Dark Survivor Echoes of Love

by I. T. Lucas

  Naturally, Turner’s people hadn’t known that they had been keeping tabs on immortals, and even if one of them had noticed something strange, they weren’t the kind of humans who talked. Ex-commandos knew to keep their mouths shut.

  Just before the raid, their own Guardian team was going to do the last check. Using electromagnetic radar equipment, they were going to count bodies and make sure that all the Doomers were accounted for.

  A block away from the apartment building, Magnus and Anandur stopped where several Guardians were already waiting.

  No one talked.

  A few minutes later, when everyone was in place, the chief’s voice came through Magnus’s earpiece as well as everyone else’s. “One last test before we go in. Tap your earpiece if you can hear me.”

  48

  Anandur

  “Okay, I have everyone tuned in,” the chief said through Anandur’s earpiece. “Our team has verified that all twenty Doomers and thirty-one humans are in the building. The Doomers are on the bottom floor, and the humans are on the second. You’re clear to go.”

  There were a total of ten two-bedroom apartments in the crappy old building, five downstairs and five upstairs. The twenty-two Doomers shared the bottom five, and the thirty-one humans shared the top ones.

  The beauty of this arrangement was that the five ground level entry doors faced the street, with the Doomers’ cars parked in front of them, so there was no hallway with a creaking floor to traverse. It was concrete all the way.

  This part of the raid was going to be so easy that it was almost disappointing. The Guardians assigned to the warehouse were going to have so much more fun.

  It wasn’t fair, but that was the life of a Guardian. If Anandur wanted to call the shots, he should’ve vied for the chief’s position. But since he wasn’t interested, he had to abide by Onegus’s decisions of who went where.

  Besides, the chief wasn’t taking part in the fun either. Onegus was sitting in the control van together with William and monitoring everything via cameras that Turner’s people had attached to the utility poles outside the building. Once the mission started, William was also going to launch his drones.

  At the rate technology was advancing, Anandur was sure that pretty soon warriors would become obsolete. Battles would be fought from afar by pimpled teenagers with joysticks because this would happen way before they found a cure for acne.

  As the five teams of Guardians took position in front of the five doors, the one holding the bump key in each team did the honors of opening the way.

  Anandur and Magnus had gotten the commander’s apartment, which housed only him and his second.

  Crouching by the door, Magnus used his bump key for breaking and entering, doing it almost soundlessly, which was quite impressive.

  As soon as they had the door open, they rushed inside. In the couple of seconds it took Anandur to reach the bedroom, his Doomer had woken up and bolted out of bed, making Anandur so happy he was ready to kiss the dude before biting him.

  The guy didn’t wait for Anandur to launch his attack, leaping three feet in the air and using his momentum to topple Anandur down.

  Anandur didn’t fight it, letting himself fall back with the Doomer on top of him. But the Doomer’s victory didn’t last long. A millisecond before hitting the floor, Anandur flipped them both around and landed on top of the Doomer, immobilizing him immediately.

  “It was a good fight, buddy.” Anandur smiled down at the Doomer’s shocked expression. “But you’re out.”

  The guy struggled, trying to get free of Anandur’s grip, but it was no use. Once down, it was game over. No opponent had ever succeeded in dislodging Anandur’s grip, not Bhathian with all his muscles, and not Dalhu with his formidable size and strength.

  Well, there was that one time when he’d been distracted by Wonder during training, but that had been a fluke and was never going to happen again.

  As the Doomer realized it was over, he closed his eyes in resignation.

  For some reason, Anandur felt magnanimous. “Don’t worry, buddy. You’re just going to sleep for a very long time.”

  The Doomer’s eyes popped open. “You’re not going to kill me?”

  “You’re going into stasis.”

  The lack of comprehension in the Doomer’s eyes was pathetic. Those suckers were told nothing.

  “As I said. Long sleep.” He hissed before sinking his fangs in the guy’s neck.

  Contrary to what he’d told Magnus, Anandur was very careful. He listened to the Doomer’s heartbeat slowing, and retracted his fangs before it stopped.

  One day this Doomer would get to live again. Lifting the guy over his shoulder, Anandur checked the other bedroom, but Magnus and his Doomer were already gone. He hadn’t heard any sounds of struggle coming out of there, which meant that Magnus got the guy while he was sleeping.

  As Anandur emerged from the building with a Doomer draped over his shoulder, Magnus tapped his earpiece. “That’s the last one,” he said.

  “I was the only one that encountered resistance?”

  “Seems so.”

  “Good work, people,” Onegus said in his ear.

  Right. As if it had been any challenge at all.

  Anandur climbed to the back of the truck and laid down his cargo next to his buddies. There were twenty of them. Scanning for Grud, at first Anandur didn’t recognize him. A trim had changed the way the Doomer looked.

  As per Onegus’s instructions, Anandur stripped every last stitch of clothing from his Doomer, checked him for any trackers that might have been glued to his body, and then dressed him in the nylon pants and long-sleeved shirt that were designed not to disintegrate during his long rest in the catacombs. All the other Doomers had been given the same treatment.

