Alex looked at his hands, at the blue veins running just underneath the skin, and wondered.
“Are they still inside me?”
The question seemed somehow terribly important, his throat dry and his voice hoarse. He had to fight the urge to scratch at his skin.
“I’m afraid so,” Michael replied, looking sadly at Alexander. “It’s not a reversible procedure, Alex.”
“Why would you do that?” He was almost shouting, halfway out of his chair and onto his feet. “Who told you could do that?”
“Sit down, Alex,” Michael ordered sternly. “I won’t bother to repeat the ‘you were dead already’ part, since we covered that, and move to the other half — we would have done it to you, anyway, regardless of the injuries. We would have asked your permission, but, hey, I was there, watching you bleed out, son. If you’d prefer that I explain myself fully to an unconscious kid, before deciding to try and save his life, well, I’m not sure how realistic your expectations are.”
Alex glared at Michael, hands knotted around the arms of his chair, for a long moment. Then he sat back, sighing.
“What exactly have you done to me?” he asked, resting his head in his hands.
“It’s not as bad as all that, son,” Michael said, his smile back. “They did save you, after all. And those little machines, the nanites, they can do it again, too, if it becomes necessary. You’ll find dying pretty difficult from here on out, my friend.”
Something in Michael’s tone resonated with Alex.
“Do you have them too?” he asked, almost pleaded. “Are there machines inside you?”
“Sure I do,” Michael said, reassuringly. “And so do all the students here, and the entire faculty. For people like us, it’s an absolute necessity.”
“Why?”
“You’ve got power inside you, Alex, like everyone else at the Academy, to one extent or another. We don’t know why, but you were born that way. But power isn’t everything…”
Alex shook his head, bewildered.
“Look at it like this,” Michael said, leaning forward in his chair excitedly, “electricity, it isn’t much good, all by itself, right?”
“Huh?”
“You don’t just build a power plant and then sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor, right? Electricity alone won’t do it. You need light bulbs, right?”
“Light bulbs?”
His response was nothing more than a weak echo.
“Power isn’t everything, Alex, I already told you. Application, that’s what we’re talking about now, son. Energy alone is meaningless, unless you can make it work for you, and you need tools for that. Something inside you provides the power, sure, but those nanomachines, they’re the tools. With them, you can apply energy, and do work.”
Alex raised his head from his hands to stare at Michael incredulously. Neither of them responded to the quick knock and rapid entry and exit of Mrs. Nesbit, and neither reached for the steaming coffee mugs she left behind.
“So, what can I do?” Alex asked dubiously. “I have powers, now, because of these machines inside me, right? Can I fly or something?”
Michael laughed and picked up his coffee.
“That’s good, Alex. I’m glad you asked about flying.”
“I can?”
Alex almost jumped out of his seat, gaping and incredulous.
“No, I’m afraid not,” Michael said, chuckling to himself, “but it’s good that you asked. Normal people ask about flying. Perverts ask if they can turn invisible.”
Alex almost choked on his first sip of too-sweet coffee.
“I’m just playing with you son, trying to lighten the mood,” Michael said, with an amiable grin. “Yes, you’ll be able to do some things, now, but we won’t know what till we do some tests. It’ll take some time. And a lot of it, like I mentioned earlier, will be up to you.”
“I get a choice?”
Alex set his mug down on the edge of the desk, hoping he had sipped enough to be considered polite. Apparently, being injected with some sort of mysterious nanomachinery had not changed his opinion of coffee for the better.
“To some extent,” Michael affirmed, “you do. What you are capable of, well, that’s predetermined, but what you do with it — that’s going to be a bit of a compromise. Some of it will be about what you want. Some of it will be about what we need from you.”
“Oh?”
Alex didn’t bother to hide the suspicion from his voice. Normally, he would have been more diplomatic, but this whole situation had shaken his reserve.
“Don’t make it sound so sinister,” Michael protested. “We are like any other organization, son. We’ve got operational needs, and we need the right personnel to fill them.”
