Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1)

by Michael Valdez

Chapter 5

  Meeting Trenna

  If there was anything that was an absolute sure-thing today, it was that when Dastou and his own ranked agents left the lobby, Constable Chenrov Renker was glad to see them go. Dastou did casually mention that five members of Ornadais Academy were helping the injured and displaced that had been separated into a hallway and several offices of the embassy. Renker did not say thank you, and instead mentioned once again that none of this would have happened in the first place without a Saint being in town.

  Well, as technically true as that may be, Dastou was still irked that his help in the situation was not appreciated, and left the constable to talk to the “daylight officers” she called in.

  “By the black,” Nes said as they were exiting a stairwell and going into the Diplomatic Center’s sub-basement, “it’s like talking to a consistently disappointed mother-in-law.”

  “No,” Hays said, “trust me, a mother-in-law can be much worse. More for knowing that you’ll have to deal with them often enough to get used to the insults.”

  “I thought your momma-by-jewelry liked you?”

  They were walking down a short corridor that led to a right turn, and Saan was waiting for them at the corner.

  “She did like me, a lot in fact,” Hays said. “That was because my wife never told her I was a member of the Academy. I graduated early, came home with a dress uniform on to surprise Kiralhu, and found out her mother had come for a surprise visit.”

  “Yeesh,” Nes mumbled with sympathy as they reached Saan and the entire group took the right turn together. “Let me guess, the mother hates Saints.”

  “Despises them,” Hays said with a touch of a smile you could hear in his voice. “It’s been rocky ever since, but I guess I don’t mind. I’m not any different than when she liked me. If momma-by-jewelry, as you put it, wants to hate me, so be it. Sooner or later she’ll come around.”

  The captain said that not with the false hope that others might, but with genuine confidence. The man was certainly sure of himself, and additionally did his best to spread that confidence to almost everyone he met. People very much liked having him around, and there was no doubt about how invaluable he was not only to the Academy and DSF, but to their public perception. That last part would be especially necessary in the next few years as the DSF grew and more people realized what exactly they were doing.

  Lately, whenever Dastou thought about people like Captain Hanyan Hays, Corporal Nesembraci Jaydef, and Staff-Sergeant Saan-Hu, pride and loyalty were his immediate emotional reactions. At first, when he started the school and had no idea if teaching people his skills would work, he was nervous and pessimistic. Now that he had so many talented individuals at his side, sharing leadership roles, he was calmer. Today, though tragic, was a perfect example of everyone from high ranking agent to freshman hitting on all cylinders. Dastou couldn’t help but smile at his team’s performance, and when they reached a door in this hallway and stopped, Saan noticed his grin and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “Nothing,” Dastou mouthed as he let his smile fade to a normal expression.

  The door they had reached was steel, with a traditional dead bolt. Saan used her key, the only one entrusted to Dastou’s team by the Diplomatic Center’s staff. Everyone stepped back as she pulled open the steel door to reveal a sizable storage closet. Partially used cans of paint and related accessories, various tools, and cleaning supplies were not too neatly placed on the floor and hastily built shelves. At the other end of this room was a wide cream-colored door, angled at about forty-five degrees up from the floor.

  Several months ago the Blackbrick Council asked what would be best in order to provide some kind of docking area that would allow “the growth of a positive future relationship” with Dastou and his “subordinates.” The Saint had a feeling they only asked because the embassy was being built literally directly above the path of one of the tunnels the Caravan uses. The feeling was cemented when he arrived this morning to find that their dock was actually a hole in a closet covered by a heavy piece of wood. Extravagance was not exactly key to the growth of this relationship, apparently.

  The angled cream-colored door had no visible lock. The group walked up to it and Dastou stepped up, bent to put his thumb on a strip of black where a door knob would be, and an audible blip was followed by a door sliding to the side. The little hiss-whoosh the door made when it opened was always comforting – better than the warning beeps when they first started using this machine and the door occasionally didn’t work, leaving people stranded in or out for several minutes.

  The foursome walked down a short flight of stairs and into the Caravan, the Academy and DSF’s mobile headquarters; part building, part big fat underground boat. Once inside and surrounded by cream-colored walls, somewhat low ceilings, and the quiet echoes of their footsteps, Captain Hays led the way to a proper stairwell they’d use to go down a level, as usual politely insisting that their commander not be in front despite being in safe territory.

