The Church of Sleep (Central Series Book 5)

by Zachary Rawlins

  Min-jun. Hayley frowned.

  Her bad mood was mostly his fault.

  Not that he meant anything by it. In fact, Min-jun had been upsettingly casual and remote about the whole thing. It would have been awkward either way, but seeming to make the offer on a whim made it all worse in Hayley’s eyes.

  An internet search informed Hayley of the legal status of cannabis in Nevada, much to her surprise. It was real legality, too, not the bizarre song-and-dance of a medical card system, so she did a little comparison shopping online.

  Ten minutes later, she had arranged a delivery.

  She had thought of Min-jun as a friend, in a casual way, or at least a friendly sort of colleague. She had thought him sane and moral, in comparison to the rest of the Auditors, a like mind.

  He was a member of the Hegemony, at least.

  She had thought he was in love with his fiancé. Their relationship sounded sweet, maybe even a little bit over the top. Min-jun talked about her all the time!

  Hayley ground her gum between her teeth until it was a flattened, tasteless ribbon, and then ducked into the bathroom to get rid of it.

  She got an automated text from the delivery service while she was washing her hands, a strong odor of perfume hanging about the casino bathroom, undercut by faint notes of bleach. She shoved her hands beneath the jet dryer, and then hurried out to find her driver in the front of the hotel, double-parked in a loading zone. The mica-flecked silver paint on his lowered Honda Accord glimmered in the multihued light cast by the Strip, and the impatient, heavily stoned driver had his window down and her brown paper bag waiting when she approached. A strong odor of burnt weed assailed her as she leaned in to take the bag from her red-eyed driver, handing him a folded sheaf of bills in exchange.

  The driver hardly spoke and did not bother to count the money before taking off.

  Hayley walked through the casino, and after several wrong turns, back out the other side, into the sulfurous lighting and stifling heat of the concrete parking structure. The stairs were white-painted and lined with friction tape, the doors to each level were green and heavy. The stairwell smelled strongly of piss, and Hayley resolved to take the elevator back down as she emerged on the roof of the parking garage, the asphalt still warm through her crepe soles despite the late hour.

  Without any of her paraphernalia at hand, Hayley had opted for pre-rolled joints, a trio of brown paper cones packed with pungent green herb. Since it was Central’s money that she was spending, purloined from her emergency kit, Hayley opted for the most expensive joints on the menu, cannabis flower supplemented with water-press hashish, each packaged in a cylindrical plastic tube covered with warning labels. Reviewing her options, she selected a joint rolled with a strain called ‘Cookie Monster’. Her disappointment at the lack of any cookie flavor when she lit up was mitigated by the intense, head-fogging high that kicked in before she was halfway done.

  She finished two-thirds of the joint before a coughing fit persuaded her to stop. She tossed the remainder into the trash-filled culvert that ran below, and then made her way back to the elevator, glassy-eyed and content. The garage elevator did not smell much better than the stairs.

  She wandered the casino, the surfeit of bright light and electronic noise still overwhelming, but now less aggressively bothersome. She drifted with the crowd of gamblers through seas of patterned carpet, brushing the green felt of an empty card table with her fingertips as she passed. She paused to watch an elderly woman with painted eyebrows collect a small bucket of nickels from a slot-machine jackpot, and then hesitated in front of one of the many bars, considering a drink that she ultimately rejected.

  She turned around, intending to take the elevator back to her room, and then maybe take a bath before trying to sleep, and then noticed the man hovering in a corner of the massive room, wearing a plastic raincoat and a blue mask stretched across the lower half of his face, matching nitrile gloves, and what appeared to be swim goggles clamped over his eyes. He was watching a nearby roulette table with apparent interest, occasionally drinking from a bottle of water that he wiped down with a tissue after every sip.

  Hayley hurried over to Xia, grateful for a familiar face. The lingering metal fog from the weed helped her to gloss over the unpleasant nature of her earlier, accidental telepathic eavesdropping.

  “Hi, Xia,” Hayley said, standing as close as she felt he’d be comfortable with. “Can’t sleep?”

