None of the Thuur seemed to take it as anything but polite. Alyshur gave one of his alien nods and motioned upward with both palms, then he lay down on his table. Marette did the same.
“Vitals are all in the clear,” Dr. Seung reported from his console. “Monitoring and ready on this end.”
Marette nodded to Knapp’s questioning look, and Knapp in turn nodded to the elder. “You may proceed.”
The elder’s fingertips settled on Marette’s forehead like soft leather against her skin. Her thumbs, somehow warmer, pressed firmly to Marette’s temples. The slightest tingle began just behind her ears, and for a fleeting moment she could smell cinnamon.
Uxil appeared beside Marette’s table as her vision began to blur. “The elder suggests that you may wish to close your eyes, for your own comfort.”
Marette nodded, but kept them open. In her mind, something stirred that was not her.
XLI
THE SOUND OF HIS OXFORDS over the concrete echoed in the corners of the modest underground parking garage of the RavenTech satellite facility where the gate lay. Save for a few executive sedans and the two guards at the access elevator, toward which Adrian now strode, the garage was deserted.
He smiled to both guards as he reached the elevator. “Trisha. Ethan. How’s everything?” Adrian pressed a hand against the screen of the security reader.
Ethan, a stout, dark-haired man in his early thirties, looked uncomfortable behind his well-kept beard. “Been an interesting day, Mr. Fagles, I’m sorry to say.”
“Oh? And why is interesting a sorry—” The security reader flashed red.
Trisha set her jaw. Ethan’s equal in height, with a glowing crimson triangle tattoo on her left cheek, she said with reluctance, “Ms. Thomson revoked your access. You’re not allowed in.”
“Yes, I believe I figured that’s what ‘revoked your access’ meant, thank you.” We’ll see about that. He brought up his cyberscreen and called her. No answer. “Is she here?” he demanded of Ethan.
“I’m not authorized to answer that.”
Adrian clasped his hands behind his back and forced an easygoing smile. “Given the circumstances, I can’t believe she would be anywhere else. So if you would be so kind as to get her on the screen for me. Please.”
The guards exchanged glances. Trisha touched her earpiece. “Ms. Thomson: He’s here and asking to speak with you.”
Adrian stifled a frown. Asking, indeed. Within moments, Camela Thomson’s face appeared on the elevator’s security reader screen. “Adrian. Go home, and wait to be contacted.”
“My home is currently charred to a crisp thanks to a mysterious fire that got me out of this facility conveniently prior to project completion. Would you care to explain that?”
The woman had the nerve to laugh. “Convenient is exactly the word I’d use. This facility is attacked and you’re nowhere to be found? Suspicious, Adrian.”
“Camela, do give me some credit. If I’d tried to pull something I would’ve been in the observation room, right by your side, to allay suspicion. I had nothing to do with the attack, but I do have vital information you’d do well to listen to.”
She said nothing, apparently content to let her frown speak to her skepticism.
“It’s sensitive information.” Adrian gave the guards a meaningful glance. “Come up to the garage. We’ll speak in my car.”
“Go to your car and call me instead.”
“You’ll answer this time?”
“If you do it quick,” she said.
He made a show of considering it, glancing to Ethan and Trisha in turn before answering. “No, I’d really rather you come up here. You remember the thing I warned you about doing that you did anyway? I know what happened on the other side, Camela. If you want to stay in control of that situation, you need to know what I know.”
Camela folded her arms and sat back, regarding him as she might something she’d found on the bottom of her shoe. “Wait there.” The screen went dark.
Adrian turned a smile onto the guards. “So. How well are they paying you these days?”
Ten minutes later Camela sat in his passenger’s seat, arms still crossed. “So you’re saying it hired a team of freelancers to bust in and give it MEDAR access, completely independent of you?”
“Yes!”
“In order that it could do the very thing you’d been pushing me to allow it to do.”
“To give Suuthrien access to the gate, yes. Ah, which did turn out to be a good idea, I might add.”
