“I, uh… Thank you, sir.”
“Like I said, it’s hardly worth spit in a can.” He clapped my shoulder and leaned in conspiratorially. “But if you do happen to find yourself in need of the kind of support Glenbark might not be readily able to offer right now, I’m sure my servitor would like to hear about it.”
That surprised me even more.
“I understand, sir.”
“Good.” He straightened and showed us all a grim smile. “Then I’d better get back to managing the madhouse. Be careful. All of you.”
And with that, General Hopper marched off, well-polished boots clacking on well-polished tile.
“So what is the next move?” Johnny asked.
“Aren’t you the High General’s servitor?” I asked.
“Yeah, and she told me to keep our heads down. I thought your broom closet was a brilliant plan, honestly.”
I stared at our vacated hideout, wanting little more than to crawl back in there—or better yet, into a safe bed somewhere—and to not come back out until the world made sense.
“Maybe we should try to contact Burton Kovaks again,” Elise said.
Franco and I traded a glance. We’d already sent multiple messages to Burton Kovaks’ public ID address since Humility, not really expecting he’d respond, hardly even positive what we’d do if he did. But now that innocent blood was being spilled with no likely signs of stopping soon, maybe Kovaks and his pasty friend would be willing to step foot out of their dungeon and do something to help the Shapers of Enochia. Maybe.
“Why not?” I said. “It’d probably be more useful than interviews and smiles at this point.”
“I can compose another message through one of my proxies,” Franco said.
“I’ll help,” Elise said.
Franco arched a thick eyebrow, softly smiling. “You don’t trust your bumbling father to see it done properly?”
Elise shrugged. “I’m good at coaxing stubborn bastards into corners. That’s all.”
None of us saw fit to argue with that.
“Very well,” Franco said. “In the meanwhile, it might be prudent to begin more seriously exploring what offensive weapons we have on hand in this battle of truths.”
“Like the existence of the Seekers?” I asked.
Franco nodded.
“Four’s just gonna love that,” Elise said. “I can already hear him griping. ‘Oh, sure, happy to be exploited. I’m sure Enochia will just take our word for it when we say the Sanctum had us doing their wetwork behind the scenes.’”
“So we’re back to ‘smear campaign on the Sanctum,’ huh?” Johnny said. “Great. Maybe while we’re at it we can start an awareness campaign to remind everyone that happiness is overrated and that there’s really no such thing as pure altruism.”
Franco shrugged. “If they’re going to tell warped truths and outright lies to destroy our heroes, I don’t see why we should withhold inconvenient facts to protect theirs.”
“An eye for an eye, eh?”
“The facts,” Franco said. “Only the facts.”
Johnny pursed his lips, considering. “You do realize I’m gonna have to tell Glenbark about this, right?”
Franco showed Johnny the patient smile he always seemed to reserve just for him. “I wouldn’t have said anything had I thought otherwise.”
“Comforting,” Johnny muttered, swiping a few commands into his palmlight before pausing to look up at me. “So what’re you gonna do?”
I’d been wondering that myself, standing there listening to my friends marshal their plans. What was left to do? I’d already spoken my truth as best as I could. It wasn’t like anyone particularly needed my help with talking to Four and Eight or sending yet another hopeless message to Burton Kovaks. When it came down to it, there was only one thing left that I was singularly equipped to do here, and much as I didn’t want to do it, it sure beat the alternative of lying back down in a dark closet and trying to weather the storm.
“Well,” I said, “I guess I’m gonna go kick Alton Parker until something useful falls out.”
10
To the Roots
“You look terrible,” Alton Parker said from the other side of the thick polymer window panel, his expression rather flat except for the faintest flicker of amusement. “Are you getting enough sleep, Haldin?”
I didn’t bother wasting the breath on a comeback. For one thing, the effort probably would’ve done little more than please the raknoth—especially given that the salt-and-pepper bastard still barely looked ruffled despite having been without food or blood for seven days now. And for another, I didn’t have much breath to waste.
“I had to go through a lot of scud to come see you,” I said. He didn’t need to know the full extent of how true that statement was—about how I’d had to beg and disguise myself in full specialist armor just to sneak over here like a freaking thief in broad daylight, heart thundering every step of the way.
“Consider me touched. What would you like to talk about?”
“This game of yours—”
“It is not a game.”
“It’s done,” I pressed on. “We’re out of time. If the legionnaires don’t come for your head on Legion orders, they might just end up doing it in the name of Alpha instead, and sooner than later.”
His smile was perfectly reptilian. “Feeling the pressures of a world on fire, are we?”
I tried not to let him see just how true that was. “I need to know what you know about the Sanctum and the Emmútari. If you give me that, I might be able to—”
“To what? Protect me? Please, you expect me not to notice that you’re suddenly wearing armor skin under your clothes again, or that you arrived here alone, clearly not by plain sight, and took an extra minute in the antechamber outside to lose whatever disguise you were wearing? It hardly takes a cunning mind to see it. They’re turning on you.”
