by Amber Jayne
They all had jobs to do.
Lavinia, no longer exuding an air of wounded dignity, dressed as quickly as he did, slipping the gossamer garment over her head, lifting her heavy length of hair out from under the fabric. The two of them had been interrupted once before, on a night when a lone Passenger had crossed into a border town undetected by the Guard. One of Rune’s commanders, bursting in here, had been treated to an eyeful of Lavinia’s naked, writhing flesh. On that occasion she either hadn’t trusted in Rune’s phenomenal senses or believed his warning that someone was rapidly approaching the room. And though she hadn’t blushed at her exposure that night, she was apparently in no hurry to recreate the incident.
As she pulled the thin slippers that barely qualified as shoes onto her feet, Rune’s thoughts dwindled back to that same night, to what had happened after the officer had issued his orders. He and Urna had strapped on a pair of waiting wings and set out. It had been early on in their careers, when they were still learning the outer limits of their incredible abilities. In those days they’d been on call for border incidents. The missions into the Unsafe hadn’t yet been implemented by military policy. The Weapon/Shadowflash division was just then being formed, apparently around the two of them.
The lone daring Passenger had attacked a young boy and the rundown border town was already erupting into panic. Initial reports that were indistinguishable from rumor told that the child had been outside chasing an escaped pet, foolishly leaving the relative safety of his family’s shabby home several hours after the midnight curfew. By the time Rune and Urna were tracking the Passenger, several arrests had been made in the town for other curfew violations and the Lux back in their city were starting to panic themselves. Any civil disorder was a threat to the delicate balance that had allowed them to stay in power so long, despite being, according to population numbers, a clear minority.
When they’d located the Passenger a short time later, retreating back into the Unsafe, there had been a crust of gore on its hands, all the way up to its spindly wrists. Gruesome lace gloves was how Urna had described it, whispering back to Rune across a half-mile of deserted wasteland as he ran the creature down. He’d also said the beast appeared disoriented, almost lost, liked it had strayed into the town by accident.
Rune had never seen that Passenger himself or the disfigured face of the child they had avenged. Nevertheless the images were burned into his mind, as he suspected they were burned into his Weapon’s.
“This is fucked,” Urna had said to him that night, looking directly into his face as he’d wiped black ichor from his sword. Rune hadn’t been sure if he meant the night’s incident in particular, or if it was some larger comment concerning their own military status. Or maybe it was a criticism of the Safe’s society, which pushed its poorest residents to the literal margins. Border towns were technically a part of the Safe, but they weren’t safe. Everybody knew that.
Lavinia stood next to him as the seconds ticked down. Though she was a head shorter than Rune in those flat little shoes, her poise made her seem taller than her height. Shoulders back, chin up. They waited, professionals together.
The alarms were still wailing.
“It’s a guard,” Rune said. Again he had no idea why he bothered, but suddenly he wanted to share something with her, even if it was only a scrap of information, before she was sent away from him. He half expected her not to respond, was mildly surprised when she looked up at him.
“How do you know?” she asked. She sounded genuinely curious. Maybe even after all this time she still didn’t quite believe in his abilities. All the others in the program could only aspire to what this Shadowflash could do.
“Boots,” he replied. “The guards wear boots with treads on the soles.” If it had been Urna here, Rune could’ve said which toes were wriggling inside those boots.
“I don’t hear anything,” Lavinia said.
The shadow of the guard appeared under Rune’s door, stopped. Lavinia glanced at Rune again, not hearing the tiny beep and click that Rune detected perfectly as the guard swiped his ID through the card-lock. If he’d been trying a bit harder, he could have identified the individual guard based on the coded tonality of the card.
It was a man who Rune recognized, but only from having glimpsed him in the halls on his way back and forth from his room. A regular security agent, not an officer. So what the hell was he doing opening Rune’s door? He made his displeasure known by narrowing his eyes, but the guard was nonplussed.
He regarded the Shadowflash and the woman for a moment before speaking, not surprised to see them standing and obviously waiting, not wary of Rune’s countenance.
