonetheless, the girl’s wet eyes caught her, evoked a memory that
Rebecca refused to acknowledge except in her worst dreams. It was possible that
she had looked after Eerie more than she was supposed to.

Eerie
couldn’t seem to learn to talk, but teaching her to sing was easy. They worked
backward from there. The first few years, when she could only sing and therefore
remained silent in public, were particularly difficult in terms of bullying,
but Eerie hung tough and got better over time. She grew more comfortable with
her altered state, to the point where she could rebalance her own neural
chemistry without Rebecca or Alistair’s help. While she remained clumsy and
near-sighted, she had overcome most of her physical difficulties with the help
of physical therapy, contact lenses, and custom soles for her shoes. Rebecca
paired her with Margot on intuition, and despite the vampire’s frigid
personality, a relationship had developed between them, some kind of caring.
They looked out for each other, if they weren’t exactly friends. Rebecca
maneuvered Eerie into Gerald Windsor’s class, knowing that he was determined and
compassionate enough to draw Eerie out, and that worked as well. Eerie wasn’t a
great student, but she learned enough to get by, and she was remarkable with
computers. Gerald showered the girl with unreserved attention and praise, which
Eerie returned in her own way: a new scarf, every winter, always an
unpredictable array of colors, making Gerald easy to pick out against the snow
in December. Privately, Rebecca felt Eerie was her greatest success, because
she couldn’t do much for the girl with telepathy or empathy. The Changeling’s
mind remained alien and impenetrable. Rebecca had to use conventional methods.

This
wasn’t to say they hadn’t had problems. Eerie’s early teenage years were
difficult. In particular, Rebecca hadn’t caught on to the girl’s liberal
attitude toward the other sex until she had already developed a reputation.
Rebecca put a stop to that quickly, and largely blamed herself – she knew,
after all, that the Fey had a very different relationship with sexuality than
humans, and it should have occurred to her that Eerie might have some strange
ideas. The rest of her classmates were less forgiving, and in a closed, tight
community like the Academy, once a label was attached, it was very difficult to
shrug off. Eerie was mortified when she understood what had happened, and the
next few years had been challenging. Things had cooled off eventually, though.
Eerie took up knitting, developed an interest in clothes, and started dance
lessons. Rebecca encouraged her self-expression to the point of letting her
break the dress code. Eerie hadn’t shown much interest in boys since her early
teens. Not until Alex arrived.

Figuring
out how to punish Eerie was a difficult thing. Rebecca would have preferred to
punish Alex, but he hadn’t really done anything other than go along with Eerie
in his own dopey way. He was a teenage boy, so what else could she expect?
Besides, Alex was Michael’s responsibility.

‘That
easygoing jerk’, Rebecca thought, with a sudden flash of intuitive jealousy, ‘he’s
probably just going to make him run extra laps’. She imagined making Eerie run
and had to suppress a giggle.

“I
can’t let this slide, Eerie. This isn’t like when you ran off before. You took
Alex, and you know that’s dangerous for him, dangerous for everybody. And
Edward was killed.”

“I’m
not sure that should count,” Eerie offered tentatively. “He came back.”

“That
wasn’t Edward, whatever it was,” Rebecca said uncertainly. “It definitely
counts.”

“But,
I like Alex!” Eerie protested. “You said I was supposed to make friends. Alex
is my friend.”

“Is
that what it is between you two?”

“He
said that he likes me. And he stayed behind to stop Edward! He put himself
between us and then he was all like, ‘run and get help before I die’, so I went
and found you, but he didn’t even need your help and it was pretty cool…”

Rebecca
found herself wanting to point out that Alex had very much needed Katya’s help,
but she bit her tongue, and wondered if she was becoming bitter about her own
perpetually single status. Certainly, Eerie’s schoolgirl crush was annoying her
out of proportion to its significance.

“That
doesn’t sound like ‘friends’, Eerie.”

“Friends
look out for you,” Eerie insisted stubbornly. “That’s what you said. Friends
don’t pick on you. He got angry with Steve and hit him because he was being
mean to me, and I didn’t even know him yet. In the hotel, when those Weir were
hurting him, he didn’t say anything about me. He is looking out for me, and I,”
Eerie added proudly, “made him a hat.”

“I
saw that,” Rebecca observed sourly.

“He
likes it.”

“I’m
sure.”

Eerie
finished one plait and then started contentedly on another. Rebecca knew from
experience that she would do this cheerfully, all day, until there was nothing
left to braid. Something about knots and patterns fascinated Eerie, and had
since she was a child.

“What
do you think I should do about all of this, Eerie?”

“I
don’t know. That’s your job. I would let me go with a warning.”

“Very
funny.” Rebecca shook her head gently, so as not to pull her hair out of
Eerie’s hands. “I can’t. You caused too much trouble this time. Maybe this
wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gone easy on you till now. Maybe you don’t
take this seriously.”

“Not
fair,” Eerie objected, in her soft, singsong voice. “You know I do. I try very
hard.”

“I
do know,” Rebecca acknowledged, frustrated. “Of course I do! Why didn’t you
come to me before you did all this stuff, Eerie? Why put me in this position?”

“I
told you already,” Eerie said guilelessly. “I wanted to go dancing with him.”

“Couldn’t
you have waited for Winter Dance?” Rebecca grumbled.

“I
guess so,” Eerie admitted. “But I was worried that at Winter Dance that he
would dance with Emily Muir, because she is bossy, and she has better dresses
than me, and pretty hair, and because she always wants Alex to pay attention to
her.”

“Is
that so different from what you want?”

Eerie
paused in mid-braid and thought it over. Rebecca was patient. She knew that
sometimes it took Eerie a long time to work out what she wanted to say, and how
to say it. She was quicker than usual this time.

“It
is different, because I don’t want Alex to feel sorry for me. Emily doesn’t
care why Alex pays attention, as long as he pays attention to her.”

Rebecca
should have been used to Eerie’s sudden bursts of insight, but this one took
her by surprise. Rebecca wished that they could communicate telepathically, as
they had when Eerie was a child, to bypass her language difficulties. That was
probably part of why Rebecca tried earlier, in their meeting with Gaul. Despite
Rebecca’s entreaties, the girl had insisted on her privacy since becoming a
teenager.

“True;
not kind, but true,” Rebecca allowed, finally coming to a decision. “Alright.
Here’s what we are going to do, kiddo…”

* * *

“Come on, man. Even
people on the combat track have to be able to do the basics.”

“Fine,”
Alex said, rolling his eyes and setting his book on the bed in front of him.
“Well, there are the Witches, of course. And the Weir, who the Witches
enslaved. They don’t fight us because they want to, necessarily, but they are
like, stupid or something…”

“Not
actually the case. They are bestial and easy to control. That’s not the same as
stupid.”

“Whatever.
They are hairy guys who can turn into wolves who work for the Witches, most of
the time.”

“Good
so far,” Vivik encouraged.

“Then
there are vampires, but they don’t really count, because we have that treaty
thing with them. Same with the Fey. Whatever they are.”

Alex
paused in thought, almost long enough that Vivik cut in, before he came up with
more.

“And
then the Anathema – we don’t talk about them much in class. They are rogue
Operators from way back. They got thrown out of Central for some kind of banned
research thing, and nobody has seen them since.”

Vivik
nodded.

“Then
there are the Wights, who are like, bad ghosts or something. And the Ghouls –
don't they eat dead stuff? Oh, and those Horror things, like the one on the
roof. They are sort of like wild animals, right? Dangerous, but only if you
bump into them and piss them off. Otherwise, it isn’t like with the Witches or
the Weir. They aren’t organized. How’s that?”

“Not
bad for someone who can barely speak English,” Vivik admitted. “I think Windsor
will pass you, assuming you make an effort.”

Alex
hesitated for a moment, and Vivik waited indulgently for the question he could
see coming. He gave the simplest answer that he could.

“Field
study?”

Alex
asked as if the words themselves were unfamiliar.

“Grigori,
Chandi, and Hope just came back from their assignments. The Academy sends all
of us to work in the field underneath someone who currently has a position
similar to what we are aspiring toward. Margot’s doing field study right now
with Audits. They bumped Eerie’s up by a couple months so it would coincide
with break.”

“Okay,
but what is it that Eerie is studying, anyway? I can’t exactly see her fighting
or doing science or anything…”

“If
the Administration had its way, she would be a doctor. Sort of.”

“What
does ‘sort of’ mean?”

“Well,
they would like her to be a doctor. That biochemical thing she does, you see.
She won’t let them study her, but everybody has ideas about what it could do,
over in Life Sciences.”

Alex
sat up, rubbing his head and grimacing.

“That
sounds a lot more like guinea pig than doctor.”

“Don’t
get pissed off, it’s not what you are thinking. She has a gift for it. She’s
not dumb, you know. Actually, she’s quite smart. You probably haven’t even
noticed,” Vivik said crossly. “Li told me that a couple years ago, a kid in
Eerie’s fitness class broke his leg, playing soccer. She did something that
fixed it – no one really agrees what – and since then, everybody keeps thinking
that she’d be a natural.”

“I’m
having trouble with this idea…”

“You’re
not the only one,” Vivik agreed, frowning. “Eerie hasn’t shown the slightest
inclination to go along with it. And she doesn’t have to, since technically,
she’s on loan to us, from the Fey.”

“What’s
up with that, anyway? The Fey? Fairies, right?”

“I
don’t really know,” Vivik admitted, sounding exasperated. “That’s actually
bothered me for a long time. There’s almost no documentation on the subject. If
you believe the unclassified section of the archive, then no one even knows
what they look like, where they come from, what they do, or why they left
Central. That’s gotta be a lie, though. The Academy records say they’ve had
four Changeling students over the years. It follows that they must know
something. After all, Central signed a treaty with someone, or something. But
everything about the Fey seems to be secret.”

“I’m
getting used to that.”

“I’m
not surprised. Anyway, Eerie doesn’t want to be a doctor. For a while she
wanted to be a veterinarian, but though the Academy staff is large and
multifaceted, nobody has a need for a half-sane veterinarian.”

“Makes
you wonder why they saw the need for a half-sane doctor,” Alex pointed out.

“Since
then she’s moved toward information technology,” Vivik continued on, pretending
not to hear Alex. “Eerie is one of the best coders at the Academy. So my guess
is that her ‘field study’ will actually be down in Central, working at Processing,
where the servers are. She’ll probably be sitting in some cubical writing code
for the Etheric Network.”

“That
is…very difficult for me to picture,” Alex said, trying and failing to imagine
it. “She must be miserable doing that.”

“Actually,
according to my friend Adel, who did a summer internship down at Processing
with her last year, they practically had to turn the lights out to get Eerie to
leave the building,” Vivik said, shrugging as if to show that he would have
doubted it himself. “She eats candy and codes away, apparently.”

“That’s…well,
actually, that’s pretty believable.”

Vivik
was worried about Alex. He couldn’t help but be concerned. After all, it wasn’t
like Alex to be so down about things. Vivik was also more than a little bit
grateful, however, that Alex’s current attentions seemed to focus on Eerie,
even if it was galling that Alex would simply ignore the girl of Vivik’s dreams
throwing herself at him. Nevertheless, Vivik felt a sense of obligation to his
friend.

“Do
you want to come back to my room and watch anime? I downloaded new episodes of Toradora
and Full Metal Alchemist and stuff…”

“Alright,”
Alex said, finally sitting up. “But I’m not watching the one with the girls in
the cartoon band again. Nothing ever happens, and the music is annoying.”

“Okay,”
Vivik said, smiling as he held open the door for Alex.

“And
not one where they talk forever about how powerful they are and hidden
techniques and all that shit but never actually get around to fighting. I’m
sick of giant swords, and I’m not staying up all night to find out who wins.”

“Okay,”
Vivik said as they walked down the hallway, humoring him.

“Oh
yeah! No more shows where all the girls throw themselves at some lame guy who
spends his time running away and having nosebleeds, because he’s some kind of
porn-obsessed moron who’s afraid of girls. That shit drives me crazy. Totally
unrealistic.”

“Sure,”
Vivik said, fumbling with his card key. “What do you want to watch, then?”

“I
dunno. Something with zombies. And boobs.”

Eleven

“You don’t want to?”

“No,
I do, really.”

“You
don’t seem like you do.”

Alex
hesitated for a moment, and then he broke down and told her the truth. It
seemed like the simplest thing to do.

“I’m
a little worried that your sister might kill me,” Alex said, laughing
nervously, but not at all joking. Emily laughed along with him as if it were
funny.

“Don’t
worry. Therese won’t do anything to you.” Emily paused, then gave him a very
fragile smile. “There will be other people there, so I don’t think your
girlfriend will mind. You can even bring her, if you want.”

Alex
looked back down at his notes, as if they had something to tell him, some way
to avoid the situation that he couldn’t see for himself. The pages in front of
him remained mute on the subject.

“Assuming
you mean Eerie, she’s not my girlfriend…”

“Assuming
that I mean…” Emily imitated, rolling her eyes.

“She
couldn’t come anyway. Eerie is grounded. Rebecca is making her work in her
office during non-class hours, until break. Then she is to do field study in
Central.”

“That’s
terrible,” Emily said, with what he could only assume was false sympathy. The
concern on her face looked genuine, but it couldn’t possibly be. “How lonely.
Since you are free, then you should definitely come to my dinner party
tomorrow. Wear something nice, okay?”

“There
is no chance that boy owns even a single article of clothing that could be
described as ‘nice’,” Anastasia said, walking to her seat, followed by a dour,
fine-featured boy with muddy brown hair and an athlete’s build.

“I
don’t have anything nice to wear,” Alex admitted. “Who’s the new lackey,
Anastasia?”

“His
name is Timor, and you are not obligated to act like a jerk at all times,”
Anastasia said mildly, taking her usual seat, two rows up and dead center.
Timor looked around for a moment before settling down one desk over from where
Anastasia sat. “Don’t take Alex personally, Timor. He is simply deflecting a
discussion of his own inadequacies in your direction.”

“I
won’t,” Timor said, nodding and pulling out textbooks. “I am worried about
where your class is in comparison with my old one, though.”

“You’ll
be fine,” Katya said, hustling in with a pastry and a steaming cup of coffee,
bundled in a winter coat and scarf despite the fact that morning was no more
than chilly. She set her leather bag down in the row behind Alex, putting her
feet up right next to Vivik’s head. “It’s not bad. They aren’t so gifted. Plus,
Mr. Windsor offered us tutoring if we need it.”

Emily
looked from one new kid to the other slowly, with an uncertain expression. It
was obvious from her reaction that she knew both Katya and Timor Zharova, at
least by reputation, but she hadn’t expected to see them here. Alex looked at
the two in turn, apparently brother and sister, but he didn’t see the
resemblance. Then a light bulb went off in his head.

“This
is the gifted class?” Alex turned to Emily in astonishment. “Am I gifted?”

“Oh,
God,” Anastasia said, making a choking sound.

“Well,
there are three classes preparing for graduation next year, and this is the
advanced course, so, yes, in a sense,” Emily offered hesitantly. “I think it
has more to do with your protocol classification, and not nearly as much with
your academic abilities. I’ve seen your test results, and they are nothing to
brag about…”

Emily
trailed off when Grigori and Chandi arrived, entourage in tow, all eyes in the
class immediately turning to them, excepting those of the unflappable Miss
Martynova.

Grigori
was even more imposing in the school uniform than he had been in street
clothes. With broad shoulders and a barrel chest, he looked like a soldier
attempting casual dress. His unruly hair was smoothed in a concession to
civility, blunt hands protruding from the sleeves of an immaculate and slightly
undersized blazer. Next to him, Chandi Tuesday appeared demure and
self-assured, riding in the striking boy’s wake. She looked over the class with
cool, contemptuous eyes behind her round glasses. The students following them
were a mixed bag; two Alex knew already, William and Choi, plus some Chinese kid
he had never met and a smiling chubby girl. Grigori’s lip lifted in contempt
when he saw Alex surrounded by members of the Black Sun Cartel, and Alex
realized that in all probability, only Emily Muir’s proximity redeemed the
situation. He shifted in his seat closer to Emily, and she covered his hand
immediately, moist with her own apprehension.

“Alexander
Warner,” Grigori hissed. “You choose your company poorly.”

“Get
fucked, okay?” Alex snapped back, aware that the entire class had stopped in
shock, and that everyone was watching the exchange. He was too angry to care.
“I put up with enough of that shit from Anastasia already. I’m not about to
take it off you.”

Anastasia
smiled as if she had won a prize in a carnival game. Grigori was briefly
appalled; then with a sort of inevitability, his face reddened with anger and
his voice hardened.

“Don’t
take that tone with me, boy,” Grigori warned, his bag clenched in his hands,
tension highlighting the myriad of white scars on his knuckles. “You don’t want
to do that. The last thing you need is to count me among your enemies.”

“Excuse
me, Grigori?” Emily cut in smoothly, putting one hand protectively on Alex’s
shoulder. “Could you please cut Alex a little slack? Alex didn’t mean to be
rude. He’s just had a difficult couple of days. He’s not himself this morning.”

Alex
didn’t even notice that Emily was rigid with effort, her eyes glazed over as
she looked in the direction of the angry Hegemony students. Anastasia noticed,
however, and gave Emily a very hard look before shifting her gaze over to
Grigori, obviously fascinated. Grigori fumed a moment longer, while Chandi
looked confused and the rest of his group shifted nervously and exchanged
worried glances. Then Grigori snorted and stomped off, his retinue taking over
one whole side of the classroom.

“So
many Russians in here all of a sudden,” Alex observed loudly. “It’s like Red
Dawn.”

“Alex!”
Emily protested. “That’s mean!”

“Our
parents are Ukrainian, actually, but my brother and I were both born in
Portland. Grigori’s mother is Romanian, though he was, I believe, born in
Moscow to a Russian father. Anastasia’s grandmother is Chinese, but she was
born in Scotland and raised in Oregon. I’m not sure about how that fits in,”
Katya said sternly, piling books on her desk. “But don’t let me interrupt your
whole racist generalization.”

“It’s
not racist,” Alex insisted. “I liked Red Dawn. Red Dawn was
awesome.”

“I’m
not sure how to respond to that,” Katya said, taking a bite from her pastry.
“Except to point out that you are an idiot.”

“Or
a really big Patrick Swayze fan,” Vivik offered nervously, taking the seat next
to Emily. “Besides, Russian is a nationality. If Alex wanted to be racist, he’d
have to know that you were Slavic in the first place.”

Alex
couldn’t help but notice that the look Katya gave Vivik was a lot friendlier
than any look she had given him thus far. Then again, he was feeling a sort of
generalized goodwill toward everyone at that particular moment, and Katya
seemed more sympathetic than normal. Maybe, he thought, she wasn’t a total
bitch – maybe, Katya was only a bitch to him. That meant there was room for
improvement in their relationship. Alex smiled over at her, but all that earned
him was a puzzled and dismissive glance. Baby steps, he thought optimistically,
watching Mr. Windsor make his way to the front of the classroom. Baby steps.

Then
something Katya had said belatedly clicked in his mind. He leaned forward,
across the empty row of chairs in front of him.

“Hey,
Anastasia. You’re Chinese?”

“Alex!”
Emily scolded, shocked. He looked back at her innocently. He genuinely hadn’t
meant anything by the remark.

Anastasia
answered without turning her head, sounding bored, but not offended.

“In
part. My grandmother’s maiden name was Teng. Honestly, Alex. Does the phrase
‘Black Sun’ sound at all Russian to you? Cartels change over time, like living
things – they join, split, and evolve. The Black Sun was originally a humble
Triad in Macau, mainly involved in smuggling cigarettes. After World War II
they aligned a number of their businesses interests with a Russian political
dynasty dating back to the Czars, culminating in an arranged marriage.”
Anastasia shook her head slightly, as if she pitied him. “Nationalities don’t
mean a great deal in Central.”

“You
replace countries with cartels, and then you want to act like I’m stupid for
not getting it?” Alex demanded, pulling his arm away when he felt Emily tugging
at his sleeve.

“Is
there something you’d like to share with the class, Alex?” Mr. Windsor asked,
looking as amused and benevolent as always. “What I could hear of your
discussion sounded surprisingly political, given your avowed disinterest in
such things. Care to elaborate further?”

Alex
sat down hard, making stinging contact with the molded plastic of his chair. He
tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t leave him in deeper trouble than he
had already managed to get himself into this morning. Then, with a
self-satisfied grin, Anastasia saved him. Again.

“Alex
was trying to understand the rationale for the existence of the cartels,”
Anastasia said smoothly.

“Ah!
An excellent topic. Tell me, Miss Martynova, how would you have answered him,
had I not interrupted you?”

Anastasia
folded her hands neatly on her desk, her eyes turned demurely down at the
notebook in front of her. Emily snuck her hand onto Alex’s knee, and he let it
stay. He needed all the reassurance he could get.

“Two
reasons. The most obvious, and pressing, is money. Central needs food, fuel,
machinery, and everything else that it cannot make itself, enough to provide
for a small city. A single cartel’s operations can involve hundreds or even
thousands of people, who must be housed, fed, and compensated. A presence must
be maintained wherever cartel interests are based, as well as some form of representation
in Central. A field office, transportation, personnel, equipment…all of this
has to be paid for. The cartels do the business that pays for everything, the
entirety of this quiet war; every bite of food, every comfort, every
necessity.”

“What
is it that cartels do?” Alex demanded, interrupting. “Where does all of this
money come from?” The class turned to face him in a sort of group slow motion
that made him sweat and his face stiffen. “What, I’m not supposed to ask?”

“Alex!”
Emily said, grabbing his arm. “Please stop!”

“Now,
there is no need…” Mr. Windsor began in a consolatory tone.

Alex
sat back, torn by rapidly shifting impulses; a sort of uneasy guilt that
suddenly blunted the anger that had been white hot a moment before. Neither
emotion prevailed, so he simply sat there with his mouth hanging open.

“Finance,
transportation, and security are primary cartel revenue sources, though that is
hardly the extent of it. We make funds available that otherwise would not be,
to people who might have trouble borrowing through established channels. We
move things from place to place, cargo that would be impossible to move
otherwise. Naturally, some of these things are illegal. Sometimes, these things
are people,” Anastasia said, glancing calmly at Alex, her eyes clear and
unclouded, her tone chilly and academic. “The security work is more nebulous
and varied. But in virtually constant and universal demand.”

“Smugglers
and mercenaries, then, right?” Alex asked in disbelief. “That’s what the
cartels are?”

“No.
We are soldiers fighting a war, a war for our survival, for all of us. The
industries I discussed, that is how the bills are paid. This is what you wanted
to know, correct?” Anastasia asked, sounding unimpressed. “Or, are you more
comfortable not knowing the hard truths about where your dinner comes from?”

“You
mentioned another reason that cartels are necessary, Miss Martynova?” Mr.
Windsor prompted, the only person in the classroom who seemed wholeheartedly
pleased by the scene.

Anastasia
turned from Alex and assumed her previous pose before continuing, her eyes
downcast. Alex could hear the resentment in her voice and marveled at it.

“Self-protection.
There are at least two people in this class capable of killing everyone else
here, simply by thinking about it. Does that frighten you, Alex? It should. It
is a terrifying reality to live in. Think about it – there are people sitting
next to you right now, fully capable of killing you with a thought, because
they were turned down for a date, or did poorly on a test. How long do you
think the human race would survive under such circumstances? Our threshold for
destructiveness far exceeds our threshold for defense.” Anastasia shrugged
sadly. “If not for the cartels, the strong would be able to prey freely on the
weak. Which becomes a serious problem when some of the strong are telepaths and
empaths who can quite literally control minds. The cartels allow the weak
leverage, Alex. Unity and numbers balance out individual power. The cartels are
not an imposition. They are a means of survival when our very natures conspire
against it.”

Alex
wanted to respond, but he knew that he would only embarrass himself further, so
he sat and fumed while Mr. Windsor prodded the class into a discussion of the
issues that had been raised, in a more organized manner. Emily patted his arm
soothingly while he raged impotently against the back of Anastasia’s head.

Then
he saw Eerie sitting on the other side of the room, an alarmingly green
lollypop in one hand, and no expression whatsoever on her face. She noticed him
and looked away before he could pull his hand from Emily’s grasp. Despite
Alex’s best efforts to catch her eye, Eerie stared up at the bullet points that
Mr. Windsor had projected on the hanging screen, never again looking in his
direction for the duration of the class.

* * *

“I have a feeling we
may have gotten off on the wrong foot, Alexander. Would you mind if we join you
for lunch?”

Alex
gave up watching the door to the cafeteria resignedly. Eerie had managed to slip
out of the classroom before he had a chance to try to talk to her, and it was
by now obvious that she wasn’t going to show for lunch. Which made him look
like a total idiot for insisting on sitting by himself. He had been considering
looking for Eerie at the vending machine – it sold candy, after all – but now
he didn’t think he was going to get the chance. He reluctantly motioned for the
three of them to sit.

They
were an awkward bunch – the plump girl named Hope, who appeared friendly and
cheerful, flanked by the dour Grigori and the decidedly aloof Chandi. Hope had
a salad on her tray. Chandi had orange juice and a bagel. Grigori had nothing
at all, and kept his hands folded across his chest the entire time.

“It’s
too bad, really, that you arrived when you did, since we were all in field
study at the time.” The way Hope said it made it sound as if it really did
bother her on a personal level. Alex was immediately suspicious, thinking
through a few things Rebecca had told him. “The precognitives made a terrible
error.”

“Anastasia
Martynova probably had something to do with that error,” Chandi offered coolly.

“What
a tragedy. I’m sure we would have been great friends, otherwise,” Alex said
sourly, picking disinterestedly at a breaded chicken breast that was overcooked
and unappetizing. “You’re an empath, right, Hope?”

“Yes,
I am,” Hope acknowledged. “How did you guess?”

“I’m
not much for people, but you are immediately likable. That’s a dead giveaway. I
don’t appreciate it much.”

“So
sorry,” Hope clucked, picking through her salad with a methodical
determination. Alex watched, fascinated with the process. He couldn’t help but
wonder what ingredient merited such a patient search. “I don’t do it
deliberately. I can’t help that people like me. It’s in my nature as an empath.
But Emily Muir should have explained all of this to you by now.”

“Look,
I’m really not in the mood,” Alex snapped, tossing his fork onto a plate
littered with side dishes he had picked at without enthusiasm. “If you’ve got
something to say, Hope, then say it. I don’t have the energy for this
cloak-and-dagger nonsense. Just tell me what it is that you want.”

“Would
Anastasia Martynova do that for you?” Hope asked, stabbing a particularly large
cherry tomato with her fork. Alex felt let down by the anticlimactic selection.

“That
is probably her only good quality,” Alex conceded. “Anastasia is frank.”

“Well,
then, I will endeavor to be so as well. Your behavior of late, as I am sure you
realize, is alarming to my friends and I. We have been informed of events in
our absence, obviously, but some of the reports appear to be…erroneous. To be,
as you desire, frank, we believe that we have been misled. Further, it seems
obvious from recent events and our own brief time here that your life is already
entangled with Anastasia Martynova, perhaps unavoidably. Chandi Tuesday wishes
to give Emily another, brief chance. Grigori believes you lost already, to the
Black Sun or to that bizarre Changeling. He wants us to take appropriate
action. I have my opinions, which are not particularly positive regarding your
friend Emily and her veracity. Was that frank enough?”

“Yes,”
Alex said meekly.

“And?
What do you think of all this?” Hope finally took a bite, one small nibble from
the miniature tomato, her eyes placid, almost bovine in satisfaction. “What do
you think I should do about you, Alex? Is there something that I’ve gotten
wrong?”

Alex
took a bite of mashed potatoes to buy himself time. It was a transparent
gesture, and he knew it, but he genuinely didn’t know what to say. Then he had
a flash of inspiration. Alex was thinking of one of Michael’s little talks on
Aikido, about how any situation could be inverted with the proper application
of force and control, how advantage was merely a matter of perception.

“Here’s
what you’re going to do,” Alex said firmly. “You are going to stop jerking
Emily around. She stays in the Academy until she graduates, no matter what
happens. And Eerie, who is not what you are thinking she is, whatever it is
that you are thinking, you leave alone. If you want to have any chance of
recruiting me, any chance of having me hear you out, then you will promise me
these things. If they do not happen then I will march my ass straight over to
Anastasia and volunteer to join the Black Sun. You understand me?”

Alex
was trying very hard to imagine himself as the kind of person who said things
like this. He was trying very hard to sound not confident but rather
nonchalant, as if he didn’t really care about their response, as if the outcome
were never in doubt. He didn’t even notice Emily standing behind him, not
daring to touch him, but hovering as close as possible.

“Well,
Alex, that sounds a great deal like you want us to do you a favor,” Hope said
indulgently. “Which, I might add, we are more than happy to provide. But, if
you would,” Hope said, nodding at him pleasantly, “remember that we’ve done
this for you.”

“Yeah,”
Alex said uncertainly as they stood up in rough unison, Hope nodding at him
again and Grigori glaring suspiciously, before they left for another table far
across the cafeteria, where groups of students having lunch screened them from
him.

Emily
walked forward and reached for him tentatively.

“Alex,”
she said softly, her fingertips on the back of his neck. “I don’t think you
should have done that.”

* * *

“I didn’t expect you
to come here,” Gaul said. His tone was civil, he felt, given the circumstances.
Anastasia Martynova was not the most welcome guest, particularly when she
announced her intentions in advance and arrived in state, trailing Renton and
Timor, both of whom sat patiently in Gaul’s puzzled secretary’s office. “At
least, not so openly.”

“It
seemed important that this visit be on record. I need a favor, Director, and I
need it done in such a way that everyone is aware.”

“I
see,” Gaul said, not actually seeing it. He disliked Anastasia Martynova
because she represented a blank as far as his precognition went. It was an
unforgivable flaw and, as far as he knew, unique to her. On a personal level,
however, he found her alarmingly easy to work with.

“I
have done you a number of favors in the past, yes?” Anastasia said, crossing
her ankles daintily. “I recall as much.”

“Yes.”

“In
perfect confidence?”

“As
far as I know, yes.”

She
nodded firmly, as if emphasizing their agreement.

“You
must have had some suspicion this day was coming,” Anastasia said reasonably.
“I want something in return. Nothing major. You will not have to put yourself
out too far.”

“Yes?”

Anastasia
explained her request, Gaul adjusted his glasses, and then they regarded each
other cautiously.

“The
Hegemony will never allow it.”

“They
will. They are sending two representatives along, so they should have no
complaints.”

“Oh?”
Gaul prodded again, when he realized she was gathering herself to head for the
door.

“Oh
yes,” Anastasia said, smiling indulgently. “The Muir sisters. Surely you have
heard of them?”

Twelve

Are you sure you’re ready for this?

Shut
up, boss. You’re distracting me.

Alistair
obediently disappeared from her head. Alice Gallow sighed with relief, then
returned to the task at hand. She was clinging to a ledge twenty-five stories
in the air; her feet turned sideways to make the most of the three inches of
space the windowsill afforded. Below, she could barely hear the evening traffic
from Fifth Avenue. She had her hands above her head, seeking purchase on the
sill above her – the twenty-sixth floor, where the target maintained offices.
She couldn’t remember free-climbing before, but her body seemed to know what to
do by muscle memory, and she figured if she couldn’t trust her body, then she
couldn’t trust anything.

Finding
purchase with her hands on the ledge above her, Alice lifted onto her toes,
shifting her weight briefly to her hands while she walked her legs up the sides
of the windowsill. She braced one foot after the other as high as she could
manage, wedging the toes of her shoes into the mortared space between the stone
of the building’s façade. She stopped halfway to give her aching fingers a
rest. Alice felt perfectly calm, hanging above the sounds of horns and sirens,
the wind whipping through the gap between the buildings, coming off the
Atlantic achingly cold. Alice couldn’t remember much, but she knew that she
hated New York. She had felt loathing since she arrived, the day before
yesterday.

Of
course, the view of the city she received wasn’t exactly the most flattering.

She
had come directly from Central via apport. The first few hours were spent
scoping the area outlined in the dossier Alistair had implanted before she
left, and caching portions of the gear she brought where it might prove most
useful, in case what she carried with her turned out to be insufficient. She
found everything to her liking, as much as was possible in Manhattan, so she
navigated her way to Brooklyn, finding her way to a club that Rebecca had told
her about. It was supposedly a metal bar, one she had apparently been to
before. Emperor blared in her earbuds as she walked past eclectic crowds of
hipsters, Orthodox Jews, black teenagers, and homeless people, to get her in
the mood. It turned out to be more of punk bar that played metal-inspired
hardcore, but Alice made the best of what was at hand. She had four drinks and
was hit on three times. The second guy was the cutest, but the last one managed
to make her laugh, and that seemed more important, that night. She decided to
forgive his spiky hair and bad tattoos. She let him buy her another drink, and
then went back to his flat in a dilapidated warehouse loft a few blocks away.
Alice spent most of the night with him, returning to her hotel in the early
morning, tired, disheveled, and thoroughly pleased with herself.

She
had harbored secret anxiety for weeks that she might have forgotten something
important about that stuff too, but it all came back to her as soon as the
clothes came off.

Alice
spent the day napping and taking short walks, reading over files and deciding
between three potential targets. Whichever she picked, Alistair would throw Xia
and Mitsuru at the other two if it looked like she wasn’t in trouble – and
probably the new girl he was holding in reserve as well, the vampire. She
didn’t know where Alistair had gotten such excellent intelligence lately, but
she didn’t let that worry her. Killing Witches was her thing, even she
remembered that. Alice decided on the hardest target with the prettiest face.
She liked it better when they were pretty.

The
afternoon stretched out interminably. New York was cold and she was listless.
She ended up watching four hours of the Discovery channel. Some guy named Mike
Rowe, whose warm voice she found soothing, narrated every show. Just about
everything he discussed was new to her. When the sun finally consented to set,
she took out her hardbound diary and jotted down notes from the day, just in
case she ever needed to know something about crab fishing. Then she showered
and shaved her legs, leaving the door to the bathroom wide open behind her.
Since Rebecca had found her, she had developed a weird anxiety about small,
tiled spaces. She dried, dressed, and double-checked her kit, confirming
everything was in order.

The
subway was nicer than she remembered, and she felt pleased with herself for
remembering. Midtown was wrapped in weeknight quiet, so she saw only cops,
service workers in orange vests, and ragged homeless people pushing shopping
carts. She climbed by hand, because she was worried that an apport would rile
the Ether, letting the Witch know she was there before she announced herself.

Resetting
her grip, Alice pushed off with her feet and pulled with her hands, jumping for
the handhold above her. Her fingers caught and then, for a long moment, she was
certain that her grip was bad. Her fingers held, though, and she wriggled up
onto the ledge, standing on the balls of her feet due to the narrow space. She clung
to the side of the building and shuffled, painstakingly inching to the corner
of the building, where the target was working her typical late hours, as the
dossier promised. The lights were on, just as they were supposed to be, the
blinds closed as they always were, according to surveillance. Attaching the rig
to the office window was trickier than she anticipated. It took the better part
of half an hour worth of fumbling before the suction cups attached correctly
and the electronic fuse activated. Alice continued around the corner to the
adjoining window on the precarious ledge, then took a flashlight from her bag
and taped it to the wall beside her, so that she was spot-lit by the powerful xenon
bulb, her shadow vivid and black.

Alice
took a series of deep, timed breaths. She shook out her hands, then hugged them
beneath her arms until her fingers were no longer numb and cold. She extracted
a black matte H&K USP Elite and a phosphorus flare from her bag, wishing
that it had been practical to carry a shotgun across town and then up the side
of a building. She dropped the bag casually into the void, and then spent a
dizzy moment watching it glide peacefully out of sight. Alice stared into her
shadow for what seemed like a long time. When she was sure she was ready, she
hit the button on the detonator and then let the shockwave push her from the
ledge, falling backward through her shadow.

She
hit the carpeted floor of the office hard; physics and her momentum demanded
the impact. It was undignified but necessary. Alice rolled hurriedly to her
feet and found that things had gone better than anticipated. The charge was
shaped to spray the interior of the room with broken glass along with a load of
metal-tipped flechettes, and it had done that job well. One man was down
roughly in the center of the room, another bending over him and talking rapidly
into an earpiece, while a third approached the shattered window cautiously, his
gun drawn and held close to his body. Her target huddled behind a desk with a
fourth security guard standing protectively over her, covering the guy
advancing on the window with a silenced Israeli X-95 submachine gun. Everyone
in the room was looking the wrong way, so no one noticed her arrival until she
moved.

Alice
being Alice, that was too late.

The
Witch noticed first, of course, because she could feel the distortion in the
Ether that the apport had caused. She raised a barrier instinctually, but that
actually made things easier on Alice. She had to take out the guy with the
submachine gun anyway, so the barrier simply meant that she didn’t have to
worry about stray rounds hitting the Witch.

She
and Xia had done rock-paper-scissors for assignments back at Central, and he
won, rock smashes scissors, so he got the kill order. The other kill order went
to Mitsuru, because it would be her first Witch, and it was about time the girl
was officially baptized as an Auditor. That meant that Alice had to bring her
date back home tonight.

She
dropped the flare behind her, and then raised the gun and fired a long burst,
aiming for the head, wishing again that she had a shotgun loaded with solid
slugs. She didn’t know if the guards were human or Weir or what, but she had to
assume the worst. The H&K fired .45 caliber rounds, and she had loaded it
with these horrible explosive Tungsten bullets called Fang-Face, designed to
tear big fucking holes in flesh. If the guards were Weir, she would need them.

His
head exploded like a jack-o’-lantern with an M-80 inside, so Alice shelved any
further worries about species. She squeezed off a couple more rounds in the
direction of the two remaining guards near the window, more to keep them from
firing than anything else. The shots all went wide, but they gave Alice time to
get set. She dropped down to one knee and took careful aim at the guard who had
been smart enough to draw his gun. Alice fired two bursts and then dove forward
through her own dancing shadow. She stepped from the shadow of a broken lamp on
the other side of the room, in time to see the place where she had just been
standing obliterated by some kind of blue fire Working that the Witch threw.
Alice used the moment to pick off another guard, the .45 caliber rounds making
a nasty mess of his head.

The
last guard had scrambled behind some file cabinets and drawn his gun, and came
embarrassingly close to getting the drop on Alice when he started firing. She
dove through her own shadow again, a moment before he sprayed the spot with
bullets with his Ingram MAC-10. She emerged from the shadow of the file cabinet
beside him, slamming her knee into the meat of his thigh, her gun butt
colliding solidly with the side of his face. She tried to grab his gun while he
reeled back. He stumbled but kept a hold on the submachine gun. He spun and
twisted to avoid the shots she fired, assuming she was aiming for him, moving
with an inhuman grace that gave the game away. He was a Weir.

When
he raised the MAC-10 and tried to line up a shot with his reflex site, Alice
lunged forward and kicked him in the chest. As she he had hoped, he rolled with
it. Her previous bursts had left spider web cracks in the safety glass behind
him. There was a look of utter surprise on his face right before he fell
silently to the street below, too dignified or shocked to cry out. Alice
assumed that the Witch would have something aimed for her back, so she followed
him out the window, a perfect swan dive into the faint shadow cast by the lip
of the ledge. It was a complicated apport, because she had to rely on her
memory of the room to pick a destination, factoring in momentum.

She
felt a momentary dislocation, a physiological static as she passed through the
Witch’s barrier, or rather, the ghost of its presence in the Ether. Then Alice
slammed into her, shoulder first, barking her shin and elbow on the desk as she
took both of them to the ground. She ignored the pain, focusing on controlling
the Witch’s hands. They wrestled for a moment, and Alice had to give the Witch
credit – she was a surprisingly capable fighter, particularly considering she had
been attacked from behind. She scratched and clawed, catching Alice on the
forearm and drawing blood. Alice managed to get a lock on one of her hands; she
twisted her arm inward and stepped forward, shifting her weight to the right
and then turning the Witch’s wrist in the opposite direction. The bone snapped
and she left the limb at a grotesque angle. The Witch grabbed her arm and
howled in pain. Alice took the opportunity to drive her gun barrel up
underneath the Witch’s chin.

The
file was right. She was cute. Alice fumbled for a moment with the top drawer in
the desk, then managed to slide it open without removing her gun from beneath
the Witch’s jaw.

“You
want to live, put your hand in there,” Alice said, nodding at the drawer.

The
Witch shook her blond head, batted enchanting blue eyes, and looked confused.

“What?”

Alice
pushed up on the gun, hard, so that the Witch’s head bent backward.

“No
talking,” Alice said, grinning evilly. “Put your hand in the drawer. Now.”

The
Witch reached down fearfully, and before she had a chance to recoil, Alice
kicked the drawer closed on her hand. She leaned into it, putting all her
weight on the boot until she was certain the Witch’s fingers were broken. The
Witch cried and thrashed around helplessly, torn between the pain from her
fractured hand and fear of the gun in her face.

“Oh,
come on,” Alice scolded. “What did you think I was going to do?”

Alice
let up on the pressure, and the Witch snatched her mangled hand away, holding
both arms out in front of her as if she didn’t know what to do with them, one
dangling at the wrist, the other with smashed fingers. Alice pulled the gun
back, then whipped it butt first into the Witch’s face, breaking her jaw and
laying her out.

“Okay,
Gaul,” Alice said, breathing heavily. “We got a live one.”

Thirteen

“We would be honored if you would join us,” Anastasia deadpanned, as Alex walked
into the dining room, Emily hovering nervously behind him with a guilty
expression on her face.

“This
doesn’t really seem like the time for pop culture references,” Alex murmured,
surveying the people at the table. He had been expecting official
representatives from the Hegemony, or something similar. He had not been
expecting Anastasia Martynova and Therese Muir to be sitting at the table opposite
each other, Therese gripping an enormous glass of white wine and looking
extremely unhappy. Anastasia was flanked by the pleasantly smiling Timor, and
Alex couldn’t help but wonder where Renton was.

“I
think I deserve some credit for trying,” Anastasia complained. “I thought all
boys loved Star Wars. Don’t tell me you prefer Star Trek?”

“What?”
Alex asked, shaking his head as Emily gently urged him over to his seat, right
next to her. “No way. Star Wars has light sabers. Star Trek is
for nerds and fags.”

“Hey,”
Timor objected, his grip tightening on the stem of his wine glass. “I like the
old series. What’s wrong with that?”

“William
Shatner,” Alex said, sitting down. “You seriously think that William Shatner
running around in a unitard with an electric shaver for a gun is cooler than
the Death Star? It blows up fucking planets, man.”

“Wait
a minute. Did you not see the last three movies? Anakin? Jar-Jar?”

“Hey,
c’mon. You don’t have to be mean. Besides, the second trilogy doesn’t count.”

“It
doesn’t? What about when they rereleased the original movies with all those new
effects – like dinosaurs everywhere and Greedo shooting first? Do those count?”

“As
much as Deep Space Nine does.”

“Excuse
me,” Emily said, shaking her head while she headed to the kitchen. “But would
you boys stop now, please?”

“Sorry,”
Timor said, looking chastised.

“Sorry,”
Alex echoed.

“Nice
to see you again, Alex,” Therese prompted, glaring at him over the rim of her
wine glass.

“You
too, Therese,” Alex said, doing his best to sound pleased. “How have you been?”

“I’ve
had better company for dinner.”

Therese
paused to give Anastasia a significant look before shrugging at Alex and
returning to her wine. Anastasia ignored her politely. The ensuing silence
seemed to be a contest as to whether the strain would get to Timor or Therese
first. Anastasia seemed unmoved, while Alex was more concerned with the fact
that his sweater and slacks made him the only person here who wasn’t well
dressed. At least Therese, he noted with relief, had not bothered with niceties
of hair and makeup. Anastasia, on the other hand, had apparently taken the
opportunity to dress up even more than she normally did; as far as Alex could
tell, Anastasia had opted for a sort of Gothic Little House on the Prairie
look, wearing a deep purple velvet dress, complete with corset, matching
lipstick, and eye shadow.

Then
Emily arrived with the food, to everyone’s relief. There was a salad layered
with radish slices and white, crumbly goat cheese; bread toasted with butter
and herbs; small plates of mozzarella and purple-pink tomato, covered in
balsamic vinegar. Alex had forgotten how good Emily’s cooking was, and he
devoured everything that was put in front of him. Emily, he noticed, had even
produced vegan dishes for Anastasia, who seemed to be unusually cheerful.

The
conversation started tentatively at first, and of course, Emily was forced to
smooth the way, asking Timor a series of friendly questions that caused the boy
to blush and sink further and further into his chair, until Therese exploded in
raucous, semidrunken laughter. Unexpectedly, Anastasia laughed as well, and
things were more relaxed after that. His initial impression hadn’t been
mistaken, Alex discovered – Anastasia was in a better mood this evening than he
had ever previously seen.

Emily
cleared the plates, recruiting a reluctant Therese’s help, and then brought out
the main course – roast chicken with fennel and rice for everyone but
Anastasia, who was served tiny pasta stuffed inside of a grilled bell pepper.
The chicken was as good as he expected, savory and tender, and when Emily did
little more than pick at her own, Alex assumed responsibility for it. At
Anastasia’s insistence, he tried her pasta, which was actually quite good.

Desert
was a fruit torte that Anastasia brought, with a dry crust that was reminiscent
of graham cracker. Anastasia waited until everyone had moved on to coffee,
except for Therese, who was still drinking.

“I
hope this has put us all on a friendlier footing,” Anastasia said with apparent
sincerity. “I will be the first to admit that this is an awkward situation that
we find ourselves in, but I think it would be easier if we were, at least,
civil with each other. We do not need to be friends, but if you decide to accede
to my proposal, we will be spending a great deal of time together in the near
future.”

“Um…”
Alex began, only to be cut off by Therese snorting.

“Friends?
Did you actually just say that?”

Anastasia
smiled back at her.

“I
said we did not have to be friends, Therese,” Anastasia corrected sweetly. “I
think you misunderstood.”

“Wait,
wait,” Alex said, waving his arm, “what are you proposing? Wait, before that,
how many people at this table know what is going on here? Show of hands?”

Nothing
happened for a second, then Anastasia rolled her eyes, followed by Emily
tentatively putting a hand up, as did Timor. Therese remained contemptuously
silent, but she looked aware to Alex.

“Okay,
well, I always like that,” Alex said glumly. “Will there ever be a point when I
am not the last one to find these things out?”

“Probably
not,” Anastasia said, her head cocked to the side, considering.

“That
was more of rhetorical question,” Alex said sadly.

“I
hate those. What is the point, after all? If you ask a question aloud then you
should expect it to be answered,” Anastasia said firmly. Alex got the sense
that this was something that really bothered her. “Regardless, there is no need
to become nervous, Alex. There is no sinister plot afoot. I prefer to think of
it as a surprise. Tell me, Alex,” Anastasia said, pausing to sip the herbal tea
she apparently preferred to coffee, “what are you doing for Spring Break?”

Alex
tried to find an answer that fit the situation, but found the English language
lacking. Instead, he made a weird, interrogative noise.

“You
are aware that in two weeks, just after midterms, we will all get three weeks
off, correct?” Anastasia asked patiently.

“Yes,”
Alex said, pleased to have found his voice again. “But I haven’t given it much
thought. It’s not like I have some place to go back to,” Alex said, shrugging
because he knew it should have hurt, because people always expected him to feel
that way. He didn’t really remember having a home, not one that he’d ever felt
like going back to, so he didn’t miss it, either.

“I’m
sorry,” Emily said, automatically.

“Right.
Circumstances are always more complicated for orphans,” Anastasia said,
nodding. “As I said, what are your plans?”

“Well,
Michael told me that I could stay at the Academy if I wanted,” Alex said, not
aware of how lame that plan sounded until he said it. “You know, just train
with him and hang out and stuff. He said a few people stay around.”

“Trust
me, there will be no one here, except for Gaul and Rebecca and similar administrative
types. You will simply sleep away the whole three weeks if no one looks after
you. As you clearly have no plans, allow me to suggest accompanying us on
vacation.”

“Wait,
what? Who is ‘us’?”

Emily
leaned over to cover Alex’s hand with her own. He was too annoyed to put up
with it now, and meant to pull his hand away, but for some reason, he didn’t.
He tried one of the breathing exercises Michael had taught him to deal with
stress, and was surprised to find that it worked.

“’Us’
in this case would be myself and Therese, along with Anastasia and company,”
Emily said, looking him in the eyes with a hopeful expression and squeezing his
hand. “It could be really cool, you know? We could finally get some time to
hang out.”

“Yeah,”
Alex agreed guardedly. “So, uh, where are you guys going?”

“An
island that I happen to own,” Anastasia said offhandedly. “It is really quite
nice. There is a house there with room enough for everyone. I have already sent
staff ahead to prepare. The food will not be as good as tonight,
unfortunately,” she said regretfully, “but I am certain that the experience,
overall, will be a positive one.”

“You
have an island?”

“Yes,”
Anastasia affirmed, nonplussed. “The Black Sun owns quite a few, actually, but
this particular island is mine. Inherited from my mother. I went there a great
deal as a child.”

“I
see,” Alex said distantly.

“Alex,
it has to be more fun than sitting around the Academy, right?” Emily pleaded.
Alex didn’t want to disappoint her, but he felt uncomfortable with the entire
situation.

“Probably,”
he allowed cautiously. “First, though, I have to know – why would you be going
on vacation with Anastasia, Emily? Or you, Therese?”

“Well…”

“I
wonder the same thing myself,” Therese interjected, sounding angry and tipsy.
“Don’t act so put out, kiddo. You’re hardly the only one who didn’t see this
coming.”

“Perhaps
I could explain?” Anastasia offered. “Emily will come in order to spend time
with you without interference. Therese will come because, as an agent of the
Hegemony, she cannot pass up the opportunity to visit one of the private
sanctums of the Black Sun. From an intelligence standpoint, it is an offer she
simply cannot refuse. Once her superiors heard, they insisted that she come
along.”

“Anastasia!”
Emily said, stunned. “How could you say that?”

“Ah,”
Alex said, trying to process. There was a pause. “Blunt as always.”

“Why
would I be any other way?” Anastasia asked, shrugging. “It is simpler to tell
you, so you won’t waste the evening trying to formulate the question on your
own – I always prefer diplomacy, and I have been compensated appropriately for
my time and effort. Also,” Anastasia added, averting her eyes, “I would prefer
having someone besides Renton to accompany me to the beach. There is, in fact,”
she added hastily, “a long tradition for this sort of practice. Many
established families host orphans during the holidays. It is not so unusual.”

“Ah.
I see,” Alex said slowly, thinking the exact opposite. He had never previously
speculated that Anastasia even cared that Renton was creepy, or that she would
have possibly owned a bathing suit, for that matter. He pictured her in an
old-timey full-body stocking and cap, and barely managed to stop himself from
laughing aloud.

“I
don’t know what you are thinking, but cut it out,” Emily admonished sternly.

“Right.
You really have an island?”

“Indeed,”
Anastasia said modestly. “A small one.”

“Not
an evil island, or a cursed island, or an island where you perform forbidden
experiments or summon terrible elder gods?” Alex asked, leaning forward eagerly.

“Not
lately, no. I mainly swim in the ocean, or read in the library. I enjoy talking
a walk in the garden in the evenings, to watch the stars come out. I spent my
third, fifth, and eleventh Christmases there, and more than half of my summers.
I learned to fly a kite there. I read The Stranger underneath an old
tree behind the house when I was eleven and thought it was amazing. My sisters
have a rope swing. There is a jetty with a few small sailboats. Are you getting
the idea, Alex?” Anastasia asked. “There is no devious ploy. I am simply
inviting you somewhere that I enjoy, a place that is important to me.”

“Who
are you bringing? Who is going to be there?”

“Renton,
Timor, Katya, Svetlana, and a number of unimportant staff you have not met. My
little sisters may also be there,” Anastasia said, in an offhand manner. “I am
bringing my cook, as well – but we have a modern, fully stocked kitchen, Emily,
and I do hope that you will indulge me at least once…”

“Sure!”
Emily chirped. “I like to cook, really!”

“Can
I bring someone?” Alex asked cautiously.

“As
you like, though it would be difficult if you request a member of the
Hegemony,” Anastasia said. “Of course, as Eerie is committed to Field Study and
Vivik is returning home for the break, I am not sure who you intend to invite.
Steve, perhaps?”

Alex
swore to himself silently. Of course Vivik would be going back home – he had a
huge family back in his unpronounceable hometown that he called regularly. Alex
hadn’t managed to talk to Eerie all week, anyway. Somehow, he never seemed to
remember he needed to speak to her until after class started, and by the time
it was over, she was already gone.

“Oh
yeah,” Alex admitted. “I forgot that Vivik would be out of town.”

“Well,
it isn’t as if you have to decide this instant,” Anastasia said lightly,
dabbing the sides of her lips with her napkin, and then folding it neatly and
laying it on the table. “Do tell me soon, though. Timor? We should probably be
going. Can I offer you a ride back to Operations, Therese?”

“Oh
no,” Therese said firmly, ignoring Emily’s horrified stare. “I’m staying.”

Anastasia
and Timor left shortly after, Anastasia and Emily whispering to each other
briefly, as if they were confidants, close friends. Alex was seriously starting
to wonder what was going on. Therese, to his amazement, went upstairs without a
word. This left Emily and him, sitting on the couch in the living room side by
side, with nothing that Alex felt like talking about.

“Are
you ready to tell me what exactly is going on? Because this was not the most
pleasant surprise I’ve ever had,” he said, careful to smile and make sure that
his tone sounded light, because he didn’t want her to start crying.

“I
know,” Emily said, sighing, “I didn’t want to do it like that, but Anastasia
insisted.”

Alex
waited while Emily worked up the nerve to continue, her hand inching toward his
and then retreating in such a tremendous struggle that he took pity on her and
took it himself. She smiled contentedly, took a deep breath, and then started
to explain.

“You
realize that I am on the outs with the Hegemony, right? My father called two
nights ago and threatened to pull me from school. Chandi and Hope are all but
convinced that I am liar and a failure.”

“I
thought maybe I took care of that problem for you the other day,” Alex said
carefully.

Emily
sighed again, more loudly, and Alex started to feel bad for her, for the
position he put her in.

“I
told you not to do that, Alex. If anything, you forced the issue, though I know
you meant well. Tell me, what did you think I would gain if you forced the
Hegemony to keep me at the Academy? What do you think would happen to me once I
graduate, and you aren’t around to lean on them on my behalf?”

“Ah,”
Alex said, shamefaced. “I didn’t think about that.”

“You
have that tendency. You aren’t exactly the best at noticing what’s going on
around you, particularly when you’re all worked up.”

Emily
patted his hand and smiled at him.

“Don’t
get me wrong. It was a sweet gesture, and I’m touched that you tried looking
out for me, but this situation is something that I need to resolve myself.”
Emily paused and took a healthy sip from her wine glass, something he noticed
her doing all evening, which he didn’t think of as normal behavior for her. “I
know what you think of Anastasia, and I don’t blame you, but she is weirdly
reasonable. She has always been fair with me, even nice, in her own way. I
think that maybe she’s a bit lonely. The price the Hegemony wanted from you to
keep me here was too high, Alex, anyway, whatever it was. I know, I’ve been
paying off favors to those bastards for years, and you always wind up further
in their debt. Anastasia’s help was far more affordable.”

“What
did you have to give her in return?”

“Nothing
important, if it doesn’t work out,” Emily said, waving her hand dismissively
while she finished her glass. “If it does, well, then what I promised her is
something she would have already had.”

“You’re
talking in riddles,” Alex complained. “It isn’t like you. Just tell me what’s
going on.”

“I
want you to come with me to the island, that is what,” Emily said sternly.
“Come on, it will be fun, I promise. She has an island! How cool is that? You –
you are going to come with me, right? Unless,” she said, her eyes downcast,
“maybe you don’t want to. Though,” she pouted, “you did take Eerie to San
Francisco already…”

“I
didn’t really take her there,” Alex protested. “Besides, that wasn’t…ah,
whatever. I’m probably gonna come.”

“Really?”
Emily demanded, grabbing Alex by the shoulders and pinning him against the
couch. “You aren’t just saying that? Because I’m going to be angry if you get
my hopes up and then turn out to be joking.”

Alex
meant to push her away, but by the time he got his hands up to do so, he didn’t
really feel like doing that. His hands seemed to fall almost naturally onto her
back, one running through her long, blonde hair, which was exactly as a soft as
it looked.

“No,
I’m serious. But my mind’s not totally made up yet.”

“Oh?”
Emily said, sitting down comfortably in his lap, her arms around his neck. “You
still need convincing?”

“I
might,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close
before he even thought about what he was doing. She squealed, steadied herself
against his shoulder, and then leaned forward to kiss him. Their lips met
eagerly, then he remembered what Eerie had taught him, and did his best to move
along with the flow of things, to be tender, not to let his excitement
overwhelm him.

He
felt a twinge of guilt, thinking about kissing Eerie, but he was so much more
aware of the girl sitting in his lap, warm and inviting and smelling faintly of
flowers, that guilt didn’t seem to matter as much. That was something that
could be worked out later, he thought hazily. And Emily was so very here. Her
lips were warm and he could feel her pulse when he ran his fingers along the
graceful line of her neck. Alex slowly lost track of everything except the way
her skin felt, and the warmth of her breath against his neck.

Therese
made enough noise stumbling down the hall and descending the stairs that Emily
had time to straighten her clothing and take a seat a more discreet distance
from Alex. Therese walked in, bleary eyed, and then sat down on the couch to
the other side of Alex.

“Do
you need something, Therese?” Emily asked, her voice saccharine.

Therese
crossed her arms and glared sleepily at Alex.

“I
need a glass of water, and you need to walk your boyfriend to the bus station
before the last bus,” Therese said crossly. “I gave you guys an hour of
privacy. You will have all of break to do whatever you want. But you’ve still
got to commit to that, don’t you, Alex?”

“Well,
uh…”

Alex
knew he was blushing, but how could he argue? It was a little painful that
Therese knew exactly what they were up to, and then let it go on for a short
time. It made him feel childish and easily manipulated.

“Therese,”
Emily said, shaking her head, “he could stay here, you know? He could sleep in
Mom and Dad’s bed. They haven’t been home in weeks, and the sheets are clean.”

Therese
shook her head.

“No
way. Not happening. Not tonight.”

Alex’s
head was starting to clear, and for some reason, staying didn’t seem like such
a good idea; besides, Therese was implacable. She was right – if he went on the
Spring Break trip, he figured sleeping with Emily was inevitable, unless he was
determined otherwise. Very determined. And why go on the trip at all, if that
was the case?

“I
should actually go back to the dorms,” Alex said, avoiding Emily’s eyes,
suddenly made guilty by the series of ideas that only now occurred to him. “I
have a bunch of things to take care of tomorrow.”

Emily
was reluctant, but eventually relented and walked him to the bus station,
clutching his arm and stopping twice in alcoves and small breezeways to kiss
him again, briefly but intensely, her body pressed to his, warm against the
night and the wind. Alex started to wonder why he was heading back to the
Academy in the first place.

However,
when the bus finally came and Emily let him go, as he rode up the hill on the
rattling diesel with his head against the cold glass of the window, he
remembered the bad thoughts. Some about Emily, some about Eerie, some about
everyone he knew. After a while, it all made him feel lonely and persecuted, so
he did his best to push it from his mind.

By
the time he reached the Academy, he had fallen solidly asleep, and the driver
was forced to wake him.

Fourteen

Alex looked at the pig, and the pig looked back at him. He
wished it had fur. Its pink, knobby skin was altogether too close to human for
him, and its bright little eyes even more so. Then it made a noise that his
mind insisted was simultaneously questioning and pleading, and Alex couldn’t
swallow past the knot in his throat.

“I’m
not sure I can do this…”

“Yeah,
I noticed that in Miss Aoki’s notes,” Alice Gallow said, flipping through pages
on her clipboard. “You’re kind of a wimp, aren’t you, Alex? Well, I don’t plan
on coddling you the way Mitzi did.”

“Hey…”
Alex protested weakly. “I just don’t want to shoot the stupid pig, okay?”

“You
eat meat, right, Alex?” Miss Gallow asked, grinning at him. He had never met a
person who smiled more often or looked less friendly when they did so. “If that
little piggy was already conveniently turned into delicious bacon or pork
chops, you would eat it, right?”

“Well,
yes, but…”

Miss
Gallow advanced on him slowly, menacingly, her grin displaying her sparkling
teeth.

“If
you won’t kill it, then you don’t deserve to eat it,” Alice said, reaching out
to poke one black-painted nail to his chest. “If you won’t defend yourself,
then you don’t deserve to live. According to the notes Miss Aoki left, you do,
in fact, want to live. That right?”

“Uh,
yeah.”

“Then
don’t give me crap because you are more comfortable with someone else doing the
killing when you plan on doing the eating,” Miss Gallow said, turning away from
him and back to the class. “This is the Program, kids. What you don’t take, you
won’t have. You all want dinner tonight, right?”

There
were cautious nods and affirmative noises, though Alex noticed that none of the
other students wanted to make themselves too noticeable. He didn’t really blame
them, looking at the gun in his hand, and then again at the pig, cheerfully
wandering the radius of what the cord around his neck would allow him to
explore. Alex related to the animal, on a number of levels.

“Well,”
Miss Gallow said, turning back to Alex and licking her lips, “tonight we are
having pork. Except for the Jews and the Muslims, of course. Wouldn’t want to
upset poor Rebecca’s sensitivities. Then again, dinner could be very late,” she
said, taking a chair in the corner of the classroom, “considering we have to
wait for Alex to provide it.”