I wanted to argue—needed to quell his speculation and maintain my position here. But I couldn’t seem to find the words. I just stood there, stunned.
“It was inevitable, Haldin. It is all inevitable.”
They were just words. Ominous words, maybe. But also completely vague. Definitely too vague to explain why I suddenly couldn’t seem to breathe. But something about the way he said them—the foreign, almost gentle tone in his voice… I think it was the most sincere thing I’d ever heard Alton Parker say. And it sent chills down my spine.
“Fine,” I finally forced out. “Fine, you’re right. If and when they come for you, they might just decide to make a grab for my head too. Maybe sooner.”
“Maybe they already have, even,” he said, studying me closely.
Alpha, was his stare disconcerting.
“Tell me about the Sanctum and the Emmútari.”
“And what about my kin, and your hybrid cure? You were quite bent on both last time. It must truly be quite the ruckus out there if you’ve forgotten so easily.”
“I haven’t forgotten. I just… We need to know the truth about something I saw in an ancient text. An image of the prophet Sarentus and the last leaders of the Emmútari.”
“You declare the time for games past, and then refrain from speaking your mind plainly. You wish to know whether Sarentus was one of my kin, do you not?”
I hung on the question, my breath halted for the second time.
“Was he?”
“Yes.”
The floor rocked beneath my feet. I hadn’t expected him to simply answer. But then again…
“Do you have proof?”
He seemed genuinely amused at that. “Not of the kind that would hold merit in the courts of the Central Justice.”
My initial shock gave way to a ripple of disappointment
“But I could show you,” he added. “Indirectly, at least.”
Show me? Did he mean telepathically?
I eyed him through the thick polymer panel, positive that this sudden helpfulness was a bit too convenient. “What ar
e you playing at, Parker?”
Trying to get me to disable the cloaks on his cell, maybe? Or to get me to step into the cell instead?
“How many times must I explain that this is not a game?” He said the words slowly and with immaculate annunciation, letting the perfection of his suave voice do all the insulting. “As I have told you, I am here for my own safekeeping until it is time for us to confront the greater threat facing your planet. As you yourself point out, my safety in this cell is presently a matter of increasing uncertainty. Hence, it is time for me to show you why I decided to surrender to these ridiculous accommodations to begin with. Do you follow?”
“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”
Calmly, the raknoth reached for the transfer port beside the door, pulled his hatch open, and laid his forearm down in the narrow rectangular space—a clear invitation to open the hatch on my side, take his hand, and physically short-circuit our way past the cell’s cloaking fields.
I considered my side of the port, and the palm panel that clearly indicated the hatch was locked. I wasn’t sure I even had access to unlock the thing. But that would hardly stop me, if I really wanted to open it. The real question was whether I was willing to reach into a narrow polymer shaft and take the hand of a raknoth who’d tried to kill me on multiple occasions.
“If I wanted to hurt you,” Parker said, “I would’ve done it before now.”
“You blew me off of a building two cycles ago.”
“That was before I learned just how completely the hybrid initiative had failed, and decided that I needed you.”
“Well if that’s not comforting…”
“I’m a pragmatist, Haldin. You needn’t trust me to at least trust that.”
I looked from his eyes down to his offered hand. Back up again.
Alpha, I think I did trust that. Or at least trusted that he wasn’t about to try to kill me through a six-inch-by-six-inch transfer port. But that was kind of beside the point anyway, because the truth was that I needed to see what was in his head. Which just left one problem.
“You expect me to believe you’re gonna open your mind to me? Just like that?”
“I am not overly concerned by the notion.”
That wasn’t exactly comforting to hear, either.
In the days since he’d turned himself over, I’d considered more than once trying to break into Parker’s mind by force, but that tactic came with a multitude of challenges—not the least of which being the physical contact required to circumvent the cell’s cloaking fields, and the fact that I had no idea how strong a telepath Alton Parker actually was. I wasn’t quite so arrogant as to forget how narrowly I’d succeeded at breaching Al’Kundesha’s mind—and even then only because I’d caught him off balance. Alton Parker wasn’t one to be caught off balance, emotionally or otherwise.
Glenbark, familiar with the feasibility of the act if not the precise details, had only asked me about the possibility once. As soon as she’d agreed that it sounded too dangerous, I’d all but put the thought from mind, thinking we had time to find a better option. Never once had it crossed my mind that option might turn out to be freely granted access to Alton Parker’s mind.
Somehow, the idea of a free pass made me even more uncomfortable than the prospect of telepathically duking it out with the raknoth.
“You’re not worried about what I could do in your head?” I asked.
“Not particularly. The time for secrets is passing, and I am not some fleeting human to be broken by any damage you could deliver.” He considered me. “Not that I’d expect you to try.”
“And if I decide not to relinquish control back to you?”
“Eventually, you will need to sleep. I will not.” He showed me that reptilian smile. “It might actually be rather stimulating, relinquishing control for a time. It’s been a long while.”
“Yeah, you’re not really making this any less creepy.”
