The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4)

by Zachary Rawlins

  “And so…?”

  “So you can see, idiot.”

  “Sorta.” Alex peered at his new eye in the mirror, and then blanched and quickly lifted his lip to check his teeth. “Oh, shit! Am I a vampire now, or what?”

  “You are kidding me, right?”

  “I don’t know. I thought, you know, that if a vampire bit you, then you became a vampire,” Alex said, running a finger along his canine teeth. “Or maybe I need to drink your blood, first? I don’t remember how it all works.”

  “I didn’t bite you,” Leigh said, too mystified for anger. “When the hell did you drink any of my blood? That kind of shit is unsanitary! Idiocy aside, you do know how vampires work, right? We are the product of malfunctioning nanites, not some sort of blood-based supernatural plague.”

  “I know, I know. Sorry.” Reassured by the apparent normality of his teeth, Alex turned away from the mirror. “Sometimes you really do remind me of your sister.”

  “You go on and on,” Leigh said, returning to indifference. “I never even spoke with Margot. We aren’t related, aside from the coincidence of being adopted by the same rather negligent vampire.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a certain similarity.”

  Alex returned to his inspection, poking at his synthetic eye with equally synthetic finger tips, tracing the false cartilage of his unfeeling ear. Leigh was right. He could sense the warmth and moisture of the skin beneath his fingertips, but only just, like he was wearing gloves. Sliding his fingers across his cheek, it felt like his skin was coated with a layer of epoxy. He closed his good eye, and was startled to find the world dim and lacking in depth.

  “Listen, I know this is a lot to take in, and all, but…”

  Alex turned his attention from the mirror back to the vampire. Leigh’s straw-colored hair was long and uneven, a pair of sparkling barrettes he suspected belonged originally to Emily holding her bangs in place. She wore no other decoration, eschewing even nail polish, the lobes of her ears unpierced.

  “…I have a question for you.”

  That got his attention.

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Is it…bad?”

  “Huh?”

  “The transformed flesh. The reduced sensation.” The vampire’s self-possession slipped briefly. “Is it much worse than before?”

  Alex thought to himself that Leigh was like an amputee, trying to determine exactly how much she had lost.

  “You don’t remember what it was like before your Activation?”

  Leigh shook her head irritably.

  “No. Not really.”

  Alex considered his response before speaking.

  “It’s…uh. No. Not bad.” He rubbed his eyes, one of which felt like a marble wedged into his eye socket. “There’s a difference, but it’s not, ah, that huge…”

  Leigh watched him closely, her face and body weirdly still.

  “Oh,” she said, finally. “I see.”

  They seemed to be engaged in a staring contest, and Alex was reticent to lose. Looking away from the vampire felt as if it would be inviting violence.

  “Hello! Are the two of you getting along?”

  Emily smiled brightly, appearing a bit confused to find them standing in the middle of the room, staring at each other.

  “Yeah,” Alex said hurriedly. “I think.”

  Emily laughed and set the bright red bag she carried with her down on a convenient counter.

  “Are you being friendly, Leigh?” Emily’s voice was gently amused, but not mocking. “Alex has been through a lot, after all.”

  Leigh shrugged.

  “He seems fine now,” she said curtly. “Where did you go?”

  “Covering our tracks. Buying us time. Hopefully Alistair stays distracted long enough for us to do what needs doing. I haven’t seen John Parson in a couple weeks, though, so that’s nice.”

  “Is Marcus ready?”

  “I think so. First, though…”

  Emily turned to Alex, clasped her hands, and then hit him with the full force of her smile.

  “It’s good to see you again, Alex.” She hesitated for a moment. “Is it good to see me?”

  For once, Alex had an answer.

  “Depends. What the hell is going on?”

  “Oh, Alex! Why can’t you ever say anything nice to me?” Emily pouted. “Let’s take a walk, then, and I’ll explain what I can. Mark will cover the rest later, if he’s up for it. Sound good?”

