“I hear weird rumors about them,” she said finally, pushing the heavy steel-lined door open. “That they think the Founder wasn’t human – that they worship things that supposedly live in the Ether, or the Ether itself. That kind of thing. I mean, haven’t you noticed the way they smile all the time?”
Alex nodded hesitantly. Now that he thought about it, Dr. Graaf had a pleasant smile on his face during their entire orientation, when they arrived at the facility over the weekend, as had the staff who been assigned to show them their rooms and the Audits building’s facilities.
“Not in the canteen, though – the cooks seemed normal.”
“They are support personnel. Family of Operators without the potential to use protocols. They just get assigned wherever, so they don’t count.”
“I don’t know,” Alex said doubtfully, pausing at the junction where he would turn right and Katya left. “Are you sure you just don’t like them?”
“Maybe. Tell me – do you wanna find out for sure?” Katya poked him playfully. “You up for some unauthorized after-hours shenanigans?”
Of course he agreed. What else was there to do?
***
“The kids giving you any trouble, Doc?”
Dr. Paul Graaf glanced at Alice Gallow pleasantly and shook his head.
“Not at all. Though I do feel a bit bad that you found us so unprepared. If the Director had given us advance notice, we could have prepared classes and activities for them. He only mentioned the impending transfer of the active Auditors, however, so I did not make arrangements for juveniles...”
Dr. Graaf was short and round, and therefore had to struggle a bit to keep pace with Alice’s long stride. The beach that they walked along was level and uniform, and would have been postcard perfect if not for the perpetually grey skies overhead, and the leaden sea of Ether that churned where the ocean should have been. The wind blew from inland, as it always did, and it carried the faint scent of coastal sage and a mild smoke. In the distance behind them, the twin chimneys of Central’s power plant spewed steam into the otherwise featureless sky, the only by-product of their unique process of generating electricity.
“Not to worry, Doc. They were all graduated, or pretty close to it, anyway. Gaul has ’em set up for Friday and Saturday classes during the half-week they will be back at the Academy anyway.”
“Nonetheless, I believe we should arrange something to engage them. It would be a pity not to expose them to the unique work that we do here. And please, do call me Paul, Miss Gallow. We are to be neighbors, after all.”
“Sure. And you call me Alice,” she said, with her twisted grin, “neighbor.”
“Indeed,” he said, returning her smile with an amiable one of his own. “I hope that you are finding the Audits facilities sufficient for your needs?”
“And then some. These digs might be nicer than our old place back at the Academy. Little quiet for my taste, though. Don’t you ever miss Central, all the way out here in the Fringe, Paul?”
“On occasion,” Paul admitted, pausing to light a thin brown cigar, offering a second to Alice, who accepted after some consideration. “We do have bus service back to Central, twice daily, though,” he said, shielding his silver-plated lighter from the wind for Alice. “Our work here is rather consuming, however, and I have little time for other affairs.”
“Gaul warned me about that,” Alice said, drawing on the cigar experimentally, then exhaling a thin stream of blue smoke. “Huh. Guess I like cigars.”
“The Director warned me of your unique circumstances, as well,” Paul said, snapping his lighter closed with a smile. “I will be frank with you, Alice. We have met before, though it is my understanding that you most likely do not remember.”
Alice winced and started to walk again, her pace a bit slowed.
“I do not.”
“That is for the best,” Paul said, with a brief laugh. “I am afraid that you did not like me very much.”
“Life is full of second chances,” Alice said, grinning at him from behind her cigar. “Why don’t you consider this one of them, Doc?”
“Indeed. I hope to make a better impression this time. I am frankly pleased that you wish to speak to me at all. My popularity among apport technicians has been dismal of late.”
Alice perked up.
“Why’s that?”
“The latest grand project here at the Far Shores,” Dr. Graaf explained ruefully. “A bold transportation intuitive. We have discovered something that promises to revolutionize the transport of matter, utilizing entirely different principles than apporting, and requiring none of the special talent. A democratization of transport to Central, if you would. Some who share your talents are less than thrilled with the prospect.”
“Little hint, Doc – nobody shares my particular talents,” Alice explained, knocking ash from the end of her cigar into the ocean. “I’m not a delivery girl. I don’t do logistics.”
“Of course,” Dr. Graaf agreed, with an apologetic half-bow. “I didn’t mean...”
“I am curious as to how it’s done,” Alice said, cutting him off. “If there’s no apport, how do you move things from point to point?”
“Ah! That’s the beauty of the process,” Dr. Graaf exclaimed, clenching his hands in excitement. “You see, it’s already there!”
Alice laughed.
“I think you lost me, Doc.”
“It isn’t easily explained,” Dr. Graaf allowed. “A demonstration would surely suffice, but the machinery is not yet fully operational...”
“Another time, then,” Alice said, shrugging.
They walked and smoked in silence for a few minutes. The beach was utterly monotonous, without a single rock, shell, or piece of garbage to interrupt the plain of grey sand. Alice found the perspective disorienting – the monotone shade of the sand, sky, and Ether nearly uniform, causing her to search for the soft line of the horizon with a sort of visual desperation.