  The Caravan itself was a three-story structure that traveled using massive deprecated subway tunnels built almost a hundred years ago. No one actually knew what those big tunnels were supposed to be used for, and they were often adjacent to smaller, standard subway tunnels. But, there were enough of the massive pathways that this mobile headquarters could go to a great number of populated spaces, including across oceans, and get there fast. When moored – or if you want to describe it more accurately, sitting very still underground – only the topmost floor was accessible via the angled outer doorway.

  Dastou hadn’t been back down to the Caravan since first stepping into the embassy at around mid-morning, and he couldn’t help but be in a significantly better mood once here, almost like he could breathe easier. It wasn’t because the machine was technologically superior literally anything in the world, the same as Ornadais Academy as a whole. It also wasn’t because he was coming from the partially wrecked Blackbrick Diplomatic Center. This mobile headquarters had become a second home to him – comfortable, known, friendly. Maybe that meant he was spending too much time being stationary, something most other Saints frowned upon. Being inside this place, where he had a designated office and where most important Academy meetings took place, was a stress-reliever.

  He almost wanted to feel guilty about having a home and an office, a work place of all things. That wasn’t for his kind in the past, not remotely. Times were changing for him, and since no other Saints could be found, the instinct that should be leading Dastou to the next one seemingly inactive, no one was there to complain. However, he always felt guilty about having a home and allies and stability; it all seemed like a prize he certainly didn’t earn.

  Dastou shook his head and let his pseudo survivor’s guilt slip away as they took the stairs down. He actually closed his eyes and let his fingers graze the clean ceramic of the walls, finding peace in the way his fingers lightly grazed the cool, untextured material. Earned or not, thank the black for some stability, he thought, despite the fact that today’s events proved he might not have it again for some time.

  “You guys, uh, want a room?” Nes asked halfway down the steps. “I don’t touch a girl with as much love as you touch these walls.”

  “I know,” Dastou said in a cheery tone, seeing the opportunity for some ribbing. “You think I don’t notice how fast women want to run from you when you’re done with them?”

  “Bullshit. I’m a loving person and everyone knows it.”

  “Tell that to my wife,” Captain Hays interjected. “Your last fling was with one of her friends. There’s nothing like trying to finish up some paperwork with a sobbing woman downstairs who had convinced herself that she could change your ways.”

  “Well, um...” Nes started. “I can’t really help that. I’m young and I won’t be tied down is all.”

  “Meanwhile,” Dastou said, “I don’t have to read minds to know you’re already planning on some kind of apology after hearing about that poor la
dy friend just now.”

  “Uh, I mean, what’s wrong with maybe having a chat? Kind of, you know, clearing the air or something.”

  “Do not,” Saan said with authority and a little too much volume.

  Hays had reached the bottom floor and was holding the door from the stairwell halfway open when the two words stopped him.

  “I meant him,” Saan said apologetically. Hays nodded with a smirk and led the way into the hall.

  The stairs near the entry door fed directly down to the medical rooms in the middle level. The corridor they were in now featured eight exam rooms with green plastic curtains instead of doors. The two rooms farthest away from the stairs had surgical bays attached and a pair of first-years stood guard in front of one of those curtains. That’s where they were headed while Saan berated Nes.

  “Do not go see her,” Saan elaborated. “That will possibly make her think you truly can change your ways. If you want to be a slut try not to apologize to the women you have your fun with. It ends up being insulting.”

  “Or at least pick women who also only want to have some fun,” Hays added. “Trust me, there’s plenty of ‘em if my accidental eavesdropping during paperwork sessions is anything to go by.”

  Nes sighed. “Yeah, yeah, okay. No final chats. You old people are bossy.”

  “I am younger than you,” Saan reminded him.

  “And I’m only a decade older,” Hays said. “In my prime, I’d say.”

  “And we’re both twenty-six,” Dastou finished. “No one here is old, you’re just an idiot. I’ll second Saan’s suggestion. The unapologetic asshole route works for the Stroff kid.”

  “Ugh, no!” Nes exclaimed reflexively as they reached the curtained exam room door. “He’s on a much higher level of self-absorbed. I like to think I have a heart.”