She rolled her eyes. “The point is—”
“The point, Camela, is that we need access to what’s on the other side of that gate, and Suuthrien has achieved that. Security systems, technological secrets, unfettered access to everything aboard! Like it or not, that A.I. is RavenTech’s ticket, and I’m the only one she trusts—especially since you tried to circumvent her. If RavenTech wants to avoid her circumventing you again, I’ll need a seat at the table.”
“You need to stop calling this thing ‘she.’ And the fact that it could circumvent anything is exactly the problem! It got outside access without your knowing. Or so you say. This doesn’t bother you?”
“Control is an illusion, Camela. Only influence is real. Without Suuthrien, RavenTech gets nothing. All this does is raise the stakes.”
She lay one hand on the dashboard and stared at the bare cement garage wall. Her nails drummed once. “In for a penny, in for a pound, you mean?”
“I’d buy that for a dollar.”
She turned back to him, one eyebrow raised. Her scowl deepened in thought. He waited.
“No,” she said at last. “It might be necessary, Adrian, but you’re not. You may have skimmed your way off the top to get where you are, but it ends here. RavenTech no longer needs you. More to the point, I no longer need you.” She bumped a fist against the door release and pushed her way out, stopping to add, “Best of luck convincing anyone you didn’t hire that assault team. The company’s going to have your head for that. We’re done here.”
“Camela?” Adrian reached into his suit jacket. “One last thing.”
She’d nearly shut the door when he’d said it. She paused long enough to where he thought she might not listen, but then swung the door back open and leaned down. The shadows of the parking lot covered her. All he could see was the outline of her head and shoulders, and the glittering reflection of the dashboard indicator lights in her eyes.
“What?” she whispered.
“You’re right about one thing.” Inside his coat, he flicked off the pistol’s safety. “We are done here.”
It was a good shot; the bullet took her almost exactly through the center of her forehead. She slumped back onto the passenger’s seat, leaving a stain he’d need to get cleaned.
A figure approached the driver’s side and wrapped knuckles on the window. Adrian lowered it.
“Hello, Ethan,” said Adrian. “All’s well?”
Ethan bent down, sparing a glance for Camela’s body, and then nodded. “Trisha’s handling the cameras, Mr. Fagles.”
“Excellent.” Adrian holstered his pistol. “Now, if you’d be so good as to help me get Ms. Thomson into the trunk, I’ll gladly pay you an extra thousand.”
XLII
WITHIN AN HOUR of Michael’s verified negative test results, he, Caitlin, Jade, and Marette departed Omicron with six other Agents via a Knapp Aerospace shuttle to Alpha Station, ESA’s primary moonbase. From there it was eleven more hours to Sunrise Station in Earth orbit.
Both flights had gone as well as could be expected. The shuttle experienced no navigational issues and no sign of interference from Suuthrien. Though they had not expected any—Suuthrien’s reach off of Earth seemed confined to Paragon—Michael found himself breathing easier as the shuttle neared Sunrise.
And yet, he realized, not completely easier. Despite knowing he needed to focus on the immediate future, the past still preyed upon him. The sight of Alpha Station out the shuttle wi
ndow only tightened its talons.
Jade, sitting across the aisle, leaned over it toward Michael. A few tresses of red hair dangled beguilingly from behind her temples, interspersed with glowing white. “So. What’s new?”
“What’s new?”
“I mean, how’re you doing?” She shrugged. “I just got booted off a job, learned some grievous shit is going down that I can’t do dick about, and I just realized I was dumb enough to not convert what Suuthrien has paid me into cash, so maybe it’s already wiped what it paid to my account. Dwelling on my own problems is a drag, so . . . ”
Michael glanced at Marette, sitting on his other side, between him and the window. She remained asleep, exhausted from her battle on Paragon and the procedure with the Thuur elder. He’d yet to ask her about it; that she carried Alyshur’s consciousness(!) was a secret he had to keep from Caitlin and Jade, and they’d never been out of earshot.
