Alex tapped out before she could hyperextend his elbow.
They rolled into seated positions, and then stayed there, Mitsuru sitting neat and formal, while Alex sprawled out on the other side of the mat. Both were sweating and out of breath, their faces dotted with red welts.
“Not bad,” Mitsuru said, grabbing a towel from her gym bag. “You’ve gotten better.”
“The trauma module had an eight-week jujitsu course, for some reason,” Alex said. “I guess Rebecca couldn’t figure out what I liked, so she loaded up my sim with yoga and exercise.”
“She knew perfectly well what you like,” Mitsuru said. “She just didn’t feel like building you a simulation out of anime and pornography.”
“That’s the old me you’re talking about,” Alex said, grinning. “I’ve got a girlfriend these days.”
“Congratulations, I suppose.”
“Thanks.”
“You really have improved,” Mitsuru said. “They never asked me to teach before you arrived, you know.”
“Really? That seems strange. They always seemed shorthanded at the Academy.”
“They were. They just didn’t just trust me around the students.”
“I don’t think anyone in Central trusts either of us. Or Ms. Gallow, for that matter. We’re basically monsters, you know.”
“I know better than anyone. The goal, with you as well as myself, was always the production of a useful monster,” Mitsuru said. “Do you want to tell me why you woke me up, or do I need to beat you up again?”
“I’m not sure,” Alex said, reaching for his gloves. “I feel like I almost had you there.”
They geared up and took their stances.
Every movement and every gasp echoed in the emptiness of the vacant gym, and the mat would jerk across the court floor if they both moved at the same time.
Mitsuru surged forward, sliding in beneath Alex’s guard, and tripped him, carrying him immediately to the ground. She whipped her elbow across his face until he was forced to roll to his back, and then she jumped on him, putting him in a body triangle and isolating one of his arms.
He fought for several futile seconds before she got the choke in.
He tapped out before she applied any pressure.
Mitsuru released the hold and Alex crawled away, coughing as she resumed her former cross-legged posture.
“Are you ready to talk?”
Alex nodded, lying flat on his back.
Mitsuru took a towel and a pair of water bottles from her gym bag. She tossed one bottle to Alex before opening the other herself.
“You were yelling at Emily,” Mitsuru observed, wiping herself with the towel. “Did she do something to you, or was it the other way around?”
“It was no one’s fault but my own,” Alex admitted. “I’m just the last to figure out what’s going on, as usual.”
Torn between the temptation to stare as Mitsuru wiped the sweat from her body entirely unselfconsciously, or prudently looking away until she was done, Alex settled on watching intently from the corner of his eye, and therefore maintaining plausible deniability.
That felt to him like an acceptable compromise.
“You never graduated from the Academy, nor were you even partially trained as an Auditor,” Mitsuru reminded him. “I spent years doing exercises and simulations before I was put in the field as an Auditor. You only spent a few weeks in the Program. You shouldn’t feel bad about unavoidable ignorance.”
“This was probably avoidable. Emily’s right when she says I don’t listen. She’s been dropping hints since she pulled me out of the Outer Dark – shit, maybe even longer than that.”
“The choice between two women?” Mitsuru looked annoyed. “That’s why I’m not asleep in bed?”
“That’s not it. I already made a complete mess of that decision,” Alex said. “This is more a life-or-death issue. There’s a bad thing coming, Ms. Aoki. The Church of Sleep. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
Mitsuru gave him a strange look, then she nodded.
“Emily told me,” Mitsuru said, turning away. “You can call me Mitsuru. When we are alone, and not in the field. Never on duty as Auditors, or as your instructor, should either of us ever return to the Academy.” She shot Alex a glare, and he straightened up automatically. “Are we clear?”
“Yeah, sure,” Alex stammered, not sure what he done. “Of course!”
“Very well, then,” Mitsuru said. “What is it about the Church that has you screaming your head off outside my window, Alex?”
“The Church is coming for Eerie, but you probably already know that,” Alex said. “I’ve only known about that for a couple of days.”
“A difficult situation for the Changeling.”
“I think she’s handling it better than I am.”
“That does not surprise me.”
Alex winced.
“That’s what I would have expected.”
“I get it, okay? Anyway, John Parson, he’s an agent of the Church gone rogue, or something to that effect. He’s a dick.”
“I agree. Why does he matter?”
“I guess he, like, invented the Anathema,” Alex said. “He made them with his protocol, somehow. It’s almost like he infects people. He replaces every cell in their body with nanites, cloned from the ones in his own body. He’s not really a person. He’s, like, a small part of the Church, broken off somehow. Right now, he’s doing his own thing, but I guess when the Church shows up, he becomes part of it again, whether he likes it or not. When that happens, all the Anathema he created will fucking dissolve.”
“Really?”
“I think so,” Alex said. “That’s what I’ve been told. It’ll be awful.”
“It sounds like it. I see the problem,” Mitsuru said, tossing the towel in her bag. “For a chance at saving Eerie, you must lose Emily for certain. Or, perhaps you were thinking of doing it the other way?”
