The Academy

by Zachary Rawlins

  “It will probably get heavy,” he admitted. “But, you know I wouldn’t bother you for anything that wasn’t.”

  “I’d probably get bored with anything else,” Alice said, gradually shredding a discarded sugar packet into dull pink ribbons. “Get to the point, please, Chris.”

  “I need you to watch my back on a job,” Chris said plainly. “It’s something personal, it isn’t Society business. I can’t use my normal channels to handle this thing.”

  Alice leaned back in her chair and looked at him with the most open confusion he’d ever seen her express, already starting to morph into anger.

  “And now I am supposed to say ‘Just like old times’, or something, right? I’m an Auditor, Chris, not a hired dog. I don’t do favors. I certainly don’t help you deal with your ‘personal business’.”

  Chris held up his hands pleadingly.

  “Credit me with a bit more intelligence than that, Alice. I know perfectly well who I’m talking to. I wouldn’t have bothered to make the request, but the fact is…”

  Chris hesitated for a moment, then. It was like looking down off of a height, right before he jumped. It didn’t change anything, other than reminding him to be terrified. He still had no options other than a leap of faith.

  “The fact is that this job pertains to your Audit, Alice, and I think you’ll be very interested in it.”

  “I already am,” Alice said grimly, her smile suddenly gone. Chris wondered how he’d forgotten how much scarier she was without it. “Have you done something ill-advised, Chris?”

  Chris shook his head and sighed.

  “I wasn’t planning on trying to hide it,” he said guiltily. “We don’t have nice jobs, Alice, and they aren’t easy, either. I’ve made a mistake.”

  Alice leaned forward even further, taking his ice-cold hand in her own. It was a friendly gesture, but with an underlying firmness. He knew better than to flinch from her touch.

  “What did you do for the Terrie Cartel, Chris?”

  He heard the edge in her voice, and knew that it could go either way, but Chris faced it down with the nerves of a life-long gambler.

  “Remember, when I took the job, they were still a cartel in good standing!” Chris protested. “The suspension only came down a few weeks ago. This all started almost three years ago.”

  When he realized that no reaction from Alice was forthcoming, Chris sighed again, more out of habit than anything.

  “The Terrie Cartel approached us, the Society, wanting to buy all kinds of intelligence – anything at all on the Witch cults, those Anathema freaks in the Outer Dark, the movements of the Weir tribes and population estimates, that sort of thing.” Chris shook his head, and wished that he could take his hand out from under Alice’s. “It’s obvious to me, now, they were interested in how much we knew, and by extension, how much Central was likely to know, rather than the information itself.”

  Alice nodded grimly, but she released his hand, much to Chris’s relief.

  “You provided this information?”

  Alice tapped her fingers on the table expectantly.

  “Of course,” Chris acknowledged, feeling a bit foolish. “There was nothing proscribed, nothing outside the boundaries of the Agreement. We continued to provide intelligence for them up until we heard about the attacks. The arrangement was terminated before Central proscribed the Terrie cartel.”

  Alice’s grin returned. Apparently she had caught the emphasis on the last part of the statement, the proactive termination of the relationship. Weeks could mean everything. Nothing was trivial when Alice Gallow was sitting across the table, and Chris wasn’t about to assume any more guilt than he had to.

  “What happened once you heard about the proscription?”

  Alice finished the better part of her coffee in one swallow. Chris found himself wondering idly what his chances were of surviving the encounter, and then put it aside. There was no point in worrying about what couldn’t be changed.

  “I told them the arrangement was dead, of course,” Chris said, immediately regretting his choice of words. “They told me that ending the arrangement would be a very serious error on my part, that it could have consequences for the Society. I walked away, never even looked back.”

  Chris wondered if Alice had activated the Inquisition Protocol. She was a skilled enough Operator that he couldn’t read anything from her Etheric signature, but it was certainly possible. He hoped that she had. He desperately needed her to know he wasn’t lying.

  “Why are you so cold, Chris? Why are you starving?”

