Timor blanched, and Renton felt a moment of genuine empathy. He had forgotten, until that moment, Katya’s adolescent captivity, and how she had suffered. Obviously his sister’s ordeal would have weighed heavily on Timor’s mind.
“It was no easier for me,” Renton admitted. “I don’t think I’ve slept at all since she was taken, and the anxiety inside that place was even worse. The rescue couldn’t be rushed, but I could hardly stand to wait, either.”
“The drugs were the worst of it, then?” Timor turned his attention back to the magazine, though Renton was certain that he wasn’t actually reading the article, illuminated with glossy photographs of triumphant soccer players in the uniforms of various European clubs. “I noticed burns from electrocution, wounds beneath her fingernails, and ligature marks on her wrists, but she seems intact, otherwise...”
Renton felt a certain amount of comradeship with Timor, united by their shared helplessness in the face of the suffering of a woman they both cared for, albeit in different ways.
“I believe so. She is a member of one of the noble families, and the heir to the greatest of the Cartels. Brennan Thule was prone to bouts of monologue, so I heard much of his plan even before he approached her. He did not wish Anastasia dead. At some point after their first attempt at assassination failed – I don’t know when, exactly – he became obsessed with the idea of making Anastasia his bride.”
That got Timor’s attention. He studied Renton’s face, searching for signs of a joke or deception.
“Surely you can’t be serious.”
“Deadly. He was mad. Their whole family is mad – and after watching the ordeal they put Anastasia through, I’m inclined to think the whole lot of them are. That wasn’t torture, Timor, it was family tradition. They’d all been through it at one time or another, the whole Thule family.”
“But, why? What reason could they possibly have for inflicting that sort of deranged ritual on themselves?”
“If Brennan Thule was telling the truth, then I think they wanted to be like Ana,” Renton explained, more because he wanted to say it then out of a desire to inform Zharova of anything. “To some small extent, they understood that Deviant Protocols are inherently powerful, if difficult to control, so they sought to induce that in themselves, through pain and derangement.”
“Madness,” Timor proclaimed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Do you believe they had any success?”
“I’m not sure,” Renton said, telepathically suppressing the memory of Anastasia’s hand passing through Brennan Thule’s chest to extract a shapeless red mass. “Their protocols are certainly odd, but I don’t think they would qualify as Deviant.”
Renton was unsettled on the subject. What he had seen Anastasia do – quantum tunneling, she had called it – was likely only a single application of her protocol. There was no telling what else Anastasia’s Reign Protocol was capable of. That implication worried and comforted him at the same time. Ana, he thought, really was amazing. No matter how much respect he had for her capabilities, somehow he always underestimated her.
“I’m worried about her nonetheless.” Timor shut the magazine and glanced out the window at the vista of endless clouds that always reminded Renton vaguely of the Ether. “At the very least, she is exhausted, and the toxins could hardly be out of her system. I would like to see her rest and receive medical attention, before she attempts anything further.”
“I agree. But we both know that she won’t do that,” Renton said sourly. “Regardless of her condition, Ana won’t let it stop her.”
“But in her current state...”
Timor didn’t finish his objection. He blinked hard and then trailed off in mid-sentence. Renton looked up at what had struck him dumb.
“Whose current state?” Anastasia asked with a yawn, bowing her head slightly so that the flight attendant could continue brushing out her hair. She had changed into a black dress that cinched at the waist and shimmered when she moved. She wore patterned tights beneath that appeared to be made of lace, and there were bows tied in her hair, the same blue-black as the hint of eye shadow around her eyes. Her heels were hand-stitched black leather with silver buckles. They added at least five centimeters to her height, though the Asian flight attendant still stood half a head taller. “I swear, I leave the two of you alone and you gossip like school girls.”
“Milady,” Timor gasped. “I didn’t mean...”
“Ana.” Renton swallowed hard. “It is good to see you looking so much better.”