“You’re
saying that if I converted…” Alex said slowly.

“Nope,”
Miss Gallow snapped. “I’ve seen them raise and slaughter pigs on a kibbutz in
Israel. They just don’t eat ’em.”

“Oh,”
Alex said, his voice sounding funny and somewhat hollow to him, as if he were hearing
it at a remove. The pistol was the same Colt 1911 he had used for target
shooting two hours ago, but it had taken on an evil import, a menace that
pervaded its cold weight. “That’s good, then.”

He
did it in a rush, raising the gun and firing quickly. To his utter shame, he
closed his eyes at the last moment, something that Miss Aoki had cured him of
weeks ago, by slapping him in the back of the head every time he did it until
he stopped. His shot went wide, hitting the ground a few feet away from the
pig, causing it to squeal and run in blind panic. Alex felt hot shame, and
heard the beginning of Steve’s laughter before he started firing wildly.

Alex
was a terrible shot, and the pig was moving. He got it eventually, but it took
several tries, and it wasn’t pretty – he hit it in the foreleg, causing more
blood and noise, and it took another shot to put it down. Miss Gallow inspected
the carnage grimly while Alex shook and wiped tears from his eyes that he
hadn’t realized he cried, all the while trying not to notice Steve and Renton
smirking and exchanging superior looks.

“Well,”
Miss Gallow said doubtfully, “I’m not sure how much of this one will be edible,
but we all have to start somewhere, right?”

She
slapped Alex on the back.

“Don’t
worry,” Miss Gallow confided. “I already talked to the kitchen. It takes them a
while to use up a whole pig. You won’t have to do that again for two, maybe
three days.”

“Great,”
Alex said numbly, the gun hanging, useless and forgotten, from one hand.
Somehow, this hurt worse than shooting Steve, although that didn’t really make
any sense to him. “That’s great.”

“Of
course, man doesn’t live by pork alone,” Miss Gallow said cheerfully. “Tomorrow
you get to practice decapitating chickens.”

“Oh
God,” Alex said, swallowing back bile, his eyes smarting and watering.

“And
we’re supposed to have hamburgers for lunch Friday…”

Alex
calmly returned the gun to its locker. He didn’t run to the bathroom. He found
his way to his seat without stumbling. He watched the new kid, Timor, take care
of his pig with a ruthless dispatch that was practically boredom. Alex didn’t
get sick and he didn’t wallow in self-pity.

It
wasn’t that he didn’t care. Instead, he tried to convince himself that this
represented progress on his part; he was closer to becoming something
definable, to an identity. Maybe not something he was proud of, he would have
been the first to admit, but something that, at the very least, Alex could put
a name to.

Maybe
he shouldn’t have been, but he was still surprised, watching Timor’s pig bleed
into the gutter inset in the floor for that exact purpose, how badly he wanted
that.

* * *

“Are you sure?”

“Of
course I’m sure!” Eerie insisted, stomping her foot in frustration. “I see it!
Every day!”

“Okay,
that’s weird, but you know how boys are,” Rebecca said. “One minute they’re all
over you, the next minute they’re off with someone else. Maybe he and Emily
just, well,” Rebecca hesitated, trying to find a way to finish her sentence
that wouldn’t set the poor, frantic Changeling into another fit of anxiety,
“maybe they’ve gotten…close.”

“I
am not as petty as you think, Rebecca,” Eerie told her sternly. “I would not
come for help because I thought they were sleeping together. I came to you
because she is making him feel things. You know, with her protocol.”

“Well,
you pretty much had to come to me, because you’re stuck working in my office
until field study starts next week,” Rebecca added lightly. “How can you spot
empathic manipulation in the first place? It can be pretty subtle.”

“You
don’t know what I see with these eyes. I’m not broken, Rebecca,” Eerie reminded
her. “Besides, I noticed when you tried to use your protocol on me, didn’t I?”

Rebecca
had to give the girl credit on that one, even if she wouldn’t openly
acknowledge it. She looked for a place to stub out her cigarette, but found the
ashtray so overwhelmingly full that it wasn’t possible. She emptied the
contents into the trashcan, wrinkling her nose at the ash kicked up, then
finished the job on the blackened bottom of the ceramic tray she’d been given
so many years before, when she was a student here at the Academy.

Eerie
was in one of her rare lucid moods. The shimmer in her eyes was diminished
today, and when she spoke, it was careful and pained, with an air of profound reluctance.
The feeling was unkind, but Rebecca had greater affection for the girl’s more
pitiable persona.

“Emily
doesn’t have that kind of empathic ability,” Rebecca insisted. “She’s quite
weak, actually. I doubt she could do any kind of significant manipulation, let
alone a lasting one.”

Eerie
tossed her head and threw her hands in the air, gestures so dramatic by her
standards that Rebecca was startled.

“She
was touching him,” Eerie said insistently. “At the time. All the times.”

“That’s
why I think – ”

Eerie
stomped her foot again.

“You
aren’t listening,” Eerie said, tears of frustration forming in the corners of
her strange eyes. “I don’t mean it like that. She was touching Alex, Rebecca. When she did it. You
know what I mean, right?”

Actually,
Rebecca knew perfectly well. The catalyst effect. Michael might have been
scared of Alex’s Black Protocol – with reason – but the part about Alex that
kept her awake at night, that gave her the heebie-jeebies, was his potential as
a catalyst. Gaul worried about what would happen if Alex came into contact with
Mitsuru, who was obviously still obsessed with operating her own restricted
Black Protocol, and Rebecca recognized the validity in that. Rebecca herself
was concerned about the effect his protocol might have on Eerie’s unique body
chemistry – and, in turn, the effect that same body chemistry might have on
Alex, and she stood by that worry. Maybe, she thought, they had gotten too
cute, too clever this time; maybe they had overlooked the most obvious person,
perhaps the most desperate person.

Emily
was a Class B empath, so she had just a shred of ability. Her protocol was
limited mainly to perceiving the emotional state of those around her, rather
than manipulating it. She was clever and persistent, so given time, Emily could
make very small tweaks in other people – Rebecca was well aware that she had
done so in the past on a few occasions. Since it had mainly been to stop
bullying or avoid unpleasant social scenes, Rebecca had let it slide. A
manipulation on the order Eerie was describing, on the other hand, should have
been impossible. It was a Class F operation, a severe and lasting
transformation that would require ability, time, and a huge reserve of
strength. There was a nine-year-old boy in the Academy’s grade school who
Rebecca believed to be the most powerful empath currently at the Academy
besides herself. Potentially, Rebecca suspected that he could even surpass her
own abilities, and turn out to be the first Class M empath in living memory.
Nonetheless, he would be sadly incapable of doing what Eerie alleged Emily had
done to Alex until he was fully trained.

The
problem was inexperience. Employing an empathic protocol repeatedly, with such
subtlety that neither the subject nor the people around him were aware, was an
amazing feat, requiring practice and instruction. Rebecca had been lucky enough
to find a teacher, and callous enough when she was young to experiment on those
around her. She was confident in her abilities, having tested and honed them.
For most empaths, however, there was simply no way to attempt a manipulation on
that order, much less perform it regularly enough to become proficient. Even if
Alex was somehow elevating Emily from a Class B to a Class F…

Was
Alex really elevating Emily to Class F without even realizing?

…even
if he was, she still shouldn’t be capable of a complex and nuanced operation of
this sort. Emily didn’t have the technical knowledge to pull it off. Raw power
alone, even a great deal of it, wouldn’t be sufficient.

“I
don’t see it, Eerie,” Rebecca concluded reluctantly.

“Just
trust me!”

For
a moment, her temper flared. Eerie had more or less gone out of her way to
embarrass Rebecca in front of her boss. Eerie made Rebecca look foolish and
shortsighted for the very same reasons that had earned Rebecca a reprimand
during her own Academy days. The same incident, oddly enough, that led to the
misshapen clay ashtray. Though Rebecca knew the similarities were the source of
her frustration, that knowledge didn’t make her feel any less frustrated.

“No,
Eerie. I warned you about this – you don’t get to play the trust card with me,
not right now. You abused that privilege,” Rebecca snapped. “Don’t ask me to
take this on faith. You’re lucky that I’m even bothering to listen to you.”

Eerie
looked briefly furious, then her expression turned stricken, her hands dropping
to her sides as she cried in frustration. Rebecca was more than a little
surprised. Eerie cried easily until a few years ago, when she stopped
completely, for reasons that she had never explained. Eerie shut Rebecca out of
what little contact she had forged between their minds around the same time,
for equally nebulous reasons. To the best of Rebecca’s knowledge, Eerie hadn’t
cried since.

“Then
talk to Alex,” Eerie demanded, sniffling. “Bring him here and see for yourself.
Then you can tell me whether I am lying or not.”

“Maybe,”
Rebecca allowed, turning her attention reluctantly to the stack of paperwork
that Gaul circulated perpetually through the office, like that Greek guy in
Hell endlessly rolling a rock up a hill, whose name she couldn’t remember. “If
I get the time, I’ll try and talk to him early this month, even though I just
saw him two weeks ago. Don’t hold your breath, kiddo.”

“Why
are you being this way, Rebecca?” Eerie asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. “You
should just let me!”

“Let
you what?”

“Let
me out of trouble!” Eerie pleaded. “Just let me talk to him. Please?”

Rebecca
made a show of meticulously filling out the first page in front of her,
appearing to study it thoroughly while she considered her options. The truth
was, in her own opinion, Rebecca wasn’t nearly as nice as people thought. She
was just very sensitive, as an empath, and hated it when the people around her
were unhappy. That always made her feel bad, too. With the exception of Gaul’s
unhappiness, which Rebecca had perversely come to treasure.

Beyond
that, she loved Eerie. She couldn’t help it, and it would be stupid not to
admit it privately. Still, Eerie had embarrassed her, and that didn’t seem to
bother Eerie at all. Which upset Rebecca a great deal.

Rebecca
thought it over for a while. Her glance strayed back to the stupid ashtray.

“You
don’t deserve a chance when you haven’t even finished your punishment,” Rebecca
said tiredly. “But if you are very, very good, I might try and arrange a little
time for you to do whatever it is you have in mind, provided it’s not what I’m
thinking it is. I’m serious about that.”

“It’s
not that,” Eerie said reassuringly. “Probably.”

“Make
certain it isn’t,” Rebecca warned her. “I have to work in this office. Finish
the files in the other room, and then we’ll talk about it. Tomorrow. Okay?”

But
Eerie had already skipped off, confident of her eventual victory. Rebecca sat
and smoked, contemplating the ugly ceramic ashtray and thinking how stupid it
was to assume that age made you less susceptible to a broken heart.

* * *

“Haven’t seen you in a
while,” Alex offered.

It
was impossible to tell what the look Margot gave him meant. Her expression was
always the same, unless she was really angry – so all he could say for sure was
that she wasn’t really angry. She paused briefly in the process of wrapping his
hands in white tape, then shrugged and went back to it.

“Field
study.”

“Oh.
So, uh, how’s it going? You’re doing stuff for Audits, right?”

Margot
gave him the barest of nods.

“Yeah,”
Margot said reluctantly, as if she had admitted to something that he might use
against her. “Seems like it’s going okay. How do you like Miss Gallow’s
Program?”

Just
the mention of the name brought the bleeding pig back to mind, and Alex
dispelled it with an effort. He wasn’t about to share anything about that
incident, even if Steve had probably already told everyone about it. Steve
never passed up an opportunity to take a shot at Alex – time hadn’t diminished
their animosity at all.

“I
don’t think it’s any worse than Miss Aoki’s version. It isn’t any better,
either. Sometimes – well, most of the time, actually – I don’t think I’m cut
out for it. You know, killing people and stuff. It’s weird, but sometimes I
even feel bad about Mr. Blue-Tie.”

“Who?”

“A
Weir,” Alex said, embarrassed. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter. I guess I don’t
know if I have it in me. This whole thing, the Program or whatever – it’s a
fucking nightmare as far as I’m concerned.”

“We
all think that way at first, Alex,” Margot said softly, tapping the wrap on his
right hand to see if it met her standards. “Then we adjust. It won’t bother you
forever.”

“I’m
not sure that makes me feel better. Is that really an improvement? Or are they
just wearing us down?”

Margot
turned his hand over, gave it a final inspection and a quiet grunt of approval,
then moved on to his other hand.

“You
tell me,” she said, pulling a fresh length from the roll of tape. “You’re the
one with all the problems.”

Alex
almost got mad. That would not have been a good idea, even if Margot was
working in Michael’s class as an aide today, and therefore obligated to be more
tolerant than usual. He’d had the bad luck to spar with her, just once, in Miss
Aoki’s class. He broke his arm blocking her first kick. Her second kick had
been aimed at his head – at least he thought so, because of the concussion he
received as a result. On the upside, he couldn’t actually remember anything
else about the fight. He was about to say something obnoxious, but then he noticed
the tension in her movements, the slight indications of a frown of her face.
Alex remembered where she lived and got a little worried.

“Have
you, uh – have you been back long enough to see Eerie?”

Alex
looked away, trying hard to sound casual.

“I
have.”

He
waited a moment, but Margot appeared to be absorbed with wrapping his hand.

“Yeah?”
Alex prompted. “How is she? We keep…not running into each other, I guess.”

Margot
turned his hand and pushed his thumb up, so she could put extra tape along the
edges of his knuckles, where the impact would be the greatest.

“My
understanding is that you suck,” Margot said blithely. “That’s what I hear.”

“Oh.
Um.”

“Right,”
Margot agreed, though he didn’t think he’d said anything that she could agree
with. “That’s about the impression I have of you, as well. I can’t say I’m
unhappy that Eerie is coming around.”

“She’s
angry with me,” Alex said slowly.

Margot
paused to glare at him, the roll of tape hanging from one of his hands, but he
didn’t think she was actually particularly angry.

“She
said you guys made out once, week before last, and then you haven’t spoken to
her since, even though both of you are in homeroom together.” As oblivious as
he knew he was, Alex couldn’t help but notice envy in the last part of the
statement. Alex was a bit surprised. He never would have thought that Margot
would have been the type to miss school. “Eerie said that every time she sees
you, you’re with Emily, being all cutesy. What exactly did you think I was
going to say, Alex?”

Alex
sighed, and tried not to hear the other kids behind him, snickering and
gossiping over what they heard. Margot finished the wrap on his right hand,
testing to see if it was thick and smooth enough to satisfy her. Apparently it
was satisfactory, because she reached for the gloves sitting on top of his gym
bag. They were light, mutant things, bulbous on the outside but almost
nonexistent on the inside. They left his fingers and thumb free for grappling,
but offered a couple inches worth of padding over his knuckles and the back of
his hand.

“Pretty
much exactly what you said, but maybe angrier,” Alex admitted, holding out his
hand so she could work the left glove over the tape.

Margot
appeared to think about it while she worked.

“I’m
not that angry, because I don’t think that much of you,” Margot said casually,
a thin, polite smile on her face. “I don’t like seeing Eerie with you. Emily is
vapid and weak, so I don’t really care what you do with her. But the idea of
you and Eerie; well, I don’t approve. Getting close to Emily might be the first
thing you’ve done since you arrived that I support. Keep it up. Eerie will get
over you eventually, I’m sure.”

“Hey!”
Alex objected. “Maybe I deserve some of that. But it’s a little harsh, don’t
you think? I mean, I do like her...”

Margot
shrugged. She had let Eerie cut off her hair before she started field study,
and Alex was still trying to get used to it. It was a little ragged around the
nape of her neck, but it didn’t look bad. Alex had to give credit to anyone
brave enough to let Eerie near their face with scissors.

“Not
harsh enough, I guess,” Margot said, looking away, her expression terse and
strained. “You know I live with Eerie, right?”

“Well,
yeah…”

Margot
sighed deeply.

“You
want to see her?”

“Wait,
what?” Alex asked, scratching his head with one gloved hand. “I thought you
said I sucked?”

“You
do, but that girl is raving mad,” Margot said with an expression of annoyance,
and then hesitating. “Look, I can get you in. Tonight, after dinner. Do you
want to or not?”

“Yeah,
of course.”

“Fine.
Meet me outside the library after dinner. Wait on the back steps. When I’m sure
everything is cool, I’ll come for you.”

The
plan puzzled him, and he opened his mouth to tell Margot as much. He wanted to
say that her brief time with Audits had already made her paranoid, but she
turned and walked away before he had the chance, striding off toward Katya who
was patiently waiting her turn to be taped. Alex looked automatically for the
bouncing pigtails that were no longer there as Margot walked past. For a
second, he felt a kind of giddy happiness at the thought of seeing Eerie. Then
he remembered all the weird things he had done, that he would have to answer
for, and his apprehension returned. He wasn’t exactly sure how long Michael stood
off to his side, waiting for him to notice.

“Hi,”
Alex said sheepishly. “Sorry. I was thinking.”

“Wouldn’t
want to interrupt such a rare event,” Michael said, wearing his usual
implacable grin. “But anytime you’re feeling up for it, I know a Muay Thai instructor
who’s just dying to meet you.”

“Right,”
Alex said, grabbing his headgear and mouthpiece from the gym bag. “I thought it
had been a long time since someone kicked my ass.”

Michael
clapped him on the back and laughed as he led him toward one of the gym’s three
elevated boxing rings. He wore a white T-shirt and board shorts, and as always,
Alex was profoundly envious of his physique – Michael looked, more or less, as
if someone had carved one of those ancient Greek statues of the gods out of
some kind of lustrous, dark wood, then added dreadlocks and black tattoo work
for good measure. He was easily the most popular teacher on staff, the best
physical trainer and protocol instructor, and the most patient man Alex had
ever met. Michael was also the object of more than a few crushes from students
in the combat program, some of whom stared jealously as he walked Alex across
the room.

“Thanks
for not letting Margot do it,” Alex said tensely, biting down experimentally on
his mouthpiece, a nervous habit he seemed to have picked up. “She might have
tried to kill me.”

“I’m
not a sadist, son.” Michael appeared genuinely surprised. “This isn’t the
Program. I wouldn’t do that shit to you. I’m trying to help you improve, that’s
all. I don’t like seeing people hurt, much less my students.”

“I
think you’re the only one here who thinks that way.” Alex was a touch
embarrassed by the overwhelming gratitude he felt. Michael was the first person
he met at the Academy, and the only one he trusted completely. “I can’t decide
whether the Program was better when Miss Aoki was in charge, or now that Miss
Gallow is. They’re both pretty awful, aren’t they?

For
a second, as they approached the side of the ring, Michael looked so unhappy
that Alex couldn’t believe it. The moment was over so fast, the expression so
out of character, that Alex started to doubt that he had seen it at all.
Nothing, after all, bothered Michael, not like that.

“Yes,”
Michael agreed playfully, grinning. “Back to the job at hand, alright? The last
time we did this, when you were in the clench, you let him tie you up in a Thai
plum,” Michael said, putting his hands on the back of Alex’s neck, fingers
interlocked, to illustrate. “You do that, he can nail you with knees all day,
son. You have to keep him outside, work your jab and throw some low kicks, keep
him cautious. You have reach, I keep telling you – but that’s no good if you
don’t use it.”

Alex
nodded, put in his mouthpiece, strapped on his headgear, and clambered through
the ropes, thinking all the while that Michael could have been talking about a
lot more than just his reach.

Fifteen

Alice was in her diary room, printing the day’s events in
laborious capital letters on cream-colored paper. The cup of coffee she forgot
an hour earlier sat, ice-cold, beside her elbow. Arrayed around her on the old
writing desk were more black leather-bound volumes in haphazard stacks and
piles. The left side was reserved for the diaries she was reading, the right
for those that she completed in recent years. The walls of the room were
nothing but inset bookshelves, unstained brown wood with row after row of
diaries in varying states of repair. Alice didn’t know how old she was, but the
other day she had searched for the oldest diary in the room. The oldest she
could find was from 1922. She had been freaked out by that, but she hadn’t said
anything to Rebecca or Alistair when they came around regularly to pester her.

She
probably spent too much time up here. Alice knew from her diaries that this had
always been her preferred retreat. Alistair’s download had restored the
framework of her memories: recent events and happenings, the names and formal
relationships, and some of her past, but none of the context had come with it.
Her own mind felt alien, like someone had replaced the furniture in her bedroom
while she was out with things that were nice but not quite the same. Still, the
download had worked well enough that she could manage, and every day Alice
remembered bits and pieces – not exactly memories, but feelings and
preferences; foods and people she liked and disliked, things that she knew how
to do, books she had read and movies she had seen. She put a Darkthrone album
on the stereo the other day – Panzerfaust – the same one that was
playing softly from her laptop at the moment – and was suddenly fairly certain
that they were her favorite band. Stuff like that had been happening a great
deal recently, and trying to remember to write it all down gave her a headache.

When
Alice wasn’t trying to preserve what was left of her, she read from the
diaries. It was fascinating, some of the time, like reading a series of fantasy
novels populated entirely with people she knew but remembered only vaguely. At
random, she had pulled a volume that was more than a decade old, and found
herself reading a detailed description of a night spent with Michael, the
scratches her nails had left across his broad, muscular back. She blushed to
think that she had considering flirting with the handsome black man the night
before at dinner. Four hours later, reading another diary, she discovered why
they no longer spoke, and did some more blushing.

Alice
read the most about the people around her, what she thought of them, what they
had done together. Rebecca Levy was interesting, because she was one of the
only people that Alice actually remembered of her own accord. Xia, too, who she
remembered not to hug when she saw him – he was pathological about germs,
living in a sealed clean room in the Science building at the Academy. There was
something about Rebecca, just thinking about her made Alice feel a little
safer. Alice knew that she trusted Rebecca and Xia, as far as she was willing
to trust anyone. Alistair, on the other hand…

He had
come to visit her several times since her repair, to treat her and help her
reconstruct her memories into some sort of order. He was unfailingly polite.
She respected him as a boss. The diaries were replete with stories of his
prowess and brilliant improvisations in the field. Nonetheless, Alice didn’t
like having him in her head. She had to take a long, hot shower after each of
his visits. The entries in her diaries made this relationship all the more
problematic.

Many
of her diaries had asides, notes written directly to herself, on the assumption
that she would eventually forget. Most of them were not particularly
significant, though a few had been helpful. The aside that particularly
concerned her was brief, but was underlined several times for emphasis.

‘Something
is wrong with Alistair,’ it read, her normally neat block letters slanted with
agitation.

There
was nothing else in the diary to help her understand the note, but it fed her
growing distrust of her supervisor. Alice wasn’t entirely sure that she had
been able to hide that suspicion from Alistair during their telepathic
reconstruction sessions, but he never said anything about it. She didn’t know
why she didn’t trust him. Alice wasn’t sure how much she trusted the diaries,
or the even the woman who had written them. It was like reading the thoughts of
a different person who had inhabited a similar space and time. She needed
something to lean on, though, and the disjointed, verbose diaries were the most
solid objects available.

The
first week was the worst. The entire time, Alice felt as if she were trying to
scramble up a gravelly hill, sliding back further with every step she took
forward. She could see pity in the eyes of everyone she met, when she couldn’t
remember who they were, and it wounded her. More often than not, she protected
herself by responding with hostility – and the cruel smile that her face
settled in almost automatically. That, at least, she felt comfortable with, the
smile at least she knew as her own.

Recent
weeks had been a little better. It had been days since she met someone and
didn’t know who they were, or made a colossal misstep in conversation. She was
initially reluctant when Gaul had approached her and offered a temporary
teaching position, running the Program. But when she’d actually gone to the
shooting range and the cavernous room with the tile floor dotted with tiny,
irreversible bloodstains and a rough painted circle, it all came flooding back.
Alice threw herself into the work. It helped her to center herself, and she
knew instinctively that she had looked to violence for that in the past as
well.

It
didn’t hurt that Alex Warner turned out to be almost as fun to pick on as
Mitzi.

Alice
wrote until her hand cramped, until she was certain she had written everything
important – her conclusions and suspicions, the whole of the day’s events, in
as concise a manner as possible. Then Alice returned to reading one of the
diaries she pulled from the wall earlier, one of the more recent volumes. She
was primarily concerned with what she was doing in the months before her
disappearance.

She
was engrossed in the diary, and the knock at the door was so quiet, that at
first Alice wasn’t sure if she had heard it. She crept to the side of the door
out of habit, light on the balls of her feet, then remembered that there was no
peephole, and reluctantly opened it a crack. She peeked outside, sighed for
effect, then opened the door to let Rebecca in.

“Finally!
I could feel you standing on the other side of the door, you know. What a
fucking day, let me tell you,” Rebecca said, breezing past her, brown hair tied
back in a bun with something that looked like a chopstick sticking through it.
She wore a tight blue T-shirt with the UCLA logo and worn, comfortable-looking
jeans, a lit cigarette in her right hand. “I swear these kids spend their free
time plotting new ways to make my life miserable. When Gaul pulled me from the
field I thought I was getting a reward. A vacation, you know? At least a desk
job with weekends off. I thought that life would be simpler with no one
shooting at me.”

Rebecca
glanced around the room, then settled precariously on the corner of Alice’s
desk, nudging the trashcan with her sneaker, so she could knock the ash into
it. Alice barely managed to avoid laughing aloud. She already knew that Rebecca
would refuse any chair in the room – without needing her diary to remind her,
she knew that. A strange habit, but the familiarity of it was comforting.

“Since
when did you ever give anyone the chance to shoot at you?” Alice asked fondly,
sitting down at her desk and closing her diary.

Rebecca
winked at her with a wry grin.

“Somebody
has been doing her homework on the old days, I see,” Rebecca said, smiling.
“Been reading about our many adventures? Have you read about that thing in
Greece, yet? The one with those two amazing Algerian cousins?”

A
piece of Alice’s memory fell out of the sky, whole and vibrant, just like that.
It was a good thing. She felt warm and her skin tingled, thinking about that
night, lying on the beach on a very small island, the wind off the
Mediterranean cooling the sweat on her naked back.

“Yeah,”
Rebecca sighed. “That was back when I used to get laid occasionally.”

Rebecca
snuffed out her cigarette and dropped it into the trashcan, then hopped up to
wander the room. She crouched over the laptop and switched the music to Minor
Threat. Alice let it pass. She had learned Rebecca hated black metal earlier
that day from one of her diaries.

“Why
don’t you, then, if you miss it?” Alice asked mischievously. “It’s not
particularly hard to arrange.”

Rebecca
snorted and resumed her perch on the exposed corner of the desk. It looked
uncomfortable to Alice, but whatever.

“I’m
not like the rest of you people,” Rebecca said, taking a hard-shell plastic
case from one of her pants pockets and opening it. “I don’t want to have to go
to work the next day with the person I just slept with. It’s...icky.
Uncomfortable. Besides, my job practically requires me to be all of these kids’
big sister. That’s a very fragile notion. I have to try and stay as perfect as
possible in their eyes.”

Alice
laughed at the idea of Rebecca keeping up an appearance of virtue – Rebecca,
who chronically smoked, swore, and littered with a haphazard apathy. Of course,
thanks to her empathic gifts, no one held any of that against her. It simply
wasn’t possible.

“Besides,”
Rebecca continued blithely, pulling a neatly rolled joint out of the plastic
case, “I’m not even remotely attracted to anyone here. Not my type.”

Rebecca
lit the joint and inhaled, coughed briefly, and then, with her eyes red and
watering, offered it to Alice. Alice wondered if she did stuff like that, and
couldn’t remember. She refused, to be safe. Rebecca shrugged indifferently.

“Remind
me,” Alice said, trying to sound casual. “What is your type?”

“That
reminds me of a story, actually,” Rebecca said mischievously, pausing
occasionally to pull at the smoldering joint. “We did a job together in
Venezuela one time, out in the jungle – FARC country, you know? Anyway, we’re
slogging along through the brush and the trees, and it had been raining for days.
It was terrible, my hair smelled like mildew, and this purported guerrilla
group we are supposed to check out aren’t anywhere. Finally, after three days,
we drag ourselves into this little village, way the fuck out there, expecting
nothing but Indians. Instead, it turns out that there’s this whole group of
graduate students from the University of Ohio at the same village,
anthropologists, and they end up offering us dinner. So, we’re hanging out,
getting drunk on this awful moonshine they distill out there in a tin boiler,
waiting for them to finish cooking some sort of stew. Then you tap me on the
shoulder, and you point out this guy to me, one of the students…”

Alice
kept smiling expectantly for a moment. Rebecca remained silent and motionless
so long that she got worried.

“And?
Rebecca? Hello?”

“Did
you feel that?” Rebecca asked, her eyes filled with worry.

“What?”

“Alice,”
Rebecca said, dropping the joint, still burning, into the trashcan, and taking
her gently by the shoulders. “Did someone just apport into the Academy?”

Alice
closed her eyes and looked for the silver veins running through the Ether that
marked passage, the roiling of the endless fog. They were there, as obvious and
temporary as contrails.

“Yeah.
Multiple ports, actually. Why?”

“Because
they are all angry, angry and scared,” Rebecca said, heading for the door and
dragging Alice behind her. “Come on.”

“Where
are we going?” Alice asked, grabbing for the shotgun and bandolier that sat
next to the door – blunt, mean, and reassuring.

“Wherever
they’re going,” Rebecca said grimly.

“Where
is that?”

“I
don’t know,” Rebecca snapped, pulling her along. “I haven’t figured out who
they came to kill yet.”

* * *

It seemed like he
waited on the steps for a long time. It wasn’t unpleasant, though; Alex was
sore and battered from Michael’s class, and it felt good to watch the sun sink
below the sea of fog that covered Central. There was a certain pleasant
tension, torn between eagerness and anxiety, at what might happen with Eerie.
Alex hit play on his MP3 player, and it brought him something new, odd
electronic music, something he’d never heard before. Which meant that Eerie had
downloaded it to the device when she plugged it into her laptop a few weeks
ago. The singer’s voice was pitched-shifted into a frantic, sexless thing, the
desperation of a late-night nervous breakdown over a long-distance call.

Alex
decided that didn’t fit his mood, skipping ahead until he hit something more
innocuous, a hip-hop group from Hong Kong named Lazy Motherfuckers. He only had
a different sweatshirt and jeans to change into, but they were his nicest
sweatshirt and jeans. Stretched out on the warm grey stone, thinking about
nothing in particular, he zoned out until he felt Margot looking down on him,
though he didn’t hear her approach.

“Come
on,” Margot urged, helping him up with one cool hand.

“Did
I tell you that I like your hair short? Looks good. Suits you.”

Margot
mumbled something and turned away.

“Let’s
go,” she said roughly, over her shoulder. “I don’t want anyone to notice. We
have a pretty narrow window of time to work with.”

“Are
you sure you aren’t over-thinking? Can’t I just hop a fence or something?”

“Are
you kidding me? Eerie’s in trouble with Rebecca. Rebecca’s not to be messed
around with,” Margot said seriously. “Even if she is a softie when it comes to
Eerie, she’s still an Auditor…”

“What?”
Alex stopped in his tracks, dazed. “What did you just say?”

Margot
stopped at the edge of the trees and looked back at him as if he were insane.

“Rebecca
is an Auditor, you fool.” Margot’s mouth was a barely visible contemptuous
line, her eyes gleaming with an internal radiance that shone through the dusk.
“You actually didn’t know? She must not have wanted you to find out. Well,
that’s life, right? You can’t take anyone at face value. I work with them now,
Alex,” Margot said, sounding a bit like she was laughing. “The current
Auditors. Alistair, Alice Gallow, Mitsuru Aoki, Xia, and, of course, Rebecca
Levy. Though I’ve never seen her out in the field. I hear she’s terrifying.”

“Really?”
Alex was dumbfounded, walking blindly behind Margot while his mind was very
much elsewhere. “She just seems so...I don’t know. Nice, I guess. I’m having
trouble imagining it.”

“You
are a soldier, Alex. So is pretty much everyone you know,” Margot said
casually, but with a terrible coldness. “At some point, you are going to have
accept that.”

Stunned
as he was, Alex knew that Margot was right. He had been fooling himself, after
all. If she was in charge of him, what else could Rebecca be? And why did he
feel so surprised? It wasn’t as if Michael had always been a teacher. He knew
that Miss Gallow and Miss Aoki worked in the field, killing people, but
Rebecca…

It
wasn’t just that she hadn’t told him, though that was a part of it. Seeing her
as an Auditor was so profoundly at odds with the woman he thought he knew, he
had difficulty reconciling the information. Alex felt betrayed, and was
surprised to have such a strong reaction. He hadn’t realized the degree to
which he had trusted Rebecca, until that moment, when he started to question
it.

God,
he hated empathy.

He
followed Margot through the wooded area behind the library; a cluster of willow
trees hugging a milky, churning creek, surrounded by twisted oaks and deliberately
spaced fruit trees. It was a popular place to hang out and study during the
day, when the weather was nice, and the students who smoked would often sneak
out here. In the evening half-light, however, the ground was a treacherous
tangle of roots and brambles, and Alex stumbled and muttered curses under his
breath. Margot periodically urged to hurry, apparently untroubled by the
darkness. Eventually, she seized his hand like a mother pulling along a
recalcitrant child.

“It’ll
be quicker this way,” Margot snapped by way of explanation, scowling as she
pulled him along, her cold fingers tight around his wrist. His arm hurt, but he
was afraid to say anything.

They
walked roughly parallel with the creek for a short time, emerging behind the
low hills to the east of the monolithic Administration building. A cluster of
homes surrounded by low fences was nestled in a small valley notched between
the hillsides, one of which looked familiar. It took Alex a moment to place it.
The wind and the dark must have been playing tricks on his eyes – more than
once, he could have sworn that he saw someone following them, a figure he
couldn’t make out through the trees. Margot’s pace was too demanding to stop
for a good look. Alex quickly forgot, focused on avoiding roots and tree trunks
in the waning light.

“Isn’t
that Anastasia’s house?”

“We
are neighbors,” Margot acknowledged. “The little one on the end, that’s Eerie,
Sebastian, and myself.”

“Who’s
Sebastian?”

“He’s
a pyrokine, like Xia. Maybe even more so. A bit touchy about strangers. Might
try to burn you alive if he notices you skulking around. Fortunately, he’s only
ten. He’s so absorbed watching the TV downstairs that he will never notice you.
He kinda latched on to Eerie a few years ago, and he’s lived with us since,”
Margot said, tossing her shoulders indifferently. “Don’t worry about it. You
probably won’t get set on fire.”

“I
hate it when you say stuff like that, you know,” Alex complained, following her
with a heavier heart than when he had started.

“I
do.”

They
wound around the buildings and hillocks in an abstract path that seemed utterly
random at first. It wasn’t until they were almost halfway to the house that
Alex realized Margot was intent on keeping them out of view of the bulk of the
Administrative building. She stopped one house past Anastasia’s, just short of
their destination.

“Here
is my ID,” Margot said, handing him her pass card. “Give me yours.”

“Why?”
Alex said, digging it out of his pocket.

“So
that when you open the door, it will record me going in the house, rather than
you, dumbass,” Margot said, snatching his card. “I’m going to read in your
room. I’m not going to see anything gross in there, right?”

“I
don’t know what you mean by that, but no,” Alex said, trying to remember if
that was true. “Nothing gross. I didn’t make the bed, though.”

“I’ll
make do. Eerie’s room is upstairs, second door. You have till midnight, then we
meet back here and exchange cards. Don’t leave me standing out here, or you
will be sorry.”

Margot
didn’t wait for a response. She disappeared into the gloom, leaving him to
stare at the pass card in his hand, as if it held some special import.
Eventually he walked cautiously to the little cottage, similar to places he had
seen in the older neighborhoods around Bakersfield, wood and white stucco with
ivy on the walls. The door clicked open with a swipe of the card. The stairs
were to his right. He could hear a TV in the next room, but no one reacted to
his arrival. He crept up the stairs to the second floor, passing an unmarked door
he assumed belonged to Margot. Alex wondered what her room was like, what
Margot would keep there, if there was anything on the walls. Mainly, though, he
was nervous.

Alex
knocked as quietly as possibly, but Eerie must have been waiting for him,
because she immediately called out musically for him to come inside.

* * *

Anastasia waited for
Donner to find the right bush to relieve himself on. It wasn’t glamorous, but
that was dog ownership – even if the dog was actually a wolf that could
transform into something that looked human. She stood near a ditch on the side
of the road while Timor hovered at a discreet distance, and Renton at a less
discreet one.

“Well,
hello,” Renton said unexpectedly, his hands suddenly on her shoulders, steering
her in the direction of a figure moving quietly and deliberately through the
failing light. “Is that Margot? Where do you think she’s going at this hour?”

She
shrugged out of his grip and kept a firm leash on her temper, which threatened
to explode. Ever since Anastasia had brought Timor in, Renton had been
particularly obnoxious. She knew why perfectly well, of course, and it vexed
her to no end.

“I
don’t know. Why don’t you fix that,” Anastasia suggested coolly.

“Follow
a girl through the woods at night? I’m your man…”

Renton
smiled creepily and padded off in Margot’s direction. Anastasia knew perfectly
well what Margot was up to, obviously, but she planned to have hot cocoa and
watch the DVD set her little sister had given her on her bed with Donner and
Blitzen, and if Renton saw, he would snicker. She enjoyed the idea of him
hanging around outside Alex’s room, cold and getting the wrong idea about
Margot, a great deal more. Besides, Timor was her favorite among the cousins,
but so recalcitrant when Renton was around that they hardly had the opportunity
to talk. She double-checked that Renton had actually left, glanced at the still-occupied
Weir, and then wandered in his direction.

“You
can relax,” Anastasia said generously. “Renton will remain occupied for the
rest of the evening.”

“Good,”
Timor said, breathing a sigh of relief. “I can’t get used to all this
subterfuge, Anastasia. Are you sure you want to pursue this course of action?”

“There
is no viable alternative,” she responded airily, swirling her skirt with one hand.
“Are you certain you can handle matters, when the time comes?”

“Oh,
yes,” Timor said, with his charming and utterly matter-of-fact confidence.
“Won’t be a problem. Have you picked a time?”

“Not
yet.” Anastasia said, watching the last sliver of the sun disappear and feeling
the same sadness that she always felt when she had to throw something away that
had become a familiar part of her daily existence. “But it will be soon, I’m
certain. Be ready.”

“Of
course,” Timor said smoothly, giving her a smile that rather made her wish that
they weren’t cousins. Then again, Timor being her cousin made it permissible
for her to take his arm and stroll along the darkened road, so maybe
circumstances weren’t entirely bad. “Do you think that Katya will have to do
her half of the job?”

“That
is still very much up in the air,” she said, sighing and looking at the
emerging stars. “We will go to the island, and then we will see what happens.
If everything goes according to plan, then we have nothing to worry about. If
not, we still get Emily to cook for us on vacation. She is quite a talented
chef, you see.”

“Yeah.
Dinner was good,” Timor agreed, nodding. “You do realize there’s no way she’s
the girl to back, right? You have to know. You always know everything. Why are
you helping her, then?”

Anastasia
pulled his arm closer because she could, because he didn’t think anything of it
– and because Renton wasn’t here. Lately that had started to make Anastasia
feel a little giddy.

“Because
I enjoy her company, I suppose,” Anastasia said, feeling as if she were
confessing something. “Also, she has something I want. Her older sister.
Therese Muir is an effective Operator. If I cannot recruit her, then I am going
to have to kill her, because she is a thorn in my side, as things currently
stand. In any case, you shouldn’t underestimate a desperate woman, and Emily is
desperate. You really like Eerie that much more, then? I wouldn’t have thought
it.”

It
was too dark to be sure, but Timor looked like he was thinking about it. She
didn’t pester him, and they wandered a bit off the path, into the shadows of
the woods and the smell of moss, the wolves trailing behind them. She clutched
at his arm, unable to see, but he walked confidently through the sound of
crunching leaves. Even when he had been a rough and clumsy teenager, she
remembered, he had been this way – she couldn’t help but want to rely on him,
and he practically encouraged the whole world to do the same. She wondered, not
for the first time, what it was that made him and his sister so profoundly
different.

“She’s
cute enough,” Timor said indifferently. “And Eerie seems nice in her own weird
way. She’d make a good girlfriend for a shy guy, and Alex is exceptionally shy.
Even I can see that. Emily is, well...she has looks and poise and is a hell of
a cook, but she’s a bit lacking in something important. I’m not sure what it
is, so don’t ask me. She’s just not the kind of girl I can see Alex falling in
love with, that’s all. I hope you’re hedging your bets.”

“You
know I always do,” Anastasia chided him as he took her other hand and lifted
her, delicately, over a protruding obstacle that was invisible to her. “Eerie
and I have cooperated for years. She became recalcitrant and cut me out when
Alex showed up, so I respected her wishes and left her to her own devices.
True, I sent Katya to watch over them, but that is probably excessive caution
on my part. I can’t imagine Alex getting up the courage to do anything more
than talk, but I told Katya to take care of it if things get too heated.”

“Another
night spent outside a window watching those two make out,” Timor laughed.
“You’re going to warp my sister even more than she already is. I’m not sure I –
hey…”

He
trailed off. She would have asked him what was going on, but he put his hand on
her shoulder, and she knew he meant for her to stay quiet. While Timor had
worked as an assassin for her for a year or so, he was a capable bodyguard as
well, and she respected his wishes. Anastasia knew from a lifetime of
experience that part of being guarded successfully was simply cooperating with
the process of being protected. After a moment, he leaned close to whisper in
her ear, she could feel his breath against her skin, and though she never would
have admitted it, she didn’t mind at all.

“There
are two or three people on top of the hill to our right, coming in our
direction, and another group off to the left, circling around the houses. I
don’t think they know we are here. They are probably heading toward one of the
houses behind us. Could be you, could be Alex. Either way, they trip over us
here and we are in trouble. Can you bring your Weir closer?”

Anastasia
pulled the whistle from where it hung on a braided platinum chain, down in
between what she optimistically thought of as her breasts. There was no audible
noise when she blew into it, but the Weir padded over obediently, sidling
through the undergrowth to take positions protectively around her.

“Okay,”
Timor said, sounding impressed and encouraged. “These are better odds. Now,
what do you want to do?”

“I
don’t want them to see us. Let them pass, then follow them before you do
anything. I want to know who they are.”

“Fine,”
Timor said, concentrating briefly, then pointing to a nearby copse, dominated
by one massive leafless oak. “They won’t look over there when they come by.
But, if they have any telepaths with them and they have your signature…”

Anastasia
chuckled as she walked, Timor and the Weir tagging obediently along behind her.

“Not
to worry,” she said warmly. “They won’t notice me, I’m sure.”

She
was right, of course. They didn’t. There were three of them, dressed in grey
and dark blue, faces obscured by smudge paint and darkness. It didn’t matter.
She recognized them nonetheless.

“Taos
Cartel.”

Timor
turned to look at her, his expression strained.

“What?
You can’t be serious!”

“I
am,” Anastasia said icily. “They are members of the Taos Cartel, no doubt about
it. They could only be here for me. We have traitors in the Black Sun. Clearly,
Terrie is not the only cartel the Anathema have compromised.”

“Assassins,”
Timor said softly, watching them disappear into the brush, moving steadily
toward Anastasia’s house. “Here for the future head of the Black Sun. They mean
to put the whole cartel into disarray. Maybe even start a civil war.”

Anastasia
emerged from behind the tree, following the path the assassins had taken, a
respectable distance behind. Donner and Blitzen pressed against the blooming
skirts of her dress, and she was grateful for their presence. She could walk
confidently in front of Timor, her servant, which was important, because the
dogs would do the worrying for her. And there was indeed much to worry over.

“Two
teams that we know about,” Anastasia reminded him. “There could be more. They
aren’t here for me exclusively. The Taos Cartel fields twenty-two combat-capable
operators. If they are making a move, then it makes no sense not to use
everything they have.”

“Are
you going to recall Renton?” Timor asked nervously, checking his long Russian
army coat, no doubt confirming the readiness of various implements of his
trade. “He could be useful.”

“No,
I like him where he is,” Anastasia said thoughtfully. “If they are hitting
multiple targets, I am willing to bet that Alex is one of them. I do need to
warn someone, though.”

She
had Brennan Cree, the only other competent telepath she had on campus, relay
the message. The man she wanted to talk to wasn’t a telepath, but thanks to the
Etheric machinery implanted in his brain, he could download protocols at will
from the network. Since he was a precognitive, he was always listening when
needed – because he anticipated the need.

Director.

Anastasia
Martynova. I assume I know why I’m hearing from you?

Yes.
I have five of them here in two teams. I will take care of them. Nonetheless, I
thought you should know that they are members of the Taos Cartel. There could
be fifteen or so more of them in Central. Proscribe the Taos Cartel. I
officially withdraw the Black Sun’s protection.

Understood.
Don’t bother taking them alive.

Anastasia
broke the connection and smiled. ‘As if’, she thought. There were questions to
be answered, and Gaul and his Auditors certainly didn’t plan to share
information with the Black Sun when they dragged their own prisoners off for interrogation.

“This
works out well,” Anastasia said, satisfied. “Very well. Timor, take the first
group as they leave the woods. If possible, leave one of them alive…”

Timor
acknowledged her with a nod, and then went ahead, moving at a jog. She gave a
curt command in Norwegian, the Weirs’ mother tongue, and they glided after,
splitting to cover Timor’s flanks, moving quickly through the leaves and the
darkness.

Sixteen

“Hello!” Alex yelled over the near-deafening music, waving like a total idiot. He shoved
his hands in his pockets, so that they couldn’t embarrass him further.

Eerie
blinked, looking briefly confused.

“Hi…”

Alex
stood in the doorway.

“What
– uh, what are you listening to?” Alex asked, over the thunderous, robotic
bass.

“The
Glitch Mob,” Eerie responded seriously, after glancing at her laptop. “Do you
like it?”

Alex
shrugged, briefly attempting to figure out if that was the artist or the song
title, then deciding it didn’t matter. Eerie put songs on his MP3 player all
the time without him realizing, as he just hit shuffle in the morning when he
put on his headphones. Because he asked, he was pretty sure he would hear the
song again eventually.

“You
won’t believe this,” Eerie said softly, from where she stretched across a small
couch in the corner of the room, her tongue stained as blue as her hair from
Pixy Stix, “but I actually tried to clean up.”

If
she had, he couldn’t imagine what it had looked like before. There were two
narrow paths through the clutter that led to the small couch on one side of the
room, and the unmade bed on the other. The rest of the floor was covered in a
layer of software cases, DVDs, and articles of discarded clothing. The desk in
the corner groaned under the weight of several different computers and
displays, and the wall behind it was at rat’s nest of cords and black boxes
with green blinking lights. The glow of the enormous dual monitors provided the
primary source of lighting in the room.

“Thanks
for inviting me,” Alex said lamely, shrugging out of his sweatshirt and then
casting about for a place to put it, while she tapped the keyboard on her lap,
reducing the volume of the music. He settled for tossing the sweatshirt on her
rumpled bed, then moved to sit down next to it.

“No,”
Eerie said, setting aside her keyboard and holding out her hands. “Come here,
silly.”

“O-okay,”
Alex stammered, picking his way careful across the floor littered with things
that looked as if they would break if he stepped on them, stepping over the
pile of discarded candy wrappers that surrounded the couch. Eerie waited for
him, her expression blank and ambiguous.

She
lay sideways across the cushions, with her head on one arm of the couch and her
legs thrown across the other, a shoe dangling from one foot. She wore striped
stockings that ran almost all the way to her wrinkled blue skirt, with only a
sliver of white skin showing between. The tank top she wore was blue, with the
phrase ‘Fever Ray’ printed across it, which he assumed was a band. One strap
drooped down her arm, revealing a round, unblemished shoulder. Alex stopped at
the edge of the couch, but she pulled him down onto the couch beside her,
tangled with her in the small space. Alex was so surprised and satisfied that
he was afraid to say anything, for fear of messing the situation up somehow.

“Alex,
could you move your arm a little?” Eerie asked, red-faced. “You are crushing my
chest.”

“Sorry!”
Alex said, straightening up as a reflex, almost falling off his tenuous perch
on the edge of the couch, before she grabbed and pulled him close again.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to – I didn’t know where my hands were…”

“It’s
okay,” Eerie said softly. “You’re allowed to touch. Just not crush, that’s
all.”

“Oh,”
Alex said, feeling his cheeks burn. “That’s, uh…I thought maybe you were mad at
me.”

“Because
you are being all cozy with Emily in class?” Eerie asked, her voice low and
musical. “Or because you kissed me and then didn’t talk to me afterward?”

“Well,
both, I guess,” Alex said, rolling on to his side so that his head was facing
hers, almost uncomfortably close. He could feel the air move when she breathed.
“I feel bad about all of it, so I’m pretty sure it couldn’t have made you feel
good.”

“No,
it didn’t, really,” Eerie admitted. “But I didn’t bring you here to have a
fight.”

“No?”
Alex couldn’t keep his disbelief off his face. “Look, I need you to know, Emily
is only my friend, whatever she thinks. I...I like you, Eerie.”

“That
is good,” Eerie said, putting her finger to his lips. “Now show me how much.”

He tried.
There was a long kiss, sometimes deep, sometimes only their lips touching while
Alex struggled to catch his breath. Eerie ran her fingertips under his shirt
and down his spine. Her touch tingled and made his back arch as he pressed himself
urgently against her. She kissed him, pushing her small tongue into his mouth;
the taste of blue-raspberry artificial flavoring, and seconds later a wave of
euphoria, of disarming excitement and sensation across the broad palette of his
senses, pleasure scrawled in neon letters on the walls of his mind. Eerie
opened her eyes, and they were close enough that he could see his own
reflection in the black of her dilated pupils, his own dazed and hungry face.
For once, he didn’t have to wonder what she saw. The world spun and danced
pleasantly as he lay beside Eerie, pressed against her on the couch.

“Wow.
That’s just…”

Eerie
laughed, a sound like small glass bells breaking.

“That
is how you make me feel,” she said, sounding satisfied. “That is how I know I
like you. You can feel it too, can’t you?”

“I
can,” he admitted, “but I’m not sure what to make of it. It isn’t like before,
in San Francisco.”

“We
aren’t like before,” Eerie said firmly. “You aren’t.”

Alex
lay there, watching multicolored motes of light consume the ceiling, filling
his vision with self-devouring, brilliant fractals. He kissed her neck, her
sweat tasting of honey and the ocean, her skin smelling of sandalwood. When he
touched her thighs, her tights crackled with static electricity.

“Once
I am back from field study, will you take me dancing again?” Eerie asked,
clinging to him.

“Sure,”
he said easily. He would have agreed to anything she asked.

“But
this time you have to dance,” she ordered, her eyes sparkling playfully.

“How
could I ignore you, Eerie?” Alex spoke softly, feeling as if the couch were
floating on the surface of a gently rocking ocean, as if his hand were trailing
along in blood-warm water beside them. “What is wrong with me?”

He
wondered if the music was still playing. He felt like it was, but somehow he
couldn’t be certain. Eerie sat, brushing her hair back from her face and
looking at him with obvious concern.

“Do
you feel better now?”

Alex
was about to be confused, about to ask what she meant, when he realized that he
did feel better. The heaviness, the confusion, the fog that had surrounded him
for days, so ubiquitous that he had stopped even noticing, was gone as quickly
as it had come. His head was brilliantly, marvelously clear, washed clean by
the euphoria of their contact.

“Holy
shit! This is so weird. I must have been half-asleep for days. How could I have
not seen it?”

“You
didn’t want to,” Eerie said, shrugging, then laying her head on his chest. “I
don’t blame you. Emily is pretty, and you feel guilty when you see her. That’s
okay, but it makes you stupid and easy.”

He
should have known. He did know. Of course. How could it have been any other
way? Alex remembered Emily holding his hand under the dinner table and felt a
little queasy. However, on Eerie’s couch, her head tucked comfortably beneath
his chin, her chest moving against his when she breathed, there was no
possibility of anger, there was no implied criticism. The shame that he felt
was entirely his own. Alex realized with startling clarity that the only person
he had failed was himself.

“Oh,
God,” he said dully, his lips numb. “Eerie…I told them that I would go on
vacation to Anastasia’s place over the break. With Emily.”

“Yeah,
I know. Margot told me,” Eerie said, with an unconvincing shrug that he could
feel more than he could see. “That’s okay. I have to do field study in Central
anyway, for the whole break. We wouldn’t be able to hang out even if you
stayed. Besides, I trust you…”

“Why?”

Alex
asked the question before he thought about it, and then it hung in the space he
had created between them.

“Because
I don’t trust myself,” Alex continued hurriedly. “I don’t know even know why
I’ve done what I’ve done recently. Maybe they weren’t even my ideas to begin
with. What if Emily…what if things get all weird again?”

“It isn’t
like that,” Eerie said quietly. “Emily gave you a little nudge, that’s all. She
made it easier for you to do what you already wanted to do. She is not enough
of an empath to make you do something that is actually against your will. Now
that you know what she was doing, you should be able to avoid it in the
future.”

“Really?”
Alex buried his face in her hair. “Then I am an asshole.”

“Sometimes,”
Eerie said, her lips brushing his neck. “I like you anyway.”

“Why
would Emily manipulate my emotions this way? She had to know I’d find out
eventually.”

Alex
had no idea why he felt compelled to ask the question. Eerie shrugged in
response.

“Rebecca
might be able to tell you exactly what happened. You should ask her,” Eerie
suggested. “Alex is interesting. I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

“But
what do they want?” Alex asked, puzzled, his hands resting comfortably on the
flat of Eerie’s back, warm skin through a thin layer of cotton. “Why interfere
with…you know. This. Us.”

“You
keep talking that way, and I’m going to get ideas,” Eerie said, smiling.

That
shut Alex right up.

“They
all want you for their own reasons,” Eerie said mischievously, levering herself
upright so that she was sitting across his lap. “I’m not so different, I
guess.”

“I
don’t understand,” Alex said softly, looking at the blue-haired girl,
surrounded by a corona of soft, honey-colored light, everything gone thick,
sweet, and slow. He reached for her without thinking and she melted into him,
into his arms as naturally as if she had always been there. “I don’t understand
anything.”

“Stop
trying,” Eerie suggested, kissing him, nibbling his lip.

They
stayed that way for a while, pressed together on the couch, their hands and
lips exploring each other tentatively. Eerie smiled at him, and she looked soft
and lovely in the flickering orange light…

Orange
light?

Alex
sat up slightly, so that he could look out the bedroom window that had also
caught Eerie’s attention. It took him a little while to processing what he was
seeing.

“Ah,
Eerie? This might sound dumb...but is Anastasia’s house on fire?”

* * *

Brennan?

Yes,
milady?

Is
Renton presently occupied?

Yes,
milady. He is currently involved in combat near the dormitory buildings. There
are currently three separate engagements happening across campus that we are
aware of, and I am afraid he is at the epicenter of the largest. Shall I send
reinforcements?

“I
doubt he needs the help. Warn me if he comes back this way. And get Katya on
the channel.”

It
took a moment for Brennan to manage the switchover, then there was another
delay while he relayed the instructions. Brennan was not half the telepath that
Renton was, but she was going to have get used to doing without his prodigious
talents in the near future. Such a shame, she thought, clucking her tongue.
What a waste.

Anastasia
smoothed the billowing skirts of her dress carefully before she sat down,
perched on a moderately level rock, careful not to stain or tear the fabric.
She had worn the white dress because she knew Timor liked it, but now she rather
wished that she had not. She had a good view from here, at the edge of the
trees, so that she could watch Timor work under the moonlight. It wasn’t often,
after all, that one had the opportunity to see a combat precognitive in action.
Given the rare nature of their abilities, precognitives worked almost
exclusively in Analytic Pools, but Timor was an exception. A Class C Operator,
Timor had enough precognitive ability to see a bare second or two into the
future. Which was surely the reason that his parents had tithed him to the
Black Sun, and Anastasia’s father had in turn pawned Timor off on her.
Fortunately, Anastasia saw value in what other people discarded. In combat,
after all, a single second was an eternity, and Timor had learned to use his
foreknowledge ruthlessly. She had helped him become deadly long before anyone
realized their mistake in casting him aside.

She
was not overly worried about the attack itself. She had already warned Brennan,
Svetlana had spirited away the staff, and both the Black Sun’s critical
documents and her own wardrobe were safely locked away in fireproof safes.
Nonetheless, Anastasia was forced to admit she hadn’t expected anything quite
as uncouth or mundane as the Molotov cocktail they threw at the roof.

“Oh,
no,” she said, burying her head in her hands. “All my things…”

Milady?

Yes,
Brennan?

Katya
just reported in. She’s confirmed the secondary group in your area. They are
attempting to establish a sniper’s nest. Do you want her to take care of it?

Yes.
And warn Timor.

Of
course, milady.

The
assassins fanned out, clearly waiting for the fire to flush their target from
the burning building. One was probably a pyrokine, judging from the speed by
which the fire consumed the structure. They needed to spread out rather far in
order to cover all three sides of the building, while the other group set up on
the ridge above the house; a spotter with a scope and a sniper armed with what
appeared to be a small cannon. With limited personnel, it wasn’t the worst
setup Anastasia could imagine, but she still felt insulted. If they wanted to
attack the future head of the Black Sun, they should have thrown everything
they had into the operation. Splitting up their forces and attacking multiple
targets across the Academy was either extraordinarily foolish, or a sign that
the attack was little more than a feint.

“Oh,
for heaven’s sake, Timor,” Anastasia said to herself, eyeing the flames
nervously. “Will you please hurry about it?”

Timor
was faster getting into position than his sister, probably because he had the
dogs flanking him, so he could afford to be more confident. Katya was cautious
by nature and the situation was likely to make her more so. Timing limited
Timor’s options, as he had to avoid the sniper’s field of fire. Katya, on the other
hand, had to walk up the rather steep hill, a burden for which Anastasia felt a
certain amount of sympathy.

Timor
hopped the fence between the staff guesthouse and her own in one fluid motion,
utterly casual, without a hint of tension in his movements. When he moved on,
half-crouched, he had a compact CZ 75 with diminutive silencer held in both
hands, away from his body, pointed at the ground. Timor moved with utter
self-assurance, and never looked at the ground in front of him. She knew from
experience that he didn’t need to. There was nothing there that could surprise
him.

Timor
and Katya Zharova, she mused, her cousins no one had wanted, had bloomed into
such lovely and terrible flowers under her watch. Josef Martynova, Anastasia’s
father, had never thought of them as anything other than an obligation, and
treated them accordingly. Anastasia had approached them early. They had a
little trouble putting confidence in the plans and ambitions of a nine-year-old
at first, but they came around quickly once they realized what she was capable
of, and had been among her most faithful followers since. They were both Class
C Operators, and therefore chronically underestimated, frequently to their
advantage. Katya was a transporter who could move far less than her own weight,
and Timor a precognitive who could perceive only the most immediate future. The
Black Sun Cartel had not seen much value in either. Anastasia had seen
tremendous potential in both, and in the years since, her investment in the
siblings had repaid her many times over.

Katya
was erratic, vampy, obsessed with ridiculous gore films, and lethal within ten
meters. Timor was polite, handsome, tragically her cousin and even more
tragically gay, but equally deadly in his own, slightly indirect way. Katya
killed only on command, without passion or remorse. Timor killed effortlessly
whenever he felt it necessary, preferring combat that didn’t upset his
appearance. Both of them were devoted directly to Anastasia, rather than to the
Black Sun.

Timor
let the Weir flush the attacker out from the hillock that concealed him, not
far from the gravel pathway. He simply pointed; there was no need to give the
Weir instructions. Donner and Blitzen were as smart as a reasonably stupid
human, after all, or a staggeringly brilliant wolf. They came at the target
from both sides, almost simultaneously. If they had been trying to kill him,
they would have gone for the throat and the groin, but instead they harried the
assassin, clamping on to a leg and a forearm and tearing out healthy chunks.
The man tumbled backward, screaming as he fell into open space. Timor shot him
coolly in the head with a suppressed pistol, staying back to avoid any errant
splatter.

The
next attacker knew Timor was coming and took better cover, behind a section of
wooden fencing bordered by a raised berm that the pistol could not hope to
penetrate. Timor fumbled in his coat pocket for a moment, dismissing the Weir
with a wave of his other hand. Donner and Blitzen whined with disappointed,
then they lowered their heads and disappeared together into the trees. Timor
pulled a grenade from his pocket, set the timer and removed the safety, then
closed his eyes. He didn’t bother to open them before he tossed the grenade.
His timing was so perfect that it never hit the ground; there was an airburst
directly above the concealed gunman, invisible from where Timor currently
stood. The high-velocity shrapnel tore the man to pieces.

Timor
stepped out in full view of the sniper’s field of vision to stalk the third, clearly
no longer concerned about that possibility of being shot from afar. The sniper
team must have been so busy angling for a shot at either Timor or the target
presumed to be fleeing the burning building that they had ignored Katya
slinking up the hill behind them. She needed little more than line of sight
before she could apport the needles she carried somewhere instantly and
dramatically fatal. Anastasia was pleased. Eliminating the sniper meant Timor’s
task of taking the last attacker alive would be much easier.

“Well,
that that leaves only you, skulking in the woods behind me. Are you ready to
come out yet? Because all of your friends are dead.” Anastasia spoke loudly,
with obvious satisfaction. “If you have a move in mind, then this would be the
time to make it.”

An
isolation field descended from the heavens like inverted thunder, abrupt and
total, separating Anastasia from the scene in front of her like a pane of
glass, perfectly polished and virtually invisible. She could call for help, she
knew, and no one except the person who had been sneaking up behind her for the
last few minutes would ever hear. Not, of course, that she would ever give
anyone the satisfaction.

