John’s face went ashen. “Oh God.”
“He’s alive,” Lea said quickly.
John looked from Lea to Rachel. “What happened?”
“He’s…” She swallowed and forced herself to meet his eyes. “Michael was standing next to some kind of raknoth device when it went off. He’s in a coma.”
“Oh God.” John rocked back on his heels and stumbled back a step to lean heavily against his desk. “When?”
Rachel dropped her gaze to the floor, hot tears brimming in her eyes. “Two days ago. I should have called—I’m sorry—I just… kept waiting. Hoping. But when we realized you were the one who sent that tip up… I wanted to tell you in person. I’m sorry, John.”
He was silent for a long time, his eyes half-lidded.
Finally, he moved forward to pull her into another hug. “It’s okay, Goldfish. I just…”
“He’s going to pull through,” Lea said. Then, looking embarrassed, she added, “I really believe that.”
The smile John tried to force only broke Rachel’s heart that much more.
“Thank you, Lea,” he said. “I know my boy’s a fighter.” He leaned back on his desk and looked around at them. “But you folks didn’t come here to tell me about Michael, did you? You want to know about the ship.”
“John…” Rachel said.
It was no mystery where Michael had learned his martyrdom from. But willing martyr or no, John didn’t need anything else on his plate right now. He needed time to process and—
“We do,” Jarek said. He ignored her sidelong scowl and traded a look with Alaric that made her wonder if they’d discovered their own form of telepathy.
“We’re trying to figure out if this ship is connected in any way to the device that went off a couple nights ago,” Alaric said.
John sat a little straighter. “The same device that…?”
Jarek and Alaric both nodded.
John considered that with a grave, distant expression. “Not sure how much help I can be there. All I have is a few accountings of a strange ship poking around Philly.”
As sure as she was that John needed time to process the news about Michael, his reactions suggested he might prefer a distraction right now, especially one that made him feel helpful and in control. Maybe Jarek and Alaric had already arrived at that conclusion.
“If it is connected,” Rachel said. “I’m hoping this ship might help us find out more about what happened to Michael. Maybe even how we can help him.”
John gave a jerky nod. “Of course. I’ll tell you everything I can.”
“What was so strange about this ship?” Jarek asked.
“Well, one guy who claimed to get a good look at it said it had an odd purple hue to it. He couldn’t seem to find the words to explain what he meant aside from saying it definitely looked like something from out of this world. He described it as being long, wingless, and mostly smooth, with big, uh, bulbous features.”
“Was that not how he phrased it?” Rachel asked, sensing some hesitance.
John shook his head, and his somber expression cracked long enough to blow out a short chuckle. “No. I believe he said it reminded him of a giant ribbed dildo an ex of his used to have.”
Well there was something you didn’t expect to hear your foster father to say about a potentially alien ship.
“Well,” Jarek said, “I think the possibilities just grew infinitely more terrifying.”
“Was there, uh, anything else?” Lea asked. “Mentions of who the ship might’ve belonged to? Or a list of locations sighted?”
John shook his head. “We don’t have much more on the details. But we do have an idea on its rough trajectory. The first reported sighting was in northwest Philly. Then again downtown.”
“So how’d you hear about it over this way?” Rachel asked.
“That’s the thing,” John exchanged a concerned look with Myers. “We haven’t noticed anything suspicious, but according to the last account, that ship was headed straight this way.”
6
Rachel wasn’t exactly expecting to see an alien ship looming just outside of John’s window, but it didn’t keep her head from whipping that way to check after the bomb he’d just dropped. “What?”
“Yeah, come again?” Jarek added.
Myers crossed his arms. “We’ve kept our eyes peeled all morning.”
Rachel consciously refrained from rolling her eyes. Myers was a good guy, but he was quick to get territorial.
“It’s been business as usual around campus,” he continued. “Aside from you guys flying in unannounced, that is. No new entries other than that.”
“Yeah,” Jarek said. “You’re probably right. There’s no way anyone could have snuck over the big scary chain-link fence.”
Myers positively bristled. “Look, pal, I—”
“Guys,” Rachel said. “Not helping.”
Jarek was absolutely right, but Myers already disliked him enough. So instead of saying anything else, Rachel switched off her substitute cloaking pendant and reached out to their surroundings, looking for anything amiss. Anything like, say, a raknoth-class telepath lurking nearby. Nothing immediately jumped out, but that hardly meant all of Unity was clear.
“Is there any reason to think this mystery ship would want to stop around here?” Lea asked. “We are dealing with hearsay, right? And even if we weren’t, the thing always could have changed course or flown right past Unity.”
John nodded. “I expect that’s exactly what happened. Don’t know what interest they’d have in a place like this.”
“Might be hard to say without knowin’ who ‘they’ is,” Alaric said.
“Right on, cowboy,” Jarek said. “And if this phallic monstrosity did just pass on by, that leaves us with a big pile of nothing in the way of leads.”
“I wish I had something more useful to offer,” John said. “And heck, maybe there’s not even anything interesting about the ship, but when three separate contacts I only hear from once every month or two decide to call with the same story… Well, it seemed like it was worth passing on.”