I kind of wanted to ask about the sleep thing, but it hardly seemed to matter now anyway. Raknoth didn’t need sleep? Fine. Throw it on the list. I’d been mind-gropped a dozen too many times in the past seasons to feel excessively shocked by such things anymore. And why was I arguing anyway? Wasn’t this exactly what I’d wanted all along?
He splayed his waiting fingers in the access port. “Come. Let us have on with it. Time, as you say, is dwindling.”
Yeah. Exactly what I’d wanted. Sure. The world I’d tried to save wading straight back into the thick of war, and the raknoth who’d tried to kill me offering me his hand, inviting me to take a telepathic gander at what he seemed to think was the actual danger facing my planet.
Bring on the flowers and gropping sunshine.
I reached for the transfer hatch access panel. I was less than surprised when it flashed me a warning that my credentials had not been accepted. That was probably where a reasonable person should’ve stopped. But I needed to know. With one more wary glance at Parker, I sank into my extended senses and made short work of the hatch’s internal locking mechanisms.
It was only once the hatch was open and I was contemplating grabbing one of the most dangerous hands on the planet when Parker decided to speak again.
“One more thing.”
“Wonderful timing,” I muttered.
“I ask that you defer to my guidance on what memories to explore, and when.”
“So that you can keep your bullscud story straight?”
He smiled. “No. Because there are truths and tribulations in here that might break you if you stumble upon them by casual accident.”
I couldn’t decide if he was the worst salesman who’d ever lived, or the best one. Either way, I found my hand reaching for his as if it had a will of its own. I paused at the last few inches, then grabbed hold of his deceptively human flesh and tensed my telepathic defenses, more than half-expecting his mind to fall on me like a force of nature.
But it didn’t.
I felt him there. It was impossible not to. But he kept his distance, so to speak, watching me calmly with his eyes as his mental presence settled down, shifting in pattern and density, preparing itself.
“At your leisure,” came his voice in my mind.
As far as I could tell with a faint probe, his defenses were down—about as ready to bar my entrance as an open doorway. It was bizarre, to feel such vulnerability in a raknoth. But still, I wasn’t going to take any chances. I focused my will, and threw my mind at his like one of the spiked bolts from Edwards’ heavy pulse rifle.
And I punched straight in.
No matter how many times I did it, I doubted I’d ever truly get used to the feeling of diving into another living thing’s head. Not that I hoped to try. Even putting the experience into words is difficult—words other than disorienting and overwhelming, at least.
At the heart of it, it sort of feels like you’re standing on a rocky bluff, high above a raging river, solid and content in your own thoughts and sense of being. Then you jump. But you don’t just hit the water. You explode into it, diffusing and merging so fast that, if you’re not careful, you can lose track of what was you and what’s the river before you have a chance to blink your telepathic mind’s eye.
Did I mention it’s overwhelming?
And none of that was even to mention the freaky level of sensory overload that came with taking up co-residence in a raknoth’s head. Alton Parker’s nose was so sharp we could still smell the scents of Johnny and Elise lingering on me in our shared headspace, right along with the faintest trace of cleaning supplies. His hand could practically scan the prints of my fingers, tightly clutching his. His ears could easily hear every beat of my heart.
Suffice it to say, it was unsettling. But I did my best to reel in my focus and point our thoughts at the prophet in question, Sarentus.
“Very good,” Parker’s voice came to me. “Straight to business.”
Good was the last thing I felt, hearing Alton Parker whispering encouragement in my mind, b
ut I was too busy maintaining my mental balance as we flashed through a rapid series of thoughts and memories, all pertaining to the holy prophet. There were a lot of them. But, then again, that wasn’t surprising, seeing as you couldn’t walk more than a mile in most cities without crossing at least a couple statues of the man. Or the raknoth, rather.
Because I could see it now, riding over every memory and reference of Sarentus in Alton Parker’s mind—the smug amusement Parker felt at the fact that most of the planet had been all but worshiping one of his kin for the past thousand years, long before he and his clan had even considered coming back to Enochia. Parker hadn’t been lying.
Sarentus, to the best of Alton Parker’s knowledge, had been one of the raknoth.
Spoken aloud, the admission had rocked me. Realized within the winding depths of Parker’s mind, it nearly sent me exploding into that raging river on the back of a thousand different questions. Worse, the raknoth’s mind actually seemed perfectly capable of pulling full, discrete thoughts and memories to match every disjointed fragment of my shocked mind, piling them all on until I had to back almost completely out for fear of losing myself in the flood.
“The way we store and access memories is radically more efficient than the methods employed by human brains,” Alton explained, apparently having noticed my near-overload, and sounding just as pleased as a sun-struck flower about it. “A necessity, seeing as our lifespans are exceptionally longer.”
And now I was getting fun facts from a raknoth. Wonderful.
I resisted the curious urge to ask how long was exceptionally long, and instead returned to the matter at hand.
“Why was Sarentus here? How did he come to be on Enochia a thousand years ahead of your clan?”
Children of Enochia Page 9
