“Karon— Karon, I can’t. I need you.”
Branden cries. It is so bright and cold in here. There is no warm surrounding fluid. Instinctively, I dim his optical nerves and increase his thyroid for heat. He quiets.
“Hurry, they’re coming,” Karon pleads. “I’ll find you. The vehicle—”
No, they’re already in the building. The window.
“The window, Sumy … the window. Go.” He hefts the gun. Time, he needs to give them time.
Slip.
***
“Nooooo!” I scream at Official Delphine standing over me, disengaging me from the projector.
She taps the timer. “Four hours, that’s the limit.”
“Send me back!”
She rips one of the neural patches off my scalp, a quick tight burning sensation lingers.
It only infuriates me more. “Stop it! Four hours is the standard, not a limit.” I take the patch back, and attach it to my skull. “Power it back on. Now. Let’s go! There’s no time to waste.”
“No. Four hours, that’s the rule.”
“Who’s the Watcher here? You want information? Then do your damn job and get out of the way!”
Ka-tish. The door opens. Renya rushes in. “What’s going on? Emre, are you well?”
“No,” I say. “I need to go back, I wasn’t done.”
She stands there for a second, her brows furrowed as she takes me and the official in. “Official Delphine, could you please excuse us?”
“No,” Delphine says. She folds her arms in front of her. “I am not to leave this room under any circumstances.”
I consider attacking her. Her left knee looks weak.
Renya rushes forward to my side, placing herself between me and the official. Her hands are cool against my arms. Can she read my mind? “Emre,” she says soothingly, “calm yourself, breathe—”
“But—”
“Breathe.”
I breathe in through my nose, focus on keeping it steady, out through the mouth. I close my eyes.
“Keep your eyes open. Stay here.”
I obey and continue to breathe. The ‘keeping the eyes open’ comment was both to keep my eyes open and to remind me that we’re being monitored. After several minutes, I feel calmer, but I can’t stop worrying about Branden.
When Renya sees I’m calmer, she says, “Now, let’s debrief. Come.”
I slowly and deliberately remove the rest of the neural patches and stand. I stretch my back, crack my neck. Without looking at the official I walk out of the room with Renya behind me.
The official moves to follow us, but Renya turns back. “You’re not allowed to leave this room, remember?” I couldn’t see Renya’s face, but I hear the smirk all the same.
The official stops, clearly torn. She settles on moving back into the room toward the communicator.
Renya catches up to my side, and we start walking through the stark, sterile hallways. She fiddles with her forearm display. “We’re now acoustically cloaked, their sensors cannot detect what we’re saying. We need to keep moving to avoid suspicion, and while they can’t hear us, they can still see our lips moving.”
“Understood. And … uh.” I look at her forearm.
“The dampener hardware is hidden in your quarters and the software is a small part of the next patch upgrade, that can be downloaded at any point. But I suggest waiting until you have the hardware, there seems to be an issue with the bio-driver syncing before the hardware is there.
“Now, what was that back there? You almost attacked her.”
“I— I—” I shake my head. “I don’t know, I just panicked.”
“You went too deep again didn’t you? How many?”
“One—”
“One! Damnit, you know how dangerous that is. Your neural net mixes with theirs—”
“I know, I know. Well, it was deeper into one more than the others.” Karon.
Some people approach us from the oncoming direction, so we quiet. After they pass, I say quietly. “This is a horrible law. I just Watched the authorities try to tear a child away from his parents. It was their first child, they wanted him desperately. Gino didn’t want to tell them, but he had to and now he’s dead. Sumiko has only just given birth, now she’s on the run and Karon is probably dead—”
“Emre, Emre. Slow down, you’re going too fast. None of this makes sense.”
I resist the urge to scream at her and run back to the projector room. I deliberately slow my pace and try to match my gait to land my footsteps inside the gleaming black tiles and tell her what had happened. I leave out my talking directly to Karon—a big no-no. When a person strays too close to Unification, we’re trained to pluck the memory from them or shift their attention elsewhere and continue to monitor them. But directly speaking is forbidden—the goal is to remain secret, and speaking to someone kind of violates that.