  “I guess. Who is Mark?”

  “Marcus Bay-Davies. He’s an old-timer, by Anathema standards. You’ll like him, I think. Leigh, dear, I’ve already arranged for an apport. You are on to the next thing, as we discussed.”

  The vampire nodded and watched them go. Alex followed Emily toward the door, his gait still made awkward by the rigidity of his lower leg, cold and numb from knee to ankle.

  “Fine, whatever,” Alex muttered, limping along. “Don’t tell me anything.”

  “Oh, don’t be a grump.” Emily held the door for him. “We’ve all worked very hard to put you back together again, you know.”

  ***

  Alice’s footsteps echoed down the vacant hallway. The wind whistled through cracks in the spray-painted safety glass; Alice caught a sheet of paper as it blew past her in the hallway and checked the date printed at the top right. The day before. She ducked into an office, glanced around. Pulled open a microwave door to discover a cold cup of coffee.

  They left recently, and in a hurry.

  Yeah.

  Alice squinted at the dark rooms she passed, finding nothing more than water-damaged office equipment and scattered documents within. The building was in surprisingly good maintenance for an anonymous block in Downey, the squat building marked with its fair share of graffiti, but the interior remained secure from vandals and copper thieves. Alice had used a lockpicking gun to enter – a nifty little device and a present from Michael – while Xia simply melted his way through the fixture on the opposite side of the building.

  Walking past the bank of dead elevators, following signs for the stairs, Alice regretted her decision to split with Xia, despite telepathic contact and the fretting psychic presence of the Director.

  Boss?

  Yes, Chief?

  This place looks awfully familiar.

  It should, Director Levy admitted. I dug you out of an Anathema facility that looked almost exactly like this.

  Oh. How did you find this place?

  The archive we grabbed in Busan. We haven’t cracked the main contents, yet, but we have decrypted some associated files. John Parson built the archive here a month or so ago. Then it was sent to Korea for duplication. I suppose this facility was shut down not long after the archive was complete.

  Or, you know, right after. Something go wrong?

  The files don’t mention it, but that doesn’t mean…

  Yeah.

  Alice tightened her hand around the grips of her shotgun, an old Ithaca 10 gauge so massive that she was slightly afraid to pull the trigger, and crept through the darkened hallway.

  The door to the stairwell was pinned shut, so Alice stepped into the abundant shadow, and then out into the relative brightness inside, emergency LEDs providing some illumination. The flight above her led to the roof, so Alice ignored it, heading down, very aware that she quickly descended below ground level.

  Alice retained no memory of the months she had spent presumably in Anathema captivity, but this building brought something back to her anyway. A foreboding, and a lingering feeling of suffocation, which only worsened the deeper she went.

  Alice?

  Shut the fuck up, Becca. I’m trying to work.

  The Director was smart enough to back off. Alice made her way down the stairs, thinking of a vampire in a vanilla ice cream suit whose name she could not remember, for some reason, and another man she could not quite recall, one with strong white teeth and an affinity for purple.

  ***

  “This is not…”


  “Yes, everyone says that.”

  “…what I expected.”

  “Right.”

  “How…?”

  “The same way the Academy has trees and sunshine, I suppose. Marcus calls them anomalies, and claims that Central is simply the largest of them,” Emily explained, walking just slightly ahead of him on the carefully laid flagstone path, winding through an emerald sea of untrimmed grass nearly waist high. “We are very near the inner edge of the Outer Dark, as much as it can be said to have edges, or a shape, or any sort of chartable consistency. Conditions are generally more fluid on the Fringe.”

  Alex nodded slowly.

  “Like the Far Shores?”

  “Yes, exactly! This sort of uncertainty is a commodity in certain areas of scientific inquiry. It’s no accident Mark and his people are in similar circumstances to that science-cult in Central. There are things you can do in the Fringes that cannot be done elsewhere…”

  Alex was oblivious to the weight in Emily’s voice. His attention returned to his numb fingers and stiff leg, preoccupied with what he could not feel. Out in the sunlight, at least, the dullness of his new eye was less apparent, drowned in the greater illumination of the brilliance of the sky.