“The Toplux requests your immediate presence,” he said. He looked at Lavinia, seemed uninterested in meeting her eyes directly. “You too,” he said to her ample chest.
“Me?” Lavinia blinked rapidly, her smoky lashes a dark blur above round cheeks. “Why?” Not a very professional question to ask.
Rune almost smirked. No one asked why the Toplux did anything. But he couldn’t deny the order was an unusual one. Especially at this hour, with the compound’s alarms still going. Clearly, something wasn’t right. Probably Urna had been summoned to the Citadel, too…and that thought—damn it—quickened Rune’s heart a little.
Moments later, as they crossed the open ground heading toward the Citadel building itself, the alarms finally wound down into silence.
* * * * *
Aphael Chav surveyed the small assembly in his private receiving chamber, appraising them with no small amount of contempt, not all of it warranted. His mood was foul. He didn’t like being woken, particularly by alarms. But he didn’t let his emotions interfere with his cold calculations.
His eyes passed over the Shadowflash first. This was Rune, or at least that was his code. But the random four-letter designation that represented each Weapon and Shadowflash seemed especially suited to this one somehow. Rune. It had a vaguely sinister sound to it. The Shadowflash’s eyes, though glazed with the drugs meant to keep him and the others like him docile through the night, betrayed a wisdom beyond the years that showed on his exotically pale face, as if he were somehow connected to the ancient. To a time erased by the darkness and the presence of the Black Ship.
Were the Toplux to be honest with himself, the Shadowflash—all of them, in fact—unnerved him more than any Weapon. Weapons might be capable of phenomenal violence, but the Shadowflashes heard things. They saw things without actually seeing them, including that which they weren’t meant to, and so he was careful with his facial expressions, careful not to reveal anything more than what he spoke out loud.
This Shadowflash, well…he was the best, wasn’t he? No one could argue that. And that made him the most dangerous, and was the reason why this current situation had the potential to implode. Why it was, in short, a disaster.
But there was still time to clean it up.
Aphael turned his gaze over to the woman accompanying Rune, dismissive even though he had specifically ordered her brought before him. A glance at her told him all he needed to know. She almost certainly had nothing to do with the escape that had occurred, just as the other woman who’d lain tonight with the Weapon was absolutely not involved in some tangled conspiracy. But there was the rub—almost. These sows, he knew, sometimes connived and contrived, wheedling favors from the weaker officers, like fancy clothes or increased rations.
He addressed the guard who had brought both visitors here. “Take this breeder into custody along with the other. The one that spent the evening with him.” He waved his hand toward the receiving chamber’s doors. Then, not quite an afterthought, “Have the Interrogators release Miss Temple for tonight.”
He could always have his dear Virge arrested another time. He didn’t want the Guard distracted right now. They had already been mobilized and were being sent into the streets of the Lux city that surrounded the Citadel. This was something of a dicey operation, however, since the Guard officially had n
o jurisdiction over the military—and it was, after all, a member of the military, a Weapon, who had gone AWOL. Still, it wouldn’t do to flex too much militaristic muscle in the city. The Guard were supposed to keep order domestically.
The woman, belted into a coarse robe over some gauzy bit of nothing, was removed from the chamber. The space felt close, the air heavier, as Aphael Chav faced Rune alone. The Shadowflash was waiting stoically, obviously aware that something unusual was afoot tonight.
The Toplux paced a few steps. He wore silken nightclothes and his white hair was in disarray. Even so, he was sure he exuded an air of control, of authority. It was so familiar a front he was confident that even this ultimate Shadowflash couldn’t perceive his anxiety.
He gazed at his receiving chamber’s baroque furnishings and fixtures. This crisis was dire and action needed to be taken urgently. But this situation, here in this room, was also an emergency of sorts, one which needed to be handled delicately. Aphael, after all, knew of the relationship between the two members of his very best Shadowflash/Weapon team. He perhaps understood the depths of their relationship even better than the men themselves. After all, he had knowledge of their shared past, which the drugs of the military medical technicians had systemically erased from the two men’s minds.
