The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4)

by Zachary Rawlins

  Vivik coughed, and both girls turned their attention to him with wondering expressions.

  “Really? You too, Vivik? What sort of secrets could you…?”

  Katya looked perplexed, while Eerie seemed intrigued.

  “I’ll level with you guys next,” Vivik, promised, wondering if the timing would work out. “It’s Eerie’s turn now. C’mon, guys. We made a deal.”

  “I know,” Eerie said. “It’s just…”

  “I get it,” Vivik said. “I absolutely understand and agree.”

  “Understand what?” Katya scratched her head. “What are you two talking about?”

  “Nothing,” Vivik said. “Eerie, I think you should answer her question.”

  Eerie bit her lip and said nothing for a long while. Then she nodded slowly, giving Vivik a view of the blond coming in at her part.

  “Okay.” Eerie glanced at Vivik, and he was possessed by the notion that there was something wrong with her eyes, and the tone of her voice – in that nothing was currently wrong with either. “No questions, though. Let me tell it my way.”

  ***

  The girl sleeps beside him at times, though he never remembers her arrival, and she is always gone before he wakes in the morning.

  On occasion, waking from dreams of terrifying and mysterious import, Alex will find himself held. The girl spoons him, her body nestled against his back, her hair on his face, breathing soft words into his ear, whispering in an unfamiliar language that he understands intuitively. When he wakes from those nightmares, his mouth filled with the taste of aluminum, his head buzzing with conflicting memories, she comforts him; drawing him into her gentle warmth and the scent of sandalwood, melting against her like a pat of butter.

  He always falls back asleep before he can ask questions or act, secure in her arms. When he wakes to the morning alarm over the PA, he will be rested and calm, not quite certain if he dreamed it all or not. Careful to first turn his back to the camera, he covertly sniffs his pillow, where her head lay, for confirmation.

  A few times, he finds a stray hair attached to his pillow. Often, the fine, straight hair is blond. Occasionally, the strands are an improbable shade of blue.

  These are his favorites, but he saves each hair pressed between the pages of a bible that he does not read. Though he does his best to avoid it, he will sometimes open the pages of the book and inspect those half-dozen strands, wondering at their significance. During one inspection or another, the hair disappears, and Alex feels a sense of loss wildly out of proportion to the circumstance.

  The time between her visits is dull and featureless, and he starts to doubt her reality. The hours pass slower, hope propping his eyes open. His pacing takes on a frantic, restless character; he gives a guard an evil look in return for an offhand shove on the way to the showers and receives a clinically administered beating in return.

  Nursing a separated shoulder, tongue exploring the chip on his upper right bicuspid, Alex hopes for nightmares, because sometimes, when the dreams are particularly bad, she likes to sleep beside him.

  ***

  “You bitch,” Katya said breathily, shaking her head. “You selfish brat!”

  “Hey!” Eerie sounded genuinely wounded, wet eyes reflecting the firelight. “That’s mean!”

  “I wanted him to have a life.” Katya leaned her head against the trunk of the tree behind her and closed her eyes. “Just a normal life, you know? Typical shit, none of this cartel crap. A life as far away from Central as the Black Sun could provide. Something safe and boring.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Eerie protested. “You should blame Anastasia. She made the deal.”

  Vivik stirred the water he was boiling over the campfire and measured out dehydrated bouillon cubes for dinner.

  “Yeah. You keep saying that.” In the gloom of deepening evening, Katya’s doubt seemed real enough to Vivik. “Convenient that I only find all this out after I can’t ask her myself.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  Eerie shrugged. Katya grunted and closed her eyes. The wet wood crackled and spat protestations as it burned. In the near distance, Derrida barked avidly, having departed in gleeful pursuit of some unknown animal. Completely unsure of their present whereabouts, Vivik wondered about the possibility of predators, but Katya and Eerie evidenced no apparent concern.

