The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4)

by Zachary Rawlins

  The brandy froze solid, and then the crystal glass fractured, scattering little pieces of brandy-ice across the top of the picnic table.

  “I think I figured that part out, actually,” Alex said, standing up. “Thanks for the drink, old man. I think I should probably go after Emily.”

  “Yes, yes.” Marcus waved him away, absorbed by the frosted remains of his glass. “Do run along.”

  ***

  Rebecca was only just fast enough to blot out the memory of the consuming words.

  Everything went black, and Rebecca assumed the recovered memory was at end. Then the prisoner’s eyes opened again, and the Auditors discovered that the man had not just survived the experience, he had retained a limited sort of consciousness.

  John Parson entered the room and walked among the bodies with a dreamy expression. A moment later, Emily Muir joined him, looking queasy and horrified.

  “I guess it works,” Emily offered, turning a sickly shade of green. “Can we leave now?”

  “The process worked,” John Parson said, with a slight accent that Rebecca never could place. “After all the failures to record and broadcast, I believe we finally have a delivery mechanism. The lexicon is deployable, if we can simply find a way to archive and distribute it.”

  “That’s great, John. Can we…?”

  “Shortly.” John Parson bent to examine the body beside the prisoner, and Rebecca shuddered and was forced to squash an irrational fear of discovery. “We must be certain. Anything less than a complete result, and the outcome becomes unpredictable.”

  Emily Muir drifted toward the door, looking quite ill.

  “That’s…fine, John. Do you really need me, though?”

  John Parson laughed.

  “I suppose that I can tell the living from the dead without your expertise,” he said, laughing. “Go on ahead to Las Vegas, Miss Muir, and determine whether the Black Sun has already assembled what we need for duplication. Our task will be much simpler if the means of production is already in place. If you find what we need to replicate the archive, then dispatch Alistair to seize it.”

  Emily disappeared. John Parson wandered among the dead like a man strolling in a garden, washed-out blue eyes rimmed with pink, and as cold as the Marianas Trench in their depths. The button-up shirt he wore was slightly too long in the wrists and pinstriped with an iridescent purple. It was baleful, ghastly – and Rebecca found her attention returning to it again and again.

  Rebecca fought as the prisoner’s eyes slowly closed, forgetting momentarily that it was only a memory. As the last of his vision faded, Rebecca was struck with disconcerting suspicion that John Parson was looking directly at her, a smile on his unlined and ageless face.

  Eighteen

  The world disintegrated around them like a dream upon waking. They ran because it seemed better to run than to stand still and wait for things to fall apart, not because they had a destination. They were lost too far into the Outer Dark to have a destination. The anomaly tapered, but their path did not end.

  Eerie fell, and Katya dragged her back to her feet, cursing the whole time. She propelled the Changeling ahead of her with a firm grip on her wrist and shoulder, ignoring all protest. There was something stalking them, something that was somehow above and below, flitting about in the glassine shadows like the glowing lure of a deep-sea anglerfish. It wasn’t always clear where to put her feet next, picking out her steps between thin tendrils of creeping black mist, but that didn’t dissuade Katya. She was quite simply not having it.

  The eyes were first, and she recognized them instantly.

  The first one was embedded in one of the layers of fractured radioactive glass beneath their feet, staring wide-eyed and noticeably lacking in pupil and iris, the color of radioactive waste in a Saturday morning cartoon. Katya swallowed and moved past it, careful to place the sole of her boot over the eye.

  There were three more a few seconds later, one shallow enough that she could see it make little movements.

  “Eerie…are you seeing the eyes in the ground?”

  “Yes. I’m starting to regret wearing a skirt.”

  “Is that your sister? The Yaojing?”

  Katya stopped to inspect a quartzite outcropping that contained scores of eyes, all glowing furiously. Eerie collapsed gratefully to her knees, wheezing and gasping for air.

  “Samnang is…not…my…”

  “Yes, she is! The eyes, Eerie. Is that her, though?”

  “I…think so.”

  “How is she doing that?”