  Jumping down, Anandur stuffed the Doomer’s clothing in a trash bag, wiped his hands on his pants, and then reached for the sanitizer he kept in his back pocket.

  He tapped his earpiece before rubbing his hands. “What about the other team?”

  “They are done as well,” Onegus said.

  “Any money found?”

  “Your brother is working on the safe.”

  “Let me know. I’m curious.”

  Onegus chuckled. “Will do.”

  Magnus pulled down the back door and put a lock on it, then walked over to the front and handed the key to Gregor who had been chosen to drive the Doomer cargo all the way to the keep.

  “Don’t forget to stop by the warehouse and collect the other two,” he told the guy.

  “I won’t.” Gregor turned on the ignition and pulled out into the street.

  Casting a look at the upper floors, Anandur was glad to see that no lights were on. Evidently, the humans had slept through the raid with none any the wiser. But then Yamanu had been shrouding the entire area, and they’d been affected as well. Hopefully, the shrouding hadn’t compounded the damage to their brains.

  Shrouding wasn’t as invasive as thralling, but it must’ve had some effect.

  Now the question was how to wake them up and tell them that they were going on a surprise plane trip.

  Thralling them again was out of the question.

  “The bus is on its way,” Onegus said in Anandur’s ear.

  It was time for phase two of the mission.

  Shai had rush ordered T-shirts for all thirty-one humans, the five guardians who were going to accompany them on the bus trip, and extras for the Guardians who were going to assist in herding the humans into the bus. The words Fabulous Retreat were printed in thick yellow letters on the blue fabric just below the rays that extended from the illustrated yellow sun.

  “So what now?” Magnus asked as the bus pulled into the spot the truck had vacated.

  “Now I’m going to look for a T-shirt in my size.”

  “I mean after that. How are we going to herd the humans out?”

  Anandur shrugged. “I’m going to knock on the door, and the moment it’s open, I’m going to shout,
Surprise! You won an all-expenses-paid vacation in the picturesque Ojai.”

  Magnus smoothed his hand over his goatee. “What if it doesn't work and they get scared?”

  “Then we pick them up, carry them to the bus, and call Yamanu to the rescue. He can sing them a lullaby to calm them down.”

  Magnus quirked a brow. “A lullaby?”

  “Yeah, why not? Or he can just tell them a story. It doesn’t matter. All they need in order to calm down is to hear his voice.”

  49

  Wonder

  “Ready to go?” Kri asked.

  Wonder removed her apron and tucked it under the counter. “When are we going to be back?”

  “I don’t want to be stuck in traffic so we will probably leave there at around two and arrive back here around three.”

  Since immortals required much less sleep than humans and didn’t tire as quickly, their standard workday was longer than that of humans. Wonder’s shift at the café was usually eleven hours, from seven in the morning to six in the evening, which meant that she could put in only a total of four hours today.

  No complaints, though. She was happy to have something to keep her busy, and Carol was a lot of fun to work with. Besides, the café was a perfect place to meet everyone. Her acclimatization to the village would’ve never been so fast and so easy otherwise.

  “I feel weird about taking more than half a day off. I just started working here.”

  Carol waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. You need to get out of here once in a while.” She gave Wonder a shove. “Go.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be back at four.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Take the rest of the day off.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, go have fun.” Carol waved both hands in a shooing motion.

  “So, how is life here treating you?” Kri threaded her arm through Wonder’s. “I see you in class, but you usually rush out before we have a chance to chat.”

  That was probably about to change.

  After last night’s fiasco, she doubted Anandur would be waiting outside Kri’s classroom to walk her home. But that was not something she wanted to share with her self-defense instructor.

  Already, too many people knew about Anandur and her.

  “It has been only a week since I came to the village, but it feels like I’ve been here for much longer.”

  Kri pressed the button for the elevator. “It’s easy to get used to good things.”

  That was true. Wonder was never going back to her old life. There was nothing for her there. With or without Anandur, the village was her new home.

  The first ten minutes or so of the drive to Ojai passed in awkward silence. Kri wasn’t much of a talker, and neither was Wonder. Everyone assumed that the two of them would become friends because supposedly they were both warrior women, but Wonder didn’t think of herself as one, and the reality was that she and Kri had little in common.

  Out of all the clan females she’d gotten to know, Wonder liked Carol the best. Amanda was still too intimidating, and Syssi was the leader’s wife, so in a way, she was intimidating too. There were a few others that had stopped to chat and seemed nice enough, but Wonder didn’t really click with any of them.

  Maybe she needed to get to know them better.

  “I’m totally bummed about being excluded from the raid,” Kri said. “Even though I understand why.”

  “I heard that Kian doesn’t allow you to participate in confrontations with Doomers.”

  “That too. But this time it wasn’t about that. Kian said that I lacked the necessary equipment, meaning fangs. They put all of the Doomers in stasis.”

