The villa was only six blocks distant, well inside the secured Administrative district of Central. She had walked the distance by herself many times in the past, head bowed, seemingly lost in thought. She had carefully cultivated a reputation for frequently – but not always, that would have been suspicious – preferring the option of a night walk home after a meeting of the Committee-at-Large. Years of deception, leading up to this night.
Anastasia felt almost giddy, holding her shawl and skirts carefully as she walked to avoid tearing the fragile silk. The sky she saw through the lace of the parasol lacked any indication of stars or moon.
The silence was broken only by the sound of the heels of her handmade Italian shoes clicking against the sidewalk. After she walked a full block unmolested, Anastasia started to mutter to herself.
“Oh, come now. Here I am, all alone after leading the most controversial vote in Committee history, walking an empty street, unescorted. Who could be afraid of a young lady all alone in the dark?”
The street was artificially devoid of even the smallest indications of traffic. The silence took on a palpability that grew dense and claustrophobic as it wrapped around her. Anastasia allowed herself a small smile, raising her hand politely to her mouth to conceal it.
She was no longer alone. She smelled the burnt-ozone taint of an apport protocol.
She counted eleven, heads wrapped in black cloth and features obscured with concealment protocols. The night air surged and eddied as protocols activated, fire spilling out from the clenched fists of one, while another formed a spear of what appeared to be pure light. The wind eddied around telekinetic effects and the distortion of barrier fields, massive temperature differentials and electromagnetic fluctuation. Most wore night-vision gear, heads as swollen with arcane devices as the tactical armaments they held. Anastasia could feel the cold fingers of uninvited telepathic intrusions, caught in the web of her defenses like repressed memories of childhood abuse.
Anastasia carefully snapped her parasol shut.
“Oh,” she said neutrally. “Dear me. What a terrifying and entirely unexpected development.”
A canvas sack and a pair of handcuffs landed near her feet.
“I offer you one chance.” The voice was maliciously sharpened with empathic suggestions of despair, hopelessness, violation. “Put the bag over your head. Bind your hands.”
Anastasia nudged the bag with the toe of her extraordinarily expensive burgundy shoes.
“I think not. It would not go with my outfit at all.”
The shapes in the darkness rustled impatiently, currents of motion and uncertainty running through them as they wavered. Anastasia basked in the face of their collective indecision.
“We have been warned of your Deviant Protocol. We have taken every precaution. Whatever the nature of your abilities, we are more than capable of subduing you. We offer you a chance to avoid...unpleasantness. I cannot promise good treatment or safe transport if you do not surrender.”
“How crude,” Anastasia said coldly, leaning the tip of her parasol on the ground. “Do you actually think you can defeat me? That would be a novel occurrence, would it not?”
“We have been warned...”
“Of what?” Anastasia said crossly. “I am well-versed in the art of keeping secrets. If you knew what I was capable of, you would not have come. It is hard to tell behind that mask – who are you? Which cartel has come for my head this time? I prefer to know the names of those who are about to die.”
More uncertainty. Anastasia could feel the Ether ripple as the empaths among them reinforced their collective nerve.
“This is your final warning,” the man advised her, gesturing at the bag with the muzzle break of his rifle. “I would advise you to consider your situation.”
“Oh, I have, not to worry,” Anastasia reassured him, adjusting her shawl to cover her neck from the cold night wind. “All alone in an isolation field. No bodyguards...no witnesses. Almost as if I planned it that way. Rather convenient, isn’t it, Vera?”
She didn’t bother talking to the man who had addressed her. He was just a mouthpiece. Anastasia gave her attention to a girl near the back of the group, who shifted uncomfortably as she stared.
“Would you care to hear the main difficulty with a Deviant Protocol, cousin-once-removed? It must be kept secret, naturally – from the Auditors, and therefore everyone. This rather sharply limits the usefulness of said protocol. Do you see my dilemma?”
