The Far Shores (The Central Series)

by Rawlins, Zachary

  Alex’s anger heated up again. He decided that if he were going to die here, then it wouldn’t be alone, or for nothing. He braced himself as best he could and reached for the Black Door, determined to withstand or ignore whatever Alistair threw at him.

  “I think not,” Alistair said gleefully, lunging forward with the point of the blade.

  Alex flinched at the proximity of the knife, shattering the routine before he could complete it.

  Not that it mattered.

  The point of the machete pierced Alex’s right eye.

  ***

  Eerie screamed and tried to stand, succeeding only in toppling over forward.

  Samnang crouched above her, one arm around Eerie’s shoulders, so to be sure the Changeling heard her.

  “Now or never, Ériu. What will you decide?”

  ***

  Emily emerged from the portal beside John Parson to the scene of carnage. Alistair stood over Alex in the sunken center of the room, an enormous blood-covered knife in one hand. Alex was missing fingers and bleeding from the side of his head, and one of his eyes had become a well of red that was gradually coating his face.

  “Alistair, what are you doing?” Emily demanded, covering her mouth in shock. “Stop it!”

  “Really, Alistair,” John Parson said gravely, standing aside so that his guard could enter the room. “Such cruelty is beneath us, as Anathema. I must ask that you cease this barbarity immediately. This is not part of our plan.”

  “Of course. In just one moment,” Alistair agreed, swinging the machete without bothering to look, embedding the knife into Alex’s extended leg, the blade driven through his tibia and into the marrow, fracturing the bone crudely down the middle. Alex made a strange keening sound and stared blankly at the shards of bone protruding from his skin while Emily screamed. “I’m very nearly finished, you see.”

  “Savagery,” John Parson said, with obvious distaste. “You disappoint me, Alistair.”

  ***

  “Ériu?”

  “Yes,” Eerie said, barely able to raise her head from the floor. “Do it. But I will come for him.”

  “Of course. I expect nothing less.”

  ***

  Alex couldn’t understand why he didn’t lose consciousness. Wasn’t that supposed to happen at a certain point? Was it even possible to experience so much pain?

  It must have been, he reflected groggily. After all, as much as this seemed like a horrible nightmare, it was happening.

  Alistair left the knife embedded in Alex’s leg, turning to face him with one outstretched hand.

  “Oh, very well,” Alistair said, sounding like a child whose toys have been taken away. “You’re all so damn boring. Goodbye, Alex. It was fun.”

  Shining Cloud.

  ***

  Samnang stood over Alex, the tattoos on her cheeks flaring in sequence. The brilliant cloud of nanometer blades that emerged from Alistair’s hand blossomed and died, falling to the ground as gently as snowflakes.

  “I won’t let you,” Samnang explained simply, brushing aside the sparkling remains of the protocol. “He is mine, after all.”

  “What?” Alistair glanced from Samnang to Parson, and then back. “What do you mean, Yaojing? You were meant to collect the Changeling. This wasn’t the deal.”

  “I have changed the deal. This is more intriguing.”

  “Nonsense,” Alistair sputtered. “This is absurd. You cannot change the terms of a deal once it is struck. Stand aside now. I am warning you.”

  “It would be the height of foolishness to challenge me, Anathema,” Samnang said, eye sockets burning with a disquieting greenish-white radiance. “You forget yourself.”

  “Enough,” Parson commanded. “You have indulged your bloodlust more than sufficiently, Alistair. We will discuss this later, at length. Lady Samnang, I will have Emily Muir aid you in transporting the boy back to the Outer Dark, if that will truly settle our debt.”

  Alistair stood aside, white faced and with shaky hands. Samnang nodded absently, having apparently lost interest in the proceedings.

  “Fine.” Alistair folded his arms across his chest. “Take him and go, then.”

  “Is the World Tree ready for transport, Talia?”

  The technician nodded, her hands still tapping away at the keyboard.

  “Almost, sir. Nearly there.”

  “Good. Emily, if you would?”