  Vivik waited until he had a rolling boil, and then he added the bouillon cubes and reduced the heat. They still had a couple ramen packets left, but Vivik was saving them for future use, so dinner was hot broth and a protein bar, split two ways – Eerie would instead eat a handful of high fructose corn syrup, in bear or worm form.

  His stomach complained at the very thought.

  “You said you were programming him, right?”

  “I said I was shaping him,” Eerie corrected. “It’s gentler.”

  “Whatever. You told me you wanted someone who wouldn’t run away, someone who could handle your bullshit. I get that. You were trying to make him into something…”

  Katya trailed off. Eerie stared at the fire. Vivik rolled the foil packet the bouillon powder came in between his fingers, making a ball of it.

  “…so what went wrong?”

  Eerie’s eyes flicked briefly away to the fire, to Katya.

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “The sleeping thing aside,” Katya said, rubbing her eyes. “Alex is, like, half a person. He’s nervous and uncertain and fearful. He has no interests, no hobbies, no talents. If he didn’t have terrible taste in women, I’d worry that he didn’t care about anything at all.”

  “So?”

  “C’mon, Eerie. Even you have hobbies. You’ve been in the Sewing Circle for how long, now?”

  “Eight years.”

  “You see? And you’re always listen to music. Margot used to complain about the bass through the walls.”

  Eerie’s voice ratcheted up, in pitch and tension.

  “So?”

  “That’s not even including computers. Then there’s boys,” Katya said, looking up with an evil grin. “I heard some stories about you from a few years ago.”

  “So?”

  “So you have interests,” Katya said. “Fuck, girl. You’re only part human, and you’re still more of a person than Alex.”

  Vivik portioned the broth out into two of the three stacking aluminum cups that were their only dishes, but held off on passing them out. He did hope that they would finish soon; it had been a long day, and Vivik was hungry.

  “I wasn’t…very confident. Back then. When I started to nudge Alex along.” Eerie spoke gravely, surprising Vivik with her solemnity. “I didn’t…I didn’t think…that is, I was worried…”

  “Oh, my God,” Katya said, with a peculiar mixture of joy and horror. “You wanted a boy who was only interested in you. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Eerie hung her head, and they all had their answer.

  “You silly bitch!” Katya took a flask from her bag and shook it, clearly disappointed by the results. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

  Eerie looked up in surprise.

  “What?”

  “That’s the first thing you’ve ever said that made a damn bit of sense to me,” Katya said, upending the flask into her mouth, and then tossing it over her shoulder into the brush. “I mean, it’s a messed up story, but it’s not altogether impossible to relate to.”

  Eerie nodded enthusiastically.

  “So we’re friends?”

  “Not hardly,” Katya said, with a grin. “But I’ll consider not making Alex break up with you.”

  “Yay!”

  Eerie leapt for Katya, who neatly sidestepped her attempted hug. Derrida burst from the underbrush and barked at everyone. The leaden sky rolled over them without comment, featureless and slate-grey.

  Vivik used the opportunity to serve the soup, and waited until everyone was eating, until he was sure that everything had calmed down.

  “I appreciate you both sharing your sto
ries,” Vivik said, nervous the moment both young woman turned their attention to him. He focused on Derrida and his amiable, panting face instead. “I think I understand a little better now. If it’s not too much trouble, though…could you just tell me what happened?”

  “We did,” Katya said, with her mouth full. “All day.”

  “Right,” Eerie affirmed. “With words.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “But what? You haven’t told us anything, yet,” Katya said crossly. “Why should we have to explain more?”

  Vivik faced a suddenly formed unified front, Eerie nodding firmly in agreement.

  “Because I don’t understand what happened at all,” Vivik admitted, with a tentative smile. “Your story missed every important detail.”

  “Oh, fine,” Katya said, holding out her empty bowl for a refill. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything important, really.”

  “That doesn’t help.”

  “Okay...let’s start with the obvious. How did the Black Sun manage to rescue and replace Alex without anyone noticing?”

