Barbara let that sit in silence for a long stretch—at first, I thought, to simply allow the words to soak in. But then I noticed she was shooting furtive glances over at Franco and her crew.
“Well,” she said, pointedly pulling her focus back to me, “whether or not you find the peace you’re looking for, I think we can all agree the protection of Enochia’s future is an admirable sentiment.” She leaned in and offered me her slender hand. “Haldin Raish, it’s been an honor. And quite an eye-opening one,” she added, with a meaningful look at the now mostly melted Alpha sigil in my caffa cup. “Thank you for sharing your story with me and the rest of Enochia.”
“Thank you for hearing it,” I replied, shaking her hand. “I just hope it’s worth something, and that we can all talk about this openly before any more triggers are pulled.”
Barbara gestured to her crew to cut the feed. As soon as they did and gave her a thumbs-up, she stood, her polite smile darkening.
“What is it?” she asked, scanning her crew. “What’s happened?”
So I hadn’t imagined the looks. My stomach sank as Franco glanced over one of the crew members’ shoulders and his face fell.
And here I’d been thinking that this had actually gone well. Certainly better than expected.
“I think we just got scooped, boss,” one of the cameramen said, looking up from the tablet they were all huddled over.
“Scooped?” Barbara said, stalking over to them to see for herself. “What do you mean scooped?”
It was a fair question, seeing as it wasn’t like there was another team here sneak-recording our talk. The cameraman handed Barbara the tablet. She read for a few seconds, muttered a curse, and looked to me.
“You’d better see this, Haldin.”
I opened my palmlight and pulled up the reels, already pretty sure I knew what I could expect. It was truly starting to feel like the story of my life. If Johnny’s adage about “no such thing as bad reel coverage” had ever been true for anyone, it sure as scud wasn’t me. So, it wasn’t with surprise or shock but simply with a dull, weary sickened feeling that I spotted the headline currently taking the reels by storm, complete with an Alpha-damned feature length storyvid.
Haldin Raish: The True Story of the Demon of Divinity.
9
Point of View
Ever since I’d lost my parents and fled Sanctuary under Carlisle’s protective wing, I’d seen my name—and the names of pretty much everyone I knew—dragged through all manner of mud, scud, and everything in between.
I’d been branded a terrorist. Accused of killing my own parents and burning my house down. I’d read stories that Carlisle and I were in fact criminal masterminds who’d simply fabricated the entire raknoth invasion. Carlisle was obviously still alive, some such stories suggested, pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Those red eyes? Lighted lenses. Those scaly hybrids? Cosmetics, broto. Cosmetics.
There’d even been spliced vids that made it look like it had actually been me and Carlisle batting down civilians and tearing out throats back when the hybrids had first been released on the Great Hall.
This was worse than all of that.
The Sanctum’s feature didn’t grasp at wild straws. It did much worse. It told the truth—or enough of the truth that I doubted anyone would know or care to spot the difference. It hit at every spot that hurt—my every flaw and weakness.
Point by point, the Sanctum deconstructed me for all of Enochia to see.
Barbara was sure that the timing wasn’t a coincidence, and that someone, either on our end or hers, must’ve told the Sanctum what we were planning. Someone like a recently discharged and highly disgruntled Legion general, perhaps. Or maybe it had simply been Barbara’s supervisor, looking to save her own skin before her daring little reporter earned the wrath of the Sanctum. It hardly seemed to matter at this point.
Once I’d gotten the measure of just how deep the thing was going to dive, I’d turned to leave, not really sure where I was going, only that I didn’t want to watch my deconstruction alongside Barbara and a crew of complete strangers. Franco had reminded me that I couldn’t just go strolling around base at my leisure—especially not now.
Which was how I’d wound up in a dark, cramped storage closet somewhere in the east wing of Central Command, staring at my palmlight in a kind of dumb stupor, just watching it all fall apart.
The so-called True Story of the Demon of Divinity had been shot in a series of presentation-style talks from multiple witnesses who’d been well-positioned to chronicle my every failure and shortcoming. We heard from the High Cleric about what a troubled spirit I’d been when we met in his White Tower quarters, and how he’d been wrong to allow High General Glenbark to wrestle me out from the Sanctum’s grasp in the name of Enochian safety. We heard from Vantage guards and legionnaires I’d tangled with while on the run, who all unanimously attested to my savage nature, and from old tyro rivals about how I’d always been one to bend orders and stray from Alpha’s path when possible. We heard from that lowlife, tavern-brawling bastard, Captain Man Glare, about how he and his brotos had tried to quietly alert the authorities to my presence and had suffered my immediate and gratuitous wrath.
The performances were all so good that I couldn’t help but wonder if they hadn’t been paid for by the Sanctum—or if maybe there wasn’t a small grain of truth to them after all. To people like the men and women who’d diligently guarded the Vantage facility, ignorant to what was going on beneath their feet, I suppose I probably hadn’t seemed like anything more than a violent criminal at the time.
It wasn’t a comforting realization.