She gave him a rare, unreserved smile, brushing away the further attentions of the flight attendant to take the seat between them.
“Thank you, Renton. You are a dear.” Anastasia put one hand over Timor’s, reaching across the aisle to take Renton’s hand with the other. “Now boys. Pull yourselves together. We have a few hours to rest and regain our strength, then we will return to Central. Our work is not yet finished.”
Seventeen.
On second inspection, Kiev tried no harder to impress Alex. In the neighborhood of the former chemical factory, there was nothing green or growing, relatively few pedestrians, and sporadic sidewalk along the crumbling and heavily trafficked road. They passed defunct and crumbling factories, enormous repurposed and subdivided industrial facilities, and acres of rusting warehouses, following a meandering path that was dictated telepathically by Karim. The only upside was that they were far from the tension and political troubles of the city center. At least it was a sunny day, though still quite cold.
“Man, this sucks,” Alex complained, scratching at the healing wound on the back of his neck. “You grew up here, Katya?”
“Sort of,” Katya admitted. “And don’t call me man, okay?”
“Sorry. Wasn’t it, like, depressing?”
“Parts of it,” Katya sighed, lowering her sunglasses to glance around them. “I didn’t grow up in a factory, idiot. My parents place was out on the Left Bank, and it was pretty nice. Between the Soviets, the famine, and the war, there isn’t much of the old city left, but what’s still around is actually pretty beautiful. Not that I spent too much time here. My parents deeded me to the Black Sun when I was a kid, you know.”
“Oh yeah,” Alex said, feeling guilty. “Sorry about that.”
“What? Don’t be. Best thing that ever happened to me. Better than growing up useless and unwanted, like your little friend Emily.”
“Ugh. Could you please not mention her? I’m trying to forget.”
“Not gonna let you forget about it,” Katya said, giving him a shove toward the street. “You have to learn from that situation, Alex, or you’ll stay a little shit for the rest of your life.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“Oh, get over yourself.”
“Fine. Whatever.” Alex didn’t want to admit it, but Katya had a point. He had almost screwed everything up, getting involved with Emily when he wasn’t even sure if he cared about her. It was only luck and generosity from Eerie and his friends that had prevented him from losing the things he turned out to actually want. It wasn’t an experience that he intended to repeat. “You think we’ll find what we’re looking for today?”
“Don’t know. I think our chances would be a lot better if Miss Gallow knew exactly what she wanted us to find.” Katya gave him a crooked grin. “I hear your role as bait is really working out lately, so maybe we’ll get lucky...”
“Don’t remind me.” Alex said, running his fingers along the bandages on his elbows, where the skin was still in the process of healing. “I’m just glad it’s you this time, instead of Miss Aoki.”
Katya glanced at him over the top of her sunglasses. They were wearing the same basic outfit – fatigues with a vest reinforced with armor plates and combat boots with hardened toes and insoles. Alex had thrown a sweatshirt over his vest, partly because it was freezing, and partly because the military gear made him feel self-conscious, though they had telepathic disguises to discourage passersby from taking a close look. Ka
tya wore elbow and knee pads in addition to the armored vest, while Alex had a rifle slung over his back and a pistol strapped to his waist.
“Yeah?”
Alex nodded in response, putting his hand to the small of his back and attempting to stretch it out. He was still sore from the encounter the day before, and the extra weight from the armor, rifle, and ammunition didn’t help much. He wasn’t sure if he felt better for having it, anyway – he ranked last in marksmanship in the entire roster of the Program. Alex envied Katya’s ability to get away with carrying little more than a pistol, a few grenades, and an extensive array of sewing needles, but he supposed that field experience allowed her the luxury of picking and choosing her loadout.
“Yeah. I heard what you said about Miss Aoki to Michael, out in the hallway. You weren’t wrong.”
“It’s Mitsuru, now,” Katya laughed. “Remember? She told us this morning. We are on a first-name basis, you know.”