As much more obvious as his initial reaction had been to the news about Michael, it seemed like the weight was only now starting to fully settle on him. It might not have been obvious to everyone, but Rachel could see it in the weary distance of his eyes and the defeated set of his shoulders.
They’d talked enough for now. John needed time to process everything she’d just dropped on him. And regardless of what Myers might think, she needed to sweep Unity for anything otherworldly.
She was just about to propose they give John some time and go take a little tour of the community when Lea spoke up. “We truly appreciate the information, John. But we don’t want to be in your hair too long.” She looked pointedly at the rest of the group.
John, always the martyr, looked like he’d protest.
“I’ll take them out to the market if you want a few minutes,” Rachel said. “Show them the sights. Get some food.” She hesitated. “Unless you’d rather me stay here.”
“I could show them around,” Myers said, finally uncrossing his arms.
John waved Myers back. “That’s not necessary.” He squeezed Rachel’s shoulder. “You go show them around and we can meet back up for an early dinner?” He looked at the others. “Assuming you can all stay that long.”
“I’ve never been known to turn down dinner,” Jarek said.
“That sounds perfect,” Lea said with a warm smile.
“Good then.” John gave her one last lead blanket hug and bid farewell to the others.
Myers followed them back downstairs and out to the front lawn.
“You’re good?” he asked, shooting once last frown in Jarek’s direction.
“We’re good,” she said with what little smile she could manage. “Thanks, Myers.”
He gave her an informal salute. “We’ll see you in a bit then.”
“So,” Jarek said as Myers drove off in
the Gator, “what’s the plan?”
“I figured we could start at the market and find ourselves something tasty for lunch,” she said.
“While you give the place the old Jedi mind sweep?”
She smiled and gave her best innocent shrug. “Maybe while I give the place the old Jedi mind sweep.”
Jarek grinned. “That’s my Goldilocks. Let’s go then.”
That could have been that, but then Jarek offered his arm to her as if he were some manner of fine gentleman.
She considered the arm, unsure how to react. Taking it was technically a possibility, but she couldn’t seem to do anything aside from stare at it as if it were something from another galaxy. She met Jarek’s gaze, aware of Lea stifling a fit of giggles behind them.
Jarek retracted the arm. “Yeesh. You look like you just saw a giant flying dildo or something.”
She snorted. “At least it wasn’t ribbed.”
Jarek grinned. “Always the optimist.”
Alaric coughed behind them, then cleared his throat.
“He raises a fair point,” Jarek said. “Let’s have the tour, princess.”
She sighed and led them around Parrish Hall and past the slightly-less-majestic Kohlberg Hall to the crowded lines of tents and tables in the grassy quad beyond. The lingering tightness in Rachel’s chest began to ease at the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of the market. Then people started to notice them, and a new tightness settled in.
The market served as both a food distribution system for those citizens of Unity like Myers who didn’t already work in food production as well as a trading post for those within the community and those who visited from nearby. It had never been her favorite place on account of the crowd, and the prospect of sweeping her senses through that many minds sounded about as appealing as dancing naked through the busy quad.
But she needed to be sure, so she extended her senses and started for the far corner of the market, where her favorite vendor, sweet old Annie, would be posted with whatever stew or casseroles she’d concocted to see to it that the day’s hungry traders had somewhere to barter their bellies full.
Most of the crowd continued bustling about its business as she moved into it with Jarek at her side, but a fair amount of people parted to let them pass, at least half of them just looking for a better opportunity to stare.
The four of them did make a strange sight, she supposed. Most of these people were probably used enough to seeing her with her extensively glyphed staff, but now here she was walking around with an old cowboy-looking Resistance fighter, a walking tank with a giant sword strapped to his back, and… well, Lea wasn’t really odd in any way, but she drew plenty of stares—especially male ones—all the same.
Jarek and Lea looked almost as baffled by the spectators as the spectators were by them. It took Rachel a few seconds to realize that neither one of them was used to seeing this level of prosperity and peace between humans anymore.
Lea looked pleasantly surprised. Jarek looked at the place like it was already burning and all these good people just didn’t know it yet.
Rachel swore she could see the wheels turning in his head. Maybe the marauders would finally attack with enough force to overwhelm them. Maybe some other disaster would leave them with the kind of famine that could make a community tear itself apart. Something terrible had to happen at some point, right?
Maybe she was simply projecting her own fears onto Jarek’s convenient pessimism.
She followed Lea over to look at a few trinkets at one trader’s table and half-heartedly exchanged what she hoped was pleasant small talk with the trader, whose name escaped her. Jarek and Alaric waited for them, silently watching the crowd.
Alaric looked far less flabbergasted by all of this, but that made sense. He’d been in Deadwood for the past five years, up in the mountains with his own little isolated community. His people had probably bartered and gotten along in much the same way. She didn’t blame him for wanting to get back to it.
Lea indicated her curiosity was sufficiently scratched, and they moved back into the throng.