  A swell of water lifted Alex from the ground and raised him toward the portal, Samnang following closely. Emily glared at Alistair from the platform.

  “You are a beast, Alistair. A monster. I hope you get what you deserve.”

  They disappeared into the portal. John Parson gave Alistair one final disapproving glance, then followed, leaving Alistair to fume and the Anathema soldiers to shift from one foot to the other and exchange nervous glances in the silence.

  “What I deserve? That’s all that I want as well,” Alistair fumed. “Why is it that I never get it?”

  He snapped his fingers, and the Anathema came uneasily to attention. From beyond the chamber door, the sound of the water rushing out of the hallway was audible.

  “Let’s finish this, then,” Alistair said, glancing at the soldiers. “We’re moving into Central proper. You all have your targets. I want no survivors, no prisoners. We’ve had enough of that today.”

  Katya dragged herself slowly up from the ground, shaking her head woozily.

  “Where’s Alex?” Katya asked, glancing around the room as her head cleared and her eyes focused. “What’s going on – oh.” Katya stood slowly, looking from one Anathema to the next. “This is fucked.”

  “What a brilliant observation,” Alistair snarled, turning his attention to Talia and the equipment while gesturing vaguely in Katya’s direction. “Start with this one.”

  The door to the chamber opened. The girl in the doorway cleared her throat politely, then entered, Timor and a pair of black Weir following close behind, stepping carefully around the puddles of blood and the unconscious Changeling.

  “I think not,” Anastasia said with a half-smile. She wore a matte black dress that had been tailored for her in Harajuku, hand-stitched by her favorite tailor to accentuate her very subtle curves, laced at the chest and tight around the hips, flaring into a long skirt with custom Italian heels to match. Her hair was perfect. “You are done here, Anathema. There will be no trip to Central, no further violence – unless you believe yourself ready to face me?”

  Alistair hesitated for a moment, then he laughed uproariously.

  “I think I’ve had about enough for today, thanks. After all, we can come back anytime we want, now that we have a World Tree,” Alistair said brightly, gesturing to Talia, who began tapping at the tablet in front of her. First the Anathema flickered, then the World Tree behind them. “Take a rain check?”

  Then they were gone, and the only sound was the sobbing Changeling.

  “Just as well,” Anastasia sighed, fanning herself and leaning against the wall while her Weir circled the perimeter of her dress anxiously. “I’m far too exhausted for any further excitement. Timor, be a dear and bring Eerie along with us, won’t you?”

  ***

  Renton rendered Vivik neatly oblivious. It was an exacting procedure, requiring the aid of one of the special transdermal patches to accomplish. The Sikh would remain conscious, his protocol in operation, but without him noticing or remembering anything that occurred in the numerous points of view he provided. Instead, Vivik would broadcast a false view that Renton carefully implanted in his consciousness, subtly altering the feed of what was happening at the Far Shores.

  “Here,” Renton said, pointing at a window that showed a portly man frantically running through a hallway and bursting through a swinging door into a dormant laboratory. “We need to go here, Svetlana.”

  ***

  It had all gone wrong.

  There was no denying that, no use disputing it or crying over spilled milk. The events of the day
would cost him years of work, the Far Shores, everything he had accomplished and earned over decades, but that was beyond fixing. The important thing now was to make sure that it didn’t cost Dr. Graaf his life, and therefore that was where his energies were focused.

  The Anathema must have had their own World Tree, to allow them to sidestep the barrier that protected Central from direct apports. That they had come to the Far Shores with such a clear understanding only confirmed Dr. Graaf’s suspicions – they had both been provided technology from the same benefactor. He had no idea why the Anathema required the World Tree he had planted and nurtured at the Far Shores, if they already had one of their own, but the bee line they had made to the concealed control room made their intentions obvious. He was curious, despite his anger, as to the nature of the Anathema World Tree, and would have given much to see it. It was a decided pity that he would never have the opportunity to reverse engineer it, given all he could learn.

