The Far Shores (The Central Series)

by Rawlins, Zachary

  “Mr. Windsor?”

  “Yes, Katya?”

  She paused to look away, then continued while staring out at the willows.

  “You…you said ‘as I was your student’…”

  Mr. Windsor puffed on his pipe contemplatively.

  “Did I, now? Then I must have.”

  Katya clenched her hands together beneath the table, her cheeks burning.

  “Then, in a year or two,” she suggested softly, “after I have graduated, if I were to…”

  “Who can say? The future, as they say, is undecided. Drink your tea, Katya.”

  ***

  Distant shots, like scattered rain on a metal roof. Then the Weir got involved, and all sorts of auditory Hell broke loose. Emily listened to the howling, wet noises, the ringing of metal, and waited for Colin to finish rigging the second truck with motion sensors and proximity mines. The noises swelled to a crescendo, then came to an abrupt halt, leaving the wind to carry the smells of smoke and cordite.

  The spiky-haired meathead emerged from the truck, rubbing oily hands against his overprinted MMA shirt and grinning as if he had done something clever.

  “All set, doll,” Colin said, coming up to stand too close to her. “What do we do next?”

  “Whatever I say.”

  “You’re a bossy little girl, ain’t you?”

  Emily held her tongue. It would be over for him soon enough, one way or the other.

  “You worried? No need, sugar. You say the word,” Colin suggested, puffing out his broad chest, “and I’ll head out there and take care of the bad guys for you, no problem.”

  She was about to agree with the idea, when the broken body of a Weir came flying out of a nearby breezeway, slamming into the concrete wall of the adjoining warehouse with a meaty impact, then slowly sliding to the ground, movement facilitated by the blood leaking from too many holes to count.

  “No need,” Emily said softly. “I believe they have found us.”

  A moment later, Michael Lacroix emerged from the shadows of the breezeway, shaking his head when he saw Emily, sending his dreadlocks bouncing.

  “Emily, words truly cannot describe my disappointment,” he said, his expression tight and sad. “How badly we have failed you, child.”

  “What?” Emily was truly taken aback. She struggled to see Michael’s halo, but he was an utterly blank slate, immaculate psychic defense.

  “What the hell is he talking about?”

  Colin gave her a condescending look, or maybe that was simply his default expression. Not that it mattered.

  “Take him,” Emily said, pointing at Michael. “He’s a telekinetic, but he’s only got one shot, assuming he hasn’t used it already.”

  “Too easy,” Colin snorted, advancing to meet Michael, cracking his knuckles and looking every bit a macho jerk. “You sure you wanna do this, man? You could still run. I might let you.”

  Michael shook his head and continued forward, eyes fixed on Emily, not acknowledging Colin’s presence.

  “I feel that we owe you an apology, Emily…”

  Colin took a step between them, his skin crawling with liquid fire, starting at the crown of his head, and gradually expanding to turn him into a literal burning man.

  “You might wanna pay attention to the business at hand.”

  Michael’s eyes continued to bore into her, brown tinged with dull red, as if he hadn’t slept.

  “…though your actions have been deplorable.”

  Colin lunged for Michael. Technically, he was an energy projector, but he couldn’t project more than a few centimeters beyond his own skin. He was still a Class-E pyrokine, however, and the fire that coated his skin was like napalm, long-burning and adhesive. Even proximity to his protocol was painful and disfiguring, whereas prolonged contact was lethal.

  Emily expected Michael to use his own devastating telekinetic protocol to obliterate Colin, which would have left him more or less helpless by the time he reached her. But that didn’t happen.

  Instead, Michael let Colin come, then took firm hold of him by a shoulder and upper arm, then stepped behind his leg and performed a traditional leg-sweep takedown. Michael landed atop Colin as if he weren’t burning, brushing aside his flaming hands with no obvious consternation. Emily could see a purple-hued distortion surrounding Michael, hugging close to his body like a second skin, and wondered who could have been projecting the barrier around him. The barrier was unusual, as well – the flames that licked it were rapidly consumed and extinguished, the defensive field growing brighter as a result.