“Anastasia
Martynova,” the man said, from behind her. “You are a fool. It may have cost my
entire team, but their sacrifice will be worth it to eliminate you.”

“Eliminate
me?” Anastasia said coyly, glancing over her shoulder at the man behind her.
“Please. If you were a professional, you would not have bothered talking to me.
Who are you, anyway?”

Anastasia
did not recognize him, but she knew the facial paint he wore. He was from the
Taos Cartel, a cadet branch of the Black Sun, and obviously one of their top
operators, if he had drawn the opportunity to take a shot at her. Anastasia
found herself in a rare struggle with her temper. She had heard rumors of
dissention in the ranks of the Black Sun, of course, but there were always
rumors.

“It’s
William Steed, Miss Martynova, but you can call me Bill, in light of the fact
that I’ll be killing you,” he said, his grin revealing bad teeth. He wore the
same blue and dark-grey camouflage that the rest of his team had worn, his
features partially obscured with cartel smudge paint, his head shaved to
stubble. “Unless you plan on trying to bargain with me?”

“Whatever
for?” Anastasia asked, amused and letting it show. “Do your worst, Bill.”

He
licked his lips and glanced around furtively. When he turned back to her, she
decided she did not like the expression on his face much at all.

“Your
bodyguards won’t hear you scream. They won’t notice anything is wrong until
long after I’m done with you,” William said with obvious relish. “I suggest you
rethink cooperating.”

“Didn’t
you say that you were here to kill me? Why in the world would I cooperate with
that? Or are you suggesting that you could be persuaded not to kill me?”

William
Steed looked nervous and excited at the same time, pulling a comically large
serrated knife from a belt sheath and pointing it at her.

“Such
a stuck up little bitch,” he sneered. “I remember you, Anastasia Martynova. You
were sitting next to your daddy three years ago, when our cartel was
disciplined and humiliated by the Black Sun. Do you even remember it? Or is
that sort of thing routine for you? I remember your arrogant face, exactly like
your bastard father. I’ve wanted to take you down a few pegs ever since,” he
said, excitedly spraying spittle as he talked. “I might like you better as a
hostage, come to think of it.”

Anastasia
laughed because that was what was expected of her, but honestly, she felt
tired. Treachery, she thought bitterly, was simply exhausting.

“I
don’t think so,” she said distastefully, leaning her head on her knee. “I doubt
very much that anything like that will happen.”

“I
can make you do what I want you to,” he suggested, his voice taking on
resonance and authority. “You will make an excellent bargaining piece, Miss
Martynova. I’d like it if you would come with me.”

“I
am certain that you would,” Anastasia agreed, covering her mouth and stifling a
yawn. “That was a telepathic protocol you just attempted, wasn’t it? Well,” she
said, stretching her back and then standing slowly to face him, “I suppose that
would be quite impressive, under different circumstances.”

He
took one step toward Anastasia, then another. William Steed intended to be bold
and menacing, but the hesitation in his gait betrayed uncertainty. Anastasia
could see the concentration and effort he put into his protocol, his face
reddening and his eyes twitching with strain.

“Are
you starting to understand?” Anastasia asked, her voice full of liberated,
cruel laughter. “I can feel you trying to use your silly little protocol,
William. Tell me...are things going the way you planned?”

He
took a small step back, then looked at the knife in his hand and seem to draw
some confidence from it. He stood his ground, holding the blade out toward
Anastasia like a ward, as if she would simply walk straight into it chest-first
and save him the trouble of stabbing her. Perhaps that was the suggestion he
was trying to feed her now. Anastasia could not be sure, and she did not care
to be.

“Thank
you for the isolation field, by the way,” Anastasia said, walking calmly toward
him. “As much as I would like to make an example out of you, I simply cannot
have anyone seeing this. It is an awfully big secret, after all.”

William
Steed was right about one thing. No one heard the screams.

* * *

“You’re serious?”

Alice
looked at her with an eyebrow raised.

“I’m
pretty sure he’s serious.”

Mitsuru
put her hand on Rebecca’s shoulder.

“I
am also sure that he is serious. The…gravity of the situation cannot have
escaped him,” Mitsuru said delicately. “Rebecca, we need some of them to not
scratch out their eyes and choke on their tongues, so please, please calm
down.”

“Yeah,”
Alice chimed in. “It was funny at first, but we’re running out of bad guys.”

“They
attacked my school. They came for my kids at my school, according to what this
piece of shit of told us. You want survivors? Fuck that. Alistair can
interrogate his corpse.”

“It’s
a lot easier if some of them are still alive,” Alistair said, from the doorway,
inspecting the damaged remains of the dormitory common room, where Rebecca and
Alice had caught the attackers. “I passed Margot Feld on the way in. She’s
already reconstituted most of her torso.” He paused thoughtfully. “Somebody
might want to get her some new clothes. Anyway, Rebecca, I need you to back
down…”

“Don’t
try and be funny,” Rebecca snarled, turning briefly away from the three
remaining assassins, who were crawling on the ground and whimpering. “Nothing
about this is funny. Brittney Abbot is dead. Chris Ross is dead. Cy So is – ”

“Actually,
we got to him in time,” Alistair offered hopefully. “Cy will be okay.”

“Don’t
you dare interrupt me!” Rebecca shouted, causing everyone except Alice to take
a careful step backward. “These are my kids! This is my home…and this is not
happening again.”

Alistair
looked at Rebecca for a long time. Long enough for him to be certain that a
ghost had been woken today for Rebecca. A ghost from a trip long ago, back home
to Venezuela to visit her family, one that had changed everything for her. All
he could feel from her mind was the heat of the blast, the smell of gunpowder
and burning plastic, the awful familiarity of the voices crying weakly for
help. The memories were years old, but as fresh as the wound in Cy So’s
stomach.

“Five
minutes,” Alistair pleaded. “Give me five minutes to ransack their brains for
anything useful, then, if you still feel this way...”

“I
can do it myself,” Rebecca snarled, her expression distorted with fury. The
light that came pouring from inside her was coppery red, a hard flat light that
poisoned the eyes and skin of the men whimpering below her. “They don’t have to
live so that can happen.”

Eventually
they stopped screaming. Sleep would not come easy for any of the Auditors who
watched, excepting Alice, who always slept like a baby. One of the men was
successful in ending his life. Alice did it for the other two. Alistair thought
that she must have been feeling a little out of sorts, because it was quick and
quiet. By Alice Gallow’s standards, that was practically mercy.

Rebecca
knelt in the center of the room and broke down in hysterical tears. Alistair
waited politely until she gathered herself. Then he collected her in his arms,
and urged her to her feet.

“We
should go, Rebecca…”

“To
Gaul,” she said, her voice thick and hesitant. “Take me to Gaul. He needs to
know what I know.”

“Right,”
Alistair said firmly, slinging her arm over his shoulder. “Alice, Mitzi, you
are on cleanup. Sweep the whole compound, no stone unturned. I want to be
certain that it’s clear before we have kids running around.”

Alice
hesitated for a moment, her eyes lingering on Rebecca, then shrugged and headed
out, followed by Mitsuru. Alistair waited till they were gone before laying
Rebecca carefully back down on the floor.

“What
are you doing?” Rebecca slurred, her eyes half-closed. “I need to tell Gaul…”

“I’m
sure you do,” Alistair said, with good humor. “Let me ask you a question – how
powerful of a telepath have you become, lately? Because tearing information out
of someone’s mind, well, that’s not something I remember you being able to do.”

“It’s
nothing special,” Rebecca muttered.

“It’s
impressive,” Alistair said, disagreeing. “You’ve always been a peerless empath,
but with your expanded telepathic abilities, you are becoming downright
dangerous, Rebecca. I bet you need time to organize all that information you
downloaded, right? Three men’s lives. That is a great deal to comprehend, much
less sift through all of it for one fact. If I was going to guess, I would bet
that these men made you aware of some kind of treachery, a plot to topple the
Academy from the very top, right?”

Rebecca’s
eyes fluttered open, and she looked at Alistair with obvious confusion. He gave
her his most reassuring smile.

“And
that is important information,” Alistair continued jovially, “but what would be
even more important would be the name of traitor. Do you know that name,
Rebecca?”

“Alistair,”
Rebecca mumbled, shaking her head feebly like someone trying to wake from a
nightmare. “Alistair, what are you saying?”

“You
always worried me, much more than any of the other Auditors,” Alistair said,
sitting on the floor beside her, putting a hand to her forehead as if he were
checking for a fever. Rebecca barely had the energy to struggle. “You were
probably the only one who could have stopped us, so I always thought we’d have
to get you out of the way before things got going. Once you started tearing
answers out of people’s brains, though, that got a little scary. I had hoped to
wipe the pertinent details from those fools’ minds, but you had to go and do it
yourself. As it turns out, though, that works even better for me. I am sorry,
but I really can’t let you tell Gaul about this, or about me, or about that
word, the one that is bothering you – ‘Rosicrucian’, right? Don’t think so
hard, it won’t mean anything to you. But it would a great deal to Gaul.”

Rebecca
moaned when she wanted to scream. Alistair already had his hooks too far into
her mind for her to manage anything more, and even that much was agonizing,
telepathic barbs tearing the fabric of her identity.

“Now,
now,” he chided gently, “it’s a little late for that. I managed to wipe
everything relevant from Alice’s mind when I restored her memory, but dear
Alice is so suggestible in that way. It’s a shame that you won’t be able to see
how that resolves itself. I think you would have been very surprised.”

Rebecca
managed to force her eyes open for a moment, but she could barely see despite
that. Alistair was little more than a blurry form leaning over her.

“Don’t
look at me that way,” Alistair said, his voice smug and filled with laughter.
“I’m not going to kill you. I couldn’t even bring myself to do that if I wanted
to, thanks to your remarkable protocol. I doubt anyone could, even your worst
enemy. I’m afraid that instead I will have to make it impossible for you to
interfere, until our affairs here are settled. Don’t worry, though,” he said,
closing her eyes gently with the palm of his hand, “by the time you learn to
speak and move again, it will all be over.”

Seventeen

The roof was dead quiet, a description that Alex regretted
almost as soon as the thought occurred to him. He could still see the shattered
façade of the nearby dormitory building in the back of his mind, though they
had taken away the bodies and cleaned up the broken glass hours ago. When Katya
had walked with him back home from Eerie’s, there was still blood on the
concrete and frightened students crying, though that also seemed to have died
down as night descended.

“I
can’t believe they got Rebecca,” Alex said, taking a sip of his beer and making
a face at the bitterness. Renton liked IPAs, and since he was the only one who
seemed to be able to get beer, Alex had to drink them, but he hadn’t learned to
enjoy it. “How could that even happen? Margot said that she’s an Auditor, right?”

“Yeah,”
Renton said grimly, from where he slumped next to an HVAC unit. He had bandages
all the way down one arm, an ankle wrap, and a crutch that he barely seemed to
use. “She’s one of the best. Alistair said they rigged the assassins with some
sort of psychic trap, a parasitic protocol disguised as a memory. It attacked
her mind from inside, once it was past her defenses. I still have trouble
believing it myself.”

“Will
she…be okay?”

“Of
course,” Vivik said immediately. Renton just shrugged, while Li looked away.

“Who
were they after, do you think?”

Alex
felt okay asking the question because, for once, it didn’t seem to have been
him. One group attacked Anastasia’s home, while a second went for one of the
Administration buildings, meeting Alice Gallow and Rebecca Levy by chance. It
hadn’t taken long to deal with either attack, but a third undetected group had
made it as far as the dormitories. A few kids he didn’t know were killed in the
attack, and a couple more were in the hospital, including Li’s friend and
Alex’s occasional training partner, Cy So. He wouldn’t have admitted it, but he
felt a profound relief, not being responsible. After all, they hadn’t even
attacked his dorm.

“Hard
to say,” Renton said thoughtfully. “Maybe it was Rebecca from the start. Who
knows? They sure couldn’t have taken out anyone we need more right now. Half
the primary school kids saw it happen. They’re probably all traumatized.”

“It’s
worse than that, and you know it. Rebecca’s a lot more important than you are
giving her credit for,” Vivik said moodily. The boy had been drinking more than
the other three over the past hour, to no visible effect, causing some worry on
Alex’s part. He understood, of course. Alistair had to intervene personally in
order to prevent Alex from visiting Rebecca’s bedside a few hours before,
dragging him down the hall while quietly explaining the need for her to
recuperate in peace. “The Committee, the cartels, the Academy, it all holds
together because Rebecca can always rally support and smooth things over.
Without her, Gaul might be brilliant, but I don’t think he can do much to keep
control.”

“How
do you know all this stuff?” Li asked. “I’ve been here three years longer than
you and I don’t know any of this…”

For
some reason, Vivik looked embarrassed to Alex, but maybe it only seemed that
way. Maybe he was just drunk.

“I’ve
been studying political theory and history lately,” Vivik said dreamily. “I’ve
been having these ideas…”

“What
I want to know,” Li cut in, turning to Renton with a smirk, “is what you were
doing over here, old man. Why weren’t you right by Anastasia’s side?”

“I
was watching out for Alex…” Renton began uncomfortably.

“Bullshit!
We all know where Alex was,” he said, turning and giving Alex a big grin that
made him supremely uncomfortable, “so Anastasia knew that, too, right? What’s
up with that?”

Renton
finished his beer before he said anything.

“I
think maybe I got ditched. She’s been tight with Timor since they were kids. I
think she wanted to hang out with him, without me around. It’s not a big deal.”

“Look
out, Renton,” Li said, cackling. “A rival appears!”

“He’s
gay,” Renton said flatly, giving Li an evil look.

“Or
you wish he was.”

“He
is, jackass,” Renton snapped. “I am a damn telepath, remember.”

“Huh,”
Li said, briefly stopped in his tracks. It didn’t last. “Well, whatever. I
still say you are jealous. He goes to class with her every day and all, while
you are stuck with me and Mr. Kohl.”

“He’s
her cousin,” Renton said, almost shouting. “And he is gay, you fucking idiot!
Why would I be jealous?”

“I
don’t know. You’re the one yelling, dude,” Li said, smiling affably.

Renton’s
shoulders slumped.

“How
is Margot?” Alex interrupted, hoping to avoid a fight. “You were with her,
weren’t you, Renton? You fought those guys who attacked the dorms, right?”

Renton
looked pained.

“It
wasn’t much of a fight. They were much more experienced than us. One on one, it
wouldn’t have been so bad, but there were five of them. One of them manipulated
light, I think, because that bitch set my whole arm on fire, swear to God, and
I couldn’t see a thing the entire time. While they had me distracted, their
telepath got all up in my head, locked me in a replay of some fucking childhood
trauma on endless loop. Took me hours to stop it. Margot said they ported her
about forty feet up and dropped her on concrete, then one of them shot her in
the chest with an assault rifle for good measure. She didn’t even have to go to
the hospital. By the time the cavalry showed up, apparently she was already
walking around.”

Li
whistled appreciatively.

“That
girl is a force of nature,” Li said approvingly. “But you shouldn’t feel bad.
Even the Auditors would have had trouble with odds like that.”

Renton
shook his head.

“No,
you don’t get it,” Renton said quietly, but the kind of quiet that made Alex
think that he might actually be angry. “Timor killed two of them. So did
Katya.”

“They
had the jump on them. And you got jumped,” Li said encouragingly. “Not the same
thing.”

Renton
stood abruptly, knocking his chair aside with an angry gesture. His crutch
clattered to the ground beside it, forgotten.

“I’m
supposed to be the one protecting her, Li,” Renton said, the full force of his
anger turning his voice into a snarl and twisting his face. “Do you think
Anastasia takes mitigating factors into account when she’s evaluating the
success of her bodyguards? No, you idiot, she doesn’t. That fucking piece of
shit Timor is after my job.”

“I
don’t know,” Vivik said uncertainly. “Who besides you would want it?”

“Maybe
some other pedophile?”

Renton
gave Li the finger and stomped off, slamming the door as he left the roof.

“That
was pretty messed up, Li,” Vivik said, mildly rebuking him. “You didn’t have to
be so hard on him.”

“Well,
it is Renton,” Li said cheerfully, unmoved as always. “You don’t know
him the way I do. Don’t waste too much time feeling sorry for him, ’cause he
sure wouldn’t do the same for you. Besides, if you think that was fucked up,
wait and see what Renton does next. I guarantee it won’t be pretty.”

* * *

“I will be the first
to admit that this is hardly my strength or area of expertise,” Mr. Windsor
said solemnly, sitting on the edge of the table in front of the lecture hall,
his normally ubiquitous projector inactive and silent. “Unfortunately, the
events of this weekend appear to have deprived us temporarily of the services
of the person most qualified to deal with their aftermath. This, I’m afraid,
leaves me as your next-best option. I wanted to give you all the opportunity to
discuss anything that might be on your minds, to ask any questions you might
have – which I will answer to the best of my ability. While we were fortunate
enough not to lose any members of our class, I’m sure that some of you knew
those affected by the fighting. Moreover, the sheer violence itself, once so
routine in the days of the cartels running rampant, must have come as quite a
shock, given the decades of peace we have enjoyed. Would anyone like to start?”

The
class was silent, which was pretty much what Alex expected. Judging from the
patient expression on Mr. Windsor’s face, that was probably what he had been
expecting as well. Alex glanced over at Vivik to see if he was planning to say
anything, and decided that he was not. He had managed to maneuver Vivik between
himself and Emily as a precaution, one Vivik had been happy to oblige. Emily
looked hurt as class started, but he ignored it. Better, he thought, to be safe
– but he couldn’t be too obvious about it, either. If he went over and sat down
by Eerie all of a sudden, he would make her the target of every plot and scheme
at the Academy. The silence stretched out uncomfortably, and Mr. Windsor opened
his mouth to break it. Then, something happened that no one was expecting.

Eerie
slowly raised her hand.

To
his credit, Mr. Windsor managed to keep the amazement out of his voice.

“Yes,
Eerie?”

“When
will Rebecca wake up?”

The
class stirred and muttered, and not with the usual amused contempt that
followed Eerie’s attempts to contribute in class. For most of the people here,
Alex figured, it might have been the most coherent thing they ever heard her
say. Thinking about what he knew about her relationship with Rebecca, it just
made him sad.

“I
don’t know,” Mr. Windsor said apologetically. “We are all hoping it’s soon.”

“Then…why
won’t they let me see her?” Eerie demanded. “Because I don’t like it. Alistair
keeps saying no. But I can help!”

There
were some giggles, but Eerie seemed oblivious, like she always did.

“I
am not certain why that would be the case,” Mr. Windsor said, with obvious
concern. “I will look into it for you, I promise. Do you have any other
questions, Eerie?”

She
shook her head solemnly, apparently satisfied.

“Anyone
else?”

It
seemed like the whole class relaxed when Vivik raised his hand, restoring the
normal order of things. Alex did, anyway.

“I
have one, Mr. Windsor,” Vivik said, his voice abnormally strident and cold.
“How long does the Administration plan on allowing this madness to continue?”

“What
do you mean, Vivik?” Mr. Windsor asked, sounding genuinely curious. It was, in
Alex’s mind, a personality flaw.

“They
were part of the Black Sun, right? Nobody is saying as much, but I saw the
markings. The Taos Cartel, right, Anastasia?” Vivik demanded, his hands shaking
visibly. Alex tried to catch his eyes and failed. Next to him, Emily covered
her mouth and looked mortified.

“It
is no secret,” Anastasia said airily, not bothering to look up from her
notebook. “Though they have been expelled from the Black Sun, obviously. What
is it that you want to say?”

“Relax,
Anastasia, I don’t think you ordered the attack on the school,” Vivik said
hurriedly. “But, is this what it’s come to? They were here for you, weren’t
they?”

“This
is getting a little personal…” Windsor interrupted half-heartedly.

“It
is fine,” Anastasia said curtly. “Yes, some of them were here to kill me. Some
of them were not. I took care of those who were. There will not be a
reoccurrence of such behavior.”

“But
you can’t guarantee that, can you? Or there wouldn’t have been one in the first
place, right?” Vivik said emphatically, half standing. “And if you can’t
maintain discipline, then how will anyone? How will the Hegemony?”

“Watch
yourself, boy,” Grigori said darkly from the other side of the class. “We would
never do something like this.”

“No?
The Terrie Cartel already turned. Everybody knows that,” Vivik shouted back.
“You don’t have control. None of you do. The system was always insane, it was
always going to get some of us killed. Now you’ve all lost control, and unless
someone does something, it’s going to kill all of us. While you, Mr. Windsor –
you and the rest of the Academy – train and arm us, then stand by
disapprovingly while we kill each other. Are we just going to pretend that this
didn’t happen?”

The
class was silent. Emily had turned bright red, and was staring at Vivik. Katya
looked delighted and impressed. Grigori and Hope were staring at Vivik too, but
without approval. Even Eerie appeared surprised. Only Anastasia continued on as
if nothing were happening.

“Maybe
not the most civil delivery, but Vivik has some excellent questions, class.”
Mr. Windsor glanced around hopefully. “Would anyone care to try and answer
them, or shall I have a shot at it?”

Mr.
Windsor smiled pleasantly, as if they were having a normal class discussion.

“I will
answer,” Anastasia said icily. Mr. Windsor nodded at her benignly, but she
didn’t look at him to see it. “I maintain order, Vivik, because it must be
maintained, because I can, and because I like it that way. I have no other
reasons. I am not devoted to the system, but it works better than anything else
attempted thus far. Tell me, Vivik – because I am aware how very intelligent
you are – do you have anything better?”

“Not
yet,” Vivik said defiantly, folding his arms across his chest. “I have some
ideas I’m working on.”

Anastasia
finally looked at him, her face composed and haughty.

“Then,
when you have worked them out, come to talk to me. You know that I will
listen,” she said, through what sounded a clenched jaw. “Also, Vivik, since you
seem to have forgotten, my enemies,” she said, pointing at the Hegemony side of
the class, “are sharing the room with us. The next time you want to talk
politics, do come to see me in private. Do not,” she snapped, slamming her
notebook closed and startling everyone, “put me in this position again.”

Anastasia
gathered her notebook and stomped out of the class, letting the door slam
behind her. Timor nodded politely at Mr. Windsor, grabbed her books and his
things, and hurried after. The entire class watched, helpless in shock at the
outburst.

“Alright,”
Mr. Windsor said, cleaning his glasses. “Maybe we should take a moment to
compose ourselves? Five-minute break, people. Back in your seats in five
minutes.”

Katya
leaned over the row of seats to tap Vivik on the shoulder.

“Well,
well,” Katya exclaimed, beaming. “Who’d have thought it? I totally misread you,
Vivik. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone call Ana out like that. You’re
awesome, man.”

“I
think I might actually be stupid,” Vivik said, burying his face in his hands. “Why
did I do that? What possessed me?”

“Well,
there go all my questions,” Alex said softly.

“You
poor thing,” Emily said, patting Vivik on the back, looking appalled. “What got
into you?”

“I
don’t know,” Vivik said miserably. “I feel weird.”

“I
bet I know,” Katya said smugly. “You go see Rebecca a lot?”

“Once
a month, same as everybody else,” Vivik said without lifting his head.

“Yeah?
Well, you know, whatever protocols she was operating, keeping everything
running smooth and everybody happy around here?” Katya smiled and leaned back,
her hands behind her head, her feet up on top of the row of seats in front of
her. “Well, they stopped working a day or so ago. And it can’t only be you.
Anastasia seemed a bit emotional herself. Betcha almost everybody at the
Academy has been subjected to a little tweaking courtesy of Rebecca at one time
or another. I think things around here are about to get a lot more interesting.
Tell me,” she said, kicking the back of Alex’s chair, “how you feelin’ lately,
son?”

* * *

Alex couldn’t sleep.

Calling
that rare didn’t do the experience justice, particularly since he came to the
Academy. Alex generally fell asleep before ten, waking only when his alarm
clock got insistent about things. Since the attack two days before, he hadn’t
been sleeping well, and last night, he’d only gotten a few restless hours
before giving up around four in the morning and heading to the gym, hoping to
dispel some of the nervous tension that had been plaguing him. While he forced
his stiff body through a very abbreviated Yoga routine on the deserted mats,
Alex couldn’t help but wonder if Katya had been right, if Rebecca had really
been manipulating everyone in the school, and if his current worries were a
direct result of her incapacitation.

He
tried not to think any more about that.

Remembering
things at random made it even more difficult to rest. Alex would drift partway
to sleep, feel his body start to relax, his mind begin to wander...and then he
would snap back to attention while a memory emerged from nowhere, blurry and
indistinct, the details jumbled and impossible. Then he would spend hours
worrying over it.

He
recalled the ocean, placid as a bathtub, warm as it lapped against his calves.
His legs aching from the effort of climbing the foothills behind him, up to his
shoulders in bare red Manzanita, the air around him smelling of the sage plants
he crushed underfoot. He remembered turning the pages in a very old book, too
young to read, sitting on a thick Persian carpet in a library that seemed almost
as ancient as the book in front of him, smelling wood polish, coffee, and
tobacco. For some reason, in the middle of the night, he remembered that
Monarch butterflies returned to the same trees along the California coast every
year.

For
some reason, he realized with a fair amount of surprise and confusion, he had
been very concerned with this particular butterfly migration at one point in
the past, though he couldn’t imagine why.

None
of the memories seemed to hold any special significance. Alex wasn’t sure why a
memory of attending a formal dinner party and being confused over the forks had
kept him awake a significant portion of last night. Of course, he must have
fallen asleep at some point without realizing it, because in a muddled version
of the memory, it was a childish but unmistakable Anastasia Martynova who
helped him determine which fork to use, scolding him as she explained. Dream
logic caused him to accept this until he woke up in confusion.

The
sun was barely up when he arrived at the track. He didn’t even have to run
today, but after several weeks of being forced along by Michael, the strangest
thing happened – he started to like running – not that he ever would
have admitted it. Alex wasn’t fast, but over long distances, that tended to average
out, and it wasn’t like anyone was racing anyway. Moving at a steady jog, he
could comfortably cover several miles. Some days, he actually wanted to – when
his head was too heavy, when he felt smothered by the people and the attention.
The track was cold and still damp from the night mist, but not deserted,
despite his expectations.

“Good
morning, Miss Aoki,” he called out, descending the row of concrete steps that
led down to the track and the playing fields. She looked up from where she sat
by the side of the track, damp with sweat, messing with one of her running
shoes.

“Alex,”
Miss Aoki said flatly, not expressing any surprise. “You are up early.”

“I
know,” Alex said, stepping onto the track and smiling with forced cheerfulness.
“Out of character, right? But I couldn’t seem to sleep last night, so, I
thought maybe if I went for a run…”

Miss
Aoki nodded, and started fooling around with the other shoe. She was wearing
the same grey T-shirt and red running shorts that the Academy handed out to all
of its students, but it looked somehow risqué on her. Alex couldn’t help but
notice that it was the first time that he had seen her legs bare, but Miss
Aoki’s vivid red eyes were too nerve-wracking to risk appreciating, so he
actually went out of his way not to look in her direction. This probably meant
he was overthinking, since she didn’t seem concerned with him at all, but
better safe than sorry. He hurried through his warm-up routine, eager to get
moving, to get away from his former instructor and repeated savior. He had just
finished when he realized she was sitting by the side of the track, watching.

“Do
you miss her?”

Miss
Aoki’s expression offered Alex no clues as to her motivation. He didn’t bother
to ask who she meant. No one had talked about much of anything else since the
attack, even though no one wanted to talk about it.

“Yeah,”
Alex admitted, surprising himself a little. “I guess I do. I didn’t think that
much about it while she was here, but I guess I started to rely on our little
chats to put things in perspective, you know? She was, like, the most
levelheaded person here, and I...I don’t know. I felt like I could trust her.”

“I
thought you might,” Miss Aoki said enigmatically. “You were her special
project, after all. I remember what that felt like.”

Alex
was immediately curious, but he let it pass. Not that Miss Aoki had ever been
reluctant to answer his questions, but her demeanor didn’t normally encourage
it, and he wasn’t about to bank that her current mood gave him a free pass.

“She
worried, you know,” Miss Aoki said, standing up next to him. “About you finding
out that she was an Auditor.”

“I
see,” Alex said uncomfortably. “I was surprised about to learn that, but I
never had a chance to talk to her about it…I mean, I haven’t had one yet.”

“Right,”
Mitsuru said, flipping her hair back and adjusting her ponytail. “You were
going to do some running, right? I’ll join you. Unless that would be weird,
having your former teacher run with you…”

“Not
at all,” Alex said, a false, reassuring smile plastered across his face.
Internally, a voice cried out that it would, in fact, be very weird, but what
could he do?

He
shook out his arms, bounced a few times on the balls of his feet, and then fell
into the slow-but-steady jog that he preferred anytime Michael wasn’t there to
force him to run faster. He was a bit worried that Miss Aoki would push him the
same way, but either she wasn’t as much of a conditioning fanatic or she was
distracted by whatever was going on in her elegant and inscrutable head, because
she fell in beside him and let him set the pace. They finished the first few
laps in silence. It was the first time in a while that Alex had run without his
headphones, and it was weird, how loud the sound of his feet on the synthetic
track was in the still of the morning.

“Do
you like having Miss Gallow as a teacher?” Miss Aoki asked, not sounding the
least bit out of breath.

“Miss
Gallow is good,” Alex said carefully. Michael liked to talk with him while he
ran, too, even claimed that it was an important skill to have, though Alex
suspected he was simply chatty. Nonetheless, Alex could just manage a
conversation while running, at least for the first few miles. “But I hate the
Program.”

“As
much as you hated it when I was in charge?”

He
snuck a look over at Miss Aoki, looking for signs that this was some sort of
trap or setup. He didn’t see anything other than polite disinterest, so he took
the risk.

“More,”
he admitted. “It’s bad enough having to do those things, but Miss Gallow thinks
it’s funny, and that makes it worse.”

To
his surprise, Miss Aoki gave him a thin but genuine smile.

“That
sounds about right,” she said, moving ahead a little, forcing him to pick up
his flagging pace. “That’s the way it was for me, too. I hated it, too.”

“Does
that mean,” Alex panted, “Miss Gallow was your teacher as well?”

“No,”
Miss Aoki said, shaking her head, “it was Alistair.”

Alex
mulled it over the next quarter-mile.

“Miss
Aoki,” he managed, between breaths, “I’ve always – meant to ask – what’s up –
with the eyes? Same as – the Director?”

He
had braced himself for a bad reaction, but she just laughed. That was a first,
in Alex’s experience.

“I
have an implant,” she said, tapping the side of her head, just above her
temple. “Two grams of nanomachinery introduced into my brain that spontaneously
evolved surgical components and attached itself to my nervous system. The
Director has a similar implant.”

“Huh?”

“I
have a computer in my brain,” Miss Aoki said, rolling her eyes. “The Director
does as well. It’s an uplink to the Etheric Network, and from it, we can
download data and temporary protocols, and upload information as well.”

“Protocols?”
Alex asked, both amazed and out of breath.

“Yes.
That was the reasoning behind my implant. You must be aware of the…drawbacks to
using Black Protocols. In my case, those consequences were judged too severe to
merit using the protocol, so an alternative was devised. Along with seven
others, I volunteered for the process. Only the Director and I survived, and
the procedure was banned. We are the only two of our kind, which is
unfortunate, because it is very useful device. Such a pity.”

“Director,”
Alex wheezed. “His protocol is Black?”

“No.
And the Board fought him tooth and nail when he announced his intention to
undergo the upgrade. Nevertheless, he designed the procedure, and he wouldn’t
let the testing move forward unless he was the first subject. Black Protocols
have always worried him excessively. He thought that perhaps this procedure
would eliminate the need to use them. There was some precedent, actually. There
are other ways to perform implants, or any secondary introduction of nanites,
which have better survival rates. But the experiment that created us was deemed
a failure.”

Alex
managed a gasp as a response, but that was all he could do. Miss Aoki seemed to
take pity on him, because she didn’t ask anything else while they ran. Alex
tried to get into a groove, that place he had recently become aware of, where
he stopped noticing anything other than the action of running, the obsessive
mechanics of movement. That, however, was proving impossible when running with
Miss Aoki. She started to stay a little bit ahead of him no matter how fast he
went, probably with the intention of pushing him. In a way she was, because the
last thing Alex wanted was to be caught staring.

Maybe
that was why, somewhere around mile three, his leg cramped up. He limped off
the track and tumbled down to the grass beside the track, his right calf in
painful knots. Miss Aoki trotted back a moment later, with what might
charitably be termed as concern on her face.

“Did
you get a cramp?”

“Ow.
Yes,” Alex said, kneading it with his knuckles. “Sorry about that, Miss Aoki.
Not sure what happened.”

“Here,”
Mitsuru commanded, “give me your leg.”

She
snatched his leg and pulled it taut, ignoring his pained expression, then
leaned on it gradually. Alex tensed for tremendous pain, but there was none,
just a gentle, facilitated stretch. After a minute or so, she gradually changed
directions, so that she was pulling, rather than leaning, but that didn’t feel
bad either. The pain subsided a few minutes later, and with some coaxing from
Miss Aoki, the muscle ceased its spasms. Alex stood carefully, testing his leg
to see if it would take his weight. He had a slight limp, but he was otherwise
fine.

“Thanks,
Miss Aoki,” he said hurriedly. She seemed to be ignoring him, staring off into
space with a peculiar intensity. “I think that’s it for me this morning. I’m
going to head for the showers, okay?”

She
gave him a minimal nod, so he shrugged and headed for the locker room, perhaps
a bit too eagerly, but Miss Aoki didn’t pay him any attention.

If
Alex had stayed a little longer, he might have seen Mitsuru staring at the
inside of her arm intensely for several moments, as if lost in thought, and
then, slowly, raise her hand and drag the jagged edge of one fingernail across
the soft skin below the elbow until she bled. He would have needed to be very
close to see the blood seep out, drop by drop.

He
probably wouldn’t have noticed that while the first drop hit the grass, the
second did not. Instead, it formed a perfect sphere midway to the ground, and
then it reversed itself, floating up until Mitsuru caught it in her hand,
something indefinable, between happiness and fear, on her face, as she examined
the bloody smear across her palm.

“It
was right there the whole time, from the first night I met him. Rebecca,”
Mitsuru asked sadly, looking at Alex as he slowly limped up the steps from the
track, “what did you make me forget?”

Eighteen

Emily didn’t typically wake this early and head to
the gym, but
since she agreed to go to Anastasia’s island for Spring Break, she started to
worry about how she would look in the bathing suit that she hadn’t worn since
last summer. It was too late to do anything about her tan, but, at the very
least, she could finish shedding the last few pounds she had been trying to
lose since Christmas. Emily was frequently too busy to make it to the gym after
class, so she decided to work out a couple mornings a week.

The
locker room was quiet when she arrived, just a handful of girls changing into
workout clothes or swimsuits. Since the central gym had an indoor pool, and the
mornings were still cold, it was seeing more traffic than usual. Emily picked a
row of lockers at random, squeezing politely by a couple of younger girls who
were toweling off from a very early swimming session, taking the first
available locker. She didn’t even notice the girl a few lockers over until she
had already unpacked her things. Emily was half-changed into her gym clothes
when she realized that the girl had blue hair.

Emily
quickly considered her options. The idea of trotting to the next row, partially
dressed and holding her gym clothes didn’t seem appealing or dignified, so she
resigned herself to changing rapidly and hoping that Eerie either wouldn’t
notice or wouldn’t talk to her. Emily took her shirt off, glad that she had put
her sports bra on in her dorm room, then grabbed her gym shirt and pulled that
over her head. When she finished, she found herself standing almost toe to toe
with an obviously surprised Eerie, wearing a black one-piece swimsuit and
frozen stock still in the act of tucking her blue hair into a swim cap.

“Oh,”
Emily said faintly, trying to summon a smile. “Hello.”

“Hi,”
Eerie squeaked. “Yes. Um. Hi.”

“Well,
Eerie,” Emily asked, hurriedly turning to shove her clothes into her locker, as
if the activity required her full attention, “how have you been?”

“Not
great. In trouble,” Eerie said sadly, shaking her head. “What about you,
Emily?”

“Things
are fine,” Emily said, her voice oddly shrill. She was talking to the main
reason that things were not, in fact, fine. Her hands trembled so slightly that
no one else would notice, but Eerie looked no more nervous than usual. Emily
was suddenly emboldened by a rush of self-righteous anger.

“Good,”
Eerie said, sounding doubtful. “You are here very early.”

“So
are you,” Emily said defensively. The last thing she was about to admit to was
her current weight-loss regime. Even admitting the necessity would be, she felt
certain, some sort of moral victory for the blue-haired freak.

“I
always swim in the morning,” Eerie explained in her odd, melodic voice. “But
you do the three o’clock yoga class with Anastasia. Everyone talks about it.”

“Is
that so?” Emily asked as she pulled on her running socks, hoping to draw Eerie
out. She was secretly pleased with the idea that people were talking about her,
even if it was about her and Anastasia.

“Yes,”
Eerie said, apparently uninterested in explaining any further. After a moment’s
delay, she turned back to her locker, pulling out a pair of flip-flops and then
closing it behind her. Emily reached for her trainers, then she got a nasty
idea.

Emily
tried unsuccessfully to put it aside while she laced up her left shoe, but it
wasn’t going anywhere, even if it was mean and beneath her. Emily reminded
herself that this was not just any girl, but her rival, who would doom her
entire future, unchecked. This was the person, she thought angrily, who had
almost managed that once before, with her infamous jaunt to San Francisco. And
probably, probably just because she liked Alex right now, another
airheaded crush, one that Eerie would lose interest in, sooner or later. Did it
even matter to her, Emily wondered, that Eerie was screwing up her entire life?
Did it bother her at all?

“I’ve
been so busy lately, it’s been a struggle to make it to the gym,” Emily said
lightly, loudly enough that Eerie stopped walking away to listen. “First there
was the dinner party, and now, with Spring Break coming up, of course there are
a million details to take care of before I go away to Anastasia’s. You know,
what to wear, what to pack, that sort of thing. And, as you can imagine, Alex
needs help with all the same things. The boy hardly knows anything at all about
that sort of thing, don’t you agree? Do you think he even has a swimsuit?”

Emily
looked over at Eerie and smiled sweetly. The girl’s face remained flat and
expressionless, but Emily could see her hand twisting one of the corners of the
white towel she clutched to her chest, and knew that she had gotten through.

“I
don’t know,” Eerie answered quietly. “I have never seen him swim.”

She
wasn’t sure what to make of that. Emily’s expected elation mixed with more than
a hint of doubt. Was Eerie really that dense? Or was she simply unconcerned? Even
if she actually was Alex’s girlfriend, how could she possibly be so confident
when he was going away with Emily for nearly three weeks?

She
couldn’t be. Emily decided to twist the knife.

“What
are you doing over break, Eerie?”

Was
there a flicker, a glimmer of light above her head? Perhaps the barest hint of
a halo?

“Coding
at Processing in Central,” Eerie said slowly. “Field study. It’s not so bad.”

Emily
thought she could see a halo flicker above Eerie’s head. Not long enough to
read it, not vivid enough to identify the hue, but Emily knew that Eerie was
rattled if it was visible at all. She had gotten to the Changeling.

“You
poor thing,” Emily said sympathetically. She did feel some sympathy for Eerie –
after all, she fully intended on taking Alex from her while Eerie was stuck in
Central, working in a cubicle under fluorescent lights, staring at a monitor.
But that, she was starting to realize, might still not be enough. Emily was not
about to lose to her, and she didn’t like the idea of Eerie being there for
Alex to come back to. “That sounds awful.”

“It’s
not so bad,” Eerie repeated, not sounding convinced. She turned and took a step
away, then stopped and looked back. “Have a fun break, Emily.”

“I
will,” she promised the girl’s back, surprised and secretly enlivened by her
own bad intentions. “And you, too, Eerie.”

* * *

Somewhere in London,
in a fashionable loft with a view of the Thames, Margot killed four members of
the former Taos Cartel, fast. Not so fast, however, that she failed to notice
that the first one, the black guy, had been at the Academy when she was a kid.
She remembered watching him play basketball, out the window of the little house
she shared with Eerie, while she fractured his skull against the white-painted
concrete wall. His wife and the other two weren’t people she knew, so that was
easier. She found herself staring at the way the blood pooled and collected on
the flat’s antique Persian rugs, marring the delicacy of the designs.

She
was glad, for the first time since she had started working for Audits, not to
be at home, back at the Academy.

* * *

“…it was fascinating.
Apparently, Professor Khan is part of a Black Sun splinter cartel called the Far
Shores, which maintains a private institution in Central out on the Fringe –
you know, the edge of the city, right beside the Ether. That’s what they study
there – the Ether – and some of the theories they are exploring are nothing
short of revolutionary. One possibility he discussed revolved around the idea
that the Ether is actually a solution, a complex stew of constituent elements.
Not chemicals, of course, but something analogous; that Central and even the
Earth, the universe itself, are all a crystallization of these elements, like a
pearl formed in an oyster’s shell, lacquer building around an irritation, an
anomaly within the Ether that enlarges and solidifies over time. And that was
just one of the theories! He discussed various scenarios for an hour, and then
I stayed after and listened to him talk after class until dinner, and it was
one mind-blowing idea after another…”

“Uh-huh,”
Alex said, not looking up from the screen of his laptop.

“Well,
think about the potential!” Vivik raved. “If Central and our world crystallized
from the Ether, then that means there could be other places within the Ether!
Other worlds – other universes, even. Professor Kahn thought it was a real
possibility, that the Ether serves in one form or another as a boundary between
universes. It might even be possible to travel within the Ether, from our
universe to another one, Alex! We might even be doing it right now, if he was
right about Central. Can you imagine?”

“Uh-huh.”

Vivik
looked over at Alex, lying on his stomach across his bed, staring at his
laptop, one hand propping up his chin. His other hand was wrapped with bandages
and in a skeletal black brace, resting on the touchpad. Vivik wasn’t sure what
Alex was looking at, but he didn’t seem any more absorbed by it than he was by
Vivik’s ongoing lecture. Vivik sighed, but it was an affectionate sigh.

“You
couldn’t care less about this stuff, right?” Vivik said, both disappointed and
amused. “Did you even hear anything I said?”

“I
heard that you stayed late after class so you could hang out with a teacher,”
Alex said dryly, “again. You are a total nerd, you know?”

“Oh,
well. That’s something, I guess. What is it that you are looking at, anyway?”

“Nothing
really. This thing that’s been bugging me, I’ve been trying to read about it on
the network but, you know, I’m lazy and clueless, so…” Alex said, shutting the
laptop and sitting up. “I wish I could go see Rebecca before break, even if she
is in a coma or whatever. I’d just feel better somehow.”

“Can
I ask you a question, Alex?” Vivik asked hesitantly.

Alex
just nodded, futzing around with the clamp on his forearm.

“What
are you going to do? About Emily,” Vivik said, feeling his cheeks redden, but
unable to look away, “and the trip and everything. You do like Eerie, right?”

It
wasn’t that Vivik didn’t want to go home. Actually, he missed his family,
particularly his older brother, a great deal. However, given the choice, Vivik
would have given up a million trips home for one vacation with Emily. Not that
it seemed likely anyone was going to give him an invitation.

“I
don’t know,” Alex admitted morosely, folding his legs and resting his chin on
his knees. “I think so, most of the time. It’s kind of weird, being with Eerie.
It’s hard to tell what she’s thinking, or what she wants, or even what she’s
talking about. Eerie’s cool, don’t get me wrong, but Emily’s more. I don’t
know. It kinda sucks, you know, talking to you about Emily and stuff. I feel
bad about the whole situation.”

Vivik
smiled at Alex, partly because his favorite thing about his friend was his
almost compulsive honesty, partly to hide the bitterness that he couldn’t help
but feel over the issue. He spent the whole of his tenure at the Academy trying
to build something more than friendship between himself and Emily Muir, and
hadn’t had any success at all. Then Alex – dopey, perpetually confused Alex –
arrived, and suddenly Emily was all smiles and availability, only not for him.
Vivik had wanted to ask her to dance at the Winter Dance, and knew that she
would have agreed, even if it was out of charity. She had been so resplendent
with her hair down and in a tapered silver dress, though, that Vivik hadn’t
managed to say anything to her at all. Instead, he had insisted on taking
pictures of the event, not because he was a great photographer, but so he could
hide behind the camera. He had taken several candid shots of Emily that evening
without her realizing, and though he felt guilty over it, that didn’t stop him
from saving all of them in a password-protected file on his laptop that he
opened more often than he would have admitted.

“Don’t,”
Vivik said, with forced cheerfulness. “I’d rather know. It’s not as if the
situation is your fault.”

“Really?
Because I’m pretty sure all of this is my fault. None of this would have
happened if I’d been bright enough not to go with them for Spring Break. I’m
gonna be stuck on an island somewhere for three weeks, with Emily and Anastasia
and Renton and God-knows-who-else, and I’m not even sure why I agreed to go.”

“Well,
what are you going to do?”

“I
don’t know,” Alex said, hanging his head. “Emily is pretty, after all. And
she’s always been nice to me. She’s not crazy – and she’s human, which turns
out to be more important than I thought. Three weeks is a long time, too, and I
don’t really know what Eerie thinks about all of this…”

“Well,
I’m sure she’s totally pleased that you are going on vacation with the girl
who’s been all over you from day one,” Vivik said, trying for humor and
succeeding only in sounding bitter.

“Yeah,
that’s what I figured. At the same time, it’s not as if I owe Eerie something,
or I promised her anything. She’s not even really my girlfriend,” Alex said
uneasily, “so it isn’t like it would be cheating, exactly. I don’t even know if
Eerie would care.”

“Don’t
be stupid,” Vivik snapped, surprising himself. “Of course she would care. She
wouldn’t have interfered with Emily by pulling that whole San Francisco thing
if she didn’t care.”

Alex
gave him a long, interrogative look, then nodded in agreement.

“You’re
probably right. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, or for anything bad to
happen to either of them, but I don’t see how I can manage it. I don’t really
care whether it makes me an asshole or not – I’m not staying celibate forever.
Long story short – I don’t have a fucking clue. I can’t even decide which one
comes with more strings attached.”

“Are
you complaining?” Vivik mocked gently. “Your life is so hard. Poor Alex and his
girl problems.”

Alex
looked angry for a moment, but then he laughed it off, and Vivik joined him,
more out of relief than anything.

“Yeah,
I suppose I shouldn’t expect much pity, huh?”

“Not
from me,” Vivik said, grinning.

“That’s
right. It would be better for you if I hooked up with Eerie, huh?”

Vivik
shrugged uncomfortably, fighting off the urge to say a dozen different
uncharitable, unhelpful things.

“Not
necessarily. It’s not like Emily automatically becomes mine if you turn her
down. Even if she wasn’t pulled from the Academy at that point, she’s never
been interested in me as anything other than a friend. Frankly,” Vivik said,
smiling to try to mask the pain inherent in the admission, “I’ve seen more of
her thanks to her attempts to get close to you than I ever did before. Maybe if
you picked Emily you’d do a bad enough job of being her boyfriend that she’d
cheat on you with me, for all I know.”

He
meant it as a joke, but Alex just nodded resignedly, as if that scenario was
yet another grim possibility. While Alex had never been the most upbeat person
in the world, since the attack on the Academy, he seemed more inclined to be
gloomy, to fall into one of his bad moods, stop talking, and isolate himself.
Vivik wasn’t sure why, and didn’t plan to ask about it. It wasn’t any of his
business, for one thing – and he didn’t feel bad for Alex, despite the
circumstances. Vivik was still painfully aware that, whatever other problems he
might have, Alex could walk up to Emily’s door tonight and probably wouldn’t be
turned away. Whatever else was wrong in Alex’s life, Vivik would have traded with
him for that privilege.

“How
long have Anastasia and Emily been friends, anyway?”

“I
don’t remember them not getting along, exactly,” Vivik said, thinking back.
“They could be catty with each other, but I never got the feeling that they
particularly disliked each other. I guess they started hanging out not long
after you showed up.”

Alex
turned away.

“Yeah,
I figured,” he said moodily. “You have no idea how tired I am of hearing that.”

* * *

Michael broke up four
fights in the afternoon class, two involving Steve. Miraculously, one of them
hadn’t even been Steve’s fault. Eventually, he gave up on anything other than
running, and they spent the remainder of the session on the track. Alex didn’t
show, but Michael didn’t have time to worry about his absence, not today.

He
had six disciplinary sessions in the early afternoon, and he barely made it
back in time for the late conditioning session. He took one look at the surly
faces of the class and didn’t bother with his planned training routine.
Instead, he spent two hours running them into the ground, working every kid he
could get his hands on until they were exhausted, in the hope that they would
be too tired to act out later. He ran with all of them, miles more than his
norm. It took his mind off things, at least.

He
hardly ever thought about what it was he was running from.

* * *

Mitsuru didn’t have to
be so cautious, with Rebecca unresponsive in a hospital bed, but she was
anyway, out of long habit. She changed into jeans and a black top she thought
was cute, and swashed her hair and then let it hang down – an unfamiliar,
ticklish presence on the back of her shoulders. It wasn’t what she would have
chosen to wear, but she couldn’t afford the attention that her little black
dress would draw. She had excuses planned if anyone stopped her on the way to
the upper story of Operations, where he maintained a small apartment, but no
one wanted to question anything she did, not now. They just assumed she knew
what she was doing and left it at that, eager to avoid any unnecessary contact
with the Audits Department. No one would dare challenge an Auditor.

No
one, of course, but her best friend, whose limp hand she had been holding,
sometimes in tears, all afternoon.

Still,
she checked to make sure the hallway was clear before hurrying along it,
stopping at a door near the middle and knocking, softly but firmly. She heard
him call out sleepily, then there was a short delay before he opened the door,
just a crack, so that all she could see of him was one eye, which widened in
surprise. Then he opened the door wide and ushered her inside, checking behind
her to make sure that no one saw.

“Mitzi,”
he said, reviewing her with obvious concern. “What are you doing here? Is
everything okay? It’s really late…”

“No,”
she said firmly. “Nothing is okay. And you know why I’m here.”

Alistair
backed away slowly, retreating to the kitchen where he made an unnecessary
production out of opening a bottle of bourbon and pouring a slug for each of
them into two thick blue glasses, handing one to her and draining the other in
one swift motion. He was still in the worn brown T-shirt and khakis that he had
been wearing in the office, and he still smelled like the stale cigarette smoke
that permeated Operations. She sipped her drink once for politeness’s sake,
then set it aside on a handy counter when he went back for a refill.

“Mitzi,”
he said softly, turning back to face her with a full glass and obvious
reluctance. “You know you shouldn’t be here.”

She
felt the tears trying to force their way out before they happened, and turned
away so that he wouldn’t see them. She hadn’t cried since the night she brought
Alex Warner back to the Academy, and that had been out of frustration; since
the attack, however, since her last conversation with Rebecca, she hadn’t been
able to stop.

“I
know what I did was wrong, and I was punished,” she said, her voice shaking
more than she would have cared for it to. “Does that mean I’m kicked out of
your bed forever?”

She
could hear him swear, though it was under his breath. Afraid to open her eyes,
she listened to him finish his drink, and the clatter of the glass as he set it
down in the sink. She couldn’t hear him as he walked across the room that
separated them, and for a long, unhappy moment, she thought that he wouldn’t be
able to answer her at all. Then she felt his hands at her waist and she melted
in relief, leaning back against his chest, pulling his arms tight around her
until she couldn’t feel anything else. Eventually, he let her go, and she
turned to face him.

She
could tell by his face that he wanted to say something, but she put her fingers
on his lips, hushing him, staring patiently into his eyes. There was only a
moment of hesitation, a flash of something that looked a lot like guilt, before
he took her hand gently and led her to the bedroom.

* * *

“You are being weird.”

“That
is so not true,” Alex objected. “I was just being normal, right that second,
right when you said that. If things are weird now, then it’s your fault for
saying weird things.”

Eerie
looked at him skeptically with her dilated eyes.

“I
don’t think so,” she said gravely. “I do that a lot, so I know what that’s
like, and this isn’t that. It’s different.”

“Huh?”

Eerie
sighed and released his hand, stopping in the path and looking at him
forlornly.

“You
suck. Stop lying. Just tell me what it is. Is it because you are going away?
Because I am going to Central for field study?”

Alex
stopped too, and swore. He couldn’t look at her while he said it.

“I
just keep wondering about that thing with Edward, or whatever it was. You did
some shit to me, back there – to my protocol, right? And then he said some
stuff, and it kinda bugged me,” he explained defensively, shoving his hands in
his jeans pockets.

“He
said some stuff…” Eerie repeated doubtfully, clearly not understanding. Then,
slowly, it dawned on her, and her expression changed to something he hadn’t
seen before. “Oh. And it bugged you?”

“Yeah,”
Alex admitted.

“Why
do you care? Why does it matter what happened? We helped each other, and Edward’s
gone now, anyway. I never even talked to him when he was…you know. Alive. Why
would he know anything about me?”

Alex
looked away and nodded, not exactly sure what he was agreeing to, or admitting
to. The moment the words had left his mouth, he knew that this was a bad,
self-punishing idea, and wished that he hadn’t started at all. The words seemed
like they had been festering inside him for a long time, fermenting in his
suspicions, and then, at the worst possible moment, before three weeks of separation
and temptation, they came boiling out of him.

“It’s
just…how did you do that thing? When you made my protocol work so easily. I’ve
never been able to do that by myself.”

“I
don’t know,” Eerie said, shrugging and looking away nervously.

“Okay,
but Edward was saying some stuff about…about how you were like him,” Alex said,
frustrated and not sure why.

“Dead?”

“No…like,
maybe, there was something about you that you weren’t telling me.”

“What
do you want me to say?” Eerie said. She looked hurt, which was much, much worse
than her being angry. “You’ve never asked me anything about myself. Is it my
fault that you don’t know anything about me? I didn’t think that you were
interested.”

“Oh,
fuck, Eerie, that isn’t it at all…” Alex said, turning toward her, realizing
she was right.

“Why
do I have to explain myself to you, anyway?” Eerie demanded. “You are going on
vacation with a girl who likes you. A girl you sit next to in class. A girl you
hold hands with. And do I ever give you a hard time about it?”

“No,
no you don’t, and I didn’t mean to…” Alex said, reaching out to try to hold
her.

“Maybe
you shouldn’t be touching me, Alex,” Eerie said, pushing him away. “Since you
aren’t sure that you can trust me.”

“Eerie,
please, you have to let me – look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean it. I wish I
hadn’t said anything at all…”

“How
long have you been thinking about this anyway?” Eerie said, abruptly tearful.
“Have you been suspicious of me this entire time? Is that why you are always so
weird when I try to be nice to you? I hear all the names they call me, you
know. All the things they say about me. I didn’t think that you would be like
that.”

Alex
tried to object, but she turned away, and he didn’t blame her. She was right,
and he knew it, sick to his stomach and sick through his heart, he knew it. He
also knew that he had nothing to offer to fix it but it lies and flattery, and
that both would fall short. He wasn’t surprised when she started to walk away,
or that he didn’t do anything to stop her.

“Have
a nice trip, Alex,” Eerie said, not looking back at him.

He
stood there, hoping the earth would open up and swallow him, hoping that he
could stop his heart from beating just by thinking about it. Nothing of the
kind happened. The world remained as before, the girl continued to walk away.
He just stood there and watched her go, knowing that if he did nothing, that
there would be nothing left between them for him to come back to. Yet all he
did was watch her leave.

* * *

When Xia felt this
way, the only thing to do was clean. Sleep was impossible anyway. He started at
the middle of the room, using a disinfectant that he made himself. The soap he
used left a particular sheen that allowed him to see where he had already
cleaned, so that he could be precise. He did the floors with a rag, by hand,
just to be sure. Then he did the walls. Then he cleaned everything in the
kitchen, which was just a half-dozen dishes and a freezer full of bagged,
frozen meats and vegetables that he had selected, prepared, and vacuum-sealed
himself. Then he did the bathroom and the futon he slept on, even though he’d
done it the day before. Then he showered, changed clothes, and brushed his
teeth.

It
didn’t make him feel all that much better.

He
put out a package of frozen broccoli and a chicken breast to thaw, each in its
individual wrapper, before he boiled and baked them, respectively. He took one
look at the finished product, then put it back in the refrigerator, and had a
sip from a sealed bottle of water instead.

Then
he went to change the tape that sealed the cracks in the door.

* * *

“Tell me,” Alice
suggested playfully, “do you know what your favorite food is?”

The
prisoner looked at her warily, blinking to get rid of the water that dripped
from his hair into his eyes. He was too out of breath to respond immediately,
but Alice was feeling generous, so she gave him time.

“What?”

His
shaky voice belied his gruff tone. Alice’s grin widened another notch.

“Well,
honestly, I’ve forgotten mine,” Alice continued brightly. “I thought you could
relate, since you have all those cognitive blocks and anti-interrogation
routines restricting your memory. It’s more complicated than you would think. I
had a turkey and Swiss the other day, and it was okay – but for all I know,
that’s my favorite sandwich, right?”

Alice
leaned over to pick up the industrial cattle prod sitting next to her chair,
moving slow so that the prisoner could watch her double-check the batteries,
the power switch, the weight of the thing. His chest heaved in panic. The whole
front of his body was soaked.

“Then
the next day, I have roast beef, and I’m like, okay, this has got to be
it, right here…it was Robert Fisher, right? Anyway, Robert, I order roast beef
on rye and it’s mind-blowing, and I think maybe I’ve found it. Then that night
I go for Italian food, and it all flies out the window when I have that pasta
with cream sauce and shrimp. It could be that one day I’m going to eat some
plain yogurt or whole-wheat crackers or some shit and discover that’s my
favorite food. It’s nerve-wracking. What if macaroni and cheese is my favorite
food and I keep skipping it in the cafeteria every afternoon? What if I like
the donuts with jam inside best, but pass them up ’cause they look weird?”

Robert
Fisher’s eyes crept to the man above him, the man with his hands placed on his
neck and one shoulder, in an almost-friendly manner. He was a hard man, and
looked it – all bulky muscle and obvious bad intentions. Then his eyes returned
to Alice Gallow, leaning across the chair back and smiling at him, happy as a
cat with a mouse.

“What
the hell are you – ?”

He
made it that far and then the man behind him drove his head into the bucket
that he knelt in front of, cued by the slightest nod from Alice. Fisher
struggled and thrashed feebly, but never managed to dislodge the man’s grip or
upend the bucket. Alice started to giggle the moment his head hit the water
with a gurgling, choking noise, and the man joined her a moment later.

“This
shit never gets any less funny,” Alice said, leaning over the chair to watch.

“Are
you ever going to ask him any questions?” The man asked, apparently untroubled
by his victim’s rather minor struggles. “I’m starting to feel sort of bad for
him.”

Alice
snorted.

“Taking
a page out of Alistair’s book, are we, Mark? You telepaths are all alike.
Softheaded bleeding-heart pansies. What is the point of having all you
mind-readers around if we still have to ask people goddamn questions?”

They
both laughed again.

“Uh,
should I let him up?” Mark asked uncertainly.

“Is
he thinking about anything interesting yet?”

“Nope,”
Mark said, shaking his massive, stubbly head. “Same nursery rhyme he’s been
thinking the whole time, same counter-interrogation telepathic routine. Taos
did a good job on the memory locks and the cutouts on their people. Quality
psychic engineering.”

Alice
swore and looked at the ceiling for a moment.

“Okay,”
she said, sighing as Robert Fisher’s head came back into view, breaching the
water with a hideous, shuddering gasp followed by coughing and spitting water.
Mark dumped him unceremoniously on the concrete, where he writhed and
shuddered.

“Here’s
the point I am trying to make,” Alice said, leaning close to the wet man,
though not so close that his writhing splashed her. “I have forgotten my
favorite food. Other things, too, but that is the one that bothers me the most,
for whatever reason. Unless luck or research intervenes, I may never know for
certain.”

“Bitch,”
Robert Fisher spat, “fuck your – ”

Alice
made a disappointed sound and then activated the cattle prod, pushing it firmly
to Fisher’s chest. There were sparks, a snapping sound, and then a great deal
of screaming and twitching, a wisp of steam coming off his wet shirt where the
prod touched. She kept it on for ten seconds.

“Don’t
be impatient,” Alice scolded. “My point is that I will die without ever being
able to remember what I have forgotten. There is nothing I can do about it.
You, however, can have all of your precious memories back, just by wanting
them. All you have to do is trigger that psychic safety word they implanted in
your mind, where my friend Mark can’t get at it, and it will all come flooding
back. I am envious of your position.”

He
didn’t seem to be up to talking yet, but the look in Robert Fisher’s eyes made
it abundantly clear that he doubted her sincerity.

“I’m
serious,” Alice protested, pausing to zap him again, then waiting until he
stopped moaning and flailing before continuing. “Do you know what it’s like to
suspect you could be walking right by your favorite food, your dream house, the
perfect lover – even ignoring your own birthday, all because you can’t
remember? You should be grateful for what you have. You’re lucky to have the
two of us here to assist you, working hard to help jog that memory for you.”

Robert
Fisher straightened partway and looked her hard in the eyes. There was a faint
crackle of power, a minor fluctuation in the Ether. Alice stared back for a
moment, then she laughed and jammed the cattle prod to his crotch, activating
it while the big man behind him recoiled in laughter and sympathetic pain.
Again, Alice politely waited until Robert had stopped thrashing about on the
floor.

