“Emily’s also way too smart to go to all this trouble, if all she needs is a killer,” Alex added, pulling on his shirt. “Murderers are a dime a dozen, Ms. Aoki, and I figure Emily’s already got a few around if she needs one. She must think you’re special, or it wouldn’t be worth it to her to bring you back.”
Emily giggled as she approached the pool, wrapped in a towel, her eyes hidden behind oversized white sunglasses.
“I was going to say the very same thing, albeit with greater eloquence,” Emily said, kissing Alex lightly on the cheek. “Thank you for the compliments, dear. I’m glad we have worked out our issues. I really didn’t like not getting along!”
“Me either,” Alex said, stepping carefully away from her.
“I need you to go back right away,” Emily said, giggling as he struggled to get his sweats on. “I have some things I need to discuss with Ms. Aoki, and I need you to buy us enough time to have that conversation.”
“Won’t it just take a second, in the real world?”
“We are out of time, so I need you to buy us just a few minutes,” Emily said. “You’ll need to be ready for trouble.”
“I don’t mind that,” Alex said, rubbing his numb eye. “I don’t think I mind at all. What am I going to be dealing with?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I’ve taken care of everything. Please just trust me,” Emily said. “I set up psychic early warning systems, and they are all sounding. We are under attack, Alex, and I need you to look after our bodies while I finish here.”
Alex snorted.
“Oh, please be mature for just one minute,” Emily said, cracking a smile despite herself. “Can I send you now?”
“Sure,” Alex said. “Good luck, Ms. Aoki.”
“Would you trust her, Alex?” Mitsuru asked. “If you were me?”
“I don’t know,” Alex admitted. “But I trust her, if that answers your question.”
“With your life?”
“Is there any other kind of trust?”
Alex disappeared, the only reminder of his presence a puddle of pool water beside a wet towel.
“Well, then, Ms. Aoki, that should buy us a minute or two before I’m needed,” Emily said, smiling at her. “You’ve returned at an opportune time, Ms. Aoki. We are at the cusp of great things, and I really hope that you’ll be interested in what I have to offer.”
“Do you really trust Alex to protect us?” Mitsuru asked. “He has good intentions, but if it’s who you think it is…”
“Reading my thoughts already? You are in fine form, I see,” Emily said, looking surprised and impressed. “To be frank, I don’t expect Alex to do more than what I asked him to do. He’ll buy us some time. I’ve something else planned for you-know-who.”
“Alex warned me,” Mitsuru said. “He told me that you’d want something.”
“He didn’t warn you about anything,” Emily said, laughing it off. “He was too busy telling you how great I am! Now, shall we walk along the beach? There’s a conversation that I’m just dying to have with you, Ms. Aoki, and the sunrise will be lovely today, I’m certain of it.”
Fourteen
Day Three
He made circuits of the house to pass the time. It was dawn, and the heat had already started to set in. He was on his third go-round when he noticed something weird in the kitchen. Alex was shocked to see a man sitting at the birch kitchen table with a half-full glass of water sitting in front of him. He watched Alex closely, his eyes hamster-pink behind prescription lenses in heavy black frames.
“How very strange,” he said, frowning. “I was expecting Miss Muir. I knew she would have a surprise for me, but I never thought – well, no matter. Hello, Mr. Warner,” Gaul Thule said. “A great deal has happened since we last spoke. I’m glad to see that you are well.”
“No thanks to you,” Alex stammered. His hand went automatically to the holster at his waist but found it empty. “What the fuck are you up to now?”
“An excellent question, and exactly what I was hoping to discuss with you.” Gaul took a sip from the glass of water. “We should have a few uninterrupted moments before the next round of complications begins. Shall we have a conversation?”
“I heard that you killed Ana’s dad.”
“We don’t have time for…”
“Some other people, too, though I doubt that matters much to a guy like you. Little people, I guess. Servants, that sort of thing. Bodyguards, for example. You know anything about that?”