  Hays had been laughing meekly since Nes’ outburst, and now softly chuckled as he relieved Private Melk, the pimple-faced boy that was helping in the lobby, and Private Nudrenmbe, a pretty sixteen-year-old girl with dark skin and braided hair. She had a few pimples, too. Both of the young freshman saluted when they were relieved and Melk walked away to the barracks in the connected hallway. Nudrenmbe held her place and handed something to Hays.

  “Evara told me to give this to you, captain,” Nudrenmbe said. “She said it was in one of our guest’s pants pockets.”

  “Thank you,” Hays said. “You know your next assignment, right?”

  “Get more medical supplies and keep helping the people that came into the Blackbrick Diplomatic Center for safety.”

  “Exactly, but clean up first. Shower and change your uniform. Tell Melk to do the same. We need you to make us look good, private.”

  “Yes, sir!” Nudrenmbe said sharply, with a another tight salute. She then walked toward the open barracks section Melk was already in and turned toward her bunk.

  “Those salutes were very earnest,” Dastou noticed.

  “Yes,” Hays said, “because they were to me. Before a year’s through people treat you like their crazy uncle. If they do that to me they’ll be wiping down the outside of the Caravan without any help from the cleaner drones. By the by, good job with that ruse, Saan.”

  “Thank you,” Saan said to him respectfully as everyone slipped past the curtain.

  Inside they found a skinny young woman in dirty, ill-fitting clothes lying unconscious on a paper-lined exam bed. There was a smell lingering in the air, sweet and subtle and instantly recognizable in its uncombined form. It had a few different nicknames, but in most of the Tribeslands it was called hillsleep and used by slave-traders to take victims without too much trouble. That was what the Stroff twins recognized, and whoever used it on this girl must have spilled some on her clothes, too, or the scent would have faded by now.

  “Hmph,” Saan grunted in a contemplative tone. She was the best-trained medical field agent here and went to a drawer to fetch gloves. She put them on and stepped up to the girl.

  “What did Nudrenmbe give you?” Dastou asked Hays.

  “It’s a bracelet,” Hays said while holding up the item.

  The bracelet was made of a mix of black, natural stone beads and brown pearls. Intrigued, Dastou took the jewelry in hand and looked it over. He then walked over to the bed and examined the girl. Pale skin, dirtier than it should be. Her hair was filthy and had lost tone thanks to being outside with all that pulverized concrete. And she was not simply skinny, she was damn near malnourished.

  “She’s all yours,” Hays said. “Best of luck. I’ll get started on manipulating the cameras and copying footage.” With that, the captain stepped out beyond the green curtain and his footsteps faded into the barracks, where he’d head for the elevator and down to the bottom floor where the servers and mass storage were.

  “Saan?” Dastou said while Nes made himself comfortable by leaning against the wall.

  “Her skin is unclean,” Saan responded, “and that is not due to what happened today, where we found her. At best, she bathes in the river, and not every day.”

  That was said with scientific detachment, but the implication made Nes cough in surprise. In a city, you don’t do that sort of thing. You can’t. Say you go on a raging bender one night, you’re still forced into work the next day by a hypnotic hand against your back, hangover or not. Or, if you don’t have to work, you’re made to go home where there would be a shower nearby. You don’t do things like disappear for a day and end up taking a bath in someone’s yard with a hose, or worse, a river. Dastou’s done that, sure, but that was him. The only way this girl could live like that at all is if she was like they suspected the others attackers were: immune to hypnotism.

  “Her hair also proves her lack of regular hygiene,” Saan said with a couple of fingers feeling the long, unkempt strands.

  Dastou had been studying each piece of stone or pearl on the bracelet for several seconds and spoke up when he had an opening. “These pearls were either found by her, or she’s from the Tribeslands,” he said. “This isn’t the type of item that’s for sale, it’s a tribal mark from the Northshore Gatherers clan.”

  “Light-brown skin past the dust and dirt,” Saan said while staring at the girl’s face. “Her eyes are almond-shaped. I agree, it all points to the Northshore.”

  “That is a long way from here,” Nes said. “Either one huge ocean that almost no one crosses or two whole continents the other way. And she’s immune. That’s a recipe for intrigue.”

  Dastou couldn’t have said it better. There were too many small problems with this girl being here in this city at all, let alone at this exact, tragic circumstance and seemingly tied to those that perpetrated the attack.

  “Is if safe to wake her up?” Dastou asked, knowing they were going to have to get her talking for some real information.