  “I don’t know. She shouldn’t be here. She’s supposed to be…wherever Alex is.”

  More eyes opened in the depths of the crystal spires that tore up out of the ground like thorns, sickly green and phosphorescent. Katya grabbed Eerie beneath her arms and pulled her to her feet, slinging Eerie’s limp arm over her shoulder and helping her along to anywhere else. Derrida ran just ahead, glancing back frequently to make sure they were still behind him. The dog appeared to be picking out a path – or, at least, heading consistently away from whatever calamity was erupting behind them – and so Katya followed with little thought, aside from vague gratitude.

  There seemed to be enough for her to worry over without adding a destination to the list.

  “Fuck it,” Katya wheezed. “Die on our feet.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Nothing.”

  Eerie nodded, and then for no apparent reason, burst into tears. Katya groaned and pulled her along.

  “Oh, Alex!” Eerie wailed. “We were supposed to rescue you!”

  “What happened to Alex?” Katya demanded. “He isn’t…?”

  “No! That would hurt. Something has happened to Samnang, though...”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “She can’t be in two places at once,” Eerie explained, short of breath. “Unless the Church of Sleep lets her.”

  “So? Anything bad that happens to her has to be good for us, right?”

  “Samnang was…returned. To the Church. Probably just for a moment, but…that’s the only way. They invested her with a portion of their authority.”

  “Eerie, you aren’t making sense.”

  “She went back! The only way that could happen so fast…”

  There was a sound like a firework going off, a loud and resonant pop, followed by a few seconds of silence. When the noise resumed, it was with force; a cracking sound, not unlike cannon fire.

  “…is if someone killed her. Not that she can be, exactly, but…close enough.” Eerie sniffled. “Do you think someone else already rescued Alex?”

  “Sure. Why not? Maybe they can rescue us next!”

  “Do you think…could it have been Emily Muir?”

  The bolt of slow lightening that had been illuminating their way for the last long while abruptly went out, and Katya was forced to seize Derrida’s collar, to progress in the dim light of distant forks.

  “This isn’t how it is supposed to be…”

  “You said you changed something,” Katya remembered. “A chance, you said.”

  “I did?” Eerie sounded uncertain. “When did that happen?”

  The noise was so great that Katya felt it as much as she heard it. They paused at the top of small ridge and looked back.

  Katya, Eerie, and Derrida watched the sky bubble and swirl like a boiling pot. A massive expanse of splintered darkness sheered from the black plain of the sky, faceted like a cut diamond. The fragments of the sky rained down on the cliffs above the anomaly, shattering like candy-glass on the crags and quartzite, showering them with a black dust that burned like snow against the skin. The fantastic sound repeated a few seconds later, like the resonant boom of a glacier calving into the sea, or the discharge of a vast artillery.

  “Eerie?” Katya had to shout to be heard over the echoes. “What the fuck is going on?”

  The sky above them shuddered again, straining against the tremendous gravity of the singular bla
ck star.

  “Dream weaving,” Eerie said, studying her hands. “We must be dreaming. It’s the only…”

  “What are you talking about?” Katya ran dirty fingers through dirty hair. “We aren’t sleeping!”

  “This close to the Church of Sleep, it doesn’t really make any difference, asleep or awake, and Samnang is angry…”

  Katya cursed loudly and resumed their progress, despite the depth of the gloom that surrounded them. As they stumbled deeper into the anomaly, the crystal spires became less common, yielding fewer luminous green eyes to track their progress.

  “This isn’t at all how I remember! Someone is meddling! Who could have done this?” Eerie wondered. “I don’t get it!”

  “A disaster of this magnitude?” Katya eyed the tumultuous sky warily, one hand on the dog’s collar, the other on the Changeling’s wrist. “Who other than Alex could possibly be responsible?”

  ***

  You were right, Becca.

  Yeah. The Director’s response was a little fuzzy, her chin resting just above the level of the steaming water. Question is, what do we do about it?

  Well, Vegas, obviously. There are four Black Sun facilities in town that we know of…

  There are six Black Sun facilities in Las Vegas, but one is deactivated, and another is seasonal.