“You
are probably wondering why it is that you cannot use your magic brains to kill
us,” Alice said crisply. “I should have pointed this out earlier, but I tend to
lose my train of thought when I am having fun. My friend Mark Costas probably
isn’t familiar to you, but he should be, if there was any justice in the world.
You see, Bobby, you might be something of a telepath, but Mark here is a very special
kind of telepath; really, he’s a rare and utterly unique talent.”

“You
are too kind,” Mark rumbled.

In
fact, he was too kind to point out that he had heard this speech a number of
times over the years, almost verbatim. He knew that Alice’s knowledge of him
came from her diaries rather than any direct memory. Since Mark actually was
her friend, he kept quiet about this, the same way he kept quiet about the fact
that he was also her former student, because he wasn’t sure whether she had
read about that yet. Alice Gallow had actually overseen his transformation from
a chubby, awkward Salvadorian kid from New Mexico to the tattooed enforcer that
he was today. Still, no matter what she had forgotten, he was heartened to see
Alice being Alice, and it showed in the genuineness of his smile.

“Don’t
get me wrong, he can do all the normal shit. That isn’t what makes him unique,
though. You see, Mark has a protocol that operates entirely on your autonomic
nervous system. I’m sure you know all about that – maybe you’re even good
enough to do a little of that sort of thing; making people stop breathing, say,
or putting them down for a little nap. Mark, though, he’s fucking surgical when
it comes to tampering with the actual workings of your nervous system. When Mark
decides that you aren’t going to be able to use your protocols, well, I’m
afraid you just can’t access that part of your brain. When Mark decides that
you’re going to struggle about as effectively as a prom date after a couple
wine coolers, well, then that’s what happens. Are you starting to understand?
You, my friend, are going to die, face down in a fucking bucket.”

Robert
Fisher coughed, shuddered, and glared at Alice Gallow, but he still didn’t say
anything.

“What
about now?”

Alice
cocked an eyebrow at Mark.

He
shook his head slowly.

“Well,
then, let’s try again,” Alice suggested jovially, as Mark wrenched Fisher
roughly to his knees, again not at all dismayed by his attempts to fight. “Let
me know when you think of something interesting to say. Go ahead and call out.”

Mark
plunged his head back in the bucket.

“How
long till he dies from this?” Alice asked, yawning.

“We’ll
have to get a medic in here to set him back up pretty soon, I think,” Mark
said, considering.

“You
wanna take the kid gloves off, then? We could try the thing with his fingers
and the table saw. The last one definitely didn’t like that.”

“Yeah,
I guess we probably should – wait a minute. I think maybe I got something
here,” Mark said, closing his eyes and cocking his head as if he were listening
intently to music that only he could hear.

“Would
it help if I shocked him in the balls again?”

“Not
really.”

Alice
pouted, but she let him do his business. She had to remind Mark to let Robert
Fisher up for air, and by the time he did, the man was in sorry shape, vomiting
all over the floor.

“Gross,”
Alice said contemptuously. “What’d you get, son?”

“He’s
worried,” Mark said, a grin breaking across his tattooed face like sun through
the clouds. “He’s worried about his kids. He’s worried that they didn’t get
underground in time, that we’ve found them. He’s worried because he doesn’t
think he could handle that.”

“Holy
shit! That’s where the conditioning broke? Taos got sloppy! You have
their names?” Alice said, reaching for her cell phone. “Let me make a phone
call.”

She
stepped out of the room to make the call, leaving Robert and Mark alone.

“Wh-where
am I?” Robert Fisher croaked. “Is this Central?”

“Oh,
you didn’t recognize it?” Mark asked patiently. “I thought you would. This is
the worst place in the world. This is the room that you are going to die in.”

Robert
Fisher had nothing to say to that. Mark smiled and folded his arms, a man at
peace with his place and station in the world, and waited for Alice, who didn’t
take very long. She waltzed back into the room, sliding her phone back into her
pocket, and kissed Mark on the cheek as she walked past, the only woman he had
ever known tall enough to do that without reaching.

“Mark,
how is it that I never snagged you for Audits?” Alice said with her eyes full
of laughter. “A man of your talents is wasted on Analytics.”

“I’m
a hemophiliac,” Mark said gently, explaining what he had already told her,
years before. “My nanites malfunctioned, don’t know why. I bleed, Alice. I
wouldn’t last a minute in the field. Besides,” he said, smiling at her
affectionately, “I like what I do. What’s the word on his family?”

“Not
sure about the wife or either of his sons. The assumption is they were still
inside the main Taos compound when Xia torched it…”

“No,”
Robert Fisher moaned, until he was cut off by Alice, who pivoted smoothly,
without looking away from Mark, and kicked him savagely in the midsection.

“…but
we did snag his daughter in the raid. She graduated two years ago, name is
Shelly Fisher. You know her?”

Mark
shook his head ponderously.

“Me
either,” Alice said, shrugging. “But we will soon. Now all we need is another
bucket.”

Mark
nodded and left the room. He returned toting a second rusted bucket, filled to
the point that the water inside slopped and spilled on the concrete when he set
it down, not far from Robert Fisher’s head. Fisher stared at it for a long
time, while Alice smiled and watched, nudging Mark with her elbow.

“Don’t
do this,” Robert said, pleading with his eyes. “Please. Don’t hurt her.”

“Bobby,
Bobby. I thought you would understand by now. That’s my thing, baby,” Alice
chided, leaning forward, so that her face was only inches from his. “All I do
is hurt people.”

“Please…”

“Don’t
talk to me as if I am creating this situation,” Alice said, seizing him by the
cheeks and squeezing. “You know how to fix it. I am warning you, Bob – if
little Shelly walks through that door, then she is going to die in this room,
too. It’s going to be an ugly death. One that you will be allowed to watch
every second of, before you get the chance to die yourself. I want you to think
very carefully about what you want to do, because you don’t have a whole lot of
time left.”

The
look on Robert Fisher’s face was one of abject pain, the realization of defeat.
Exactly, in other words, what she had been waiting for all day. Alice smiled,
genuinely pleased.

“Mark,”
she asked softly, “is he done?”

Mark
nodded absently.

“Quiet,
Alice,” he said gruffly, bending down to put his hands on Robert Fisher’s wet
head. “I’m trying to work here.”

“So
sorry,” Alice whispered, smirking and pacing. It only took a minute. Mark was
clearly satisfied when he looked up at Alice.

“He
gave it all up,” Mark said, sounding satisfied. “We’ve got what we need.
Locations, safe houses, alarm codes, passwords, dead drops, the whole deal.
Fisher is the most senior member we managed to turn out. The Taos Cartel is
over with this.”

Robert
Fisher moaned, but Alice’s laughter drowned him out.

“Well,
alright, Bobby, I appreciate that,” she said jovially. “You saved us a whole
lot of time. I’ll keep that in mind, when I use that info to hunt down your
wife and sons, if they aren’t already dead. I’ll make sure they know that you
made it all possible.”

There
was a knock at the door, while Alice shook Robert Fisher like a rag doll. Mark
padded over to glance through the glass panel inset in the security door,
nodding to someone outside and then holding up a hand.

“Hey
Alice,” Mark said doubtfully. “They brought the girl. What do you want to do
with her?”

Alice
tossed Robert Fisher on the floor, made a fist, and bit her knuckle while she
thought about it, looking serious. Her smile spread slowly across her face, as
lovely and toxic as the sheen on an oil spill.

“Well,
shit,” Alice said, gesturing expansively. “We already went to the trouble of
getting another bucket. Be a shame not to use it, right?”

* * *

As the sun set behind
the hill that sheltered the Academy, Gaul rested his feverish head on the cool
expanse of his desk. His mind smoldered with the excess heat of simultaneous
processing, buzzed with partial downloads and custom-built Etheric software. Rebecca
would have known, he thought, in a corner of his mind not presently burning
with possibilities, burdened with a thousand potential futures and borrowed
protocols. She would have brought ice water and cold towels. She wouldn’t have
told him to stop, because Rebecca would have known that he would ignore her.
Instead, she would have sat on the corner of his desk, lit one of her forbidden
cigarettes, and talked, making it impossible for him to multitask, because a
conversation with Rebecca was a titanic undertaking. Once she had thwarted his
work, she would have walked him back to his cottage behind the Administrative
building. There, she would have run him a cold bath, before leaving for her own
tiny apartment in a disused wing above her own office. And she never would have
told anyone about it. Because Rebecca was a master at keeping secrets.

He
could almost see her sitting on the corner of his desk. He could almost smell
her despised, habitual cigarette, could almost hear her nagging him, and he
knew that all of this meant that he must be very sick indeed, he must have been
pushing himself far too hard for too long. He didn’t stop, though. Because no
one was there to make him.

But
Rebecca Levy would have.

Nineteen

“What do you think, Alex?”

“I
am sort of excited,” Alex admitted, taking in his uncharacteristically opulent
surroundings. “This is my first time in a limo, after all. On the other hand,
I’m still regretting some things that happened earlier, and wondering if I‘ve
ruined my life by going along with this. I guess my feelings are mixed.”

“Don’t
be like that,” Emily scolded. “We are on vacation. You must try to have fun.”

“Right,”
Alex said. “Besides, except for Timor, it’s me in a limo full of girls. That is
definitely pretty cool.”

“Actually,
Timor won’t be much competition for you,” Emily said, tipsy from three glasses
of champagne, patting Timor’s leg affectionately. “He told me so.”

Timor
blushed and muttered something to himself. Katya laughed uproariously. Svetlana
looked vaguely uncomfortable. Anastasia attempted to murder Emily with her
eyes.

“Right,
then,” Alex said lightly, hoping to change the subject. “So, uh, where are
Renton and Therese?”

Anastasia
gave Emily one last glower, clearly wishing she would move away from her
cousin, then reluctantly turned to face Alex.

“They
are taking the long way. Security procedures,” Anastasia said, sipping from the
glass of mineral water she had taken, rather than the excellent sparkling wine
that had been handed around when they got in. “Not my idea. Black Sun
regulations. Therese had to be psychically blindfolded so she couldn’t find the
island again. Renton is taking care of that. Not that she won’t figure it out
the first time one of the fishing boats or the vendors come by. But I don’t
make the rules,” Anastasia said ruefully. “At least, not yet.”

“Does
that mean I shouldn’t ask where we are going? Because I definitely won’t figure
it out.”

“Ha
Long Bay,” Anastasia said, shrugging. “And before you ask, that is in northern
Vietnam.”

“Oh,
shit. Don’t they, like, hate Americans?” Alex asked curiously. “I saw Full
Metal Jacket. I would hate us.”

“Actually,
that doesn’t come up too often,” Anastasia said, clearly taken aback by the
reasonableness of the question. “Probably because my family isn’t American, but
also because Vietnam is a pretty young place – not many people are old enough
to remember the war, and most people are too busy trying to make money from
tourists to worry about their country of origin. The government can be a bit
passive-aggressive – they have any number of rules about what foreigners can
and cannot do, including owning land. Technically the island is held by a
Vietnamese development group. On paper, they run a small resort there. In
reality, the resort is my vacation home, and the only guests are my family, but
we pay taxes as if it were full of tourists year round, so no one objects. You
will like it, I’m certain. It is beautiful, the weather should be nice if very
warm, and there are beaches.”

“Wow,”
Emily said, shifting over in her seat to be nearer to Alex. “This is so cool,
Anastasia!”

“How
come we didn’t just go straight there?” Alex asked, finishing off his own glass
and setting it aside. “Couldn’t we have skipped the flight from Tokyo and the
drive and stuff? Couldn’t Svetlana port us directly?”

“Yes,
but there are people in Central who can track apports,” Anastasia said,
frowning at the thought. “I never go there directly. I had Svetlana take us to
Narita Airport in Tokyo because it is the regional transportation hub; all
anyone watching us can say for certain is that we went somewhere in Asia. The
Black Sun has holdings throughout the region. They might know about the island,
but they don’t know for certain we are going there.”

“Doesn’t
that seem a little bit paranoid? It’s only a vacation, right?”

Anastasia
sneered at Alex.

“You
are naïve, boy. I was still in my mother’s womb when I survived my first
assassination attempt, an abortifacient slipped into her poached egg. The
precognitives knew I was coming, so the cartels didn’t even wait for me to be
born to try and kill me. That is the world we live in. You will learn this for
yourself, eventually.”

“It
seems like you are going a little far…”

“You
think that was the extent of my subterfuge? You underestimate me,” Anastasia
said haughtily. “At the marina on Ha Long Bay, we will be met by an old friend
and employee of the family, Mr. Bao, who will handle both the payment and the
telepathic memory wipe of the driver who took us there, and after, the ferryman
as well. Meanwhile, Renton, Therese, and a few others are on an overnight
flight from London to Beijing, then to Hong Kong the next day. They won’t meet
us in Ha Long Bay until Tuesday at the earliest.”

“Anastasia!
That’s mean,” Emily said. Her tone was chiding, but she seemed delighted.

“They
never used to have limousines here,” Katya said, sounding a bit sad about it.
She was still wearing an unnecessary windbreaker, despite the heat and
humidity, and eating bright red battered shrimp she bought from a vendor outside
the airport. “Remember those Chinese jeeps we used to take, Ana? I hated those
things.”

Anastasia
nodded, and then, to Alex’s absolute astonishment, she laughed.

“Timor
was sick every year; do you remember?” Anastasia asked, laughing from behind
her hand. “Poor child. Never could stomach the roads or the suspension.”

“Thank
you for reminding me,” Timor said glumly. “You are both just showing off for
Alex and Emily.”

“I
wasn’t doing anything of that sort!” Katya protested. “I was harmlessly
reminiscing.”

“They
are trying to con you,” Timor said, leaning over Emily to confide to Alex.
“Normally, they fight the whole way here about what movie they plan on watching
on the big television downstairs.”

“Now
who’s showing off,” Katya muttered, closing her eyes and leaning her head
against the window.

It
wasn’t a long trip, perhaps four hours, with traffic that was generally heavy
and varied from bicycles to massive Chinese cargo trucks, all crowded together
on the same narrow roadway. Most of the vehicles they passed were vans and
trucks, all sitting low on their suspension, loaded with cargo or covered with
passengers clinging to every available surface. Anastasia and Katya quarreled
briefly, then both appeared to fall asleep, while Emily stared out the window at
the lush countryside, Svetlana read, and Timor and Alex played gin on the
foldout table in between the seats. They crested a particularly large group of
hills, then started to descend back down into an urban area.

“I
recognize this part of the road,” Svetlana said, in her clipped,
Russian-accented English. “It’s not much longer, now.”

“You
know, you never say anything when I’m around,” Alex observed, discarding one
bad card and getting another to replace it. “I was starting to worry that you
hated me.”

“No,”
Svetlana said, shaking her head. “I am a servant, however, not a member of the
family or a favored guest like yourself. It is not my place to speak, so I
don’t.”

“Wow,
that’s a really fucked up attitude you have,” Alex said, tossing his cards down
in disgust. “Does Anastasia own you or something?”

Svetlana
gave him a wan smile and returned to her book. Timor put the cards aside and
turned to chat with Emily, leaving Alex to stew impotently. Anastasia’s eyes
snapped open a few minutes later without a trace of sleepiness in them.

“Mr.
Bao,” she said softly, staring at an indeterminate point above Alex’s head. “It
is good to hear from you again.”

Then
Anastasia switched to what he assumed to be Vietnamese, which impressed the
hell out of Alex, but didn’t seem to come as a surprise to anyone else.

Alex
stared glumly out the window and wondered if the whole trip would be this way.

* * *

Gaul sighed and let
Alistair knock twice before he called for him to enter.

“Sorry
boss, I know you’re busy. But I just got my marching orders…”

“Yes,”
Gaul snapped irritably. “Get to the point, Alistair. There is a problem of some
kind? Something that you don’t understand?”

“No,
I get the mission,” Alistair said, unflappable as always, taking a seat in
front of Gaul. “You’ve had me working on this for months, whatever it is, so it
must be important. I'll do it, I’m not arguing. I’m simply wondering when I
will get my old job back.”

“What
does that mean?” Gaul asked. “I’m not in the mood for games, Alistair. Say
whatever it is that you have to say.”

“You’ve
had me running errands for some time now, while you do my job. In case you have
forgotten, I am supposed to be your Chief Auditor. Instead, I barely even see
my subordinates,” Alistair complained. “They take their marching orders from
you. Hell, you and Alice Gallow seem tight these days. What gives? Did I blow
it?”

“On
the contrary,” Gaul said, pushing his glasses back into place. “I have no one
else that I can trust with this matter, no one else who is capable. I am not
demoting you, Alistair, I am relying on you.”

“If
you say so. I’ve spent months running down rumors about your old classmates,
and about our friends out in Egypt, the Anathema. They haven’t tried anything
in fifty years, Gaul. They’ve been dormant since they were expelled from
Central. No one that I’ve talked to knows anything about this ‘Rosicrucian’
person at all – at least, not in the sense that you mean it. You have me
talking to conspiracy theorists and French Royalist weirdos. Is all of this
supposed to make sense?”

Gaul
looked up at him briefly, then solemnly shook his head.

“Not
to you, it isn’t. Don’t misunderstand me, Alistair. I put my faith in you
because you are capable, but your remit does not extend as far as doubting me,”
Gaul said critically. “I have guided the Academy through a dozen crises before
this, and I will lead us through this one as well. As Chief Auditor, you are my
right hand. My right hand is not permitted to question my intention or my
judgment.”

There
was no sound in the room except for Gaul’s pen scratching on the paper.

“You’re
the boss,” Alistair said, sighing and standing. “I wish you’d let me delegate
this, though.”

“The
most important part of management is knowing which jobs you absolutely must do
yourself,” Gaul said coldly, motioning toward the door without looking up. “I
eagerly await the day that you come to this realization yourself.”

Alistair
shook his head doubtfully and left, closing the door behind him. After he left,
Gaul put his pen down, rubbed his forehead, and then sighed, looking at the
chair where his Chief Auditor had sat with an unreadable expression.

* * *

Mr. Bao was nothing
like the wizened old Vietnamese man that Alex expected. He was short, stocky,
and middle-aged, with neatly trimmed hair and designer glasses. He spoke
unaccented English and was evasive about where he picked it up. Since he and
Alex both ended up in the front cabin of the ferry, they talked about the
Lakers, to whom Mr. Bao was devoted, despite the fact that Alex knew nothing
about basketball. He was likable, and the trip to the island was short and
breathtakingly beautiful. The bay sparkled in the afternoon sun, azure blue
with grey columns of stone jutting out from the water like the ruins of an
ancient city, some crowned with livid green flora, others concealing impossibly
perfect white sand beaches. Mr. Bao pointed out each islet and told him what
they were called, but Alex got confused, as they all seemed to have variations
on the same name. The island that they were going to was at the end of the
harbor, tucked inside the arm of a much larger barrier island. There was a
fishing village across the water on the mainland, and a swanky resort on the
adjoining island.

They
disembarked on an amazingly level beach flooded with two inches of warm
seawater extending to the rock walls that surrounded the cove, so clear that he
could see the grains of sand beneath. While a taciturn Samoan dealt with the
luggage, they followed Anastasia along a narrow path through dense undergrowth
and unfamiliar trees. This was followed by lush, formal gardens, dotted with
fountains and bisected with a miniature stream. Maintaining the grounds must
have required an army of gardeners, but Alex didn’t see anyone on the entire
walk.

The
house was nestled at the rear of a great clearing, surrounded by cultivated
fruit trees and a dazzling array of exotic flowers. It was less grandiose than
Alex had feared; two stories painted a uniform white, in a Western style. The
house was clearly old, maybe even dating back to the French occupation, with
significant modern renovations. They were greeted by a small army of servants,
who were a mix of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russian. Then Alex was shown to his
room by a tiny smiling man named Phon. He informed him in heavily accented
English that dinner would be served in an hour and a half, then disappeared
before Alex had a chance to thank him.

Alex
paced across the room, taking stock: one bed, giant and comfortable, too many
pillows. One mirror, floor length. One massive armoire into which he had
unpacked his meager things. One uncertain-looking writing desk, on which he
placed his laptop with some trepidation. One vase, with perfectly arranged
flowers. One window, with a view of the bamboo garden at the rear of the house,
with what he assumed was jungle rising up behind it in a verdant green wall.

Alex
couldn’t hear anything, though he knew the house was filled with people. He was
afraid to walk on the lacquered wood of the floors in his shoes, so he stayed
carefully on the patterned rugs. He sat on the bed for a while, staring out the
window, trying to figure out why the view made him feel vaguely nostalgic. He
checked his laptop, confirming wireless service and Internet access, but then
didn’t do anything with it. Restless, he changed into board shorts and his
weird Israeli sandals, then headed for the beach.

The
halls of the house seemed deserted, though once he heard people talking
somewhere nearby. Alex worried that he might have to ask directions, but the
path he chose at random led directly to a cove a quarter-mile from the house,
fifty meters long and flooded to the extent that only a sliver of dry sand
remained, at the very edge of the dense rock that bordered the beach. He threw
his things down and took off his shirt and sandals, realizing belatedly that he
hadn’t thought to bring a towel. As there was nothing for it now, he jumped
into the water, which was pleasantly warm, particularly in the shallows of the
flooded beach. Gradually, he waded out further, where the water deepened and
was a darker shade of blue, then swam in the freestyle stroke that Michael had
taught him. He didn’t go far, instead making lazy circles around the cove,
pausing every now and again to float on his back. He stared up at the sky as
the sun diminished, licking salt from his lips and brushing wet hair back from
his eyes. Alex wasn’t the most confident swimmer, having only learned a few
months ago in the Academy pool, but the bay was calm and he felt safe.

He
was tired by the time he made his way back to shore. Alex was relieved to find
that his fears had not been realized – the tide had receded slightly, leaving
his clothes dry and intact. He was less pleased to discover he had company.

“I
thought I might find you here,” she said shyly. “Well, maybe not here.
Actually, this was the second beach I checked. I brought you a towel.”

“Thanks,”
Alex said, suddenly very self-conscious of his shirtless physique. Things had
improved, thanks to Michael and the nanites, but he still felt pretty
inadequate. “I forgot.”

“I
thought you might,” Emily said, obviously pleased with herself. “Are you done
swimming? Because I was sent to collect you. Dinner is soon. I don’t know why
Anastasia has such a problem with her cook. He seems perfectly fine to me.”

“Maybe
because she doesn’t eat meat,” Alex said grumpily, running the towel through
his hair. “Sorry for the trouble, by the way. I didn’t mean to stay so long. I
kind of freaked out once I got here, and had to get out of that house for a
little while.”

“Culture
shock,” Emily said sympathetically. “Anastasia’s world will do that to you. I
have no idea how rich she is personally, but it must be a substantial fortune,”
Emily said, shaking her head and looking, to Alex’s eyes, more than a little
jealous. “Her family is considered the wealthiest and most powerful among all
the cartels. She’s lived this way since she was a child. It gives you an idea
how she became so comfortable giving orders.”

Alex
pulled his shirt over his head, ran a hand through his hair, stepped into his
sandals, and nodded at Emily. She started back along the path, and he followed,
drops of saltwater running down the back of his neck and tickling his ears.

“I’ve
been meaning to ask…are you and Anastasia, like, friends now? Or is that part
of some sort of deal you’re working, or what?”

Emily
laughed, the sound dying in the brush around them.

“You
are so not subtle, Alex. I like that about you,” she said, giggling. “Anastasia
and I are for-real friends, at least on my part. We didn’t make any kind of
deal. She did me the favor of inviting me and a few other people along on her
spring vacation. If things work out the way I hope, then I won’t owe her
anything more than a favor. And if they don’t, well, Anastasia wouldn’t be my
first option for help.”

“No?”
Alex said encouragingly. “You mean the Hegemony?”

Emily
shook her head.

“No.
It’s…become quite complicated. Let’s not waste our time talking about this,”
she said, seizing his arm and clinging to it. “It isn’t important. Because I’m
very confident that everything is going to work out for both of us.”

“For
you, maybe. For me, I’m not even sure what that might entail,” Alex complained.

Emily
poked him between his ribs, making him jump and yelp in surprise. He rubbed the
spot and stared at her resentfully.

“You
are the least romantic boy,” Emily chided.

* * *

“What do you think,
Vlad? Has Alice brought me something I can use?”

“I
think so,” Vladimir said slowly, chewing on the end of his pen. “It’s hard to
work out the hierarchy, but there’s no doubt – Witches are at the top of it.
These two should be worth something, if we can figure out a way to contact them
and how to make the offer.”

Gaul
adjusted his glasses, looking at the two figures, each in her own individual
and mostly barren cell, one-way glass inset between them and their observers.
Both were women, both wore bulky red jumpsuits with no pockets, and both were
shaved bald. One still had splints on the fingers of both hands and a healing
bruise on the side of her jaw, while the other seemed in relatively good shape.
Though it wouldn’t have been apparent to the casual observer, neither of the
prisoners was even remotely human.

“What
do you suppose they would be worth?”

“Hard
to say,” Vladimir said, fussing over a piece of machinery he had been messing
about with since Gaul arrived, which looked a great deal like a slide
projector. “Since we started the operation, we’ve managed to kill six, and
capture two. That’s in contrast to the dozens of Weir and human causalities
they suffered during the same period. Clearly, they are willing to sacrifice
their pawns in order to protect the Witches, so they must be valuable. But how
valuable? That’s hard to say when we don’t know their priorities. What do you
want to do with them?”

“One
of the teams we lost in Shanghai,” Gaul said quietly, his voice terse. “They
didn’t die; they simply disappeared from Alistair’s grid in mid-operation. The
current theory is that they are alive, and are being held somewhere. We have
had similar incidents in the past few years. There could be as many as a dozen
prisoners, assuming any of them are still alive. I want them back. Failing
that, I want their bodies. After what happened with Edward, I don’t want any
repeats.”

“Prisoner
exchange, huh?” Vladimir spoke thoughtfully as he extracted a lens from the
device that he was working on, setting it down carefully on a sheet of wax
paper. “Might work. Hard to say, when we don’t even know if they want their
prisoners back. We have no idea if their culture assigns value to individual
Witches. They could write them off when they are captured. Maybe the recent
escalation was prompted by our taking prisoners in the first place. They may as
well be aliens. Who knows what they think?”

Gaul
leaned close to the one-way glass, studying their longer-term captive, the less
battered of the two Witches. She sat on the minimal cot, staring blankly at a
featureless cell wall.

“Do
they ever do anything? Every time I come down, they are just staring into
space…”

“They
scream when Alice and Mark come to take them downstairs,” Vladimir said,
shaking his head disapprovingly. “The new one – the one that Alice brought back
from New York – she still spits and claws at anyone who comes into her cell. We
have to restrain her just to hose the thing down every other week. The Witch we
captured in San Diego behaved similarly until Alice got annoyed and broke both
her arms and her left knee. Since then, she’s been more cooperative. Her name
is Evelyn, apparently – or that’s what she calls herself, at least. She’ll
respond if you talk to her, she’ll answer if you ask questions. I don’t think
they’ve gotten anything particularly useful out of her.”

“Because
she doesn’t know anything, or because she’s recalcitrant?”

Vladimir
took a replacement lens from a rack on the nearby table, carefully handling it
by the edges, and slotted it cautiously in an arcane machine. A circle flared
briefly around him, a swirl of dancing letters that disappeared as fast as they
had materialized.

“I’m
not certain,” Vlad admitted, breathing an obvious sigh of relief as he screwed
in the new lens. “But since our own dear Alice Gallow is involved, I wouldn’t
put money on her holding out. She seems traumatized, if that’s even a
possibility with these creatures. Rebecca suspected that they might not have
emotions at all – or not the same emotions as us – but that they have learned
to mimic ours to their advantage. That Witch certainly seems frightened of
Alice, but who isn’t? Go talk to her, if you are curious.”

“I
might,” Gaul said, looking through the glass at the women on the other side.
“How are you holding up, Vlad?”

“Better
than most,” Vladimir retorted, glaring at Gaul. “And if that’s what you came
down here to discuss, then you’ve wasted your time.”

“If
you say so,” Gaul said, turning back to the window. “How do I talk to her?”

* * *

The lights were
already on in the kitchen when Anastasia entered, glad that she had bothered to
put on a nightdress. She cleared her throat and waited politely for Emily to
notice her.

“Oh,”
Emily said, looking up from the refrigerator. “I guess you didn’t have enough
dinner, either?”

“No,”
Anastasia admitted, walking into the kitchen, the silk of her slip moist with
the humidity of the night. “I have this problem with cooks. The ones that
aren’t vegans hate cooking for me because I’m a vegan. The vegan ones are all
so crazy that I can’t stand to eat their food three days in a row. Have you
ever had a jackfruit-and-tofu scramble? Because I was served one, and I’m still
not sure if it was an attempt on my life or a sincere effort to feed me.”

Emily
laughed, closed the refrigerator, then opened a nearby cupboard, stretching to
see what was on the upper shelf. The T-shirt she wore was tight enough that it
had to stretch to accommodate the movement.

“You’ve
lost weight,” Anastasia observed.

“Thank
you,” Emily said brightly.

“And
that’s why you’re here…”

“Yeah,”
Emily said, looking a bit embarrassed. “I never actually eat enough at dinner
these days. Oh! Do you want popcorn?”

“Yes.
Yes, I do want popcorn,” Anastasia said seriously. Blitzen wandered cautiously
in, following his mistress’s voice. His head emerged tentatively through the
door, until he determined that the staff, who would not have tolerated him in
the kitchen, were nowhere in sight. He sidled up next to them and nudged
Anastasia’s hand until she relented and scratched behind his ears. “Emily, why
aren’t you with Alex? It’s only ten…”

Emily’s
smile was utterly joyless.

“He
fell asleep,” Emily said resentfully. “Do you know where the popcorn maker is?”

In
fact, Anastasia had only been in the kitchen on a half-dozen occasions in her
entire life, and didn’t know where anything was. As such, she was reduced to
helping Emily open the dozens of identical, white-painted drawers, hunting for
anything that resembled a popcorn maker. At the very least, she managed to
salvage some of her ego by being the one to find it, on her fifth try. She
still needed Emily operate it, though, since Anastasia understood the making of
popcorn only in theory.

“Anastasia,
can I ask you something? Are your…what are those, um, things on your slippers?”

“They
are Domo,” Anastasia said helpfully, pointing at the brown plush figures
attached to her footwear. “These are Domo slippers.”

“I
see,” Emily blinked. “They’re cute. Where did you get them?”

“Same
place I get everything,” Anastasia answered with a shrug. “Tokyo. I have
Svetlana take me there every so often so that I can go shopping in Harajuku or
Shinjuku. They have all the cutest stuff, and my build,” Anastasia said,
grimacing, “is common in Japan. Which makes shopping easy.”

“That’s
amazing,” Emily said, raising her voice above the whirring motor of the air
popper. “I can’t believe you go all the way around the world to go shopping.
That sounds so cool.”

“Would
you like to come with me?” Anastasia asked, searching cabinets for salt. “We
could go sometime during break. Sveta can take us.”

“Could
we?” Emily asked, excited. “Of course I’d love to go! I don’t have any money,
but it would be fun to see. I haven’t really been anywhere exciting before
this.” Emily waited until the popcorn was finished, and Anastasia returned with
a saltshaker, before she went on. “Anastasia, it isn’t that I don’t appreciate
it, but I have to ask – why are you being so nice to me?”

“Am
I? I hadn’t noticed. Perhaps it is because you are one of the first people
outside of my family or cartel to visit this place, and I want you to get a
good impression.”

“Maybe,”
Emily said, looking dubious. “Do you want to watch a movie or something?”

Anastasia
nodded and headed toward the room with the giant television in it.

“Yes,
but probably not the same one you want to watch…”

Negotiations
followed. They settled on Heavenly Creatures, because they were both
feeling maudlin. Emily cried a little, near the end, but Anastasia remembered
it being better.

* * *

“I would appreciate it
if we could have a frank conversation, Evelyn.”

The
woman rubbed her wrists and looked befuddled by her surroundings. Gaul tried to
remember Rebecca’s theory about the relative humanity and the possible
falseness of their emotions, but it was difficult. The woman seemed genuinely
distressed, and Gaul didn’t enjoy being a party to said distress. The room was
sterile white, except for the bare wooden table they sat at and the plastic
chairs they occupied. It looked like a disused meeting room, not an
interrogation chamber, but Gaul still felt like an inquisitor. Normally, he
thought resentfully, he had people for this sort of thing.

“Whatever
you want,” Evelyn said, pathetically eager. “I always cooperate. You don’t have
to force me.”

“I
hadn’t planned to,” Gaul said distastefully. “Tell me, please, Evelyn – what is
your relative position in the Witch hierarchy?”

Evelyn
ran a hand across a head made bare, and Gaul felt a dull guilt.

“I
can, but you won’t like the answer,” Evelyn said flatly, looking at the table.
“I’m nobody special. I don’t know how to make a comparison to your standards,
but I’m about as low as our totem pole gets, without being like you people.”

“What
is the relative worth of a captured Operator?”

“That
depends on what they are being used for,” Evelyn explained dully. “If we took
them prisoner – and they are still alive for you to recover – chances are my
people wouldn’t trade them for my return, because they have some specific use
for them. They would have been killed long ago, otherwise. There is no
precedent for an exchange, anyway. Witches are expected to hold our own.”

“Is
there someone for me to negotiate with? Someone who might be concerned about
your well-being, or want you returned on the basis of security?”

Evelyn
shook her head hesitantly.

“A
superior? A central organization?”

“You
don’t understand.” Evelyn’s voice was laced with something that sounded like
pity. “We aren’t organized in a manner you could understand. I told you that
from the start, but no one believed me. We have an…awareness of one another.
You do not have a word to describe it. Nothing that you have done has
restricted my connection with the rest of my kind. You may as well be talking
directly to them when you speak with me. The other Witches are aware of my
suffering, they are simply not concerned. Understand, please – I do not want
more bad things to happen to me. To my people, however, I am already lost.”

Gaul
sat back from the table and pushed his glasses back up.

“I
see. Very interesting. Are some Witches more valuable than others?”

“Certainly.
Older, wiser, more powerful Witches command more respect. Those who control the
cattle, the humans. Those successful in the war against your kind,” Evelyn
explained, her voice wandering and distant. “There is no hierarchy as you
understand it, however, no leader with whom you might converse. Some might
listen to you out of curiosity, but they would have neither the ability nor the
inclination to sway our society.”

“Then
there is no way to negotiate with your kind,” Gaul concluded tiredly. “Not even
to secure your own release.”

Evelyn
looked him in the eyes, her expression desperate, but not quite – he thought –
defeated.

“Not
even to surrender,” Evelyn agreed flatly. “We have an understanding of your
concept of diplomacy. We simply do not agree with the philosophy behind it.”

“That
is…unfortunate. For our conflict to end, then, one side or the other must be
completely wiped out.”

Evelyn
nodded mutely.

“The
intelligence you provided us thus far has proved valid,” Gaul said woodenly,
consulting the Etheric Network. “Empathic and telepathic probes, as well as
basic self interest, indicate that you are being honest with us, as far as that
goes.”

“Of
course,” Evelyn said shakily. “What would I gain with lies? I am dead to my
people. Even if I were to escape somehow, they would kill me out of distrust. I
have been contaminated by contact with you people.”

Gaul’s
frown tightened.

“One
of my associates has made a rather alarming suggestion. She claims that your
emotions are manufactured,” Gaul said, his voice returning to normal. He
regarded Evelyn critically, observing her through the filter of a downloaded
empathic protocol. “She claims that you fabricate personas, complete with
emotional responses to stimuli that meet our general expectations, for the
purposes of feigning and appealing to humanity.”

Gaul
watched Evelyn fidget and twitch, but nothing came of it. He hated downloading
empathic protocols; they were inherently touchy-feely. He always felt dirty
after using one, as if he had gotten too close and caught something.

“Well?
Is that true?”

Evelyn
spoke slowly when she responded, as if she were under tremendous pressure, as
if the words were torn from deep within her, and spoken only at grievous
personal cost.

“If
my persona is manufactured, then I would have no more awareness of that than
you. I would not be able to differentiate between the persona and my own
identity. For all intents and purposes, using a Working to implant a persona
completely replaces the preexisting personality.”

“And
this would be true if a human were implanted with a persona?”

“Certainly,”
Evelyn said, with a muted nod.

“An
Operator?”

“If
it is possible, then yes.”

“When
the Auditors took you, Evelyn, were you working for the Anathema? Or with
Anathema?”

“No,”
Evelyn said, shaking her head vigorously. “We do not recognize a difference. An
Operator is an Operator, regardless of your petty disputes. We do not engage in
alliances. We have slaves, but no allies.”

“Then
why is it,” Gaul asked, leaning forward, “that we keep finding Witches and
Operators working together lately?”

“I
don’t know.”

“What
about the Terrie Cartel?”

“I
don’t know anything about that,” Evelyn said, shivering. “Alice Gallow didn’t
believe me either. I can tell you this much, though. It’s a lesson that we
teach our young from their first days – anyone can be controlled. All that’s
needed is the right leverage.”

“You
think the Anathema have found a way to manipulate Witches?”

“What
do I know?” Evelyn answered, spreading her hands helplessly. “I’m not
important. It isn't impossible. As far as I know, there are no Witches working
with Operators, so any you have encountered have either gone rogue, or they are
under outside control. Do you believe me, Director?”

Gaul
shrugged noncommittally.

“My
fear, my pain, is every bit as a real as yours,” Evelyn said, her hands out
imploringly. “I don’t want to see Alice Gallow again. I don’t want to die in
that cell, and I will ransom my life with whatever I can offer. Is there
something that you want from me, Director?”

Gaul’s
pale red eyes narrowed.

“As
a matter of fact,” he said softly, with quiet satisfaction, “there is. We
conducted a raid in Shanghai recently, as part of the mop-up of the Terrie
Cartel. Instead of finding Witches, we found the Anathema – heretic Operators.
Tell me, Evelyn – we aren’t fighting you this time, are we?”

He
could see the surprise in her eyes, and it annoyed him.

“Of
course not,” Evelyn said. “Have you only just now realized?”

* * *

“Exquisite,” Alice
said, running one gloved finger across the blood smear on the pitted concrete
floor. “I’ve never seen another protocol to equal it. This is what Rebecca and
Alistair were so desperate to keep secret. I thought that your protocol was
permanently restricted. I’m pleased to see that isn’t the case. How long have
you been able to use it?”

Mitsuru
sat down heavily on the floor of the basement room. The cement wall behind her
was spattered with her blood, evidence of the stomach injury she had sustained.
The wound was still dripping on the floor around her in little rivulets. Of the
five Terrie Cartel members she had found, there were only two intact corpses,
leaking from various bullet wounds. The rest were splattered across the room.
The basement looked like a slaughterhouse, and was starting to smell that way.

“Since
last week,” Mitsuru admitted, poking experimentally at the gouge that ran from
her side to her belly, above her belt line. “I’ve been trying for months, but
nothing worked. Then, the night that I brought Alexander Warner back…”

“Aha!”
Alice cried, delighted, inspecting the carnage. “I thought it might be down to
that little delinquent. I wondered why they were so damn eager to get me to
take over administering the Program.”

“Yes.
Me too,” Mitsuru said, leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes. “I
suppose that I know why, now. I helped him stretch out a cramped leg recently.
Shortly after, the bindings that the Board installed around the Black Door
snapped like rubber bands.”

“Okay,
I see the gunshots, and the knife work,” Alice said approvingly, turning her
attention to the dissected corpse of a middle-aged man in the center of the
room, more a collection of mangled parts than a body, “but what did you do to
this unfortunate bastard?”

“He
was the one who wounded me,” Mitsuru said, wrinkling her nose in disgust, “I
didn’t even see him until he was right on top of me. When I activate my Black
Protocol, though, I can do all sorts of things. That,” Mitsuru said, inclining
her head at the body without opening her eyes, “is what is left over
afterwards.”

“Nasty,”
Alice said approvingly.

Mitsuru
gritted her teeth, and the air around her was tinted a deep red, as if Alice
watched through a filtered lens. The blood seeping from the wound in her
stomach appeared to coagulate in fast-forward. Mitsuru gasped, opening her eyes
and blinking several times to clear her vision.

“Oh,
Mitzi. I like you more and more all the time,” Alice said, hugging her knees to
her chest and leering. “So, why did you call me? Not that I mind, you
understand…”

“I
can’t tell Alistair about this,” Mitsuru said meekly, waving her hand to
indicate the massacre. “He’d freak. And there was another one with them; she
got away before I could stop her. I was hoping we could go after her.”

“Well,
I’d like to hunt her down, baby, but how?” Alice said, obviously amused.
“Bitch’s gotta be long gone, if she saw what you did here.”

“Some
of my blood splattered on her,” Mitsuru said, looking embarrassed. “The nanites
will keep relaying information until they shut down. I can track her for at
least a few hours.”

“Nice
trick. What are you doing here in the first place, anyway? What are you
working?”

“Alistair
gave me the lead. On accident. He doesn’t know I followed up on it. That wasn’t
his intention. But I’m angry. About Rebecca. These bastards have something to
do with it. That’s what his personal files said, anyway.”

Alice
grinned, and walked over to where Mitsuru sat. As always, Mitsuru was more than
a little intimidated by the tall woman, with her jet-black hair and disturbing
smile, but as usual, Alice seemed utterly benevolent where Mitsuru was
concerned. Alice bent down to pat Mitsuru’s head affectionately.

“Mitzi,
I swear, I could just eat you up!” Alice said, her smile revealing altogether
too many teeth for Mitsuru’s comfort.

Twenty

“Oh, hello,” Alex said, hesitating at the bottom of the crude
stairs carved in the cliff face. “I didn’t realize anybody was down here. I can
find somewhere else, if you want…”

Katya
looked at him over the top of her sunglasses. She was in a blue swimsuit and a
translucent sarong, sitting on a towel on the narrow strip of white sand that
wasn’t flooded by the late afternoon tide. Her hair and suit were both damp. She
shaded her eyes with her paperback, a plastic bottle packed with ice and pink
liquid in the sand next to her leg.

“Naw.
Don’t worry about it,” Katya said, patting the patch of dry sand beside her
towel. “It’s not like it’s my beach or anything.”

“Oh.
Cool,” Alex said half-heartedly, tossing his towel down as far away from Katya
as he could get without sitting in the water, which was barely an arm’s length.
“I sort of thought you would be, you know, still following me around.”

Katya
laughed from behind her book.

“It
isn’t like I do that for fun, you know,” she said, rattling the ice in the
plastic bottle. “I don’t really have to keep too close an eye on you here. It
is an island, after all. Even with your unique aptitude for getting in trouble,
I doubt you could manage much.”

“Oh.
Right.”

Alex
sat down and stared at the ocean. He was wearing board shorts, but he had more
of an interest in getting away from Emily than for swimming.

“How
many movies did they make you watch, anyway?” Katya inquired, folding the top
corner of the page she was currently on and setting her book aside. This
naturally left Katya’s ample chest on display, which meant that Alex didn’t
dare look, for fear of his eyes straying. He watched the waves’ gentle motion
instead. That seemed safe.

“I’m
not sure,” Alex said, shuddering at the memory. “After a while I sort of lost
count. It was all a blur of British accents, period costumes, and women crying
endlessly over – actually, I’m not really sure what they were crying over.
Life, I guess.”

“Just
be glad you fell asleep early last night,” Katya said. “They watched Requiem
for a Dream and Dancer in the Dark back to back. Emily must have
used an entire package of tissues. Even Therese got all weepy.”

“I
would swear that chick from the X-Files was in one of them,” Alex said
uncertainly. “Why do girls like depressing movies so much?”

Katya
shrugged, uncapped her plastic bottle, and took a long drink from it.

“Don’t
ask me,” she said, wiping her mouth, then holding out the plastic bottle and
waggling it in his direction. “I’m not into that stuff.”

Alex
took the wide-mouthed bottle hesitantly. Whatever was in it smelled very
fruity, though he couldn’t identify the fruit, with a strong alcoholic
undercurrent.

“What
kind of movies do you watch?” Alex asked, cautiously sipping from the
wide-mouthed bottle. Katya watched him while he drank, then burst out laughing
when he made a face, forced himself to swallow and then handed the bottle,
rather insistently, back to her. “And what the hell did I just drink?”

“Old
black-and-white movies and artsy Asian horror flicks, mainly,” Katya said,
laughing. “And rice vodka mixed with lychee and tamarind juice. It’s good.”

“I
guess,” Alex said doubtfully. “Old movies? You mean like Psycho, or The Maltese Falcon? Stuff like that?”

“Sure,”
Katya said, shrugging. “Not that it matters. I wasn’t planning to invite you to
watch movies anytime soon.”

There
was a lull in their conversation. Alex relished it, as long as it lasted.

“Hey,
Alex?” Katya glanced at him, either amused or curious; he couldn’t tell behind her
sunglasses. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,”
Alex said unenthusiastically, watching the ocean slowly recede from the beach,
each wave incrementally less dramatic than the one before.

“What
are you doing here?”

Alex
broke his own rule and looked over at Katya. She was crunching her way through
an ice cube extracted from the bottle, waiting for his response.

“What
kind of question is that?”

“Don’t
get pissy with me. I just don’t understand, that’s all. You went on vacation
with a girl who obviously has a thing for you – to the point that it’s more
than a little bit embarrassing for those of us watching, by the way – a
vacation that, as far as I can tell, you were invited on, rather than forced.
And yet I’ve seen Mormon girls who didn’t work as hard at not getting laid,
honest to God.”

Alex
had to laugh. There was a Mormon temple a few blocks from his high school, so
he had a good idea what she meant. Katya handed him her bottle, so he tried the
pink stuff again. It tasted weird, like orange juice gone slightly off, but not
as bad as before.

“I’m
not really sure,” Alex admitted, handing the bottle back. “I don’t know why I
agreed to come, except that I didn’t really have anything else going on. I
guess it seemed like a better idea at the time. Now that I’m here, it’s nice
and everything, but I sort of wish that I’d stayed at the Academy.”

Katya
nodded. She must have been content with the answer, because she didn’t ask him
anything else, but he was certain that he caught her glancing at him out of the
corner of her eye a few times. He had the unpleasant sensation that he was
being evaluated, gauged, weighed on a scale and then set aside, found wanting.

“Hey…question
for you,” Alex said, watching the sun creep toward the water, growing redder as
it descended. “You went to some sort of Black Sun school for assassins, right?
What was that like?”

Katya
frowned and then took a longer swig off the bottle. She didn’t seem too happy
with the question, but at the very least, it seemed to have shifted her
attention from him, for which he was grateful. She offered him the bottle
again, and then dug it partway in the sand by her towel when he refused.

“It
was a lot like the Program, but all of the time,” Katya explained grimly. “How many
Black Sun members do you know?”

“Well,
uh,” Alex said, trying to count in his head. “You, Anastasia, Timor, Renton…”

“Right,
so basically just Anastasia,” Katya said, pursing her lips. “Well, the people
in the cartel are nothing like her. She’s at the top, you see, and she’s
smart, so you can’t really tell how ambitious she is. But the people underneath
her? Ambition runs through her followers like the plague. I was lucky,
actually, because I had Timor. Otherwise, it would have been super-lonely. You
can’t really trust or like anyone you meet there. It’s just…well, you must have
some idea by now. Lots of killing, not all of it simulated. Lots of doing
things you’d never want to do, until it doesn’t bother you anymore.”

As
she spoke, Katya’s voice changed, from her usual cool flippancy to a lower,
contemplative tone. She was staring at the ocean, now blood red, as the sun
sank slowly into it, so rapt that Alex studied her without fear of her
noticing. It was funny, now that he thought about it – Katya was kind of
attractive in her own way. Normally, though, she carried herself with an air of
indifference and contempt that obscured it. He didn’t feel that at all, right
now, and he wondered why, but he didn’t think too hard about it. He couldn’t
exactly ask, after all.

“At
first it doesn’t seem that bad, because you have to finish the Program before
you can go. Those first couple of weeks, while they test out your potential and
gauge your abilities, aren’t too terrible. The first time you have to kill some
poor farm animal is pretty terrible, but after a while, that starts to become
routine. After you’ve been there for a while, though, it hits you – everything
you do there, everything you learn, it’s all in the service of murder. And everyone
there, all the people around you, each of them spends every waking hour
dreaming up ways to kill. The Academy can be tense, with the cartel conflicts
and all. But, can you imagine sitting down to dinner with a bunch of
murderers-in-training, all speculating on how they would kill you over their
soup? It gets to everyone there, eventually. Nobody wants to hang out, or make
friends, or date, or anything. I was glad when I got in trouble, and Anastasia
pulled me,” Katya said quietly. “I don’t want to go back, even if I could. I do
have to admit that it colored my way of thinking, though. A little.”

“You
don’t say?”

“Yeah,”
Katya confirmed, smiling over at him. “For example – if I wanted to kill you,
Alex, and do it so no one looking over the body could figure out how you had
died, how do you think I would do that?”

Alex
was a little alarmed by the turn in the conversation, but he had been at the
Academy for months, and was beginning to get used to this sort of thing. He
glanced around at the beach surrounding him.

“Well,”
Alex said, biting his lip uncertainly, “I guess you’d either bash my head in
with a rock, or stick needles inside me somewhere horrible, right?”

“You
are a very direct thinker, aren’t you?” Katya laughed, uncapping her ice-choked
bottle, drinking from it, then taking an ice cube from her mouth and holding it
in front of him. “If I used needles, I don’t think it would be very hard to
figure out I did it. I would use ice, silly. An ice cube this big, there’s
better than a dozen places in your body I could put it that would kill you real
fast. Once the ice cube melts, there wouldn’t be anything left to clue people
in on what happened.”

Katya
smiled and capped off the demo by popping the aforementioned ice cube back in
her mouth.

“Huh,”
Alex grunted, thinking about it. “Crazy.”

“You
know,” Katya continued idly, “I was thinking you could do the same sort of
thing. Freeze a small area. Ice crystals in the brain, or in the blood around
the heart. Assuming you could get that unwieldy protocol of yours under
control. I bet it would be faster to operate if you tried to do less.”

“No
way,” Alex said definitely, shaking his head. “I can’t get that kind of
precision.”

“That
so?” Katya said contemptuously. “And you know this because you’ve tried this
already?”

“Well…”

“Thought
so,” Katya said smugly.

Alex
sat quietly, not exactly embarrassed, just considering. He cleared his throat
before he spoke again.

“Well…could
you teach me? To aim, I mean? To do what you just suggested?”

Katya
looked over at him seriously, and again, he got the unpleasant sensation that
he was being evaluated.

“Okay,”
Katya agreed. “Sure. But you’re gonna owe me.”

Alex
sighed theatrically.

“Should
have figured. What do you want?”

“I’ll
let you know once I think of something,” Katya said, standing and straightening
her swimsuit, then glancing back at Alex. “You wanna swim before dinner?”

After
considering it briefly, Alex got up to join her.

* * *

Eerie coded by rote,
one-handed, while she poured the contents of a purple Pixy Stik on her stained
tongue. She’d had her headphones clamped over her ears the entire day,
listening to music from her sticker-covered laptop, but they must have started
to pinch her ears, because she took them off a few minutes before. Eerie
brushed her hair back behind her ears, the tips still red from the pressure of
the headphones, and tossed the candy wrapper into the trashcan by her feet,
which was about half full.

She
hadn’t bothered with real food since she came down to Processing. Adel El-Nadi
knew because he had been waiting for her to head to the commissary for lunch
for two days now. He intended to casually join her at the table and strike up a
conversation, but the opportunity never materialized. He adjusted his plans
today, waiting by the vending machines with a cooling cup of coffee, the same
place he encountered her regularly last summer. However, Eerie appeared to have
brought candy with her in bulk this year, and as a result she hardly left her
desk. Which is how he found himself skulking along the balcony above her work
area, looking down at her blue hair and debating himself.

Adel
came to no conclusions, except that he had an awful headache.

When
he first met Eerie, Adel was a final-year student at the Academy, majoring in
computer science and programming languages. That summer, he was one of many
interns doing routine maintenance on the massive, constantly mutating body of
code that constituted the Etheric Network. Adel had since left the Academy and
turned down a number of cartel offers to work at Processing, coding new
extensions for the network; cutting-edge field applications and revolutionary
new procedures for protocol storage and download. In a single year Adel was
promoted twice, all the way to network architect, and now had his own small team
– four coders, a tech, and two interns. He’d burned any number of favors trying
to get Eerie assigned to his team. There were only two female interns, after
all, and a number of the team leads harbored fond memories of Eerie’s two
previous summers working there. Adel was single-minded when he wanted
something, though, so he did what had to be done to get her assigned to his
team.

The
bitter reality was, however, that outside of routine meetings and distribution
of assignments, he had barely managed to talk to her. Eerie seemed subdued when
she arrived this summer, less bouncy and eager than previous years. For the
first time, Adel got the impression that she didn’t want to be there. She
certainly wasn’t unfriendly, but she hadn’t given him the enthusiastic hug he
had grown used to receiving as her normal greeting, and she had barely
responded to questions during orientation sessions. Not only to his questions,
either, or he would have had an idea where he stood and changed tactics.
Instead, she was vaguely standoffish with everyone. Adel wasn’t sure if he was
worried about that, or glad, or what.

Then,
of course, there was the strange offer he had received, from a girl he didn’t
really know, making outrageous promises in return for one small favor.

Adel
earned his headache last night, drinking at a friend’s apartment in Central
with a couple of the new interns. It had taken hours and many more drinks than
he was accustomed to, because he didn’t want to ask any questions that would
have given away his motivations. Eventually, though, he got some of the story
about Alex Warner, and his on-again off-again involvement with Eerie. Initially
he thought that Eerie was simply making a mistake, but he couldn’t help but
wonder if he had been wrong about her from the start. How to talk to her,
though, when she didn’t seem to want to talk with anyone?

One
of the staffers walked by on their way to buy a cup of Ramen from one of the
machines, giving Adel a friendly nod and a curious look. Adel quickly bought a
soda from the machine and then retreated to his cramped office. It was dark
inside, because he had covered the windows with construction paper and
unscrewed the overhead lights so they wouldn’t compete with any of the four
different displays. He clicked through documents on his desktop aimlessly while
he brooded and contemplated the offer.

It
came via a dummy email account the day after Eerie had arrived. The sender
claimed to be Emily Muir, a Hegemony girl from the Academy. Apparently, she was
Eerie and Alex Warner’s classmate, and seemed as upset at their relationship as
he was. Adel had no idea how she had found him. It would have taken a powerful
empath to recognize the crush he had nurtured for the Changeling. The email was
concise and detailed, and made a number of intriguing and lurid offers in
return for one very simple thing: a false forward, an email purporting to come
from the school account of one Alexander Warner. Emily Muir had helpfully
provided the text, and Adel had completed the necessary technical work two days
ago. The email had been sitting in his outbox ever since, waiting for him to
click a single button.

He
wasn’t sure what would happen to Eerie if he sent it, but he was certain that
it wouldn’t be good. On the other hand, the email he had received had made some
very tempting offers. Adel was lonely, and resentful of Alex Warner.

He
sulked in the dark of his office for an hour before clicking the Send button in
a gesture so impulsive that he could only stare at his hand afterward,
wondering how it had done such a thing without consulting him. He reread Emily
Muir’s email until he didn’t feel anything other than barely suppressed
excitement.

Eventually
he returned to his assignment, a new heads-up display for a ballistics protocol
that Auditor Aoki frequently used. He spent about twenty minutes conceptually
attacking it from different angles, before deciding that he was wasting his
time. He reached for the forgotten soda blindly, and his questing fingers
managed to knock it over, covering the papers on his desk with neon-green foam
and causing Adel to curse to the greatest extent a secular Moroccan upbringing
allowed.

“Adel?”
Eerie asked, only her head peeking around his doorframe. “Are you okay?”

“Fine!”
Adel shouted without meaning to. “Just fine. I just spilled my soda. Ah…what
can I do for you, Eerie?”

He
made an utterly pointless attempt to make a neat pile of the documents he had
soaked with bright-green soda while Eerie wandered into his darkened office,
taking a seat on the only chair that wasn’t covered with a pile of bound
technical manuals. Her face was blank, but that told him nothing – from
experience, he knew that was the way she usually looked.

“I
need to go back to the Academy,” Eerie said seriously, “tonight.”

“Ah…yes?”

“Yes,”
Eerie agreed solemnly.

Adel
felt the time stretching out disastrously, his smile growing terse as he
panicked behind it. He felt a perverse urge to turn his monitor so that Eerie
could see what he had done, to show her how false her expectations were. Then
he caught the look in her eyes, the obvious eagerness, and had to choke back
his resentment.

Adel
put his hands down firmly on the desk, resolved himself, and did his best to
look solicitous.

“Eerie,”
he said carefully, “is there something I can help you with? Maybe something you
would like to talk about?”

Eerie
shook her head.

“No.”

“Are
you sure?” He felt as if he were running a fever, sweat dripping down his brow
and the small of his back. “Because if I can help you, Eerie, then I would like
to.”

“Why?”
Eerie asked, sounding more curious than usual, leaning forward so she could see
him clearly in the dark room. Adel fought the urge to twitch and fidget.

“Because
I like you, Eerie,” he admitted, amazed at his own forwardness, and a little
afraid, too. “Because, after last time you interned here, I had hoped we might
have a chance to get to know each other better…”

“I’m
sorry,” Eerie said gently. “I would like to be friends with you, Adel. But I
got a very important email. From an important friend. And I have to go now.
Maybe we could talk later?”

“I
see,” Adel said, stiffly. “Can I ask who you need to see?”

“Alex,”
Eerie said softly. “He was supposed to be gone all break, but he came back
early. I want to go see him, Adel. Please.”

“Well,
if you really think that you must,” Adel said reluctantly, wondering again with
a slightly uneasy twinge what exactly he had involved himself in. “The
Administration won’t be happy, of course, since you are supposed to be with us
until the end of break…”

“That
can wait,” Eerie said, shaking her head. “I can be in trouble later.”

“Okay,”
Adel said, mentally washing his hands of the matter. “Then go, if you think you
have to. I won’t tell anyone, so they probably won’t notice until sometime
tomorrow.”

If
Eerie hadn’t leapt to her feet then, so excited that she barely managed to
remember to thank him, he might have warned her. At least that was what he told
himself. Instead, he felt a perverse satisfaction in hustling her out the door,
so eager to see her boyfriend.

“The
bus should be by in twenty minutes,” Adel advised her helpfully. “Oh, and
Eerie? Have a good time.”

* * *

“Whoa, Alex,” Renton
said, blocking him with his arm. “Charm offensive.”

“What
do you mean?” Alex asked, struggling to peer past Renton and over the brush
that separated him from whatever Renton was looking at.

“Must
be,” Timor agreed solemnly.

Alex
finally wriggled around Renton to get to the edge of the bluff. The sea
stretched out below them, dotted with islands no bigger than their own, and a
clutch of small fishing boats, separated by waters that were a color of blue
Alex had previously seen. The hillside below was covered with small trees and
brush. A narrow dirt path wound down through the scrub, to a white sand beach
at the base, gently lapped by rolling waves. It was one of three beaches on the
island; the smallest and least accessible, but apparently also Anastasia’s
favorite. Svetlana had taken the girls there half an hour ago, while Renton had
suggested they walk.

Anastasia
was sitting on a towel placed securely beneath a massive beach umbrella, no
part of her white skin exposed to the late afternoon sun. She wore a black
sundress that left her skinny legs bare, but covered whatever else she had
chosen to wear. Nearby, Svetlana lay on her side in the sun, wearing sunglasses
and a mundane burgundy one-piece. Therese sat by herself on the sand, wearing a
long T-shirt over her suit and reading a paperback. Katya was out where the
waves broke, swimming a vigorous breast stroke through the tiny breakers.

And then
there was Emily.

She
must have seen them, she had to have known they were watching. She was walking
along the edge of the sand, her feet in the surf, profile against the sun that
reflected brilliantly off the water. Her bikini was blue, and not overly
revealing – but as with everything else, Emily knew how to wear it. She never
looked at them, not once. She just strolled along, pausing to adjust her
sandals, to dip her hands in the water. Nobody said anything for a little
while.

“For
the first time,” Renton said softly, “I am actually kinda jealous of you,
Alex.”

Alex
nodded in agreement. What could he say?

“Can
we go down to the beach now?” Timor asked, shifting impatiently.

“Yeah,
yeah,” Renton muttered, starting down the path.

Alex
was in the back of the group the whole way down, wrestling with himself, his
eyes on the ground. He was past the point of making a decision, he knew that,
but he was no closer to committing himself to anything. He was just letting
things happen again, as if his life were a movie, something to be observed and
perhaps enjoyed, but not directly under his control. He cursed himself for the
hundredth time since arriving; for saying those things to Eerie before he left
(and probably, he feared, burning that bridge), for agreeing to come in the
first place, for failing to enjoy the vacation because he was busy beating
himself up.

He
actually caught himself muttering under his breath as he descended the slope,
but then he hit the beach and it was so stunning that it was impossible to stay
upset. It looked like a brochure photo for visiting paradise, an impossibly
perfect beach with soft sand the resort imported at tremendous expense. That it
was located in a genuinely communist nation whose name was synonymous in his
mind with war and Agent Orange was difficult for Alex to reconcile.

Anastasia
flicked her eyes lazily in their direction as they approached, one hand shading
her eyes from the sun. Alex felt a stab of pity for the girl, who had never
looked more like a child than she did in her prim little slip, and could only
hope that the sun behind him prevented her from seeing it in his face.

