Children of the Sky (The Talari Subversion Book 1)

by Houston V. Grant

  “Don’t look now, but our friend is back,” I said, looking away from Chaudry.

  When I gave her the all-clear, Tatiana looked where I indicated.

  “He sees us,” she said, with a staged smile so as not to alert their watcher.

  I kissed her lips and then her neck to hide whispering in her ear. “I still don’t think he knows its us,” I said, “but I don’t like coincidences. Let’s go.”

  Chaudry couldn’t believe it. He’d found the two Enlil he was looking for. Hearing them talk about him was almost surreal. He considered how fateful this whole thing was—if he hadn’t heard them say his name on the platform, he never would’ve noticed them. He wouldn’t even think to look at them and definitely wouldn’t be paying any attention to their conversation now. He couldn’t resist smiling a little bit, but otherwise he pretended that he didn’t notice them. They could pretend; he could too.

  He saw the agents approaching the couple, coming up the path from both sides, looking totally inconspicuous. He knew his mission was just to find and report, but he hoped they needed help with the takedown.

  Tati and I stood up and started to walk away. I glanced over at Chaudry, who was pointedly looking elsewhere. Tati and I set a quick pace, but not so fast as to appear that we were running. We quickly turned up a narrow side street and put some distance between us, then ducked into a little store to get our plan together in privacy.

  “Let’s split up here,” I said. “I’ll go get our stuff from the locker and meet you at the bus station.”

  We stepped out into the empty street and kissed before turning to go.

  I’d gone about 15 yards when a hand grabbing my shoulder shocked me and I turned to see a six-foot tall Frenchman.

  “Denis!” he exclaimed in French “I thought that was you. Where have you been? I haven’t seen you since Jean’s party.”

  Caught off guard, I started to say that he had me confused with someone else, but he kept right on.

  “I was just talking to Claudette about you. She’s trying to get funding for this venture she’s working on and I was telling her about those American investors you were connected with? What ever happened with that anyway?”

  I was shaking my head no when he jabbed me with some kind of shock device in his other hand. I was so focused on the words pouring from his mouth that I hadn’t noticed it. Even insulated by my chumahai, I convulsed from the shock. Tati had been watching the exchange with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, but my pained reaction to the physical attack pushed her firmly into a defensive posture.

  “What are you doing to him?” she yelled, rushing to us. I tried to raise my arms to grab the guy, but I couldn’t. My movements were labored and the pins and needles sensation was spreading throughout my body. I tried to yell, but all that came out was a hissing sound.

  Tati’s worried eyes caught mine.

  “Weapon!” I managed to say. “Enki.”

  Whatever confusion she had before dissipated immediately upon hearing those words. Even though we were on a quiet side street, my assailant didn’t want to attract any attention. He grabbed at Tati, trying to tag her before she could react, but he wasn’t fast enough.

  Tati grabbed his wrist and yanked hard, dragging him down in front of her. Whatever he was expecting her to do, it wasn’t that, and he was totally unprepared. She grabbed him so violently that he dropped the device and it clattered to the ground at my feet. As he passed by, she punched the heel of her right palm into the back of his shoulder. He recovered just quickly enough to spin in the direction of her blow and avoid having his shoulder broken. Without pause, Tati was already following up the move and as he turned to face her, she hammered his solar plexus with her fist. He sputtered and stepped back, but came at her again. This was not the JV team. Tati tried to dance to the side to give herself more room, but he was on her too fast. He grabbed her hands and tried to redirect her movement, but she was a lot stronger than he thought and they struggled against each other for a few moments. My movement was starting to return and I reached out to activate a shield, but I couldn’t. I was still down. I looked for the device he’d dropped. The guy spun Tati around and slammed her into the wall, knocking her breath away.

  “Hey asshole!” I bellowed out with as much strength as I could muster to distract him before he could do more.

  He kept his grip on her, but turned to look at me. That was just the break Tati needed. She slipped free from his grasp and stepped aside. He tried to counter her, but her chumahai-enhanced movement was too fast. Before he could turn, she kicked the side of his knee and was rewarded with a sickening snap. He screamed and collapsed to the ground. Tati kicked him in the head and knocked him out cold.

  “We gotta get out of here,” she said. “Can you walk?”

  The sensation had mostly returned by that point and I flexed my fingers and toes to check the feeling. I nodded. “Yeah. I’m still a little gimpy, but I can move.”

  We got lucky—the idiot that attacked us thought we’d be easy marks and he’d get bonus cred for bringing us down by himself, so he hadn’t told any of his buddies where he was or what he was doing. It gave us a bit of a headstart in getting away. My feet were still numb, so walking was awkward, but I limped along. “They’re gonna be watching the main streets,” I said. “We should stick to side streets as much as possible. “

  “No shit,” Tati replied without sparing a glance.

  “And they know what we look like now. Can you change our appearance?”

  “Already done.” She watched me hobble along for a moment and grimaced. “I made you look like a three-legged dog. Come on, Rover.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “I prefer Fido,” I said with a straight face.

  She patted me on the head and walked on. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Wait, did you really make me look like a three-legged dog?” I asked.