“No,” Alex said. “Eerie’s the important – that’s not to say I don’t, or, that Emily isn’t – damn it. That’s the whole problem, right there,” Alex said. “I’ve lost both of them already, Mitsuru. I lost Emily to the Anathema and I lost Eerie to the Thule Cartel. In a couple days, I might lose both again. I will lose one of them, that’s for sure.”
“I see.”
Alex waited expectantly, but Mitsuru just sipped her water and stared at him.
“Well? What do you think?”
“I think you need to make up your mind,” Mitsuru said. “You’ll lose everything if you don’t decide.”
“I know that! I obviously know that!”
“You asked.”
“What would you do in my place?”
Mitsuru considered it seriously.
“You are certain that saving both is impossible?”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”
“Then I would start by talking to Eerie, who, as I understand it, wields a protocol that is, for all intents and purposes, impossible,” Mitsuru said. “I would ask her for help.”
Alex nodded slowly, running his fingers through his sweaty hair.
“I guess I could try,” he said. “She won’t like it. She’s friends with Emily, I think, and I’m sure she’ll want to help, but she won’t like it, that I’m asking. She doesn’t, uh, doesn’t completely trust me where Emily is concerned.”
“I do not blame her for that.”
“Yeah.”
“I know she will be upset at you for asking,” Mitsuru said. “I suspect that she will be much more upset when she discovers that she could have done something and was denied the opportunity by your rank cowardice.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t put it like that. Rank sounds so bad. Couldn’t it just be normal cowardice?”
“You are my pupil. I do not plan to allow you to make a farce out of your life with impunity.”
“Eerie is gonna be pissed.”
“She has every right to be, but I think she will help you
regardless,” Mitsuru said. “Perhaps you could make it up to her some other way?”
***
Alistair’s mind was assailed by the wildest variety of hue and color he had ever known, green deeper than a showpiece lawn, red like the dying sun expanding to consume the Earth, and more beside that, colors without name or designation, colors from spectrums that he had never previously imagined.
He opened his eyes, but it did nothing to change the onslaught of hue and shade.
The color was followed by music.
Not an auditory hallucination, but bar after bar of sheet music, written in glowing lines across the darkness. Alistair could practically hear each sonata and aria being played as he read the notes, but the compositions were new to him. He read operas and symphonies, ballets and choral compositions, pieces for quartets and full orchestras. He absorbed an entire body of music, the product of a time and a culture with which he was unfamiliar.
It was some time later that he remembered that he could not read music.
The music was driven away by an ache in his belly that swelled as soon as he noticed it, moving from an annoyance to a crisis. He hobbled through the uncertain dark, one arm out looking for a wall, the other wrapped around his middle, hunched over like he bore a great weight on his shoulders. His abdominal muscles cramped and contracted, and he shivered uncontrollably.
His eyes ached with the effort of trying to see into the dark, so he closed them again.
The nausea became a throbbing headache at the base of his skull. He sunk down into the water, until the source of the ache was submerged, and made his way further like that, his head turned to the ceiling so that he could breathe.
He moved until it was no longer possible to go further, and then he collapsed in the first shallow corner that he found, his body wracked with pain.
Alistair waited it out, silent and unmoving.
The waves of agony came and went. He explored his surroundings during the calm periods between the spasms, feeling along the stone with his hands.
His third attempt located a stone pedestal, not unlike the one where he had first tasted the water.
Alistair climbed wearily on top of the slab and felt his body slide into the perfect grooves in the stone.
Wondering whether he had ever even managed to leave the vault, Alistair let his eyes drift closed, letting the colors and the music and the pain take him. He no longer had the strength to try and hold it back.
Lying with his face just above the surface of the dark water, Alistair twitched and shook, his mind burning feverishly with psychoactive toxins.
***
The roof was bigger and higher, and there was more wind than he remembered, but the setting was similar enough, standing on an institutional building beneath a black, starless sky, that he felt quite nostalgic.
“It’s been a while,” Vivik said, helping himself to a beer from the cooler. “Like the old days, right?”
Alex nodded, but did not pay him much attention. He was holding his still unopened beer against a rapidly forming bruise on his cheek.
“Just like the old days, I don’t really get why you are here,” Renton said, already well into his second can. “Shouldn’t you be banging your freak girlfriend while you have the chance?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Alex said, finally opening his beer. “Anyway, she’s asleep.”
“You’ve got till the end of the week, right? Not even three full days?”
Alex nodded, just avoiding choking when he swallowed wrong. As it was, he coughed and his eyes watered, while Renton laughed at him.
“Why are you here? I say get some while it’s still around.” Renton smiled. “You don’t want to live with regrets, do you?”
Alex eyed Renton’s bandages and the pair of crutches leaning against some sort of machinery behind him and wondered how wrong it would be to beat up a guy just out of the infirmary.
“I bet she would be into it,” Renton continued merrily. “Girls get really permissive when they know they’re about to lose you. You could probably get away with just about anything right now.”
Alex decided that he could live with whatever criticism came his way for battering an invalid. He started to stand, but Vivik put a hand on his shoulder.