“I know what this is about. You are angry about…”
“Timor Zharova!” Alex slammed his palms down on the bare table. “You killed him, Gaul.”
“I hadn’t realized we were on a first name basis, Mr. Warner.”
“I don’t care about your name, and I don’t give a shit about any title,” Alex snarled. “Timor was a good guy, you know? He was nice to me.”
“Timor Zharova was an unavoidable casualty of a gamble, an attempt to avoid a much greater calamity. That is the burden of precognition. What appears as senseless death to you is truly the most preferable of many bad options, however tragic it may be.”
“Timor was Katya’s brother,” Alex said, rising from his chair. “You know that?”
“Yes, of course,” Gaul said irritably, adjusting his glasses. “I was the Director of the Academy. I also know that Miss Zharova is important to you.”
“I didn’t even know Katya could be hurt that badly. She’s, well, I guess she’s my cousin, or something, but really, she’s…like, my best friend,” Alex stammered, gripping the table, his fingernails sinking into the varnish. “There’s only one thing I want you to tell me, mister former director.”
“This display is a waste of valuable time.” One side of Gaul’s mouth dipped into a frown. “We have important things to discuss, Mr. Warner. I have information that you will need, for you to survive, and to ensure the best possible outcome for all.”
“I’m gonna let you in on a little secret,” Alex said. “I don’t care about ‘all’. I don’t give a shit about the entire fucking human race. I care about my friend, who you hurt. Why shouldn’t I just kill you, right now?”
“You can’t.” Gaul took off glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I appreciate how your talents have developed and evolved in recent weeks, but you are nowhere near my level.”
“I’m not so sure,” Alex said, his breath suddenly visible. “Want to test that theory?”
“I have no interest in pointless conflict. I am here to equip you with information that will save your life and the lives of those you care for. Whatever you think of me personally, my protocol is indisputable. Don’t you want to know what is coming for Eerie? Don’t you want to know how to deal with it?”
“I don’t need you to tell me anything! If I can’t trust a word you say, then what good is your precognition? You fucked up and made yourself useless to anyone.”
Gaul adjusted his glasses.
“The Auditors are dead or scattered. The Anathema have largely been purged. The Black Sun is shattered and the Hegemony at war with itself,” Gaul said. “The Thule Cartel is in position. The circumstances are very nearly perfect. We will have one chance to turn the Church back from Central. Your participation will be required.”
“We aren’t at the Academy, and you aren’t the damn Director!” Alex’s eyes were wide, his nostrils flared. “Why would you think that you could tell me to do anything?”
“Reason is my first hope,” Gaul said. “I hope to persuade you to see it my way.”
“Why would I go along with anything you say? All you’ve done is get people killed.”
“Would you feel better if I assured that I have allowed only the minimum amount of death possible?”
“Not even slightly. What the fuck, man? Everyone in Central trusted you.”
“I have honored my responsibilities to Central. The Fifth Assembly was always inevitable. Eerie’s foolishness was the simplest way to make them come early, still
drowsy from their long hibernation, when it was just possible to imagine defeating them. The Church is not something that can be stopped, but it could be misdirected. Central could be hidden – no, it will be hidden – and the Assembly will turn its attention to richer pastures.”
“What? You mean the world, right?”
“The whole world,” Gaul agreed. “That should be just enough to satisfy the Church, to convince the Assembly to break up, and the Church to return to hibernation.”
“Great plan,” Alex sneered. “Too bad everyone dies.”
“Not everyone. We survive, Mr. Warner. That should count for something.”
“I’d aim a little higher, personally.”
“That’s just the problem. Rebecca and Alice would do the same. Even Henry North and Josef Martynova would not have stood by. They would have opposed the Church, and in doing so, they would have been destroyed, and drawn the Assembly down on Central in the process.”
