The Children of the Sun

by Christopher Buecheler

  “Who gave you that password?” Tori asked him, and Thomas gave her a scoffing laugh.

  “Why would I tell you that? If it makes you feel any better, he’s never used it. Didn’t have the balls.”

  Tori considered this and nodded. “Fine. You know I was on the pills, and you know that when I stopped taking them my memory started coming back. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “If you’re going to kill someone for doing something, shouldn’t you be sure they did it? Like, I mean, a hundred percent for-real certain?”

  “If you know something that you think I should know, this would be an excellent time to share,” Tori said. She turned away from Two, who was staying silent, watching those blades in Tori’s hands and hoping like hell that Thomas knew what he was doing.

  “While I was in Atlanta, I did a little thinking about you, Captain. Pretty convenient how it worked out – the council killing your parents but leaving you alive long enough for us to swoop in. So when I decided to use the password, I read up on your history. It’s all there, every email or journal entry … everything Charles ever filed, and even a few things from the Emperor himself. I guess he doesn’t use computers much, but man … the stuff he did write is really interesting.”

  “Get to the point!” Tori snarled.

  “You think the vampire council killed your parents because you killed the dude at the top and they wanted revenge … but now that you’re off your pills, Captain, why not ask yourself who stood the most to gain from your parents’ deaths?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Tori said.

  “Come on, Captain. They told us you were smart …”

  Tori bit her lip, looking frustrated. “I know what you’re insinuating – don’t think I haven’t thought of it – but there’s no way. It goes against everything they believe in. Everything the Emperor stands for.”

  “Sure does, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Think about it. Finally there’s this weapon just lying around that they can pick up and use against the vampires. After four hundred years of sneaking around, killing a handful here or there, they can finally put together a real army and make a push. Abraham is gone and there’s someone out there who can take the fight to the big, badass vampires that are left.”

  “Stop it,” Tori said, but there was a wavering note to her voice now that hadn’t been there before.

  Thomas didn’t. “The only question was … how could they convince you? You had been a vampire once, and who knew when they might decide to come recruit you? Once our people found you, and they were sure of what they’d found, they had to figure out a way to get you to come with them. Let’s be honest, Captain … even with all the fighting, there was no way you were going to just bail on your parents and sign up with the Children. No way you were gonna disappear again.”

  “I said stop it,” Tori said, and she took a menacing step toward him. Thomas stared back at her, defiant, and continued.

  “What if they could take care of both problems at once? What if they could eliminate your parents and make you hate vampires at the same time? Wouldn’t that get you to come with them, at least long enough that they could make you forget? Once they got that process started, they could do whatever they liked with you, make you believe anything they wanted.”

  Tori took another step forward, but Thomas wasn’t done.

  “I read every word of it. The plans, the order, and the reports afterward. You want to know who was in your kitchen that night, holding your mom and dad down and cutting their throats? It wasn’t anyone on Two’s council. The people who killed your innocent, human parents were Charles Porter, Colonel Timothy Palowski, Major Arthur Davidson, and his Majesty himself, that benevolent guardian of humanity, the Emperor of the fucking Sun.”

  At this, Tori took three long, fast strides forward and brought the blade in her right hand up, pressing it underneath Thomas’s throat and holding him up against the wall.

  “You shut up with your lies!” she hissed at him. “Shut up right now or I’m going to cut your head off!”

  “Captain … why would I lie?” Thomas asked her, his head leaned back, eyes staring down at her, and for a moment Two thought that those would be his last words. She could see in Tori’s eyes the kind of rage that rendered coherent thought impossible. The animal that Tori had once been was fighting to be set free, to rip and rend and tear.

  “Tori,” she said quietly, trying to keep her voice calm. “Tori, come back.”

  Whether it was the words or the tone Two didn’t know, but they seemed to get through, and Tori swung her head around to stare at Two.

  “What did you say?” she snarled, and Two smiled at her gently.

  “I said, ‘come back.’ You don’t have to be that girl anymore, the crazy one who kills without thinking about it. You can be someone else, someone better. I know you can because I’ve seen it.”

  With a visible effort, Tori fought back the rage. She was shaking, her shoulders jerking, and Two was afraid she would cut Thomas’s throat by accident before she could get ahold of herself. But after a moment more she took the blade from his skin. She breathed in, long and deep, and looked him in the eyes.

  “There’s a terminal back at the desk,” she said. “They’ll let me use it. I want you to tell me how to get to that one particular password prompt, and I want you to do it right now.”

  Thomas nodded and began to speak.

  Chapter 22

  Ascent

  When Thomas was finished, Tori contemplated the things he had told her for a moment, as if to ensure she had the proper sequence committed to memory. Then, without a word, she spun on her heel and left the cell, and for a time no one spoke. Two turned and looked at Thomas. He had gone back to a sitting position but was now looking at the cell door, a contemplative expression on his face.

  “So, was that a load of shit or were you serious?” Two asked him, and Thomas glanced over, laughing a little.

  “Why don’t you try lying to her while she’s got that thing up against your neck,” he said.