Renya listens and laughs at random places when I pause, so as to throw off anyone that might be watching. I pick up quickly on it and oblige, smiling and becoming animated with my hands. Acting out a feeling is a disturbing thing. By acting happy and joking, I feel my mood lighten, and it only seems to heighten the gravity of what I just Watched.
I finish, and we walk in silence for several steps. Eventually she says, “Emre, I’m sorry you had to Watch that. But you need to cooperate with them. Compose your report and brief them personally on it. Perhaps they will want you to follow the situation as it develops—you could even persuade them along those lines. But don’t forget our purpose here—”
Acolyte Renya is leader of the Plaiselle team. Who would expect an acolyte to be running an intelligence team?
“Already there are signs that Regent Teife is keeping his word and that half the Directorate are returning as a show of good faith. If we continue to cooperate, he’ll return the other half—” Planting ideas in people is not all that different than removing them, which the Directorate is seriously skilled at. I wonder if the Regent even suspects that that wasn’t his own thought. “—In the meantime, we are to cooperate, gain trust and intelligence that they can use when they return. I suspect they are catching on to the acoustic cloaking. Watch for my signal to move to phase two communication. Understood?”
“Understood.”
She turns at the next left, her shoes squeaking slightly on the polished hallway floor. I stop to consider this new information and decide to go back and apologize to Official Delphine and brief her personally. I’ll explain my distaste for what I witnessed and thank her for pulling me out when she did. I smile. I’ll even go so far as to say I do not wish to return—that’ll probably make her eager to send me back against “my wishes.”
CHAPTER FOUR
I WAS WRONG.
Official Delphine stands there and stares down at me the whole time, her lips a pale beige from lip balm, compressed into a thin line. She listens the whole time that way, to my explanation, to my apology. Her only response at the end is: “I don’t trust you.” And with that I’m dismissed, released until my next session at eighteen hundred, twenty-one hours from now.
A secret underground resistance sounds exciting until it actually starts, the mechanics of it. It’s mostly waiting—a chess match, one small move here so that forty moves later you’ll have a one-point advantage to exploit. That’s where we are currently at, the opening—small moves, lots of waiting.
Renya gives the signal in the middle of the night to move to phase two communication. The acoustic cloaking is a feint, only to be used in the opening hours of a resistance. Obvious enough that the occupiers would notice, and if they were smart enough, attempt to hack it without us knowing. So now we had another way to influence them, to feed them conversations they thought, we thought were confidential.
The next morning, I show up to the projector room to find Official Delphine not alone. There’s another official with her—not good. She really wasn’t kidding about that not trusting me.
“Ah, Watcher Emre,” the n
ewcomer says, “welcome back. I am Councilor Polston.” Polston is another female, taller than Delphine, and thin with a hawkish nose that curls up at the tip. “I listened to your report with great interest from Official Delphine. Do you mind if I observe today?” She smiles a small smile that just begs a smart-ass response.
The stupid quirks at the corner of her mouth inflame my conceit—are they really that clueless to who they’re messing with? But I force the ugly, unbecoming pride monster down and channel the calm of Joslyn, “I welcome another of set of eyes to see that which perhaps escapes two.” Joslyn would be proud.
“Excellent,” she says. Her smile turns genuine—she thinks she has the upper hand. “Today we’d like you observe Strata and their reactions to the events of Evaga.”
Damn. “Very well.”
“We’d also like you to discuss what you do, while you do it, to prevent pulling you out at a critical time. We wish to avoid the unpleasantness of last time.”
“Impossible—”
“Watch Director Joslyn is reputed to do it, as a teaching method.” She lets the statement hang in the air as we stare at each other.