“Hello,
various boys,” Anastasia said neutrally.

“Hello
yourself,” Timor said cheerily. “I’m going in the water. You wanna come, Ana?”

Anastasia
sighed reluctantly and stood, brushing nonexistent sand from her back.

“I
suppose,” she said, following him across the sand. Renton stood there, his
smile frozen, while Svetlana looked at him hopefully. Alex vacillated for a
moment before deciding that anywhere was better than staying with those two. He
pulled his shirt off and hurried to the ocean.

He
had some ideas about diving directly in and swimming away from everyone, buying
himself a couple of minutes in the surf to compose his thoughts, but that
didn’t happen – the water was colder than the day before, and he had to time
the intervals between the small but abrupt breakers. He was still only waist
deep when Emily caught up.

“Hey,”
Emily said, wading into the water after him.

“Hey,”
Alex said weakly, willing himself to keep his eyes on her face, at least as
long as she was looking at him.

“It’s
beautiful, isn’t it?” Emily asked, waiting for a wave, the water lapping at and
channeled between her trim thighs.

“Yeah,”
Alex said emphatically. “And you…you look amazing, Emily.”

She
seemed genuinely happy. He wasn’t sure, because right about that time, a wave
hit and she lost her footing, ending up in water to her neck, squealing with
surprise. She was tugged back by the undertow, so Alex caught her by her waist
and set back on her feet. That left her standing close to him, and as much as
he intended to open his arms and let her go, it didn’t happen.

“Hey,
cut that out,” Emily scolded playfully, smiling as she shrugged free of his
arms. “Do you want to swim?”

“Yeah,”
Alex said with relief.

She
was a strong swimmer, much more than himself. After the first few minutes,
Emily was forced to slow her pace so Alex could keep up. They passed where the
swells started, at the edge of the area protected by the cove. Ahead of them,
deeper blue waters ran with the current south, away to the China Sea. They
stopped at the edge of the cove by unspoken agreement, treading water and
looking around. Alex was doubly nervous – he had only started swimming in the
ocean a few days ago, and still wasn’t a confident swimmer. Despite the clarity
of the water, he couldn’t see all the way to the bottom, and in the shadows
there, he wondered if there were sharks, or other equally horrible shark-like
things.

Emily
smiled, and for once, the expression didn’t seem to be for his benefit. It
could have been that she enjoyed swimming, or because she was happy to be on
the island. Alex rolled onto his back, floating with his face pointed at the
late-afternoon sky, bobbing along with the swells. He glanced at the shore and
saw Timor forcing his way through the break, pulling Anastasia along behind
him. He was surprised to see that she was wearing a black bikini, and looked
better than he expected. Then Alex realized what he was staring at and decided
to dive, more out of embarrassment than anything. He bobbed up thirty seconds
later, much closer to Emily than he intended. He tried to swim away but she
caught on to the upper part of his arm.

“You’re
stronger now,” she said shyly, treading water with such ease that he felt like
a child splashing about beside her. “You were so skinny when you arrived at the
Academy.”

“Thanks,”
Alex said, suddenly afflicted with cottonmouth. “You seem like you are in a
good mood, today.”

“Oh,”
she said, looking away and smiling cryptically. “Maybe something good
happened.”

“Okay,”
Alex said, uncertainly, wondering how long he could tread water before he
drowned.

“Can
I ask you something?” Emily asked, looking worried.

“Sure,”
Alex panted, trying to suggest with his eyes that this was a conversation that
they could have on land. Emily wasn’t biting.

“Are
you having fun here? At all?”

“Sure!”
Alex said, working hard to keep his head above the water. “No, this is awesome.
I don’t think I’ve ever left California, you know?”

“That’s
good,” Emily said, her expression strained. “Anastasia told me about a path up
to the top of the hill, where there is a good view of the stars. I wondered if
you felt like going for a walk with me tonight.”

“Uh,
yeah, sure, that would be great,” Alex said, with obvious strain.

“You
don’t sound too happy about it…” Emily pouted.

“No,”
Alex protested, “it’s just that I’m kind of starting to drown…”

Emily
laughed and Alex tried, but he had already swallowed too much water. He hoped
she couldn’t tell how desperate his swim back to shore was, but by the time he
made it to the shallows where he could stand, his legs were shaking. Anastasia
glided by, coasting along the foam of a dwindling wave, and smirked at him.

“Poor
Alex,” she said cheerfully. “Always in over his head.”

Twenty-One

“I don’t get it.”

“What
a total surprise,” Katya said tiredly. “I am starting to get the impression
that the number of things you do understand can be counted on one hand. Now
tell Auntie Kat what it is you don’t get.”

“Why
are you suddenly acting like you’re so much older than me?” Alex asked
idiotically, his arm extended self-consciously in front of him, as if he were a
traffic cop gesturing for the foliage in front of him to stop. “Never mind. Forget
I said that. Why do I have to hold my arm out like this? I feel stupid.”

“I am
older than you. And thanks for pointing it out. You charming bastard. Anyway,
you need to learn to gauge distance,” Katya said, reluctantly setting her rice paper–wrapped
spring roll down on the table and walking to where Alex stood. “Depth is the
hardest part of aiming a protocol. It’s not like a gun; you don’t aim in two
dimensions. Everybody can get the other two axes down, but the last one is a
bitch. With your arm out – what’s your reach, anyway?”

“I
think it’s, uh, like, seventy inches or something…”

“Right,
so your arm is about half the distance to the glass,” Katya said, shrugging.
“Near enough. Go ahead and try your protocol up close, to get a sense of how it
works. Activate your protocol a couple inches in front of your hand. Only a
little, mind you. Don’t go freezing your arm off.”

Alex
grumbled, but settled into the focusing routine Michael had taught him, staring
hard at the point in space where he was focusing all of his efforts.

“Is
this some sort of concentration exercise?” Katya asked doubtfully. “Because you
look like you are having a really hard time going to the bathroom.”

Alex
ignored her. Not that it mattered. It still took him the better part of a
minute to activate his protocol at the end of his hand. Then he felt pain, and
he jerked his hand back reflexively, like a child from a stovetop, the tiny
breach into the Ether collapsing instantly.

Katya
finished the last of her spring roll while Alex cursed and jumped, clutching
his frost-burnt hand. Round white patches were already forming on the pads of
skin below his fingers, which would eventually bloom into hard, yellow
blisters.

“Not
bad,” Katya allowed, wiping her mouth delicately with a napkin. “Kinda slow.”

“Not
bad? I burned the shit out of my hand! Didn’t you see that?”

“Yeah,
the breach you opened was too big, so it was too cold, too much vacuum, and it
took you too long. We’ll have to fix all of that. But the depth was pretty
close. That’s one point for you. Score three points, and I’ll give you a
prize.”

“Um...okay.
But it better not be something painful...”

“You
have a strange concept of the word ‘prize’. Let’s move on to the second
target,” Katya suggested. “Use your arm as a guide again, but this time,
instead of trying to open the breach right in front of your hand, I want you to
stand on the line and open a breach as close to twice the length of your arm as
you can. A smaller breach this time. Much smaller. I don’t want you to freeze
it solid.”

Alex
looked at the target propped on a tree stump at roughly at shoulder level, and
then the crude line in the moss on the rock that Katya had made by dragging the
toe of her sandal through it.

“It’s
a glass of water.”

“Right.”

“You
want me to make ice?”

Katya
nodded, digging in her army surplus rucksack for a moment, before coming up
with tonic water and a number of miniature bottles of Bombay Sapphire.

“I
need ice,” she explained, smiling and leaning her chin on her hand, watching
him.

“I
should’ve known,” Alex muttered, turning back to the target and extending his
hand again, trying to draw an invisible line between the glass and himself,
about twice as far as he could reach. He tensed his body and closed his eyes.

“Not
like that.”

Alex
was startled by Katya padding up silently behind him, one arm wrapping around
his waist, the other forcing his elbow to unlock. “Loosen up. Tensing your
muscles won’t help you operate a protocol. Bend your knees. Relax your back.
You aren’t trying to tear reality to pieces; you don’t have to murder that
glass of water. This may be a first for you, Alex – but I think you might be
trying a little bit too hard.”

He
tried to relax, knowing he could have done a better job if Katya hadn’t been
standing so close. He could feel her chest brush against his back, and it was a
terrible distraction. He needed to try, though, so he closed his eyes briefly,
visualized the distance, raised his arm, and tried to punch the smallest hole
into the Ether he could imagine, so small that he visualized a single molecule
struggling to fit through the breach. The effect was subtle to the point that
at first he didn’t think it had worked it all. Then the glass cracked in two
places, but didn’t shatter. The water in the glass had a shard of ice in the
center an inch think, running from the top to the bottom.

Katya
yelled encouragement and slapped his back while he hurriedly shut the breach.
She practically skipped over to collect the ice from the fractured glass,
breaking pieces into the two plastic red cups that she had brought. She hummed
to herself happily as she filled them with a restrained amount of tonic, and a
more generous helping of gin.

“Cheers,”
she said, handing him one and offering hers up for a toast. He tapped the
plastic rim of her cup with his own. “Good job. I think you are starting to get
it. And that’s another point for you.”

“Thanks
to you, Katya,” Alex said, sampling his drink, making a sour face, and then
adding more tonic water. “Really. I’m sorry I was such a jerk at first. I completely
misjudged you. You’ve done nothing but look out for me, and teach me, and I’m
grateful for it.”

Katya
smiled, blushed, and then looked unhappy in an impressively quick array of
emotional responses. She sat down on the bench and then patted the empty space
beside her.

“Not
bad,” Katya said quietly. “That’s three points. You win the prize. First,
though, Alex, there is something I’m not completely sure that you understand.
Do you know why Anastasia assigned me to look after you?”

Alex
looked away for a moment, considering both what he thought to be true, and what
saying it aloud might do to their improving relationship. In the end he decided
he wasn’t smart enough for anything except the truth.

“Because
you are an assassin,” Alex replied, suddenly shy for no specific reason.
“Because I need someone watching over me who is willing to kill.”

Katya
laughed mirthlessly and drained her cup, pausing to refill it.

“Not
hardly, boy,” she scoffed. “Anastasia has lots of people who are willing to
kill, and plenty of trained assassins. She sent me for two reasons. The first
is that I am completely loyal to Anastasia, and Anastasia alone. I can’t be
bribed, persuaded, or threatened, my trust can’t be shaken. I do whatever she
says, no questions asked, no compunctions, no moral scruples, no trouble
sleeping at night. I owe her everything. Literally.”

“Okay,”
Alex said, rattling the ice in his cup, taking a certain satisfaction at having
made it. “What’s the second reason?”

“Because
I don’t give a fuck about anything or anyone else,” Katya said sweetly, looking
at him with a mixture of pity and affection. “I’m not like the other people at
the Academy, Alex. I don’t want power or money. I don’t have any hidden
motivations or secret agendas. My outlook on life is simple. If Anastasia told
me to screw you, Alex, I would have you flat on your back before you had time
to reach for your rape whistle. And if she told me to kill you, well, I don’t
need any other reason to fill that vacant head of yours with pointy metal bits.
And it wouldn’t even mess up my afternoon.”

“Huh,”
Alex said, trying to thaw his brain out of its induced freeze. “You feel like
trying that out?”

“What?
No,” Katya said, shaking her head. “I’m not Alice Gallow. If I go through the
rest of my life without having to kill somebody, that’s fine with me. I don’t
like killing people, I just don’t mind it in particular. Besides, I’m supposed
to be teaching you.”

“No,
I meant the other part,” Alex said with a grin. “I think maybe I forgot my rape
whistle back in my other pants.”

Katya
laughed, long and hard, and Alex felt good about that. He was pretty sure it
was the first time he’d ever really gotten her approval.

“Cute,
but I’m afraid you aren’t at all my type,” Katya said, digging in her pocket,
and then tossing him something. Alex caught it in midair and examined it. It
looked like a hacky-sack knitted from red and blue colored yarn with something
heavy and dense at the core. “Present from Eerie for the big winner.”

“Really?”
Alex asked, examining the object closely. He was starting to think it was maybe
actually a small pillow, or something similar. “Wait a minute, Katya. You know
Eerie?”

“Did
you think the sewing needles were an affectation?” Katya asked, looking
surprised. “Never underestimate the power of the Academy’s Sewing Circle. We
are a force to be reckoned with, and Eerie is a charter member. She taught me
to cross-stitch, so I owed her a favor. She asked me to give you that before we
left.”

“Great.
Um, what is it?”

“I
don’t know,” Katya said. “But it comes with two instructions. Eerie told me
that you should put it underneath your pillow before you go to sleep, when you
miss her. Isn’t that just too cute? Sort of makes me sick. Also, she said that
if you are ever in deep trouble and you need her help, you’re supposed to
squeeze it really hard.”

“Okay…”
Alex said thoughtfully. He held it up close to his face, and it smelled vaguely
familiar, some kind of heady incense. He weighed it thoughtfully in his palm,
wondering what was inside it, wondering what Eerie had thought when she had
made it, if it had been before their fight, if there was in fact something for
him to come back to at the Academy. By the time he finished considering, Katya
had replaced the water in the damaged glass out on the step and was shaking her
red cup at him expectantly.

“Okay,
big guy, whenever you’re ready,” she said, grinning, “I need a refill.”

Alex
sighed, stretched out his arm, and started to range in on the target.

* * *

Most of the time, when
a day went completely wrong, Christopher Feld only identified the problem in
retrospect. Looking back on the day, often from bed, he would think to himself,
‘That was a very bad day,’ and catalogue the various mistakes that had made it
so. But on this particular day, he knew the precise moment it went bad, without
a shred of doubt in his mind. There would be very little preamble required in
his daily report, assuming he managed to survive and submit it. It would read:

‘Alice
Gallow walked around the corner while we were still in the outskirts of
Portland, hours before the plan was meant to begin.’

That
would be an exact record of the events, as he watched his chances of having the
kind of day that ended comfortably in the arms of his favorite Slovakian
prostitute fall into the ground, through the crust of the earth, stopping
somewhere uncomfortably close to hell.

“You
fucking piece of shit,” Alice snarled, starting toward him, clutching her
shotgun. “Christopher Feld. You undead asshole. How is it that you are still
walking around and nobody told me?”

Chris
wasn’t stupid enough to argue. He ran, which, upon further reflection, was
almost as stupid. He went tumbling through his own shadow, and then fell out of
a shadow in front of Alice, about five feet off the ground. He hit the sidewalk
hard, right on his tailbone. He had barely started to writhe before Alice got
her hands on him.

“Explain,”
Alice hissed through gritted teeth. “Explain good or I gut you right now.”

“Do
you even remember, Alice?” Chris asked, laughing like someone with nothing to
lose. Which, at this juncture, was probably an accurate description of his
present circumstances. “You cried over my body, you know. It was a very
touching scene, even if you didn’t know why you were doing it.”

Alice
lifted him by the lapels of his very expensive jacket, pulling him close to her
there-and-then-gone-again smile.

“I
remember, you son of a bitch,” Alice said, shaking him back and forth. “You
were supposed to kill me, but you didn’t do it. You died, fighting next to me.
You don’t have to remind me about any of that shit. Why don’t you skip to the
part where you’re still alive, or whatever you vampires call it, before I
decide to skip to the part where I show you what your insides look like?”

“It’s
so cute,” Chris said, beaming, “the way you think that you’re angry with me. If
you remembered what I had done to you over the years, I guarantee you would
tear me limb from limb without hesitation. You hate me and you don’t even
remember. Hell, you won’t even remember this, so what’s the harm in telling
you? I’ve made you fall for me a dozen times, and you don’t even know how much
that would disgust you.”

“You
have such pretty eyes,” Alice admired. “It would be a shame to have to dig them
out of your skull.”

“I
like it when you say things like that,” Chris said, leering. “I’ll think about
that the next time we fuck.”

Mitsuru
Aoki stepped forward nervously, putting one hand on Alice’s shoulder.

“Alice,
be careful,” Mitsuru warned urgently. “He’s trying to get under your skin, make
you lose control.”

“It
won’t work,” Alice said, pinching Chris’s face between her fingers.

“The
boss decided to let you run around for a little while, but I guess eventually
even he lost interest,” Chris continued, his face white but his eyes full of
laughter. “Since you developed your convenient little memory problem, we’ve
been passing you around like the last cigarette in the pack.”

“Actually,
maybe I am going to kill him,” Alice said through gritted teeth.

“No,”
the girl said, from somewhere right behind them. “You won’t.”

It
wasn’t possible, of course. Mitsuru was running a telepathic surveillance
protocol that gave her something of a sixth sense; nothing with even a vestige
of thought could approach without her knowing. By the time the girl spoke, it
was far too late to react.

She
went for Alice first, not that it mattered. Mitsuru didn’t see anything other
than a blur, long blond hair whipping through the air, and then a series of
impacts with Alice that sent the shotgun spinning away on the ground and left
the Auditor on her knees, clutching her head, bleeding from her shattered nose.

Mitsuru
caught the first blow on her forearm, a wide strike coming in high that she
could barely see. The force behind it was terrific, and Mitsuru’s arm went numb
on impact. She finally got a good look at her then; a girl, no more than
seventeen, blond hair hanging wild and long, baggy grey pants and a
midriff-exposing tank top. She looked as if she were headed to play in an
intramural softball game. But she moved like quicksilver, and hit so hard that
Mitsuru suspected that she had broken her arm. The kick the girl threw was a
straight push kick, delivered from the hip; normally a simple attack to avoid,
something Mitsuru would have seen coming with plenty of time to dodge or counterstrike.
Mitsuru couldn’t remember the last time someone had landed that strike on her,
even in training, but this girl did it casually, slamming her foot into
Mitsuru’s solar plexus hard enough to bruise her sternum, forcing the air from
her lungs and sending her tumbling into the dust at Xia’s feet. Mitsuru barely
had time to catch her breath before she saw a disturbance in the dust in the
air, which meant the girl had passed by her, no doubt heading for Xia. There
was the crackling of fire springing briefly to life, then a sequence of
sickening crunching noises.

Chris
stood, brushing ineffectually at the dirt and dust that flecked his ice-cream
white suit.

“Alice,
meet Leigh. Leigh, Alice. Be nice to her, Leigh my dear. She really gave her
all to try and save you a few months ago.”

Mitsuru
might have been able to make it to her feet. She wasn’t hurt so badly as to
make that impossible. But she wasn’t sure what she would manage to do if she
got up, so she waited instead, watching the vampire-girl strut calmly back to
where Chris stood. And she could only be a vampire, the way she’d bypassed
Mitsuru’s surveillance, the way she moved like a machine built from skin and bone.
Mitsuru didn’t have a shred of doubt about it.

“Since
you arrived early, we may as well start the party,” Chris said, looking down at
Alice happily. “Allow me introduce you to the very last people you will ever
meet.”

* * *

Alex managed to slip
out of the living room while Emily and Anastasia were engrossed in watching a
strange movie that was either about Julia Child, or some self-pitying hipster
imitating Julia Child – he couldn’t tell which. He was exhausted from spending
the last week practicing his protocol with Katya on the beach, and headed
immediately for bed. He was brushing his teeth when he found the little cushion
with the dense center that Eerie made for him. He looked at it for a long time
before shrugging and sliding it beneath his pillow.

He
generally fell asleep fast, thanks to the induced sleep that was the
aftereffect of his protocol, but that night, as soon as his head hit the
pillow, he found himself resting in a profoundly comforting wreath of scents,
predominantly sandalwood with a hint of distant saltwater. As he drifted off
slowly toward sleep, he found himself thinking of Eerie, dancing quietly and
unselfconsciously, somewhere in the midst of strange lights, moving through
colors that he did not have names for. The light around her, the light
radiating from her, was as sweet and golden as honey. After a while, it became
difficult to tell whether he was dreaming.

* * *

Christopher Feld.
Mitsuru knew him by reputation, and from the files. The files said he had a
thing for white suits, a compulsive sexual appetite, and a knack for survival that
made him legendary in intelligence circles. The files also said that he talked
a lot, and that he enjoyed doing so. Mitsuru could confirm that from
observation. She had been watching him strut around for a couple minutes now,
from where she lay in the dirt, and he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

She
knew the backstory, of course. It was a big part of the whole ‘Terrie Cartel
Defection’ narrative, back when they thought it might be an isolated case, an
anomaly. Christopher Feld was one of the very best agents of the Syndicate, an
independent intelligence agency staffed mostly by vampires. He was purportedly
one of the few survivors when the European branch of the Syndicate was wiped
out by Witches in league with Terrie Cartel, not too many months earlier. He
had contacted Alice Gallow in the wake of the attack, and fed her a story about
freeing his wife, who he claimed was being held prisoner. Together, they had
hit a Terrie installation in London. Alice hadn’t been seen again until Rebecca
Levy had tracked her down, using what had been thought to be Christopher Feld’s
last known movements.

Unfortunately,
he looked to be doing quite a bit of moving around at the moment.

“You
are still with us, right, Alice?” Chris asked mockingly, though Mitsuru noted
that he was careful to keep out of Alice’s reach, despite the fact that she was
still clutching her bleeding head. “I’d hate for you to miss any of this. I’m
sure you’ve guessed by now, but the whole wife thing was a total dodge. I
really believed it at the time, though. Those personas the Witches build are
amazing. But I don’t need to tell you that, right?”

Chris
laughed as if it were the funniest thing he ever said. The blond girl he called
Leigh stood next to him, looking vaguely bored. Two other men came up to join
them, emerging from wherever they had been concealing themselves. One of them
was tall and lanky, the other short and rail-thin. Both were dressed for
combat, in contrast to Leigh, decked out in fatigues and body armor.

“Let
me introduce you to the team,” Chris offered enthusiastically. “I put it
together with you in mind, after all. This is Martin Cole,” he said, gesturing
at the tall, dusky-skinned man, who appeared to be somewhere in his thirties,
“and he would have telepathically neutralized you, if things had gone to
script, and you hadn’t shown up for another hour. Over here,” he said, patting
the short, black-haired man on the shoulder, so painfully thin that even his
very small clothes hung off him absurdly, “is Kim Hyun-jun. Kim does a neat
thing with basic forces manipulation that would have been really great for
dealing with Xia.”

Chris
threw his hands in the air and shouted.

“And
I am really quite disappointed! A great deal of thought and effort was put into
this. Half of the team aren’t even here yet! The Auditors,” Chris scoffed. “You
were supposed to be the biggest obstacle that we had to face, more than the
Committee or the Black Sun, more than the Director himself. But here you are,
all the remaining Auditors save Rebecca Levy, who we have already
incapacitated. Leigh alone was enough to beat all of you! I expected more. Your
reputation is completely unmerited. Can you imagine if you had encountered an
entire squad of fully transmuted Anathema? You would have been helpless.”

Mitsuru
felt a certain relief at his monologue. He made no mention of Alistair. That
could only mean that they had overlooked him, somehow, that the Chief Auditor
was still alive, free, and capable of fighting. That reassured her
tremendously. Alistair, she thought hopefully, would think of something.

Chris
crouched to look at Alice with mock sympathy as she clutched her head.

“Still,
Alice is remarkable, isn’t she? How hard would you say you hit her, Leigh
dear?”

“I
went easy,” Leigh said flatly. “We aren’t supposed to kill her.”

“Of
course. She leveled you with one punch, Alice, before you could apport, before
you could do anything. Your whole team, as well,” Chris said, shaking his head.
“Leigh’s a vampire, obviously, but instead of giving her over to your kind, to
your Academy, she was given to the Outer Dark – and look what they have done to
my precious ward! She’s a full synthetic, Alice. Every part of her has been
replaced, but she didn’t become inanimate like the others, she wasn’t ruined
and paralyzed. She thinks and feels and acts, but her body is artificial. It
rebuilds itself from surrounding materials. She has been made superior to all
of my kind, Alice, she has been made whole – and she is only the first.”

“Enough
of that,” Leigh snapped, eyeing Alice contemptuously. “Are you certain, Feld?
This one was really her?”

“Yes,”
Chris nodded. “You can’t see much of it through the implanted persona, but
she’s down there, underneath it. When she is restored to herself, you will
understand.”

Mitsuru
didn’t know what they were talking about, but that didn’t matter at the moment.
Her enemies seemed completely preoccupied with Alice. She wasn’t sure what she
could do against four of them, but she was obligated to try. Mitsuru moved with
all the patience she could muster, turning her head a few inches to look for
Xia. He was embedded in a wall behind her, somehow, broken and bleeding. The
readout on the remote-viewing protocol Mitsuru was operating consoled her with
the knowledge that he was, at least, still alive.

“Can
we kill the others and be done with it?” Leigh asked, her eyes flicking over to
Xia and then Mitsuru, who cancelled the protocol and froze in place, her heart
beating frantically in her chest. “No matter how much you like to brag, they
are still dangerous. I would feel better if they were dealt with.”

“I’m
not sure,” Chris said, frowning. “They weren’t supposed to arrive for another
hour. I’m worried that if we kill them now, it might alert the Academy somehow,
and throw off the rest of the plan.”

“I don’t
think it matters,” Leigh said, folding her arms. “They don’t have any combat
personnel left worth the mention. How could they possibly interfere?”

Chris
stood and started to pace. Mitsuru inched her hands toward her guns.

“Alistair
oversold your people, Alice,” Chris declared. “Alistair oversold all of you and
the threat that you posed. We were ready for war! Then again, since you were
his old outfit, and he put you together, who can blame him for puffing up your
reputations? I suppose he got sentimental, thinking about fighting all his old
friends…”

Mitsuru’s
hands froze. It was like a nightmare. She told them to move and they wouldn’t.
The very mention of his name had frozen her. Alistair. Not dead. Not captured.
With them. Her Alistair.

“I
do have to give some credit to the information he handed us,” Chris gloated.
“We knew everything about you people. All your weaknesses. The protocols you
operate. Everything about you.”

Mitsuru’s
hands were her own again. She felt a dull, cold space in her chest, but that
could wait. Right now, the only thing that mattered was what she knew, and what
they didn’t know. What Alistair hadn’t known, what she hadn’t said, on that
last night, when they were together, lying across the worn and frayed sheets of
his bed, the pillow she lay on smelling of his aftershave.

She
held on to the pain of his betrayal like a lifeline, and reached for her knife.

Twenty-Two

‘Malbec’, he thought drunkenly, staring blankly at the label
sitting at the center of the table, his mind unspooling like coarse thread. ‘Malbec’
was an interesting word. Alex didn’t think it was very good wine, but he wasn’t
going to hold that against the varietal. He wasn’t even sure that he knew good
wine from bad, but this tasted too much like raisins for him to enjoy it –
though that hadn’t stopped him from drinking it. Was it a place, he wondered? A
word in French? Somehow it didn’t sound very French to him – but wasn’t that
where all wine came from, originally?

The
walk up the hill was short, but it had taken them a long time to come back,
with Emily walking so close to him, brushing her hand against his, holding on
to his arm so that it pressed against her chest, smiling at him invitingly from
the soft shadows beneath the tall, spindly trees that crowned the hill, her
skin luminous in the radiant moonlight. His head was spinning even before the
two glasses of wine.

Alex
leaned against the couch, which had too many throw pillows to be comfortable,
Emily tucked beneath his arm, holding her own wine glass. Across the coffee
table, Anastasia, Katya, and Timor were arrayed in overstuffed chairs, and even
Anastasia appeared mildly tipsy. On the opposite side of the room, Therese
sulked in a corner, while Anastasia’s two little sisters played some sort of
complicated game involving a great deal of shouting and excited involvement on
the part of Donner and Blitzen. Alex had lost track of Renton a while ago, and
frankly, didn’t care very much – though he did notice that the fawning Svetlana
wasn’t anywhere to be seen, either.

Then
Alex remembered that Katya was talking, answering some question Emily had asked
that he had forgotten, and tuned back in, trying to figure out from context
what it was she was talking about.

“…we
were mostly in Portland until I was twelve and Timor was thirteen. Then we got
adopted by the Black Sun, and…is it okay to tell them this part, Ana?”

Anastasia
looked up from her primly held wine glass, an inch of something the color of
clarified butter swirling inside it.

“Of
course,” she said indifferently. “You can tell them whatever you like.”

Emily
smiled and Alex wondered hazily exactly how much she was enjoying this; being
important, sitting there with the major players in the Black Sun and treated as
a peer. He worried drunkenly for her feelings, because he couldn’t believe that
Anastasia intended for things to stay this way forever.

“Okay.
At that point we’d been activated, so we did a couple of years at the Academy,
before the Black Sun arranged to pull us out for ‘vocational training’. We came
back last year, but we were so far behind academically we ended up in the
standard class,” Katya said with a shrug, looking a bit embarrassed at the
revelation. “Timor finished his program, more or less, but I had some…disciplinary
issues, so I have to go back eventually to polish it off.”

“Assuming
they let you come back,” Anastasia observed. “You were expelled, after all.”

“Technicalities,”
Katya scoffed. “It was a big misunderstanding, anyway.”

“Interesting,”
Emily said, bright eyed. “But you never really said what it was like. Were there
other kids to hang out with, at assassin’s camp? Did you meet any boys?”

Katya
blushed and laughed, while Anastasia looked amused and Timor aghast. Alex
laughed along with Katya, not thinking about it too hard.

“In
a sense, and none of your business, respectively,” Katya said, picking up the
bottle from the table to refill her glass. “It was okay. Hard work, not a lot
of free time, a whole bunch of killing things over and over until it didn’t
bother me. Sound like anything that’s happened in your life lately, Alex?”

“Yeah,”
Alex agreed nervously, spinning his glass between his palms. “The other day
they made me kill a cow, then clean and dress the entire fucking thing. It took
all afternoon, and it was, you know, horrible.”

“I
always hated the part with the animals,” Katya said sympathetically, while
Timor excused himself quietly and went to go join Anastasia’s sisters. “I felt
bad for them.”

“Me
too,” Alex said, nodding emphatically. “Of course, it would help if you hadn’t
made me do the same thing the other day to those chickens.”

“What?”
Emily said, looking from one to the other in confusion. “That’s where those
chickens came from? That’s horrible!”

“Alex,
the Program never ends,” Katya said sadly. “Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“Nobody
tells me anything,” Alex said, shaking his head. “Probably because I don’t ask
the right questions, or understand the answers.”

“Well,
why do you think that you and Katya have had so many charming experiences in
common of late?” Anastasia said mildly. “What exactly do you think you are
being trained to do, boy?”

“Well,
Alice Gallow is my teacher, so I figured that I wasn’t going to be learning
first aid and nonviolent conflict resolution – but the Academy is neutral,
right? It’s not as if they are training me to kill other Operators or
anything…”

“Are
you sure? Then why is it that Katya, who is being educated for that express
purpose, has been trained in such a similar manner as you?” Anastasia asked
idly. “Are they training you simply to kill Weir? You seem capable of that
already, without further desensitization. I would advise you to wake up, Alex.
They are teaching you to be a killer who can sleep at night. Like Katya, for
example.”

“I
do sleep fairly well,” Katya offered, swirling the last mouthful of wine in her
glass.

“Is
it possible that we could have one conversation that isn’t about killing
people?” Emily scolded, sitting and brushing her hair back into place. “Perhaps
an evening without sinister overtones?”

“Sorry,”
Anastasia said, obviously amused.

“Sorry,”
Katya echoed, reaching again for the bottle, and upon finding it insufficient,
going back to the kitchen for replacement.

“Katya
is a total lush,” Anastasia confided, leaning forward to talk directly to
Emily. “And I wouldn’t normally tolerate it, but she is rather entertaining. If
you give her an audience, she will be up all night regaling you with her
adventures.”

“That’s
hurtful,” Katya said accusatorially, returning with a fresh bottle of something
else, also a red, though Alex couldn’t read the label from where he was
sitting. “You are vastly underrating me, Cousin Ana. I don’t limit myself to
only my adventures. I tell stories from your childhood, as well. You see, before
my family was disciplined, our dads were tight, and my family used to come
along on vacation at least once a year. So, I know everything.”

Anastasia
laughed.

“Nothing
worth repeating,” Anastasia said, a mild warning that Katya ignored.

“Are
you sure? I know all about the boy you kissed last summer on the boat…”

“Katya!”

“Who
did she kiss?” Emily asked eagerly, leaning forward. “I want to know!”

“It
might be better for everyone concerned,” Anastasia said softly, “if we picked
another topic of conversation. Now.”

“Do
you know?” Emily demanded, ignoring Anastasia.

“I
do,” Katya said proudly, nodding.

“Who
was it?”

“I
am not telling you that,” Katya said firmly, much to Anastasia’s evident
satisfaction.

“Oh,
what a tease. Why not?”

“Because,”
Katya confided, “the poor kid probably still works on the property, and I’d
hate for rumors to start about what Anastasia likes to do to the local boys
they hire as gardeners.”

Katya
sat back and smiled sweetly at Anastasia, who, for the first time in Alex’s
experience, looked utterly dumbfounded.

“I
cannot believe you actually said that. I think perhaps it is time for you to go
to bed, Katya dear,” Anastasia suggested.

“That’s
a good idea,” Emily whispered in Alex’s ear, drunk and inviting. “We should do
that, too.”

* * *

There was no
explosion. The bomb that destroyed Analytics was a word. A corrosive,
blasphemous word, a sin against reality itself. A team of telepaths fed an
operative the word remotely, each relaying a syllable in isolation, so that
they might not be destroyed by comprehending the whole.

His
name was Brian Turner, and he had worked at Analytics for three years as a
staff scientist. When he was a child his cartel had been proscribed, his
parents deemed to require ‘correction’. He had been placed with another
Hegemony cartel. Turner had always been careful to tow the line after that,
whenever anyone was watching. It had not been difficult for the Anathema to
recruit him; when he realized the depth of the conspiracy and its intentions
for him, he had no capacity to resist. As he marched robotically into the
Analytics building and relayed a word, syllable by syllable, that caused every
mind within the reach of his broadcast telepathy to wither and die, he felt
nothing at all. Not even fear.

It
had to start there, of course. The part of the Analytics building he worked in
contained both the precognitive pool that anticipated future events as well as
the telepathic bank that Central relied upon to maintain communications.

Therefore,
when there was a brief, monumentally sickening telepathic cry as dozens of
precognitives and telepaths died simultaneously, almost no one was capable of
perceiving it. There was no warning, and the only reaction was from one man
wearing glasses in front of his pink eyes who hurried across the Academy,
hunting through his key ring for a seldom-used key. All around the Analytics
building, there was expanding silence and a ring of dead birds that had fallen
from the sky.

* * *

If it was a test, then
Alex wasn’t the first to fail. There was a girl somewhere else, a bed he wasn’t
sleeping in tonight. And then there was the naked girl on top of him, the smell
of saltwater from her hair and the softness of her breasts cupped in his hands,
and the utterly unprecedented thing that they had done together, which left
them both moist and out of breath and looking at each other with different,
softer eyes. Their first was over quickly and a little embarrassing, but still
a revelation for Alex. The second was sweet and languid, continuing for a time
that was indeterminate and utterly consuming.

Alex
considered guilt, in the interval between, when Emily excused herself and went
to the bathroom, and then put it aside. It was too soon, and he was still too
much in the glow of pride and excitement. He wished that he could have called
someone to brag, even if he did feel a bit bad about it. Then, when she
returned, Emily was warm and permissive, such an immediate and fascinating
reality that Alex had no room in his mind for anything other than the places
where their bodies met and joined.

He
told himself that he had tried. Alex lay contentedly beside her, neither moving
much, in the warm, floral-scented darkness on her side of the bed. Eventually
she begin to move along the length of him, and he reached to pull her close.
Her hair fell across his face as she kissed his collarbone, nails scraping
lightly against his chest…

“What
was that?” Alex asked, sitting halfway and almost spilling Emily off of him.

“Hush,”
Emily instructed. “You are the least romantic boy.”

Alex
laid reluctantly back, his eyes closing. Then it happened again, this time much
louder, the bed shaking slightly beneath them.

“Okay,
what the fuck is that?” Alex asked, again sitting up partway. “You heard it
that time, right?”

Emily
smiled at him.

“Alex,
it’s nothing for you to worry about,” she said reassuringly. “Try and focus on
being here with me, okay?”

“That
was definitely gunfire,” Alex said, pushing her down with his free arm. “You
should stay down, keep out of the line of fire while I try to figure out what
the hell is going on…”

“Alex,”
Emily pouted, gripping at the sheets bunched up in her hands. “You really don’t
like me at all, do you?”

“No,
I do, but…is this the time?”

Alex
stood up and took a single step toward the window, meaning to sidle up to the
wall next to it and peer cautiously outside, and then he stopped to look down
at his feet.

“That’s
weird,” he said. “The floor is totally soaking wet. There’s like an inch of
water in here…”

“I
know,” Emily said, pulling her slip up and sighing. “I turned the tap on a few
minutes ago, when I went to the bathroom. I didn’t think you’d notice. And I’ll
probably need it.”

“You’ll
what?” Alex asked, puzzled. “Emily, none of that made any sense to me. Do you
know what is going on here?”

“I
made a deal, Alex. You forced my hand and I made a deal, but not with the
people expected. Silly boy,” she said, laughing or crying, he couldn’t tell
which in the dark. “You don’t even know the names for the things of which you
should be afraid. Anathema, Alex. The exiled are returning to take back what
was theirs. I made a deal with them, Alex. Now I get everything that I ever
wanted, only not the way I wanted it. Would you like to hear how I paid them,
what I had to do because you wouldn’t make up your mind?”

There
was a brief, intense pounding on the door, a pause, and then part of the lock
fell off and the door flew open.

“Alex!
Emily! Look, I hate to do this, but I need both of you to get somewhere safe
and oh my fucking God,” Katya said, horrified, taking one faltering step back.
“What the hell is going on here?”

“Please
shut up,” Emily said, glaring at her. The water swelled around Katya, appearing
to swallow her, a splashing column of water in the shape of a girl, and then it
collapsed to the ground again. Katya made a strange, frantic motion with her
arms, clutching at her neck, and then fell down, sideways, spasmodically
kicking and bucking.

“Why
is she doing that?” Alex said, pulling at his feet, which seemed to be attached
to the soaked hardwood floors, up to his ankles in icy-cold water. “Why is she
making those noises?”

“Because
she is drowning,” Emily said callously. “Like they did to me. The Anathema. It
was weeks ago, before we left on break. I was frightened for days beforehand.
Did you even notice? They came and took me to a place that looked like a temple
built out of stone, like the Academy but all translucent blues and greens.
There were pools there, deep enough that I couldn’t touch the bottom when they
put the lid on top and sealed me in. It was dark and cold and I held my breath
as long as I could. They said the water was full of nanites, but I didn’t know
for sure until after I took that first, deep breath. Then everything changed. I
am not who I used to be, Alex.”

“Why
would you let them do that to you?” Alex asked, bewildered and horrified. “Why
didn’t you ask for help? I would have helped you!”

“You
had a hundred chances to help me, and you never did. Now I don’t need anyone’s
help, ever again. And if you try your protocol on me, Alex Warner,” she warned
sternly, “that water you feel all over your skin will freeze. You’d kill
yourself, trying to kill me.”

“Emily,”
Alex said, “I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

The
needle impaled her head, only one end visible, poking out of her hair on one
side, a bit above her ear, like an ornament. Alex howled and grabbed for her
body as she fell.

“I
sure would,” Katya croaked, coughing as she stumbled across the room and
grabbed Alex’s shoulder. “God that hurt. I wasn’t sure whether I could port the
water out of my lungs or not. Alex, we have to go, she’s not…”

Alex
was holding an armful of water that was leaking back to the floor. He ignored
Katya pulling at his arm and stared as it melted away. It all seemed so
unreasonable. He thought of Emily sitting next to him in class, her flowery
handwriting, the worried look she got every time he did something stupid, and
he simply couldn’t comprehend it.

“No,”
Emily said, out of a slowly rising column of water that only vaguely looked like
her. “She most certainly is not.”

“Alex,”
Katya commanded, pulling him to his feet. “Run.”

* * *

The Weir lunged,
spittle flying, and Mikhail Bashmet ducked the attack easily, not even paying
it much attention as he whipped the hatchet in his left hand around, removing
the top part of the Weir’s head, along with a bunch of indeterminate matter,
which hit the trunk of the tree behind him with a wet plop. Mikhail barely
heard it, running forward, leaving behind the dead Weir, hunting whatever it
was the pack was dying to protect.

All
around him, operatives of the Black Sun moved through the pine trees and the
great tufts of ferns, killing Weir and Ghouls with silent precision. The air
crackled with discharged protocols, and the potential energy of more, held in
reserve for the right moment. The shadows were thick beneath the trees that
fought and clawed for every inch of sunlight, but for those with the right
eyes, the forest was lit from within for miles around, the last stand of Taos
Cartel. A few members had gone to ground in Washington, along the Canadian
border, on a small ranch not far from the Snake River. When Mikhail’s
extermination team arrived, Weir had come swarming out of the primitive
structures of the camp like insects, allowing the occupants to flee to the
woods. After mopping up the beasts, Mikhail and his team had followed. It had
galled him, requesting that another team be ported in to supplement his own in
this operation, but now that they had come so far, he was glad of the extra men.

“Where
are they?”

Mikhail
called out to Don Tran, his tracker and remote viewer. He looked from the
corpse in front of him and pointed toward a distant hill crowned with trees,
where Mikhail thought that he could see movement.

Leaves
broke and crackled beneath his boots. He moved fast now that he had the trace,
a thread of fright and desperation marking the trail of those who had fled
before his team. It wound through the undergrowth, over the ridge and partway
down the valley. They were still bridging a narrow stream when he finally
caught up to them. He steadied himself on the uneven surface of the rocky
slope, aiming the synthetic .40 caliber Glock he clutched in both hands. A
woman, the one trailing behind, cried out and fell, and was swallowed by the
swollen water as her companions plunged onward, Mikhail pursuing. The creek
slowed him a little. He caught the man near the top of the next ridge, the
hatchet burying itself right in the center of his back. The man fell, cursing
him, and for a brief moment, their eyes met.

And
then he said the word, and Mikhail’s brain, reacting in primeval horror,
relayed it to every neighboring mind before tearing itself apart in revulsion.

* * *

The meeting stretched
through the afternoon, much too long for North’s taste. It was George Muir from
the Raleigh Cartel, again, as usual – protesting his family’s shrinking
interest in the covert Iranian opium trade that was their traditional area of
expertise. He had already wrung whatever consolations he would receive from the
Hegemony for this perceived breach of territory, and knew it. Muir was simply
offended and frightened by his family’s failing fortunes. He expressed this
with long, aggrieved speeches at the meetings to which the Hegemonic leadership
was obligated to invite him.

North
had heard it before, so he had tuned out shortly after the blowhard began
talking, his eyes drifting out to the window to the blue sky and the rolling
hills outside of Dublin, where they were doing this quarter’s financials. That
put him in the position to see it first.

“Something
is wrong,” North stated firmly, cutting off Muir in midsentence, the whole room
turning to face him in shock at his sudden impoliteness.

“What
do you mean?” Lord Tuttle asked suspiciously, squinting at him through rolls of
fat surrounding his eyes. “You do not have the floor at the moment, Lord
North.”

“You
fools,” North sneered, gesturing at the window while he walked purposefully for
the exit. “See for yourselves.”

At
first there was only one person, a man, running along the road that connected
the buildings of the retreat to the main security gate. He wasn’t wearing the
normal uniform of the security forces, but the snipers stationed on the roof
took care of him, so that didn’t seem too ominous. The men in the room, largely
older, largely fat, had already begun to nudge each other and exchange
whispered speculation on whether the younger North had finally lost it, the
same way the elder had done so many years before, when another man came around
the same curve, running as if his life depended on it. Followed by another.
Then several more. The snipers felled the first few, but soon there was a whole
crowd, a small army of strange people rushing the building, heedless of who the
security staff shot.

And
when they one of them got close enough, she said the word.

* * *

Eerie hesitated at the
entrance to the old Physical Education building, currently unoccupied and
slated for revamping next year.

“Alex?”

She
said his name softly, probably too softly for anyone inside the ragged old
building to hear.

She
debated a moment longer, then ducked underneath the caution tape and opened the
front door, left unlocked and partially ajar. Eerie stepped into the half-lit
room, one side flooded with yellow light from the streetlight outside, the
other shrouded in the shadows of the interior of the building. The whole place
smelled powerfully of dust and mildew.

“Alex?”
Eerie asked again, hopefully.

“Not
exactly,” Steve admitted, stepping in the front door behind her and shoving her
unceremoniously aside, while Charles closed the door firmly behind them. “I
guess you’ll have to make do with us.”

Eerie
caught herself on the arm of a chair covered by a paint-smeared drop cloth in
time to avoid hitting the stripped wooden flooring. Her knitting basket went
clattering to the floor and overturned, spilling yarn and darning needles.

“What?”
Eerie looked from one sweating, leering boy’s face to the other. “But, the
email said…”

“I
know,” Steve said, moving forward, reaching for her with one massive hand,
while Eerie shrank away. “What can I say? I am as surprised as you are. I
always figured Emily as too good to talk to the likes of me, but I guess we
both misjudged her, right? Anyway, I’ve wanted to settle things with your
piece-of-shit boyfriend for a long time now, for my teeth. He ain’t here, so I
guess that makes you the next best thing, right?”

“Maybe
better…” Charles suggested evilly, his face flushed and ugly as he advanced.

Eerie
backed away until she bumped up against one of the walls, a cloud of dust
puffing up around her, like a halo in the glow of the streetlight.

“What
do you mean?” Eerie asked quietly, her fingers knotting in the fabric of her
oversized sweatshirt.

Charles
laughed his nasty little laugh, and Steve ambled forward with a smug,
self-satisfied grin on his face while he reached through the dust and the
strange golden motes that filled the air, his hand clenching tight around her
arm.

“You
still don’t get it?” Steve asked, his voice rich with mock sympathy, his face
red and swollen. “I got the strangest email this morning. It turns out that
Emily wants you gone in the worst way, and she’s willing to give us all sort of
things, including a free ride into the Hegemony, if we take care of it for her.
We were sent here to make you disappear, retard. And no one will care if we
take our time about it.”

* * *

“Alistair?” Vladimir
said, clearly surprised. “What are you doing here?”

The
old man’s laboratory was a mess as always. The two long tables were both
covered with components and machinery, pipes and coils of wire, the remnants
and wreckage of a dozen experiments; failed, functioning, and ongoing. Alistair
selected a length of steel pipe that looked about right on his way over, still
a little groggy from the apport.

“The
boss sent me,” Alistair said jovially. “There’s something I need to take care
of.”

Alistair
glanced at the cells that hung across the second level. The traumatized Witch
that Alice had brought home was the only current occupant. Alistair winked at
her, and her eyes widened in terror as she shrank back into the corner of her
cell, as far from him as the walls would allow.

“That’s
odd,” Vladimir said, frowning. “I was sure Gaul told me that he had sent you
out on assignment a few days ago.”

“Oh,
now I understand the confusion. You see,” Alistair confessed, rolling the pipe
around the palm of his hand, “I don’t work for him anymore.”

Vladimir
spun to face Alistair as he advanced, gripping the table top next to him for
support, water leaking from the corners of his wrinkled, weepy eyes. Around
him, a circle flickered to life, a frenetic ring of unintelligible words
burning faint orange.

“Alistair,
you can’t be serious.”

“I
can,” Alistair said, swinging the pipe at the his wrinkled head and connecting
with the side of his skull. Vladimir toppled without making a sound, the orange
ring around him disappearing as he hit the floor. “You never gave me enough
credit, Vlad. None of you did. For such ambitious men, you could be very shortsighted
when it came to your protégés.”

Alistair’s
eyes rolled back in his head, and he strained with the effort of wide-spectrum
broadcast telepathy.

“Come
on in,” he said, to whoever was listening. “The door’s wide open.”

Across
Central, apports were completed and gateways opened. Central had scarcely sunk
into darkness when they began to kill.

Twenty-Three

“Allow me to get to the heart of the matter,” Gaul said patiently, folding his
hands on the desk in front of him. “There is an excellent possibility that
things will shortly become rather ugly. I may be forced to deal with this
situation without a number of my usual resources. Which is why I have brought
you back early from your vacations. For whatever reason, your potential in this
situation was overlooked by my unknown adversary, but not by myself. In short,
I am going to need your help, ladies and gentlemen.”

The
small group of people in his office exchanged glances, whispered, and nudged
each other. No one left, however, and no one appeared anything other than
excited. Grigori and Margot exchanged challenging glances, while Vivik was
already occupied, pouring over the probability matrices on Gaul’s desk.

Kids,
Gaul thought sourly.

“Very
well,” Gaul said crisply. “Let’s discuss the plan, shall we?”

* * *

“Alex, I need you to
pay attention, because this is very important.”

Someone,
a girl, was in front of him. Who was it? He couldn’t seem to focus his eyes,
and his head kept lolling forward and to the side uncontrollably. She put a
hand to his cheek, steadying him, and something else behind his neck. The
sensation was so overwhelming that it took him some time to identify it, but
eventually it came to him.

A
cold towel.

“An
unfortunate thing has happened, Alex. I’m honestly not sure exactly what yet,
and I find that very upsetting. You have also had an experience, no need to
think about it right now, that you found quite upsetting.”

White
face, red lips, pale blue eyes, black dress…Anastasia? Could the girl be
Anastasia? No, Alex decided, it wasn’t possible. Because this girl looked as if
she might have been worried.

“I
need you to stay with me, Alex. I have a number of things that I am responsible
for, and to be entirely frank, you are hardly my priority. Please try and
focus. I grow tired of repeating myself.”

She
had ribbons tied in her hair. It could only be Anastasia. But how? And why
would Anastasia help him? Then again, maybe he was being unfair. In some ways,
Anastasia had done nothing but help since he had arrived at the Academy.

“We
are not the only ones who were attacked, and there are things that all of us
need to be doing. You included, I’m afraid. I have already spoken to the
Director, and I have full authority over you and the rest of the students here.
I also have duties for the Black Sun, so my hands are full. This means that I
cannot accompany you where you need to go.”

There
was a pause, and when his vision cleared again, Anastasia was embracing her two
younger sisters, Molly and Diana, while Renton watched in obvious satisfaction.
When Alex saw the look Anastasia gave Renton, he understood why. The crying
girls then hurried off to Svetlana’s waiting arms. Anastasia returned to patting
his face with a cold washcloth, looking much more composed.

“Svetlana
will return shortly to take you to Central. As I was saying, I can’t come with
you, because matters must be settled here, first. I will join you in Central
when I can, when I have marshaled whatever is left of the Black Sun’s
combat-ready personnel. I am not certain how much of Central is still under our
control, or under control at all, for that matter. Because it will, in all
probability, be quite dangerous, I am sending Katya with you.”

Alex
attempted to move his fingers and found that they would obey him. His tried his
toes and found that they were equally willing. He blinked his eyes several
times, and his vision began to clear. The strange sense of distance, the idea
that he was watching a movie or having an incredibly vivid dream slowly
receded.

“The
Director has explained the situation, and I agree with his assessment. It is
critical, Alex, that you find your way to Rebecca Levy. Nothing else matters as
much as this. Gaul believes that contact with you might restore Rebecca. I
believe that this is a possibility as well. It could potentially kill her, but
that is a risk that we are willing to take. Without her, circumstances will
continue to worsen, and the longer she is incapacitated, the harder the damage
will be to repair. Now, I know that this is not what you want to be doing…”

“What
about Eerie?” Alex managed, a little surprised that his tongue remembered how
to handle the complicated challenges posed by language.

Anastasia
shook her head and sat back, wringing out the washcloth in a bowl of water
beside her.

“Back
with us, I see,” Anastasia said, sighing, but he was fairly certain the sigh
was of relief, rather than exasperation. “And about time.”

“Is
Eerie okay?” Alex demanded, trying to sit, and, after a few abortive efforts,
just managing it.

“I
knew you would ask,” Anastasia said, with a slight smile. “Let me assure you
that, if anyone in Central is currently safe, then Eerie would be that person.
And if you don’t assist us, you won’t be able to help Eerie – because she,
along with everyone else in Central, will be dead.”

“You
don’t know?” Alex asked, shivering as the sweat on his body cooled. “No one has
heard from her?”

“Alex,”
Anastasia said with unaccustomed gentleness. “No one has heard from anybody,
because the same thing is happening everywhere. Central, here, at Hegemony and
Black Sun operations the world over. This is much bigger than you realize.”

Alex
tried to stand, but his body wasn’t ready for that level of overall
coordination. Anastasia pushed him gently back down.

“What
are you going to do?” Anastasia said, dabbing at his forehead with the
washcloth. “You cannot go to Central till Svetlana returns, and you will not
survive there very long without Katya’s help. The whole place is overrun, Alex.
I promise you that Eerie can take care of herself. What she cannot do is live
through the day without some help from Rebecca Levy, and the only way we can
manage her return requires your catalyst effect. You see, Alex, we have been
betrayed. By the Chief Auditor, no less.”

“What?”

Anastasia
nodded grimly. Alex’s vision had cleared to the point that he could see that
they were still in the main house, back on the island, in the kitchen. There
was continuing gunfire outside, but it was more distant and sporadic. The
threat, he reasoned, was less immediate.

“I
don’t know all the details, but apparently, Alistair is leading the attack on
Central,” Anastasia said, apparently judging him well enough, placing the
washcloth across his forehead and standing up to pace across the kitchen.
“Weir, corrupted Operators...potentially even Witches and Anathema. They have
destroyed whole portions of Central’s defense and transportation departments,
and we cannot seem to port directly to the Academy at the moment. I will have
Sveta deposit you and Katya somewhere not too far outside the gate, and you
will have to make your own way there.”

“Fuck
that,” Alex said, peeling the washcloth from his head and standing unsteadily.
“I’m finding Eerie first. If she’s okay, then I’ll…”

To
his utter shock, Anastasia whipped around and grabbed him by the ear, pulling
him down and coming up on her tiptoes until they were almost eye to eye. There
was no mistaking it, now that he was this close – tears had run through her
eyeliner and mascara, leaving dark streaks down her cheeks, but those eyes were
filled with nothing other than burning anger now.

“Listen
to me very carefully, boy,” Anastasia commanded, and Alex, despite the painful
grip on his ear, found that he could do nothing but listen. “I have looked out
for you since you arrived at my doorstep. In that time, I have been very
patient in tolerating you and your whining and indecision, your self-pity and
narcissism. I don’t have time for that right now. Those fools are trying to
tear apart everything that I have built, everything that is mine. They are
trying to kill my family, the Black Sun, all my people. My cartel needs me, so
I must be there. If you think that what you need to do is to go find Eerie – who,
by the way, does not need your help – then feel free to do exactly that.
However, keep in mind that, at that point, I will decide that you are
disagreeing with me. And this, I promise you, is going to be a very bad
day for people who disagree with me. Please think about that very carefully
before you open your mouth again.”

Anastasia
finally released his ear, and he rubbed it resentfully. He still felt sluggish
and overwhelmed, and every time he thought of Emily his mind went around in
circles. He remembered her disintegrating to water in his arms, and then,
before he could even begin to register her loss, rising from a pool of water in
the corner of the room. Alex felt strangely sleepy, as if he could slip right
back into the fugue he’d been in since. And that, he knew, was the only thing
he couldn’t allow himself to do.

“Okay,”
Alex said guardedly. “I’ll do it. But if anything happens to Eerie before I can
get to her, then I’m holding you responsible.”

To
his surprise, Anastasia looked at him evenly and nodded, then took a compact
mirror from somewhere and started dabbing her face with a tiny sponge.

“I
really couldn’t care less,” Anastasia said curtly. “Katya should be here any
moment. Oh, and Alex? One more thing. None of this,” she said, motioning to take
in the scene around her, where her sisters had been, where she had nursed Alex
back to consciousness, her own smudged makeup that she had already begun to
repair in a handy mirror, “is ever to be spoken of again. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,”
Alex said, nodding. “I’d rather not, honestly.”

Her
shoulders stiffened, and he thought for a moment that he had made her angry
again. Then Anastasia turned, smiled, and patted his head as if he were a
well-behaved child.

“Good
boy,” she said approvingly, returning her attentions to the mirror. “In return,
I promise that Eerie won’t find out what you did with Emily. Not from me or
mine, that is.”

Anastasia
snapped her compact closed and walked away, looking cold and firmly in control
again. He felt better with her that way. It seemed important that someone knew
what was going on. He could only hope that he and Anastasia were actually on
the same side.

All
of a sudden, Alex understood why so many people decided that whichever side
Anastasia chose was the right side.

“Hey,
Anastasia,” he called out on impulse. “Do we still have a chance?”

Anastasia
sauntered back over in her torn slip, the ribbon in her hair out of kilter, her
mouth curved into the hint of a smile, her eyes implying that it was at his
expense. The effect was only slightly spoiled by the degree she had to crane
her neck to look up at him.

“Don’t
be a fool, boy,” Anastasia chided. “This game is hardly over. I haven’t even
started to play yet.”

* * *

“Alright,” Christopher
Feld said, apparently finally tiring of the sound of his own voice – or, more
likely, his audience. “Martin, put Alice to sleep and call for Tomas, so that
we can move her. Leigh, Kim, go ahead and take care of the other two.”

Kim,
who Mitsuru figured for a Korean from his features, approached where she was
sprawled. He wasn’t cautious, so he must have figured Leigh had put her down
hard earlier, so that he wasn’t worried about her now. She kept her head down
as he approached, her hands hidden beneath her body, her guns cocked, a
ballistics protocol feeding her information about what she couldn’t see.

“Hey
Leigh,” he called out, in accent that that confirmed her suspicions. “Do you
know who this one is? Or what it is that she does?”

“No,”
Mitsuru heard the girl say, her voice devoid of interest. “Why do you care?”

“Well,
I thought it would be better to know, that’s all.”

Mitsuru’s
body screamed in protest as she forced it into motion. She rolled and twisted,
firing as she moved. She gave him both guns. She didn’t need to – not in a
strictly practical sense – but she found it gratifying on a personal level. Of
course, that meant she couldn’t put one gun on Leigh, whom her ballistics
protocol located via acoustic analysis, warning Mitsuru that the vampire was
headed toward her and accelerating rapidly. Then again, it probably didn’t make
that much difference. Mitsuru scrambled to her feet before Kim hit the ground,
and spun toward the vampire girl, hoping to get off a shot before they
collided…

There
was no such time. Leigh was only a meter away, moving so fast that all Mitsuru
could hope to do was get her arms in the way of the kick that otherwise might
literally take her head off. Then, at the last possible moment, her implant
hummed into impossible life, a protocol downloading and activating without any
input from her. She watched in amazement as viral command text scrolled down
the side of her vision in alien, golden letters.

Leigh’s
kick landed. And bounced off, without even touching Mitsuru’s already broken
arm, sparks trailing the vampire’s leg where it had impacted against the
localized barrier that somehow shielded Mitsuru’s arms.

Um,
hello, Miss Aoki.

Leigh
was staring at her in shock. Mitsuru took the opportunity to open fire. While
bullets might not have been able to kill the vampire, they still must have
hurt, because Leigh ran, moving for nearby cover. It took Mitsuru a moment to
place the voice in her head.

Eerie?

Yes?

Mitsuru
continued firing one pistol while she dropped the clip from the other, pulling
another from her belt and loading it against her thigh.

When
did you become a telepath?

I’m
not. I mean, I didn’t. I’m using the Network, Miss Aoki. I’m using your implant
as a relay. Sorry I had to take control like that, but, well, I think maybe
that girl is trying to kill you.

Leigh
rounded the corner faster than Mitsuru would have thought physically possible,
weaving and accelerating so that she couldn’t get a decent shot off. Mitsuru
threw her guns aside in disgust and reached instead for her knife.

Never
mind that. Can you do it again?

Sure!
I wrote the protocol myself, you know. I call it ‘Point Barrier’, and…

Mitsuru
saw Leigh’s punch coming and crossed her arms in front of her face, figuring
that Eerie was too caught up in describing the wonders of her protocol to activate
it, but she was wrong. The vampire’s punch was no more effective than her first
strike, glancing off the golden barrier that separated them, her arm trailing a
wake of sparks. Figuring that was about as certain as she could expect to be,
Mitsuru leapt for Leigh, knife in hand.

Can
you keep defending me long enough for me to put her down?

Well,
I can try, but it’s hard, you know, and anyway…

She
didn’t have time for the rest of Eerie’s warning. Mitsuru had already closed,
where she was comfortable fighting, where she might have advantage over the
young vampire. She kicked Leigh in the leg, aiming for the ankle she was
pivoting on. It wasn’t quite the same as kicking stone, but it was close. The
kick must have hurt on Leigh’s end, though, because she tripped and fell.
Mitsuru followed her to the ground, the knife gripped in both hands, aimed for
the upper back, below the shoulder blade. Leigh rolled, but Mitsuru had
anticipated the movement, and made sure that her elbow fell directly into
Leigh’s face. Again, Mitsuru wasn’t sure whom the attack hurt more. Regardless,
it definitely hurt Leigh. Mitsuru snaked her legs around Leigh’s middle for
grip and leverage, and then swung the knife for her throat.

Leigh’s
punch was stopped by the Point Barrier, but apparently she had tired of that
happening, because she allowed the knife to sink into the not quite impervious
flesh of her shoulder, which gave her purchase on Mitsuru’s shoulder and right
arm. Mitsuru tried to shift, to lock her legs to maintain her position, but the
girl was simply too strong. She peeled Mitsuru off her like gum from the
sidewalk, and then hurled her into a wall almost thirty feet away, Mitsuru’s
shoulder separating painfully on impact. If it hadn’t been for Eerie’s barrier,
Mitsuru suspected the collision might have killed her. Judging from the information
her ballistics protocol fed her, she had a few seconds before Leigh arrived and
made that a certainty.