  Xia glanced at her, his goggles offering her a blue-tinted reflection of herself, and nodded.

  “Me neither,” Hayley said. “Can I ask you a question?”

  Xia turned back to the roulette table, seemingly fascinated by the rotation of the brass and wood wheel.

  “Do you…what do you think is going to happen tomorrow?”

  Xia tightened the cap on his water bottle. Hayley looked at Xia sympathetically, taking in the sweater beneath the plastic coat, the heavy tweed pants tucked into bulky steel-toed boots, and the sock cap pulled tight over his ears, and wondered how he was surviving the Vegas heat.

  “That’s too vague, isn’t it? I should just say what I’m thinking,” Hayley said, pinching her lip. “Do you think we’re all going to die tomorrow?”

  Xia glanced at her, then returned to his silent observation of the gaming table.

  “I’m a shit empath, but when emotions are extreme, it’s hard for me not to notice. Ms. Gallow is…I mean, I know she’s not afraid, but I can tell that’s she’s, I don’t know, resigned. She’s upset about whatever is happening in Central, and she doesn’t trust the Black Sun involvement, and she isn’t sure whether we should go after Alistair before we leave, or not. That seems like a lot for her to deal with, don’t you think?”

  She watched the roulette wheel spin in the reflection on his goggles.

  “It doesn’t seem normal to me,” Hayley complained. “We already lost Katya and Alex, and Karim is dead, and then Chike and Mr. Lacroix and…” Hayley sighed. “It hasn’t been a good week for Auditors, has it, and even Ms. Gallow is concerned that it might get worse.”

  Xia took a tissue from his coat pocket and used it to wipe the sweat from his forehead, immediately tossing the tissue in the nearby garbage can after he finished.

  “This isn’t like me, but I can’t help it,” Hayley observed desultorily. “How many Auditors have you seen die in action, Xia? A lot, right?”

  Hayley put her face in her hands.

  “Do you think we’ll even make it back to Central? Or will we all just die in transit? Or worse, a failed apport. We could all end up floating in the Ether…how long do you think we’d last out there? Would we die right away, or would we just drift forever? That’s the scariest part, to me.”

  Hayley looked up to discover that Xia was offering her a tissue. She smiled and took it, careful not to brush his gloved fingers.

  “I’m sorry for putting all this on you,” Hayley said, dabbing the corners of her eyes with the tissue. “I’m babbling, aren’t I? We’re all acting strangely, trying to deal with the tension and uncertainty, I guess. I just don’t feel like any of this is what I signed on for. What about you, Xia? Is this what you had in mind, when you became an Auditor?”

  A long silence followed, Hayley’s eyes drifting naturally to the spinning roulette wheel that seemed to have Xia completely absorbed.

  “I wish I could be as resilient as you are. Is that something that comes with time and experience, or did you always feel that way?”

  Hayley closed her eyes for a moment, shutting out the excessive light in the casino. She took three deep breaths, willing herself to calm down, telepathically altering her own brain chemistry to curb her gnawing anxiety.

  When she opened her eyes again, she felt bolder.

  “Can I ask you a personal question, Xia? It’s none of my business, I know, so please feel free to tell me to leave it, and…”

  Xia glanced at her, turning away from the roulette wheel for just an instant before resuming his motionle
ss contemplation.

  “Are you in love with Ms. Gallow?”

  He did not move or react in anyway.

  Hayley bit her lip, and then slowly nodded.

  “Maybe that isn’t a fair question,” she said. “Do you know how she feels about you, then?”

  Xia took the bottle from his pocket, wiped the mouth with a tissue, and then took another sparing sip. There was still a bit of water left in the bottle, but he tossed it into the trashcan along with the crumpled tissue.

  “Maybe it’s me that is acting strangely,” Hayley said. “Maybe I’m just angry because I’m too afraid to sleep, and everyone else seems fine. Is that it? Or…Xia, can I tell you something?”

  Xia nodded without looking at her.