  Then again, that could hardly be his priority at the moment. There were more time-sensitive concerns.

  Like getting out of the Far Shores before the Auditors arrived.

  Succeeding in life meant preparing for the worst, no matter how confident one was in the success of his plans. It was certainly unfortunate that things had worked out in the manner they had, but even unfortunate possibilities have to be explored and compensated for, in case the worse does in fact happen.

  This was the reason he had negotiated an out for this very contingency. Hidden carefully in a disused seismology laboratory in the Geophysics building, taped to the back of a cabinet door in a bleached white envelope, there was a beacon. He had used it twice in the past, and was thus assured that seconds after he employed the beacon, he would be safely distant from the ongoing disaster at the Far Shores.

  Of course, eventually everyone runs out of contingencies.

  Dr. Graaf burst through the laboratory doors, operational codes in hand for the device, to find the seismology lab occupied a young man in a suit with a salesman’s smile, and a young lady watching with polite disinterest beside the ransacked cabinet.

  “Dr. Graaf. Please do come in.” Renton greeted him, waving him into the room with a friendliness that conveyed just the slightest hint that not accepting whatever he was graciously offering would be very unwise indeed. “I am afraid that the guest you were expecting won’t be coming.”

  “I had guessed as much,” Dr. Graaf agreed sadly. “You have seen to that, I imagine.”

  “It was not our doing,” the young man said, tossing him the beacon. “We found the package you had concealed, and examined it, as we are also eager to talk to your friends. Unfortunately, it appears to be nothing more than an empty plastic tube. Unless you have some special knowledge?”

  Dr. Graaf tore open the envelope, and then examined the beacon with trembling hands. Externally, it was exactly as he remembered, excepting only the weight – flat black, with a texture that was similar to glass, similar in shape and slightly larger than a pencil. It had no joints or panels, no obvious joining or points of separation. There were no signs of tampering or damage. Dr. Graaf wasn’t even sure how one would go about accessing the interior. Nonetheless, he was forced to agree with the young man’s conclusion – the beacon was hollow, and therefore useless.

  “None, I am afraid.” Dr. Graaf tossed the useless shell aside, his shoulders slumped, resigning himself. “If not you, then who did this?”

  “Your benefactors, I imagine. The Church of Sleep. They seem to have abandoned you.”

  Dr. Graaf didn’t bother to look shocked. It seemed a little late in the game for such fictions.

  Truthfully, he had never understood why the Church of Sleep had contacted him, or why they had been willing to exchange the data that would allow for both the power plant and the nearly finished World Tree, in exchange for a few pointless communication experiments. The relationship benefited him tremendously, however, providing access to research decades beyond anything in Central and allowing for the astounding progress at the Far Shores, so he didn’t worry overly much about what they might be getting out of it.

  In retrospect, Dr. Graaf wished he had put more thought into that aspect.

  “How did you discover the project? And their involvement? I was careful to cover my tracks...”

  “Katya Zharova,” the young man said, with a smile. “She suspected you from day one. You may recall that she observed a portion of one of your night experiments? Under hypnosis, she was able to recall every detail. The Black Sun has formidable scientific resources of its own, Dr. Graaf. It did not take long to deduce that you were assembling some sort of array, for discreet communications with a distant party. The rest was inferred.”

  Dr. Graaf nodded slowly.

  “If I understand correctly, you intend to leave the employ of the Far Shores,” the young man suggested, “effective immediately?”

  “That was my intention, yes,” Dr. Graaf admitted weakly. “I see that has been rendered impossible, however.”

  “Impossible? Nonsense,” Renton said, putting his arm around Dr. Graaf’s broad shoulders. “I wouldn’t let a small thing like a disabled communication device bother you, Doctor. Not when such a staggeringly convenient and well-timed opportunity has just dropped in your lap.”

  “Oh?” Dr. Graaf said, warily encouraged. “What opportunity is that?”

  “I would assume that you wish to depart before the Auditors locate you, Dr. Graaf. Am I correct?”