“What kind of needs?”
Michael stood up and looked out the window at the trees, the top of the clock tower visible above the maples, the green slowly eroding from the leaves.
“Well, this place is a lot of things, Alex. Like any school, we need teachers. Our hospital needs doctors, just like any other. Our laboratories need scientists and engineers. Our network needs programmers. But I can already tell that stuff isn’t for you, son…”
The ‘son’ was starting to irk him a little, but he suppressed it. Alex didn’t plan on embarrassing himself any more today, not if he could help it.
“Yes?”
“Yes,” Michael turned away from the window to look at him benignly. “I’ve been doing this a long time, Alex, a lot longer than you probably think. And I can tell an Operator when I see one.”
“What’s an Operator?”
“Mitsuru is an Operator,” Michael said by way of an explanation, “And, a long time ago, I was too. An Operator is a field agent, Alex.”
“A soldier?”
“No, not just a soldier. Soldiers fight wars. Operators do work, war or no.”
Michael frowned and looked back out the window for a moment.
“The world functions within set parameters, you know that right? Physics, that’s basically a set of rules that we think everything follows. Operators can, to some extent, modify those parameters. In particular, Operators are trained to affect parameters relating to combat and intelligence work.”
“You mean they fight those werewolf things?”
Alex tried to push the conversation in a more prosaic direction. He wasn’t sure at all what Michael was talking about.
“Weir, Alex. They are called Weir. And not just them — Operators fight the Witches, the Outer Dark, and the things that came before man, the named and the nameless. All the enemies of Central, the enemies of mankind.”
“I have no idea what you just said. You want me to fight monsters?”
Alex could barely keep from laughing aloud. He’d already met werewolves, so it wasn’t that he didn’t believe Michael, not exactly. The whole thing sounded absurd, even in the face of recent experience.
“I think that you want to, son. I can see it in your eyes already. But Operators don’t spend all their time fighting monsters. They spend a great deal of it fighting each other, or worrying about having to.”
Alex eyes widened.
“Why?”
“We’re no better than they are,” Michael said ruefully. “Normal people, I mean. Humanity. We create families, allegiances, cartels — and then we scheme, Alex, we plot out agendas and attempt to advance them, or try to stop others from doing the very same thing. Just like in the real world, eh?”
“That’s pretty depressing,” Alex observed. “All this power you keep talking about, and the best thing you can think of to do with it is fighting each other? Couldn’t we use it to help people instead?”
“Seemed like Mitsuru helped you a lot the other night, you know,” Michael said dryly.
Alex shook his head.
“That’s not what I mean. Fighting monsters, that’s one thing, whatever they are. But why fight each other?”
“It’s complicated, on one level. On another, it�
�s the same old stupid story — we aren’t enlightened, Alex. We disagree, fall in love, and hate each other, the whole spectrum of human experience. We have differences of opinion, and sometimes, we can’t resolve those differences peacefully.” Michael started to sound a lot like a teacher to Alex, in a very mundane way. “If a disagreement goes for long enough, and is important enough, people start to take sides. Once people start taking sides, conflict is inevitable. No different here than anywhere else.”
“So what is the disagreement about?”
“How best to protect people,” Michael sighed. “How best to apply the power we have. Like I told you earlier, it’s not a good-guy bad-guy thing — we all agree that we have a responsibility to protect humanity. We just have differing opinions on the most effective way to do that.”
“Different enough that you’re willing to kill another?”
“Sure,” Michael said, shrugging. “Don’t tell me you can’t think of anything worth killing over.”
Alex wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he kept his mouth shut instead, and reached for the vile, cooling coffee.
Eight
Blood crawled across the chain, red on black pitted metal, radiating out in coils from where Mitsuru crouched, motionless in the center. She bled freely from her palms, the wounds reopened, and the chain slid slickly through her hands, moving of its own accord. Her nosebleed was a steady trickle, and her blouse was red and wet all down the front. The floor where she had fallen was sticky, and there were two smeared red handprints on the white pine flooring.