Miss
Aoki? I don’t think it’s enough…she’s getting stronger or something. Her next
shot might actually get through. However, there is…something else I can do.

Do
it.

There
was hesitation, and in that time, Leigh eliminated half the distance between
them.

Miss
Aoki, are you sure? Because there’s no going back if I do this. You see, your
Black Protocol isn’t truly active yet. It’s still restrained. There is more.
But if I do it…

There’s
no time! Do it now!

Mitsuru
wasn’t sure whether Eerie did something or whether Leigh struck her. Either
way, she hit the ground, hard. As did Leigh, crashing into a wall that rapidly
became little more than debris. Mitsuru wasn’t entirely sure when she would be
able to stand again, but at least Leigh didn’t pop back up, either. The pain
was immense. It threatened to overwhelm her.

Desperate
times. Desperate measures.

Mitsuru
slid a knife from her belt, a small one, balanced for throwing. Despite the
intent of its manufacture, despite all the work she had done balancing and
trimming it for optimum flight, she had never thrown it in anger. She had only
tried it a few times, in drunken contests carried out behind the Academy firing
range with a much younger Alistair. As a matter of fact, she had never used it
to hurt anyone other than herself.

After
all, that wouldn’t be sanitary.

* * *

Drake and Michelle had
just arrived when things lurched sideways beneath Christopher – right when he
started to think that he had been wrong. He had nearly convinced himself that,
unlike every other time Alice Gallow had barged into his life unexpectedly,
this day might actually end well. After all, Alice was still immobilized by
what was most likely a cracked skull, a broken nose, and a concussion. That
alone should have qualified today as a good day. He greeted them as they
approached, but didn’t think much of it when they didn’t respond. Then he
noticed Drake’s colorless face.

“Hey,
Chris?” Concern looked odd on Drake: two hundred pounds of muscle and an extra
twenty or so of flab, a beard that was split and braided, and an insane scrawl
of multicolored tattoo work all over his body, excepting only the insides of
his hands and the majority of his face. “I thought you said they were down
already…”

The
crash happened before Christopher could turn all the way around. But it was
definitely Leigh – perfect, invulnerable Leigh – who was crawling from the
wreckage of the wall she had just collided with. Where she had been seconds
before, one of the Auditors was standing, the Japanese woman with red eyes.
Mitsuru Aoki, if he remembered correctly. It was obvious, even at a distance,
that it required a tremendous effort on her part to stand. Typically, he would
have assumed that was because of all the blood. Leigh’s claws, after all, made
a terrible mess.

This
girl’s blood, however, was black. And everything it touched, it consumed.

“What
the hell is that?” Chris asked, backing slowly away.

“Nanite
dissemblers,” Michelle said hesitantly, trembling at whatever her remote-viewing
protocol showed her. “Her blood is saturated with them. What is this woman,
Chris? How can she live with those things inside of her?”

Leigh
moved cautiously to flank her, and the Auditor turned toward the movement. Her
eyes were fire engine red; Chris’s eyes hurt in sympathy. Black blood crawled
across her skin in rivulets, falling silently to the ground and then consuming
it. She took one slow step, then another, and even her footprints were
corrosive. Everywhere she touched, the black liquid expanded outward like rot.

“The
dissemblers are self-perpetuating, and they are reproducing rapidly,” Michelle
said, horrified, her normally slight French accent becoming pronounced. “Chris,
that girl is a monster. If this continues, I don’t know where the damage will
stop…”

He
understood Michelle’s fright. It was a nightmare idea he had heard described
hypothetically, a favorite doomsday scenario among physicists at the Academy –
an Operator who could generate nanites that did nothing besides build more of
themselves and take everything else apart. Functioning unchecked, their mass
would grow exponentially. The whole planet would be consumed in a matter of
weeks. Of course, the scenario had been kicked around because it was widely
assumed to be impossible – nanites of this variety had never actually been
encountered, to the best of his knowledge. Nothing in the information they had been
given on the Auditors mentioned Mitsuru Aoki having such an ability – either
Alistair had withheld the information, or he hadn’t known himself.

“Do
we have to do something about this?”

Christopher
began to explain that, with Leigh doing the fighting, they had nothing to worry
about. The plan had always hinged on her, after all. Leigh had spent a decade
and more in stasis, embedded in the flesh pits, her skin crawling with
blasphemous workings and forbidden technologies, asleep and growing strong in the
Outer Dark. They had slaughtered a dozen vampires, elders of the European
Syndicate, to provide the nanites used in the procedure; the Witches that the
Anathema held in thrall had sacrificed centuries of collected power. Selecting
Leigh for the process was the price that brought Christopher over to the
Anathema. He had allowed himself to be implanted with a false persona, even
unknowingly faked his own death, for the purposes of collecting Alice Gallow.
But he had never doubted his decision, ever since Leigh had emerged from her
bath of blood and nanotechnology like Lady Bathory; naked, perfect, and
invulnerable.

Except
for the places that the red-eyed woman’s blood landed on Leigh’s waxen skin.
Because there was nothing left except a boiling, slowly-expanding black mass.
The ground beneath Mitsuru Aoki’s feet fared no better. Even her clothing and
weapons were consumed. Only her skin and the knife in her hand were ignored by
the ravenous nanites.

There
was nothing to say. Christopher stood and watched as Leigh snarled and threw
herself at Mitsuru.

Even
if she didn’t know exactly why, Leigh clearly understood that causing her
opponent to bleed was a bad idea, so she sheathed her claws before she struck,
molding her hands back into fists. Thin, rotating tendrils of black blood
surrounded Mitsuru Aoki, hanging in midair with frank disregard for gravity,
drifting gently with the wind like seaweed, consuming even the moisture from
the air. Leigh’s timing was exquisite. She jumped one branch like a hurdler,
then ducked beneath another, landing in a crouch and then springing back up
with blinding speed. Truly, she was a marvel to Christopher’s eyes.

Mitsuru
Aoki laughed, and hurled a handful of blood collected from her wounded arm,
hanging crooked from Leigh’s kick. Leigh blocked reflexively, the blood
splashing along her forearms and splattering across her chest. A tiny drop
connected with her immaculate cheek and started the hissing conversion. Leigh
tried to step away, and one of the ribbons sliced through her arm, neatly
severing it at the elbow. The limb was already coated with black, viscous goo
by the time it stopped rolling.

Leigh
did not feel pain. She did not scream. She retreated, absorbing a glancing blow
to the calf as she fled. She was beside them a moment later, the black spots
expanding. Her right arm was almost totally lost, and spreading puddles were
consuming her chest and neck.

“Get
rid of it,” Christopher commanded Michelle. “The black blood and all the skin
touching it. Now.”

“What?”
Michelle said, gaping. “I don’t want to…”

“You
can’t hurt her,” Christopher explained impatiently. “Whatever that bitch is
bleeding is breaking Leigh down faster than she can rebuild. She will die if
you don’t do it.”

Michelle
hesitated for another infuriating moment, before nodding to herself, closing
her eyes, and exercising the other half of what made the petite girl from
Normandy such a valuable asset, first to the infamous Terrie Cartel, then to
the Anathema. Michelle was a skilled remote viewer, but more importantly, she
was an exceptional telekinetic, capable of gross and small manipulation.
Leigh’s flesh was neatly incised where the nanites had spread. Leigh gasped in
shock at the instantaneous removal, but that was all. There was no blood. She
showed no signs of pain.

Mitsuru
shrieked when she turned toward them, all reason absent from her red eyes.
Alice Gallow stumbled to her feet, still clutching her head.

“Fuck
this,” Chris snarled. “Let Alice deal with it. Drake, get us out of here. Start
stage two, now.”

“About
damn time,” Drake said, raising one tattooed arm. He brought it down like a
conductor, and then there was no one where there had been four.

Alice
stared at the spot unsteadily for a moment, waiting for her vision to realign,
then turned to regard Mitsuru, advancing surrounded by a tempest of black
filigree, her eyes livid red, her delicate features twisted and feral.

“Mitzi?
I mean, Mitsuru?” Alice tried hopefully, wondering if that Leigh bitch had
actually killed her, and she was simply too dumb to realize it. “You wanna tone
it down a bit?”

Alice
wasn’t surprised that it didn’t work, but she didn’t think she could be blamed
for trying, what with her head in the process of falling off.

“Hey,
Xia?” Alice called out to the motionless figure embedded partway in a wall.
“Any chance that you’re still alive?”

Still
nothing. Mitsuru came forward, the first of the black tendrils splashing
against the strip of concrete that separated them, consuming what it touched.

“Gaul?”
Alice tried, not sure if she was talking or thinking. Her head felt sick and
fat, like a rotten jack-o’-lantern, one side so badly caved that she was afraid
to touch it. “Mitzi is about to kill me. Little help?”

Mitsuru
froze and howled, caught in a bubble of rainbow-tinted oil-slick light emanating
from the front of her brain, where her implant rested.

“Like
that, for example,” Alice said gratefully, stumbling to where Mitsuru lay on
the ground, mercifully harmless. Alice had meant to check on her, but all she
managed was to fall over in her vicinity. “That’ll work.”

* * *

Gaul was staring. He
had been staring since he had arrived, called to the abandoned bulk of his own
Analytics building, the hallways littered with dozens of dead bodies, summoned
by perhaps the last person that he would have expected.

“Be
careful,” Eerie said, taking off her headset and putting it down next to the
laptop. “When Mitsuru wakes, she’s going to be able to operate her Black
Protocol at will.”

“You
are going to have to explain some things to me,” Gaul said, looking quizzically
at the girl in front of him, as if she reminded him strongly of someone whose
name he could not quite recall. “I think, after all this time, that you owe me
an explanation, Eerie. How long have you been able to do these things? Who are
you, really?”

“It’s
true that I am not myself right now,” Eerie agreed, nodding gravely. “I am who
the moment demands. But I have to go.”

“What
do you mean?” Gaul demanded, barely suppressing the urge to shake her. “You
activated the most treacherous and forbidden protocol I can imagine in one of
my Auditors, over the Etheric Network. Then you turned it off like a light
switch. That was the Ecofage Protocol, wasn’t it? Self-replicating nanites that
devour the surrounding environment? The last time she used that protocol, the
Operator with her died, and Mitsuru was hobbled as a result. I have watched
over you since you were a child, and I feel a certain investment in your
future. Why have you kept this from me?”

“Director,
you are right. You deserve an explanation. But at another time. I need to be
somewhere else, and you have other things to worry over. You have to protect
the Source Well. You know that already. They are coming for it. Can’t you feel
it? Your old ghosts, Director, coming back to haunt you.”

“What?”
Gaul demanded, taking the girl by the shoulders and holding her there, forcing
himself to be gentle. “What are you saying?”

Eerie
sighed and looked at him as if he were stupid. It was an intensely surreal
experience, like watching a video of a friend, their voice overdubbed with a
profoundly different one. Gaul had all sorts of nasty ideas occur to him, but
he also felt inclined to doubt them; after all, Eerie was the first Changeling
raised entirely amongst humans, and the Fey themselves were such an unknown
commodity that even he hadn’t met one. No one knew how Eerie would evolve as
she aged.

“There
is someone else who needs my help,” Eerie explained impatiently. “And you have
other things to deal with. They are already inside the Academy, you know?”

“Don’t
worry,” Gaul snapped, letting go of her. “It’s being dealt with. What concerns
me, Eerie, is you. I’ve never seen you like this before, and I had no idea you
could do these things. Are you the same girl who grew up here?”

“Mostly,”
Eerie hummed, nodding. “Whoever I am, I still like you, Director. I hope you
live through this. If I do as well, then ask me again. I won’t have the answers
you’re looking for, though. I don’t know myself.”

Gaul
looked at her for a long time with his faded red eyes.

“Director,”
she said softly, with urgency. “I have to go. Please.”

“Then
go,” Gaul said, shrugging. “But, Eerie – this discussion is in no way
finished.”

“Let’s
hope not,” Eerie said pleasantly, heading for the door.

Twenty-Four

“I hate your life, Alex,” Katya said, crouched in the brush
beside him. “I would like to make that clear.”

“I
hear you,” Alex said, nodding.

“I’m
not too fond of your attitude this evening, either.”

“Can’t
say I blame you,” Alex said with a shrug. He was watching the road a hundred
meters distant; it was empty, for the most part, or rather, nothing on it was
moving. The stone strip was dotted with distant shapes that could only be
bodies. He hoped they didn’t belong to anyone he knew. He tried very hard not
to worry about Eerie. “I wouldn’t call this a good mood.”

Katya
was silent for a while. Alex enjoyed the interval as best he could. He really
wished that he had his headphones.

“Look,
I liked Emily, all right? She was fun, and a good cook, and whatever,” Katya
said, looking like it embarrassed her. “And you should understand that your
indecision played a role in this situation, and you have some things to own up to.
But, if you’re holding yourself responsible for what happened to Emily, you
need to stop. She was a big girl. She did that shit to herself.”

“I’m
trying not to think about that right now.”

“I
know – and you’re going to screw everything up because of that. You need to
clear your mind, so you can focus on what we are about to do. You can’t fight
with the big black cloud you got over your head right now. Let it go, Alex. You
aren’t responsible for her actions, and your guilt is gonna get both of us
killed.”

“Wow,”
Alex muttered. “That’s a sympathetic response.”

“What,
I’m supposed to be impressed by your compassion? Alex, she’s just someone you
fucked. If you are planning on taking responsibility for the actions of every
single person you sleep with, you had better consider celibacy.”

“We
have to get to the medical wing,” Alex said darkly. “As for the little pep
talk, you can skip it. I’m not worrying about Emily at all. I’m worried about
finishing this stupid job so that I can go find Eerie. The sooner we get this
done, the sooner I can move on to what I actually care about. So, are we doing
this, or what?”

Katya
looked away and swore under her breath.

“Fine,
tough guy,” she said, finally, shrugging. “Let’s go.”

* * *

“Try and hold still,
Miss Gallow.”

Alice’s
head hurt. It felt like someone had hollowed out her skull and then filled the
empty space with broken glass. She sincerely hoped that she was dying. If she
wasn’t, then the pain was too much to bear.

“Please,
Miss Gallow. Hold still. I am trying to put you back together again.”

She
became aware of her senses slowly, one by one, as if she were repeating infancy
in fast-forward. First, the smell. Incense, like sandalwood. Then a sound, like
a recording of a child’s voice, pitch-shifted, high and unnatural. Finally,
there was a light, a light that had all the warm qualities of amber,
translucent, tinted with an iridescent rainbow. The more she was aware of the
light, the more she paid attention to it, the more the pain receded. So she
stared intently, not entirely sure that her eyes were even open, listening to
the horrifying sounds of her skull realigning, bone fragments grinding against
each other and then fusing, with the patience of one who has become familiar
with horror.

“I’m
sorry, Miss Gallow. I’m sorry that they did this to you. I’m sorry I can’t fix
what’s truly wrong with you. All I can do is put the pieces back together, and
loosen some of the fish hooks in your mind.”

The
voice was almost singing, rather than speaking, which she suspected should have
meant something to her. The sound rang in her head, reverberating in her
shattered, fluctuating skull, but the sensation was not unpleasant. Similar to
the light Alice bathed in, the more she was aware of the voice, the better she
felt. She listened raptly, even though the words made little sense to her.

“As
old as you are, it’s funny that we never met. You are a remarkable and
mysterious being, Miss Gallow – even from my perspective. You know, of course,
that no human could survive the implantation of the kind of nanomachinery that
was used in your manufacture? But that’s for the best. I could never heal an
Operator in this fashion. Too fragile. You must have guessed by now, even if
you have forgotten? Some Operators do not appear to age, it is true, and they
can have long lives, but there are limits to everything. I heard about you the
first time in Holland, when Napoleon’s troops were entering Amsterdam. You
arrived with them, to make other, more private inquiries. I don’t know whom you
were working for then. I don’t know how old you were then. How old do you think
you are, Alice?”

Alice
couldn’t wonder. She couldn’t follow much of what was being said. The whole
experience was too extreme, the words too small and insignificant a part of the
process. Whatever her mysterious benefactor had to say, the relevance of the
words paled beside the reformation of her skull. The process didn’t hurt as
much as she would have thought it might, her whole being permeated with that
ephemeral, translucent light.

“Or
your protocol, have you ever considered the oddities of its nature? It isn’t
anything like any other Operator’s protocol. How would nanites explain what you
can do with the shadows, Alice? You must suspect that you are very different.”

It
was almost like an orgasm. Not that the experience was pleasurable, but it was
consuming, overwhelming, indescribable. The sound of her bones knitting in
fast-forward. The sound of tissue rebuilding, each cell molded from the
blueprint of the last, the shrill crescendo of her nerve endings returning to
life.

“I
wish we had more time together, Miss Gallow. There are a so many things that I
would like to talk to you about. I think that one day we will meet again, as we
are now. Maybe then we can talk more. I sincerely regret what I have to do,
now. To make it up to you, I’m going to fix Xia, too, okay? I know how
protective you are of him.”

Alice’s
instinct, her drive for survival, was primal and fundamental to her nature.
Even in her lulled, half-conscious state, she reacted apprehensively to what
she perceived as a threat.

“I’m
sorry, truly – but I can’t allow you to remember any of this. Given your
condition, that seems particularly cruel. However, I’m being indulgent – there
is a child that I spoil, I’m afraid, and there is a boy she is fond of. He
won’t make it if you don’t. I’m counting on you, Miss Gallow, even if you won’t
remember me. If you can remember anything, remember this: the Church of Sleep,
Miss Gallow. They are always watching us…”

There
was an interval that was lost to her. Not forgotten, not exactly. Lost like a
dream to morning sunlight.

Alice
picked herself up and dusted herself off, then probed her bruised head and jaw
hesitantly, as if she expected it to break if handled roughly. She tried to
remember, and she could only recall snippets, bits and pieces of what had
happened after Mitsuru had gone berserk. She felt sad, which usually meant that
she’d forgotten something good, something that had made her happy. She shrugged
it off with the benefit of long experience.

Poking
her jaw with her index finger, Alice Gallow walked through the rubble and
wreckage that dotted the site of Mitsuru and Leigh’s battle, wondering what had
happened, wondering if anyone else was still alive. There was something, stuck
like a barb on the surface of her mind, an itch she couldn’t scratch. Her mind
insisted on returning to it, like remembering the melody to a song but
forgetting the words, vague but insistent, infuriating. She tried to think in
his direction.

Gaul?

It’s
about time. Pull yourself together. There are things that must be done, and
you, Chief Auditor, are the one who needs to do them.

Today,
Alice thought, is going to be a big day for the old diary.

* * *

There was something
wrong with these Weir. They were…twisted, malformed. Hideous and rank, skin
crawling with tumors and sores, features obscured and deformed. Alex couldn’t
help but wonder if they were somehow already dead.

Katya
ducked beneath the outstretched arms of the charging Weir, and one of the three
needles she clutched in her left hand disappeared. The Weir’s howl was muffled,
as she had impaled it through the jaw, the tip of the needle protruding from
its skull. She opened her hand and the other two needles disappeared, and the
Weir behind it fell as well. Then it was Alex’s turn, as he stepped up behind
her. He had practiced it dozens of times, but now, with a Weir lunging at him
and nothing else to rely upon, he was more nervous than ever. He reached his
hand out, using his arm as a rough visual guide. Wait until the Weir was twice
as far…aim as Katya had taught him, for the point between the beast’s eyes…

The
Black Door skidded open a crack. Alex punched a hole to the Ether, no larger
than the width of one of Katya’s needles. The blood in the Weir’s brain froze,
along with some of its head and most of its eyes. The creature made a ghastly
sound, then fell to the ground and twitched as its nervous system died in
shock.

“You
only need to freeze like five centimeters, max,” Katya scolded. “You’re still
overdoing it.”

She
walked over to the Weir he had killed and kicked its head experimentally.

“Like
someone poured a slushy inside a pumpkin,” Katya observed dryly, then paused
and looked away. “You did pretty good, all in all. You’re still slow, but I
don’t feel quite as bad about having you watch my back.”

“I’m
going to accept that as a compliment,” Alex said happily, “because I know
that’s as close as I’m gonna get. Look, we do this, and I’m gone, okay? We get
Rebecca back on her feet, then I’m going back down to Central.”

“Through
the woods,” Katya said coolly, tapping her foot impatiently.

“Yeah.”

“Which
are filled with…? I don’t know. Anathema, I suppose. Lots of them.”

“Well,
yeah. I mean, I have to, right?”

“I
suppose,” Katya mused. “The only other girl in the world who was willing to
sleep with you decided that she preferred death, so your options for the future
are limited.”

“Hey,”
Alex said, genuinely hurt and not fully able to disguise it. “That’s really
harsh, even for you.”

“Sorry.
You’re just going to have to deal with it.”

“Well,
whatever. I have to go for Eerie. I said some things that I wish I hadn’t…and
now that I think about it,” Alex said, wondering why he was confessing this to
Katya, of all people, “there are some things that I want to say that I should
have said. I’m trying not to compound my mistakes. So, while I appreciate your
help, I’d appreciate it even more if you would lay the fuck off. Please.”

Katya
regarded him narrowly. It could have gone either way. He wasn’t sure how many
needles she had stuck in the lining of her jacket, and he found himself
watching her hands intently. Then Katya shrugged and walked off, toward the
gate, stepping neatly over the corpse of the Weir, its head steaming from
internal temperature differential.

They
made it halfway to the gate, which seemed good, given how crowded the woods
seemed to be tonight. At least, for variety’s sake, they managed to stumble
over the next group of Anathema, rather than vice versa. Both Weir looked very
surprised. The human – well, no, Alex reminded himself; the Anathema – with
them looked even more so.

Katya
threw one of her needles at him, overhand, and he ducked to avoid it, reaching
for his gun. It flickered out of sight in midair, holding on to the momentum
when it reappeared somewhere inside of him, emerging, point first, from the
right side of his chest, poking out from between his ribs. He dropped the gun
he had been holding and stared at the tip of the needle in horror. Alex held
out his hand and waited for the Weir to move. He didn’t have to wait very long.

They
were faster than he anticipated, and he almost didn’t get the first one on the
way in, which would have been a problem, because Katya was still digging
through her pockets. He had to try twice in rapid succession, unpleasantly
aware that every pinhole breach meant a few more hours of his life lost to
dreamless, hollow sleep. His first attempt grazed the back of the Weir’s skull.
The second hit the mark, and the thing fell down in the same horrible
convulsions. Alex spun to face the final Weir, knowing that he would be too
late to stop it, wondering if Katya had worked anything out.

The
Weir dropped to its knees in coughing, choking spasms, close enough that Alex
could smell its foul breath. He turned and looked at Katya gratefully as the
thing died.

“Fuck,
man. I thought you were out of needles or something,” Alex gasped, his hands on
his knees. “I would’ve been dead.”

“Actually,”
Katya said modestly, “I did kind of run out of…accessible needles. I actually
killed that one with a handful of dirt. Whatever works, right?”

“Accessible?”

Katya
blushed.

“Yeah,
can we not talk about that?”

“Right,”
Alex said, turning back toward the gate. “You’re right. How do you think we
should do this? Do we walk right in, or what?”

As
they walked along, he could hear clothing rustle and shift behind him. He
risked one quick glance, and caught her fussing with her skirt lining, and got
a good idea about where the ‘inaccessible’ needles were stored. Then Katya
caught him looking and glared, and he sort of wished he hadn’t looked.

As
much as Alex tried to keep his mind on other things, it returned again and
again to Emily. He recalled the strange things she had said, water bleeding
from her skin, disintegrating in his arms and then rising up from the water; it
was like a sore in his mind, constantly threatening to occupy his attention.
When he actually gave in and tried to think the whole scene through, though,
Alex drew a complete blank. His mind fixated and recoiled over the sheer horror
and impossibility of the situation. Alex remembered what she looked like in her
white dress on a sunny afternoon not so long ago, on the other side of the gate
he and Katya were cautiously approaching, and it caused pain that ran right
through him, nestling in his chest as if it planned to stay. However, if he had
been asked to explain, there would have been nothing he could articulate.

It
grew quiet as they approached the gate. There were more bodies scattered in the
trees and along the road, some of them probably people he had seen around, some
of them maybe even people he liked. Alex tried very hard not to look at them.

The
road broadened into a roundabout with a stone pavilion in the center, directly
in front of the gate. There had been a bus stop and a rain shelter in its
shadow, but now there were only fragments of torn metal bolted to the stone
that reminded him of the way Emily laughed on a certain afternoon. Katya
motioned for him to be quiet as they approached, and something about the
gesture recalled the way it had looked – Emily’s lovely, well-proportioned head
marred and violated by a thin, rounded piece of metal – and for a moment, he
thought that he couldn’t go on. Then he saw them, standing near the gate,
talking in low voices. Anathema, dressed for battle, wearing face paint he
couldn’t identify but knew indicated their cartel affiliation. He didn’t need
to be able to read it to recognize them. He had seen the same paint a
half-dozen times tonight, and the people wearing it had inevitably tried to
kill him. There were five, and they all had guns.

Alex
crouched in the brush, not far from the edge of the woods, where the road began.
Katya crouched beside him. The heavy skirt-and-jacket combo she wore seemed
unreasonably warm on the island. Now he envied her, shivering in a T-shirt and
track pants.

“What
do we do now?”

Katya
opened her mouth to answer, and then closed it again, shrugging.

“I
have three needles left,” she offered. “Can you take some of them from here?
I’m going to have to get close…”

As
it turned out, she didn’t need to, after all.

Normally,
an apport was delivered as close as possible to ground level. When Svetlana
performed an apport, Alex noticed that he often had the sensation of falling
slightly on arrival, probably due to inexperience. But whoever put Grigori ten
meters above the huddled group outside the gate did so on purpose. Apparently,
the electric blue aura that crackled around him was enough to absorb the
impact.

The
two men directly below him had no such luck. Alex sincerely hoped they were
dead. They sure looked dead; a whole lot of what was supposed to be inside of
them was violently expelled by Grigori’s telekinetically enhanced dive-bomb. A
shallow crater contained the carnage that Grigori was in the process of
extracting himself from.

The
first of the survivors to react was wearing one of those ski-mask things people
use to rob gas stations. He must have been a pyrokine, and he clearly wasn’t
stupid. Apparently, he didn’t need to use his hands to operate his protocol,
because the air around Grigori ignited while the man leveled his squat British
L22A2 carbine, face eerie in the glow of his illuminated sight, and started
peppering Grigori with long bursts. Grigori lit up like a Christmas tree in
February. Alex moved to help him automatically, before he even thought about
what he was doing, but Katya tugged him into cover, hissing her disapproval.
She indicated with curt, angry gestures that he was to follow her. She crouched
and led him off to the side, flanking the remaining men near one side of the gate.
Ten steps later, Alex realized why.

Grigori
was invisible inside the Roman candle he had become. But he wasn’t flailing or
falling down. He was moving toward the men, slowly but surely, and beneath the
layer of livid orange flame, Alex could see brilliant blue undertones.

He
had seen Grigori use his protocol before, once or twice, during sessions in the
Program, but he didn’t really get the nuances of it. Grigori was some kind of
wideband telekinetic, as Alex understood, powerful but with an extremely
limited range and blunt, dramatic dispersal. He couldn’t project or strike at a
distance like Michael. Instead, he used his protocol almost entirely in contact
with his own body – as a shield and a battering ram.

Grigori
crossed about half the distance between him and the remaining Operators before
they had the good sense to kill the pyrotechnics. Grigori was sheathed in a
shimmering blue field that ebbed and waxed around him, tidal fluctuations in
high speed. He looked singed and unhappy, but otherwise unhurt. Two of the men
had the good sense to start using banana-clipped AK-47s in full auto, not
bothering with niceties of aiming. The final Anathema had the even better sense
to go for his radio. Alex assumed that the squad telepath must have been one of
the unfortunates Grigori had landed on.

Grigori
got his hands on the closest gunman, the pyrokine. The air in front of his fist
radiated a livid blue as he concentrated his telekinetic abilities down into a
single point. Alex had seen him do this before, once, but it had been as part
of a demonstration, on a block of concrete. The effect on the pyrokine’s
abdomen was similar, but much more gruesome.

One
of the other Anathema must have been a telekinetic. Alex didn’t actually see it
that well, but something knocked Grigori over and sent him skidding across the
pavilion, the shifting energetic field surrounding him tearing a furrow in the
old stone of the road, raising sparks and making an awful squealing noise. He
hit the wall next to the gate hard, sending chips of stone and dust flying.
Fortunately for Katya and Alex, all of this made so much noise that the
Anathema didn’t notice them circling until they were close enough to do
something about it.

Katya
was supposed to go first, and Alex was supposed to hang in reserve, since she
could strike multiple times rapidly, and he had only managed to figure out how
to do it once, with a long windup. But something about the remains of the post
in the ground where the bus stop had been, where Alex had stood with Emily,
brought back memories; her sly smile when enjoying a private joke, the way she
would nestle comfortably beneath his arm, how she looked in a dress that she
liked. Now all of these memories were poisoned.

Alex
put his arm out in front of him to use as a visual reference. But he didn’t
open a pinhole. Instead, he let his anger operate the Black Protocol for him,
and it went for the walls of reality like a scorpion’s stinger, white-hot at
its sharpest point, clawing free of him like a living thing and tearing through
to the Ether as it were frictionless. There was no resistance whatsoever. The
hole he opened to the Ether was roughly the size of a basketball and expanded
rapidly, fueled by his irrational anger.

The
result was crueler than he expected. The air temperature dropped, shards of
frozen water shattering against the stone with a gentle music. Then the men
fell one after another, choking on the frigid air that scoured their lungs.
Their skin blackened and crackled, frostbite expanding manically across their
bodies; but they lived on somehow, not exactly screaming, crawling and moving
spasmodically. Eventually, he supposed, their blood froze or their hearts
stopped from the trauma. He didn’t actually see that part, because he kept his
eyes firmly closed until he was sure they were dead. Then he closed the rent to
the Ether, stunned at the effort it required.

Grigori,
sheathed in a telekinetic field, and Katya, needles dangling from slack
fingers, had both stopped to stare at Alex.

“Alex,”
Katya said softly. “You’re going to fall asleep again. You can’t do that sort
of thing.”

“I’m
past caring,” Alex said curtly. “I have places that I need to be, and no more
time for this bullshit. Grigori, who sent you here?”

Grigori
rubbed his stubbly chin and looked at Alex with obvious curiosity.

“Maybe
I have misjudged you, Alex Warner,” Grigori rumbled thoughtfully. “I did not
realize that you were so capable.”

“Whatever,”
Alex said irritably. “I want to be done with this. I have other things to worry
about, and I couldn’t care less about your opinion. Now, who are you here for,
and what do we need to do next?”

“I
see,” Grigori said, slowly, shrugging his broad shoulders. “Very well. I’m
working for Gaul. He had Choi port me over here when he said the time was
right. Vivik tagged both of you at a kilometer’s distance.”

“What’s
it like inside?” Alex asked, inclining his head in the direction of the
Academy. “How bad is it going to be, getting to the infirmary?”

“Hit
and miss,” Grigori said, nudging one of the dead Anathema with his boot. “Some
places are pretty safe, mainly around the Admin building where Gaul has the
students bunkered. Others are less so. You don’t need to worry about that,
however. Gaul sent you a guide.”

“Oh,
then you aren’t coming?” Katya said brightly. “Pity.”

“Please,
Katya,” Grigori said, walking off. “Do try not to get yourself killed. It would
be such a shame.”

Alex
shrugged, then he and Katya walked through the gate. Things on the other side
looked a little better. Their guide stepped from the shadows, an uneasy smile
on his face, his hands in the pockets of his brown tweed jacket.

“Katya,
Alex,” Mr. Windsor said cheerfully. “Either of you two fine young people up for
an evening stroll?”

* * *

“Therese,” Anastasia
called out, stepping carefully through the burning wreckage of the western wing
of the house, holding her skirt bunched in front of her, trying vainly to
protect the embroidery on the hem. “Come out, come out, wherever you are…”

She
peered around the burning remains of one wall, destroyed by a telekinetic
attack shortly before reinforcements arrived from the organized combat forces
of the Black Sun. They had driven back their attackers, at a cost that was
currently being tallied. Anastasia didn’t see anything but darkness and trees
moving in the wind behind the wall, so she stepped gingerly around and
continued.

“Oh,
come now, Therese,” Anastasia said impatiently. “I have other matters to which
I must attend. Your sister doesn’t have the kind of contacts to beg favors from
the Anathema. You, however, do, Miss Foreign Affairs Liaison. I would have
helped Emily, you know. She would have been a lady of repute in the Black Sun,
and you would have done well for yourself as well. Instead, you let the
Anathema drown her in a hole in the ground, and now she has become a monster.
What did you receive in return for that betrayal, Therese? What have they made
of you?”

Anastasia
crossed her arms and planted her feet, not worrying for the moment about the
velvet in her skirt, no doubt damaged beyond repair by the soot.

“You
flooded my island. You destroyed my house and ruined my dinner. You made my
sisters cry, and you failed your own sister, you pitiable thing. You had better
show yourself, so that we can put this incident to rest. I know that you are
out there. Renton is telling me as much.”

“I
am not hiding,” Therese said calmly, walking into the open, dressed for a day
in the office in grey slacks and a white blouse, her hair back in a neat bun.
“I was simply waiting to see which of your servants you planned to hide
behind.”

“None
of them. Not for you, dear,” Anastasia said, walking toward her. “For you, I am
making an exception. When you used to work for the Hegemony, you would have
dreamed of this opportunity. Congratulations are in order. You are about to
find out the secrets of my Deviant Protocol.”

Therese’s
smile was sickly, even in the dark.

“Your
mistake, Anastasia. The Outer Dark has been kind to me,” she gloated. “I have
heard the rumors; the anomaly in the Martynova clan, with your mysterious
protocol. Whatever your secrets, you are no match for what I have become.”

“Therese,”
Anastasia said, her voice suddenly soft. “Tell me that you did not plan for it
to end this way. Tell me your plan went horrible awry, that you did not
deliberately allow them to do that to your sister.”

Therese
froze, and her expression became muddied and uncertain.

“Why?
What does it matter? Because you were ‘friends’ with her? Please. You were
trying to play Emily.”

“Of
course,” Anastasia acknowledged. “Honestly, I was growing tired of acting the
lonely and secretly self-conscious heiress. But that is beside that point. She
is your sister, though,” Anastasia added, glaring. “That is a responsibility
that I take seriously.”

“You
have no idea,” Therese barked. “Don’t give me that crap, rich girl. You’ve
never had to do anything for your sisters. You have no idea what it was like
with Emily. I did everything I could to protect her.”

“You
gave her to the Outer Dark, and they made her a walking corpse, a Drown. Don’t
bother with the good-sister act. We are far beyond such artifice. Tell me,”
Anastasia said softly, taking one deliberate step toward her, then another,
“did they put you in that pool, first? Or did you let them do that to her? She
was a truly excellent cook, too. I won’t forgive you, whatever your reasons or
rationale.”

“I
am not a Drown,” Therese hissed, the air around both of her hands smoking and
steaming. “They have made me so much more than that. You cannot imagine,
Martynova, the scale and the sheer power of the Outer Dark.”

“Then
provide me with a demonstration,” Anastasia invited. “I have something of a
surprise planned for you, as well. Shall we see whose is superior?”

Twenty-Five

“Mr. Windsor?”

“No
need to be so formal, Katya. Please call me Gerald, both of you. We aren’t in
class, and you’ve earned the right.”

“As
you like, Gerald,” Katya said, tossing her hair and looking pleased. “Are we
safe with you?”

“I’m
sorry?”

“Don’t
play dumb,” Katya said, sighing. “Your protocol, teach. Can you do anything
notable? It’s my job to keep this one,” she said, jerking her thumb at Alex,
“safe. So, I’d like to know if you are going to be any help. Because, you know,
I could have found the infirmary on my own.”

Mr.
Windsor laughed pleasantly.

“Not
to worry, Katya. I will not be entirely useless to you. I do have abilities of
my own, you realize. I don’t think you need to exercise such vigilance,
however, not while we are on campus. It may not appear as such, but we have
things here well in hand.”

“Really?”
Alex cut in. “Because, no offense, but it doesn’t really look that way.”

“Of
course not, Alex,” Mr. Windsor said cheerfully, glancing back at him. “The
Director plays his cards close to his vest. Since the attack started, we
haven’t lost anyone on the campus, student or faculty. Things in Central proper
may have gone poorly,” he said, a shadow briefly crossing his face, “but, for
the moment, here, we are still in control.”

They
walked along in silence, across a sidewalk that was mercifully free of the
bodies that littered the road to the Academy. Alex could see that Mr. Windsor
was right – there was superficial damage to a number of buildings, and
scattered signs of battle, but he saw no evidence of the chaos and savagery
that seemed to consume much of the surrounding area. As they walked along the
path, the streetlights in front of them flickered to life, then shut off after
they passed beneath them, a mobile island of artificial light that led them
across the silent campus. It had been such a long day that Alex barely even
noticed the phenomena, and even when he did, he didn’t have the energy to
question it. Then, abruptly, he came up with another, much more urgent query.

“Mr.
Windsor?” Alex asked. “Do you know where Eerie is? If she is okay?”

“I
know where she was, which was on campus,” he said carefully, obviously
considering his words. “She came back yesterday. I haven’t personally seen her
since the attacks started, but if she’s still here, she’s fine.”

“Why
was she here?” Alex asked, stepping across a section of chaotic sidewalk,
buckled by some sort of upheaval. “I thought she was supposed to be coding in
Central.”

“She
was,” Mr. Windsor said curtly. “Circumstances changed. If you want to know more
about it, you’ll have to ask her. She’s entitled to her privacy.”

“What
the hell does that mean?” Alex demanded, balling his fists at his sides. “Don’t
fuck around with me. Is she okay?”

“In
all seriousness, it’s none of your business. And watch your language, Alex.”

“He’s
been like that all day,” Katya said sympathetically. “He lost Girl A, so now
he’s going to mad-dog everybody to try and prove that he’s really serious about
Girl B. It’s really tiresome.”

Alex
thought about arguing, and then decided that he didn’t have the energy. He told
himself that he was too worried about Eerie, and maybe that was true. But he
wasn’t completely sure that Katya was wrong. Katya may not have blamed him for
what had happened to Emily, but she might be the only one who felt that way. He
dreaded the larger, public reaction, once the events of the break became common
knowledge. He might even doubt it himself. Was that really why it was so
important to him that he find Eerie? Because of the way it would look to other
people? Alex hoped not. Nevertheless, he couldn’t say that he was certain.

“Is
that so? Well, I’m certain that everything will eventually be resolved
satisfactorily,” Mr. Windsor said, as they rounded the main lecture hall and
their goal came into view. “Fortunately, the Director didn’t send me to answer
questions. My job is to make sure that you find your way to the infirmary.”

Alex
didn’t wonder why they would need the help. There was a person standing in
front of the infirmary, amongst the wreckage, and everything about his body
language said he planned on impeding them. Alex couldn’t begin to imagine what
had happened in front of the infirmary, but gouges were torn in the concrete
and the façade of the
building was collapsed. A water main had been breached, and the area was
scattered with puddles and sinkholes. In the distance, a downed electrical line
sparkled and danced, and a fire alarm wailed on endlessly.

There
was no need for Alex to ask for an introduction. After all, Alex knew him by
name, and he remembered that same man preventing him from visiting Rebecca in
the hospital. Suddenly, he had a very good idea why.

“That
sounds like a hard job,” Alistair said cheerfully, walking casually amidst the
water and wreckage. “Your boss is shafting you. You ought to complain.”

“I’m
afraid not,” Mr. Windsor said politely, clearing his throat as he moved to
stand between Alistair and Alex and Katya. “The Director isn’t the type to
listen to that sort of nonsense.”

“Then
maybe you should find yourself a new boss,” Alistair suggested helpfully.

“Again,
I will have to disappoint you. Though not as much, I hope, as you have
disappointed me.”

“Don’t
take it personally, Gerald,” Alistair said softly, almost apologetically. “Do
yourself a favor and back down. Everyone knows you used the last of your power
binding Mitsuru all those years ago. That’s why you retired to teach. How are
you going to stop me without a protocol?”

“It
was never my job to stop you,” Mr. Windsor said dryly. “All I was instructed to
do was distract you until Miss Aoki could arrive.”

“Oh,
please,” Alistair laughed. “You don’t actually expect me to…oh, no. Oh, dear.
Hello, Mitzi.”

Alistair
probably meant to turn around. Alex guessed that was what he intended to do,
before Mitsuru emerged from the shadows behind him, an enormous knife held in a
reversed grip, slashing at his unprotected side. Alistair sighed and stepped
casually out of the way. Alex was confused for a moment, then he remembered
with a terrible, sinking feeling that Alistair was a powerful telepath, capable
of reading Mitsuru’s intentions before she moved. Unless she was much faster
than Alistair, she would be incapable of hitting him.

“Mitzi,”
Alistair said, moving his head to avoid an ice pick–style stab. “I was hoping
we would have an opportunity to talk. Naturally, I thought that you would join
us, once you saw how much of what we’re trying to do makes sense. Can we talk
this over?”

“Don’t
call me that name,” Mitsuru hissed, her hair wild and disheveled, her face
contorted with rage. She kicked at his midsection, and then followed with her
blade, moving forward the whole time, feinting and hunting for openings. “Never
call me that again.”

“Mitsuru,”
Alistair said urgently, stepping backward so the knife passed just centimeters
from his chest. “Mitzi, calm down. No one was actually trying to kill you. That
was for show. They were supposed to take care of Alice and Xia, not you.”

Mitsuru
threw a leg kick, but without any real force behind it, and in return caught a
right hand from Alistair to the forehead that she didn’t manage to duck. She
brought up her left knee into the meat of his thigh, but he slapped it aside.
Mitsuru scrambled to parry a knee intended for her midsection. Stepping past it
and moving inside, she drove the point of her knife forward with both hands,
aiming for his solar plexus. Alistair drifted frustratingly out of reach of the
trembling point of her blade. Mitsuru stepped back and gasped for air.

“Get
ready,” Gerald advised in a low voice, the air around him crawling with faint
white sparks, here and then gone again. “When I give the word, you two run
inside, and don’t stop until you get to the third floor, middle staircase.
Rebecca is in the third room from the stairwell.”

Mitsuru
and Alistair continued to fight, Alistair dodging and counterstriking, keeping
up his constant patter, while Mitsuru’s strikes grew increasingly wild and
desperate. She threw a kick at his head and he caught her leg in mid-strike,
then sent her sprawling, very nearly flipping her over. If Alistair had
followed her down, Alex knew from instincts pounded into him from the Program,
it probably would have ended. Then again, he also knew that if Miss Aoki were
actually going one hundred percent, Alistair never would have been able to toss
her so easily.

Alistair,
apparently, did not know that. Apparently, he also didn’t see the angry man who
had quietly emerged from the building behind him, tattoos pulsing with violet
light.

“Look,
Mitzi, this is completely unnecessary…”

Alex
couldn’t figure out how Alistair could miss the violet pulse that presaged
Michael’s attack. A bolt of purplish light tore through the air to connect with
Alistair’s back, and his face contorted in agony when it made contact, which
made the entire scene feel worthwhile.

For
a moment.

Then
Alistair laughed cheerfully from a few feet away, while a light fixture
disintegrated at the spot where Michael had aimed his protocol. No one said
anything, Alistair’s grin daring them to try.

“Can
we please stop this nonsense? None of you are capable of stopping me, and I
think we all know that. If we could talk this thing out, I think you would all
see that a transition in power would be to your benefit...”

Mitsuru
grabbed him by the hair, jerking his head back so that she could slit his
exposed throat. She drew her knife across his jugular, so fast that Alex never
even saw any blood.

It
made no difference. There was no body to hit the ground in front of her. To
Mitsuru’s credit, she realized what had happened, and tried to move to avoid
what she knew must be coming, but it was impossible. Alistair appeared behind
her, his arms wrapping around her throat before she had the time to react. He
pulled the choke tight, ignoring her frantic kicks and elbows, cutting off the
flow of blood to the brain. Michael ran to help, but it was over in seconds.
Alistair set her neatly on the ground.

“You
bastard,” Michael said, spearing Alistair with his shoulder, driving forward
from his thighs and his back, his arms out wide. Alistair was lifted completely
off his feet, and Michael caught him before he could hit the ground, grabbing
him by the shoulder and slamming him, neck first, into the sidewalk.

Despite
Alex’s screamed warnings, Michael didn’t seem to realize that it was Gerald
Windsor he was attacking until after he drove him into the concrete, breaking
his shoulder with a sickening certainty.

“Oh,
no!” Michael cried out in horror. “Gerald! I’m so sorry...”

He
didn’t have long to be sorry. Alistair used a chunk of concrete to the skull to
make certain of that.

“What
is it that you people have against speech? It’s the foundation of civilization,
you know,” Alistair said, breathing hard and rubbing his hands together. “All
of this violence is completely unnecessary. Oh, wait. Except for Katya. I’m
afraid you are far too dangerous to let live, and not nearly useful enough to
recruit. Terribly sorry...”

Alex
had no idea what Alistair planned to do to Katya, who crouched beside Mr.
Windsor, bandaging his head with more tenderness than he had seen Katya show
anyone. Alex stepped firmly in Alistair’s path, water from the puddle he stood
in seeping through his sneakers, determined not to find out.

“I
get it now,” Alex said, focusing all his anger, all his frustration, on the man
in front of him. “I understand why you wouldn’t let me see Rebecca. It’s the
catalyst effect, right? My protocol would have enhanced her powers, and she
could wake herself up.”

“Maybe,”
Alistair said, amused. “I’m afraid that’s purely rhetorical at this point.”

“’Fraid
not,” Alex said, planting his feet defiantly. “I’m going in there, and I’m
going to wake Rebecca up. Care to try and stop me?”

“Alex!”
Katya yelled from behind him. “Have you gone insane? Let me handle this.”

“She’s
right, you know,” Alistair said conversationally, walking toward Alex as
casually as if he intended to shake his hand. “Did you see what I did to your
teachers? And I wasn’t even trying hard. Katya Zharova has some real training,
at least. She might last all of a few seconds against me. You, Alex? Well, I
don’t want to embarrass you...”

“Go
ahead and try,” Alex encouraged, opening the Black Door and attempting to
freeze Alistair’s horrible brain.

“Nice
try,” Alistair said, from the top of a nearby rock pile. “But I’m not impressed
with your protocol. You do realize that you’ll never hit me, right? I can
always make you think I’m somewhere else. That’s how telepathy works.”

Alex
aimed for his head again, breaching the Ether and letting in the terrible cold.
Alistair appeared to his side, and before he could react, he slammed one knee
into Alex’s chest, dropping him instantly into the water at their feet. It was
all he could do to roll away as if he were on fire, putting several feet of
distance between them, much to Alistair’s amusement.

“Congratulations,
Alex,” Alistair laughed. “That was definitely the most ridiculous way anyone
has tried to get away from me. Are we done here?”

“Not
quite,” Alex said, dragging himself to his feet, one arm across his chest.

“Give
me a break,” Alistair said, snarling and taking a step forward. “This is...”

Alistair
never actually gave his opinion. Because he slipped on the ice beneath him and
went crashing down, landing on his elbows and backside, yelling in pain and
surprise. Alex had realized quickly that he wasn’t going to be able to hit
Alistair. The best he could do, Alex reasoned, was stand in a puddle and then
wait for Alistair to hit him. Even telepaths can slip on ice.

Alex
jumped on Alistair, and they scrambled in the splintering ice. The collision
was clumsy, and his knees cried out when they cracked against the ice, but Alex
came out on top, pinning Alistair’s midsection with his legs while Alistair
struggled to find purchase against the slick ground. Alex straightened his back
to create distance, then started to batter Alistair around the head and
shoulders with fists and elbows, moving quickly to avoid getting tied up.

It
worked. Alistair rolled and made it halfway to his feet, then they slipped from
beneath him again. Alex hit Alistair full-force with his left elbow, dragging
the point across his forehead to break it open. Alistair fell back onto the ice
with Alex on top, struggling to drive his thumbs into Alistair’s blood-smeared
eyes. Alex leaned forward, putting all of his weight on his thumbs, and then,
somehow, he fell right through Alistair, his hands pushing against the
frozen ground beneath him, his head surrounded by a cloud of ashes and burning
embers.

“What
the fuck?”

The
ashes and sparks whirled around in a tight knot, defying the wind to collect on
the other side of the plaza, coalescing into something that looked like
Alistair, but reminded Alex of the ash bodies at Mount Vesuvius. Fire crackled
and glowed where the eyes and mouth should have been.

“Not
bad,” Alistair said, his voice emerging from the cloud of sparks. “I
underestimated you.”

“No
fair,” Alex said, kneeling in the frozen mud. “I had you.”

“You
didn’t, actually, but you are better than I expected. I hadn’t planned on
showing my new form off so soon. I’d like to make sure you never tell anyone
about it. But I’m afraid that I’m needed elsewhere at the moment. Bye for now,
Alexander. Don’t think I will forget...”

Just
like that, where Alistair’s voice had been, there was nothing more than a few
flakes of ash carried away by the wind.

“Well,
I sure didn’t see that coming,” Katya said, helping Alex to his feet. “That was
a good idea, though, freezing the ground underneath him. You might actually
have some promise after all...”

“What
was that he turned into? What is going on with these people?”

“One
thing at a time, alright?” Katya said, taking him by the shoulders and leading
him gently to the infirmary’s side entrance. “That’s the key to surviving,
Alex. One thing at a time.”

* * *

Katya had to lead him
by hand to the elevator. They were halfway up before he could see anything
other than purple dots. He still needed her help when they got to the third
floor.

“Man,
you are a hassle,” Katya complained, not sounding particularly upset. “You
know, in a couple of minutes you are going to have a really big problem.”

“Yeah?”
Alex asked, wishing he didn’t have to hold on to her hand to keep from walking
into the walls, but in the dim hallway, lit only by the red emergency strip
lighting running along the wallboard, he couldn’t see anything at all. “What’s
that?”

“Well,
we’ll be finished in a minute,” Katya said cheerfully. “That means that shortly
you are going to have to either back up all that big talk about going to find
Eerie, or you’re going to have to swallow the lot of it. You could maybe just say
you were going to, and then go hide somewhere in the woods until it’s all over,
but the telepaths would figure it out eventually…”

“Katya,
seriously, shut up,” Alex said sternly. “I keep telling you, I’m going to do
it. But…”

Katya
stopped for a minute to glance over her shoulder. He could just about make out
her face now, through the floating colors. He was sure she was smiling. There
was something oddly familiar about the situation, but he couldn’t put his finger
on it.

“But
what?”

“But,”
Alex said, looking away for some reason, even though he couldn’t really see
her, “it would probably work a lot better if you came with me. That’s all.”

“Really?”
Katya asked, giggling. “You think so, huh?”

“Come
on,” Alex urged. “Aren’t you supposed to be my bodyguard?”

Katya
laughed and started down the hall, tugging him along with her.

“First
of all, I thought you didn’t need a bodyguard. Haven’t you been accusing me of
stalking you since I started? Second, my job is keeping you from being killed.
It would be much easier to knock you out and stuff you into a closet somewhere
until this is over, rather than trying to protect you on some insane quest to
preserve your rapidly dwindling Summer Dance options,” Katya said pleasantly.
“Third, what’s up with asking me to help you rescue your backup girlfriend? Why
would I want to do that?”

“Why
not?” Alex demanded. “Why wouldn’t you want to help her?”

Katya
sighed and reached for the doorknob with her free hand.

“Maybe
because I don’t think helping you get to her actually qualifies as helping
her,” Katya said resignedly, letting go of his hand. “You know, Anastasia
warned me, but it is really remarkable how fucking dense you can be. You really
don’t get girls at all, do you?”

Katya
opened the door, and then something very strange happened. Someone spoke from
inside. It wasn’t Rebecca’s voice.

“He
doesn’t actually. He really doesn’t.”

Alex’s
vision had mostly cleared, so when Katya went flying past him, colliding
against the wall with a sickening thud, then slumping down on the floor,
unmoving, collapsed in an expanding pool of water, he was able to make out
enough to watch helplessly. Alex looked from her into the hospital room.
Rebecca was still there, on one of the beds, as composed as Sleeping Beauty
waiting for a prince to force his affections on her. On the edge of a trundle
bed set in front of Rebecca, Emily sat, her folded legs and a casually wrapped
hospital sheet the only things preserving what little modesty there was to be
preserved. She was working on her nails with an emery board, but she stopped
when he stuck his head in the door.

“Hi,
Alex,” she said, her smile slow and ambiguous, eyes half-lidded and amused.
“Come on inside. Let’s try this again.”

* * *

Alice touched her head
softly, as if reassuring herself that it was still intact. She could see
herself reflected in the blue-tinted lenses of Xia’s goggles. They were very
close, both pressed against the stone wall of an alcove as the group walked by.
Xia smelled like sterile rubber and burnt cloth with an undertone of incense,
the last scent incongruous but somehow familiar. It was nerve-wracking,
watching her enemies walk directly beside her, but Gaul’s concealment protocol
was as good as promised. They noticed nothing.

She
watched and counted a short procession of what appeared to be lumbering
corpses. Four Anathema, and then the girl Chris had called Leigh, followed by
the vampire in the powdered-sugar suit. Alice felt Xia pat her awkwardly on the
back with one gloved hand, and Alice was touched, knowing what the clumsy
gesture cost him.

“Don’t
worry,” Alice said, smiling in a way that no one else could have found
reassuring. “I’m fine.”

The
Anathema walked right by, hearing nothing. They stopped at the entrance to the
ruins of one of the old buildings, the intact subterranean structure that the
Science building had been constructed on top of, a concealed warren of cold
stone tunnels that Alice couldn’t remember having seen personally. The door had
been sealed and cemented over, but their telekinetic – a pretty, dark-haired
woman – tore it out and threw it aside with a gesture. They entered the dark
space with obvious trepidation.

Alice
smiled to herself.

“C’mon,
baby, let’s go show them how Auditors settle accounts,” she said cheerfully,
Xia falling in beside her. “It’s the least we can do, isn’t it, Xia? After all,
we owe them something for their trouble.”

Twenty-Six

“Oh, come on,” Emily said, patting the soaked
mattress next to her. “Sit down with me. We never really got a chance to talk.”

“Right,
because your new friends attacked the house,” Alex said, trying to find a happy
medium between averting his eyes and keeping his eyes on her so she didn’t kill
him. “So, um, what happened to your clothes?”

“I
came in through the drain pipe,” Emily said, as if that were a completely
normal thing to say. “I couldn’t exactly bring along my overnight bag.”

“I
guess that makes sense,” Alex said grudgingly. “I’m going to check on Katya.
Could you put something on while I do that? Otherwise I’m not going to be able
to listen to a word that you say.”

Emily
grumbled, but after he left the room, he heard cupboards banging and thumping,
so he figured that was as much of a response as he was going to get, and
hurried over to make certain that Katya was alive. He couldn’t find a pulse,
and started to panic, but then he realized that Katya was still breathing, and
wrote it off to lack of basic first-aid aptitude on his part. She had a nasty
knock on the back of her head that was welling blood, her clothes were soaked,
and her skin ice-cold, but she looked okay to him. Alex propped her against the
junction of the wall and a nearby door frame, where she would be at least
partially out of the water that was gradually covering the floor. Then he
returned to face Emily. She was still sitting on the empty trundle bed, but now
she was wearing the top half of a set of surgical scrubs, so oversized that
they hung down almost to her knees and really didn’t do much to cover her
shoulders or chest.

“Best
I could find,” Emily said sweetly. “Now come sit down and talk to me.”

The
mattress of the trundle bed squelched when he sat down. He tried to stay a safe
distance away, but Emily shifted to sit next to him, the wheels on the mount
squeaking with the movement. The water that seeped through his jeans was
frigid.

“I
wanted to tell you about it,” Emily said frankly. “But Therese told me that I
had to keep quiet. I’m sorry about that part. It must have been a hell of a
surprise.”

Alex
looked at her in shock at the mention of Therese Muir’s name. His attention
seemed bizarrely drawn to minutiae. He noticed that Emily’s ears were no longer
pierced, then realized that when she turned to water, her earrings must have
been left behind, like her clothes. And that filled him with a sudden and
almost intolerable grief.

“I’m
sorry if I was what drove you to this,” Alex said, turning away before he got
openly emotional with a girl that he had to remind himself was probably here to
kill him. “I can’t believe Therese would let them do something like this to
you.”

“I
was really scared,” Emily said quietly. “Until I walked out of the water and
saw my body still back there, floating in the pool. It was almost sad, sad and
pretty. But this was all my decision, Alex. Not Therese. And now,” she said,
grabbing his shoulders and turning him to face her open, sincere eyes, “now I
am so glad that I did it.”

“What
is the Outer Dark?” Alex said, licking his lips nervously. He tried to pull
away but Emily’s grip was implacable and surprisingly strong, her hands wet and
cold. “I thought I had a pretty decent scorecard going, but this is all…”

“Frightening,
right? I understand,” Emily said, as sympathetic as ever. “The Outer Dark is…a
place, like Central. A strange place, isolated in the sea of the Ether. The
Anathema found it, Alex, and they found…other things there, too. Old things,
not built by humans, and not just buildings – language and machines and ideas.
The Anathema studied them, and what they learned changed them.”

“Okay,
who are the Anathema?”

“They
were Operators, once,” Emily said laconically. “Exiled for proscribed
experimentation and technology when Gaul engineered his takeover of Central. Driven
out into the world and scattered. Eventually they found refuge in the southern
desert of Egypt. In a tomb that predates the Pharaohs by a millennia and more,
they found a way to the Outer Dark. They took Central’s name for them – the
Anathema – and made it their own. Then they disappeared for the latter half of
the twentieth century.”

“God,
this is exactly like being in class, and it’s fucking Spring Break,” Alex
complained, and then had a thought that made him melancholy all over again.
Alex couldn’t understand what was happening – he was in danger of bursting into
tears, and he wasn’t even sure why.

“Now
we can’t sit next to each other in homeroom, Emily.”

Maybe
it got to her like it did him. He couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t bring himself
to look her in the face.

“I
don’t think I’m getting the important part across,” Emily said gently. “I need
you to understand that I did this myself, for my own reasons – and it turned
out better than I could have hoped. If I had stayed in Central, I would’ve
ended up a slave, a pawn for one side or another, until boredom or despair
overwhelmed me, or I was sacrificed in the name of a larger goal. And if you
stay, Alex, the same thing will happen to you.”

Alex
shook his head.

“Wait,
so this is another recruitment speech? You want me to join with the people who
are out there killing people I care about?”

“And
why do you care about them?” Emily persisted, putting one cold hand on Alex’s
knee. “What have they ever done but use you, and lie to you? What about the
Program, Alex, and what they tried to do to you? Who is it that you’re feeling
bad over? Rebecca? Gaul? Anastasia? They would throw you away in a second, any
one of them, if they thought they could get something for it. Or is it,” Emily
said, digging her blue-green nails into his thigh, “her? Are you sitting here
with me and thinking about her again? Why are you so fascinated with that
Changeling?”

“Maybe
I like that she doesn’t need me for anything,” Alex said, crossing his arms
over his chest in an attempt to preserve a bit of warmth.

Emily’s
laugh was loud and filled with contempt. It made him feel rather small and
foolish, as if he had admitted to an abiding belief in Santa Claus.

“You
honestly think that? Did you ever ask her? Because I tell you, whatever you
think of me, Eerie is twice the monster I am. Regardless, there’s no point in
worrying about her anymore.”

Alex
started, and turned to face Emily, puzzled.

“What
did you say?” His fingernails were digging, unheeded, into the skin of his own
upper arms. “Did you do something to her?”

Emily
sighed, and then put one clammy hand on his forehead. His thoughts broke like a
wave against a rock, and he tried desperately to hold onto the thread of what
he had been saying, something that he knew was important, but the urgency
dissipated along with his sorrow. He sank back onto the wet mattress gradually,
as the tension and strength in his body dissipated.

“Emily,
why?” Alex asked, surprised at the desperation in his voice. “Why did you do
this to yourself?”

“You
seem cold, poor thing. I’m sorry. I don’t even feel it anymore,” Emily said
softly, pushing him down on the soaked mattress. “I was keeping the water near
freezing in case we had company, but no one is coming to interfere. Let me warm
you up.”

She
lay on top of him, and he felt increasingly powerless to do anything. Not like
the last time, on the island, transfixed with lust. There was something
frightening about their proximity this time, something heartrending about her
affections, but he felt all of it distantly, as if it were happening to someone
else. At the very least, she was good to her word, and her body and the water
soaking the mattress warmed considerably.

“Emily,”
Alex asked slowly, through numb lips, “are you dead? Because I keep thinking
that you are dead...”

Emily
looked at him tenderly, then took his hand and placed it on the slick contours
of her chest.

“Can
you feel my heart beat? Do I seem dead?”

Alex
found it difficult to speak at that moment, so he settled for shaking his head.
They remained like that for a time, Alex dimly unsure whether he couldn’t pull
away or didn’t want to.

“Are
you still the girl I knew? How much of you is still Emily Muir?”