When he halted and turned to face Rune once again, he found somewhat to his dismay that he had to suppress a shiver. There was an intensity about the man, something not quite human.
Hah. Well, the freak wasn’t strictly human, was he? Or at least he had natural abilities that no normal human was supposed to have.
“You heard the alarms?” the Toplux asked.
“I did.”
A silly opening question, Aphael Chav thought, but one had to start somewhere. “There has been an escape.”
Dark blue eyes blinked. “From the Guard facility?”
“No.” The Toplux drew in a breath, held it a moment then said, “From the military complex. A Weapon has broken out of his quarters and gone over the fence. Several soldiers were injured in the process. We require that this escapee return to the Citadel.”
Those eyes widened, but otherwise Rune showed no reaction. He continued to stand stiffly, awaiting his orders.
And now here they came, Aphael thought grimly. “It is Urna who has fled. I require you to find him.”
Chapter Five
“There is vermin in every city,” Rune muttered on the rooftop, preparing to strap on the waiting set of wings.
“Uh, how’s that, sir?” asked the trooper attending him. He seemed a boy to Rune, though they might be only a year apart in their ages for all the Shadowflash knew.
Rune waved dismissively. “Forget it.” He hadn’t meant to utter his familiar observation aloud. It was ironic that he was voicing it here, in the Safe, at the Citadel, which stood at the very heart of this most prosperous Lux city. But it was still the truth, he saw with cold clarity—vermin in every city.
Urna had fled the complex. Had attacked several guards and gone over the fence. Urna had escaped!
How dare he. How dare the…the… Suddenly none of the vivid vulgarities that Urna had collected over the years from his precious books, some of which Rune too had inevitably absorbed, seemed adequate. He wanted to curse the Weapon. He wanted to damn him as no human had been damned before. He wanted to make his name poison. He…
Wanted the son of a bitch back. There. He’d admitted it. Insufficient epithet or not.
Shooting his eyes at the soldier on the roof with him, he saw that this time at least he hadn’t unintentionally spoken out loud. The rooftop was festooned with solar panels, meant to catch the daylight and convert it into power. The soldier was bringing the wings to him now. Rune was ready to receive them. He had changed into his combat garb, the loose-fitting black clothes. They felt comfortable on his lean frame—though they also reminded him that his counterpart, always similarly dressed, wasn’t here with him tonight on this mission. No. Tonight his partner was the mission.
The trooper did up the harness for Rune with something like ceremonial solemnity, though the Shadowflash was perfectly capable of doing it himself. Some of these soldiers, he knew, were in awe of the members of the Weapon/Shadowflash division. They regarded those who ventured into the Unsafe to slay Passengers as nearly mythological. The military, however, wasn’t merely a support staff for the Passenger killers, though much of its personnel were given over to housing, guarding, feeding, administering, doctoring and training the Shadowflashes and Weapons.
The troopers based here at the Citadel served another function. They were the private reserve army of the Lux. If ever true civil unrest were to sweep through the Safe, if the general population rose up against the rightful power structure in any significant way, beyond what the Guard themselves could handle, then the military would defend the Lux to the last soldier. That was their ultimate, if unspoken, purpose. Every trooper knew it.
Rune checked his gauge. These wings were among the few devices that operated on fuel rather than electrical batteries. The wings’ straps, as usual, felt uncomfortable across his shoulders, but there was nothing to be done about that.
“Good luck, sir,” the trooper said, giving him a stiff, formal salute.
Rune turned a baleful eye on the earnest youngster. Was I ever like that? he wondered. He didn’t know, not really. He couldn’t recall exactly when he and Urna had joined the military. He retained scattered remembrances of adolescence, of early days of training, but there wasn’t anything explicitly bridging those two periods of time. One day he’d been a teenager, the next a soldier. Or so it seemed, amidst the blurry swirl of his memory.