I studiously drop my eyes, like a cowed pet. “Director Joslyn is a Master of the highest order. It is possible, but the ability is beyond my skill.”
“Try.”
“You do not understand. You’ve read my file, yes?”
She doesn’t give any indication she has or hasn’t.
I continue, “Well the ability you’re referencing is the epitome of mind splitting, to split your mind over universes. Few in history have been able, and it’s an area I have a particular weakness in. To ask me to try this would likely fracture my consciousness. I cannot and I will not.”
Official Delphine believes me, I can tell by the way she’s watching Polston. Polston crosses her arm and exhales through her hawkish nose. I realize I’ve misplayed it, the “will not” was too strong, too independent. To bring me to heel, she’ll have to find a way to save face.
I save her the trouble, I offer her a way out. “Please, Councilor Polston, do not ask this of me. I beg you.”
She folds her arms in front of her and shifts her weight slightly onto one foot. “It so happens that I have read your file and know of your limitations—” Kick ‘em while they’re down, exert control. “—Therefore, your sessions are to be limited to two hours. You may begin when you’re ready.”
I toy with making her wait, but it’d only make things worse. I hope the other Watchers haven’t erred this badly.
I ease myself into the projector. The smell always reminds me of the first time I entered Watcher Station. I was two, and I don’t remember much other than that metallic smell. It smelled foreign, unnatural against all of my experience. The smell stung; it was cold and shoved up into the back of my nose unwelcomed and unwanted. All I had wanted was to just go home, where the air had smelled of sharp floral spice, of life.
I attach the neural patches. Delphine dials in the location on the control panel under the supervision of Polston. She flips the switch.
Breathe. Calm. I am not Emre. I am not a single person. Exhale.
I am the Watch.
Slip.
***
Strata is a terra-formed planet. The populations are centered around the weather-controlled regions along the equator. I start at the largest city, Braquito, a city of eight million.
I skim along the streets and ride the pulsing wave of humanity. It has an ebb and flow to it, but always there is movement. I split once. Twice. Three times. Eight threads roam the city. I keep it to eight, any more would start to hurt. I hop through people, skimming as many as I can as fast as I can.
The air smells like fresh rain rising up from hot concrete. I can smell the moisture in the air through the people I skim, the exhaust from vehicles, the food from vendors, even the wet metal from the rising buildings—all smells the majority of the people are blind to. But I’m not. They’ve never spent any time on a space station, breathing, smelling filtered air.
I stay high above them and resist the urge to go deeper, to experience the city more fully. Thousands of concerns and needs flood through me as I hop through the citizens of Braquito: I’m running late; what should I get my spouse for a birthday; I’m married—That women is smiling at me—I’m married; I haven’t eaten in five hours; and on and on it goes.
I shift through them by imagining a filter tuned to basic human needs and apply it. Now the leftover thoughts are more specific: The import tax will crush small businesses, and the owner doesn’t have the resources to deal with all of that paperwork; the Grunken staged military drills in the Natau sector, will their child be redeployed; the DNA profiling law of Evaga is a prudent course of action, should it be applied here?
And there it was. Of the thousands I’ve skimmed, only four are thinking of Evaga. That in and of itself is an answer of sorts. I pull back on the rest and delve deeper into the four. They have no knowledge of the events on Evaga. I check the front of the papers; I stop to watch their broadcasts. No word. Nothing.
What has happened to Karon and his family?
How much time do I have left?
I skim the next largest city, Marto, quickly. Nothing.
Evaga is twelve parsecs away, which is nothing when the speed of thought is involved.
Several seconds later I’m back at the hospital on Evaga. The birthing room from before is cordoned off. Flashing yellow tape, with a warning message scrawling across it is stuck to the entrance of the room. There’s no one here. Blood—Karon’s blood—is still on the floor. The window is open.
A police officer passes by the room outside. Her name is Shannan Wyer. She’s on guard duty and bitter about it. She is taking the detective’s test next week and so missed out on a high-profile case by one week. It would’ve been the perfect way to jump-start her career, to track down the mother and her baby.