“Guess you got to her. You had a good point, after all.”
“You’re damn right I did. She’s a fucking menace. Unless they rein her in, she’s gonna get everyone killed.”
He hesitated momentarily while they waited for a series of rumbling lorries to pass, not a single driver taking a second glass at the pedestrians draped in military gear strolling down the street. Alex wondered what they saw, when they looked at him through the filter of a telepathic disguise.
“I appreciate what you said about me, you know,” Alex admitted shyly, as they walked along another block of dense industry and storage. “About trusting me. That meant a lot, coming from you.”
Katya shot him a quick look before returning to her ceaseless scanning of the surroundings. He wasn’t sure if Katya’s alertness was standard behavior for her in the field, a manifestation of nervousness, or even a result of returning to her hometown. Despite the time they had spent together, Alex didn’t really know all that much about Katya, he realized.
“Why coming from me?”
“Respect, I guess,” Alex blurted, blushing as he spoke. “I couldn’t do this shit without you. Hell, I probably wouldn’t even be alive. I know how much you’ve looked out for me, and you didn’t have to do it.”
“It is my job, you know.”
“No. Your job is to protect me. You’ve done way more than that.”
Katya didn’t say anything in response, so he couldn’t judge how his words had been received. Alex felt better for having said them, and decided to be content with that.
The further they walked, the older the buildings were, and the more run-down the neighborhood became. The vehicle traffic diminished and the trucks that bounced along the cratered road were in more dramatic states of disrepair. Many of the properties seemed to be in states of semi-abandonment, and those that were occupied lacked signs or any of the normal trappings of business. Rust appeared to be the predominant color, followed closely by the blank grey of cement. The sun was painfully bright, but the air was cold enough for Alex to see his breath.
“I have my reasons.”
Katya spoke so quietly that at first Alex wasn’t sure what she said.
“For what?”
Katya averted her eyes, muttering curses beneath her breath. Alex was puzzled by her reaction.
“It might be more than a job for me,” Katya mumbled, the words almost lost in the rattle and exhaust of a passing pickup truck. “That’s all.”
Before he could respond, in the act of taking a step, some small portion of Alex’s brain sparked to life.
The memory seemed to fall from the sky, as if dislodged from some sort of orbital repository of his past and driven directly into the throbbing core of his brain. It was on the tip of his tongue, while defying the simple conventions of language. Alex was hampered by words, his mind a jumble of fragments and impressions, the emotional freight of memory without the context to place it within. He stumbled on a protruding crack in the pavement and was so distracted that he almost fell, earning a quick and confused glare from Katya. He walked behind her, flat-footed and dizzy, a headache beginning to swell up from the depths of his mind, a raw ache behind his eyeballs warning him not to follow the train of thought any further.
It was there nonetheless, like a faded snapshot in a frayed family album, a snippet from a movie to which he had forgotten the plot. The wonder of it snagged his attention away from the increasing pounding in his head.
He remembered Katya. Her expression was immediately familiar, without the need for elaboration – she was scolding him, with the grudging indulgence that she always favored him with, chiding and cursing without a hint of malice. The memory was not of a recent vintage, and Katya’s face was all wrong – rounder, the features familiar but not quite established in their typical setting. Her hair was wrong, too, set in braided pigtails, a style she had never worn in the time he had known her. There was something else...
His perspective. The point of view. In the memory, Alex had to look up to see Katya, because she was taller than him. Despite the churning in his brain, the jolts of pain that ran from the pressure in his sinus all the way to the back of his head, everything gelled for Alex, the pieces falling into place.
He remembered Katya being taller, because at the time, she couldn’t have been more than eleven years old.
Alex caught Katya by her sleeve, tugging her to a stop, his other hand pressed to his forehead.
“Hey!” Katya tried to pull free of his grasp. “What’s the problem?”