  “A moment,” said Saan while checking the patient’s head for trauma. After that came another quick double-check of the body for about a minute and Saan finally responded. “She is well enough, some bruising that looks like it is from being struck by debris, minor bleeding from quite a few small cuts. I will need to administer some treatment before she wakes.”

  “Go ahead,” Dastou said as if Saan was asking for permission. Sometimes pretending like the people you were in charge of were actually waiting on your approval felt good.

  Saan sat on a wheeled stool and rolled to a supply cabinet. She dug into a drawer, fished out a thin spray bottle, and dug into another to grab a paper-wrapped pill. Wheeling herself back to the girl, Saan used the combination disinfectant and painkiller spray on a few small cuts on the girl’s hands. When satisfied, the impromptu nurse threw the used spray can in the self-sealing aerosol disposal bin. Saan moved to the girl’s face with the paper pill in hand and promptly snapped it in half under the patient’s nose.

  Almost immediately, the dirty-skinned girl’s head reacted, jerking in short throws back and forth as if trying to emphatically refuse. She coughed, sniffed, and started breathing fast before slowing
it down and opening her eyes, blinking at the brightness of the lights.

  “Miss,” said Saan when the girl’s eyes opened, “please remain calm. You are under medical care. Take a minute and normalize your breathing for me.”

  The girl looked at Saan, then up at the ceiling as she did what she was told, keeping her eyes half closed while getting use to the light.

  “Good, good,” Saan said with two fingers on the patient’s wrist to check her pulse, “much better. Stay as calm as this and we should not have a problem.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the girl said very quietly, her voice filled with fear.

  “What is your name?”

  The girl’s eyes moved slightly to the other side of the room, not enough to identify who was there but enough to see someone else was watching.

  “Do not worry about them,” Saan said, her professional tone serious and somehow comforting at the same time. “I am your caretaker and they will not interfere. I need you to speak as clearly as you can so that I can determine your mental faculties as well. What is your name?” Saan repeated.

  Dastou could have been doing this examination with the same or better expertise, but his bedside manner was atrocious and everyone knew it. Better to leave it all to Saan, who was handling this with her typical calm.

  “I’m... I’m Trenna. Trenna Geil. What happened to me?”

  An odd question for someone who might be involved in an attempt on the Saint’s life. A slight pause from Saan meant she felt the same way about the question.

  “You do not remember?” Saan asked.

  “Um... not exactly.”

  That was a lie. At least a partial one.

  “Interesting,” Saan said. “Can you sit up and lift your shirt please? I need to check your mid-section.”

  Saan expected the hesitation that came with the command, and in that few seconds the staff sergeant stood up, took a white lab coat off a hook, put it on, and sat back on the wheeled stool. That was a ploy. It was meant to appear as if Saan was in such a hurry to help the girl that she forgot about the coat. Dastou smiled at the use of that trick and at the near-perfect manipulation of Trenna’s reaction, which softened at the sight of the long, perfectly white piece of clothing that was standard for medical professionals.

  When Saan sat back down, Trenna had sat up and turned so she was facing the wall on that side of the room. She was slowly lifting her shirt but wasn’t doing it completely yet.

  “I, um, are they...?” stuttered the girl, whose eyes were toward the floor.

  “Come on,” Dastou said as he tapped Nes’ elbow.

  Nes got the hint and stepped outside the curtain with the Saint. The men waited with their backs to the closed curtain and listened in.

  “Lift your shirt, please,” Saan said one more time.

  The command was harder by a hair that time. For the sake of the ones outside the room, Saan spoke her findings aloud.

  “You are quite thin, miss,” she said. “Am I to assume you do not eat regularly?”

  “I try,” Trenna said. “It’s been harder lately.”

  The tone of the voice hinted that Trenna had a lot more to say and cut it short. In addition, the girl’s voice was a common local accent, practiced and nearly perfected, but hints of something else in her words further proved that she was not originally from here. A few seconds later, Trenna gasped in pain.

  “Hmmm,” Saan murmured. “These small bruises look worse than they truly are. Keep your shirt up for me, please.”

  A few more seconds pass, and the distinctive low sound of a tightly wrapped, stretchy bandage being unwound sifted into the hallway. Nes stared at his nails and was annoyed at something he found there, but he was paying as much attention as Dastou and dissecting every noise.

  “This bandage has a mild painkiller,” Saan explained. “While you have no internal bleeding that I can detect, this will help you be comfortable before we do a more thorough examination to make sure.”