  She just smiled and shrugged. “When you start walking like normal, maybe I’ll upgrade you. But if I have to tell you to come one more time, I’m gonna find a rolled up newspaper and show you what’s what.”

  We crept from one little alley to another, trying to angle our way back to the center of the city and look like we weren’t creeping. It amazed me how easy it was to find empty streets even though it was the middle of the day on a Tuesday.

  “I still don’t know how they found us,” Tati said. “You shipped the old caduceus away, so it couldn’t be that. Unless it left some kind of residue they could detect.”

  “It was Chaudry—he spotted us somehow. The other guy must have been backup. When Chaudry pointed us out he followed us.” I was trying to convince myself as much as I was trying to convince her. I hoped the agents didn’t have some new way to find us. “We can still make it,” I said. “If Chaudry’s the only one who can see us—however he did it—we just gotta stay out of his way.” I checked the time again. “But we gotta move faster. Our bus is in 75 minutes.”

  “Who’s we, Rover?” Tati said. “We can move faster as soon as you move faster.”

  I had that one coming. “I’m going as fast as I can,” I said. “I can barely feel my limbs, it makes it kind of hard to walk.” Not even the chumahai was helping. My muscles all felt like liquid and my batteries were low, but I picked up my pace anyway. “And it’s Fido.”

  Hopping down back alleys and side streets, we were finally able to cross several main streets taking us closer to the station, but it was taking too long.

  “We just have to leave our stuff,” I said. “We’re not going to make it to the train station and then to the bus in time. Not at this pace.”

  Tatiana sighed. “What time is it now?”

  I looked at my phone again. “It’s quarter to six. We’ve got to be there in an hour. If we head straight there we can make it. But we have to go now.”

  Tatiana agreed and we headed towards the bus station. We’d only gone a couple of streets over when I felt eyes on me. Cautiously, I stopped and looke
d around. To my great relief, I didn’t see anyone looking, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. I was moving better now.

  “I don’t want to be a dog anymore,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t make you look like a dog, dummy. Stop worrying about that and let’s get to the bus, please?”

  She went around the next corner with me on her heels and froze. There were two guys at the other end that we’d definitely seen when we were sitting by the river. They were looking in all the storefronts and doors that they passed—clearly looking for us. Tati took my hand.

  “We’re still concealed right?”

  “Yes, honey,” she said in that overly sweet way that let me know the question annoyed her. “We’re police now.”

  “Okay, let’s just walk by them. We got this.”

  And we did just that. They barely even glanced at us as we went by and rounded the corner.

  “Not bad at all,” I said. I reached out to check if my bioelectric ability was stronger yet. It was a little better. “I’m back,” I said to Tati as I put up a shield and Electrosensed around myself.

  “Oh yeah?” Tati said. “All recharged and ready for round two?”

  I chose to ignore the comment. “It’s pretty much a straight shot from here. Let’s go.”

  Chaudry didn’t know it, but he was less than a hundred yards away from the pair he was looking for. The two had disappeared into the maze of streets that was the Ile de la Cité. Chaudry and the others had dispersed to find them, but no luck so far.

  They’d found Rolf, the 6’3” Swede, unconscious outside a little dressmaker’s shop. A crowd had gathered and an ambulance was en route when they found him, so no one showed any indication of knowing him. Chaudry figured that they were close to their quarry, but the trail went cold after that.

  He listened and looked for any sign of their passing, but there was nothing. They’d just…disappeared. He watched the others closely with his newly-enhanced vision. If he looked a certain way, he could see a faintly glowing trail where their steps had been for a couple of feet after they passed. It disappeared within a few seconds and at first he thought it was a trick of light, but as he tried it more, he became certain that he was really seeing their passing. It wasn’t sensitive enough to discern between different people, and the trails only extended for a few steps, but it would definitely be useful at some point. He also realized that when he looked closely, he could see the little vibrations people’s muscles made under their skin, even when they were being perfectly still. He could almost see their emotions just by looking closely. The one they called Gilles gave off a very calm external demeanor, but Chaudry could tell by looking closely that it was a front. Gilles was actually very nervous. Chaudry didn’t know why, but he was certain of what he was seeing.

  “They can’t have just disappeared,” Gilles was saying. “They’re not magicians. No matter what objects they might have, they can’t fly away. If they could, they would.” He turned to Chaudry. “What do we need to look for? You spotted them out before, what did you see?”

  “I saw them in the train station earlier and I heard them talking,” Chaudry said. “I didn’t recognize them otherwise. I don’t know any more than you do at this point.”

  And then he heard something. A low buzzing hum, barely audible at the edge of his perception—but clearly there. He focused his listening. It sounded almost like a generator, but fainter. He considered what he could be hearing. An air compressor maybe. But why had it just started now? The sound was moving now, slowly, away from them. He turned to the others.

  “I hear something,” he said. “It might be nothing, but we should check it out.”