  “Utterly.”

  “Well, they have just arrived, so I will make this brief.” Renton urged him gently in Svetlana’s direction. “As it happens, Doctor, there is an opening in the Black Sun at this very moment, perfect for a man of your talents. An opportunity that should afford you access to the very best in research and experimental resources, and a sufficient degree of freedom to pursue your creativity to satisfy even your demanding intellect. Would you not call that good fortune?”

  “Very fortunate,” Dr. Graaf agreed. “However, as you mention, I am anticipating certain difficulties with the authorities of Central and the Auditors – based entirely on a misunderstanding, I might add – which may prove difficult even for the Black Sun Cartel to clear up without a certain amount of unpleasantly intrusive inquiry.”

  “Then today is truly your lucky day, Dr. Graaf. The position I mentioned,” Renton explained, nodding to Svetlana, “is, shall we say, off the books. Very secret, very secure. And I assure you, Doctor, we are very good at keeping secrets. Can I assume that you are interested?”

  “Overwhelmed with interest,” Dr. Graaf said sadly. “I can hardly wait.”

  “Excellent, Doctor. If you will come with us, then...”

  Epilogue.

  “I am so not happy with this.”

  “Poor baby.”

  “I’m serious. This is fucked. This is not at all what I wanted.”

  “My heart bleeds for you. Really.”

  “Don’t be a bitch.” Rebecca sighed and then sparked her lighter, attempting to light the joint that she had been staring at for the last couple minutes. Alice rolled her eyes and then cupped her hands to shield the lighter from the wind. Rebecca inhaled, coughed smoke, and then nodded. “Thanks. You know, all I wanted was to be a school councilor. Not an Auditor. Not in charge of anything. I just wanted to help some kids, talk out their problems with them. That’s it. Is that so much to ask?”

  “Apparently.” Rebecca leaned against the wall behind the trash dumpster in back of the Administrative building where the Committee-at-Large was meeting, not appearing particularly concerned about potentially dirtying her tailored blue skirt suit. “I can’t believe I found you out here, by the way. You sure you should be getting stoned right now?”

  Rebecca attempted to blow a smoke ring, but the wind spoiled her efforts.

  “Maybe they’ll notice and fire me. What do you think?”

  “I think Anastasia Martynova nominated you three hours ago, the Thule Cartel seconded, and you
won on the first ballot. Lord North withdrew his name when your candidacy was announced. So I think you might have to try a bit harder to get kicked out of office, Director.”

  Rebecca gave her a sour face.

  “Don’t call me that. I haven’t even been confirmed yet. And even when I’m confirmed – if I decide to go ahead with it – I still don’t want you to call me that.”

  “Oh, I get it. You’re gonna be the cool informal boss. Just one of the girls. Maybe you could institute Casual Fridays or something, just to get the point across.”

  Rebecca flicked ash into the wind.

  “Why are you giving me shit, Alice? You know I don’t want to do this…”

  “What I know is that I trust you,” Alice said, shrugging. “I know that I have half the Auditors I need, less than half of what I want, and more problems than they could address in a lifetime. Central is unsettled – nah, scratch that. Central is on the edge of revolution and civil war. If Anastasia Martynova hadn’t shown up at the Far Shores when she did, then the Anathema probably would have attacked Central again, rather than retreating. For the first time in a generation, the Hegemony and the Black Sun are virtually unified, under the thumb of two of the most dangerous and effective Operators in history. The Academy is reeling. We’ve lost – even been betrayed by, depending on your perspective – the man that most of us looked to for leadership. We’ve been outmaneuvered by the cartels, conned by the Far Shores, and beaten up by the Anathema. I’ve been through my diaries, Becca, and I can’t find any mention of more desperate times. We could lose everything in a heartbeat, particularly if we don’t get a strong hand at the helm, someone people will listen to and follow, before the next crisis hits. That’s what I know.”

  Rebecca took a final drag, then tossed the roach out into the wet grass.