“Gaul said he had a bitch of a time convincing you to allow the installation of Vladimir’s power plant – and then again, when he started construction of the fallback Audits facility.”
“It was rather contentious, I suppose. I value our isolation, and our neutrality, and have made every effort to preserve it, for the benefit of our work. Additionally, Dr. Hsang had concerns about the effects the power generation facility might have on the purity of the Ether in the area, that it could influence our experiments. Fortunately, none of those concerns bore fruit, and the situation was resolved amicably.”
“Right, but it leads me to wonder – why no such objections to my arrival with a bunch of Auditors and students and support personnel in tow? I gotta assume that our presence does more to threaten the neutrality and peace of your work environment than a glorified steam engine...”
Paul laughed heartily, turning his face briefly to the sky.
“You are most perceptive, Chief Auditor. You are, of course, quite correct – the Committee-at-Large had your people expelled from the Academy largely due to their belief that your presence had drawn the attention of the Anathema. Certainly, there are those among the Far Shores community who follow the same reasoning. While I have striven to avoid any militarization of the Far Shores, the potential and the benefits that you and your people’s arrival offered offset any potential risks – both in my own estimation, and in that of Dr. Hsang.”
Alice glanced over curiously.
“How so?”
“Your own presence, for example. If you will forgive me for saying so, Alice, you are a most remarkable being.”
Alice tapped ash onto the sand, her smile wavering.
“I suppose I forgive you. Depending on your meaning.”
“Fear not, Miss Gallow. I have no hidden agenda. You simply excite my curiosity – you are quite unique. In the history of Central, I would hazard a guess that there has never been another quite like you – and the same could be said of your Black Protocol.”
“I’m surprised you know abou
t that,” Alice said thoughtfully. “Rebecca Levy generally makes sure no one asks too many questions on that issue.”
“Including yourself, under normal circumstances, as I understand it,” Dr. Graaf said blithely, as if they were discussing the weather. “These are far from normal circumstances, though, are they not? And, I might add, as a former instructor of Miss Levy, and a confidant of the Director, I have been exempted from certain machinations to which I might otherwise be subjected. I know a great deal about you, Alice – perhaps more, in some areas, than you do about yourself. It has long been my fervent hope that we might pool our knowledge for our collective betterment. Your coming here presented a perfect opportunity to realize this ambition. You see, I have made something of a study of the principles underlying protocols and their use – and it is my belief that Black Protocols like your own serve to elucidate the very nature of the protocols, and the underlying function of the nanites that power them. By making a study of the exceptional, Chief Auditor, I believe that we can come to an understanding of the commonplace. Additionally, the history of Central is something of a hobby of mine – and that is a history in which you have played a most intriguing role.”
Alice smoked and considered.
“Interesting. I’m starting to understand why we might not have gotten on in the past, Doc.”
Dr. Graaf held up his hands and offered a placating smile.
“Please, give me the benefit of the doubt. I know that you must harbor suspicions, but I assure you that I am being frank in attempt to prove the absence of a hidden agenda on my part. I mean you no harm, Chief Auditor. I intend no one harm. I aim simply for the pursuit of knowledge – because I believe that knowledge is, in and of itself, a good thing, and because the pursuit of it pleases me. I have no other motivation, no sinister ambition.”
Alice ran a hand through her hair, remembering that it was almost time to dye it again. She touched up the roots near her part daily, of course, but it was necessary to regularly apply black dye to the whole of it to avoid any inconsistencies in tone or shade.
“We will revisit that at some point in the future, Paul. For the moment – you said you had some interest in my people as well?”
“Yes. I confess that we have long considered the prospect of inviting students to the Far Shores, rather than simply recruiting promising graduates of the Academy. It was my thought that you might be able to persuade the Director to transfer a few of the students that have particularly attracted our interests, assuming that we could make it worth your while, and convince you of the harmless nature of our intentions. As it turns out, however, it seems that you have brought one of the very objects of interest with you already.”
Alice sighed.
“Let me guess...”
Dr. Graaf chuckled.
“It is as you suspect. We have an abiding curiosity regarding one Alexander Warner...”
Four.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“No. I was expelled from one school already, dummy. This is probably a terrible idea.”
“Great.”
Katya’s eyes sparkled with obvious delight beneath the brim of her baseball cap, her ponytail poking out of the opening in the mesh back. She wore a dark-blue sweatshirt and black jeans, while Alex was dressed similarly in a hooded sweatshirt and grey cargo pants, as she had specified. He was pressed against an interior wall in an empty room on the first floor of the Audits building, beside the window where Katya crouched, fiddling with the locking mechanism holding it in place.
“Oh, come on. This’ll be fun.”
“Sure. Fun. Why are we doing this, again?”
Katya made a satisfied noise as something in the window frame gave way with a quiet pop, succumbing to her determined manipulations, using a thin, flexible piece of metal and something that looked like a hooked dental tool.
“Because we don’t have anything else to do,” Katya said, pausing to glance at him as if he had said something stupid. “And I wanna know why they have us locked down in this building. If they don’t have anything to hide, why can’t I take a walk around?”