  How long, Alex wondered, had it been?

  “Emily? How long have I been in the Outer Dark?”

  Emily beckoned him on, ducking between two overgrown rose bushes and disappearing into verdant greenery.

  “Eight weeks, if you count from the Ukraine,” Emily explained, following the path through a veritable maze of rhododendrons. “I’m sorry.”

  Alex nearly fell over his numb leg.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Alex! It took a long time for me to arrange things properly, and even then it wasn’t easy, getting you out of there…”

  “It’s not that,” Alex said. “I’m not mad. I just…so much lost time already, you know?”

  Emily nodded and touched his shoulder gently.

  “All that time asleep, and now this…”

  He shook his head, but the sting had already dissipated. He followed Emily through the overgrown garden in a state of shock, hardly noticing the raised beds colonized by ornamental strawberries and wildflowers that passed through.

  “This is probably weird, but…do you know how Eerie is? Or where she is?”

  “Why, Alex,” Emily said, with a coy grin, “how would I know?”

  “Right,” Alex mumbled. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it! I assume she’s in Central, working on the Network and living at the Academy; don’t you?”

  “I…yeah. I guess so.”

  “Then there’s nothing to worry about. Tell you what – while you and Mark have a little chat, I’ll go see if I can figure out what your girlfriend has been up to lately. How’s that?”

  “Emily – thanks. That would be…thanks. And, you know, I’m sorry…”

  “Why? Oh, Alex, dear!” Emily laughed. “It’s completely okay. Water under the bridge, wouldn’t you say?”

  ***

  “How could you trust her? Even for a second?”

  “I…uh.” Eerie looked away quickly. “I didn’t?”

  “You did! You got all cute, trying to make nice.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t I be friendly? Alex and Emily are…”

  “Friends?”

  “Yes. So, I want to get along with her, too.”

  “Eerie? Can I be super fucking honest for a second?”

  “Sure!” Eerie’s eyes widened. “Do you want to be friends too, Katya?”

  “Not a chance,” Katya said, huffing in exasperation. “You know that Emily was more than friends with Alex, right?”

  Eerie clung to Derrida like a crutch.

  “Yes.” Her minimal response was like the chirp of a very sad bird. “I know.”

  “So? C’mon, Eerie. We are going to die out here,” Katya said, gesturing at the almost-frozen chaos that surrounded them. “The least we can do is be honest with each other.”

  “Be honest?” Eerie hugged Derrida around the chest, until the dog hopped away. “You aren’t honest.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Black Sun,” Eerie explained. “You work for them. You kill people for Anastasia! Then she assigns you – you! – to protect Alex.”

  “Yeah. What of it?”

  “Tell the truth! You were supposed to kill Alex, right? If it didn’t go how Anastasia wanted?”

  “Sure. That was a possibility. Figured it would be more likely I’d have to kill you, though,” Katya explained, with a shrug. “Depending on the situation. Alex would have been a last resort type-thing.”

  “Me?” Eerie looked horrified. “Why?”

  “You know why.” Katya sneered. “Not really much of a secret. I asked for the assignment, you know. Begged, really.”

  “You did? Why would you want a job like that? You knew you might have to kill Alex!”

  “The job put me in a position to look after him. Nobody would have to kill Alex if he didn’t lose his shit, or remember anything inconvenient. I saved his life a couple times, as I recall.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “That’s enough from you, Eerie. Now answer my question. Why don’t you care about Alex and Emily fucking? Because, you know, they did. On Ana’s island. Summer vacation. What the hell, girl?”

  Eerie did not respond for so long that Katya started to get angry, thinking that the Changeling was ignoring her. She cracked her knuckles and stewed.