  Colin struck Michael in the side of the head no to obvious effect. Michael caught his arm at the forearm and wrist, and twisted, snapping the bone with casual efficiency. Colin yelled inarticulately and struggled beneath Michael’s weight, battering him in the back and neck with his other arm, but Michael shrugged the blows off, and Colin’s flame failed to spread. Calm and deliberate, Michael grabbed Colin by the face, pulled his head up, then drove it into the ground with a sound like a hammer against wood. Colin groaned and flailed ineffectually, while Michael leaned into his hold, closing his eyes.

  Emily recognized the telltale Etheric ripples of the buildup of an energy projection protocol. The burst of electricity was violent and powerful, accompanied by a brilliant light and a loud snapping sound.

  Colin jerked and twitched as he was electrocuted.

  It should have been impossible. Michael couldn’t operate a barrier protocol, and the energy he projected was telekinetic – and even that could only be used once in a day. The she noticed his painfully red eyes, and the pieces started to come together.

  Implantation technology might have been proscribed by Central, but no such restrictions were imposed by the Anathema. The bloodshot eyes that marked Mitsuru Aoki and the Director alike were not an infrequent sight among long-term Anathema who had refused full conversion. No one on the site team had an implant that she was aware of, but Emily encountered them sporadically in the Outer Dark. While considered less devoted to the cause than a fully converted Anathema like herself, they were still powerful and respected.

  As little as she liked the thought, Emily became quickly sure that she was right, and that he must have risked implantation despite the mortality rate. She wondered what had driven him to such extremes, why he would want so badly to be out in the field – and if his reasons were anything like her own. Emily pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind.

  Tactical concerns, naturally, took precedence.

  Michael stood, leaving Colin to finishing dying on the concrete. That, at least, she was happy about. He wiped blood and spittle from his hands onto his fatigues and continued toward her, red eyes sad when he looked at her.

  Emily ran through a mental checklist of what Michael had done, comparing it to everything she knew about Mitsuru and the Director’s implants, and found it inconsistent. Local interference would have prevented him from downloading protocols via the Etheric Network, and downloaded protocols wouldn’t explain his abilities to shrug off pyrokinesis. It seemed likely that whatever had been assembled in his mind with a custom-grown nanomachinery culture was entirely novel.

  That was pretty exciting.

  “It’s strange to see you here, Michael. I always thought you weren’t the type to get your hands dirty.”

  “I could say the same,” Michael observed wearily. “I am disappointed in you, Emily. In myself as well, for failing to intervene on your behalf, for not recognizing how truly desperate and wayward you had become.”

  Emily faked a laugh.

  “And what about you, Michael? Seems that I’m not the only who decided that desperate times called for desperate measures.”

  He nodded, continuing his slow and steady advance toward her.

  “True. Nothing I have done, however, betrayed my family, my home, or my ideals.”

  “Are you sure?” Emily challenged, her voice haughty. “We are more alike, the two of us, than you are with the others in Centr
al, now. Aren’t such implants forbidden?”

  He shook his head, which seemed oddly streamlined to her, with his hair tied back.

  “Not when the Director himself performs them.”

  “And the Chief Auditor gives her approval,” Alice Gallow added, stepping out of Emily’s shadow. “Don’t forget about that. Oh, and Emily,” she added, putting her shotgun to Emily’s temple, “I don’t feel bad for you at all.”

  The sound of the gun going off was tremendous.

  It was an exotic and disconcerting sensation, feeling the lead slug tear through her skull, the wet exit of the shattered bone and brain matter from the other side of her head as the shell passed through. Emily stumbled, fell to her knees, her form wavering briefly.

  Then she laughed and rose back up to face the Auditors.

  “You don’t learn very well for people who claim to be teachers,” she taunted, water flowing into the breach the shell left behind and filling in the void with a sloshing sound. “I am Anathema now. Bullets won’t do the trick.”