There. Sumiko and Branden live. What about Karon?
Officer Wyer continues to brood about her missed opportunity. I toy with asking her directly, but avoid it for now. All I need to do is gently nudge her in the right direction. I suggest to her mind the image of her handcuffing Sumiko, of it being played out in the broadcasts and the picture plastered all over the nets.
She runs with it from there. Working backwards from that imagined point to the present. She would release the information that the husband was dead—
Karon is dead. The information doesn’t hurt as I thought it would; it was almost clinical.
—The wife managed to escape before he died. The information would cause the wife grief and that would lead her to make a mistake. They had tracked her to the vicinity of Old Industrial. She was certainly holed up somewhere in there—
Where? Where is Old Industrial? I don’t want to go deeper—I’m already beginning to feel excited at the thought of finding and arresting Sumiko. I plant the feeling of a dog on a trail. She obliges.
—Sumiko left through the window. She took their vehicle and fled. She abandoned it in front of Pyuff Park forty kilometers away and is thought to be on foot. There are no records of her taking public transportation, and witnesses saw a woman with a crying baby heading in the direction of Old Industrial. There are multiple empty buildings in that area; police are currently sweeping from one end to another.
I leave Officer Wyer and skim in the general direction she thought Sumiko was. I stop when I hit the mass of police vehicles. They’re leading several homeless people into the back of a larger armored transporter. They ask each if they’ve seen Sumiko. A small, two foot, three-dimensional rendering of her, a petite Asian woman with long black hair, hums in the air as they climb into the back.
I split my mind among the homeless group. They’ve seen her; the crying was annoying to some, reminded others of long-missed children, others were indifferent. But none gave her up—screw the police, is the universal thought.
Where? Where is she? I pluck the image of the building she was in last nig
ht from their minds. I can almost hear Branden’s first terrified cries of life in their memories. I skim to the building, but she isn’t there. The cops are spread out in a line, pushing through—they have the area surrounded.
I quest through the other buildings in huge gulps, looking for human thought, human life.
Building one: Empty.
Building two: Two homeless.
Building three: One person.
Building four: Empty.
Building five: One sleeping, exhausted, with another. There.
Sumiko is sleeping with Branden on her chest. She’s on the second floor, in an office of some kind, laid out on a soft black fabric couch. Branden sleeps with his ear to her chest, listening to her heartbeat. He’s confused: the sound is distant, quieter than it once was, but he’s comforted by its familiarity.
Human thoughts enter the building, one floor below: the police.
Sumiko, you must wake, I say into her mind.
Her eyes fly open. She cradles Branden gingerly, while sitting up quickly and surveying the room. She almost speaks.
Be quiet, I say. The police are on the first floor, they are sweeping the area. Outside this office there is a hallway that hugs the perimeter of the building. It leads to a stairway. Go there.
Who are you? she asks.
A half-second pause. Karon. It’s out before I can stop myself. Now, go!
She’s up and moving, too bewildered not to listen. Her thoughts a confusing mess of Karon, a voice in her head that does not sound like Karon, safety, and an intense worry of Branden crying and giving them away. She moves swiftly but gingerly, still recovering from giving birth. The bleeding has stopped, but pain is ever present, the threat of reopening wounds constant. But for Branden, she would endure.
I split my mind and enter Branden. It’s a mash of stimuli, confusing, frightening. I do what I can to calm him. I replicate Sumiko’s heartbeat, dampen the other stimuli. It works, but my head starts to ache from too much splitting.
Sumiko arrives at the stairwell.
Go up two flights of stairs.
She starts climbing.
The police on the first floor are bored as they wait for the crawlers to catch up. If they do catch this mother, they won’t get any credit; that’ll go the lead Detective or the crawlers, as if foot soldiers had no place anymore.
The Watchers: A Space Opera Novella Page 3