“And your plan is better? There’s billions of people, man…”
“Seven and a half billion, and their dreams are still not enough for the Church to subsist on, without hibernating. The Church is unstoppable, but whatever intelligence it possesses is insectoid. It sees only immediate desire and opportunity. The Church will leave behind a few million in place of those billions, and then, sated, will sink back into hibernation. Where it will slowly starve, deprived of the dreaming billions that sustained it during its long sleep.”
“That’s your plan?” Alex shuddered. “Everybody dies, and then this big bad thing dies too, eventually?”
“No. I keep telling you that everyone does not die. We live, Alex. My family, your friends, all of them. That’s all we can hope to protect.”
“Fuck off with this shit! No way, okay? No fucking way.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I don’t need to understand to know that’s a terrible plan! Look, I can think of a million better ways to deal with this, and I’m not the smartest. I’ll just go find Anastasia and ask her; I’m sure she can come up with something better than ‘hide and let everybody die’. Fuck, man! You’re supposed to be a genius, you know? People make you out to be such a big deal. This is the best you can do?”
“This is the very best. Can you imagine how terrible the futures that I’m trying to avoid must be for me to pursue this course?”
“That, or you’re wrong,” Alex said. “You don’t see the future, right? Just possibilities.”
“That is partly true. I see every possibility.”
“That’s what you think. Anything is fucking possible. Maybe one of us can deal with this church or whatever no problem. Maybe you’re wrong.”
“Fighting the Church would be like fighting gravity or the sun. We are like mice before the Church. The only thing for us to do is to hide until it passes us by. Then the world will be left for us to inherit, and no further need for conflict in Central over resources.”
“Because everyone would be dead.”
“Not those of us in Central,” Gaul corrected. “And what of the dead? The world is terminally overcrowded and polluted. What difference does it make if the Church makes the inevitable happen a touch ahead of schedule?”
“A lot, for the people who die. You can stop trying to convince me, okay? Even I’m not going for it.”
“I had hoped that reason would prevail,” Gaul said, pushing aside his glass of water. “I suppose that power will have to suffice.”
“Don’t give me that,” Alex said, rising to his feet. “I’m more than happy to…”
Mr. Warner, sit down and be quiet, Gaul commanded. Alex’s body obeyed so quickly that he experienced a twinge of motion sickness. “Let’s not make this more difficult than it needs to be. I understand that you resent some of what I’ve done, and that you are angry with me for the harm you feel I have done to your cousin.”
Gaul hesitated, an odd look on his face. He turned slightly in his chair, glancing down the darkened hall to where Emily and Mitsuru lay, apparently asleep.
Alex watched him closely.
As soon as Gaul’s head turned, Alex pushed the table aside and went for Gaul’s throat, activating his protocol to open a pinpoint breach to the Ether in the core of the former Director’s brain.
A wall of pure force smashed into Alex mid-step, slamming him aside. He was knocked across the room, cracking the drywall when he collided with it.
Alex groaned as the air was driven from his lungs, unrelenting pressure pinning him against the wall when he should have tumbled to the floor.
He tried to struggle, to move a hand or even a finger, but he was pinned firmly to the wall by an invisible force.
Alex tried to activate his protocol, and nothing happened.
Gaul watched him with a frown.
“You have advanced considerably in the exercise of the Absolute Protocol,” Gaul remarked, standing and tucking his chair beneath the table. “It’s a bit of a struggle to keep your ability suppressed. I’m pleased with your improvement, and alarmed. You see, Mr. Warner, I can’t escape the prescient awareness of the calamity you represent. It would be much safer to kill you now. That’s the question, isn’t it? Does your potential usefulness outweigh the danger you represent?”
The pressure against Alex’s chest swelled, and the last of his breath escaped with a groan, his vision darkening as he lost consciousness. He felt as if he were beneath the sea, crushed by the weight of deep black water.
“So much trouble could be avoided,” Gaul said. “A pity that is not an option.”