  “You’ve got it wrong,” Katya said, licking her spoon clean. “The Black Sun was too busy murdering the Rostov Cartel to help. Anastasia had to outsource the whole job. It was the Sewing Circle that managed the whole rescue operation.”

  Vivik nearly dropped the bowl of ramen he was handing Katya.

  “Hey!” Katya called out, snatching her hand out of the way of slopped broth. “Watch it!”

  “Sorry,” Vivik said hurriedly, setting the bowl on the ground in front of her. “Do you mean the club at the Academy, or…?”

  The disbelief must have shown on his face, because his response inspired gales of laughter from both of his companions.

  “Oh, yes,” Katya said, regaining her composure. “You don’t wanna underestimate the Young Ladies Sewing Circle.”

  Seven.

  “I don’t see why I have to do that,” Rebecca complained, sulking with a cigarette dangling from her left hand. “I’ve known some of them for years. I counseled the rest at the Academy.”

  “I’m not entirely sure why I’m here myself,” Gerald Windsor pointed out gently. “I’m just making the best of the situation.”

  “You’re here because the new Board the Committee-at-Large assembled is a load of bullshit.” Rebecca kicked at the unused chair beside her in frustration. “I only get to pick one member, when Gaul got to select all of them? And then they saddle me with North and Martynova? No, thank you. This incarnation of the Board will probably never meet. As a result, I’m a little short on advisors at the moment.”

  “What about the Chief Auditor?”

  “Alice Gallow?” Rebecca snorted. “She’s fucking useless when it comes to this stuff. She’s got…what’s the opposite of empathy?”

  “Disdain?” Gerald Windsor caught the bartender’s eye with a gesture, subtly indicating that another round was required at their table. “Savagery? Contempt?”

  “Yeah. All those.”

  Gerald Windsor sighed, then offered a polite smile to the harried server, who rushed two more pints of Belgian Ale to their table, dropping them off in such a hurry that beer splattered the scarred wooden table. There was a definite shortage of bars and pubs in Central; so The Duck and Rose was almost always crowded. It was not the location Gerald would have picked for a confidential meeting, but given Rebecca’s empathic abilities, he supposed that their privacy was assured, regardless of locale. None of the bar’s staff and patrons seemed to realize that the Director herself occupied one of the battered old tables in the rear of the common room – or that she was smoking, in clear violation of local ordinances and general custom.

  “If I am truly the best you can do for advice,” Gerald said reluctantly, “then I can offer nothing better than my original suggestion.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with a bunch of Auditors?” Rebecca cried out, running a hand through her disheveled hair. “My degree is in child psychology, Gerald. I wanted to be a preschool teacher!”

  “Play to your strengths,” Gerald suggested, lifting his pint in a half-salute. “Improvise.”

  ***

  Alice stuck her head in the doorway, rapping lightly on the doorframe to announce her presence. Rebecca did not bother to look up from the fantastically opaque set of financial documents that she had been studying for the last several hours. She was required to provide either approval or rejection, and thus far had not been able to admit to the bookkeeping staff that she found it incomprehensible.

  “Boss?” Alice grinned as she took a seat opposite Rebecca’s desk, clutching a steaming mug that, for some reason, was printed with the phrase World’s Greatest Dad. “You did want to see me, right?”

  “No.” Rebecca flicked ash on the paperwork in front of her. Alice’s smile widened and she moved to leave. “Wait. Yes. Stay there.”

  “Fine, sure, whatever,” Alice grumbled good-naturedly, as Rebecca shoved the offending paperwork into a vacant desk drawer. “Waste my time. Wasn’t like I was doing anything important.”

  “This is important, too,” Rebecca said, grinding out the stub of her cigarette on the sole of her shoe, because the ashtray was too full. “Way important. Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Rebecca said, resting her forehead on the desk. “Pretty sure I’m just making shit up at this point.”

  “Is it really that bad?” Alice’s smile wavered. “You look tired.”