“That’s too much, Renton. You need to calm down. I think you’ve actually gotten meaner,” Vivik said, trying to defuse the situation. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Some bitch connected my dick to a car battery with alligator clips,” Renton said, finishing his beer and tossing the empty can over his shoulder. “Just another Saturday night.”
“That was Lóa Thule. I saw part of that, in one of my windows,” Vivik said. “I’m sorry. We sent Leigh as soon as I figured out where you were, but we couldn’t get her to you any faster than we did.”
“Leigh was there to get Katya and Eerie out of that hellhole, not me.” Renton gestured to Vivik, who got him another beer from the cooler. “Not that I mind. I’ll take any rescue on offer. Anyway, Katya’s alright. I appreciate you bailing her out of there.”
“Really?” Alex gave him a skeptical look. “I’m surprised you care.”
“That just goes to show,” Renton replied. “You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“I don’t?” Alex winced as he rubbed his sore knee. “I know you’re an asshole.”
“You don’t know shit,” Renton said. “Let me enlighten you. Katya is one of the few people in the world that I truly respect, and the fact that she thinks highly of you is the only reason why I might have even a shred of respect for you.”
“I don’t want your respect,” Alex said. “I want you to watch your mouth when you talk about Eerie.”
“I’m just saying that I wouldn’t let my girl sleep alone in your situation,” Renton said. “If that bothers you, then it does. Katya likes you pretty well, you know, but she thinks you’re a bit of a twerp.”
“Who fucking cares? Compared to Katya, I probably am. You know what she thinks of you? She thinks you’re a creep and a pervert,” Alex said heatedly. “That’s what everyone thinks.”
“That’s not exactly a surprise. Katya has been giving me shit for years,” Renton shrugged. “I don’t mind. It’s worked out for me so far.”
“Except for the part where you were captured and tortured,” Alex said. “How did that happen? I thought you were supposed to be good.”
“How many times have you been captured?” Renton shot back. “I thought you were supposed to be an Auditor.”
“I’m undertrained and over my head. I’m brand new at this. I’m supposed to suck. What’s your excuse?”
“I really wanted to fuck Lóa Thule,” Renton admitted. “I had an idea what the consequences might be. It was almost worth it.”
“I should have known you would say that,” Vivik said, giving Renton a look that bordered on admiration. “You’re so single-minded.”
“If I admit that, will you both admit that you are fucking cowards?” Renton grinned. “Alex is out here with us, instead of taking advantage of poor Eerie’s situation…”
“You need to shut up about that,” Alex said, his face flushed. “I’m not warning you again.”
“…while you aren’t even trying with Emily at all, Vivik. What’s up with that? We all know you like her,” Renton said. “It’s painfully obvious how bad you want her.”
“Yeah, I do,” Vivik said. “It’s true.”
“Why not at least try, then?” Renton attempted to scratch beneath his inflatable cast with a superfluous bottle opener. “What have you got to lose?”
“We are friends,” Vivik said quietly. “That matters to me.”
“I knew it,” Renton said. “She’s got you trapped in the friend zone. You need to take the initiative. You can’t let her dictate your relationship.”
“There’s no such thing as the friend zone, I’m not ‘trapped’, and no one is dictating anything,” Vivik said. “We’re friends. I respect her. Like you
were just talking about with Katya. It’s the same thing.”
“Well, maybe,” Renton said. “Respect aside, I’d still fuck the shit out of Katya.”
“I hate you,” Alex said. “That’s my cousin, you realize?”
“Big deal. She’s cute enough. You would have hit that too, before you found out she was related.”
“It isn’t the same,” Vivik said. “I really don’t want to lose what we have. I value our relationship.”
“You have nothing, and it’s not different at all,” Renton said. “Emily won’t need you forever. These early days will pass, and you’ll end up watching from a distance while other people get closer and become more important to her, and you’ll wish you made your move when you had the chance, when you still mattered.”
“That’s dark,” Vivik said, sipping his beer and looking shaken. “Your world view is skewed.”
“Yeah. What’s up with you tonight?” Alex said. “Do have some sort of problem with Vivik? Or me?”
“I’ve got so many problems with you,” Renton said. “You’re an entitled twat, and you don’t deserve anything you’ve been given. You don’t even deserve Eerie, crazy as she is, and you sure didn’t deserve Emily for one second.”
“If you weren’t hurt, I would beat the shit out of you,” Alex said. “Swear to God.”
“If I were one-hundred percent, you couldn’t lay a finger on me, and we both know it,” Renton said, gesturing at the cooler. “Get out of my face and get me a beer.”
Alex’s hands shook.
“Fuck you,” he said, turning his back on Renton. “Get it yourself.”
Vivik quietly went to the cooler.
“I’m dead serious about the girls, too,” Renton continued. “You both waste time like you’ve got it to spare. You don’t, though, and you’ll regret it if you don’t do something about it.”
“Like your miserable ass?” Alex smirked, watching the can closely when Vivik tossed Renton a beer. “Is that what this is about?”
The Church of Sleep (Central Series Book 5) Page 55