  What? How come you know that and I don’t?

  Perks of being Director, I guess. Only one place looks like it pulls enough power and has enough square-footage to be a science-industrial facility. ‘Course, the whole place went dead a few days ago…

  I’m raising another channel to dispatch my free Auditors. What about those hard drives we took from the Anathema in Korea, Becca? Any luck with decryption?

  Not yet, but I’m arranging to have Processing dig into it. What we just saw from John Parson…let’s just say I had my suspicions about what might be stored on that archive, but now I’m sure. They’ve got a bit of a prodigy down at Processing, when it comes to Anathema codes, in Adel al-Nadi. If anybody can decode the damn thing, that kid can. Unless you wanna give that Anathema telepath you captured a run at it…

  Maybe later. We’re still working on that one.

  You aren’t confident in poor Cavan?

  “Poor Cavan” my ass, Boss. You hardly let me lay a hand on him.

  He’s a kid, Alice. We don’t do things like that to children.

  We don’t? News to me. Didn’t you design the Program?

  Just do your job and be quiet, Chief Auditor.

  ***

  Katya and Eerie progressed further into the narrow anomaly, valley walls on either side varying with the skewed geometry of the Outer Dark. Just looking at the broken sky and the singular black star made her head ache like the second-worst hangover she had ever had, so Katya kept her eyes on the ground, her mind on her footing, and did her best not to think about the vivid green eyes scattered about like wildflowers.

  “The Church borrowed Samnang back from death,” Eerie hummed, stumbling and unable to take her eyes from the black star. “They rearranged the timeline of her life so she could return, and now she is so, so angry. It must have hurt!”

  “I don’t understand a word of what you are…”

  “Samnang Banh is a Yaojing. I will shortly learn that death only angers and empowers a Yaojing.” Eerie paused, and then looked surprised by her own statement. “Oh. That’s bad.”

  “Well, not like we could have done anything about it. Emily screwed us too thoroughly.”

  “We were supposed to rescue Alex!” Eerie wailed. “This is so bad! I wanted to…”

  “Eerie, I need you to focus. Do you understand what is happening to us? Because we need to survive…whatever this is, before we can worry about Alex.”

  Eerie freed herself from Katya’s grasp and bent over, breathing hard and swaying. Katya risked a glance at the migraine sky calamity, and then decided the Changeling could not make any more progress without rest, whether they had the time for it or not. She tugged Eerie into a nearby alcove, sheltered from the disintegrating sky, and did her best to ignore the virid eyes watching her from the spires arrayed about them.

  “I don’t know!” Eerie wiped her eyes. “Everything is all messed up.”

  “No shit. Any ideas on how to get out of here?”

  Derrida barked loudly and then bowled Eerie over. There was a massive shockwave, powerful enough to shatter the glass landscape and to knock Katya to the ground, driving the air from her lungs. The sound arrived a moment later, a thunderous boom that threatened to deafen them. The Outer Dark rippled and groaned, black mist receded like a low tide; the eyes within the shattered surface underfoot closed in concert.

  “Eerie, we need to go!” Katya gripped Eerie by the shoulder. “Run!”

  There was a second, much more localized calamity. The crystal spire nearest them shattered like an egg against a kitchen counter. Eerie let out a faint little shriek from behind her hands. Derrida growled and darted back and forth in front of the Changeling.

  Samnang Banh stepped from the splintered glass outcropping like a furious Venus emerging from a clamshell, skin glistening with a sheen of pulverized glass, the characters tattooed down her cheeks bright and enraged.

  ***

  The low coffee table in the hotel room was littered with laptops, each displaying a different point of view of a handful of small commercial establishments and off-brand casinos, rendered in painfully high definition video. Karim insisted on checking the window every few minutes out of long habit, creating a careful breach in the draw curtains to peer out at the street below. As it was mid-afternoon, traffic on the streets was moderate, though the Nevada heat kept the sidewalks empty. Only Chike’s room had both a balcony and a view of the target property, so they spent much of their time crammed into it, the air conditioner struggling to keep the space cool.