Mitsuru felt the blood crawl along the chain, animating it, leveraging her will against gravity, through a headache so severe that it made her feel as if she was looking at the world from a distance, from the mouth of a dark tunnel. She ground her teeth against each other and the sound was terrible, reverberating in her head, but she could not stop. Her jaw was clenched, and her body shook with effort. In her head, she raged against the Black Door, dark pitted wood damp and sticky with blood, the dull iron of the heavy fastenings spotted with rust, the whole of it wrapped and sealed in luminous threads that resisted her efforts to throw it open. She tried to force it, straining against the gossamer bindings that shut it tight, the structure of her mind buckling with the effort.
Against the constraints that had been placed on her, against the advice of those who cared about her, and at the potential expense of her own sanity and wellbeing, Mitsuru labored to open the Black Door in her mind.
Twining itself along the chain, her blood followed her commands, and for a moment, the coils of the chain stirred, animated by force of will. Deep inside of Mitsuru, a few of the luminous threads gave way with a high, musical sound, like a violin string snapping, and the Black Door flexed and groaned. She heard the links of the chain jingle as they rose, flowing and intertwining, moving in concert with her will and volition. In that instant, she felt the chain as an extension of herself, a cold appendage, a union of blood and steel. The chain moved like a living thing, swirling around her like a cyclone of blood-slick iron, and in that instant, Mitsuru recalled herself, before she had been diminished and restrained.
And then suddenly there was no more, no further to reach, no reserves to tap; the Black Door was firmly shut, and Mitsuru folded at the knees, and then fell gently to the floor. She cried out, so she would not have to hear the sound of the chain as it hit the ground.
“You’ve turned this place into the goddamn bloody chamber again, you troublesome bitch,” Rebecca said, not unkindly, from the door. “I’m gonna have to take your key away.”
Rebecca pushed the sliding door open and dropped her bag just inside the room, kicking her sandals off next to it. She was a few inches taller than Mitsuru, a shapely brunette, somewhere nebulously between her late twenties and early thirties. Her accent and style was stereotypically Southern Californian, complete with sun-bleached bangs and designer sunglasses, but Mitsuru knew that she’d been born in Argentina, to a Jewish family that fled Buenos Aires for the United States, after a bombing, when she was a child.
Rebecca walked across the room, picking her way disdainfully through the maze of chain and bloodstains, and stood in front of Mitsuru, folding her arms. She was dressed for the field, in muddy fatigues and a black t-shirt soaked in sweat. Mitsuru found herself unable to look her friend in the eye.
“I’m totally serious, Mitsuru. Do you know what would happen if the Committee-at-Large or the Board found out you were trying to use your Black Protocol again? They’d put you down for real this time, instead of hobbling you. Clean this shit up later, okay? We have to meet Alistair in twenty minutes.”
Mitsuru stirred.
“Alistair?”
“I knew that would get a reaction from you,” Rebecca smirked. “It’s so cute it makes me kinda sick. Now go get yourself cleaned up, and meet us up in his office, okay?”
Mitsuru nodded, and stood unsteadily.
Rebecca grabbed her abruptly and pulled her close in a rough embrace. Mitsuru felt Rebecca’s hand briefly run through her hair, and then gently pat the back of her head. A sob escaped Mitsuru’s throat, and then she wrapped her own arms around Rebecca’s waist, and they stayed that way for a little while.
“You’ve got to get it together,” Rebecca said firmly, holding her by her shoulders and looking into her red eyes. “If you can’t do it for yourself, then do it for Alistair and me, okay? We put our asses on the line for you — and I’m not doing you any favors, Mitsuru, don’t look at me that way. I know that you’ll make a great Auditor. But like this, sweetie? You’re inviting them to decide that what you couldn’t control then, you still can’t control. And it reflects poorly on us.”