“There
have been some external changes, I know,” Emily said calmly. “On the inside,
though, I’m the same person I always was. All that’s changed is my perspective,
my motivations, and my capabilities. I am still Emily Muir. I am still your
friend, Alex. Have I ever done anything to hurt you?”

“You
died,” he managed. “I wish you’d stop kicking Katya’s ass, too.”

“I’ll
try,” she promised, laughing while she kissed his cheek. “Alex, are you glad to
see me?”

“I
am, but the circumstances are really terrible. What about Sara, or Li, or
Vivik? Some of them could have been killed, Emily. Maybe all of them. I
saw…bodies. On the way here.”

“I
know, I think it’s awful, too,” Emily said, running wet hands through his hair.
“But you need to understand that they were going to be sacrificed by Central,
one way or the other. Where possible, they will be offered the same choice I
was, the same chance I am offering you. Our attack was planned for when the
Academy wasn’t in session specifically to limit casualties. It will all be over
soon, and then there won’t be any need for more killing. We aren’t evil, Alex.
We aren’t monsters. The Outer Dark isn’t frightening, it is…it’s indescribable.
Beautiful. When this is done, we’ll go there and see it together, Alex, you and
I.”

Alex
stared up helplessly at the ceiling while his body responded to her every
movement. It would have made him feel better to say that it was unpleasant, but
that wasn’t true. His urgency, his worry, and his intent were all disappearing
– as if a stopper had been pulled from his head — and now they were draining
into the water pooled around the trundle bed.

“I
know what you are doing,” he said in a very small voice. “I can feel you
tearing down the walls in my mind.”

“But
you can’t even say that you want me to stop,” Emily pointed out, kissing him
lightly on the lips and then giving him a satisfied and mischievous smile. If
she were dead, it would have made him sad, but she was so clearly, immediately
vital, that grief seemed absurd. “You know, Alex, I never understood what you
saw in Eerie. I’m starting to think that being all nice and sweet was the wrong
way to go about things. Maybe I read you wrong from the very start; maybe you
like girls who are bad for you. Am I right?”

Alex’s
reply was something on the order of an incoherent moan, as his thoughts broke
and floundered, coming apart like a kite in the wind. He could feel her inside
his head, working her fingers into the cracks, shifting and rearranging. It
didn’t hurt. It felt amazing.

“You
know, it’s funny,” she said, caressing him and smiling benignly. “I did this
because I wanted to make my own decisions, without having to please you or my
family or the Academy or whoever. I wanted out of the trap I’d been born into.
And now that I can make my own decisions? It turns out that I still want you.”
Emily laughed, her fingers playing across his chest. “It’s stupid, right? But
it’s still what I want. And this time, I’m not going to be so nice about it.”

Alex
found himself touching her wet hair, the soft angles of her damp skin. He could
barely remember where he was. Everything seemed to move very slowly. Every
sensation, every point of contact was magnified.

“This
is why Rebecca kept you so close,” Emily said wonderingly, laying her head on
his chest. “She must have loved it. Your catalyst effect really is amazing,
isn’t it, Alex? And the feedback loop, when an empath uses your abilities to
boost their own...how long have you and Rebecca been doing this? I bet Eerie
wouldn’t like it very much,” Emily scolded, her eyes twinkling. “Not if she
knew what it felt like, right?”

The
name almost awoke something inside his addled head. Eerie. A promise he made...

“Eerie,”
Alex managed. “I need to find out if she is okay…”

“Really,”
Emily said crossly, “you are the least romantic boy. You don’t have to worry
about her anymore. That’s all been taken care of.”

“What?
What did you…”

“Hush,”
Emily commanded, one hand resting firmly on his chest as she shifted on the
creaking trundle bed, moving to straddle him, discarding the wet scrubs in the
process. Alex looked at her oddly for a moment, then sank back on the wet mattress
and lay still, his eyes open wide, so overwhelmed with bliss and contentment
that he couldn’t even begin to think of words to describe it. “Do you
understand? You finally belong to me, Alex.”

* * *

He had Michelle check
the area thoroughly before Drake ported them in. Christopher Feld had
experienced more than enough surprises already in the last twenty-four hours,
and preferred to avoid any more. Not that the remote viewer could explore the
place with any certainty, not with the kind of interference they were
experiencing in Central. Song Li sent a couple of her drones in first, and when
nothing tried to kill them, he and Song Li followed them over, with Leigh and
Curtis in tow.

Bodies
littered the hallway, most of them wearing the distinctive face paint of the
renegade cartels – Terrie, Taos, Mannheim, and Western Rim were all well
represented in the slaughter. Which was, of course, exactly why they
constituted the first wave of the attack – they were corrupted Operators,
rather than full-fledged Anathema, used as shock troops, as disposable and
unimportant as the Weir or the Ghouls.

Song
Li stood above one of the bodies with her hand out, a soft purple light
emitting from her palm, a luminescent cone filled with swirling Korean script.
Christopher waited until she acknowledged them. He wished that she would do
something to cover the cauterized scars from where her eyes had been removed,
but such trivialities didn’t seem to concern her. Perhaps that was an
inevitable result of working so extensively with corpses, in varying stages of
decay and dismemberment. Or it could have simply been part of the nature of the
gifts of the Outer Dark. Maybe the Anathema were better off without eyes,
Christopher thought with a shudder. He was very glad that he never had the
opportunity to discover the answer for himself.

“Central
deployed security, as was anticipated,” she said dully, the light disappearing
as she reported. “The Operators were overcome without any serious difficulty.
Our pawns made it as far as this room, where they encountered a man in glasses,
with red eyes. He operated a variety of protocols in conjunction. They never
stood a chance.”

“That
was the Director,” Christopher said, trying to keep the apprehension he felt
under control and out of his voice. “Then we can assume he is still here,
somewhere, probably near the Source Well. A battle of this magnitude must have
drained him, though. This should be easy.”

Curtis
was an empath, so the confusion on his face was to be expected. He must have
been aware of Christopher’s tension, even if he had managed to reassure the
others. Curtis was reliably loyal, though, so he shrugged and followed,
hobnailed boots clicking against the inset stone walkway. The subterranean
structure was huge, but the path continued to narrow as they progressed. The
hallway divided into a series of chambers, longer than they were wide, roughly
rectangular, with arches high overhead. Each chamber was slightly shorter and
narrower than the one before. Every step took them gradually deeper, the grade
almost imperceptible in the darkness. The air was damp further down, and ocher
mold coated the stone walls. They passed through three chambers, each roughly
thirty meters in length, then found themselves in a hallway so narrow that they
would have to walk single-file to fit through. By mutual and unspoken
agreement, they came to a halt in front of the passageway, shifting nervously.

“What
do you sense, Michelle?” Christopher asked, peering cautiously down the
darkened stone corridor. If this chamber was similar to those before, then it
should end just past where he could see with the weak beam of his flashlight.

There
was a pause. After a short time, Christopher decided that he didn’t appreciate
the delay. He girded himself for bad news, and wished for the third time that
they had thought to bring flares. The darkness in this place was oppressive,
and the light from the flashlights they had brought seemed feeble in contrast.

“As
far as I can tell, the chamber is deserted,” Michelle said slowly, her voice
straining with effort. “But the range of my protocol is restricted. Something
is hidden here. I’ve never felt such a strong aversion.”

“Christ,
we knew all that,” Chris said morosely, looking at the gate and the
impenetrable blackness past it. “Alright, Song, send your drones down there.”

He
had worked with her for more than two years. He had seen it countless times,
but the listless movements of Song Li’s drones, zombielike reanimated corpses
infected with her own peculiar nanites, still troubled him. He understood that
it was the dead Operator’s nanites that Song activated, rather than reanimating
a dead body, but that sight remained profoundly disturbing. Even to him,
harboring the vague memories of two separate deaths. They moved like badly fashioned
marionettes, lacking respiration, expression, or humanity. Song sent all three
of the reanimated Operators shuffling into the tunnel, where they were
swallowed up by the darkness.

It
didn’t last long. Song opened her eyes and shook her head, the chartreuse light
about her dissipating.

“I
don’t believe that they made it any further than Michelle could sense,” Song Li
explained with her bizarre North Korean–accented English. Christopher often had
to run her statements back in his head to achieve a complete understanding.
“There is something in there which inhibits remote viewing.”

“This
must be it,” Christopher said, running a finger along one of the invisible
joining lines between the stone blocks that composed the base of the arched
ceiling. “The Academy was constructed above, to conceal it, as we suspected.”

“This
is stupid,” Leigh complained. “Just let me go in there, Chris. Whatever –
whoever – is in there, they can’t possibly harm me.”

“Unless
it is the Director,” he scoffed. “He has an implant, remember? He can download
telepathic protocols that could temporarily neutralize you, without support. An
innate resistance to that kind of thing only goes so far.”

“Are
we just going to stand here, then?” Leigh demanded impatiently. “If you don’t
want me to go, then what are we going to do?”

“I
didn’t say I didn’t want you to go, I said I didn’t want you to do it alone,”
Christopher said sternly. Leigh appeared miffed by the public rebuke, but
Christopher didn’t have much choice, if he wanted to retain the respect of the
troops under his command. Leigh might be the future of his race, but he wasn’t
about to start letting her give orders. “Very well. We move on. Leigh, take
point. Song Li, you follow after and provide support. Curtis, stay a cautious
distance back, keeping an eye on their mental shields. I will be right behind
you, then Michelle will bring up the rear. Ready yourself – if we do encounter
the Director, we will require a barrier. Drake, you hang back, and be ready to
port us out if things go south. Clear?”

The
nods were more reluctant than he would have liked, but he didn’t blame them.
The narrow tunnel was the kind of position a soldier hopes never to be put in –
dark, tight, with only one way in or out. It was too small to maneuver in, and
there was nowhere to move but forward. Only Leigh appeared eager, but then
again, she had no trouble seeing in the dark. Christopher nodded and she
started forward. Her speed was, as always, blinding. Song Li went next,
followed hesitantly by Curtis. Christopher was right behind him, practically
pushing him along.

The
tunnel was exactly as awful as it looked – musty, cramped, the air stale and
humid. The ceiling arch was a full meter overhead, but the path was so narrow
that occasionally the stone walls would brush his shoulders. Christopher wasn’t
normally claustrophobic, but in that tiny passage, almost treading on Curtis’s
heels, he suddenly became acutely aware of the thousands of tons of rock and
dirt overhead, held by stone supports built unknown centuries earlier. He
couldn’t shake the idea that he could actually feel the weight pressing down
overhead, invisible through the inky blackness that surrounded them, but
omnipresent. Even the beams of their flashlights seemed subject to the terrible
pressure, flickering and receding the further they advanced. Christopher could
smell rank sweat coming off Curtis, and knew that the Operator was even more
frightened than him, which, paradoxically, made Christopher feel slightly
better.

The
attack was timed so well that, despite his excellent hearing, Christopher
couldn’t tell what happened first – Leigh hollering that she had reached the
far end of the passage, her voice echoing in what sounded like a vast space, or
the sound of flesh yielding to something harder. Then there was another sound
behind him, more difficult to place, but when he turned, something about Drake
looked a little off. Then his body tumbled into sections, legs and waist
collapsing in one direction, torso falling backward. His head leaked everywhere
as it rolled away into the darkness.

From
the shadows behind him, Alice Gallow, mortifyingly alive and upbeat, waved
cheerily.

Christopher
shoved Curtis forward into the next chamber, yelling incoherently. If he could,
he would have shoved him out of the way. After all, if Alice was still alive,
then that meant that Xia might be alive as well, and if Xia was alive…

On
cue, the tunnel filled with reddish-orange light, and Christopher felt a
tremendous heat behind him, the stone walls groaning with the unexpected
temperature change. Fortunately, Michelle had good reflexes, and her barrier
protocol was ready, or they would have died on the spot. As it was, the heat
behind Michelle was intense. Michelle had ground into his back in a panicked
attempt to run and had almost fallen over, so that Christopher was forced to
practically drag her along. A wall of flame licked the pinkish-purple barrier
she had erected across the tunnel. It was like viewing a forest fire through a
soap bubble. The barrier stopped the flames, but Christopher could feel his
back blister through his cream-colored jacket. He managed to pull Michelle with
him, pushing Song Li and Curtis forcefully into the next chamber, where things
were not a great deal better.

The
space was so huge it was hard not to be awed. To Christopher, it seemed very
likely that the whole of the Administration building could have fit comfortably
inside the massive space. The great domed roof and utterly flat floor were
carved from the stone around them, with no obvious joining or evident tool
marks. The ceiling was so far overhead that the center, where the dome reached
its apex, was lost in darkness, despite shafts of reflected sunlight that made
the room dazzlingly bright in comparison to the tunnel. Even in dire circumstance,
Christopher couldn’t help but wonder who could have carved such an immense
hollow, or how they moved equipment and debris through such a narrow access
tunnel. Of course, he had little time for consideration, as he had more
immediate concerns.

Leigh
was down on her hands and knees, incapacitated by the man in glasses standing
near the center of the huge chamber. It had to be Gaul – though Christopher had
never actually met the Director of the Academy in person – the red eyes,
visible even behind his glasses, were a dead giveaway. There was a nebulous
aura around the Director, shifting threads of interwoven red and blue light
twisting through the space around him. The red-haired girl who was kicking
Leigh in the ribs like she expected to win a prize for it was more familiar.

“Margot
Feld! That is no way to treat someone who is practically your sister.”

“What?”
Margot asked, hesitating. “I thought you were dead, Christopher. I preferred
that idea to what I’m seeing, actually.”

Christopher
shoved Curtis, who was still staring at the chamber like an overwhelmed
tourist.

“Activate
Leigh’s telepathic shields, you moron.”

Curtis
closed his eyes briefly, then followed that with a series of strange hand
gestures. Christopher had never bothered to ask what exactly his subordinate
was doing with his hands when he operated his protocol, because he genuinely
didn’t care. Now, however, it struck him as particularly ridiculous.

“Christopher
Feld,” Gaul said warningly, his voice echoing all throughout the huge space. “I
have been led to believe that you are the kind of man who likes to know things.
You should know, regardless of what happens, that I cannot find a future in
which you leave this room.”

He
would have normally chalked that up to standard prefight demoralization. Coming
from a renowned precognitive, however, it sounded like bad news. Christopher
was still considering his response when Leigh swung into action, telepathic
shields apparently restored by Curtis. She stood and grabbed hold of Margot in
one fluid motion, one hand on her shoulder and the other on her wrist, then
threw her overhand, so far that Chris couldn’t actually see Margot land. He
watched her body sail through the air into the darkness, and then there was a
sound like a bag of meat dropped on concrete.

“Finally,”
Leigh said, rubbing her side where she had been kicked. “Can I kill them,
Chris? Both of them?”

Christopher
Feld nodded happily. He was overwhelmed with pride, but that was to be
expected, was it not? He was her guardian, after all. And she had turned out to
be such a good girl.

* * *

“It’s hard to
describe,” Emily whispered, lips so close to his ear that she barely needed to
make any sound. “Whatever you think it is, it isn’t like that. The Outer Dark
is beautiful, Alex.”

“If
you say so,” Alex said agreeably. He had been bothered for a while by the
nagging feeling that he had forgotten something important, but he was so
comfortable, so pleasantly drowsy with Emily in his arms, that the feeling had
faded in importance. “What is it?”

“It’s
a place…sort of. It’s an idea,” Emily said quietly, running her fingers along
his arm. “It’s like Central. Somewhere in the Ether, near the very edge – did
you know the Ether has boundaries? I didn’t, not until I saw one. But that’s
what the Outer Dark is, Alex. It’s the place where the Ether ends. There is
nothing above it but an empty sky. There are no stars, Alex,” she said, pausing
to nibble his ear playfully. “The sun never rises. At first, that frightened
me. But they show you, they help you to see that it isn’t frightening at all.
It’s beautiful. We will go there together, Alex, you and I. Not long now. The
fighting seems to have stopped, for the most part. Central belongs to us, you
belong to me, all is right with the world, and, very soon, Alistair will come
to finish things here. Then we can go.”

“Alistair?”
Alex asked, mildly alarmed. “Why would Alistair come here?”

Emily
laughed and petted him affectionately.

“Don’t
worry about it. Don’t worry about anything. Let’s talk about something else,
alright?”

“Okay.
Where’s Therese, anyway? I haven’t seen her since before everything got weird…”

Emily
sighed, rested her chin on his chest, and pouted.

“I’m
not sure that Therese is gonna be okay. She’s always been ambitious. This whole
plan was her idea, obviously. Using me to turn you over to the Anathema –
doesn’t that embody everything that’s wrong with Central? My own sister would
use me the exact same way the people she wants to protect me from intended –
and for my own good, no less. I guess even that isn’t enough for her. Not that
I’m one to talk. I know my limits, though, and Therese never has. They made
her…special, in the Outer Dark. Stronger. I think the power may have gone to
her head.”

“I’m
sorry, but I’m not really sure what you are talking about...”

“Therese
stayed on the island,” Emily said sadly. “She wants to fight Anastasia.”

Twenty-Seven

Anastasia tapped Therese’s head with the toe of her
shoe. Once,
twice, nothing. She sighed as she looked at the dead woman, shook her head,
hugged herself though it was not cold. She turned to view the waterlogged hill
behind her, topped by the ruins of her vacation home.

He
wasn’t telepathically concealed. Anastasia simply didn’t notice him until he
was right in front of her. She was startled, and made a very small noise before
she put her hand to her mouth, causing herself a great deal of embarrassment.
To Renton’s credit, he acted as if he hadn’t heard a thing, which was quite out
of character.

“I
was wondering if you had decided whether or not to kill me,” Renton said,
scratching a bruised cheek topped with a rapidly forming black eye. “I’m tired
of waiting, Ana.”

“This
is a spectacularly bad time for this discussion,” Anastasia pointed out
tersely, gesturing to take in both the ruined island and the corpse behind her.

“I’ve
had a series of unpleasant experiences today. If at all possible, I’d like to
get this out of the way before we get back to killing people.”

“Fair
enough,” Anastasia acknowledged, wishing that there was somewhere she could sit
down without risking further damage to her already marred dress. “To answer
your question, Renton – your rather stupid question – I have never once, even
briefly, considered killing you.”

“You
don’t say?” Renton asked, looking unaccountably disappointed. “I thought when
Timor showed up, that’s what you had in mind. The kid seems like a pushover,
which is a bit insulting, honestly. Then why are you looking to replace me?”

Anastasia
glared at him until Renton grinned and looked away.

“Right,
sorry,” Renton said, laughing halfheartedly. “I guess I know already. Still,
I’ve always done my best for you, Ana…”

“You
do not have to convince me. It isn’t as if I can replace you now.”

“Wait...why
not?”

“Must
I say it?” Anastasia said tersely, looking away. “My sisters. You saved them.
The only people who truly matter to me. Despite the unpleasantness between us,
I have not forgotten who you are, your loyalty, or your capabilities.”

Renton
nodded in agreement. He appeared as battered as she had ever seen him; his suit
in tatters, cuts and bruises distributed liberally about his face and body,
blood seeping through the front of his shirt. Of course, that made sense. He
had, after all, been very busy.

“Since
we have broached the subject, Renton, it is rather important that you
understand. This was a situation that you created,” Anastasia lectured sternly.
“In deference to your long service, I am going to make myself particularly
clear. You do understand the nature of our difficulty?”

“I
suppose,” Renton said, scuffing his shoe on the ground. “What can I say? I
can’t help how I feel.”

“You
can. Trust me,” Anastasia assured him bitterly. “Your feelings are both
inappropriate and unnecessary, Renton. It was one thing when you had the good
sense to keep them private. Since you made the issue public, people began
talking, and you know perfectly well I cannot have that. You know who I am and
why this is important. I should not have to explain this to you.”

“No,
you don’t, it’s just that…”

“Believe
me, Renton – I harbor not the slightest confusion as to your intentions. Would
it help at all if I told you that I was a lesbian?”

Renton’s
jaw didn’t drop, but he did miss a beat.

“…you
are?”

Anastasia
shook her head.

“Not
in the slightest. I simply thought it might make the situation easier for you
to accept.”

“I
appreciate the gesture.”

“As
you are well aware, any match that I choose to make will be political,”
Anastasia said, making certain that her tone was matter-of-fact, not resigned.
“The good of the Black Sun comes first, Renton.”

“You
don’t have to let the precognitive pool decide this. Come on, Ana! You never
let anyone tell you what to do.”

“I
don’t. I also understand that I was not simply born into power and wealth. I
was born to rule. I have never had a life of my own, Renton, and I never will.
My authority is compensation for putting the good of the cartel before my own
desire. Leading the Black Sun requires excellence and total devotion, something
that even my poor father understands. Why is that so difficult for you?”

“I
do understand,” Renton said sullenly. “I just love you anyway.”

Anastasia’s
expression was icy.

“Did
you think I would be happy to hear that? Perhaps feel sorry for you?” Anastasia
demanded, clearly furious. “Renton, let me be perfectly clear – I have said all
that I will say on this subject. You must understand, even if I had a choice in
the matter, your hopes would never come to fruition.”

Renton
laughed sharply.

“I
hate to admit it, but Alex is right. You are brutally frank.”

“If
it helps, then I am sorry,” Anastasia said, shrugging. “It is what it is. Find
someone your own age. It is not as if you ever hurt for attention. If Svetlana
had not passed out from overwork, poor girl, she would probably be following
you about at the moment.”

“I
know, but I want…”

“Your
desires are not my concern,” Anastasia commanded, frustration evident in her
expression and her voice. “My devotion will always be to the Black Sun. You should
know what that means. I do not make a habit of wasting people, though. I would
never simply throw you aside because you were being foolish. I am not getting
rid of you – I am promoting you, silly boy, to where you can do me the most
good. I do not expect that we will need to have this conversation again. Have I
made myself clear?”

Renton
nodded. His smile was fixed firmly on his face, but it was uncertain.

“I
have gotten rather used to having you around,” Anastasia added charitably. “The
adjustment will be difficult for me as well, once you assume your new position.
Which we will discuss later, at a more appropriate time.”

“Whatever
you want, Ana,” Renton said, without a trace of obvious ill will or bitterness.
“There are a bunch of Black Sun commandos back at the house. Well, what’s left
of the house, anyway. Apparently your father is still trying to decide what to
do.”

“Of
course he is, the old fool. Very well,” Anastasia said calmly, heading up the
path. “Let’s go, Renton. We have a great deal of work left to do today. There
are matters we must attend to in Central.”

Renton
watched her pass in silence, his expression impossible to read, then followed
at a slight remove.

* * *

Margot picked herself
up gingerly, waiting for her shattered tailbone and hipbone to knit and reform.
It didn’t take very long; actually, she felt like she might be healing even
faster lately. It still wasn’t fast enough.

Leigh
moved with speed that Margot couldn’t hope to match. She was strong, too. Maybe
not as strong as Margot, but strong enough to throw her further than anyone
ever had, without having to strain. Leigh was not, however, disciplined or
seasoned in actual combat, whatever was hardwired into her. Her intuition was
lacking, and her instincts were not sharp. Margot’s claws, on the other hand,
were.

She
started where novices always start – Leigh tried to take Margot’s head off with
a single strike. She put all her momentum behind it, but she telegraphed the
attack, and despite Leigh’s speed, Margot had little trouble ducking the blow.
Margot lunged forward with rigid fingers, plunging them into the girl’s
abdomen, through whatever served her as a substitute for skin, and then dragged
them outward, in opposing directions, attempting to gut her.

In
Margot’s defense, if the girl had guts in the first place, then she probably
would have been eviscerated. Instead, Margot’s claws tore a huge gouge in the silicon-fiber
membrane that wrapped Leigh’s body, exposing the silicon-based compression
bands that replaced the musculature beneath. Margot had a moment to wonder if
one day she would look like that inside, all white and uniform, strange pink
fluid that was not blood seeping from what were once organs. Then Leigh threw a
left kick to the body that sent Margot skidding backward. Two ribs were
shattered so completely that Margot was certain they had turned to powder.

Leigh’s
stance change might have been ridiculously fast, but she shouldn’t have needed
to change stances at all to attempt a straight kick. She could have continued
forward with a less clumsy strike and closed, pressing her advantage. Margot
surmised that Leigh preferred to keep things at a comfortable distance, and
decided to make the fight ugly instead. Margot dodged the kick and stepped
inside, landing a kick on Leigh’s supporting left leg. While the vampire was
off balance, Margot grabbed her around the back of the neck in a Thai plum and
drove a right knee into her stomach. Leigh coughed and struggled, clawing
ineffectually at Margot’s face and shoulders while Margot pummeled her with
repeated knee strikes, trapping her neck between her forearms. Eventually,
Leigh managed to position her arm to protect herself, but a number of strikes
made it through her guard.

Margot
wasn’t sure what Leigh was made from, but she was certain that Leigh was
slowing down. If she could be hurt, then she could be killed. And if she could
be killed, then Margot meant to have a go at it.

Margot
bashed her repeatedly in the ear with her forearm, forcing Leigh to shift her
guard. She timed the jump perfectly, Margot’s knee passing through Leigh’s arms
and connecting with her face, all of Margot’s weight hanging on Leigh’s neck.
She felt her jaw give way and her teeth slam together. Leigh fell to the
ground, stunned, and Margot followed immediately with a soccer kick to the side
of the head that landed on Leigh’s right ear. She managed to roll over and put
up her arm, but the Anathema was clearly stunned. Margot threw another kick to
the opposite side and Leigh did nothing but twitch in response. She went with
it a third time, and Leigh just absorbed the blow. Margot fell on the prostrate
girl with a grim satisfaction, driving both knees into her upper back below the
neck, a symphony of fracturing bone and damaged tissue. She wrapped her arms
around Leigh’s neck, cinched her legs around her midsection in a body triangle,
and pulled her forearm across her throat until she stopped struggling, until
Margot was certain her trachea had collapsed. Then she held it a while longer,
just to be safe.

Margot
waited until there was no sound but her own labored breathing and the distant
echoes of the combat occurring on the other side of the chamber. Then she
released Leigh’s limp body and stood unsteadily. She made it maybe three steps.

“Not
bad,” Leigh croaked, grabbing Margot’s wrist and elbow. Margot tried to react,
but the girl’s judo was absurdly fast. Leigh stepped neatly to the side and
threw Margot, spinning her over and planting her, headfirst, into the stone
floor. “Not good enough, though.”

Margot
didn’t exactly black out, but there was a brief moment where nothing hurt and
she wasn’t entirely sure where she was, or why the ground was pressed against
her face. Leigh landed an axe kick to the middle of Margot’s back, breaking
another rib and bowing her spine, cutting that time brutally short. Margot
rolled and tried to scramble to her feet. She made it up onto one knee when
Leigh kicked her in the face with her heel, driving through the strike as if
she hoped to score points. Margot went sprawling head over heels, coming to a
halt when she bumped against the curved wall of the room. Her vision blurred,
but she saw motion well enough to move her head, avoiding a punch that
dislodged a whole chunk of the wall just beside her. Margot didn’t bother to try
standing; instead, she entangled her legs with Leigh’s, tripping her up while
she was still moving to attack, sending them both to the ground in a pile.

Margot
scrambled to the top by virtue of superior strength and technical skill. She
tried to keep Leigh in a body lock, arms wrapped around Leigh’s elbows, her
face in her chest, but she just couldn’t keep her controlled. Leigh bucked and
flailed beneath her, and every time she freed her arm, she peppered Margot with
elbows that were no less damaging for being short-distance strikes. The third
time, Leigh hit her underneath her arm, where her ribs were still mending.
Margot’s whole side seized, and Leigh was able to break free and scramble to
her feet, while Margot barely managed to stop from falling flat on her face,
her side shrieking in agony, impacting ribs digging into partially synthetic
organs.

This
is not going well, Margot thought woozily, wondering why that didn’t bother her
more. Her vision cleared enough to see a strange white object on the stone
floor in front of her, so close that her face touched it. A moment later,
Margot identified it as one of her teeth.

“Funny
to think that you are, more or less, what I started out as,” Leigh said
snidely. She kicked Margot’s injured side, and Margot whined involuntarily and
rolled away. “Which makes me the beautiful butterfly,” she said, grabbing
Margot’s arm and twisting it behind her back, forcing her to her feet. Margot
heard herself gasp, but she felt no pain, just raw shame at the vulnerability the
noise expressed. “And you, I suppose, are the caterpillar. Seems about right,
doesn’t it?”

Margot
had to assume the question was rhetorical, because Leigh grabbed the back of
her head, and drove it into the wall before she could respond. She couldn’t be
sure whether it was the stone or her skull that broke. She suspected that it
was her head, from the enormity of the sound, though the dust and debris that
tumbled onto her shoulders and chest when Leigh released her suggested
otherwise. Margot slumped to the floor and tumbled over, unable to move. She
wondered for a brief, traumatic moment if she was paralyzed, if the nanites
would be able to fix nerve damage on that order, but then the pain hit her –
from her neck, her shoulder, her side, her arm – and that was sort of
reassuring.

Margot
found herself thinking, for some reason, about breakfast with Eerie, eating
granola and berries and plain yogurt while Eerie ate honey straight from the
jar, licking it from her fingers between excited bursts of chatter. Margot
watched Leigh batter her body objectively, with clinical separation, a sense of
remove that she wore like armor. She recognized the hideousness of what was
happening, as she was kicked and cruelly slashed by Leigh’s claws, and she felt
pain and slight sadness at her body’s violation, but none of it really
connected with her in a meaningful way. She remembered mixing tap water and
Kool-Aid powder for Eerie in a tall blue glass, the cherry flavor she
preferred, while waiting for her black tea to steep in a ceramic mug, and that
felt much more real than the vampire who was beating her. She wondered if she
would die here, and it still didn’t sting, so Margot stopped worrying.

Margot
didn’t recognize Mitsuru when she first arrived, her eyes were so badly swollen.

“I’m
glad I found you here,” Mitsuru said shakily, dragging her knife slowly down
the inside of her arm with her red eyes locked onto Leigh. “It’s going to be
much harder for you to run away this time.”

* * *

“My family is
Methodist – actually, the whole of the Raleigh Cartel is, really. That always
seemed strange to me, given our circumstances – the Ether, Central, the
protocols – I never understood how they could reconcile it with the Son of God,
the New Testament, and that stuff. Nobody else ever seemed to have any problem
with it, though. Which I offer by way of explanation, so you know that I don’t
go in for religious-mystical crap, okay? But the Outer Dark, that is something
else. Something else entirely…”

Alex
moved his lips, or thought that he did. He wasn’t certain if he spoke. If he
spoke, there was no way to be certain what he said. His thoughts were muddied
and uncertain, slow and content, but there was something beneath that now. And
that something knew that his thoughts were not entirely his own.

“I
met this guy there. Everyone calls him the Rosicrucian, except when I met him,
he said his name was John Parson. He’s a little like Gaul, actually – I think
he sort of runs the place. He’s nice, in a weirdly intense sort of way. He’s a telepath,
or something like a telepath – he must be, because he knew things about me,
things he couldn’t possibly know any other way. You’ll meet him, too, when we
go there. He’s the one who explained all of it to me. How it happened. How he
found the Outer Dark, and how it saved him. And how it could save all of us, if
we’d just let it.”

Alex
followed along with the story agreeably enough, on one level. On another, he
couldn’t stop asking questions. Where was he? Why had he come here? And what
had he forgotten that was so important?

“John
Parson told me that it started from an accident – he watched a vampire awaken.
It got him thinking about the nanites, the way they worked, where they came
from. Parson said he was bothered by the diversity, by the unpredictability of
all of it. They are machines, after all. It follows that they must have had a
maker, right? And a purpose, too. Instead, we get chaos, biological
incompatibility, death, and weird mutations. Then he watched the experiments
that made Gaul and Mitsuru – hey, did you know that? That Mitsuru, Gaul, and
Alistair are all pretty much the same age? They did something to Mitsuru,
though, after she went nuts using some Black Protocol that killed her partner.
She spent years suspended, somehow, not sleeping, not aging, not anything. Some
kind of punishment they invented just for her. Gaul hates her, you know?
Because of whomever she killed. I bet everyone in Central knows that but you.
You know, it’s kind of fun…being able to talk to you this way. Being able to
say whatever I want. Not having to worry about the consequences. That’s what
life’s like, now.”

Alex
had to admit that it was interesting, and he was supremely aware of Emily
touching him, of her body lying on top of his. Still, something seemed…off, wrong
in a way that he didn’t have words for right now.

“Anyway,
John Parson started to wonder why the only things in Central left from whoever
built it were the nanites and the buildings. It didn’t make sense. He started
to wonder if there hadn’t been more when Central was first discovered, back in
the days of the Founder and the first Board. Then he started to ask questions –
difficult questions, that no one, least of all the Board, seemed to want to
answer. Eventually, the disagreements escalated into a feud between the
cartels, and then into violence. In the end, John Parson was exiled from
Central, along with those who agreed with him. They called themselves the
Anathema. I don’t know how – but eventually, he gained the ability to travel
within the Ether, same as the Founder when he discovered Central. In his
wanderings, John Parson discovered a new place in the Ether. The Outer Dark.”

There
was nothing but the girl.

There
was something else. Alex was sure of it. The situation was wrong, even
though he felt calm and secure. He had an intention, he was certain of it. He
had done…things. Actions that he was not entirely proud of. For…for someone?
For himself?

“It
was as he expected. There was more stuff there, things constructed by whoever
built Central, not only buildings. The remnants of a society – language,
science, and cultural artifacts; the same things he had suspected had been
removed from Central by the Founder and the first Board. The Anathema dedicated
themselves to the study of the Outer Dark. They translated the language over a
matter of decades. It’s all very…different. Reading it changes you, Alex. It
gets inside of you. The words hurt, going in, and then they take root – they
live inside your mind. They aren’t words in the way we understand them. They
are living things, multidimensional concepts, artifacts, even weapons. They
don’t describe reality. They define and shape it. Only John Parson was able to
comprehend the whole lexicon and remain sane. He was the one who first
understood the significance of the lesson of that first vampire, Alex. John
Parson was the one who discovered that you must die, in order for the nanites
to realize their true potential. I know this isn’t making much sense to you
right now. But when you hear it directly from him, you’ll understand.”

Water.
Why did he hear the sound of water running? And so much of it. Wasn’t he
inside? Was this some kind of dream?

“Maybe
that sounds scary. Does it, Alex? It’s not really like dying, though. It’s more
like…evolving. Leaving your body behind. It only hurts for a minute, and then
it’s as if this tremendous burden is lifted. Not as if you have much of a life
to lose, do you, sleepyhead? After all, your life thus far has mostly been
somebody else’s dream.”

Wait…a
dream? No, not exactly. Still, there was something there. Something that his
mind seized on to like a trap.

“It’s
funny, knowing this, being able to tell you these things. Thanks to the
feedback loop – you see how good we are together, right, Alex? I can tell you
the truth, fix the things they’ve done to your head. And you know now, right,
how they have tampered with you? Your memories, your history, your emotions,
all of it. You don’t actually believe that stuff they told you about who you
are, about what you did, where you come from? You have to know that’s not
coming from inside.”

Alex
was very tired. He would fall asleep soon, he knew. For some reason, he feared
that with a dread that cut through the euphoria of Emily’s chest pressed
against him, her fingertips on his throat. He could not fall asleep yet.
Because he still had something that he must do.

“Haven’t
you ever wondered why you don’t remember when your birthday is, Alex? Most
people do, even unhappy people. Or, tell me, whom did you live with after the
fire? Your grandmother, right? Then tell me, what was her name?”

Nothing.
Not even an echo. It wasn’t something he had forgotten, he was certain. It was
something that he had never known.

“Too
hard? Then let’s try an easy one. Is she still alive?”

He
knew she didn’t live in the trailer anymore…but why? Dead? Nursing home? It was
too hard to think, like someone had poured mud into his head, and now he was
trying to think through the sludge.

“I
read your file, Alex. I’m sorry, but I thought it might help me understand you a
little better. But it doesn’t make any sense, not at all. Alex, do you remember
your father hurting you?”

He
did. He wanted to say he did. But all he really remembered were stories that he
had been told about it.

“Do
you remember if you had a brother or a sister, Alex? Just one? Because the
police report said there were four bodies in that house that burned down. They
found you sitting outside, reeking of gasoline with matches in your pocket,
just staring as the roof caved in. Do you remember your mother’s name? What
color was her hair, Alex? Where did you go to elementary school? When did you
learn to ride a bike? What’s the name of the first girl you had a crush on?
What’s your favorite movie, Alex?”

He
felt like he had answers. Alex felt indignant in the wake of every question,
just for a minute. Then it all fell away, as he sunk back into the bliss that
ebbed and swelled through him, every time Emily ran her wet hands across his
skin. Alex knew that he didn’t have the answers, not for any of the questions
she had asked him. But that wasn’t the important thing, not right now. There
was something more urgent, something he had forgotten.

“Don’t
you see, Alex? Do you really remember anything from before they locked you up?
Who you were, what you did, what you were like? Do you remember doing any of
the things they told you that you did, Alex, or did you believe them because
you couldn’t remember anything? Do you know who did all of this to you, who
made your life this way?”

She
was right, he had forgotten things. A number of things. But one of them was
much more immediately important than the others. Something…

On
the other hand, maybe, was there someone else? Someone besides the girl whose
blond hair dripped warm water on his chest?

“I
didn’t understand it myself until I looked back and saw my body, the old one,
floating in the pool, discarded. I wasn’t horrified, Alex. I was exhilarated.
Now all I need is the proper volume of water and the nanites do the rest. And
I’m not the only one, Alex. Becoming a Drown isn’t the only way forward. It’s
evolution, Alex, and it’s beautiful. When we return to the Outer Dark, John
Parson will fix whatever it is they’ve done to you, help you get rid of all the
lies they filled your head with. Aren’t you tired of being deceived? Do you
really want to become a weapon for the same people who did this to you? The
Anathema didn’t come to hurt you, Alex, or anyone else. We just want to help
you. I don’t want you to always be empty, they way they left you.”

Her
words flowed out of his mind; it was like trying to catch water in his hands.
Like trying to hold Emily as she leaked out of his arms, into a pool of cold
water on the floor.

The
room was empty, besides them. As it always had been. And his hands were just as
empty.

Except…

Except
maybe they weren’t. His left hand had been doing things, while he wasn’t paying
attention. There was something clutched in his palm, something coarse and
textured, something he had forgotten. Something a girl had given him. Another
girl. There was another girl?

There
was. And for some reason, all he could think was that he needed to hold it. As
tightly as possible.

His
hand squeezed whatever was inside of it. He felt nothing, at first, and then he
felt a prick, a needle sliding smoothly into the skin of his hand, a temporary
blossom of pain. Then there was warmth, spreading from the point of the injury,
running through his veins like a beautiful poison.

There
was another girl, he suddenly remembered. A girl with blue hair…no. A girl who
dyed her hair blue, to hide the way it really looked. He could see her now,
twirling and spinning, alone on a crowded dance floor, the light around her as
slow and thick as honey. And her hair. Beneath the blue dye, he could see it,
so clearly that he wondered how he hadn’t noticed before. It wasn’t blond.

Her
hair was made of light.

He
did not remember her name, not at first. He remembered, instead, a group of
monarch butterflies above California coastal sage and scrubland, orange wings
against the brilliant blue sky; the scents of sandalwood and saltwater;
distantly, the sound of waves breaking on a rocky beach.

Just
like that, he remembered Eerie, lost in more ways than one. He remembered
Rebecca, mute and unresponsive, just a meter or two away. He remembered Katya,
unconscious in a slowly rising pool of blood-warm water.

“Alex?
What has gotten into you all of a sudden?” Emily asked, sitting up slowly, her
expression worried. “You don’t need to try so hard. I told you not to worry…”

That
was it, he figured. Over before it started. He triggered her suspicions with a
slight emotional shift. Emily would notice the little cushion that Eerie had
knitted, clenched in his hand, and use empathically induced bliss to make his
mind a clean slate again. She would be able to do it just by thinking about it,
long before he would have a chance to stand and reach for Rebecca, to complete
Gaul’s plan for waking her. That was, if he was even able to activate the
catalyst effect. He had never really understood it, after all. It wasn’t like
the Absolute Protocol – in fact, he was suddenly certain that they weren’t even
the same thing. It was just something that happened when he touched people,
sometimes…

Then
he had a thought. It was a surprising thought, and it made him smile for some
reason. Emily look briefly confused, but misread the expression, and smiled
back at him, buying him a second or two more before she knocked him for a loop
again.

He
closed his eyes and thought hard about Rebecca; her dry laugh, her omnipresent
cigarettes, her thoughtful brown eyes. He remembered the first time they met,
at his activation. He thought about the way it felt, when she worked on him,
the tides of energy and emotion. He thought about touching Rebecca, Rebecca
touching him. Some of his thoughts were more socially acceptable than others,
but he had no idea what would work.

A
connection between their minds flickered to life like a spark. He felt as if he
were drawing Rebecca up from the bottom of a very deep well, out of the
darkness and the echoes. The effort took his breath away. She wasn’t asleep,
wasn’t in a coma. She was trapped in her head. She had been the whole time.

There
was a sound, a feeling, like kindling a fire...

Rebecca
sat bolt upright, like the girl from The Exorcist. Emily let out a little
shriek in response.

“Fucking
finally,” Rebecca gasped, tugging an IV needle from her arm. “Now, anyone who
doesn’t want to start reliving childhood trauma better tell me where Alistair
is, and what the fuck is going on.”

* * *

“You brought a
telepath. The pretty French girl does barriers. Chris hides behind them like a
bitch. What kind of tricks do you do?” Alice asked, approaching Song Li slowly,
a Smith & Wesson 686 in her right hand, chrome barrel pointed at the
ground. Xia followed her, while Curtis, Michelle, and Chris huddled behind the
barrier. “Out of curiosity.”

“All
sorts of things,” Song answered calmly. “But in this case? In this case, I
think I will take control of the nanites inside your friend with the mask, and
then he and Michelle can focus their efforts on killing you.”

Alice
tossed her hair and laughed, but the laughter trailed off, and she got a funny
look on her face.

“Hey,
Xia,” Alice said quietly, glancing over her shoulder. “What are you apologizing
for?”

The
Kevlar Alice wore was flame-retardant. That didn’t stop Xia from lighting it up
like a dry hillside in September, but it did give her time to leap through a
nearby shadow. She made a series of three quick jumps, far enough to be out of
his range, then she hit the ground rolling, shedding her overcoat on the way
up, leaving it in a smoldering pile behind her. Alice barely had her feet
beneath her when she noticed a slight distortion in the center of her field of
vision, a ripple in the stone flooring that she recognized just in time to fall
backward, through her own shadow, porting ten meters to the right. She stepped
from the shadow of one of the massive ceiling’s supporting buttresses, in time
to watch a whole section of the wall cave in with a sound that she felt more
than she heard, where she had just been. Michelle pulsated with light the color
of a pale yellow wine, and Alice adjusted her expectations of the woman’s
telekinetic power accordingly.

The
room was large, but there was no question of hiding. Both Xia and Michelle had
turned to face her, waiting patiently for Alice to move into range, so they
could burn and bludgeon her. Song slumped over on the ground behind them.
Behind her, in the soap-bubble barrier, Christopher Feld cowered. In the
distance, she could see the dust and hear the grunts and curses of Leigh and
Mitsuru’s fight. Alice looked uncertainly at the pistol in her hand.

She
glanced at Gaul, distant at the far end of the room, standing in front of the
door to the Source Well as if he were worried it would run away.

Boss?
You have any more cards up your sleeve? Because this would be a great time to
find out that we secretly have the advantage…

She
glanced over at Gaul hopefully, but he just stared back, demanding and
pitiless.

“Fine.
Have it your way,” Alice said sullenly, walking toward Michelle and Xia as if
she had nothing to fear. “But this is a pretty sorry setup for a man who can
predict the future.”

Twenty-Eight

Emily planted her hand firmly on his chest, as if she planned to claim him in
the name of God and country. She glared at Rebecca, and Rebecca, wearing a
hospital smock and clambering from a hospital bed on shaky legs, glared right
back.

“You
better back off, Rebecca,” Emily warned. “I’m not as you remember. Alex is
enhancing my protocol. You don’t stand a chance.”

“Yeah,
not while you are like that,” Rebecca admitted. “For all your vaunted power,
though, you still lack technique. Any skilled telepath would have noticed me
waking Katya, and having a little chat with her. Sorry about this, Alex.”

He
was about to ask what she was sorry for, when it seemed as if he was stabbed,
in the right thigh, the left shoulder, and between his thumb and forefinger on
his right hand. When he looked at his hand, he saw most of an acupuncture
needle protruding from the wound, and then suddenly found his voice again,
yelling inarticulately.

The
feedback loop between him and Emily cut off so abruptly that it was like being
in a room filled with loud music only a moment before. Emily’s presence in his
mind receded like the tide, and in its place, Alex found anger and a sense of
betrayal, left behind like shells on the sand in the wake of a storm.

“Now
that we are back on our normal footing,” Rebecca said, standing up on unsteady
legs, “why don’t you tell me where Alistair is, before I decide to tear it out
of your poor little brain, Emily?”

Emily
smiled and kissed Alex full on the mouth. Then, before he had a chance to
react, she melted into water. He found himself again staring helplessly at his
dripping wet chest and arms as Emily disappeared, still in too much pain to
contemplate removing the needles that pierced him. Rebecca looked slowly around
the room, at the water she was ankle deep in.

“She’s
gone. Fucking hell,” Rebecca said blankly. “When did she start doing that?”

“Things
got really complicated while you were away,” Katya muttered, splashing into the
room. She saw Alex gingerly touching the needle in his arm and smacked his hand
away. “I’ve composed the best narrative I can with a concussion. Just read it
off my brain.”

Katya
seized his arm firmly, pinning him to the trundle bed, and then smiled
apologetically.

“Next
time I see that bitch, I swear I will have figured out how to kill her. Now,
hold still,” Katya said sweetly. “I’d hate to accidentally hurt you.”

Alex
didn’t cry out while she removed the needles. He made faces, writhed, and swore
loudly, but he didn’t cry out. He felt weirdly proud of that.

“Hey,
Katya,” Rebecca said, examining her stringy, greasy hair ruefully, “nice story.
Now, if you give me a cigarette, I promise to forget to mention the stuff that
would get you suspended, alright?”

“Sure,”
Katya said hurriedly, tossing a pack of cigarettes to Rebecca, a book of
matches tucked in the cellophane.

“Wait,”
Alex said slowly, poking at his shoulder, where the needle had been. “What did
you do that I don’t know about?”

“You
won’t tell him, right?” Katya pleaded. “I brought you cigarettes.”

“Promise,”
Rebecca said, lighting up and then, finally, smiling and looking a little bit
like the woman he knew – albeit skinny and wrapped in a wet hospital gown. “We
are going to have a chat, later, though.”

Katya
whitened, but she nodded. Alex looked at her questioningly, but Katya stolidly
ignored him.

“Okay,
kids, here is the plan,” Rebecca begin enthusiastically, taking two steps in an
attempt to pace and then stopping because of the splashing. “Katya, I need you
to go find me some clothes – the stuff I was wearing should be at the admission
nurse station at the end of the hall. Alex, come on over. You and me, we are
going to achieve an understanding, and then we are going to do some crazy shit
that will save everybody. Anyone who isn’t already dead. Mostly. Are we clear?”

“No
way,” Alex said firmly, rolling from the soaking trundle bed and onto the
flooded floor. “The deal was, I would help bring you back, that’s it. I’m going
to go find Eerie. And, while I’m happy to see you up and around again, I’m also
pretty pissed off at you for messing with my head without telling me. I think
everybody else is, too. Fair warning.”

“Yeah,
I know,” Rebecca said sheepishly. “Which is why saving everybody is a key part
of my overall plan. You see, Alistair didn’t put me to sleep, he trapped me in
my body and somehow cut off access to my protocol. I stopped telepathically
screaming for help after a couple of days, and all I’ve been doing since then
is thinking. I have a plan to make it up, to you and everybody else. But I need
your help.”

“Well,
I’m not pissed at you, if that helps,” Katya offered, splashing her way out the
door and into the hall.

“Sorry,
Rebecca, but I am done being ordered around today. And I don’t think I want you
in my head again,” Alex said, pausing to try to wring some of the water out of
his T-shirt. “I’m going to find Eerie.”

“If
you help me, I will find her for you,” Rebecca offered, “and I won’t tell her
about what happened with Emily, over break.”

“Are
you and Anastasia in some kind of extortion club that I don’t know about?” Alex
complained. “That’s low, Rebecca.”

“I
don’t have time to be nice,” Rebecca snapped. “Now. Yes or no?”

“Okay,”
Alex said, sighing. “Alright. What do we do?”

* * *

Leigh was still
faster, but now that Mitsuru understood the workings of the Ecofage Protocol,
that wasn’t really a problem anymore. It didn’t really matter if Leigh managed
to dodge all of Mitsuru’s attacks, because all Mitsuru had to do was bleed on
her. Leigh had to be cautious about touching her, as much of Mitsuru glistened
with the caustic blood that flowed like motor oil over her skin. Leigh ducked
and weaved her way around Mitsuru’s strikes, but her arms, chest, and neck were
already splattered with sizzling black sores.

Mitsuru
threw a lazy kick at her head, and Leigh dodged easily, moving inside
automatically, just as Mitsuru thought she would. Leigh must have known by now
that she couldn’t do much up close, but it is hard to think clearly in combat.
Like most fighters, she depended on a routine she had practiced until it was
instinctual. She wouldn’t change her fighting style, not while she was under
pressure. Mitsuru didn’t bother to dodge the punch that Leigh aimed at her
head, because she was too busy tossing a handful of blood at the center of the
vampire’s chest. Leigh’s punch hit with the force of jackhammer, and Mitsuru
thought that she had probably broken her jaw.

It
was worth it.

Leigh
went stumbling back, brushing at the steaming liquid splashed across her chest
in a panic, which was the worst thing she could have done. Wherever it touched
her hands and arms, it clung. Then it started to eat away at the vampire,
converting everything into more black fluid, more of the voracious nanite
dissemblers. Even Leigh’s blond hair had small flecks of the black blood in it.
The vampire may not have felt pain as her synthetic body dissolved, but Mitsuru
could see fear and impotent rage in her eyes, and took satisfaction from it.

Mitsuru
reached for her knife, and without any conscious thought, the blood ran in
rivulets along the length of the blade, a black tint that dripped slowly from
the sharpened edge. She smiled involuntarily, and watched Leigh take another
hesitant step back. That was all Mitsuru needed. She felt like a bull seeing
red, assuming bulls could actually see color. She charged Leigh, and Leigh
tried to defend herself.

It
was losing battle, a question of impossible logistics. Leigh had to put all of
her energies into avoiding the constantly shifting sanguine blade in Mitsuru’s
right hand, which meant she had no time to achieve position or avoid the black
blood that splattered her. Mitsuru could see that she was slowing down, whether
due to accumulated damage or fear and distraction. She watched Leigh’s eyes
lock on to her knife, and decided to try a left knee to the body instead, which
landed solidly, staggering Leigh. She checked the low kick that followed, but
it brought them close. Mitsuru feinted high with the blade and then hit Leigh
with a left cross instead, landing solidly on the orbital below the eye. That
must have made the vampire angry, because she threw a punch for Mitsuru’s body.
Mitsuru let it connect, wincing as it struck, but again, it paid off. The
streamers of black blood on her stomach were adhesive. Leigh stared at her arm
in horror as the boiling, black liquid sheathed her fist. She struggled
helplessly and Mitsuru laughed as she advanced, leading with her knife, aiming
for the vampire’s neck.

She
heard Gaul in her head, trying to tell her something, but the bloodlust was too
much.

“There
is a lesson to be learned here, Leigh,” Alistair said contemptuously, from
right behind her. “No matter how powerful you may be, you are never too
powerful to bring along a gun.”

Mitsuru
tried to dive and roll, tried to turn and strike, but it was too late for any
of that. Alistair had used his telepathy to mask his presence until he was
close, and she could feel him in her head now, slowing her reaction time. She
didn’t hear the shots, but she felt the impacts. She closed her eyes
automatically. When she opened them, reeling backward, she found herself uninjured
and facing a surprising tableau.

She
wasn’t sure when Margot had managed to make her way back to her feet, or how
she was even still moving after the beating she had absorbed, but she was
there, one hand on Alistair’s wrist, bent at the waist as if she were coughing.
Across the chest of her grey shirt, blood blossomed like chrysanthemums. Bone
and bits of flesh burst from her back like shrapnel. The explosive lead azide
rounds had torn such a huge hole in her head that it made almost no sound at
all when her body hit the ground, the contents of her skull spilling across the
stone in front of Alistair’s patent leather shoes. He stepped neatly aside.

“You
bastard,” Mitsuru hissed, clenching her fists while black blood oozed and crawled
across her body, adhering to her skin like hot oil, thick and viscous, coating
her from head to toe. “Alistair, this ends here.”

Alistair
leveled the gun, a small smile playing about his face.

“I
couldn’t agree more, Mitzi,” he said softly. “I’ve been waiting for this for a
very long time.”

* * *

Alice Gallow’s
specialty was, to put it simply, creating bad days. Bad days for other people.

As
she picked herself up off the ground for the third time, though, nursing a
bruised elbow and burns on her shoulder and back, her wrist so swollen that she
couldn’t really use it, Alice started to wonder if maybe she hadn’t gotten too
old for this stuff. The only reason she was still alive, though she never would
have admitted it, was that the Korean woman was unfamiliar with Xia’s protocol.
If Xia had been himself, he would have cooked her already.

The
problem was twofold – she was getting tired, for one. For another, she couldn’t
get close. Michelle’s telekinetic strikes were invisible, impossible to dodge,
and they sent her sprawling on her ass every time she tried to attack. Alice
got lucky, once, and sidestepped the strike based on where the bitch was
looking, but all that had done was get her close enough that Xia could set her
on fire, which he promptly did. She had been through a lot, and Alice was
feeling drained, M-Class or not. She could port until her body collapsed under
the strain without her protocol ever wavering. Given her exhaustion and the
damage she had absorbed, collapse had become a very real possibility. To put a bullet
in Song’s head, she needed to be no more than about twenty meters away. She’d
managed twenty-five so far, but she’d been on fire at the time and unable to
capitalize.

The
sad fact was, even if she did get inside, there were still four Anathema.
Christopher Feld, for all his cowardice, was not someone to take lightly.
Anyway, Xia was her partner, and Alice had no plans to hurt him, no matter what
the situation. Leaving her hands more or less tied. Besides, she had landed on
her ass so many times in front of these people that it was becoming
embarrassing.

There
was a series of gunshots, echoing from the other side of the enormous room, if
Alice’s guess was right. The French bitch and zombie-Xia turned toward the
noise, just for a moment, and Alice took a deep breath.

Three
jumps, three-quarters of a second, fifty meters. Alice was genuinely afraid
that she would end up puking all over whoever was on the other side when she
finally got there.

The
first port carried her to a shadow cast by a beam of refracted sunlight, about
halfway between them. She was there and then gone again, feeling weaker than
she could remember.

The
second jump was to the left and about ten meters distant, in the shadows of one
of the support buttresses. Christopher, always the bright one, saw her and
moved like he was going to grab Michelle, but Alice was gone again…

The
third port was tentative. Alice stalled in the Ether. She found herself
suspended in the grey, remembering what she had taught generations of apport
technicians – never jump when you are uncertain of your strength. Or you won’t
wink in and out of the Ether, on your way to wherever you are going. You’ll
make it that far and then you’ll stall, hanging there in the cold and the mist.
Maybe forever. Nobody was sure if you even could die, out in the Ether.

Alice
watched the Ether roil and tighten around her like the walls of a cell, a
claustrophobic and chilling embrace, and figured that she might have the
opportunity to find out.

* * *

Christopher Feld saw
Alice flicker, saw everything going very definitely wrong, and reached for
Michelle’s shoulder, to try to warn her, to turn her in the right direction.

Alice
stepped from Michelle’s shadow, looking like a corpse and smiling like a
jackal. She wasn’t fast with her .357 Magnum, but that wasn’t necessary. There
was a loud crack, then Michelle went stumbling backward, but Christopher didn’t
see if she had the time to get a barrier up. Song Li had already started the
transfer back to her own body, but it was a process. Alice fired four shots
into her prostrate body, then glanced hopefully at Xia while she dumped the
brass. Christopher moved before she had the chance to slam a circular quick
load into place, his claws emerging in mid-lunge. Then he reeled back before he
reached Alice, in terrible pain, his arms and chest alight. He beat his arms
against the flames frantically, but they only died when the man wearing goggles
sank down, first onto his knees, then sprawled sideways on the stone, as
naturally as if he planned to take a short nap.

“Hello
again, Chris,” Alice said, slapping the chamber on her revolver back into
place. “I warned you not to fuck with me.”

“Not
out of cards yet, Alice,” Christopher snarled, running his hands over his
ruined blazer and the burnt skin beneath. Then he said a word, a word Alice
didn’t recognize, and she fell to her knees so suddenly that she actually
bruised both of them against the stone.

Christopher
grinned despite the pain, despite the smell of cooked pig that hung around him
in a vile miasma.

“Starting
to understand? You were never your own creature.”

Christopher
said another word, which she recognized only as a command. Alice slammed her
forehead into the stone with a resounding impact, leaving behind a little red
splotch on the floor, like one of those red Chinese stamps they used to put on
documents. She had only just started feeling the pain, radiating out from her
forehead like liquid, seeping into her facial structure, her eyes, her brain,
when her body repeated the gesture, arching like a snake ready to strike, then
driving her head into the ground again.

“Don’t
you ever get tired of being told what to do, Alice? Don’t you get tired of
doing things and not knowing why? Or are you that comfortable, being a pawn?”

Again.
She heard Christopher laugh distantly, the next time, when he caused her to
fall to the ground, half-blind from the blood seeping down her forehead. Her
hands were still clambering for purchase against the stone, trying to pull her
back up into sitting position, when he said another word, and she was finally
released from the compulsion, and fell back down to the ground in an injured
heap.

Alice
bled and held her head and laughed weakly, as hard as someone could who could
barely manage to keep her eyes open. Then she said something. He could see her
lips move, but he couldn’t make it out.

“What?
Something to say? Even now, my dear, it isn’t too late to turn back.”

She
tried again, and again he couldn’t hear her. He leaned close.

“Thank
you…”

“For
what?”

“For
standing over me,” she said, smiling with a mouthful of stained, red teeth as
she disappeared into his shadow.

Christopher
turned fast, but he wasn’t fast enough. Alice had both of her hands on his
cheeks before he managed to turn his head. She could feel his jaw unhinge, and
she knew that he meant to speak. It didn’t matter. He wanted to turn around. She
helped him, and he spun, off balance.

She
held his face close, pressed his lips against hers. They tasted like sweat,
salt and water, like tears. Alice wasn’t entirely sure where she ported his
head. It took the body a moment to acknowledge the separation, then it fell
over sideways, dramatic gouts of blood pumping onto the stone from the severed
line of the neck, all over Alice’s old boots. She was upset about the boots.

“Oh,
Alice Gallow, centuries pass and you never change,” the man in the purple robes
chided gently, looking at Alice from behind with obvious benevolence. “But this
is not the moment for our reunion. Until then, my dear.”

His
voice was low and musical. He sounded like he’d just heard something really
funny. Then he said something that was like a word, in a voice of command, a
voice that carried throughout the massive dome. At once, Alice Gallow and
Mitsuru Aoki fell to the ground, folded neatly like origami, and then slept.
Leigh stared in uncomprehending horror as the black blood drained slowly from
what remained of her body and pooled inertly on the ground. Xia made it to his
feet in time to catch Alice halfway to the floor, turning to face the
Rosicrucian. It wasn’t entirely clear how a man with goggles and a mask could
look angry, but Xia managed it.

“Enough,
Xia. Your protocol won’t work on me. Anyway, are you certain that you want to
risk it? I know the word that will put her to sleep forever, the one that will
kill her instantly, and the one that will take longer, but allow her to truly
experience her own demise. Would you prefer I picked one of them, instead of
the word I implanted in her to cause instantaneous, sweet dreams?”

The
man waited, smiling his small smile, and eventually Xia turned away.

“Don’t
worry about it,” the man said gently as he passed by, his purple robe scraping
the ground. “I’m here to see your boss. He knows that I’m coming.”

* * *

“It has been a very
long time,” the man observed.

“It
has,” Gaul agreed. “I’ve heard the ridiculous name you go by these days, and
I’m telling you right now, John, I refuse to use it. Tell me, did it come with
the robe?”

John
Parson threw his head back and laughed.

“You’re
the same as always, Gaul,” John said, chuckling. “It makes me feel quite
nostalgic. And the Rosicrucian thing, that was just a hint for you. A secret
society of scholars and doctors, devoted to the good of man, working covertly
in concert toward enlightenment for all. I thought the reference was rather
obvious.”

“Is
Mark with you?”

“Mark
is contemplating the Outer Dark, as he always does. I do not believe that he
will ever leave it again, though he does still live. He has found something
beyond us, and on occasion, he tries to explain some of it. From the words he
speaks, we have occasionally been able to fashion tools. Mark is still
translating the old language, Gaul.”

“I
assumed as much. There were a few survivors who heard part of a terrible word,
a word that ate their minds out from the inside, during the first part of the
attack,” Gaul said, shaking his head. “Mark must have gone mad years ago. You
must have, as well, if you are trying to do what I think you are. Really, John,
have you looked at your company? Weir? Even Witches?”