  Alice shrugged and set the shotgun aside, while Michael moved to flank Emily, cutting off her main avenue of escape – assuming she planned on walking away.

  “Fine by me,” Alice said cheerfully. “How ’bout we figure out what does?”

  Emily backed away, simulating a bit of a fear response within herself, for realism’s sake. Alistair had told her to make it believable. She knew it was critical the Auditors believe – as Colin had – that this was an important Anathema operation they were taking down, rather than a meticulously prepared honeypot. It was equally important that the Auditors learn as little as possible about the true extent of her abilities – and by extension, those of the other fully transformed Anathema. If she could divine the extent of Michael’s newfound augmentation, then that would be icing on the cake.

  Alice pulled the same trick again, disappearing and then stepping from Emily’s shadow, wrapping her arms around Emily’s neck and pulling a forearm across her throat. Emily struggled ineffectually for a moment, doing her best to feign choking, until Michael drew close, then she flowed around Alice’s arms, retaining enough cohesion to remain a unified mass, but in the shape of a vertical puddle. She heard Alice gasp and watched Michael recoil, and knew that Alex hadn’t shared all the particulars of their encounter, as she suspected he might.

  That pleased her in an obscure way she preferred not to reflect upon.

  She flowed across the space between her and Michael faster than she could have run, regaining her form as she moved. The warehouse was large, so even with the valve all the way open, the water around their feet was little more than a puddle, but she didn’t really need more than that. Michael attempted to contain her within a telekinetic bubble, his hands describing the boundaries of the containment, but she simply abandoned her current position, so that he captured nothing but the water she left behind.

  “What the hell?”

  They both stared at the puddle for a few seconds. Alice looked up, glanced around the warehouse, and took a tentative step forward. It wasn’t much, but it gave Emily the time she needed to collect herself. She rose quietly out of water gathered into a small pool a few meters behind Michael, in the shadows of the warehouse door. Michael released the globe of water that floated in midair and stumbled briefly, clearly exhausted by the strain of using the unfamiliar implant. Emily took the opening.

  The thing that lashed out of the darkness behind him when he stumbled was like a tentacle composed of water. Alice didn’t have time to warn him. It smacked wetly into his head, briefly forming a perfect sphere, before it dissipated into a thousand droplets that fell to the ground along with him. Michael grabbed his throat and tried in vain to cry out.

  It took Alice a moment to understand what had happened – the water had filled his lungs. She moved toward him in a series of short apports, struggling to think of a viable option, a strategy for the situation. There was no time to query Analytics, or call on Haley, who remained in reserve, providing a telepathic link and a remote overview. Alice had to trust her instincts.

  Alice dove beneath another tendril of water that whipped across the warehouse at head level, shattering glass and knocking over abandoned furniture behind her. She slid and scampered across the wet floor, grabbing on to him and apporting across the room.

  They emerged from the shadow of the warehouse on the opposite side of the building. Alice couldn’t port only Michael and leave the water behind, so she had to hope that Emily’s control over the water had some sort of functional range. She spent a dreadful moment, watching Michael drown in her arms, his lips turning pale and his fingernails digging into her arms. Then he was racked with a fit of something between coughing and vomiting, while she pounded him on the back, hoping to assist in clearing his lungs.

  She felt relief that bordered on gratitude when he took his first, labored breath.

  I’m alright. Going to need a minute. Don’t worry about me, Alice. Go get her. Be careful.

  Alice Gallow didn’t need to be told. She was a professional.

  Stepping through her shadow and out of another in the rafters of the building, Alice emerged directly above the spot they had fled. Alice took a moment to align her feet with the narrow steel beam, making certain of her balance, then dropped her gaze to search the warehouse for her opponent.

  She saw nothing but a gently rippling shallow pool of water that covered nearly the entire warehouse floor.

  Ten.

  “Ugh. This is the worst. Not only are we stuck here, but now we have classes too.”

  “For once I’m actually inclined to agree with you,” Katya sighed, resting her chin on her crossed arms. “This is the worst.”

