Despite the jacket she wore and the hood covering most of her head, she felt exposed. On the other hand, she hadn’t been aboveground in weeks, so she also felt strangely liberated, having escaped all but the bare bones of the Secret Service and every one of the now overly-familiar faces of those who made up her administration.
She knew she should probably be feeling a lot more than just impatient.
She should probably be scared out of her damned mind.
She definitely should be wondering how she’d let herself get talked into this––a secret, low-security meeting with a known seer terrorist. Especially since that terrorist was long-rumored to be married to one of the most historically infamous mass murderers of all time.
Only one other human stood beside her out here.
By comparison, twelve seers stood around her in a protective circle. The fact that the majority of those seers supposedly worked for her didn’t really do much to assuage Brooks’ anxiety––although she didn’t feel actively in danger, either.
Then again, how would she even know?
Brooks had nothing against seers personally.
She’d even befriended a few of them on her security team. As a senator she’d fought for a relaxing of some of the harshest of the SCARB codes in D.C., an uphill battle even before Wellington was assassinated by seer terrorists. Politically, she’d never campaigned on anti-seer platforms, or put her name to any anti-seer legislation.
On the other hand, she was a realist.
A lot of seers hated humans… with good reason.
Brooks knew all seers weren’t terrorists, though.
Some weren’t even particularly hostile to humans, despite the sordid history between the two races. The power imbalance there worried her––because again, she was a realist. Meaning, she couldn’t avoid the thought that they might have manipulated her mind to get her to come out here in the first place.
The same thing might also explain her lack of fear.
Brooks remembered everything about her coming out here, though. There were no blank spots in her memory, no fuzzy areas or lost time. She remembered that initial conversation with Talei in the NORAD complex almost word for word.
Talei used to be on Brooks’ Secret Service team in D.C.
Brooks remembered her well; moreover, she’d always liked her. She’d trusted her too, as much as she could trust anyone who was essentially owned by the United States Government.
Still, Brooks had been shocked when Talei entered her underground quarters in the NORAD complex. She’d smiled, saluted her––then, as the door closed, proceeded to use an illegal headset to disable every one of the room’s internal security measures.
Once she had, she approached Brooks and began talking to her rapidly in English.
She’d told Brooks that her presence wasn’t authorized to be inside the NORAD complex, that she’d snuck in with a small group of seers to offer peace terms and a potential alliance––an alliance with none other than Alyson Taylor, one of the most notorious seers alive.
Alyson Taylor also happened to be the individual many blamed for the C2-77 epidemic.
As Brooks listened to Talei speak, she found herself wondering, however.
For one thing, in a roundabout way, Talei’s words lent support to a number of suspicions Brooks herself had been harboring for some time now.
Those suspicions all revolved around similar themes.
She had suspicions around the integrity of her administration, around some of the leaks and mysterious deaths. She had suspicions around the infrastructure failures that occurred at key points at the beginning of the C2-77 crisis. She had suspicions around the official story of how the disease got rolled out in so many places across the globe at the same time.
And, of course, she had suspicions about the blackout cities––who ran them, who warned them, and how they’d managed to be so well-prepared for the exact crisis that occurred.
Essentially, Brooks was skeptical of the official story from the start. It never struck her as wholly realistic that a handful of disgruntled, terrorist seers could have done all this on their own, without major backing from key segments of the human world.
Talei told her she couldn’t trust what she’d heard about China.
She told Brooks that Alyson Taylor’s people had been trying to feed her accurate intel for months, but those channels were increasingly being intercepted and shut down.
Remembering the reports she’d been getting and how they seemed to come from all over the place, Brooks found herself listening a lot harder after that.
Talei told Brooks bluntly that spies lived underground at the NORAD complex––spies who belonged to the same group that orchestrated the plague of C2-77 and the global lockdowns.
She told Brooks the blackout cities were now taking over entire continents. She described how they used seers for population control, using humans for labor and capital accumulation.
According to Talei, the conspiracy involved humans and seers working together from the beginning, although she admitted the conspiracy’s main architect was likely a seer. This dark seer, who Talei called “Shadow,” had been allying with humans in various ways all the way back to World War I. He’d also allied with Syrimne, at least until Syrimne decided to ally with the Bridge instead.
Some of this was a little beyond Brooks to grasp, in terms of details.
Yet she found she didn’t disbelieve it, per se.
Some was a lot easier to comprehend.
Like Talei telling Brooks that the spies among Brooks’ own people were likely already working against her––and likely intended to kill her once her immediate usefulness expired.
Brooks had long suspected there was a clear list of “allies” and “enemies” around those lock-down cities and the elite who managed to procure a coveted spot inside one of them. She’d also suspected that if you weren’t on the ally list, you would eventually end up on the other one.
Talei’s words supported that suspicion, too.
Those same spies, if Brooks understood Talei correctly, wanted her to threaten China with nuclear war in order to obtain some concession from the Chinese seers, the Lao Hu. Talei seemed to think a coup might be attempted there soon, either from outside or from within.