  “You are making me nervous, Karim.”

  He sighed and allowed the curtain to fall back into place. The room was dim, and the Kurd’s face appeared unnaturally craggy and worn.

  “Am I? Sorry, then. I was without my protocol for a long time, and I’m afraid some of the adaptations have stuck with me.”

  Michael saw the exhaustion in the sniper’s face, and regretted his words.

  “Never mind. It’s the waiting, not you.” Michael stood for the eighth time in half an hour, pacing across the limited space available in the comically tiny hotel room. “Seems like we’ve been stuck here forever.”

  “We have been deployed for not quite two days,” Chike observed with a grin. He sat cross-legged on the bed, skinny legs protruding from beige cargo shorts, making short work of the Greek salad that Michael had ordered, but barely touched. “These close quarters, however, cause time to pass slowly.”

  “That, or the company,” Karim grumbled. “At the very least, they could have dispatched me to a tiny hotel room with Alice Gallow.”

  “Hey!” Michael shot a warning glance in Karim’s direction. “Watch yourself. That’s the Chief Auditor you’re talking about.”

  “Yes. That’s it exactly.” Karim picked up an oiled cloth and began wiping down his rifle for the fourth time. “I am specifically talking about the Chief Auditor’s long legs, which would make much better company than the two of you.”

  Chike froze, fork still in his mouth.

  “That’s enough, Karim.” Michael shifted in the fabric-backed chair. “Get your mind on business.”

  “What business?” Karim wiped the oil he had applied to the barrel with a microfiber cloth. “Waiting is the job, right now. We are doing that. I suggest you curb your pretensions of leadership, Michael. You are most certainly not my boss.”

  “This is foolish,” Chike chided, pushing aside the remainder of the salad. “Surely you cannot both be so unprofessional…”

  “You really don’t know when to quit, do you? I’m going to warn you once, Karim – don’t tell me what to do.”

  “How brash.” Karim snorted. “Tell me –
what did you do before you became an Auditor? You were a P.E. teacher before, right?”

  “Damn straight.” Michael stood and pushed aside his chair. “You have a problem with that?”

  “Enough bickering!” Chike shook his head. “I am tired of listening to the two of you beating your chests.”

  “You shut up!” Michael glared furiously at Chike, before turning his attention back to Karim. “As for you, Karim – if you think I’m not up for field work, then why don’t you come over here and try to prove it?”

  “Very alpha male,” Karim tossed aside his rag and stood, so that he was nearly face to face with Michael. “Consider me suitably intimidated.”

  “Michael, Karim, enough!” The urgency in Chike’s voice was unmistakable. “This is not the time. We have a guest.”

  In the far corner of the room, next to the bathroom door, Emily Muir leaned against the wall, wearing the terrycloth white hotel bathrobe and dripping water on the wallpaper and the carpet. She had a hand to her mouth to hide her laughter.

  “Boys are all the same,” she said, with a smirk at Michael and Karim. “Deploying without an empath leaves you awfully vulnerable, Auditors. No offense intended, Mr. Sabir, but your talents are mainly limited to the telepathic realm.”

  Michael collapsed into his chair, one hand on his forehead, while Karim joined Emily’s laugher, giving her an approving once-over.

  “Too true!” Karim grinned broadly. “Who might you be, miss?”

  “Emily Muir,” Michael said, in monotone. “Former student. Betrayed Central, along with her sister, to join the Anathema.”

  “Oh, Michael, that’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” Emily’s smile was brilliant, but Michael’s head was still in his hands, so only Chike and Karim could appreciate it. “Central didn’t offer me much, now, did it? I wasn’t sworn to Central, so I don’t see it as treachery. More like taking my services to the highest bidder.”

  “Ah. Capitalism,” Karim mused. “The standard moral refuge of an American.”

  “Says the mercenary,” Emily pointed out. “I assume that all those murders were a professional obligation, as opposed to an extremely morbid hobby?”