The telekinetic force crushing him into the wall disappeared, and Alex tumbled to the floor, wheezing gratefully.
“You are still trying to activate your protocol, even now,” Gaul said, rubbing his chin. “There may be hope for you yet.”
Alex gathered himself and attempted to stand.
His body remained slumped and unresponsive.
“I will return control of your body to you when you have accepted the situation,” Gaul said, standing over Alex with his hands clasped behind his back. “You have progressed, but do not make the mistake of assuming we are at parity. I have no rivals, Alex, and I have no peers. And despite that, I am terrified of the Church of Sleep, and what their coming represents. Do you understand? I don’t want to do this – I am forced to do it.”
Gaul gestured, and Alex rose like a marionette. At a nod, he returned to his seat at the table.
“This could all be so much easier,” Gaul said, standing just behind Alex. “We don’t need to be enemies. Cease your attempts to activate your protocol, and I will release you, and then we can talk. Agreed?”
Alex could make no verbal response, so instead he thought very hard about punching Gaul in the face.
“Very well,” Gaul said, putting his hands on the back of Alex’s head. “This may be quite difficult, and as long as I am forced to suppress your abilities, I’m afraid I lack the bandwidth to make certain that you do not suffer in the process. Are you certain you won’t cooperate?”
Alex thought about punching Gaul in the liver, kicking him in the groin, freezing his head solid and then shattering it with a hammer.
“Very well,” Gaul said, closing his pink eyes. “Have it your way.”
The pain burned away Alex’s sense of self the way staring at the sun destroys eyesight, leaving great glaring holes in his mind. He was not allowed to scream, to writhe, to cry out or curl up. Instead, Alex sat calmly in the chair, with a relaxed posture and regular respiration, while his brain was scoured.
Alex blinked, and there was nothing behind his eyelids but fire, a mind-destroying holocaust.
Alex opened his eyes to the void, a clean white expanse of unvaried absence.
***
“I’m glad you agreed to talk with me,” Emily said, squeezing a lime into her margarita. “I don’t think that we will get another chance.”
“You seem to know a lot about what’s going to happen,” Mitsuru observed. “Why
is that?”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen. I haven’t a clue. I do have some idea what is happening at present, however, and I extrapolate from that. As for why, I’ll just say that I have made some excellent choices regarding friends and club memberships.”
“The Young Ladies Sewing Circle. Long overdue for an Audit, if you ask me, but Alistair and Alice both wouldn’t even consider it. I always wondered about that. What do you want from me?”
“I want you to work for me.” Emily stirred her drink. “You know that already.”
“Why?”
“Who wouldn’t? You’re a trained Operator with an implant designed by Gaul Thule and a Black Protocol, a former Auditor…”
“I’m a former Auditor, now?”
“How else do you interpret being shot in the head?” Emily giggled. “I think they’ve moved on, regardless of how you feel. You have my sympathies. The world seems to work that way far too often.”
“What sort of work do you have in mind?”
“I’d like you to help me make the Far Shores into a refuge for people like us, Ms. Aoki. People who have been discarded and betrayed, those cast aside by Central and those victimized by it. I want you to help me defend it, in the short term, and in the long term I’d like you to teach it to defend itself. I’d also like to help you cheer up a bit.”
“Why would you care about that?”
“I’m an empath, Ms. Aoki. Not the most sensitive one in the world, but still, your constant angst makes you dreary company.”
“That’s an easy problem to fix. It also makes me wonder why you want me around.”
“I’m trying to save the world, and my friends.” Emily paused to take a sip of her drink through a purple straw. “I’m willing to put up with a bad attitude or two for that.”
“Do you mean the Church of Sleep? You explained, but I’m not sure how much I believed.”
“That’s fine. This particular church requires no belief at all.”
“What else are you trying to accomplish? Do you intend to oppose or harm the Auditors?”
The Church of Sleep (Central Series Book 5) Page 36