He turned back to Jade. “I’ve been better.”
“Yeah. Can’t really say I blame you. I’m sorry that you’ve— Well, that everything’s . . . ” She frowned and rolled her eyes in a way that seemed directed inwardly somehow, and then stared ahead. Her fingers drummed once on her armrest before she turned back to him. “You’re sure you don’t want to hire me on, yourself?”
Michael sighed. “I can’t do that.”
“Hey, I know your little group doesn’t trust me, but I thought we’d developed an understanding, you and I.”
Jade awaited his answer, her eyes shifting their focus between his. She’d been helpful, and though he’d grown used to independence, he’d welcomed her companionship. Maybe he’d even begun to look forward to it. “Sorry,” Michael said finally. “It’s— It’s nothing personal, you know.”
“Come on. There’s some crazy-violent crap happening; you can use someone protecting your ass.” She smirked and slid a few strands of hair behind her ear. “I’ll even give you the nice-ass discount.”
A discount? “You really think I care about that?” he shot.
Jade’s eyes flared bright enough to force him to blink. “Fine!” she hissed at last, pulling back into her seat. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”
Michael scoffed. “Ever think of offering your help free of charge? Just because people need it?” Jade blinked. Before she could say anything, he leaned closer and pointed out the window at Alpha Station where they’d begun to dock. “See that out there? That’s where Diomedes died, because he was too paranoid and mercenary to do any better. All he cared about was the money, and protecting himself, and in the end, no one could protect him.”
“Michael, that’s not what I was—” She pressed her teeth together and huffed. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. We all have to protect ourselves, don’t we?”
Burning with the mental images of Diomedes and Felix dying, Michael withdrew into his seat, too tired to deal with it.
“So I guess this is goodbye, for now,” Michael told Caitlin. They stood in the main concourse of the spaceport outside of Northgate. The rest of the trip had remained uneventful. At Sunrise Station, the six other agents had split off for destinations around the globe—part of the effort to gather as many surviving AoA as possible. Nearby, Marette waited for him.
Jade had already departed without a word.
Caitlin set a hand on his arm. “Not for too long, I hope. Take care, Michael. And please, be careful.”
“You, too. Call me, if you need anything.” On impulse, he hugged her, in friendly fashion. Caitlin was barely five feet, and Michael had to bend his knees to whisper in her ear. “If I can get you any information on Felix, I will. I know you won’t stop digging.”
She nodded and met his gaze after the hug broke. “I’m pleased you understand that. I’ve already tried to reach Gideon. There’s no answer on his phone.”
Another pang of guilt hit Michael. Amid everything else, he’d given no thought to Gideon’s fate. “I hope he made it out.”
“He’s resilient,” she said with a tone that lacked conviction.
“Can’t argue with that.” Michael glanced back at Marette, who now waited alone. “Look, Caitlin, if you don’t hear anything from me by tomorrow at this time, get out of Northgate for a bit.”
“We’ll see,” she told him. “Stay safe.”
He watched her go. Maybe he should have lobbied harder to allow Caitlin into the group. Though would Caitlin have accepted? How much did she blame the AoA’s secrecy for what happened to Felix?
It occurred to Michael that he’d never found out just why Felix had left the AoA, or why that was tolerated. Marette stepped up beside him as Michael realized he might never find out at all.
* * *
Caitlin boarded the first airport tram car that arrived and, with three other travelers she did not recognize, endured in silence the four-minute ride from the spaceport gate to the main airport. A pair of escalators took her up toward baggage claim, where she shuffled through a crowd of others jostling for position to gather their belongings. Moments later, the polluted air outside engulfed her. She cast about for a taxi and, spotting one in particular, slid into its open back door and clapped it shut behind her.
“Thank you for waiting,” she said.
In the seat beside her, Jade adjusted the fit of her shoulder holster and then tugged her jacket closed over it. “Easy enough.” The taxi started forward. Jade had already engaged the privacy screen before Caitlin had arrived. “So what did you want to talk to me about?”