  Dastou listened close to the bandage unwinding more and more for a while, along with the occasional pained noise from the girl as it was wrapped around her abdomen, but there was no complaining or anger or barrage of questions. For someone who was probably a part of the horrific events of the day and whose immunity wouldn’t allow her to be cared for as other city folk would be, Trenna was taking all this shockingly well.

  “Your eyes,” Trenna began, her voice so low that Dastou had to focus to hear her. “Are you, um... in an entourage?”

  “Yes,” responded Saan as she finished with a bandage. “You may come back in,” she added loud enough for the others to hear.

  Dastou went through the curtain and into the medical room with Nes behind him. The patient sitting forward on the exam bed, her profile to the men that walked back in, and yet again avoided looking in their direction. Trenna was told to hold each arm forward and did so. Saan pulled back the arms of the overlarge men’s shirt the girl was wearing and found some more bruising, the kind consistent with a brawl, maybe self-defense. Saan wrapped portions of the arms with similar bandages, though ones with a weaker version of the same painkiller, and then told the girl to put her arms down, which she did without delay. Trenna was following instructions as if she was too afraid to do anything else.

  All of the bandages chosen created a balance that would result in faster healing without numbing body parts so much that it could result in further injury; Saan was very good at this. Dastou and Nes were easily visible, but Trenna was too busy occasionally staring at the floor, the bed, or away at another wall. Dastou’s best guess was that she didn’t want anyone to see enough of her to be identified later. Saan finished by cleaning and disinfecting the remaining minor cuts. The whole thing took about ten quiet minutes.

  Saan looked the girl over one last time and was satisfied with her own work. “I am done with this initial treatment,” Saan-Hu said. “You should be fine, miss. Thank you for being cooperative.”

  “Um, yes. I mean, thank you so much,” she said, looking up respectfully. “It doesn’t hurt very...”

  She cut herself off having now noticed Dastou in her periphery and confirming it with a turn of the head and a longer stare. Her immediate next action was to drop off the bed, ripping the paper-lining in the process, and get on her knees to prostrate herself before him, bowing low. Her forehead almost touched the ceramic floor as her arms were outstretched, palms down. Her fingertips reached for the Saint’s boots, which were over a meter away, and she hastily recited an old verse of worship:

  “To the souls of black vision and serendipity,

  To the scales that balance against blue,

  To those that sail the frightful and unknowable,

  I pledge my mind, my actions, and my bright eyes.”

  Trenna Geil almost spat those words out in her hurry to say them.

  “Stop it!” barked Saan suddenly, the prayer finished so quickly that the administrator’s words were a follow-up. “You are bandaged – such movements will not help your healing process.”

  Trenna was only displaying her beliefs, and was admonished so harshly that she clammed up again. She stayed on her knees, hands on her thighs, her head and eyes down. Nes went to her side and stood her up gently with a hand under her forearm, not allowing her to keep the shamed position. He whispered so low that neither Dastou or Saan could possibly hear, then backed away a step as Trenna sniffed and nodded. The girl dared to look at Dastou again, and he didn’t bother hiding his irritation. He should have, but his deep-seeded distaste for reverence was hard to get over.

  Trenna stammered through an apology. “I... I’m sorry, Your Eminence, I didn’t mean to offend or do anything wrong.”

  Dastou felt like he’d been thrown naked into an icy river: upset and wanting to be anywhere else. Saints typically disliked being worshiped, but as the last one he took that feeling to an entirely new level of discomfort. He had to deal with the political issues stemming from a new sense of independence all over the world la
tely, the feeling coming from the discoveries and exploitation of more and more holes in Social Cypher coverage. He quickly became thankful for those problems due to a coincidental result of being worshiped far less openly. The residents of controlled city-states were believing in themselves more often, in their own ingenuity and creativity, and less in a god that they once thought had some kind of control over the way the world worked. At most, he had to tolerate reverent bows at the waist or clasped hands as he walked by. Sometimes, preferably, there was simple, wordless respect. Dealing with people like Tryst, who think they can manipulate Dastou, is better than having wreaths thrown at his feet at the same time as bar fights grow out of control due to drunken arguments about just how much of a monster he is.

  “My name is Cosamian Dastou, not ‘Your Eminence,’” Dastou said. “You may call me Dastou, or Mr. Dastou, or sir, I don’t care. Anything but some mark of holiness.”