  Even though his hearing was enhanced, he couldn’t just follow the sound like a bat. He kept losing it in the background noise and had to stop every so often to focus. Sometimes it seemed the sound was getting louder, then it would fade away again, but bit by bit they were moving closer. After a while, the sound was stationary and they made up the distance. He could hear it much more clearly now—a pulsing energetic hum. He still had to focus to pick it out, but it was possible. They turned into a narrow street. “It’s coming from up ahead. Just around that bend, I think.”

  They split into two groups. Four guys went around the block to come up from the other side and two stayed with Chaudry. Chaudry and his crew rounded the bend just as the others were turning into the street. There were only a few other people there—three teenagers who probably should have been in school, a skinny girl changing the display in front of a shop, and a pair of police officers further up the street walking away.

  Chaudry focused his attention. He was pretty sure the sound was coming from one of the officers. Maybe it was their radio giving off an electric hum. Their backs were to him, so he focused on them hard. Something didn’t seem right, but he couldn’t pin it down. Then he saw it—a kind of shimmer, barely perceptible—in the uniform of the female cop. He looked harder, thinking it may have just been a trick of the light. Then he saw it again, and more clearly this time. There was a little glitch in their appearance, just a millisecond of visual static. He didn’t know how they were concealing their identity, but they were. These were the people he was looking for.

  Tati and I nodded to the guys coming towards us on the street and they nodded back. The two nearest us were laughing and talking over each other, but the third had an annoyed smirk on his face. I assumed he was the object of their laughter and was less amused than they. Tati tripped on a loose stone in the street and I grabbed her arm to steady her, which pulled her within my shield. Almost at the same moment something slammed into my shield. It was the same energy weapon the guy in Barcelona had and the shot hit me square on. My shield held, but the impact stung like fouling off a hard pitch.

  My caduceus was out before I even turned.

  “Tati, run!” I sent out an Electric push, but my batteries weren’t fully charged. It was enough to throw them back, but didn’t do much beyond that. My attempt at zapping them was similarly pitiful.

  We spun and ran.

  A man and a woman stepped in front of us and the woman fired another of the energy shots at me. I dodged the blast well enough and we ducked into the next alley and ran, aiming to turn down the smaller street that intersected up ahead. We turned the corner just as our pursuers turned into the alley we were evacuating.

  This new street was shorter and much narrower, barely wide enough for the two of us running abreast. At the other end, there was a garbage truck backing across the intersection—it would block us in if we didn’t make it. We ran as fast as we could, but we didn’t make it.

  “What now?” Tati asked, looking around.

  “Here,” I said, running to a pair of metal doors flush with the street. “There’s a cellar.” I lifted the door, revealing the stairs underneath. Tati went down with me right behind her. We closed the door moments before the agents turned into the alley. It was just a small storage space, maybe twelve feet deep and five wide, but it was enough to get us off the street and give us a hiding place. I felt a little silly letting my shield go, but I was trying to be as quiet as possible and it seemed like it would make noise.

  We moved far enough away from the stairs that we couldn’t make out clearly what was being said, but I heard the gist of it.

  “We lost them again,” one guy was saying. I could hear the garbage truck starting to rumble off and another one of the crew yelling at it to hurry the fuck up.

  “They haven’t gone far,” the woman was saying now.

  “Are you kidding?” one of the men said. “Did you see how fast they ran? If that fucking truck hadn’t blocked us in I’d say you’re right, but they’re gone now. There’s no point in pecking around here, they’re probably headed to the airport or the Gare du Nord. We should just head there and try to cut them off. Call the others and tell them we’ll meet them.”

  They started off. And then my phone buzzed. Just a single chime—an email—but
I froze anyway.

  “Wait a minute,” a voice I recognized as Chaudry said.

  Had he heard it? No, he couldn’t have. It wasn’t that loud and we were down in a cellar. Tati gave me an irritated glance. I didn’t even see how I got signal down in the cellar, but apparently, I did. I couldn’t resist pulling it out to see what it was. FedEx delivery confirmation for the caduceus I’d shipped away.

  I saw Chaudry direct his attention to the cellar and paused. He’d heard the chime.

  I listened with trepidation as the agents on the street suddenly got quiet, then the cellar doors opened. I pushed Tati behind me and put my shield back up, bracing for the coming fight. I didn’t have much juice left.

  They rushed the steps and I zapped the first guy as hard as I could. The weapon the woman used had fucked up my bioelectric capacity. My shock was weak. Strong enough to knock him back, but it wasn’t going to work as a weapon now.

  “I thought you were ready for round two,” Tati said.

  “Fucking FedEx,” I grumbled, more to myself than to anyone else.

  And then it hit me. My package had been delivered. My package containing the ancient caduceus.

  I put all the energy I had left into the shield as another blast from the electro weapon slammed full force into it. My knees buckled, but the shield held. I zapped back a couple of times to keep them off guard and hoped they didn’t notice how weak my shots were.

  “This better work,” I said as I opened a travel channel to the old caduceus. I really hoped I’d left it active. I’d traveled to it when it was in the cave and I hoped to hell it would work now. I pulled Tati to me and initiated the transfer. Another hit slammed my shield and staggered us back. I wouldn’t be able to stand another. Then came the flash and the falling sensation. Falling had never felt so good.