  “I am so tired.” Rebecca felt a flood a relief. “This job is insane! Did you know that Gaul only slept two hours a night? His implant allowed him to multitask! He could literally think about more than one thing at a time, according to the documentation. That makes for a hard act to follow. Administration is set up to work on a twenty-hour day, for one thing, and scheduling has been a nightmare.”

  “Crazy bastard,” Alice muttered, folding her legs. “Can I kill him yet?”

  “No.” Rebecca sat back up, and checked her pack of cigarettes. Discovering that only two were left, she decided to wait. “Not yet.”

  “Are you going to open an Inquiry, at least?”

  “Yeah,” Rebecca confirmed sourly. “Soon enough. There are…political concerns, I guess.”

  Alice rolled her eyes.

  “Glad that’s your headache,” she said, toying with the laces on her blunt-toed boots. “You bring me here just to chat, or what?”

  “No.” Rebecca grimaced, her hands straying back automatically to rest on the blue pack of American Spirits. While Rebecca personally found the idea of organic tobacco hilarious, they had also somehow become her brand of choice in the last couple years. “There is something we need to talk about.”

  Alice raised an eyebrow and leaned forward, intrigued by Rebecca’ serious tone.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” Rebecca said, leaning her chin on her fists, her elbows planted on the desk. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “What?” Alice blinked in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s been a while since we talked,” Rebecca said brightly. “Why don’t we catch up a little?”

  “Are you on drugs?” Alice’s eyes narrowed. “More drugs, I mean?”

  “No!” Rebecca recoiled, scandalized. “A little stoned, maybe. But that has nothing to do with it! I’m doing my job.”

  “Your job is asking me how things are going?”

  “My job is convincing myself, and then the rest of the world, that the current crop of Auditors will keep them safe.” Rebecca slid the penultimate cigarette from the pack, and then let it hang from the corner of her mouth, unlit. “More specifically, I must persuade Central that you are not an unhinged, homicidal maniac, placed in charge of a small collection of poorly trained students, former criminals, and partisan operators.”

  “Oh.” A range of expressions crossed Alice’s face, but none of them stuck. “When you put it that way.” Alice scratched
the side of her head. “Curious, though…pretty sure I should have found that little speech offensive and condescending, but I’m not upset at all.”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” Rebecca confirmed. “I’m not letting you get pissed. We are doing this heart-to-heart shit whether you like it or not.”

  Alice hesitated momentarily, and the women studied each other across a meter of stained birch wood.

  “Okay, then,” Alice said. “If that’s the case…”

  “It is.”

  “What do you wanna know?”

  “Oh, the usual.” Rebecca gestured vaguely. “How are you?”

  “Fine, I guess. Mikey’s kinda a pain in my ass…”

  “I’d imagine.”

  “…and sometimes, I wish I’d never agreed to try dating. I mean, why are we even doing that?” Alice threw her hands in the air in exasperation. “I keep fucking up, and then I have no idea what to tell him, so I just don’t say anything at all. It’s so stupid! Why can’t we just fuck occasionally and let that be it?”

  “Because you are both dumb as dirt.” Rebecca sighed, her exhaustion on full display. “You’re an idiot who cannot just admit that she is polyamorous by nature. He is an idiot who keeps taking you back, because he thinks he can change you into someone else. It’ll end badly, the same way it always does. Then you’ll forget about it, and we’ll start the whole thing over again.”

  “I get the feeling you just called me a slut in the most backhanded way possible.”

  “Oh, I doubt it.” Rebecca smiled back. “Are you sure you and Michael are okay in the field? I don’t need your affair causing some sort of cartel incident. Maybe we should consider pulling him back to the classroom for a little while…”

  “We’re fine in the field, and in bed,” Alice said, with a grin. “The rest of the time…not so much.”

  “Operationally, though?”

  “Oh, were golden,” Alice said. “He’s great with the kids. He’s good at keeping up morale. He can absorb attacks that would kill nearly anyone else. He’s a walking artillery piece.”