The thought was chilling.
It also resonated with a lot of what Brooks had been seeing.
As a result––and even knowing there was some chance Talei or some other highly-trained seer had implanted all of these thoughts and beliefs––Brooks found herself agreeing to meet with Taylor informally.
Talei promised her that her mind would not be touched.
Of course, they likely would have said that anyway.
“Where is she?” Brooks muttered again, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the afternoon sun.
Turning, she looked at the red-eyed seer standing directly behind her, an East Indian-looking female who Talei had brought out here with her.
The seer’s skin was dark enough that Brooks might have been psychologically fooled into feeling some kinship with her in that more gut-level way––particularly given her hairstyle––but those eerie red eyes marked the differences between them with exclamation points and several underlines.
The red-eyed female looked familiar to Brooks, though.
She couldn’t place from where exactly, but possibly she knew her from D.C. as well, since Talei introduced her as ex-SCARB.
Whoever she was, she seemed to be the one actually in charge.
Tall and muscular with black hair done in tiny braids that hung down her back, she had those striking red-ember eyes, high cheekbones and a strangely perfect mouth.
She also wore at least six guns that Brooks could see.
“I’ll be missed,” Brooks reminded her, glancing at the other two female seers standing next to her, both of whom adopted that same warrior-like demeanor.
Brooks noted the guns on them too, as well as the armored clothing they wore, fig
hting the intimidated feeling that wanted to crawl over her chest.
“…If you are truly worried about spies within my administration, this isn’t the most inconspicuous thing we could be doing right now,” she added.
The red-eyed seer nodded, unfolding her muscular arms and planting her feet.
Turning her head towards Talei, who stood next to her but at least four inches shorter, the red-eyed seer began gesturing fluidly with her hands, grunting something in that seer language as she did. After Talei responded in the same language, the one with the braids looked back at Brooks.
“She is on her way,” she said in accented English.
Tapping her headset with one long finger, she made a strangely polite-looking inclination of her head.
“She has just now contacted us, beloved cousin. She was held up. But she is now coming. She asks us to apologize on her behalf for being late.”
Brooks nodded, smiling stiffly.
She appreciated the seer’s efforts to put her at ease.
Still, she couldn’t remember ever seeing a seer who looked so, well… seer before.
Those red eyes coupled with the way she moved gave her an air of foreignness that seethed off her very skin. Standing over six feet tall with those muscular bare arms and shoulders, she was frankly terrifying.
Brooks strongly suspected that went far beyond the six guns she wore and the bare bones of her physicality, both of which were intimidating enough.
It hadn’t occurred to Brooks in a long time that most seers she encountered as a politician had been chosen and trained specifically to mimic humans. They mimicked them not only with contact lenses, being picked for their height or their facial features or their ability to blend into a human crowd––those deemed able to “pass” were also taught to mimic human mannerisms, human gestures, human walking styles, even human facial expressions.
No way could this female seer pass.
Brooks suspected no amount of contact lenses, prosthetics, Miss Manners classes or clothing choices would make her look human.
A laugh burst out, a male voice.
Brooks jumped, her eyes shifting to the right of the seer with the braids.
The giant male seer standing there snorted again in humor, nudging the red-eyed seer affectionately with his arm.
“Ain’t that the truth,” he said in much less accented English. He winked at Brooks, smiling in a friendly way as he slung his arm over the red-eyed seer’s shoulders. “And you haven’t even seen sister Chandre eat, cousin. It is a sight to behold. Truly.”
The blond seer next to him snorted.
The red-eyed one gave him a death stare, but Talei snickered, too.
Brooks fought a smile, not sure if she should risk pissing off the red-eyed seer, even if it all appeared to be all in good fun. She’d been told seer culture involved a lot of what her British friends called “taking the piss” out of one another, but she wasn’t sure if she was ready to test that with someone who looked like they could break her neck with their bare hands.
The seers chuckled at that, too, which didn’t exactly put Brooks at ease.
Talei’s voice turned business-like.
“She is coming now,” the Thai-looking seer said.
Brooks followed the direction of her eyes, turning to see what looked like a high-end SUV driving fast––damned fast to the naked eye––down a dirt road on the opposite side of the asphalt service road where Brooks herself had been driven in.
“She’s requesting a private audience,” the East Indian one said next. Her dark red eyes met Brooks’ when she turned. “Is that acceptable to you, sir?”
Brooks flinched at the “sir” coming from the muscular seer, then hid a smile.
“Sure,” she said, muttering, “…It’s not like she couldn’t kill me just as easily from a hundred yards away.”
If the seers heard her sarcastic addendum, they didn’t respond.
Brooks wondered again if agreeing to this had been a huge mistake.
There was a decent chance that Alyson “The Bridge” Taylor might actually break her neck if Brooks didn’t say the right things in their little talk.
Worse, she might push Brooks into doing something that destroyed what little remained of her people and country in this world.