  Alice put down her empty cup on the table, ignoring the saucer, and the porcelain clattered against the glass tabletop.

  “The entire London branch of the society is gone for certain,” Chris said, hanging his head. “They moved on us two days after they were proscribed. There was a bombing, at our central office. It did a lot of structural damage, but no serious losses. We followed the standard evacuation procedures, split up into small groups and headed for the safe houses, to wait for the all clear. They were waiting at the safe house when we arrived, I assume it was the same for the others,” Chris continued, his voice tired, wooden. “They looked like they had been there for a while. They’d killed the human servants… unkindly. There were Witches with them, and Weir, and there were only four of us. It wasn’t even a fight.”

  Chris’s hand shook as he remembered Evelyn screaming while Paul and Miguel died, devoured by the maws of horrible, malformed wolves.

  “Evelyn and I both activated emergency apport protocols, with randomized destinations to elude telepathic tracking. There was nothing else we could do.” Chris couldn’t look at Alice. He couldn’t stand the thought of what his face might show. With an effort, he recalled fifty years of professional composure. “I woke up in Amsterdam, near the docks, with a half-dozen bullets still lodged in me.”

  “What about the Amsterdam lodge?” Alice asked, fruitlessly searching for their waiter, who had fled long ago.

  “Nothing more than a burning building, surrounded by things in police uniforms that weren’t human,” Chris said sadly. “I got myself patched up by my own means, and then I went underground. I’ve kept moving since then, trying to find a safe place to retreat to. Everywhere I’ve gone, it’s been the same thing. Brussels, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona.”

  “Barcelona is the largest lodge in Europe, right?” Alice looked skeptical.

  “It was. All I found there was more rubble, and a package sitting in front of it with my name on it.” Chris felt an absurd urge to laugh. He wasn’t at all sure why. “Nobody watching, this time. Pretty clear that they wanted me to have it.”

  Alice looked sadly at her empty coffee cup. Chris wondered if maybe she was mellowing slightly with age. Perhaps, after all this time, Alice was finally capable of dealing with small disappointments without resorting to homicide. Perhaps.

  Otherwise, Chris sincerely hoped their waiter never came back.

  “I didn’t open it, at first. I tried peeking at it a number of different ways, but no matter how I looked at it, it came up clean. Eventually I cut the thing open in my hotel room. There was a cell phone.” Chris looked around them nervously, checking the faces at the surrounding tables, and then continued. “There were videos, the things they had done to the others. I saw members of a dozen different lodges – Alice, I think that they’ve destroyed most of the lodges in Europe!”

  “And?”

  Alice stared at him patiently, clearly aware that he was still skirting the main point.

  “They have Evelyn, Alice. They have her. My wife.”

  He dug a cheap Korean cell phone out of his pocket and slid it across the table to her, hoping she would overlook his wet eyes.

  “There are photos of her on the camera. They want me to give myself up, the bastards, and they don’t even bother to make any assurances that she’ll be alright.”

  “You aren’t worried about paying for Margot’s education,” Alice said, slippi
ng the phone into one of the side pockets of her long black coat. “You’re making arrangements for her to be cared for in your absence. Taking care of your obligations.”

  “I’m her sponsor, so I’m responsible. My obligation is to the Society, not to Margot. It’s nothing personal,” Chris said darkly. “I’m not so naïve as to hold out hope for finding Evelyn alive. And I understand that even if I survive, that I will have to face an Audit of my actions. And I’m prepared for that. But, Alice, please... I know where they are. The people holding her have to be the same people who are attacking Central. I can’t let her disappear down some Weir’s den. She deserves a clean death, at the very least. And, you couldn’t help but learn something about your enemy, right?”

  Alice looked at him for a long time then, considering. Chris sat and waited, making no attempt to sway her. If he hadn’t already, then there was no point in trying further. Alice could not be reasoned or bargained with.

  She didn’t say anything to him, but after a long hesitation, she dug her own cell phone out of her pocket.