The girl made her decision, pushing her way to the front of the crowd, pulling aside her mask as she approached. Her hair was as black and long as Anastasia’s, but despite her name, she favored their great-grandmother, with finely sculpted Han features and skin the color of gently aged parchment.
Anastasia could not help but note, even in her moment of power, that Vera was almost six centimeters taller. Not to mention the issue of her chest. Vera was only four years her elder, but their appearance was decades apart.
“You are rambling, Ana,” Vera snapped, brown eyes livid with weaponized telepathy. Behind her one of the men removed a glove and touched the ground, his skin rippling as it took on the form of the concrete. The group was gradually closing around her, a spiral becoming a closed circle. “You cannot be allowed to ascend. I cannot allow a deviant at the helm of the Black Sun. Even if your father and brother have been cowed, even if the honor of the Martynova Clan has been broken, I will stand against you.”
“Oh, don’t be foolish,” Anastasia chided her cousin, planting her feet and waiting. The time was so close that her hands trembled with anticipation. Her protocol slithered through the recess of her mind like a predatory reptile. “The Black Sun belongs to me already. Has the Elling Cartel suffered for it?”
Vera’s hands twisted through the routine needed to activate her protocol – according to Anastasia’s memory, a variety of telepathic assaults that focused on trapping the target in a nightmare memory loop – and advanced as she spoke, her troops following her. Anastasia glanced at the distance, and decided to give it a moment more.
“Are you certain you won’t reconsider? It seems a shame to waste your talents...”
“All together,” Vera hissed, her words heavy with power. “Give her no quarter.”
Anastasia held out her umbrella like a sword, the polished silver tip gleaming in the reflected light of the encroaching protocols.
“No need to be gentle,” she urged, too excited to smile, her eyes burning with the frightful geometry of her Deviant Protocol. “I won’t break.”
***
Gaul paused his labors over the endless paperwork when the cut-out he had secretly added to the various monitoring systems built into the Etheric Network activated, readouts shifting into the red and querulously alerting him to the flagrant discharge of a great deal of Etheric energy in the heart of Central, not far from the Great Hall where he had been not long before. Doubtless the simultaneous usage of a number combat protocols, including one that was well into the Deviant range.
He sighed heavily, then activated his implant and manually overrode all of the early-warning systems, before they could activate the main alarms and alert the rest of Central, as he had agreed. This was unfortunate, because without the advanced processing and parsing abilities of the Analytics department, he would be unable to perform a proper analysis and breakdown of the Deviant Protocol. He did, however, download a few seconds of the signal before he erased it from the Etheric Network’s database, in the hope that Vlad might be able to do something with it.
Then, having quelled the appropriate and legally required response to such activity, Gaul returned to his documents, using a downloaded telepathic protocol to erase his memory of the event until necessity triggered its remembrance, all the better to deceive his telepathic subordinates, should questions arise.
Gaul sighed, the room silent outside of the sound of a fountain pen scratching along a piece of paper. Plausible deniability always depressed him.
***
Timor arrived arm in arm with Svetlana, to facilitate their rapid apport. Anastasia had to squash a momentary and unbecoming burst of jealousy.
“You are unhurt?”
Timor hurried to her side, ignoring the puffs of ash that he kicked up from the ground and stained his tailored grey slacks, and Anastasia abruptly forgave him. She understood his worry. There was a great deal of blood.
“No,” she said sadly. “My dress is ruined.”
Timor hissed at her through closed teeth, then pulled her close in an embrace that she would have given a great deal to extend into perpetuity. Infatuated with her cousin who didn’t like girls. So perfectly stupid.
“Was it worth it, Ana? The risk was terrible.”
“More than worth it,” Anastasia said, looking up obediently so Timor could use his silk handkerchief to wipe her face clean of gore. “Our enemies have revealed themselves. I was absolutely done struggling with shadows. And...”