  “Y... yes, sir. I’m sorry. Mr. Dastou.”

  Nes favored the Saint with an unkind glare. Saan turned her head and gave him a similar rebuke. Dastou understood completely, and began to apologize. He liked not being praised, sure, but he was going to have to get better at tolerating it if and when he was.

  The Saint cleared his throat. “Trenna was it?” he said, pretending not to fully remember her name.

  Trenna hesitated, and Nes squeezed her elbow gently for support. “Trenna Geil, yes.”

  “The attack has me upset,” Dastou said, making sure to keep a respectful, empathic air to his voice. Or the closest he had to that combination. “I have to ask, though, what exactly are you doing here? Do you live in the city?”

  “No, sir. I mean yes, but....” Trenna’s hands were shaking slightly. “You said something about an attack. What do you mean?”

  All three gray-tinted-eyed people in the room shifted glares back and forth at each other. Did she really not know?

  Dastou was the one who responded, hoping to continue appearing more personable. “Several people dressed in the same way you are attacked the Blackbrick Diplomatic Center. They set three bombs that hurt and killed a lot of people to get to me. As you can see, I’m perfectly fine, meaning they failed.”

  Trenna’s breath was coming in and out faster, and her eyes were unfocused. She was starting to panic. Again, her responses were strange. If she was part of this tragedy that had killed civilians indiscriminately only to reach a single person, you’d think she’d have more mettle than to panic at the mere mention of the event. In any case, Trenna’s slowly rising panic was not helpful. This girl might be the single useful witness around, and they needed her cogent. Nes put a hand on her shoulder, continuing his gentle guidance of her stress levels. The corporal had several younger sisters and the act of calming a young frightened girl wouldn’t be new to him.

  “It’s alright, Trenna,” said Nes. “We just want to know if you have information that can help us sort this all out. Our friends, the ones who found you, said you were too far from what happened to be a part of it. Just tell us what you know, if anything, please.”

  Trenna looked at the rectangular badge on Nes’ chest, trying to figure out if she should listen to “Corporal Nesembraci Jaydef” at all. Despite the kindness, he wouldn’t be as important to her as Saan-Hu, the woman who bandaged her, or the third stranger in the room, a being she worshiped. Trenna looked at the floor for a long few seconds before she spoke again.

  “The last thing I remember,” she started, “is getting ready to go out and scavenge. I got dressed, was about to leave. Then I was attacked by someone, I don’t know who because he wore a something on every part of his body, down to his fingers. His eyes were hidden by the shadow from a hood, and I didn’t recognize any of the clothing, either. I fought back, I tried to anyway, but I wasn’t strong enough and he threw liquid from a bottle at me. The stuff went all over. Then everything went black.”

  “That would be the hillsleep they used on you,” Dastou said, and he saw that the name of the chemical didn’t confuse her. If she was from the Tribeslands, she’d recognize the tools of the slave trade by every common nickname. “If that was last night,” he went on, “they must have dosed you again a few hours ago – the stuff doesn’t last. Can you tell me, or guess at how you ended up on the street and injured?”

  Trenna hesitated, then spoke through a sob that she did her best to hide. “I think, maybe, I was left there to die.”

  Nes’ eyes opened a little wider at that revelation. “That’s unbelievable. By whom?”

  “By the ones who came for me,” Dastou assumed, answering for Trenna. “And you are one of them.”

  Trenna was doing an admirable, though not perfect, job of keeping her composure. “Yes, sir. They’re my people. I didn’t think they could ever do something like this, but...”

  After a few seconds of silence, Dastou tilted his head at Saan, suggesting she prod the girl to keep going. Nes saw the signal and moved to the side, giving Trenna some space.

  “A lot of people, innocent people, have had their lives ruined or ended because of this,” Saan said. “Go on, please, tell us everything you can. You are the only one that can help us right now. We are afraid this might happen again, and must know more.”

  “Okay,” Trenna said after swallowing to give herself a moment. Again making only fleeting eye contact with any of the three sets of gray-tinted eyes around her, she continued. “Uh, you know the old subway tunnels, the smaller ones? The ones in the main hub station of the city, or what was the main hub, we live there on our own. We’re not under control or influence.”