  Wonder turned to look at her. “You have news from the raid?”

  Kri nodded. “Naturally. Even though I don’t have a dick or fangs, I am still a Guardian. I have access to all of the communications.”

  “Is everyone all right?”

  Kri smirked. “Of course they are. Onegus, that’s our chief, assigned one Guardian for every Doomer. There is no way anyone could’ve gotten hurt, and that includes the Doomers.”

  Wonder relaxed in her seat. “But they are practically dead, aren't they?”

  “That’s not how I see it. I think of stasis as a chance of someday starting a new life. One day, when their leadership finally gets overthrown, we can revive a few and see if we can rewrite their programming.”

  “Why do you have to wait for their leadership to fall? Can’t you rewrite their programming now?”

  Kri smiled indulgently. “No, Wonder, we can’t. We don’t know how, yet. As long as the Brotherhood’s main stated goals are the clan’s destruction and gaining complete control over humanity, we can’t risk it.”

  Wonder spent the rest of the drive to Ojai pondering the why of it.

  Following Vanessa’s instructions, she’d done some reading, or rather listening, and what she was learning about the world was not all sunny.

  Why would one group of people want to control another? Why couldn’t everyone just mind their own business and take care of their own families? What was the driving force behind wanting to subjugate others and make their lives miserable? What made people murder innocents for no other reason than them believing in something else?

  It didn’t make any sense to her. There was no logical explanation. The bottom line was that good people didn’t want to make others suffer. They didn’t want to take away people’s rights and dictate to them how to live their lives, brainwashing them to believe that the only way to live was their way.

  Maybe she was just a simple girl who didn’t know much about the world and its politics, but she thought herself capable of distinguishing between good and evil, between freedom and oppression, between the sanctity of human life and human rights and the disregard of both.

  One didn’t need to be a genius to figure that out.

  The big question that bothered her, though, was what part she could take in fixing wrongs or contributing to the spread of rights.

  As an individual, there wasn’t much she could do, but according to Anandur, the clan was dedicated to doing just that. Their goals were to correct the wrongs and to spread the kind of freedoms and opportunities the citizens of the western countries enjoyed to everyone on the globe.

  In the simplest of terms, helping out the clan meant helping out the world.

  Did working in the café count, though?

  As a Guardian, she could probably contribute more. But she didn’t want to be a soldier. Maybe there were other ways she could contribute?

  “What are you thinking about so hard?” Kri chuckled. “The furrow between your eyebrows is as deep as Wonder Woman’s.”

  Touching her finger to the crease, she massaged it away. The actress who played that role had an impressive frown.

  “Do you think I should become a Guardian? Is that the best way I can contribute to the clan?”

  “No.” Kri surprised her. “You have excellent fighting instincts, and you are incredibly strong, but you don’t have the heart for it. You’re too soft.” She cast Wonder a sidelong glance. “I don’t mean it as an insult. It’s just the way it is. We can’t change who we are on the inside.” She touched her heart. “I enjoy a good fight. I’m looking forward to it. You, on the other hand, would do anything to avoid one, and not because you’re afraid of getting hurt. You’re afraid of hurting others.”

  Wonder let out a puff of breath. “Thank you. You’re the first one who gets it.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So what do you think I should do? Is working in the café the best I can do?”

  Kri smiled. “Most people would’ve told you if that is what you enjoy, then why not. But I’m not most people. I think you could and should do more than that.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. You need to expose yourself to more things to find out. You can become a self-defense trainer without becoming a Guardian. I didn’t expect it, but teaching those rescued gi
rls how to defend themselves gives me a lot of satisfaction. And you have no idea how good it feels to know that I’m a role model for them.”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  “Or you can study something. Take Amanda, for instance. She was a spoiled party girl who did nothing with her life. Then one day she decided it was time to grow up and do something beneficial for the clan. She chose to tackle the most important problem we face, which is finding suitable partners we can build a life with. In order to find a way to identify Dormants, she went to college and became a freaking neuroscience professor.”

  “That’s very impressive. But I don’t think I’m as smart as Amanda.”

  “Pfft.” Kri waved a hand. “No one believed she was that smart either, including Amanda herself. Shows that you can never know until you try, right?”

  50

  Anandur

  It was time to go home.

  The humans had been loaded on the bus, both locations had been put in order, and the car had been returned to the rental company.

  Anandur paid the taxi driver, slung the strap of his duffle bag over one shoulder, and the one stuffed with Wonder's things on the other, and together with Magnus headed for the terminal of the private airport the clan used.

  “How is Wonder doing?” Magnus asked.

  Anandur didn’t want to talk about it, but he’d known that the guy was going to ask at some point.

  “She’s acclimatizing to the village. I got her a job at the café.”

  “Good move. Sooner or later she’s going to meet everyone over there.”

  “That was the idea.”

  They climbed the stairs and got into the jet. The four other Guardians who were sharing the plane ride with them were already there, which meant they wouldn’t have to wait long for it to take off.