  Two nodded. “I should’ve realized. I just … I thought you guys didn’t kill humans, at least not innocent ones. I thought that was the whole point.”

  “It is the whole point and we don’t kill humans. Least, not those of us who still have any idea what’s right and what’s wrong. I guess that rules out the Emperor. Guess that rules out a whole bunch of top-rank motherfuckers.”

  “When she sees it with her own eyes, she will try to kill them,” Theroen said, and Thomas nodded.

  “Yeah, she will, and she might even get one or two of them. Word is that Charles already passed on, so she won’t have a chance with him, and she won’t make it to the Emperor by herself.”

  “Won’t stop her from trying,” Two said.

  “No, I guess not. I’m kind of hoping she comes back and lets us out, though. I don’t think I’ve got much of a future with this organization. I was a fucking good bartender, though.”

  “I am concerned that she will forget to come back,” Theroen said. “That she will be so enraged as to simply head off in search of the Emperor at once.”

  “Would you stop making it out like she’s some kind of psychopath?” Two snapped, and Theroen raised his eyebrows.

  “Since arriving, she has threatened to kill or maim all three people in this room,” he said.

  “She wasn’t going to kill us. The Colonel wants us alive.”

  “She doesn’t answer to the colonels,” Thomas said. “They answer to her. She’s the Right Hand. Only boss she’s got is the Emperor, and she has his authority to do whatever the hell she wants. If she wanted to kill you – and it sure fucking looked like she did – she would’ve killed you.”

  “Oh,” Two said, trying not to think too hard about how close it had been. “Well … the important thing is that she didn’t.”

  “I agree,” Theroen said. “If she does not come back, there are yet options to be considere
d.”

  “She’s not going to do that,” Two said. “She’s not going to go berserk and just charge off without thinking.”

  Thomas spoke up, a touch of incredulity in his voice. “You uh … you know Captain Perrault well?”

  Two took a deep breath, forcing down the profanity-laced tirade that had sprung to her mind, and said only, “Better than either of you.”

  Thomas considered this and shrugged. “Hope you’re right.”

  “I hope so, too,” Theroen said, his tone not unkind. Two sighed and gave him a small smile, but she chose not to continue the conversation. What was the point? Only Tori could prove whether Two was correct in her assessment or delusional about Tori’s ability to push back the animal inside, and so they waited in silence to find out.

  Two had lost complete track of time since their capture and knew only that it must not be midnight yet, as surely there would have been some sign that an attack had begun. Even the time since Tori had left seemed distorted, stretching longer than it could possibly have been. Thomas had put his head down again and Two found herself perturbed by his seeming ability to zone out at will.

  “Hey,” she said. “Thomas? You still with us?”

  “Trying to meditate,” he said, keeping his eyes down.

  “Meditate on what?”

  “I don’t meditate ‘on’ things,” Thomas said, and now he looked up. “The whole point is to empty your mind. That’s what my sister never figured out.”

  “You have a sister in here?”

  “You know her. Vanessa Harper. She works with Captain Perrault.”

  “Oh. Christ, that chick’s your sister?”

  “Yeah. She used to bitch about the meditation sessions every night, over and over. She said she didn’t see the value, but I think the truth is she was pissed she couldn’t manage it. She could never take herself out of herself … so she never got anything out of it.”

  “What do you get out of it?” Two asked.

  “Peace. Calm. Also I’m trying to conserve energy in case I get a chance to bust up out this place. If you’re good, you can drop your breathing rate, your heart rate … it lowers your metabolism. I’ve been trying not to use up energy. You can probably tell they haven’t been feeding me so good.”

  “Yeah, you’re starting to look pretty thin.”

  “I’ve burnt a lot of muscle since I got here, but not all of it. I can still move fast and hit hard if I need to, but the energy won’t last long. I’m trying to sleep and meditate as much as possible. Kind of funny … I’d have gone nuts in here by now if not for everything they taught me.”

  “Have they been interrogating you?”

  Thomas shrugged. “Not really. What am I going to give them? I’ve reported every single thing about Naomi, including the part where I broke orders and ran like a bitch. I don’t have anything they need. Or at least, they have no reason to think I do – not like my boy in IT told them he built a backdoor and gave me the key. Your crazy friend is the first person I’ve told about the password, so no one knows I can read the Emperor’s email.”

  Theroen shifted and spoke. “If she decides to tell them about that, you will be in a great deal of trouble.”

  “She’s not going to—” Two began, and Thomas cut her off.

  “Two, relax. He’s not saying she will. Your boy’s just the kind of guy who thinks about all the angles, and until she comes back, one of the angles is definitely that she’s still working for the Children.”

  “But you told her about the password anyway,” Two said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “More dangerous than what I’ve already done? Sweetheart, you’re not the only one working for an organization that swings the death penalty stick around like a psychotic four-year-old on a sugar high. If I hadn’t told her, she would’ve killed you first, him second, and me third, and anyway … it’s not like I’m guessing about what’s in there. I read it myself. If she decides she’s still a big fan of the Emperor after reading that shit, well, I don’t know what to tell you.”