  “Xia,” she said into the phone, a moment later, her voice cross and efficient. “I’m going to need to use the closest London safe house to where I am now. King’s Cross? Alright, I remember where it is. Have them send my usual things.”

  Alice met Chris’s eyes for a moment, and then gave him a toothy smile.

  “I’m going to be plus one for the time being, Xia. Christopher Feld. You can find his info on the network, go ahead and request it from Central. He’ll need a full kit, clothes, the works. Also, we’ll need some IV equipment, and several pints of O negative. Can you make it happen this afternoon?”

  As far as Chris could hear, and Chris’s hearing was nothing short of remarkable, even in his half-starved state, there was no response. In the time that he had known Xia, he had never heard him speak. But Alice certainly acted as if she had received a response.

  “You’re a life-saver, Xia. We’ll have to take the tube for a while, to make sure Chris hasn’t picked up any new friends. Let them know we’ll be there in a couple hours, okay? Everything going well in Saigon? Pat Mitzi on the head for me, won’t you? Okay, then.”

  Alice hung up, and then folded up her cell. Her eyes wandered down to her still empty cup, and she looked disappointed.

  “I guess we can stop somewhere on the way,” she said, standing up from the table and motioning for Chris to do the same. “Since they finally have fucking Starbucks in this town. If I don’t get another cup of coffee, I’ll get a headache and be bitchy all day.”

  And I certainly don’t want that, Chris thought, following Alice out the door and into the chilly London afternoon.

  Twenty Six

  “Do not tell me that your entire plan consists of waiting for that little bitch to produce Alex and Eerie, Gaul. Tell me you’ve got something better than that.”

  “I have something better than that.”

  “Then what is it?” Rebecca demanded, throwing her hands in the air in frustration. “Tell me, dammit! I’m freaking out over here.”

  Gaul sighed and shook his head, trying unsuccessfully to walk fast enough to avoid Rebecca’s pestering. It was always like this when she caught him in the hall – he was a half-foot taller than her, with long legs, and he still couldn’t manage to outdistance her when she’d decided that they were going to talk.

  “Could this possibly wait until we’re in my office, Rebecca?”

  Rebecca muttered something unintelligible, but she shut up, so Gaul decided that would have to be good enough. She managed to wait until they were in his office, door bolted behind them, and Gaul installed behind his desk before she starting badgering again. He felt better about it here, though – it was always easier, somehow, when he was behind the desk.

  “That fucking little monster! She gets right under your skin, doesn’t she? I can’t believe the Black Sun saddled us with her. Such a fucking princess, you know? And she looks at you with those,” Rebecca threw her hands up and gestured vaguely, “eyes of hers, like she knows things. Given half a chance, I would make her feel like Ophelia, rather than just dressing the part. She is so fucking lucky that she is exempted from counseling sessions.”

  “Apparently,” Gaul said dryly, reaching for his pen and opening the folder nearest to him. He wrote two words, and then his pen was jarred across the page by Rebecca hopping up onto the corner of his desk.

  “How is it that we know nothing about what protocols the most dangerous student at the Academy operates, anyway?” Rebecca demanded, lighting a cigarette despite Gaul’s frown. “Even the precogs can’t seem to get a handle on her, you know. That’s bad news right there, if you ask me. Never happened before.”

  “You are still referring to Martynova, I assume, and not Alex?”

  “For fuck’s sake, Gaul,” Rebecca said, nudging his trashcan into place with her boot and then knocking the ash from her cigarette into it. “You know I’m talking about the ice queen that ran us around in circles. Alex might be a wild card, but he’s hardly the calculated menace that Anastasia Martynova represents. The Black Sun was already dangerous without her. With her?”

  Rebecca blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling while he resignedly pushed the ashtray her way.

  “With her, it gets dangerous for everybody, not only the Hegemony. Anastasia plays for keeps, I can tell that much, even if I’m not allowed to peak around in her head. She will put the whole détente at risk, it’s a fucking certainty. And I know you’ve heard – everybody says she operates a Deviant Protocol, and nobody knows what kind. She could be a precognitive, Gaul, for all we know. She worries me.”