Then again, Talei could have killed Brooks in her own bedroom in that underground bunker in NORAD, if that’s all they wanted. They could have pushed her from there, too––“infiltrated” her, as the seers called it––without leaving the confines of the compound.
Really, that would have been a lot more effective, operationally-speaking.
No one on her human team need ever have known she’d been compromised.
Those two thoughts were a big part of how and why Brooks rationalized the enormous risk she’d taken in coming out here. She knew that’s all it was though––a rationalization. The truth was, she was following the most reckless kind of hunch imaginable.
The other truth was, she was desperate.
She could feel that desperation.
Her entire administration, herself included, was barreling towards war with what remained of China, seemingly faster than she could slow it down. Brooks felt herself being pushed towards that outcome as if by some inexorable force––like gravity.
When Talei showed up and offered her the first semi-rational explanation for why that might be, Brooks jumped on it. If Alyson the Bridge had a solution to this problem that didn’t involve Brooks killing a few billion people in Asia and creating a radiation cloud a few hundred miles in circumference, she was all ears.
She reminded herself of that as she folded her arms, watching the SUV skid to a stop.
The tires kicked up a cloud of dust as the wheels locked, right at the edge of the clearing where the field started.
The vehicle hadn’t even powered down when a female-shaped person in combat gear slid out of the passenger seat, saying something in the seer language to the muscular male seer driving. Whoever he was, he scowled at her, raising his voice as if they were arguing.
Brooks lifted her hand against the dust, shielding her eyes.
She squinted at the male through the tinted windshield, watching him continue to speak rapidly to the female, who had to be the Bridge.
He was handsome, she couldn’t help noticing.
Shockingly so, if truth be told.
He appeared to be in his mid- to late-thirties, with long black hair wound into an elaborate-looking ponytail, shockingly light eyes, high cheekbones, dark skin, a firm jaw. Even in the bulky combat vest, Brooks couldn’t help noticing a muscular body, and he had a mouth as perfect-looking as that of the red-eyed seer, although it evoked a different reaction out of Brooks seeing it on a male.
What was it with these damned seers? Half of them looked like actors or models.
She wondered if he could be the famed Syrimne.
“No,” Talei said from next to her, making that odd clicking sound with her tongue and teeth. “No, our brother the Sword is not here, cousin. That is her bodyguard. His name is Dalejem.”
Brooks felt herself startle.
Her bodyguard? And he was talking to her like that?
Pressing her lips together, Brooks folded her arms tighter around the hooded ski jacket she wore over her suit, watching the two of them throw words back and forth. Rather than cooling, the exchange appeared to grow more heated the longer it went on.
The Bridge slammed the door then, appearing to have had enough.
No expression lived on her face as she began walking rapidly towards them with purposeful strides. Brooks saw her famous green eyes scan through faces before stopping on hers.
As for Brooks herself, she couldn’t tear her eyes off the other woman.
This looked like Alyson Taylor… the famed sleeper agent that Brooks had been briefed on again and again, and whose face she’d seen over and over on the feeds… but also not.
Brooks swore she had to be taller.
She looked significantly more muscular too, although she remained on the thin side of that, particularly compared to the East Indian seer standing behind her as well as some of the female seers Brooks had on her White House security team.
Perhaps because of her recent assessment of the hot male bodyguard, Brooks couldn’t help noticing that Taylor’s looks were model-striking too, if in a way that leaned much further towards the “exotic” than Brooks would have guessed from the public feed photos. High cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes stood out on a tanned face above that athletic but obviously well-curved body and long legs.
What struck Brooks the most, however, was that despite her human upbringing, Alyson Taylor looked a lot closer to the East Indian seer in terms of her foreignness than Brooks would have expected. Much more than a seer like Talei, for example, who easily could be mistaken for human in the right clothes and contact lenses.
That foreignness shone out of Alyson Taylor’s light green eyes and the intensity of her stare almost like a living force.
It made Brooks nervous without any conscious awareness of why.
She was limping, Brooks realized.
Wearing full combat gear, she had an automatic rifle slung around her back. Her dark brown hair was down, but it looked like it had fallen down recently and some of it remained tangled in some kind of tie or thong. Both Alyson and the male seer now climbing out of the powered down SUV looked emotionally spent, and more than a little beat up.
He, additionally, looked angry.
Taylor had a recent bruise on one cheek. Blood still trickled from her hairline on one side. She also had bruised knuckles, Brooks noticed, and one of her armored pant legs looked like it had been ripped off part of her thigh.
The rip had burns around it. Like she’d been shot.
She looked like she was holding and moving her body strangely, too, like something might be wrong with that same leg, or maybe her ribs.
Even as Brooks thought it, she heard the seers behind her reacting to their leader’s appearance, gasping and murmuring and speaking aloud. The red-eyed seer, Chandre, stepped forward first, making that clicking sound and gesturing fluidly with her hands.
“Not now,” Alyson growled, giving her a silencing look.
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