That’s a little…
Think about yourself, if you don’t have any sympathy for Katya. Are you any less of a victim?
Fuck, Emily, that’s…just tell me why we’re doing this, okay?
Why I want to destroy the Source Well? I already told you.
I know you too well to believe all that stuff. Tell me what’s really going on. If you’ve got a good reason, I’ll help.
I’ve given you my reasons. If you don’t believe me after everything we’ve been through, then I’ll probably never earn your trust.
Don’t be like that!
What? It’s true. Don’t you trust me at all?
That isn’t the only issue, and you know it. What about me? I pay for it, every time I use my protocol. The Source Well is huge. Can you imagine how long I’ll sleep if I…?
Are you sure that you sleep longer based on how much you use the Absolute Protocol?
What? Yes! I mean, I think…well, Katya said, and…
Katya is a genius in doing more with less, because she had very little to work with, Emily thought. Are you sure her circumstances haven’t prejudiced your opinion?
It’s happened before, though! I slept for months, because I used it too much, when the Anathema invaded.
You had to sleep for so long because you were inexperienced and used your protocol inefficiently. You’ve learned a bunch since then. Don’t you think you’ve improved? Typically, as Black Protocol users learn and grow, the cost of using their protocol decreases, you see, and not the other way around.
Really? But I thought…
Why would they bother to train you at all, if it just made things worse? Efficiency is the whole idea. Using less to accomplish more is the definition of progress, don’t you think?
He gave Emily’s suggestion due consideration.
Then he reached for his protocol, straining to activate the implanted routine…
…or was it a strain? Did it need to be? Alex felt Emily at the edges of his mind, knocking politely, as it were, on the door of his consciousness.
He let her in grudgingly and felt her guide his perception for the tiniest sliver of a moment. He felt the vastness of the Absolute Protocol like an obelisk rising out of barren desert, alien and unyielding. It felt like a thorn embedded beneath his skin, like an arch bearing the weight of an enormous structure.
Katya showed you how do to a respectable amount with very little, which is a valuable lesson, Emily thought, nudging his thoughts in new directions. She could not tell you how to accomplish great things efficiently, because of her own limitations.
All at once he was looking at himself from the outside, the pulsing trunk line that connected him to the Ether, an Etheric Signature in the shape of a boy with bad posture crouched beside a well in the dark.
It was like watching a smoking volcano, waiting for magma and internal pressure to blow the top, like twisting the cork on a bottle of sparkling wine.
You see now, Emily thought, retreating from his head. You see what I see.
Yeah. The Absolute Protocol was a piling driven deep into the tidal mud of his subconscious, a pinion on which the machinery of the entire world might turn. I see it.
It was a question of application, Alex remembered Michael telling him, and not necessarily one of power.
A simple, cold realization.
The tips of his dead fingers sang with resonance to the Ether, and his dead eye throbbed.
…what that would mean?” Katya finished, gripping his shoulder tight. “They’ll kill you both for even trying!”
Alex sighed.
“Somebody’s gonna kill me eventually,” he said, putting out his hand over the Source Well, his palm just grazing the water. “That’s how it goes for killers, right? You can only be the fastest and luckiest so many times.”
“Don’t do this, Alex!” Katya said, shaking him. “This will make everything worse!”
He looked at the Source Well with his replaced eye, tracking the web of glimmering Ether down into the stone. It felt deep.
“Take a step back, okay?” Alex said, the air chilling around him. “Maybe a couple.”
Emily gently tugged Katya away. The assassin was either too stunned to put up a fight, or pacified by empathic intervention.
Alex did not need to reach for the Absolute Protocol.
It was waiting for him as soon as his thoughts turned to it, imposing and frigid as an iceberg floating in the darker waters of his mind.
Emily pulled Katya back to the door of the chamber.
Katya opened her mouth to protest, and he could see her breath, though he could not hear her words over the muted roar of the white noise in his ears. A perfect circle of frost collected on the chamber floor around him.
Alex closed his eyes, and he could feel the Ether everywhere, full of potential energy, eagerly filling the voids that the Absolute Protocol created. He could almost count the trillions of nanites in the waters of the Source Well, each gleaming like a cut and faceted stone, and felt as if he could have followed their passage through the medium by the vivid trails they left behind, falling submolecular stars in a liquid sky.
The stone basin cracked as the Source Well froze into one solid mass, the nanites trapped and suspended in the ice.
It was so simple, Alex thought, opening his eyes. How could he have not seen it before, when it was right there?
The strands of Ether that were attached to the nanites had stopped vibrating.
It took nothing more than a command, a simple act of will, and the Absolute Protocol severed those threads, extinguishing a trillion nanoscale lights in an instant.
***
Progress was slower than the Director anticipated. As the evening approached, she grudgingly acknowledged the need to stop for the night, following Gerald’s directions to an Academy-maintained campground near a small lake just off the road. Rebecca was checking names on a clipboard as children exited the second to last bus. She had just recorded ‘Nahas, Rayan’ as the sniffling eight-year-old left the bus, and was moving on to ‘Ong, Jaime,’ who was almost invisible behind the bulky duffel he was carrying in his arms, when she felt it.