“I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure I don’t care. Security, maybe?”
“Security? We’re Auditors, for God’s sake. Security is nothing to us.”
“Um, we aren’t actually Auditors, yet.”
“Close enough.”
“I’m not sure that’s true...”
“Hold this,” Katya said, passing him the locking mechanism somehow completely removed from the window frame she was pushing open. “And man up, would you? I don’t need you whining the whole time.”
Alex sighed and pocketed the fixture.
“Then why are you bringing me?”
Katya giggled while she popped the window screen loose, knocking it onto newly laid sod beneath the window.
“Comic relief. C’mon. Let’s go.”
Alex followed Katya out the window, dropping to the sod himself as quietly as possible, then scurrying after Katya into the deep shadow cast by the building. He couldn’t understand the logic behind it, but he was more nervous than he had been during his first mission with the Auditors. It might have been counterintuitive, but despite having spent a large portion of his life locked up, Alex didn’t really have much experience breaking the rules.
There had been the trip to San Francisco with Eerie, of course – but he had done that out of desire to impress a girl he liked, rather than going on along with some strange impulse of Katya’s. And look how that had ended – Alex fell into the hands of the Weir and was brutalized, and a pitched battle left Edward dead and him further in the debt of one Anastasia Martynova. The experience hadn’t done much to improve his opinion of illicit behavior. Even his semi-authorized rooftop birthday party had ended in violence and trauma. Following Katya closely and acutely aware of how much noise his footfalls made – particularly when he couldn’t even hear Katya’s footsteps at all – Alex was increasingly unsure why he had gone along with her idea.
Katya was manifestly disinterested in him – and even if she wasn’t, the Black Sun assassin wasn’t his type. So it wasn’t to impress the girl, even if he did consider her something of a friend – maybe even his only friend, as far as the Audits department went. He didn’t have any inherent affection for acts of rebellion, and while he was bored, a PlayStation or a Netflix account would have done a great deal more to alleviate that feeling than sneaking around the Far Shores campus at night.
He followed Katya from the shadows of one building to another, glad that outdoor lighting was not nearly the priority that it was back at the Academy. Unfortunately, building on the uninhabited Fringe meant that space was not at a premium, and therefore the distance between the buildings was fairly large, and the tree cover that was common at the Academy was entirely absent. Crouched behind a cinderblock enclosure for a green dumpster, Alex noticed for the first time that the buildings at the Far Shores were not made from the ubiquitous grey stone from which the majority of Central was constructed. The buildings here were made of modern materials – concrete, drywall, and stucco – and none appeared to be repurposed older structures that predated the current occupants of Central. He was stunned to realize that the Far Shores campus represented the largest collection of wholly new structures that he had seen in Central.
They moved in fits and spurts according to Katya’s instructions and awareness, keeping to the shadows and the eastern edge of the campus, close to the low, barren hills of the Fringe. The buildings they passed were uniform in construction and simple in design, all multistory, generally including a few attached and outlying structures that were likely garages, service bays, and the like. There were signs of a recent drive toward landscaping, with a great deal of new sod placed at intervals between wide concrete sidewalks and prolific asphalt bike paths. A road attached the buildings, large enough for a single lane of traffic, so Alex assumed the residents did most their travel via foot or bicycle. There were no trees and no pl
ants other than the freshly laid grass.
The Audits building was offset from the rest of campus, separated by an undeveloped hillside from the next building. It was situated near the southern edge of the facility, so they headed north, toward the denser concentration of structures. As they went, Alex noticed two things: the two smokestacks in the distance just beyond the Far Shores compound, silhouetted by their own powerful halogen lights; and a sandy beach on to the west. Alex glanced in the beach’s direction repeatedly before he was able to put his finger on exactly what was wrong with it – namely, he could neither hear the waves, despite being quite close, nor could he see any lights reflecting off the water.
“Katya!” Alex hissed, motioning her behind a utility enclosure next to one of the identical buildings.
“What?” Katya’s face was bright was excitement, even if she did sound a bit annoyed at the interruption. “Did you see someone?”
“No. What’s up with the ocean?”
“The ocean? What do you…oh. I get it. There’s no ocean, Alex. We’re in Central. There’s no coast here.”
“But that looks like a beach…”
“Oh, it is. But not a beach along the water.”
“Then what?”
“The Ether.”
***
“I will freely admit that this is a conversation that I never expected to have.”
“As for myself, I never gave up hope. Nonetheless, I understand why you might not be thrilled. The involuntary nature of our reunion, however, is no reason for there to be animosity between us.”
“Agreed. Particularly not when there are so many other valid reasons.”
Brennan Thule laughed agreeably.
“Let go of the past, Director. Our alliance has already borne fruit. Why not accentuate the positive?”
“Precisely because I have no intention of disregarding the past actions of your cartel.”
“Now, now. If not for your intervention, Uncle…”
Gaul flinched, then the blue eyes behind his glasses hardened.
The Far Shores (The Central Series) Page 10