Mitsuru nodded, biting back tears. She knew it all already, of course, but she hadn’t stopped herself. Even when it wasn’t her who would pay the cost for her actions. She wanted so badly to use the abilities that had been forbidden to her again.
Rebecca released her hold and turned to collect her sandals and duffle bag.
“I’ll see you upstairs, Mitsuru,” she said, waving over her shoulder. “Try not to take things so seriously, okay? The world can’t end every day.”
Mitsuru had enough time for a quick shower and change before heading upstairs, through the smoky chaos of the half-full Operations room to the equally smoky back office that Alistair had taken over. She’d replaced the bandages on her hands, as well, so that Alistair wouldn’t notice that she had reopened the wounds.
Rebecca was already there, her hair damp from the shower, wearing loose jeans and a blue UCLA sweatshirt, leaning over a chart laid out in front of Alistair, across the desk. Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, and Mitsuru noticed the bruises on her neck and jaw for the first time. Someone had tried to strangle Rebecca, and recently, too. She wondered where she had been, and who had been stupid enough to try something like that.
Rebecca was Alistair’s lieutenant, and the Auditors liaison to the Committee-at-Large, as well as a Board member. Mitsuru had been her classmate, many years ago, and knew her to be resourceful, tactically brilliant, and a peerless empath, justly respected by most Operators, and perhaps less-justly feared by almost as many. She was rumored to have once Audited a rebellious cartel completely out of existence, and while Mitsuru didn’t know the whole story, she wouldn’t have been surprised were it the truth.
She also knew Rebecca to be a cheerful drunk, a flirt, a fanatic collector of eighties hardcore punk LPs, and by far the best friend she’d ever had. Maybe the only one.
Alistair looked up briefly as Mitsuru entered, and waved her to an empty chair. Alistair almost never looked tired, but today he looked positively exhausted.
“There’s no way it could be anything else,” Alistair said grimly, turning back to Rebecca, who sat on one end of his desk, tapping a cigarette in the ashtray he had reluctantly provided, “this whole thing was a set up.”
“Why do you say that?”
Mitsuru craned her neck, to see the chart be
tween them.
It was one of the logic boards that they did in Analytics, a two-dimensional representation of a specific probability threading, with the most likely branches indicated by size and interval. Obviously, it lacked the malleability of the more complete digital models, but some of the older Operators liked to work things out on paper. It looked something like a bizarre architectural schematic, or a particularly convoluted electrical line diagram.
Mitsuru could read them, but she wasn’t great at it. She’d gotten used to the Etheric network, and its gleaming, immaculate simulations. But even in this antiquated format, she could recognize the overly precise cuts and joins of manufactured probability.
“What does this mean?”
“It’s weird to see you so emotional, Mitsuru,” Rebecca remarked. “Something about this incident bother you?”
Mitsuru shook her head, alarmed at the obviousness of her lack of composure.
“They must’ve hacked it, Mitzi. Someone sorted through the probabilities, and then eliminated undesirable outcomes, one by one, channeling reality down to one specific set of extremely probable circumstances,” Alistair explained patiently.
“So we can assume that every aspect of the scenario — Mitsuru, the Weir, the kid, North’s arrival, the whole deal — all intentional. It must have taken a lot of effort,” Rebecca mused, leaning over the chart, “but the manipulation is pretty obvious, once you take a hard look at it. This couldn’t have been arranged too far in advance, or it wouldn’t be quite so crude.”
“Or they didn’t know how to do it very well,” Mitsuru pointed out, “maybe they did the best job they could, and it just wasn’t that great.”
“It’s possible,” Alistair allowed, eyeing Mitsuru. “You have a hunch or something Mitsuru?”
“Nothing that solid,” she replied, shrugging. “Nothing specific. But, it is the other option. You’ve to admit it doesn’t look very professional.”
Alistair looked at the probability chart again and scratched his head.
“Whatever the case,” Rebecca said, crushing out her cigarette in the ash tray, “I still think that the North Cartel is an excellent candidate for ‘they’. Have you had a chance to talk with Mister North yet?”
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