Years in Southern California made her think first of an earthquake, but she knew that was wrong before the thought was finished. Central had very little tectonic activity, close enough to none that it made Academy geologists very anxious. Hell, Central barely even had weather.
The dislocated moment had not been an earthquake.
The ground beneath her was stable.
The disturbance here was much more fundamental. Something had changed, and Rebecca could almost feel the precognitive pools crying out in collective confusion and rage as years of careful calculations were ruined.
She caught Gerald Windsor’s eye, and he nodded, putting aside his own clipboard.
“That’s the third time in two days,” Rebecca said, steering Jaime Ong out into the campground. “What the hell is going on?”
“Someone is tampering,” Gerald said. “We’ve known since the night we came upon Alexander Warner that someone was creating new possibilities. There never seemed to be a clear agenda to it, and all the chances were just so slim, it was easy to overlook in the face of Alistair’s treachery or the Anathema invasion.”
“There’s more to it than that. This isn’t the unlikely coming to be, this is someone taking the established order and twisting it around on itself.” Rebecca hurried Abby Panh off the bus, quieting her anxieties with a pat on the head and an empathic tweak. “This is someone who knows what everyone is expecting to happen, and they are breaking things.”
“I cannot help but worry over our poor lost Changeling,” Gerald said sadly. “We’ve not done our best by our students, have we?”
“This isn’t over,” Rebecca said, hurrying her line along. “Don’t count us out yet, okay?”
***
Carlos started talking the minute they got back to the SUV, but this time, Alex was glad for the distraction.
No one had said a word since he had frozen the Source Well.
Katya was angry, refusing to let him catch up to her on the walk back, and taking the front passenger seat before Emily could object to the arrangement.
The car was filled with a stifling silence.
Emily was busy again with her phone.
Alex tried to look at the scenery as they drove through the woods, but Carlos had reverted to form, and it was all Alex could do to hold on.
He felt unsure if he had done the right thing, but that was nothing new.
Alex wasn’t sure there was a right thing at all.
“Who are you texting, anyway?”
“Vivik,” Emily said, grinning. “And that’s absolutely none of your business.”
“Hey!” Alex glared. “I just did you a favor!”
“Thank you very much, Alex,” Emily said. “I’m sorry, dear, are you bored? Have I been ignoring you?”
Carlos laughed and pounded the steering well, bouncing them all over the road.
“We are going to die,” Katya said, eyes closed, her head leaning out of the open window. “Please let us die before I vomit.”
“Where did you come from, anyway?” Alex demanded, tapping Carlos’s shoulder. “How did you meet Emily?”
“I’m Anathema, or I was, I suppose,” Carlos said. “I worked for Marcus, like she did.”
“Yeah? Why’d you decide to go with her when she left the Outer Dark?”
“Are you kidding? Have you met Alistair? Oh, right, you have! I heard about that.” Carlos laughed, and Alex decided he was getting tired of being laughed at. “Emily’s great! And compared to Alistair or Parson, well, no contest, right?”
“Thank you, Carlos,” Emily said. “I’m glad you feel that way.”
“She’s way hotter, too,” Carlos said. “No contest there, either.”
“Not as happy about that, but a compliment is a compliment,” Emily said. “I suppose.”
Katya glanced at the driver, her arms wrapped around her middle and her face pale.
“You are going to slow down, Carlos,” Katya instructed. “And everyone is going to shut up. Or I will puke on you, and then kill you, in that order.”
Carlos finished the drive with an abundance of caution, and no one said a word until they were back at the Far Shores, where a blue-haired young woman waited, sitting on the lowered arm of the gate with her sneakers dangling above the asphalt.
***
Timing wasn’t a thing.
Eerie knew that it was a question of placement, if anything. Proximity and scheduling.
Those issues resolved so suddenly that instead of relief she felt as if something was being drained from her, like water leaking from a cracked glass, her emotions spilling into the grass and seeping down through the dirt.
She had promised herself many things about the moment, but she forgot all of them, and instead of being brave, or cool, or any of what she had planned, she just sat and waited for something to happen.
Alex and Katya emerged from the SUV and then stood side by side, gaping at her. Emily did not seem surprised at all.
At least, that was the way it looked to her.
It felt a little unfamiliar, being able to read facial expressions, while simultaneously feeling as natural as if she had been doing it her whole life. Which she would, Eerie supposed, from here on forward.
Which was the same thing as having always done it, to a Changeling. She stood as Alex trotted over, Katya right behind him.
“Eerie?” Alex was ghost-white and wide-eyed as he approached. “Is that really you?”
“Yes, it really is,” she said, thinking of her unwashed and altogether blonde hair self-consciously. “Did you miss me?”
“Yes,” he said earnestly, reaching for her. “What the hell? Where have you…?”
Alex wrapped her in his arms and crushed her to his chest.