Timor paused in the act of cleaning her face, his fingers resting temptingly close to her lips.
“Yes?”
His eyes were filled with a warm mix of humor and curiosity. Anastasia wondered what would happen if she were to kiss him – and in a moment of self-indulgent impulse, promised herself that, one day, she would try it. Just because she could.
What was the advantage in absolute power if she didn’t exercise it occasionally?
“...that was rather fun, Timor, dear,” she said, taking a hold of his arm so she wouldn’t fall over. “It has been a terribly long time since I enjoyed myself to such an extent. I think...”
Timor pulled her close out of concern, and Anastasia made a mental note to worry him more often.
“Yes, milady?”
“I think that it is rather about time,” she said, pushing him gently aside and raising her parasol, “that I stopped holding back. Don’t you agree?”
One.
The dead man floated peacefully on his back, rising and falling with the rhythmic swells of the waves that pummeled the grey beach. The current carried him slowly toward the horizon, where the dawn was not quite ready to make an appearance. Though he would have preferred not to look, Alex found his eyes dragged periodically back to the bobbing shape of the corpse, feeling a strange envy at the apparent ease of his movement in the water. Alex was troubled by the nagging suspicion that envying the dead was some sort of sin, but of course it was far too late to worry over small transgressions. He had far more terrible things to do before the night was over.
He stepped in Katya’s footsteps, the way he had been taught. They were half-full of seawater by the time he put the soles of his waterlogged boots in them. He wore neoprene liners below the leather, which kept his feet dry and slightly warmer than freezing, but also rubbed against the delicate skin of his instep in a way that Alex just knew would leave blisters. The moon was hardly more than a sliver in the sky, but there was enough light for Alex to navigate his way across the almost featureless beach, moving toward the black edifice of the cliffs that never seemed to get any closer. Somewhere ahead of Katya, Miss Aoki blazed the trail, using a downloaded protocol that made her sensitive to the slight electromagnetic emanations of the buried mines that surrounded them.
Another thing it was better not to think about.
Min-jun followed a careful distance behind him, carrying the heaviest pack in the squad, despite his diminutive frame. Alex had called him “Kim” for three months after he rejoined the Program, back from a year of cryptic “field study” with the Audits department, before Vivik had explained that the given name came second among Koreans. Alex was still a little embarrassed about that – and unsure whether Min-jun had avoided correcting him out of politeness or disinterest.
The wet sand tugged at his boots with every step, the extra weight from the pack he carried only adding to the effort needed to cross the beach. Michael made them run on sand for three weeks before the assignment, but there hadn’t been an invisible minefield presumably just centimeters from his feet during training, so Alex wasn’t sure the preparation helped all that much. The beach here – wherever that was – looked nothing like what he had seen in California. The sand went on for tens of meters before it finally gave up at the foot of the slowly eroding cliff face. For reasons no one had bothered to explain, the boat had dropped them more than a kilometer north of their target, which made for a long and arduous slog through cold, gritty sand that Alex was not enjoying.
Thus far, their small group had eluded discovery by virtue of good luck, careful path finding on Mitsuru’s part, and the utterly soundless murder that he had committed while still ankle deep in the surf. Katya could have done it, of course, but Miss Aoki thought it good practice for him. She was probably right, for all Alex knew.
He didn’t feel guilty. That was too simple a summary of the complicated mesh of negative emotions that spun through his mind in a numbing, repetitive cycle while they walked. The guard had been armed with an FAL assault rifle, and was probably no stranger to violence himself. Whether he knew the purpose of the facility that he protected, he must have been aware that he worked for a criminal organization engaged in a morally dubious, if immensely profitable, business. He probably also had a family, or a wife, or someone who would grieve for him, when whatever the fish left of his body washed up on shore, but there was no point in indulging in that sort of fanciful regret.
Alex had known perfectly well what he was getting into.