  “You honestly think that girl has one up on me?” Gaul asked, finishing the document with his compact, economical signature. “Is that your professional opinion?”

  Rebecca’s eyes lit up, and she propped her chin up on her elbows, facing Gaul.

  “I don’t know,” she said, obviously interested. “You gonna tell me I’m wrong?”

  “Anastasia is no precognitive.”

  “We don’t know anything about her!” Rebecca objected. “She could operate all sorts of protocols and we wouldn’t know a thing.”

  “One precognitive recognizes another,” Gaul said dismissively. “Whatever Miss Martynova is, she isn’t a precognitive. She’s incredibly devious, no doubt, but I promise you she is not running a game on me. Whatever it is she thinks that she’s doing, you need to understand that it is all in our best interests, or I would have prevented it.”

  “Eerie and Alex are gone, and we don’t know where,” Rebecca said irritably, in the grating voice that she always used when she wanted to complain. “The only way we can get them back is by letting Anastasia do it for us, letting her protect the Black Sun from any potential consequences while putting us in her debt. And all this is assuming that she actually does know where they are, that they are still alive, and that she decides to bring them back. Where are our best interests in all this?”

  Gaul sighed and set his pen down.

  “We need to get Alex into the field, sooner rather than later. If we are responsible for everything that must be done to him, in order to make him an Operator, there is an excellent chance that he will end up blaming us, blaming the Academy. If we’re lucky, he’ll end up blaming Anastasia or Eerie for this,” Gaul said, flicking his red eyes up at Rebecca, and then back down to the paperwork in front of him. “Anyway, Alex and Eerie are somewhere in San Francisco right now.”

  Rebecca jumped off the desk and started pacing excitedly. Gaul sighed more deeply.

  “But, how? It takes weeks of analysis to read probability threads that broad and vague, and that’s assuming you even know where to look, and there was no time to track every apport,” Rebecca said accusatorily. “Did you know about this in advance, Gaul?”

  “I am a precognitive,” Gaul said, mildly offended, scratching away at the next document. “I had the analytical pool on this possibility two days after Alex got here, along with a
dozen other likely ways things could go wrong. Over the last two weeks, I’ve arranged circumstances that have removed all of Anastasia’s transporters from Central, except for Svetlana Rostoff. We knew that she wouldn’t do anything herself, not directly, in order to have deniability. Edward is still too new, so that meant she would have her lieutenant, Renton Hall set it up. Svetlana and Renton only cross paths rarely, so it was easy enough to alert Alistair and have him monitor for when that happened.”

  “Wow,” Rebecca said, sitting back down on the corner of the desk.

  “While I’m being frank, I should mention that Mitsuru has been in San Francisco since this morning, arranging a new exit, should that become necessary,” Gaul said, frowning. “I would have preferred it to be Alice, but she and Xia are needed elsewhere right now, keeping the Witches off-balance and settling matters with the remnants of the Terrie cartel. Mitsuru was the best I could do without anyone noticing.”

  “Okay, I feel stupid,” Rebecca acknowledged, pinching out her cigarette and tossing it into the trash can. “So, why didn’t you stop all this from happening?”

  Gaul stopped again and for a moment, Rebecca could have sworn she saw the slightest indications of embarrassment.

  “Putting aside the disturbing implications from his past, Alex Warner has been alone his entire life, and that degree of isolation worries me. I don’t need another dysfunctional Operator on my staff. Therefore, if he had found someone he felt socially comfortable with, it didn’t seem advisable for me to interfere. I will admit, however, that I wish it wasn’t Eerie.”

  “Are you saying in the most obtuse possible manner,” Rebecca said, eyebrows raised, “that you thought it might be a good idea if Alex got laid?”

  Rebecca continued to stare at Gaul for a moment, then started laughing, her face turning red, till she doubled over at the waist.