  Two considered this for a while, chewing on her bottom lip. Theroen was watching her and Thomas was staring again at the door. She was about to speak when she saw Theroen cock his head to the left, frowning.

  “That was a scream,” he said.

  “You sure?” Two asked.

  “Reasonably,” Theroen said. “We can ask in a moment.”

  “We what? How—” Two’s question was cut off by the sound of footsteps moving toward them, not quite at a run but definitely hurried. There was another buzzing, clunking noise as the door to their cell unlatched, and Tori walked back into the room.

  “When is the attack?” she asked, looking directly at Two, and for a moment Two had no idea what the woman was talking about. Then she realized, and found herself stammering.

  “The … uh, I mean …”

  “Two, cut the bullshit. I know an attack is coming. Someone very talented broke in and corrupted all of our video feeds hours ago. That’s how you got down as far as you did. Well, and because I let you.”

  “You did what?” Theroen asked her, and Tori gave him a grim smile.

  “Before he died, Charles Porter once told me that I was something more than a human. He told me I was something better, and he was right. Our people missed that the lock on the roof was broken from the inside, but I didn’t. I found it days ago. Someone broke out of the building and we’ve had no missing prisoners. Conclusion? A spy or stowaway of some sort. They must have been good, to get past the cameras.”

  “But why?” Two asked.

  “The Children’s response to discovery is to run and hide, covering their tracks as best they can. That’s not my forte and never was. I wanted my shot at you before they were alerted to danger.”

  “You knew Theroen and I were going to come all along, then,” Two said, and Tori shook her head.

  “I knew someone would come, but not who. I was expecting more than two of you, but I wasn’t counting on this. You two really aren’t here for the Children, or even for the Emperor. You’re here for me.”

  Two nodded. “That’s right.”

  Tori shook her head, a look of angry disgust on her face. “Do you know how fucking stupid that is?”

  Two considered this for a moment and then shrugged. “I don’t give a shit.”

  “You left me in Ohio. You dumped me on my parents and took off, and after that I was lucky if you even answered your emails, let alone your phone. You abandoned me, and it cost my parents their lives, and now you want to waltz in and … what?”

  “I wanted to save you,” Two told her. “Tori, I wanted to … to help you.”

  “Who says I need your help?!” Tori shouted. “Who says I need anything from you at all? Don’t you understand what you’ve done?!”

  Two felt like the wind had been knocked out of her, and tears sprung to her eyes. She was quiet for a moment, trying to find the words to express herself. Tori watched her, jaw clenched. Finally, Two spoke.

  “I know exactly what I’ve done,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I know who I am, and I know all of the terrible shit I’ve put people through. I did lots of things without ever thinking about the consequences. When I met you I was just a stupid kid, and I didn’t think about how the things I was doing could hurt you.

  “I brought you home because I knew your parents missed you, and I knew that as your memory came back, you were missing them, too. I don’t regret bringing you there, but leaving you like that and just fucking off into my own little world? I’m never going to ask you to forgive me for it because I don’t expect you to. I don’t want you to.”

  “Then what do you want from me?” Tori demanded. “Am I supposed to give you a hug and tell you everything’s going to be rainbows and unicorns from now on? Is that how this is supposed to go? What do you want?!”

  Two looked down at the ground and then back up at Tori. She could feel tears on her ch
eeks now, and she brushed them aside with one hand.

  “I want you to be safe. I want you to be free. Even if it means I can’t be your friend anymore, I want you to be able to live your own life, however you want to live it.”

  “What if I want to live my life by hunting down vampires and murdering them?” Tori cried. “What if that’s what I was made to do?”

  “Then fucking do it!” Two shouted back. She lunged forward, forgetting the chain on her ankle, and very nearly fell flat on her face. She regained her balance and glared at Tori. “Do it! But don’t do it for these people who’ve done nothing but lie to you at every step. Do it for you!”

  Tori was quiet for a time, staring at Two, her jaw clenched tight. Two looked back, refusing to break eye contact. If the time for her death had come, she would go to it standing as tall as her five-foot-two frame would allow.

  “The attack’s at midnight,” she said. “There’s about three hundred and fifty of them, mostly Ay’Araf and Burilgi. Theroen and I are supposed to open the garage doors, but they’ll break their way in if they have to. Either we finish this or we lose the war and scatter. One way or the other, it ends tonight.”

  Tori took in a deep breath, held it, and let it out.

  “Then I guess we don’t have much time,” she said, and she unsheathed her swords. She strode forward, and Two found herself grasping for something to say and finding nothing. All of her attention was focused on those twin blades.

  Tori brought the sword in her right hand up above her head, and Two felt an overwhelming urge to leap backward. Then a voice – she was not sure whether it was her own – spoke at the back of her mind.

  Show her you believe, the voice said, and Two clenched her teeth, stiffened her back and stood straight up, staring Tori in the eye. You’re not going to kill me, she thought.

  Meeting her gaze, Tori brought the blade down in a slashing motion so powerful it shrieked as it cut through the air. Two recognized the sound from her time training with Jakob and knew that the weapon was moving with such speed and force that it could easily cut through bone. If the blow was aimed at her head or neck, she was going to die.