  “Definitely the worst,” Alex said, glancing around the small classroom, which appeared brand new and totally unused, down to the pristine whiteboard and the fresh roll carpet. “Oh, never got a chance to ask. How was your weekend?”

  Katya made a strange face. Alex wasn’t at all sure what emotion, or combination of emotions, her expression represented.

  “Could have been worse,” she decided. “Also could have been a lot better.”

  “Huh. Wanna talk about it?”

  “Not even slightly, thanks. Hey, that reminds me – how was the date?”

  Alex blushed and became abruptly very involved in removing supplies from his book bag and piling them on the table he and Katya sat behind.

  “Uhm…”

  “You went on a date, Alex?” Haley leaned across their table, bringing with her faint scents of patchouli and cannabis. She was wearing a blue tie-dye with a Dia de los Muertos print on it and a ruffled skirt, her hair pinned up with a pair of plastic flower barrettes. “I wanna hear all about it!”

  “Why not?” Katya smirked and poked him in the side. “Do tell, Alex. Did you and Eerie have fun?”

  “Ah, yeah,” Alex stammered. “Yeah. It was, you know. Fun.”

  “C’mon,” Haley chided gleefully. “Details, details!”

  Min-jun entered the classroom with a tray and walked over to distribute foam cups that he had brought from the cafeteria.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Min-jun asked, shaking a sugar packet before ripping it open and dumping the contents in his coffee. “Did I miss something?”

  “Yeah,” Haley said, sipping from what Alex knew from experience was some sort of non-caffeinated herbal tea – as Haley seemed to take a rather strong stance against all drugs, excepting the one that she smoked habitually. “Alex is dating Eerie.”

  “I knew that,” Min-jun said defensively. “Katya told me.”

  “Yeah, oppa, but this weekend he actually took her on a date,” Katya pointed out smugly, biting the end of a croissant. “Big difference.”

  “Where did you go?” Haley asked, taking a seat at the adjoining table.

  “Uh, well,” Alex glanced at Katya for help, but she just grinned and watched him flail, “we went to a…a hot spring. I guess.”

 
; “You guess?”

  Alex tried to hide behind his coffee, certain he was unsuccessful.

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”

  “Where?” Min-jun took the seat next to Haley. “You’re from California, right? Somewhere you knew of before you came to the Academy?”

  Alex shook his head.

  “No. It was…”

  “We set it up,” Katya cut in, mercifully. “The Black Sun. As a favor.”

  “Wow,” Haley said, clearly taken aback. “How is it that the Black Sun does you favors, Alex? I thought you were nonpartisan.”

  “I am, I am,” Alex insisted, shaking his head. “Katya helped me out.”

  “Why would you do that, Katya?”

  “Out of the goodness of my heart, naturally,” Katya said magnanimously, mouth half full. “As I am both kind and helpful. Isn’t that right, Alex?”

  Alex nodded. What choice did he have?

  “Hmm.” Haley looked suspicious, as he would have expected of the Hegemony’s candidate for Audits. “Well, whatever. Get to the good part.”

  “Yeah, Alex,” Katya chimed in. “We want details.”

  “I don’t,” Min-jun pointed out.

  He was clearly outvoted.

  “We had fun. It was a nice place. I don’t know. What do you want me to say?”

  “Look at him blush,” Haley crowed. “You guys must be so fucking cute.”

  “They aren’t,” Katya assured her. “Trust me. It’s like two junior-high kids dating.”

  “You’re just jaded,” Haley countered. “I think it’s sweet.”

  “Hey…I don’t know if you guys are making fun of me, or what, but would you cut it out?” Alex didn’t hold out much hope. He didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to him that accepting Katya’s help meant that she would share the fact with everyone, but it definitely should have. “Can we talk about somebody else’s weekend?”

  “I had to work the first half. Then I got high and watched movies with Sarah,” Haley said with a shrug. “Nothing exciting. What about you, Katya?”