Miss Gallow had warned them ahead of time that there would be killing involved, and Rebecca Levy had made sure they were all offered a chance to refuse. Alex assumed they each had their own reasons for deciding to accept the assignment. He had no way of knowing what went in on the others’ minds, but that didn’t stop him from speculating. It gave him something to think about besides the soreness in his calves, or the proximity of buried high-explosives armed with highly sensitive pressure triggers and packed with flechettes and ball-bearings hidden just below the sand.
Miss Aoki was here because she was an Auditor, and because she hated teaching. Alex got the disquieting feeling that Mitsuru liked combat, and resented the time the Program forced her to spend away from tactically advantageous acts of cruelty.
Chike Okoro had agreed to the operation with the same good humor and enthusiasm with which he greeted all of his responsibilities as an Auditor. Alex could never hope to aspire to the apport technician’s positive attitude or willing demeanor.
Neal Blum was assigned to the mission as a remote support telepath, and therefore stayed on the boat a safe distance away to facilitate communications.
Haley Weathers was present as little more than a ghost, so what did she have to worry about?
Kim Min-jun had agreed to come because he wanted to be an Auditor, and was well on his way to that goal. In a brief conversation he had with Alex in the gym one day, he mentioned that his father was a high-ranking officer in the South Korean military, and so had intended to follow in his footsteps until his potential had manifested and Central intervened.
Katya Zharova came because Alex had agreed to come. Normally, her affiliation with the Black Sun Cartel would have created a conflict of interest, performing tasks for the Audits Department – but Anastasia Martynova had charged her with looking after Alex, which meant the assassin went pretty much wherever he did, not necessarily without complaint.
As for the rationale of one Alexander Warner, the only person there whose motivations he was actually qualified to speak for, he felt a certain amount of uncertainty. The death of Margot Feld weighed on him, as did his brief capture by the Weir. The things that Miss Gallow had shared with him during the briefing regarding the purpose of the facility they were targeting upset and enraged him, as she had no doubt intended. Those reasons, though, Alex had puzzled out after he had volunteered, during the endless boat trip to the beach, between bouts of seasickness. He was aware that those answers were altogether too convenient to be the final word on the matter.
His real rationale was likely baser – though Alex never would have admitted it to anyone but Rebecca Levy, who already knew anyway. Alex was angry, and this operation offered as good a chance as any to express some of that anger in an allowable, possibly even laudable, manner.
At least it seemed that way until he froze the blood in the cerebellum of a guard on the beach, causing him to briefly convulse and then rapidly die on the sand, waves gradually rolling his body into the sea. Then his anger had departed, leaving Alex alone to finish what he had started.
“Alex,” Katya hissed, “hold up.”
He stopped gratefully and crouched down, waving his hand to indicate to Min-jun to do the same. Of course, the Korean already had. He wasn’t prone to losing focus or daydreaming in the first place, and certainly not in the middle of a combat op. Then again, nobody had asked him to kill anyone – and they probably wouldn’t. Min-jun was mainly there to keep them from getting killed.
Alex waited in the dark, the sweat cooling beneath his fatigues and chilling him. His patience ran out quickly, then his curiosity won over. He shuffled closer to Katya so he could whisper.
“What is it?”
“Dunno,” Katya said, shrugging indifferently and chewing on a scrap of jerky. She was relatively unburdened, having somehow convinced Alex to carry the bulk of her share of the necessary goods. It was only fair, he supposed – she did promise to keep him alive. “Miss Aoki called a halt, then she went on ahead with Haley. She’s running who-knows-what surveillance protocol, and Haley’s in remote-viewing mode, so they probably saw something that I can’t.”
“No surprise. I can’t see shit out here, unless it’s right in front of me.”
“I can. You aren’t missing much. This isn’t a beach that I would take a vacation on.”
Alex got curious despite the situation.
“Wait. You can see in the dark?”
“More or less. I’m pretty amazing, you know.”
The Far Shores (The Central Series) Page 4