“That’s why you always know what to do. I know what you looked like when you were little, you know? Even though I was probably even smaller.” Alex laughed and shook his head, unaware the he was crying. The pain in his head blossomed into a migraine, an icy grip that squeezed his frontal lobes mercilessly. “Anastasia didn’t assign you to look after me, right? She let you.”
“Alex, chill out,” Katya commanded, taking hold of his shoulder. “Calm down.”
“That makes sense,” Alex whined, hands dropping to his knees and his breath coming in gasps, hysterical with pain. “But I don’t understand the rest. We’ve known each other for a long time, haven’t we, Katya?”
“Get a hold of yourself,” Katya said urgently, bending down to look him in the face. “Hey, are you okay? Your nose is bleeding...”
Katya touched him above his upper lip, and her finger came away red. Alex laughed, the sound echoing shrill and awful in the confines of his head.
“The funny thing, you know...it’s not just you. I keep having these dreams,” Alex gestured vaguely, no idea what he was trying to describe. “I remember Anastasia, too. Why is that?”
“Alex, you need to calm down.” Katya was practically holding him upright, and he could taste the blood that had flowed into his mouth, harsh and copper. His eyes were barely open, just slits, but he could see concern on her face. “Do you hear me? This isn’t the place. Fuck! I knew we shouldn’t have come here!”
“Why not?” Alex persisted, half-blind with pain. “I’ve been here before, haven’t I?”
Katya held a rag beneath his nose, her other hand pressed against his shoulder.
“Tell me the truth, Katya,” Alex pleaded, hardly able to hear himself over the sound he first took as traffic, but then realized was the rushing of the blood in his head. “You’re the only one I trust. Please. Tell me. What’s happening to me?”
“Fuck, fuck!” Katya shook Alex as if she were trying to wake him from a bad dream. “Not now! Alex, I promise, I’ll tell you everything, but now isn’t...”
“What is happening, Katya?” Alex shouted, the sound reverberating through his skull as if it would shatter. “Why do I remember you?”
Katya slapped him across both cheeks, hard and fast, sending blood flying from his dripping nose, then grabbed him again by his shoulders and yelled in his stunned face.
“Not now!”
“Why not?”
Katya spun him around, and through squinting eyes and dimmed vision, Alex could make out a woman
who had her short hair in braids, tied with crystals and shells and the skulls of small birds, wearing a simple white dress and sandals, shining with a light that was awful, an aura of menace and cruelty that wilted the sprigs of grass fighting their way up through cracks in the concrete. Alex looked at her, the agony of his head momentarily receding, replaced with the instinctual fear of a small animal trapped in the open on hearing the cry of an owl.
Witch!
Alex had time for that one thought, and the burst of panic that came with it; then his legs crumpled and his eyes fluttered, as the ground came rushing toward him.
“Oh, no,” Katya whispered, catching him before he hit the ground. “Oh, fuck. That’s just great.”
***
Eerie woke with a start on an examination table in the mundane and sterile environs of what appeared to be a hospital room. There was nothing restraining her, so she sat up, rubbing a sore spot at the base of her spine and taking in her surroundings. The walls were painted a soft uniform green, with anatomical charts and symptom posters pinned up. There was a built-in sink and cupboard, a window that looked out onto barren hills, and a pair of plastic chairs in the room with her. A stethoscope, an empty syringe, and a box of latex gloves sat on top of the counter. In the corner of the room, above the wooden door, behind a mostly opaque plastic globe, was the blinking red light of a camera.
She noted with relief that she was still wearing her clothes – a grey-and-blue-striped sweater, jean shorts, and black tights with sneakers – then discovered a cotton ball attached with medical tape to one forearm, and a Band-Aid on her shoulder. Wincing, she removed the tape and cotton and studied the mark she found, which appeared no worse than a mosquito bite. She put one finger in her mouth for a moment, then daubed the needle mark with her wetted finger.
The Far Shores (The Central Series) Page 46