His embrace was too tight, making her ribs ache, but she did not particularly mind. She put her arms around him and breathed deep, Alex smelling like smoke and stress, but most importantly like him. She felt a little dizzy, though she had known this was coming, and had been here before.
I’m always here, really, she thought. I’m always lingering here, in this moment.
Was it the first time she had experienced their reunion, she wondered? Or the hundredth?
Eerie was overcome with relief and nostalgia intermingled, remembering as it happened; his fingers in her hair and on the back of her neck, the warm solidity of the embrace, her elbow brushing the gun holstered at his side, a queasy reminder of their circumstance.
Just be, she reminded herself, leaning into him. Before and after might not be real, but first certainly was.
Eventually his arms relaxed, and she leaned back to look him in the face.
He took the opportunity.
Alex kissed her, urgently and a little clumsily, just the way she had known he would.
Had.
Always did.
It felt a little bit like melting, and it could have gone on forever, as far as she was concerned.
“Come on you two,” Katya grumbled agreeably, tapping Alex on the shoulder. “You’re in public, and she needs to breathe.”
Alex let her go reluctantly. Eerie hung on to his hand, intertwining their fingers.
They all looked at each other and smiled.
The grins turned into laughter, embarrassed and sincere.
“It’s good to see you, Eerie,” Katya said, giving the Changeling a quick squeeze. “I was really worried. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop Parson from taking you.”
“No, it’s okay,” Eerie said hurriedly. “That always – I mean, that had to happen.”
“You sound different,” Alex said, a hint of worry in his eyes. “You’re not…you know. You used to sound…”
“I’ve remembered who I am, or will be, or...I’m not sure how to say it.” Eerie frowned, feeling a little of her old awkwardness, fumbling with language. “This is how I’m supposed to be, I think.”
“I thought so,” Katya said. “It’s been a while, then, Ériu. I’m glad to see you again.”
Alex looked bewildered.
“You don’t have to call me that,” Eerie assured them. “Eerie is fine. I like Eerie.”
“You are Ériu, though, right?” Katya looked at the Changeling closely. “We met before, in the Outer Dark. We talked.”
“Yes. This is the same me as then. It’s like I told you,” Eerie said, squeezing Alex’s hand. “Your memory is a flat line, but mine goes around and around.”
“I don’t get it,” Alex admitted. “I don’t care, though. It’s just so good to have you back. How did you find us?”
“Kismet,” Eerie explained. “I wanted to be where you were. So, I was. Eventually. I need to ask you. Alex, do you still like me?”
“What?” Alex’s brow creased. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve changed. Maybe you liked me better the other way? Maybe you don’t…?”
“Do you feel better the way you are now?”
“Better than what?”
“Better than you did, before, uh…” Alex scratched his head. “I don’t actually know. Whatever happened.”
“Oh. Uh. Yes,” she said, thinking about it. “I think I do. This is…this is right. Normal, I guess.”
“Then it’s good by me,” Alex said. “I like you no matter what, you know? I just do.”
She hugged him again.
Katya laughed.
“I think I’m going to leave you two alone,” she said. “It’s a little…”
“No, don’t go!” Eerie said, grabbing her hand. “We’ll stop.”
“I really don’t want to intrude,” Katya said, hesitating. “But I think maybe it’s important that I understand. How did you get here, Eerie?”
“I walked,” she said, with a little shrug. “Like I said. I wanted…”
“But you aren’t an apport technician, right?�
��
“No.”
“So, it was like when you took us to the Outer Dark??”
“Yes. Reality accommodates my point of view,” Eerie said. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“What does that mean?” Katya asked. “You can just do whatever you want?”
“It’s not exactly…things work out for me,” Eerie explained nervously. “Not everything. Just important things. Right now, it’s the most that it will ever be. I’m the youngest, and I’ve just remembered myself.”
“So, at least, you can apport and see the future,” Katya said doubtfully. “That’s quite a protocol.”
“The Kismet Protocol is more and less than what you think,” Eerie said. “Don’t worry. You will understand very soon.”
“I will?” Katya frowned. “That sounds ominous.”
“Oh yes. It is,” Eerie said, nodding vigorously. “You see, the Church of Sleep is assembling. Once roles are settled, they will come here. For me, really.”
“What do they want with you?” Alex asked, standing very close.
“There is no good word for what the Church of Sleep want to do to me,” Eerie said. “They…inhabit? Possess? I’m not sure how to say it. Changelings, all my sisters, are taken by the Church of Sleep as soon as we reach maturity. Like we are fruit, and they are waiting for us to ripen. They require us, as hosts and sustenance.”
“That’s terrible,” Alex said. “We won’t…”
“The Church of Sleep is a parasite,” Eerie said. “It is not natural or healthy for living things to sleep. Sleep is an affliction, inflicted on every living thing by the Church. They sustain themselves on the hours you lose, but they need us too, a regular supply of fresh Changelings, or they will dwindle and recede, and perhaps become prey to something more terrible in the Outer Dark.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Alex said, putting an arm around her. “But you know that’s not going to happen, right? I – we won’t let it happen.”
The Church of Sleep (Central Series Book 5) Page 12