  “You already know, don’t you?” Hayley blushed and covered her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Xia! I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Usually I’m very good about blocking it all out, but everything was so intense and close, I couldn’t help but feel it a bit, secondhand. I hope…oh, please don’t hate me! I feel terrible for violating your privacy.”

  He might have shrugged, making the smallest motion of his shoulders.

  “It’s none of my business, anyway. I shouldn’t be judgmental. It didn’t even bother me that much. If not for Min-jun, I wouldn’t have…can I tell you about that, too? Do you mind?”

  Hayley smiled broadly, in obvious relief.

  “Thank you for listening,” Hayley said. “I really appreciate it. You’re always so nice. Do you feel like I’m taking your kindness for granted, unloading on you like this?”

  Xia glanced at her briefly. Hayley blushed and covered her mouth.

  “I should have seen it from the start,” Hayley said, cheeks reddening again. “It’s not the intrusion, is it? It’s my attitude. Oh, Xia, forgive me! I’m not usually so judgey, I was just in a bad mood and…”

  Hayley could not completely dismiss the notion that Xia had smiled at her from behind his respirator.

  “Gosh, Xia,” Hayley said, settling against the wall, beside him, but at a safe distance. “You really are a good friend, aren’t you?”

  ***

  Alice finished her second French 75 in one gulp. The bartender hurried back to his citron and his grater.

  “The Founder. You mean you discovered Central?”

  “I was deeply involved in that endeavor,” Jacob explained. “I was part of the expedition that did much of the initial exploration of Central – though we didn’t call it that, not back then. The person responsible for the discovery of Central was my poor sister, Eliska, born mad and sickly. She was a Changeling, of course, but I would come to understand that much later. She found Central in her dreams, a record of which was made by the chief physician of the facility in which she was interred, the pitiful creature. The publication of her visions, in a record of other, similar ravings, was noted by several interested parties.”

  Jacob sipped his drink, as the bartender silently delivered a fresh round to Alice.

  “The man who first set foot in Central, and was also in many ways the first resident, if only for a brief time, was named Yoshiro Aikawa. As it so often happens, his role has been obscured and diminished in official histories, in favor of my own contributions.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I suppose there are all sorts of reasons. Racial, nationalistic, and economic,” Jacob said. “If I had to guess, however, he is forgotten largely because I murdered him at the Far Shores, and then threw his body into the Sea of Ether.”

  Alice laughed, a look of intrigue on her face.

  “You killed him? What did he do?”

  “I belonged to an organization, men who would later come to be called ‘Operators’, who discovered the Ether, and were devoted to its study. Mr. Aikawa belonged to a rival organization based in Japan, which managed to beat us to Central by a mere matter of weeks. I was an ambitious young man,” Jacob said, smiling at the memory. “Quite ruthless, I’m afraid. When we discovered Mr. Aikawa camped not far from our mutual point of arrival, in what is known today as the Far Shores, he was starving and quite mad. He had managed to make it to Central somehow, but he had no means by which to return, and lacked supplies and rations to sustain himself.”

  “That’s a bit of an oversight on his part. Makes me wonder why you needed to kill him, if he was dying anyway.”

  “Mr. Aikawa was an obstacle to be removed. If he had been clear-minded when we met, I’m certain that he would have seen me in the same way. I was simply faster and better prepared.”

  “So, you’re a bigshot, and you pretend to have discovered Central. How do I come into it?”

  “You were there from the very start, Alice. You were there, beside me, when our expedition first advanced into Central. None of it could have happened without your cooperation. We entered Central the first time by stepping into your shadow, after all, and we returned in the same fashion. Without you, even if we had managed the apport to Central, we would have starved there, like poor Mr. Aikawa nearly did.”

  “You’re saying I was one of your Operators? That seems awfully progressive. When did all of this happen, anyway?”

  “You were never an Operator, Alice. I met you first in London, ten days before Christmas, just a few weeks after the Fenians bombed Clerkenwell Prison, in a failed escape attempt.”

  “Fenians?”