“You
are being bitter,” John said lightly. “I have subjugated a small number of Witches,
and more will follow. They are uniquely vulnerable to telepathy under duress;
once you learn the techniques, the process is actually quite simple. They are
simply tools, Gaul, a means to an end. It must bother you, though, that I could
end the war you’ve been fighting your whole lifetime so easily. Surely, you can
see it now? What we have discovered – the Outer Dark, those technologies you
deem forbidden, they hold the key to the world we always wanted. No more
fighting between Operators. An end to the war with the Witches. No mass
introduction of nanites to the population at large, no accommodation with the
enemy. Just victory and a better world.”

“A
better world?” Gaul demanded incredulously. “You can’t be serious. The Hegemony
lost two-thirds of their cartel leadership. The Black Sun lost two full combat
brigades. Not counting all the civilians you massacred in Central. I’ve seen
the things you’ve made from the Operators that followed you, the walking
corpses you’ve created. No, I’m afraid that our definition of a better world is
radically different, John. I assume you are here for the Source Well? I’m
afraid you won’t be going any further.”

“You
think that you can stop me?” John Parson asked as if he were genuinely curious,
taking a step toward the door behind Gaul. “I can see that you are exhausted.
You’ve been overworking that marvelous brain of yours, used too many downloaded
protocols.”

“Nonetheless,”
Gaul said firmly, crossing his arms. “I can stop you. And I believe that you
know as much.”

John
Parson paused and looked at Gaul, evaluating. Gaul’s pink eyes were even more
bloodshot than usual, his skin pale and feverish, forehead glistening with
sweat. He had slept in the shirt and pants he was wearing, and they were
wrinkled and dirty. He seemed tired beyond any measure, but he did not appear
afraid. He appeared simultaneously confident and resigned. John Parson sighed
theatrically, then stepped back.

“Perhaps
you could, at that,” John said, with a small smile. “Though I wouldn’t be
certain that you have my measure any longer, Gaul. Still. Perhaps a deal, then,
instead of a confrontation?”

Gaul
couldn’t hide his surprise, though the break in his composure was momentary.

“Let
us say,” John suggested, rummaging through his robes to emerge with what looked
like an empty wine bottle, “that I were to simply take as much as I can pour
into this bottle, and then depart peacefully – with all of my servants? What
would you say to that?”

“I
can stop you,” Gaul insisted, “so why would I allow you anything? That bottle
could hold enough nanites for several hundred activations. Why would I allow
you that kind of power?”

“Because
there is something you haven’t considered. My people haven’t been slaughtering
the population of Central, Gaul, they’ve been gathering them,” John Parson said
modestly. “Thus far, most of your subjects remain alive and well. As long as I
am satisfied with the outcome, they will live. However, if you were to try to
stop me – and I am far from certain that you could – I will simply return to
the Outer Dark with them, to use as fodder for my experiments, instead of the
nanites. We can do remarkable things with Operators in the flesh-pits, you
see.”

There
was a pause while Gaul did the math, checked probability streams, searched for
flaws, alternatives, traps. Then his shoulders slumped.

“Alright,”
Gaul said, holding out his hand. “But I fill the bottle. You watch. You don’t
even go in the same room as the Source Well.”

“Deal,”
John said, with a toothy grin. “You see, Gaul? Even you can be reasonable, when
given the proper motivation.”

Gaul
didn’t say anything. He walked through the doorway and John trailed behind. The
room on the other side was small, five meters in diameter, and roughly
circular. A stone well was set in the center of the room, the narrow mouth
capped with a flagstone. Gaul turned back to check that John remained outside
the door, and then, once he was satisfied, pushed the flagstone aside. He took
a dipper from the side of the stone well, and filled the bottle with it, careful
to make sure the excess water dripped back into the well. It looked no
different from any other water, but both men knew it was rich in dormant
nanites, nanites that would only function once introduced into a living being.

“The
Rosicrucian?” Gaul asked contemptuously, carefully tipping the dipper so that
the water poured into the half-full bottle. “Really, John. Your flair for the
dramatic is getting the best of you.”

“I
told you, it was a joke, a joke meant for you,” John protested, holding up his
hands. “It’s not as if I make people call me that.”

“You
say that you found things at the Outer Dark. Language, technology – but no
nanites? No Source Well of your own?”

John
hesitated for a moment before his smile returned.

“I
wouldn’t be here otherwise,” John admitted. “It’s the only thing we lack. With
this, I can complete my experiments, and build an army in the process. One
against which you will be helpless. You do know that, right, Gaul? When I
return, there will be no fighting the Anathema.”

“Looks
to me like we did alright,” Gaul said, continuing to fill the bottle. “If it
wasn’t for Alistair’s treachery, you might have been defeated entirely. Your
people didn’t hold up very well against the Auditors.”

“Don’t
be a fool,” John said, laughing. “Only young Leigh was one of my creations. And
if Mitsuru Aoki is your queen, old friend, then she only managed a stalemate
with one of my pawns. Unless you have a better piece hidden, just waiting for
the right moment to place it on the board, hmm?”

“Maybe,”
Gaul said, shrugging.

“Tell
me then,” John encouraged. “Who would you have stand against me? Your chief
Auditor is mine, Rebecca Levy is paralyzed until I say otherwise, and whatever
promise Mitsuru Aoki showed decades ago, you have squandered it. Whom else
would you look to? Surely not to that abomination the Martynova clan has
produced? You know as well as I do that whatever the secret of her protocol, it
is deviant. Or, perhaps, your hopes rest on the narrow shoulders of one
Alexander Warner?”

“You
ask a lot of questions, John. You always did.”

“You
can’t really expect to make an Auditor of the boy before I return. And, who is
to say, old friend, that I won’t be able to lead him astray before then?”

“Leigh
is impressive,” Gaul admitted, still bent over the well. “Are you sure you
wouldn’t prefer to leave her at the Academy for proper instruction?”

John’s
robust laughter echoed through the small stone room.

“Perhaps
not at this time. When I return, though, we can talk again, once some changes
are made to Central and the Academy. Are you really so eager to harbor your
enemies? How can you continue to allow Alice Gallow to remain an Auditor, when
you know how badly I have compromised her? Would you like to know the truth
about her, Gaul? What she really is?”

“Here,”
Gaul said curtly, shoving the bottle in his direction. “I know. I’ve always
known. But Alice belongs here.”

“If
you say so,” John said, taking the bottle eagerly. “Though I personally try not
to clasp adders to my bosom.”

John
walked into the main chamber, staring at the bottle, and Gaul followed him
closely.

“Now
for your part,” Gaul said stiffly. “Give the command. Pull your people out of
Central, and release mine.”

John
disappeared the bottle into the folds of his robe, and then turned to grin at
Gaul.

“Are
you even precognitive anymore, Gaul? Why would I do something like that? I will
be taking your people to the Outer Dark. We need test subjects. Surely, you
must have suspected something like this would happen.”

“Of
course,” Gaul said sourly. “But I had to play for time, until Rebecca Levy was
ready.”

The
worry on John’s face disappeared quickly, but for Gaul, it was at least a
little consolation.

Twenty-Nine

Alex stood in the hallway for quite a while, hoping that she would hear him
shifting his feet and clearing his throat, and invite him inside, or at least
open the door. She didn’t do any of that. Eventually, he resorted to knocking.

“Come
in,” she said, so quickly that he was certain she had known he was standing
there. He steeled himself, wiped the sweat from his palms on his jeans, then
opened the door and went inside.

“Sorry,”
she said, barely looking up from the computer she slouched in front of. “I
would have cleaned if I knew you were coming.”

Alex
glanced around the room, finding it the same as the last time he had seen it.
Piles of electronics, discarded packaging, and loose pieces of paper mixed with
wrinkled T-shirts and balled-up socks. One narrow path leading from the door to
the computers stacked on her desk, and a second, thinner path leading to her
bed. He stood just inside the door, while Eerie continued to tap away at her
keyboard. She didn’t make an effort to acknowledge him.

“So…uh,
are you…are you okay?” Alex asked, desperate to break the silence.

“Yes,”
Eerie hummed to herself, “and you?”

“Up
and down,” Alex said helplessly. “Um. Did you see that thing, outside?”

“Oh,
you mean your fight with my eight-year-old housemate, Sebastian? I did see
that.”

“Yeah,”
Alex said, scratching his arm and shifting uncomfortably. “So, is he going to
be…okay?”

“I
think so,” Eerie said, frowning at her display. “He’s not used to being punched
by people twice his size, that’s all.”

“Hey,
he started it.”

Eerie
didn’t say anything.

“He
tried to set me on fire!” Alex pleaded, holding the arms of his scorched
sweatshirt for examination. Eerie remained silent, keying commands into the
keyboard on her lap, never even looking up at him while he fidgeted. Her
display, from Alex’s angle, appeared to show nothing but fields of scrolling
numbers.

“I
wasn’t trying to hurt him or anything. It’s just that people have been trying
to kill me all day, and I sort of thought that I was still being attacked by
them, and…”

“Alex,”
Eerie interrupted, “what are you doing here?”

“Damn
it, Eerie,” Alex swore softly, “I came to make sure you were okay.”

“Oh?”
Eerie asked, still glued to her display.

“Yeah,”
Alex affirmed, slumping down against the wall and crouching there. “I figured
that if I showed up and saved you from the bad guys all cool-like, that you
might, I don’t know, forgive me.”

“For
what?”

“For
all the shit I pulled,” Alex said, surprised at how angry he was with himself.
“With Emily, over break, the stuff that I said before it. All of it.”

“And
you came to save me?”

“Yeah.”

“I
see,” Eerie said, finally turning to face him, her expression blank. “I don’t
need saving, though.”

“Yeah,
clearly,” Alex said, shrugging. “I was worried about you, though.”

“I
see,” she repeated flatly.

The
silence stretched out while Alex squirmed.

“Eerie.
Can I do anything to make this better?”

Eerie
finally put down the keyboard and turned to face him, her hands sitting neatly
on her long grey skirt. She’d changed her hair again, he noticed – the blond
streaks were gone, replaced with a varied blue, deep at the part, fading to
pale at the edges. It looked good, he thought, but didn’t think this was the
time to point it out.

“Tell
the truth,” Eerie suggested. “Alex, are you here because you lost Emily?”

Alex
thought about it for a minute. He figured she deserved that much.

“No,”
he said finally. “I’m here because I am afraid that I’ve lost you.”

Eerie
sat still for a moment, then she looked away, her face, as always, unreadable.

“You
are upset with me,” Alex said, sighing and standing up. “I’ll go. Just let me
know if you change…”

“Alex.
Why do you think I’m upset?”

Alex
considered this for a moment, wondering if there was some kind of trick to the
question.

“Because
of Emily,” he offered hesitantly. “Because I went on break with her…”

Eerie
shook her head emphatically.

“No?”

She
shook her head again.

“Okay,”
he said, spreading his hands. “Then, why?”

“Alex
is stupid,” Eerie muttered. “You really don’t get it?”

Alex
shook his head. He was genuinely puzzled. All he could think was that Anastasia
or Katya had gone back on her word, and told Eerie the whole story of the
events of the break.

“No,”
Alex said, trying to purge his mind of the memory of the weight of Emily on top
of him.

“Do
you know what I have to do tomorrow? Did you think about that at all?”

Alex
shook his head again, his eyes on the floor, unable to face Eerie. He could
feel his cheeks burning. He hadn’t so much forgotten about Margot’s impending
funeral as much as he had deliberately erased it, unable to fully comprehend
the idea. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to him how callous he was.

“Do
you even care?”

Alex
kept his eyes on the disarray on the floor. He fought down an insane urge to
start crying – out of exhaustion and self-pity, in the hopes that it might make
Eerie feel guilty and relent. He didn’t want to embarrass himself that way,
though, and Eerie deserved better after everything he had done.

“I’m
sorry,” Alex said, his hands balled into fists. “I’m broken up about Margot,
too. This is all new to me. Really, I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. He worked up
his courage, remembering Windsor’s odd reaction the night of the attack, and
asked the question. “Eerie…did – did something happen over break? To you, I
mean. Something bad?”

She
didn’t answer.

“I
mean, if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s cool, I don’t want to make you
or anything, but I was really worried, the whole time, and if you hadn’t made
me this thing, this cushion thing, I think I’d probably be dead right now. I
know it’s stupid, you didn’t need my help, but as soon as I could, I came here
to…”

He
trailed off when he realized she had started typing again.

“I’m
sorry, Eerie,” he said quietly, cursing himself.

“No,
it’s okay,” she said, staring at her display. “I understand.”

“No,
you got it all wrong. I came here to tell you…”

Eerie
shook her head.

“Not
right now, Alex,” she insisted. “I have things on my mind. And I think you
should go.”

Alex
felt cold. Suddenly, unaccountably cold. He managed to nod at the back of her
head, and for some reason, he was smiling while he did it, some sort of
automatic social reflex. His whole mind had gone numb, as if he had a cranial
injection of Lidocaine.

“Okay.
Alright, I will go,” he said, reaching for the doorknob. “But when you get it
figured out, please give me another chance. I promise you Eerie – now my mind
is made up. I won’t make the same mistakes again...”

The
pillow she threw missed by a mile, but still made him jump. When Alex turned
back to face her, there were tears running down her cheeks, and her eyes blazed
with an anger he had never seen before.

“It’s
not all about you!” she howled, her voice catching.

“Eerie…”

“Just
go! Just…just go away.”

Alex
stood there, looking contrite, hoping she would take pity on him, hoping she
would forgive him. Eventually, he realized that Eerie wasn’t even looking in
his direction, and he bowed his head and let himself out quietly. She kept
herself in front of her computer, pounding out code so fast that she would have
to redo all of it later, until well after she heard the front door close behind
him, until she was sure that she wouldn’t go to the window to see if he was
still out there.

“Stupid,”
Eerie muttered, aware that she was crying but refusing to acknowledge it. She
slid headphones onto her ears, bent over her keyboard, and stayed that way
until she could only stumble, half-blind with exhaustion, to her bed, falling
asleep with her clothes still on, her face streaked with tears.

* * *

There were many
funerals that week, and though he was not expected to attend all of them, Gaul
felt that it was his responsibility to do so. He had known many of the deaths
were coming, after all, long before they happened, and thought he had resigned
himself to it. The future he had steered them toward, he knew, was the
brightest and best of a number of terrible possibilities. Nevertheless, faced
with the physical reality of the carnage that future was built upon, Gaul felt
part of himself recoil. As an antidote, a reminder of his responsibility, he
forced himself to face one grieving family after the other; seven days of
watching the ground swallow coffins. Margot Feld’s funeral was the most painful
by far.

In
general, the students’ funerals were difficult, because he couldn’t help but
take it personally. The deaths of Steve Taylor and Charles Brant nagged at him
even though he hadn’t thought much of either. But there were many different
kinds of unpleasantness for him to experience. Certainly, he had not enjoyed
facing the Raleigh family, who were burying one daughter and dealing with
consequences of their other daughter’s defection. Knowing that their daughter’s
most likely murderer was standing across from him at the moment – on the other
side of Margot’s coffin, wearing a tasteful black mourning dress – that was a
bit hard to swallow. That Anastasia Martynova been justified in killing Therese
Muir made it no less of a bitter pill to swallow. There was no way, of course,
for him to confront her openly. The Hegemony would use the act as a pretext for
war.

And
things on that score were very fragile at the moment. A final tally was still
being made, but the numerical losses were heavily weighted against the Black
Sun Cartel, with four cartels defecting in addition to significant casualties
during the fighting. Their previous dominance was reduced to a rough parity
with the wounded Hegemony. The losses the Hegemony suffered were less severe,
but whereas the entire Martynova clan survived, much of the Hegemony’s
leadership had been destroyed in a single attack. Numerous cartels were in
disorder while matters of succession were handled. Still, the balance had
shifted, and if the Black Sun’s ascendance was still overwhelmingly likely, the
date had at least been postponed.

Gaul
looked at the faces arrayed around him, and updated his list. There was always
more to do, after all. They had not only lost the dead, after all. There were
all sorts of casualties.

Rebecca
stood at the head of the coffin, reading poetry that he couldn’t be bothered to
identify, looking like she was about to be sick. It wouldn’t have mattered to
Margot, anyway, who had no family to mourn her. Instead, she had a weeping
Changeling, Anastasia and an honor guard from the Black Sun, and a few members
from the staff at the Academy who had raised her. Doubtless, Rebecca was the
most grief-stricken of all of them. The empath suffered greatly during the
funerals, unable to shield herself from the full weight and gravity of the
grief that surrounded her.

Michael
sat beside Rebecca and Gerald Windsor, as somber as Gaul had ever seen. He was
close to the students, and their loss wounded him more than Gaul would have
expected. Part of him took a vindictive and petty satisfaction in Michael’s
grief, as his moral objections to Gaul’s plans still stung. It was unnerving
nonetheless, watching the big, powerful man grit his teeth as he watched the
coffin lower into the uneven ground of the cemetery, in the rolling hills of
the Fringe, underneath the eternal fog, at the outskirts of Central. Vladimir
watched from a distance, a nurse standing behind his wheelchair. The bandages on
his head shone white against the grey sky.

Gaul
wondered if the second time Margot died was any better than the first. He
wondered if she would have blamed him; he wondered how much of the blame
genuinely belonged to him. He knew he was hardly innocent.

He
was surprised to see Alexander Warner at the funeral. He had been asleep for
most of the week, since the attack, attached to an IV in the hospital. It was
funny, how mercurial young people could be – the last time Warner had been in a
coma, he had a rotating cast of visitors at every hour the infirmary staff
would permit. This time, he was left alone, excepting the nurses who tended
him. Even Katya Zharova had contented herself with mounting a camera in his
room, in order to monitor him remotely. Gaul noticed that Eerie was led with
great care around Warner by Gerald Windsor, while the boy watched helplessly,
obviously desperate to talk to her. Vivik put his hand on Warner’s shoulder,
whispering something, restraining him. Gaul remembered Therese Muir’s funeral,
remembered the orders he had signed for the dissolution of the Raleigh Cartel,
and decided he didn’t feel bad for him at all.

Rebecca,
clearly uncomfortable and having trouble walking in heels and a dress, seized
Gaul’s arm for support and pulled him along as the funeral broke apart.

“You
need to be subtler,” Rebecca warned, pausing for a moment to light a cigarette,
then grabbing his arm again. “Everyone sees you evaluating them, and it makes
people nervous.”

“You
are right,” Gaul said, surprised at how moody he sounded. “When you were in the
hospital, I actually thought that this place might fall apart.”

“That’s
almost a compliment. The funny thing is, while I was in the hospital, when I
wasn’t fantasizing about murdering Alistair, I was worrying about you falling
apart,” Rebecca said, smiling while she led him on a rambling walk through the
headstones, away from the new additions and back toward the older, less
emotionally loaded graves. “How are you holding up, by the way?”

“I
should be asking you that,” Gaul said, the dew from the grass soaking
unpleasantly through the legs of his slacks. “Since you asked, though, I am
worried. The cartels are depleted and in disarray. The Hegemony is trying to
decide whether to lick its wounds or attack the Black Sun now, while they are
at their weakest. John Parson is alive, safe in the Outer Dark. He has a supply of nanites that he
will use to make weapons, and one day soon, the Anathema will return in force.
The illusion of safety in Central is dispelled. The Auditors, meanwhile, are
decimated…”

Rebecca
nodded sympathetically. Gaul could tell from the way she hugged his arm that
she had bad news for him, bad news that he had already anticipated. He braced
himself and waited while she stared at the sun peeking above the sea of fog
surrounding the Academy, working up her courage.

“About
that. I know that Margot was your most promising candidate. I heard that
Grigori turned down the invitation to join the department as well. Mitsuru
isn’t at her most stable; frankly, neither is Alice. But I’m afraid you are
going to lose one more Auditor, Gaul.”

Gaul
had seen it coming, but it still shook him to hear her say it. He was grateful
that she hadn’t mentioned Alistair, because he didn’t want to think about his
former Chief Auditor, or the way he looked, before Parson and the rest of them
ported from the underground chamber that held the Source Well. He didn’t like
thinking about the Auditors without Rebecca Levy.

It
hadn’t been her alone who had turned the tide, of course. Alexander Warner had
provided the power for the whole operation, but none of the application. It had
honestly been frightening how much power Warner had expended, acting as a
catalyst for Rebecca’s protocol, but at the end of it he didn’t seem tired, or
even aware how remarkable it was, what they had done. Rebecca knew precisely,
of course, but she was too modest to say. Privately, though, Gaul knew that she
was just as aware as he was that what she had done, with Warner’s assistance,
was the greatest feat of empathy in recorded history.

Rebecca
had broken the lines of communication and control between John Parson and the
Anathema in Central, inserting herself into the heart of their network,
following the same well-worn paths of manipulation that Parson had utilized.
She couldn’t take control of his soldiers directly, but she had been able to
play on existing fears and frustrations, phobias and weaknesses. She freed the
Weir and Witches held in thrall by the Anathema, who immediately fled or turned
on their former masters. By the time the forces of the reduced Black Sun
Cartel, led by Anastasia Martynova, and the Hegemony troops led by Lord North,
swept into Central, their opposition was largely in the midst of an emotional
meltdown. Those that had not been able to flee were cut down ruthlessly. A few
prisoners were taken, mostly out of curiosity. The rest had been burned at the
barren eastern edge of Central unceremoniously, in the great charnel pit, black
with the ash of centuries of bones.

“I
assumed as much,” Gaul admitted. “Can I ask why?”

“It
was nothing you did,” Rebecca said comfortingly. “But, I messed it up, Gaul. I
missed it all. I never suspected that they turned Alistair. I didn’t notice the
command implants in Alice and Mitsuru. I didn’t even notice that Emily and
Therese Muir were desperate enough to turn to the Anathema. I failed
completely, at the part of my job that matters the most to me. And,” she added
hesitantly, “I think it was a mistake to try and do both things at once. I
should have retired from the Auditors when I took the job at the Academy.”

“I’m
not so sure,” Gaul said doubtfully, glancing down at a worn headstone as they
passed it, wondering who was beneath it, and how much rain had to fall on a
section of carved limestone before the words washed away. “I respect your
wishes, however. I’ve always wondered, though – why did you refuse when I
offered you the chance to become Chief Auditor? Why did you insist on becoming
the school councilor instead?”

Rebecca
bit her lip and didn’t answer for a while. Gaul let it be.

“Mitsuru
Aoki,” Rebecca said finally, tossing the stub of her cigarette off to the side,
oblivious as always to Gaul’s glare. “After she went wrong, I blamed myself. I
figured that if I had been there from the very start, paying attention, I could
have made a difference. I guess that’s why Alex Warner is such a big deal to me
– he’s so much like her. I want it to turn out differently for him. If I can
get him to trust me again – if I can get all of these kids to trust me – then
maybe I can make a difference. I have to try, Gaul, and I can’t be your Auditor
and their friend at the same time. For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry to put
you in this position.”

“It’s
fine,” Gaul lied, knowing that she wouldn’t believe him for a second. “You may
even be right. Everything may very well end up depending on this class. We may
not have the opportunity to train another, if we can’t succeed with this batch.
Speaking of which – any thoughts on the untimely passing of Steve Taylor and
Charles Brant?”

“None
in particular,” Rebecca said unconvincingly. “I suppose they must have been
killed in the attack.”

“I
thought the same thing at first,” Gaul continued, studying Rebecca minutely.
“Then I received the autopsy results. Despite what I had assumed, it seems that
the bodies had been out in the old PE offices for at least a day before the
attack. Does that strike you as odd?”

“Odd,”
Rebecca nodded, agreeing.

“Here’s
something even stranger – they were poisoned. With a toxin that our labs haven’t
seen before and can’t identify. Something very fast acting. Something that,
judging from the concentrations in the bodies, they touched with their hands
shortly before they were overcome. However, as I’m sure you are aware, nothing
of the sort was found in the building. There were, however, signs of struggle.”

Rebecca
nodded, frowning.

“Observations?”

“It’s
a mystery,” Rebecca said, shrugging. “They must have been killed during the
attack. Didn’t one of Chris Feld’s people have weird necrotic powers? They must
have been hit with something that accelerated decomposition.”

“I
suppose so,” Gaul agreed slowly. “On an unrelated subject, I understand that
Eerie had an accident of some sort, and was admitted to the infirmary briefly?
I hope she didn’t come to some sort of harm?”

He
made sure that Rebecca understood what he meant by the seriousness of his
expression.

“Nothing
too terrible,” Rebecca said, patting his arm soothingly. “She was mainly upset.
She fell and bruised her tailbone. Must have hit something on the way down,
because she bruised her arm, too. You know,” Rebecca said casually, looking
away, “Changeling physiology is a fascinating thing. For example, do you know
what would happen if you scared a Changeling really badly? If she thought she
was in dire peril?”

“No,”
Gaul said, his mouth suddenly dry. “What?”

“It
seems the Changeling would secrete a poison. A contact neurotoxin, rapidly
fatal to humans. I don’t think it would even require prolonged contact to be
lethal – grabbing an arm, for example, would probably be enough, if she were
extremely agitated. The Changeling wouldn’t even be conscious of doing it. It’s
an involuntary response, a biological self-defense mechanism.”

“I
see. Something to keep in mind when dealing with our own Changeling, then.
Speaking of which, would you be interested in hearing a story about her from
when you were indisposed?”

Rebecca
looked abashed for a moment, and he relished it while she made herself busy
lighting another of her infernal cigarettes. She perched on top of one of the
old headstones, while Gaul leaned his back against the cold, pitted stone of
the mausoleum behind him.

“What
did she do?” Rebecca asked, avoiding any preamble. Gaul decided to indulge her.

“She
repurposed a whole section of the Etheric Network, and used it to reactivate
Mitsuru’s Black Protocol,” Gaul said dryly. “I’m not sure what she did, after
that, but I have reviewed the probability mapping from the event from that
point on, and I see evidence of massive probability tampering. The manipulation
is very similar to a few previous incidents.”

Rebecca
blew smoke up at the sun, one hand shielding her eyes.

“I’m
not sure how long she’s been able to do stuff like that,” Rebecca said
reluctantly. “There were some oddities last summer, while Eerie worked at
Processing. She made some unauthorized changes to the network. They weren’t
mad, because most of them seemed to make the damn thing work better; they just
couldn’t understand what she had done or how she did it. Because the Etheric
Network wasn’t supposed to be capable of the kind of stuff she was doing with
it. I’ve suspected her involvement in our various mysterious incidents since
then.”

That
wasn’t all of it, Gaul could tell. However, he was tired, and neither of them
was in the mood for an argument, so he tabled it for later discussion.

“And
the other personality?” Gaul asked, genuinely curious. “I thought I knew her
pretty well, after all this time, but…”

Rebecca
laughed unhappily.

“You
saw that, too, huh? That’s unusual. She hides herself pretty well. I think
she’s always been there, but I’m not entirely sure how aware of her Eerie
actually is. I’ve never been able to get Eerie to answer direct questions about
her, and the secondary personality itself is…evasive. And smart. Difficult to
talk to directly, when she chooses to reveal herself.”

“I
notice you call it ‘she’,” Gaul pointed out. “As opposed to ‘it’.”

“Well,
she’s got tits,” Rebecca said, shrugging.

“Right,”
Gaul said crisply. “Do you think we should try and lock her out of the
network?”

“Do
you think that we could?” Rebecca said, studying the filter on her cigarette.
“She seems to know it better than you, and you’re attached to the damn thing.”

Gaul
pushed his glasses back up, thinking about it.

“You
are probably right,” Gaul said, nodding wearily. “What about our other problem
child? Alexander Warner?”

“Alex
is pretty dense,” Rebecca said, grinning. “I think it’s safe to say that he’s
starting to get an idea of how powerful his protocol really is, though, and
learning to use it. Once he gets the hang of microscale operation, he’s going
to be exactly as deadly as you hoped. Katya Zharova is a good teacher.”

“What
about stability?” Gaul asked, his brow furrowed with concern. “The events with
Emily Muir must have been…difficult for him. And he and Eerie seem somewhat at
odds at the moment. I know that you worried that hiding your Auditor status
would damage your relationship with him.”

“It
did,” Rebecca acknowledged sadly. “That will take some mending, but he’s
basically a softie, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. He will get over
Emily. Honestly, I think he was in the process of getting over her before any
of this happened. As for Eerie and him…well, don’t get too worked up about it.
She may be mad right now, but I don’t think it will last. I think she’ll make
him apologize a few more times, but that girl fixates, so I doubt she’s lost
interest in him. They’ll be fine. Who knows? Maybe they could even learn to
take care of each other.”

Gaul
shook his head.

“I
don’t understand at all…”

Rebecca
pitched her cigarette butt and grabbed a hold of his arm again, steering him
back toward the Academy, back where he needed to be, the way she always did.

“Yeah,”
she said warmly, patting him on the arm. “You never did.”

Thirty

Anastasia had just sat down to a steaming cup of
white tea and a
daunting stack of paperwork when there was a soft knock, followed by the heavy
wooden door to her office opening slowly. That was odd, because Renton had been
stationed in the anteroom, with instructions to send away all comers and not to
enter the room himself. Anastasia watched the door open and prepared herself to
scold Renton.

“Oh
my,” Anastasia said in an amused voice, “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“I’m
not sure about that,” Eerie observed timidly, peering around the door. “Um. We
need to talk. Please.”

“Very
well,” Anastasia said generously, gesturing toward one of the ornately carved
and completely uncomfortable chairs that fronted her massive desk. She’d had
the legs sawn off the desk to shorten it, though that had been desecrating a
family heirloom, and she was sitting in an elevated chair, so that her toes
just reached the ground, but she didn’t think anyone had noticed. “You know, in
all the time we have been neighbors, I don’t think you have ever come over to
my house, Eerie.”

“That’s
because you are scary,” Eerie said frankly, and without inflection.

“You
think so?” Anastasia asked cheerfully, leaning forward, over her desk. “Is it
the way I dress?”

“No.
Because you kill people,” Eerie said flatly, clutching the handle of the
knitting basket in her lap. The sweater that she wore hung off her shoulders,
and black tights peeked out underneath a woolen skirt. Her clothes were
wrinkled, as if she had slept in them, and her hair was in disarray.

“The
Academy is full of people whose duties can include killing,” Anastasia
protested.

“The
Academy is full of scary people,” Eerie agreed. “Some people think that you’re
the scariest of all.”

“Do
they really?” Anastasia asked, pretending to be scandalized.

“Yes.
But, you know,” Eerie said, hushing her voice and leaning forward, as if she were
confiding something important, “if they knew what I know about you, they
wouldn’t feel that way. Because you have an important secret.”

“Heavens!”
Anastasia gasped, holding a hand to her mouth. “And what is it that you know,
exactly?”

“I
wasn’t sure, the first time, because I was…busy,” Eerie said hesitantly,
blushing. “But I suspected. I have been watching you since then. I saw it, on
the island. What you did to Therese Muir.”

Anastasia
shook her head and smiled.

“Is
this the same conversation we were just having? What is it that you think you
saw?”

“Don’t
play around,” Eerie said resentfully, rubbing her arm nervously. “I’m not
stupid. I saw it. Your protocol, Anastasia. Your secret.”

“Oh,
my. How could that be?” Anastasia said, wide-eyed. “How could you have seen
such a thing?”

“The
Etheric Network,” Eerie said offhandedly. “All Operators are connected to it,
like it or not. That’s just, you know, the way it is.”

“I
see,” Anastasia said, folding up her shocked act and putting it away. “I wasn’t
aware that it could be used as a monitoring device.”

“It
can’t.” Eerie cocked her head to the side, considering. “Not by anyone else.”

“Well,
putting aside what you saw or didn’t see, what exactly do you plan on doing
about it?”

“Wait.
Did I not explain it right? I know your secret,” Eerie said slowly, obviously
confused. “You have to stop.”

“I
have to stop…” Anastasia encouraged.

“Yes,”
Eerie said, nodding.

“I
have to stop what?” Anastasia asked as patiently as possible.

“Messing
with Alex. And me. You know,” Eerie said, her hands twisting around the handle
of her knitting basket. “You know what you are doing.”

“I
suppose I do. Assuming that I don’t, then you will what?”

“I
will tell everyone,” Eerie said quietly, obviously dreading the thought of
talking to ‘everyone’. “Isn’t that enough? I only want you to leave us alone.”

“I
wasn’t aware there was an ‘us’ for me to leave alone,” Anastasia said dryly.
“Let me recast the situation for you, Eerie. As you pointed out earlier, my
position sometimes requires me to take violent action to protect the Black
Sun’s interests. Why is it then, I wonder, you assume that I would acquiesce to
your demands, when it is so much simpler to deal with blackmail by removing the
blackmailer?”

“Because
you can’t,” Eerie said, utterly without bravado. She seemed confused, as if
Anastasia had said something very foolish indeed.

“Aha!”
Anastasia cried, delighted. “Is this where the kid gloves come off and the
threats start? How, I wonder, would you stop me?”

“I
wouldn’t,” Eerie said softly, her irises briefly turning the color of a golden
oil slick, a metallic rainbow. “But she would.”

“Who
is that?”

Eerie
shook her head.

“You
know who. You already know each other,” Eerie said, standing up. “I don’t want
to take anything from you. I don’t want you to do anything except leave us
alone.”

“Maybe,”
Anastasia offered, leaning back in her elevated chair, “instead of things
becoming ugly between us, we could talk about something you could do for me. A
favor for a favor, Ériu?”

There
was brief pulse of light in a brilliant range of colors surrounding Eerie’s
head, and then it was gone. Anastasia could still smell a faint trace of
sandalwood in the air.

“I
don’t know who that is,” Eerie warned. “My name is Eerie. And I’m not doing you
any favors, because I’m not asking for anything. Leave me alone. Leave us
alone.”

Eerie
nodded at the end of her speech, as if she was satisfied with her performance,
then headed for the door.

“Eerie,
this is no way to make friends…”

After
she left, Anastasia shook her head, as if to clear it, and then laughed once,
cold and contemptuous.

“As
if I would,” she said, grinning at the chair the girl had vacated.

Then
she composed herself, sighed, and went to go see if Eerie had killed Renton.

* * *

“I’m not sure where to
start.”

“Why
don’t you start by telling me how you feel?”

“About
what? You? Me? What happened? What?”

Rebecca
shrugged and tapped ash from her cigarette into the stained ceramic ashtray.

“Whatever
you want. Just start with whatever’s bothering you most.”

That
prompted another silence, as the boy sat on her leather couch, his forehead as
creased as the cushions he sat on. The T-shirt and jeans he wore were tattered
and ratty, Rebecca observed critically, making a mental note to take him
shopping soon, if she couldn’t wrangle one of the girls into it.

“Okay,”
he said finally, folding his hands as if he planned on praying. “Why didn’t you
tell me you were an Auditor?”

“Didn’t
want you to know,” Rebecca said, anticipating his complaints and forcing her
recalcitrant window open. “Didn’t figure that you would talk to me if you
knew.”

“Oh.
Okay. Um. I don’t feel good about that.”

“Why
is that, Alex?”

“It
feels…dishonest. I mean, I know you didn’t lie to me or anything, but…”

He
trailed off, staring down at his sneakers, which, she noted, were in even more
dire shape than his clothes.

“I
wasn’t forthcoming with you,” Rebecca admitted. “I should have told you right
away. But I thought knowing that I was an Auditor would frighten and alienate
you even more. The Academy has been a challenging experience for you, Alex. I
wanted to be someone who you felt comfortable leaning on. Someone you could
trust.”

“And
that’s the other thing,” Alex said, more forcefully, clearly getting to the
heart of the issue. “When you…well, when you got hurt, everyone went crazy,
Rebecca. Everybody. Even Anastasia. Now, well, I’m not so sure that you aren’t
manipulating me, my emotions – hell, everybody’s emotions. It’s not just that I
am having trouble trusting you. I’m not even sure I can trust the way I feel.”

“Alex,
if I was manipulating your emotions all the time, would you be so worried about
it?”

She
gave that time to sink in.

“Hmm.”

“Exactly.
Empathy doesn’t work that way,” Rebecca said thoughtfully. “Do you mind if I
give you an example from your life?”

Alex
nodded slowly, brushing aside hair that stubbornly insisted on falling in his
eyes. Rebecca added a haircut to the mental list she was compiling.

“When
Emily was manipulating you, do you remember how hard she had to work? How close
she had to stay to you, and how she followed you around? Do you remember how
much…contact she made with you?”

Alex
nodded again. Rebecca decided not to notice the blush openly, but in a way, she
was a little bit glad for Alex – he had done something worth blushing over. It
was another link in the web of connections she was building around the boy,
tying him to the people around him and the place he was in.

“If
I wanted to control your feelings to any great degree, at all times, then I
would need to do something similar. You understand why that’s impossible,
right? I see ninety students in a slow month, Alex. No empath is that
powerful.”

“But,
then, why did it get so weird? When you were…”

Rebecca
didn’t make him finish the sentence, but she was touched by the genuineness of
the pain she felt radiating from him. Even if Alex had mixed feelings about
trusting her, he obviously still wanted to. All it would take was a little
nudge.

“I never
claimed that I didn’t perform manipulations,” Rebecca said, grinding out her
cigarette. “I smooth out the occasional wrinkle, do my best to improve my
students’ general mood and outlook. Yes, for some of our problem students, I do
tend to try to limit their destructive tendencies. Before you ask – no, you
aren’t one of those kids. While I have used empathy on you, Alex, it has always
been to help – to limit suffering, ease shyness, and help facilitate your
transition at the Academy. I have never attempted to make you do anything, or
to feel anything that you already didn’t. I’ve tried to make things easier for
you.”

Rebecca
gave him a moment to see the sincerity in her eyes.

“If
you want, Alex, I won’t even do that anymore. We can just talk and pretend we
are still normal people, if that’s what you want. We can make believe that
rules apply in the circumstances we find ourselves in. Or, you can accept that
we are both very different from what we used to be, that we live in a different
world – and you could try giving me credit for having good intentions. Up to
you.”

Alex
considered it.

“They
made me see a bunch of different shrinks. Psychologists and psychiatrists – I
never could figure out the difference. You know that?”

“Nope,”
Rebecca said, getting up to pace the room restlessly. “I don’t know anything
about you, other than what you’ve told me and what I’ve seen since you
arrived.”

Alex
didn’t look skeptical. He looked like someone was trying to play a bad joke on
him.

“How
is that possible? You must have access to that sort of thing. There must be
records…”

“Sure,
but that shit doesn’t mean anything to me,” Rebecca said, leaning against the
corner of her desk. “It wouldn’t be relevant to my job, anyway. Those shrinks –
whoever they were, whatever the reasons you had to see them, they had a
different job than mine. They were trying to make you better – a better person,
a better citizen, right? Well, that’s not me. I’m not out to confront your
innermost demons, Alex – not unless you want to. I’m just here to be a friend
to you during a very difficult experience. Because the Program is a traumatic
experience, a deliberately designed one, and we have studied it thoroughly.
Candidates who have someone to turn to, someone to trust and care for them –
well, they make it through more often. And I want to be that person for you,
Alex, for a whole host of reasons, some professional, and some personal.”

“Ah…that.
Um, I just…well, thanks for that,” Alex said, rubbing his eyes as if he hadn’t
slept in a long time, as absurd as that was. “Thanks for being honest with me.”

“And
I am fond of you, smartass. Don’t get me wrong. I really am pulling for you. I
think it’s important that you know this: you aren’t there yet, but there will
be some critical work very soon, and there won’t be many people who will be
able to do it. It will need to be done, Alex. The kind of work that I used to
do,” Rebecca said, trying out the past tense and not very sure how she felt
about it. “It isn’t healthy, or nice, or even right, Alex. But it is necessary.
And I need you to know that I believe in you, and your ability to do this
work.”

Alex
didn’t say anything. He seemed to be staring at the ground, so she gave him
space. She almost missed it, when he patted the couch cushion beside him, her
accustomed spot during their sessions. Her movements were slow and placid,
designed not to startle, but she needn’t have bothered. She sat and he put his
head on her shoulder and then sobbed. She threw her arms around him and held
him close, until long after he had stopped, until she had gently made all right
within his little world.

Rebecca
always tried to stretch it out, the first time they cried with her. It was an
amazing, cathartic experience. Actually, she thought with a trace of
bitterness, it was the closest thing to an orgasm she had experienced in years.

* * *

“We need to talk,
Anastasia Martynova,” Gaul said firmly, approaching where she currently held
court – on a picnic blanket, beneath a tree, near the creek, and in view of the
partially burnt roof of her home, which was already back in use despite ongoing
repairs. The dress she wore was dark blue and the ribbons in her hair matched.
“Right now.”

A
number of people eyed him from the expansive red-and-white-pattered blanket. He
had mixed feelings about all of them. Svetlana Rostoff was mild and servile to
the extent that she attracted mild derision, perhaps unmerited, quiet and meek
beneath a parasol. Renton Hall was one of his least favorite students at the
Academy, and not only because he was the only student to fail the final class
so many times. Renton was much older than the savage youth he appeared to be,
his smile oily and unpleasant. Timor Zharova’s eyes held a flat acknowledgment
– one precognitive recognized another. A trained killer for the Black Sun, and
particularly for Anastasia Martynova, from childhood. Another potential
problem.

His
sister, Katya Zharova, was something of an enigma. She had done sessions with
Rebecca Levy, as all students were required, and was reported to be of
above-average intelligence, with no learning disabilities or social defects.
Yet she failed enough to be held back twice already, ending up in her younger
brother’s class. Moreover, his spies inside the Black Sun reported that she had
similar issues in their private assassin camp, showing exceptional aptitude but
no motivation. She transferred back to the Academy from the Black Sun’s
assassination training program two years before, due to expulsion for a
baffling series of incidents, culminating in an equally baffling assault and
hostage taking. Since Katya’s return to the Academy, however, she had been
agreeable and accommodating to the point of inviting his suspicion, outside of
her habitual violations of the substance abuse policy. As with Renton and Timor,
he suspected her actions to have been orchestrated by Anastasia Martynova, for
her own inscrutable reasons.

“You
heard him,” the object of his suspicions said cheerfully, dismissing her
hangers-on with a wave. “Really, Director. It isn’t like you to make our
affairs so public.”

Renton
snickered and left, Timor and a grinning and tipsy Katya trailing behind.
Svetlana gathered a few things hastily and then trotted after. All the while,
Anastasia smiled benevolently, as beatific as a pope granting an audience. She
was flanked by two black wolves, one of which whined as she scratched its
exposed belly. He gritted his teeth and stood when she offered him the blanket
with a gesture.

Her
dress reminded him of the Tenniel illustrations from Alice in Wonderland,
excepting that her knee socks were black. The composure of her face was
constantly at odds with its own immaturity. The effect was appalling. No child
should have such self-assurance, such cold and calculating ambition.

“We
are alone,” Anastasia said solemnly. “My people will not observe or intrude.
Please understand,” she said, taking up a china teacup in between her thin
white fingers, “my time is at a premium at the moment. My cartel needs me. With
that in mind, what can I do for you, Director?”

Gaul
shelved his anger. When he spoke, he could hear the appropriate iciness in his
words, and felt satisfied.

“There
are a number of people facing a reckoning due to recent events. You are among
them. I came here to give you an opportunity to make an accounting for yourself
and your actions.”

“Surely
you don’t mean to imply that I had some role in this attack? Why, Director, my
people suffered more than any.”

“On
the face of it, it would indeed seem that way,” Gaul agreed grimly. “When I
examine the data closely, however, the soldiers that the Black Sun lost were
primarily affiliated with the old guard, and your father. The Black Sun members
who died included many of those most inclined and capable to resist your future
ascension.”

“I
am not the heir,” Anastasia objected mildly. “I have an elder brother,
Director. I have no forces loyal to me. Just a few unwanted children that I
look after. If none of them died in the attack, isn’t that for the best, since
so many are your charges? I would think that you would be pleased.”

“Do
I look pleased? I am not. Do not pretend that your brother plans anything
besides abdicating in your favor. You placed Katya Zharova with Alexander
Warner, an assassin. That is most certainly not what I had in mind when I asked
for an insurance policy with some combat training on the side. If killing the
boy were a viable solution to the problem, I assure you, I would have done so
the moment I met him.”

“Then
be more specific when you ask for favors,” Anastasia said, shrugging. “And do
not diminish Katya, please, simply because she has a tendency to be slightly
erratic. Alex is in good hands – and if you do not believe me – why, please, do
go and tell everyone that you find our covert dealings to be less than
satisfactory. I am not afraid to make my part in your affairs public, Director.
Do you feel the same?”

“I
have three questions. How you answer them decides your future, Miss Martynova,”
Gaul said, cognizant that these words put him in very deep indeed, assuming
that he did not like her answers. “I require honesty.”

“Ask
away,” Anastasia said, eyes sparkling, leaning forward with interest.

He
started with the worst and least likely possibility.

“Did
you know that Emily and Therese Muir had contacted the Anathema?”

“No,”
Anastasia said, appearing briefly humbled. “That was my failing. I thought I
had them boxed in, that they would be forced to turn to me for assistance. That
was clearly untrue.”

The
Inquisition Protocol he downloaded proved as useless on Martynova as he feared,
but he was certain that she wasn’t lying all the same. He breathed an internal
sigh of relief, and moved to his second question.

“Did
you have anything to do with the death of Therese Muir?”

“I
thought it a tragic event, and utter waste,” Anastasia said honestly. “In
retrospect, however, could it not be described as a sad necessity, to protect
the greater good? In the interests of continued peace?”

Gaul
knew that his question had been answered in the most careful manner possible,
and exactly the way he had expected. There was nothing more to be done about it
at present, though, so he shelved the issue for another time, moving on to the
personal.

“Someone
arranged for Eerie to be removed. As an obstacle to attaining Alexander Warner,
I assume. Did you have anything at all to do with that?”

Anastasia
must have been able to read the tension in his voice, because her smile
faltered briefly. He knew that she was surprised by the depth of his anger, and
took satisfaction from that. She had no idea, after all, exactly how angry he
would be if she had, in fact, had anything to do with an attempt to hurt Eerie.

“Again,
no,” Anastasia said frankly. “I didn’t even know that was what happened to
Steve Taylor and Charles Brant – it was them, right? – until right now. That
kind of thing is beneath me, Director. I never imagined Emily Muir would act so
despicably.”

Gaul
shrugged, but kept his doubts to himself. John Parson had a way with people;
specifically, he had a way with helping people to find places inside themselves
that were far darker than they had believed possible.

Thirty-One

He had put it off as long as was possible. Frankly, the funerals had been easier
to deal with. Nevertheless, with break ending Monday, and the last of the
burials more than two weeks old, Rebecca would not tolerate any further delays.
Gaul faced a crowd of benignly drunken faces, doing his best not to sound like
he was delivering a lecture.

“I
want to thank you all, both personally and in my capacity as the Director of
the Academy. Your services to our institution in its time of need may very well
have prevented its destruction and dissolution. The Academy is indebted to each
of you for the role you played in its preservation.”

Gaul
paused and took a sip of water. His mouth was inexplicably dry. The faces
arrayed before him were intimately familiar, cheerfully intoxicated, and worked
by Rebecca into a state of enthusiastic complacency. In any other context, he
would have invoked the fear of God in them. But not today. Not during the
speech he had been dreading since the attack, since he called in the favors,
since he realized it would become necessary. Typically, he kept such events to
an absolute minimum, instead turning a blind eye to Rebecca’s less official
celebrations, but that could only go so far. Clearly, in this case, more was
required – for morale’s sake, if nothing else. He had allowed Rebecca to pick
the venue, and to his relief, she chose a relatively inexpensive bar on the
fringes of Central, charmingly named ‘The Toss Up’. It had a few pool tables, a
barbeque in the back, a small dance floor, and the kind of bar that only served
cocktails that ended with ‘and coke’, which was fine with him.

“It
would be a mistake to think that, because we are survivors, we did not
sacrifice. Every one of you gave up something in order to see that your home
was safe. Some of you may not even realize yet that you have lost anything. But
you have. This night is not just a reward, though you have certainly earned a
reward. Nor is it merely a celebration of victory, though certainly a
celebration is called for. Rather, tonight is a recognition of our survival,
the protection of our homes and the continuity of our values, the security of
our families and conviction of our beliefs. I commend your excellence, in
rising to the occasion, in doing what was demanded of you, when nothing less
would have been sufficient. We celebrate, in short, that when it came time to
stand or fall, we chose to stand.”

The
speech was awful, and he knew it. There was simply nothing he could do to make
it any better. His position obligated him to speak. He was careful to position
himself so that he couldn’t see Rebecca rolling her eyes and laughing. Instead,
he found himself looking at Anastasia Martynova’s polite smile, which was akin
to staring at the teeth of an elaborately coifed shark. Behind her, the rest of
the Black Sun stood as a monolith – students, combat teams, even the senior
Martynova himself. On the other side of the building, Lord North stood at the
head of a hierarchically organized group of Hegemonic soldiers. Caught in the
crossfire of their muted hostility, he almost lost his place on the scrolling
text he was reading on his heads-up display.

“I
suggest that all of you enjoy tonight. For the staff, I remind you that Monday
is a workday. For those of you who are still students at the Academy, I remind
you that permission to drink reasonably this evening does not give you license
to overindulge, and that Monday is a school day. For the remainder, I remind
you that you are guests here, and to behave accordingly. Thank you. Good
night.”

Scattered
applause, louder when they saw he was walking away, relieved that the speech
was over. He made directly for the door, his various social obligations be
damned. He could not imagine having to talk to Lord North at the moment. Even
worse if Josef Martynova decided he wanted to have a chat. Rebecca headed him
off smoothly, grabbing him by the elbow and steering him away from the exit and
toward the bar.

“You
know how to end a speech,” Rebecca said cheerfully, her cheeks flushed with
drink.

“Shut
up. You know how I hate this kind of thing.”

“I
do know,” she said gently, using his arm to hop onto her bar stool, vacant
despite the crowd at the bar, all of whom gave them a respectable distance.

“I
also know you are manipulating me to calm me and keep me here so I can chat
with the important people,” Gaul continued.

“Of
course you do,” Rebecca affirmed, flagging the bartender with ridiculous ease.
He walked over to them, bypassing a half-dozen people who had been waiting
longer, but no one objected. The brunette bartender looked over at Rebecca
adoringly.

“Two
whiskeys,” Gaul snapped. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

The
stunned bartender scurried to obey. Rebecca cocked an eyebrow in his direction.

“Don’t
look at me that way,” Gaul said. “After that speech, anyone would need a
drink.”

It
took a couple of drinks and a little nudging on her part; some empathic
foundation work, as it were, emotional shoring, and Gaul was as ready and
willing as he would ever be. Rebecca sent him off in the direction of North and
his resurgent Hegemony, figuring he should start there. Anastasia and her
father could wait. If the Black Sun could be said to have virtues, then patience
was among them. Rebecca felt slightly tipsy, but not as drunk as she would have
expected, given what she’d had to drink. She did a quick turn around the bar,
stopping in to check on a few sad faces, urging a couple of shy folks toward
the dance floor, smoothing a few brows wrinkled with anger or grief. She was
the good hostess, the very incarnation of hostessness. Then she went outside
for some fresh air. Some fresh air, she thought cheerfully, and a cigarette.

Without
her, it wouldn’t have been much of a party. The wounds were still too fresh,
and too many faces were absent. A few weeks was not enough time to adjust. They
needed some kind of release, however, a degree of acknowledgment, before they
could go back to the real world, to their lives and responsibilities. Rebecca
quietly removed the inhibitions that might have made this the kind of party
where people drink heavily and grimly. By the time she made it outside, the
small dance floor was in use, the pool tables crowded, the conversation boisterous.
She wondered idly how many people would get laid tonight, thanks to her
efforts, and wondered bitterly why she was never among them.

The
restaurant had a small patio surrounded by a larger gravel-lined outdoor area.
It was far less crowded than the inside of the place. She nodded at a few
people, glanced around at the little knots of smokers and conversation. Then
she noticed him, standing on the other side of the gravel walkway, near the
fence, at just the right angle so he could see through the back window of the
bar. He was so engrossed by whatever he was watching that he did not even
notice her walk up beside him.

“Pretty
good view of the dance floor from here,” Rebecca observed, lighting her
cigarette with satisfaction. Alex almost dumped the beer he was holding all
over the ground in front of him.

“Don’t
do that,” Alex said, glaring as if she had snuck up on him. “My nerves are
fucking shot. I swear, after this last break, I think I need another vacation –
hey, wait a minute. You are wearing a dress,” he said, looking her up and down,
maybe a little shamelessly, before glancing back at the window. “You never wear
dresses. It looks really good on you.”

In
fact, she was wearing a grey skirt and top that matched so perfectly that they
resembled a dress, but she was pleased with the compliment nonetheless.
Sometimes, she thought, blowing smoke at the stars that should have been there,
on the other side of the fog, it was possible to understand what Eerie saw in
Alex. No one else had commented on her outfit. Moreover, Alex was tactlessly
honest – so if he said it looked good, then it did.

“She’s
a good dancer,” Rebecca remarked a moment later, stealing Alex’s glass when she
realized that he was not actually drinking.

“Yeah,”
Alex said, unaware how much longing flitted briefly across his face at that
moment. Rebecca winced at the thick, cloying sweetness of the porter he was
drinking and returned it. “Yeah, she is.”

Rebecca
waited a little while longer, sensing he had more to say. She was not
disappointed.

“I’m
sorry,” he said, turning to her abruptly, “I guess I’m being kinda creepy, just
staring, right?”

“It
could be,” Rebecca said, nodding. “It probably would be, if she didn’t know you
were watching.”

Alex
actually jumped back, as if he were being attacked, and Rebecca was lost in a
fit of giggling. He just stood there, trying to decide whether he was going to
be embarrassed, angry, or amused.

“You
can tell? Is that because you are an empath?”

Rebecca
laughed again.

“Because
I am a woman. It’s an instinctive thing. Also, she keeps looking over here. You
just aren’t watching her eyes, per se.”

“I
don’t even have a chance, right? She hates me, and I don’t blame her. I mean,
there is no reason for me to go talk to her or anything. Because she hates me.”

“She
buried one of the only people who she cared for not long ago,” Rebecca said
tiredly. “It is unbecoming to make this about you.”

Alex
looked aghast, and then, nodded slowly, in the way that he did every time he
was confronted with a basic social lesson that he had somehow never received:
confusion, followed by acceptance. Like it was all news to him, but he still
deserved credit for trying.

“Sorry,”
Alex said guiltily. “I have this tendency…”

“I
know,” Rebecca said, internally forgiving him. “Don’t worry about it. Now stop
being such a wimp and go dance with her.”

“I
don’t dance,” Alex said, shaking his head. “This is one of the many crippling
obstacles to our relationship. I should go home now.”

“Oh,
please,” Rebecca said, rolling her eyes as she pitched her cigarette onto the
gravel. “If you are trying to reverse-psychology me into giving you the courage
to go talk to the girl you like, you are shit out of luck.”

Alex
scuffed at the gravel with his sneaker and looked dejected.

“It
would be great if you would…”

“Fight
your own battles, kid,” Rebecca said, smiling indulgently. “Besides, I thought
you were through with letting empaths manipulate you.”

Alex
looked at her in surprise, and then shook his head again.

“I’ll
never get used to telepathy,” he said, sounding very down about it, for some
reason. “I thought you weren’t that good at it, though.”

“Alistair
locked me inside my head for weeks,” she said, shrugging and reaching for her
cigarettes. “I had a lot of time to practice. Stop changing the subject. Go
talk to Eerie. Work out whatever it is that is wrong between the two of you. I
am tired of watching you mope, and she needs someone to comfort her. If you can
fight Weir, you should be able to go talk to a girl.”

Alex
looked over for pity, but she just waved him off.

“This
seems harder,” Alex said morosely, heading in through the door, holding his
beer like a protective charm, clutched to his chest.

Rebecca
smiled to herself – a brittle, somewhat happy smile – and lit another
cigarette. She watched them while she smoked, looking through the same window
that Alex had used to watch Eerie dance. She did not acknowledge the woman who
leaned against the fence beside her, but she did take the lager that she
offered. Alice was polite enough not to say anything until Rebecca finished her
cigarette.

“If
I watch them be all cutesy anymore, I’m going to be sick,” Alice declared,
absently peeling the label from her empty bottle. “You busy doing the fairy
godmother thing this evening?”

Rebecca
laughed, and it was a genuine laugh. It felt good – the first thing that had,
really, since the series of funerals.

“Just
trying to fix things that got screwed up while I was out of commission. You
know,” Rebecca said thoughtfully, “I was stupid to think I could do both jobs.
Stupid to think that I could just go out into the field every now and then,
keep my hand in, and not get somebody killed. Stupid to think that I could keep
this place running, only working part-time.”

“You
were a terror out there,” Alice said fondly. “I don’t blame you for not wanting
to give it up. Personally, I’ll never be able to walk away.”

“I
might not have been able to see through Alistair,” Rebecca said softly,
“because he was always a clever bastard. There is no way, however, that a
teenage girl should have been able to pull one over on me the way Emily Muir
did. None of that should have happened, and it wouldn’t have, if I had been
watching closer.”

Alice
put her arm around Rebecca, and Rebecca leaned her tired head on Alice’s
shoulder. Alice smelled of the vanilla lotion that she had used for years, then
recently forgotten about. Rebecca was glad she had secretly stocked Alice’s
bathroom with it.

“One
good thing about forgetting everything – you learn, pretty fast, that there’s
no point in regrets. Once something’s done, there is no going back. That’s it,”
Alice said quietly. “Nothing can be changed. All that’s left, really, is
whatever you do now.”

Rebecca
straightened up and laughed again.

“That
was almost profound,” Rebecca teased. “And what about you, Miss No Regrets? You
wouldn’t be hovering around because of the guy working the grill this evening,
would you?”

Alice
look embarrassed, and Rebecca felt bad for her. She could not even imagine how
strange and difficult this situation was for her.

“I
read about it, you know,” Alice said morosely. “All about us. All the things we
did together, when it was good, and then all the things we did to each other,
once it went bad. I know Michael and I have a history. I know we are supposed
to hate each other, and I know why, because I read about it in my diary. When I
look at him, though, I don’t feel any of that. All that stuff, the good
and the bad, it all feels as if it happened to somebody else. When I look at
him, I don’t see my ex. I don’t remember the fights. I just see a man that I
cannot help but want. Thinking about him keeps me awake at night. And I suppose
that it’s not fair to expect him to get over it, just like that, because I
don’t remember. But, I am so over it all, and I just want to take him
home with me, you know?”

Alice
shook her head and looked a bit appalled, but Rebecca noticed something in her
eyes, for a moment, that hinted at all those years, and the grievous toll they
had taken.

“Pathetic,
isn’t it?” Alice said with a smile. “I guess I want you to be my fairy
godmother too, Rebecca.”

“No
way,” Rebecca said firmly. “I am nothing but your friend, Alice. No fairy
godmother bullshit.”

“Aw…”

“But,
as your friend, I will do this much,” Rebecca said, turning Alice by the
shoulders to face Michael, oblivious and cheerful, watching over bubbling
steaks and pink bits of skewered chicken. “Quit being such a wimp, Alice. Just
go tell him exactly what you told me, word for word. In the unlikely event that
he doesn’t jump on you, you can come get stoned and watch TV in bed with me,
okay?”

“Right,”
Alice said, biting her lip and nodding. “This is weird. Because I have already
done this before. But I do feel those butterflies, you know? And you only get
those when it’s the first time.”

“It’ll
be fun,” Rebecca urged. “Go.”

“Yeah,”
Alice said again, staring at Michael. “You gonna be alright?”

“Sure.
I have weeks of reality TV to catch up on, and Diet Coke. What else could I
possibly need? Now, now, don’t worry about me. Off you go…”

Eventually,
Alice worked up the courage, and Rebecca soaked in the novelty. She had never
seen Alice need to muster the courage to do anything.

Michael
was more predictable. He listened to Alice, with a suspicious glare that turned
gradually to disbelief, and then to stupefaction. His mouth hung open while
Alice spoke quietly, a hand resting gently on his arm, as nervous as if she had
never talked to him before. Michael hesitated for a moment after she stopped
talking, weighing his options, before he did the obvious thing and handed his
grill duties over to the bemused Gerald Windsor. Rebecca felt a subtle sense of
déjà-vu, watching Michael put his arm around Alice cautiously, as one might pet
a dangerous dog in a friendly mood. Then he allowed himself to be persuaded,
and walked with her off into the night.

Rebecca
sighed and told herself she felt happy for her, happy with them, all of them.
No one talked to her, because she did not want to talk to anyone. She went
inside to look for her jacket, still hopeful of catching the next bus back to
the Academy, home in time to miss watching the party wane and the couples move
closer together, an instinctual reaction to the night. She found her stuff
sitting near the edge of the dance floor. She practically tripped over Eerie on
the way, but the smile the girl gave her in passing, so fast she almost missed
it, made it all worthwhile.

“Come
on,” Eerie said impatiently, pulling Alex by both of his arms. “Don’t be a
baby.”

“I
don’t know how,” Alex protested, dragging his feet. “I’ve never danced before!”

“Alex
is stupid,” Eerie said fondly, pulling him close. “This is a slow song. You
don’t have to do anything but hold me.”

And
so he did.

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 with compliments,
questions, or lucrative publishing offers.

Thank you for reading The
Anathema! I hope that you will consider checking out the first
volume of my other series, Unknown Kadath Estates, Paranoid Magical Thinking,
available now in the Kindle Store. Also, keep your eyes out for Book Three of
the Central Series, The Far Shores, coming soon.