“Stand back,” he said curtly to the soldier as he ignited the wings’ engine. They were atop the tallest building in the military complex, a good site for a launch. From here he could see the glittering lights of the Lux city spreading every which way. Urna was out there somewhere, having decided to abandon his duties for some inexplicable reason. Wherever he was, he’d passed beyond the one mile range of Rune’s senses. The Guard had already been mobilized and they were just starting to pour through the streets. But it was Rune who had been charged with finding the errant Weapon by the Safe’s highest authority, the Toplux himself.
Rune would not fail. He would hunt that son of a bitch down and bring him back. He would never let his lover escape him.
The wings whined to their full capacity and lifted the Shadowflash from the roof, up into the star-pricked nighttime.
* * * * *
Arvra Finean had already decided that this fat whore had only one use.
“Then he said that someone was coming and he pulled out. He didn’t even shoot his load. I didn’t know guys could do that. Y’know, just stop. I thought—”
They had been dumped into this cell. First Arvra, then this other female. Laveena was her name. Or something like that. She too was one of those women periodically brought in to service either Urna or Rune, the two most famous members of the army’s Shadowflash/Weapon division. The two were celebrated for their bravery and talents throughout the Safe, even in the border town that was Arvra’s home.
Since Arvra had lain with Urna tonight, she deduced without much effort that Laveena here must have been sent in to spread her legs for Rune, who was the Shadowflash of the pair. Arvra tried to make herself comfortable on the bare cot on which she sat. The Guard who had brought her to this cell had offered no explanation as to why she being detained and she knew well enough not to ask. Hell, she knew more than well enough. Glancing down, she could see the scar across her belly through the sheer fabric of the lingerie she still wore. They hadn’t even given her a robe to cover herself further, like they had for this motormouth.
“He can be rough sometimes. Not all the time, though. I guess I’ve been with him, uh, I don’t know, lots of times. Sometimes, when he’s being really rough—”
On and on and on. She’d gone for at least ten minutes now without Arvra inserting a word. At first, when
she’d figured out who this woman was, Arvra had considered comparing notes with her regarding their “lovers” (it was a term that definitely belonged inside quotation marks), just to help pass the time. But something had held Arvra back. Certainly she didn’t love Urna. It wasn’t possible she could harbor truly deep feelings for a man she was specifically recruited to have sex with, whether she wanted it or not. And also Urna could be…unpleasant. Some of the time.
Somehow, though, it would’ve felt cheap to her to share memories and opinions about the Weapon with this other female. After all, Urna had held her in his arms earlier, trying to deliberately comfort her. When he’d finally mounted her, it had been something that almost resembled making love.
She sagged back further onto the cot. The walls were gray and there was nobody outside the barred door. Alarms had gone off earlier, and the Guard had apparently mobilized. Again Arvra had no idea what was going on.
A tiny warmth lingered in her, something she barely acknowledged. Urna had left his seed in her tonight, but if it was like the other times she’d lain with him, nothing would come of that sex session. They wanted her pregnant by the Weapon. That much she had worked out, garnering clues over the months. Sometimes the Guard members who delivered the summons to her at her border town slipped up and jeered a few words at her that they probably weren’t supposed to. Arvra was intelligent. She had put the pieces together.
She didn’t want to carry Urna’s child. Distantly she wondered if this Laveena here knew that she was supposed to get herself dutifully knocked up by Rune. She sniffed a laugh to herself.
The other woman, who had been pacing the small cell while she blathered, heard the laugh, and came sharply to a halt. She looked down at Arvra with an expression that hovered between haughtiness and hurt, angry pride. “Am I amusing you?”
This wasn’t the first cell Arvra had found herself in. That tale she had told Urna earlier tonight—and why, exactly, had she done that?—had been incomplete. Yes, her brother had gone salvaging in the Unsafe. Yes, his group had been found out and the Guard had come down on them. What she hadn’t told Urna was that she, Arvra, had gone on illegal salvage raids into the Unsafe herself. Several times. Often enough that when she started regularly dealing the goods she brought back, suspicion had fallen on her despite her precautions. Twice the Guard had picked her up for questioning. Twice she’d bald-faced claimed her innocence.