They were about two-thirds of the way through the market when she felt it: the flare of another telepathic mind, like a roaring bonfire in a field of tiny candles. And it was close.
She froze in mid-step, yanking her mental defenses into place.
There were no other telepaths in Unity—not since the two arcanists who’d helped train her for a short time had moved on. So who the hell was that?
With one hand ready on her cloaking pendant, she extended herself more cautiously this time, keeping her defenses tight, and scoped in on that bonfire to find out.
“What is it?” Jarek asked quietly beside her.
She was too busy scanning through the crowd of faces to answer. She allowed her senses to guide her eyes, dialing in on the telepathic presence.
Not him. When had the crowd gotten so thick? Not her. Maybe—
The blazing-bright presence disappeared completely and without warning.
A cloak? That was the only logical explanation, which meant she’d have to spot them the old-fashioned way, with—
There.
He was twenty feet away, standing completely still in the middle of the heavy foot traffic yet not seeming to be in anyone’s way. He looked a few years younger than her, with mussed brown hair and the hint of a beard clinging to his sharp jawline.
More importantly, he was staring straight at her.
He turned away almost as soon as their eyes met and moved into the crowd, headed in the direction they’d come from.
“That guy?” Jarek asked. “Pretty boy?”
He really didn’t miss much, did he?
She could give him credit another time. Right now, they needed to catch that kid.
“Get your running legs on,” she said. “He’s a telepath, and I don’t know where the hell he came from.”
“So much for that lunch,” Jarek said, moving into the crowd beside her.
The market-goers, apparently sensing some urgency to their movements, gave them an even wider berth than they had on the way in. It should have been all they needed to make up ground on Pretty Boy, but he was working through the throng ahead as quickly as if it had been open field, moving with a dancer’s grace as he weaved and wound through bodies and rogue limbs.
“He’s gonna run,” Jarek said. “As soon as he gets around the corner of that building ahead.”
“How do you know?”
“Please. I know the look of someone who’s about to run just as well as I know the look of someone who wants to be followed.”
Ahead, Pretty Boy broke through the edge of the crowd and headed to the right of Kohlberg Hall.
“And you don’t seem worried about either of these things because?”
“Mostly because I can top sixty in this bad girl and I’m not half bad at fighting my way out of hairy situations.”
“You forgot your god-like powers of modesty,” she mumbled as they broke the edge of the crowd and followed after the stranger. A quick glance back told her they’d lost Lea and Alaric, but there wasn’t time to worry about that now.
The instant Pretty Boy disappeared around the corner of Kohlberg, Jarek surged forward to make up lost ground. Rachel cut right to get their target back in sight and broke into a run herself as Jarek tore across the open lawn.
Jarek, as he so often frustratingly was, had been right. Pretty Boy was running, and fast. So fast he almost didn’t look human.
He glanced back as Jarek rounded the building after him, then he hung an early right, gathered himself, and leapt thirty feet straight up to the rooftop of the Lang building.
“Okay,” she muttered.
That decisively closed the door on whether they were dealing with a normal human.
Jarek, aided by Fela and apparently not one to be shown up in a foot chase, launched himself up after Pretty Boy.
And there she was, she realized, just watching it all happen. Sh
e cursed herself and set off around the Lang building at a sprint. At the far corner, she hesitated, wondering whether they’d passed over the building or if they were duking it out on the rooftop.
A loud crack from the woods ahead answered that question.
The sound could have passed for a gunshot, but the subsequent stream of smaller crashes and rustling sounds identified it as a falling tree. Rachel readied herself to channel and scrambled down the small hill and into the trees.
Just past a fallen tree, Jarek was bearing down on Pretty Boy, who backpedaled through the foliage with eerily sure-footed grace, ducking and twisting clear of each grab Jarek made for him.
She loped after them, gathering her will.
“We just wanna talk, you little weasel!” Jarek said. “How the hell are you—Agh!”
Pretty Boy swept a hand through the air, and Jarek’s feet swept out from under him as if a giant invisible broom had taken them.
So it was an arcanist they were dealing with?
“Tricksy little weasel.” Jarek kipped back to his feet and lunged forward with a heavy punch.
Pretty Boy caught the punch with a bare hand.
Rachel had seen Jarek cave men’s chests in with blows like that. She’d watched him wrestle with an uber-strong raknoth and throw grown men around like pillows. With Fela, Jarek was stupid strong. And this kid had just blocked his punch with little more than a grimace.
Jarek’s faceplate was closed, but his shock was clear enough as he looked from Pretty Boy to their joined hands and back again. “Who the fuck are you?”
By way of reply, Pretty Boy drove an open palm into Jarek’s armored chest. This time, Rachel’s senses were extended far enough to feel the enormous pulse of energy Pretty Boy channeled.
Jarek, she could only assume, felt it even better when Pretty Boy let the energy loose in a telekinetic blast that sent Jarek rocketing through the air. He crashed into a tree twenty feet later.
Rachel leveled her staff and focused her will for her own telekinetic attack, banking on the fact that Pretty Boy would be too drained to do much about it.
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 29