By the time the vid cut to the vengeful face of General Gregor Auckus, I couldn’t even bring myself to feel surprised. I still felt plenty of other things, though, as Auckus proceeded to unload with a scathing and surprisingly surgical analysis of my value—or total lack thereof—to the Legion’s wartime efforts against the hybrid armies over the past cycles. It was masterfully done, the way he painted everything from just the right angle. To listen to him, I’d basically let Alton Parker escape, endangered the lives of my assigned guard details more times than anyone could seem to count, disobeyed direct orders a similar number of times, and somehow sparked multiple hybrid attacks of unprecedented scope on both civilian and Legion targets. And all that just so I could spit on some pieces of scrap metal and tell High General Glenbark that I’d magically “protected” her legions from “unfriendly minds.”
I almost started to believe it myself.
Never mind that there was well-documented evidence of widespread friendly fire chaos among the ranks prior to receiving my cloaking packs, and almost no such reported incidents since. My aid could hardly be counted in the retaking of Oasis anyway, Auckus argued, because I hadn’t even cared enough to attend the assault. No, I’d been too busy sneaking off with my personal company of Hounds to rendezvous with the very creature who’d tried to kill the High General not two days earlier.
So whose side was I on? Alpha only knew. But I was clearly nothing but a danger to the Legion. A bumbling time bomb who had the High General firmly wrapped around my finger. Never mind all the lives that I had saved, or the fact that Glenbark had indeed put me on strict house arrest for bucking orders. To listen to Auckus talk, I did what I wanted, when I wanted, and Glenbark had unlawfully discharged him for trying to restore sanity to his beloved Legion.
The slimy bastard.
Tenuous as my hopes had been to start with, I had little doubt that Auckus’ confessions alone would’ve been more than enough to drive the wedge of death straight through all my talk of peace in Barbara’s interview. But that wasn’t even the end of it.
I didn’t recognize the legionnaire who came on after Auckus had finished speculating about how long it would be until I succeeded at handing the entire Legion over to the raknoth—one of whom I was routinely meeting with on Haven grounds, by the way. Whoever he was, I couldn’t imagine he could do worse than A
uckus just had. But then he began to explain how he’d been there the night his company had raided Franco’s home after the attack on the Vantage research facility, seeking to apprehend the terrorists responsible. And that’s when it hit me.
The one and only non-telepath I’d ever forced my mind on. And they’d found him.
I cringed as he described in vivid detail what it had felt like, sweeping an enemy hideout next to his fireteam one moment only to find that he couldn’t move a muscle the next. For a second, he’d expected to fall. He’d thought maybe he’d been shot and his senses hadn’t caught up, or that maybe he was even having a heart attack, or a massive brain bleed. But then he’d noticed his body was moving, by no will of his own. He’d tried to stop it, as the air had filled with a demonic flash, and he’d felt his hands reaching for the grenades on his vest. Tried to stop it as he’d felt himself pulling the pins and throwing himself at his own squad—his own little family. He’d tried to stop it as he’d listened to his friends screaming in shocked betrayal. And he’d been powerless to do a thing.
I felt sick.
I’d only been doing what I could to buy us time to escape Franco’s, and the fact that he was alive at all should’ve made it clear enough that I hadn’t actually killed anyone with the unsavory maneuver—that it had been thumpers, I’d used, and not lethal frags. But none of that made me feel any less despicable, seeing the pain on that poor legionnaire’s face.
I’d crossed a line that night. One I’d been too new to Shaping to even realize I’d been about to cross. But now it was done, and here were the repercussions, come to collect their due.
Of course, the guy hadn’t actually realized what had happened to him until after the raknoth had started pulling the same move on large swaths of Legion forces at Oasis. Still, though, he’d been uncertain. Because he hadn’t been hunting a raknoth that night. He’d been trying to apprehend Haldin Raish and his partner, Carlisle. And how could Haldin Raish have pulled the same trick as a raknoth? Unless…
I paused the vid. It was all too clear where they were headed with this, and I couldn’t take any more of it.
I sat in the darkness, trying to focus on my breathing and the dull background buzz of distant activity. Trying to focus on anything that wasn’t the Sanctum, or General Auckus, or the raging scudstorm that was breaking across Enochia—more dangerous to my kind than any hybrid army.
And I didn’t have the faintest clue what to do about any of it.
At the faint brush of a presence outside the door, I reflexively jammed the mechanism with telekinesis. Someone turned the handle.
“Let us in, Hal,” came Elise’s voice.
I released my hold and didn’t even bother trying to look dignified as the door swung open. There were Elise and Johnny, standing in the hallway, and there I was, stuffed in a corner beside racks of sweeper bots and cleaning supplies like a moody stowaway. They didn’t say a word. Just stepped carefully into the cramped space and pulled the door shut behind them.
Darkness enclosed us, thick enough that I could barely see Johnny and Elise as they tried to situate themselves. For some reason, none of us spoke. None of us even activated a palmlight to illuminate the space. Elise wriggled into my corner on my left, her legs draped over mine, and Johnny found some arrangement that left him against the opposite side of the closet with his legs stacked over Elise’s and more or less in my face.
“So glad you decided to join me,” I muttered.