  “That’s what we used to call Irish Republicans,” Jacob said, grinning wryly. “In 1867.”

  Alice turned pale and then drained her glass.

  “Please stop saying things like that,” Alice said, moodily watching the bartender go to work again. “I’m going to end up ridiculously drunk.”

  “What a tragedy that would be.”

  “I’ve got a big day tomorrow. The Chief Auditor showing up to work with a hangover is a bad look.”

  “There is nothing to require you to show up at all, if you don’t wish to.”

  “They’d all die,” Alice said, laughing. “The Auditors. Half of ’em are kids.”

  “What difference does it make?” Jacob smiled and raised his glass to her. “What is human life to you, after all?”

  Alice’s smile wavered.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Exactly what it seems. Surely you must have noticed,” Jacob said. “Some Operators may appear not to age, or to age improperly or out of sequence, but they do not live any longer for it. When I first met you, Alice, you claimed that you were already centuries old.”

  “What about you?” Alice challenged. “Didn’t you just claim to be old enough to have fought in the Civil War?”

  “There is an exception to every rule, I suppose,” Jacob said, with an expression of good humor. “You are one such exception, and perhaps I could be called another, though a less remarkable one. My continued existence is owed entirely to what is currently referred to as a protocol. My gift and curse. I have thus far been unable to die, Alice,” he said, a haunted look crossing his face. “Not from fire and poison, not from injury or illness, and so far, not from age.”

  Watching Jacob finish his drink, Alice was certain that she knew exactly how he viewed his protocol. It was obvious in the way he held his shoulders and the reserve in his smile.

  Jacob was burdened by it.

  “You claim to be an immortal Operator,” Alice said softly. “What am I, then?”

  “When we met in London, you were introduced to me as the mistress of one general or another – which seemed odd, because that general was nowhere to be seen, and you were not reserved in your attentions or behavior. I believe that most were scandalized, but I was immediately enamored. Your hair was just as black, then, but you wore it longer.”

  Alice thought of the dye she applied to her white roots and felt acutely self-conscious.

  “When a minister and a Lord of the Admiralty were found rather brutally slaughtered in the wake of the event, it created quite a scandal. One of the victims was a distant cousin to the King, or some such nonsense, as I recal
l. You were never considered as a suspect – at the time a number of erroneous ideas of what the female of the species was capable of were in popular circulation – but I was surprised at how few seemed to remember you attending the party at all.”

  Alice listened, and wondered if the feeling of confirmation inside her meant that he was telling the truth, or if she simply wanted it to be true.

  “I largely forgot the incident and moved on. It was nearly twenty years later that I would encounter you in Vienna. There was a war on, between the Russians and the Turks, and I was there to attend a conference with some associates, to iron out new commercial routes in response to the closure of the Danube. I met you at a friend of a friend’s salon, one evening after a long day of negotiation. I was regrettably intoxicated at the time of our introduction and was rendered speechless by your reappearance.”

  “Aw. That’s sort of sweet.”

  “Your beauty, then as now, was incandescent. You exuded a reckless vivaciousness that made you incomparable to any other guest at the party. I was fascinated,” Jacob said, giving the bartender a bit of a nod. “Even with all that, I probably could have managed a few words. I was struck dumb, however, by your apparent agelessness. It had been the better part of two decades, and I felt that passed time in all sorts of ways, from aching bones to loose teeth. You, on the other hand, appeared not to have aged a single day.”

  “How mysterious,” Alice said, her smile restored. “You must have thought it was magic.”

  “That’s true,” Jacob admitted, a waiter appearing from behind the bar to place a black tray on the bar beside them. The tray was laden with glistening pink and white sashimi, arranged on the black background like colorful medallions. “Though I questioned my own sanity with greater seriousness.”

  Jacob offered her a set of chopsticks, and Alice helped herself to a thin slice of toro.

  “I also contemplated coincidence, drunkenness, mistaken identity, or even senility,” Jacob said, dipping crab meat into a dark sauce. “None of it stuck, so I found myself returning to thoughts of magic.”