  “I’m bothered. I am!” Eerie’s voice was querulous, her eyes downcast. “I’m not scared of losing him to Emily, though. Even if Alex was…distracted for a little while, I always knew that he would have to come back to me.”

  Katya stared at the Changeling for a long while.

  “I’m stunned,” Katya admitted. “I’m also envious of your confidence.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be confident?” Eerie looked confused. “Alex had to come back! He’s addicted to the compounds I create when we touch. I’m not even sure how he’s still alive without me for this long.”

  Seventeen

  The gardener was intent on his labor, though Alex suspected that he noticed their arrival. If that was true, then the gardener did not think enough of them to break from his tasks, up to his wrists in soil with a trowel and a bucket filled with soaking bare root roses nearby. He looked old, his hair hidden by a sensible wide brimmed hat, his dark brown arms heavily veined and afflicted with a faint tremor. His movements were deft and sure, however, as he weeded industriously.

  “Mark, don’t be a dick,” Emily said. “I brought a guest to your garden today.”

  In the unreasonably deep shadows beneath the brim of his sensible hat, Marcus smiled, though he did not stop the determined clearing of the raised bed beside which he knelt.

  “I know,” he said curtly, his voice unexpectedly high and warm, untouched by the years that had weathered the rest of his body. “Your boyfriend can wait, Miss Muir.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend, and you know it,” Emily said, winking at Alex. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

  “Probably to get a reaction out of you, Miss Muir,” Marcus said, pushing aside the soft brim of his hat to beam at her. “I always enjoy that, myself.”

  “That’s a bad habit, Mark dear. Come and say hello.”

  Marcus grumbled, but obliged, slowing rising to his feet with Emily’s assistance. It looked like a painful process, from where Alex stood.

  “Hello.” Marcus nodded at Alex as he removed his work gloves and dropped them beside the trowel and bucket. “What do you think?”

  Alex tried on a smile.

  “About what?”

  The old man snorted and turned away, exasperated. Emily stifled a giggle, while Alex watched, dumbfounded. Whatever color the old man’s clothing had started as, today it was all mottled green and brown, the varied colors of plant and field, from head to toe. Dirt was streaked along his arms,
and his cheeks and nose were dotted with dark freckles. His beard was white and neatly trimmed, and when he removed his hat, he was completely bald. Alex would have guessed he was in his sixties, but he had learned not to make assumptions like that.

  “The garden,” Marcus said, gesturing at the rows of raised beds behind him, near one of the garden’s meandering stone walls. “My progress. What do you think?”

  Alex went to stand beside Emily, which was about as close to Marcus as he was willing to get. Marcus must have been aggressively weeding the raised beds and planting areas in this corner of the garden for some time – piles of discarded clover and yarrow and dandelion were scattered across the greenery, exposing the black loam hidden beneath. Planted in their place were numerous examples of what looked to Alex to be roses. Some were nothing more than bare canes recently planted in peat moss, with only reddish nubs servings as signs of life, while more distant plants were decorated with glossy green leaves. None, as far as he could see, had come to bloom.

  “Whatever.” Alex shrugged. “Not really into gardens.”

  “Alex!” Emily looked horrified. “Be nice!”

  “Don’t bother, Alex,” the old man said, muddy eyes sudden alive with mischief. “Leave niceness to the empaths, I say.”

  “Sure. Who are you, exactly?”

  “No one of terrible importance.” the old man said, taking off one of his ancient leather gloves – massive affairs, like medieval gauntlets, which Alex suspected were meant to protect from rose thorns – and offering Alex a hand, dirt caked beneath his fingernails. “You can call me Mark.”

  Alex! Emily’s telepathic contact was so unfamiliar Alex grimaced. This is Mark – Marcus – Bay-Davies! He was a student of the Founder of the Academy, and he led the Anathema into the Outer Dark.

  He’s a big deal, then?

  Yes, a huge deal! He’s also the closest thing to a boss that I have, so don’t embarrass me by being sullen and rude, please?