“It’s actually kinda nice in here,” Johnny said when he’d finally stopped shuffling around. “You’ve got your complete darkness, and your quiet, and your cozy little fit, and… hmm, not entirely sure what I’m touching right now, but that seems nice, too.”
He continued on like that for a little while, saying a lot about nothing in particular, as he often did when he was especially uncomfortable. Elise just sat there silently running her hand through my hair all the while.
“So much for getting ahead of this thing,” I said when Johnny’s running narrative had finally died down.
“Yeah…” Johnny said. “But honestly, broto, were we ever really ahead of this thing to start with? It’s kinda been mayhem from day one. Scud, I was even ready to shoot you back then, remember?”
“Aww,” Elise said. “Back when we first met.”
“Yeah, right? And look how that all turned out. We’re golden.”
“You were never gonna shoot me,” I said.
“Well, yeah,” Johnny said slowly. “But I thought about it. Like really, really thought about it. I even wrote you that message.”
“Yeah, because that’s what people do when they’re gearing up to shoot their best friend,” Elise murmured.
“Hey, you don’t know me, lady. You don’t know… Wait, you didn’t let her read my secret best friend message, did you? Hal?”
“Honestly, I can’t remember.”
“Well, that’s nice,” Johnny muttered in the darkness. “Clearly, I made a strong impression with my emotional outpouring.”
“I had a lot going on, Johnny. Franco and Phineas were captured. Carlisle and James were missing. The reels were saying they were all dead, and Elise and I were just…”
I trailed off, thinking about that terrible time, when Elise and I had hunkered down at Carlisle’s temple hideout, two quivering children clinging to each other for the desperate hope that they weren’t alone in a world gone mad. And now, sitting in a dark closet with Elise and Johnny, I couldn’t help but feel like we’d somehow come full circle.
“Eh,” Elise said, stroking my cheek in the darkness, “he’s just trying to pretend like he didn’t totally cry after reading it. You know, for whatever that’s worth.”
I felt Johnny’s fist punch skyward. “Score!”
“Who invited you guys, again?” I asked.
A short but distinct silence fell between them, speaking more than their words could have.
“Look, you guys don’t have to worry about me diving into the abyss again. I’ve got it under control.”
“Really?” Johnny asked. “Because you’re sitting here in a pitch black closet.”
“We’re sitting here in a pitch black closet,” Elise said.
“Ah. Well-played, goodlady. But still, as far as designated mope zones go…”
“I just needed a gropping minute,” I said. “Okay?”
“Totally understandable,” Elise said.
“And totally under control,” Johnny added, grunting and nearly kicking me in the face as he labored to readjust his position. “But you know, just in case, we’re here to… Agh. Is that a boot in my ass, Hal, or…?”
I was fighting a smile and opening my mouth to tell him where he could find a boot when the moment was cut short by a light rap on the door. Someone knocking.
I frowned at the door in the darkness. “What, did you guys hang a sign out there or something?”
“Maybe we should have,” Johnny said. Then louder, “Because we’re having an important business meeting in here, and I, for one—”
“It’s Franco,” I said, focusing my senses past the familiar presence and on to a less familiar one. “And… General Hopper?”
Just as I said it, the door swung open, flooding the cramped space with light and leaving the three of us all squinting up at Franco, the good general, and half of Dillard’s First Squad from our undignified tangle among the cleaning stores. As if Hopper or anyone else had needed any additional reason to wonder what Glenbark saw in any of us.
“Well met, sir,” Johnny said, thumping fist to chest in a salute despite being packed into the storage closet too tightly to even sit up straight. “We were just discussing next moves in light of recent developments.”
“Evidently,” Hopper said, not quite smiling, but not particularly frowning either.
Franco offered Johnny a hand up first, as he was top of the pile. Once he was excavated, Elise rose lithely and hauled me up by one hand.
“Are we late for a meeting or s
omething?” Johnny asked, glancing at his palmlight.
“Not exactly,” Franco said.
“We won’t be having another meeting like yesterday’s until things settle down on base,” Hopper added.
“How bad is it out there?” I asked.
Hopper’s expression darkened. “I’ve seen more discipline and good sense in tyro barracks. It hasn’t gotten past a few scuffles here and there, yet, but it’s not pretty. I never thought to see the chain of command so thoroughly questioned. We have civies lining up in protest outside the gates. Half the legionnaires inside are calling for an official review of Glenbark’s leadership. Others…” He shook his head. “Haven is ready to explode over this mess. Which is why I came to tell you to keep your head down where no trigger-happy heroes can see it.”
“Of course, sir,” I said, in no mood to argue. “But surely that message didn’t need a general to deliver it. Was there anything else?”
“Oh no,” Hopper said, shaking his head. “I just so happened to run into Citizen Fields a moment ago. As I’m sure you understand, it would be wise for the High General to keep her distance from you in the coming days. Same goes for me, of course, but I figured I could at least spare a moment to offer my support. Not that it’s worth much at this point, but I happen to be one of the people who agrees that you’ve received the scud end of the stick, Citizen Raish.”
Children of Enochia Page 8