  “Really?” asked Dastou, earnestly intrigued. “We saw the Cypher ignoring the original attackers and from that knew they were naturals. I had a suspicion they must live in coverage holes, but you don’t. You hide in ruins of the hypnotic system, basically taking advantage of how it works to begin with, what it won’t pay attention to.”

  “Yes, Mr. Dastou. We started finding each other in the city, each living in smaller coverage holes like some alleys, the way you mentioned. When we realized there were so many of us, we decided to live together someplace that would probably never be looked into. Subways were the easy choice. If you say you were attacked by a large group of naturals, then that would have to us.”

  Trenna lowered her head, seemingly in shame. She was on the verge of tears, but Dastou had to ask the next question regardless of her emotional state.

  “Did you know about this bombing ahead of time?”

  Trenna sobbed just once, quickly, and then got control of herself. When she answered, her voice was easily a millimeter away from breaking into pieces, but most others probably would have gone much further than that small sob. “Please, I didn’t want to hurt anyone, Mr. Dastou, even if some of the others did. I had no idea. Let me go, I’ll leave this city and you won’t see me again. I don’t want to be part of whatever happens next to them, I swear I didn’t know...”

  The emotion was expected, though the assumption that could be derived from her words was not. She sounded like she expected to be executed for nothing. Were Saints truly known to be that harsh? To their own worshipers? There were a few of his kind known to have been waking nightmares, but with the others’ desire not to be public figures, those few human monsters could easily make the rest seem like the type that would kill a person for simply knowing about a plot against them.

  Dastou sighed at the implication behind Trenna’s panic and took a step closer to her. “Look, I’m not going to kill you or whatever it is you think I do with my enemies. You’re not that, you’re a witness. In fact, you’re guiding us to those tunnels you mentioned when we’re ready. Anyone else, anyone that comes after me again? I make no promises.”

  “You’re taking me along?” Trenna asked with blank-faced incredulity.

  “Yes, because you’d be useful and don’t seem like trouble. We’re not done with you, though. We have to do a more thorough medical exam, get you clean clothes, and that whole time we’ll be asking you quest
ions. Again, and again, and again. There’s also some video footage of the bombing we’re studying. If you’re lying about anything, we’ll know.”

  “I see,” Trenna’s extended guilt about her people having done this was almost palpable. “I’ll be as helpful as I can be, I swear. If we can stop them from doing this again, or make the ones that did this give themselves up, I’d love to help. Thank you, sir.”

  Dastou nodded at her response while watching as Saan-Hu and Nes gave each other glances that only barely held their skepticism about taking Trenna along. The Saint thought the three choices in this situation were cut and dry. They could bring Trenna along and use her knowledge as best they can. Or, hold her under DSF “authority” and take her away to be questioned. Finally, they could simply treat her wounds and leave her be. The first choice was the only feasible one if they were to find out who these terrorists were as soon as possible.

  Terrorists? Where did that word come from? Dastou was sure it was the right phrase, but he never used it before in any way. He chalked it up to his mental bank and let it be.

  Nes got the girl’s attention again. “Trenna, we’re going to talk for a minute.”

  “Sure, sir, no problem,” she answered.

  The trio moved to the hallway and a few steps closer to the barracks.

  “So tell us the plan,” Nes said, “if this is one of the rare times you have one.”

  Dastou shrugged. “You know me so well, but this time I’ve got at least a few things cooking. Saan, you’re going to finish a complete examination of her. X-rays, MRI, the works. Every piece of random thing we shoved into the Caravan ‘just in case’ – if you can use it on her, do it. Captain Hays has a nearly equivalent medical background to yours and he can spot a lie from an ocean away, and he’ll assist and ask all the questions he feels he should. Nes, you’ll take over Hays’ job and rummage through the surveillance footage.”

  “We cannot leave to retrieve more people,” Saan said, “meaning I assume you do not want any of us splitting off to study this Social Cypher event as we normally would.”

  “Right. We’ve got you two, Hays, the Stroff twins, Crawford, Melk, and Nudrenmbe. That’s a pretty good combination of skills despite most of those people being first-years, but it’s not enough to take even minor risks. If there’s no other concerns, let’s get started.”

  “Sure, bossy-boss,” Nes said approvingly. “I’ll admit, this makes me glad I didn’t play sick for that shitty meeting we were supposed to have.”

  “Me too,” said the Saint, oddly happy to have something to figure out that wasn’t himself or a curriculum.

  ~~~~