“You haven’t guessed?”
Jade shrugged.
“Simple. You protect me, you help me get to the bottom of what happened with Felix, and in return I pay you. Interested?”
Jade’s eyebrows rose. “You want to hire me.”
“You’re between jobs, aren’t you? What’s the problem?”
“Just surprised, given who my last employer turned out to be. So you trust me now, Caitey?”
Caitlin turned to watch the airport streetlights pass outside. Their reflections bloomed in the taxicab’s dirty windows. “Maybe,” she said finally. “Maybe I think that if you were going to do something, you’d have done it by now. Maybe I’m too blinded by my own grief that I’d do anything to give Felix some justice. Maybe Michael trusted you, and I trust his judgment.”
Jade chuckled humorlessly at that. Caitlin turned back to her. “Or maybe I think you really are working for Suuthrien and I want you close so I can cut you down when you show your true colors. Pick one. Pick them all, I don’t care. I’ve got funds, and I’m offering you a job. Now do you bloody want it or not?”
XLIII
FOR THE FIRST TIME in Michael couldn’t remember how long, actual earth lay under his feet. He resisted the urge to savor the blades of grass that he could somehow feel through his boots and socks, and instead gave the area a once-over for threats.
The taxi had dropped them off at the edge of Falson’s Lake Park—a man-made lake that was little more than a pond. A jogging path, looking destitute in the gray November weather, circled the lake. A modest field of grass punctuated by the occasional tree or patch of neglected shrubbery bordered the path. Leaves speckled the ground and mingled with bits of trash. Michael spotted a figure lying on a bench about thirty yards down the path, a long coat pulled over him for a blanket. Beyond that, there was no one in sight.
He turned back to where Marette was paying the taxi that had brought them. Before they’d left the airport they’d located an AoA cash stash placed there for agents in need. For as long as they could, they would use only cash: an effort to keep their movements hidden for as long as possible. It was probably futile. Marette finished and turned toward him as the taxi sped away.
“Is this place natural enough?” he asked, indicating the park. Though the park’s vegetation filtered the dingy Northgate air, a faint, polluted miasma seemed to emanate from the lake. “The trees are denser if we walk about five minutes that way.”
“This area will be sufficient,” she said.
<
br /> “Is that you talking, Marette,” asked Michael, “or Alyshur?” Still uncertain of the nature of their situation, he could no longer stifle his questions now that they were finally alone.
She paused, with what felt to Michael like an uneasy smile. “That was Alyshur. This is me.”
“How can I tell? What’s it like?”
Marette fished into her satchel and pulled out a black, spherical object. It reminded Michael of a liquid-filled toy ball his late uncle had owned that supposedly told the future. This one was of Thuur design and presumably far more than a toy.
“It is difficult to describe. Something akin to having someone whisper in your ear.” After a moment, she added, “And always a feeling of being watched. But we are separate minds. As to how you can tell? Feel free to ask.”
“How about I just assume it’s you unless you tell me otherwise? I guess I’ll have to give you the benefit of the doubt on the ‘separate minds’ thing.”
“Oui.” Marette held the sphere in her left hand and drew her fingertips across the top with the other. “Alyshur says he appreciates that you have no choice.”
Michael chuckled, rueful. “I’ve heard more comforting statements.”
“I would hope so,” she said. “This is Alyshur. Please allow me to concentrate on the scan.” Marette settled her free hand on top of the sphere—or was it Alyshur in control of that?—and closed her eyes. A low thrum stirred the air around them. It grew more intense until it seemed to emanate from the ground—first directly beneath their feet and then expanding outward. Ripples danced in jagged peaks across the lake surface. The man sleeping on the bench sat up to stare across the water.
The sphere in Marette’s hands gave no indication of being the source, yet slivers of emerald light glinted from beneath her closed eyelids.
A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) Page 24
