Children of the Sky (The Talari Subversion Book 1)

by Houston V. Grant

  We ducked into the first alley we saw and ran down the pitted, muddy street lined with low-budget storefronts hawking international calling cards, cheap clothes and trinkets. The street seemed barely wide enough for four people walking abreast, but scooters zipped by, weaving around pedestrians who barely acknowledged them. The street grew muddier and slower to navigate as we went along. We came to a blind intersection, and as I started across, a motorbike came shooting from my left, narrowly missing me. I was still looking the wrong way before crossing. I’d almost been run over three times already because I was so conditioned to look left when crossing the street, but traffic here came from the right. Even though it felt wholly unnatural, I made myself look right first, then left, and we made it across without getting hit.

  The gathered clouds that had been threatening rain finally opened up and a soft, but steady downpour began to fall. We stood out like sore thumbs in this part of town, in our nice clothes and hiking boots, but the rain helped to distract people—besides getting a few glances, no one seemed to be paying attention.

  Just then, a police-marked pickup turned into the roadway a block ahead of us. Rain or not, they’d seen us. The pickup’s engine strained as it charged uphill at us.

  We ran back towards the intersection and turned right into a street that was even narrower and grimier than the one we’d just left. It was muddy and full of puddles that made it hard to negotiate, but we ran anyway.

  It was such a tight turn into a narrow alley that the truck scraped its side, but it cleared the turn and came after us.

  Our bioenhancements let us run much faster than is possible for humans, but the sloppy street slowed us down, and the truck raced to catch up. It was right on our heels, but there was a fortunate sharp bend that the truck had to slow to negotiate while we easily ran through.

  I spotted a narrow doorway that we might be able to duck into, but before we got there, a cop car turned into the alley ahead. Three officers jumped out and leveled guns at us just as the pickup made its way around the bend. We were trapped.

  “Down on your knees! Hands up!” they ordered.

  I didn’t see a way out, so I raised my hands and knelt in the mud. I looked at Tati kneeling next to me, the rain plastering her hair to her face. “Be ready,” I whispered.

  “We’ve cornered the suspects in Lyari,” one of the officers said into his radio. “We are making the arrest.”

  I considered my options: I had enough juice left for one more good zap, and the rain and mud in the street would conduct electricity, but I didn’t know how to avoid zapping Tati too. Three of the officers holstered their weapons and started to approach us while the others kept their guns on us from afar. They ordered us to put out hands behind our heads and stand, slowly.

  As I rose I surrounded myself and Tati with a shield, and when the officers got close, I tried something I hadn’t done before. I pushed the shield outward with all the force I could muster. The force of my push was visible in the mud as a wave flowing like a tsunami. All five officers went flying like bowling pins. One hit the wall with a crunch and lay unmoving where he’d landed.

  “Jump on my back!” I said to Tati, and when the recovering officers started towards us again, I zapped with all the energy I had left. The electricity shot through the officers and they screamed out, convulsing, then lay still. A collective gasp came from the bystanders in the alley. I could still feel electrical pulses in the officers I’d shocked—except for the one I’d dashed against wall, they were all alive but unconscious.

  I quickly grabbed the AK from the nearest officer and trained it on those still in the pickup. The rubber tires had grounded them, but they were in a temporary state of shock from what they’d just seen.

  “Drop your guns out the window,” I ordered. “Driver first. Any funny moves and I’ll shoot.” They complied without hesitation and then I ordered them to get on the radio. “Tell them you’ve arrested the suspects and are bringing us back to the station. You’ll be there in an hour. And use the language you’d normally use.” I made him practice it three times before I was satisfied with his delivery.

  The ruse worked and Chaudry’s response came through. “Excellent. Bring them in immediately. Do not delay.”

  I destroyed the radios, then Tati and I each took a pistol from one of the incapacitated officers.

  “I have to drop the Neuroconceal,” Tati said quietly to me. “I can’t hold it any longer.” She dropped it and we suddenly appeared as our normal selves. I heard a scream, quickly stifled, come from a doorway and looked over at the person standing there, mouth agape. I supposed we’d put on quite a show.

  I still had enough juice left for one more thing.

  “Let’s take a bow, baby,” I said to Tati as I took her hand. Grinning, I raised our hands together and we bowed to the folks watching. Then I picked her up in my arms, jumped atop the pickup blocking us in and escaped the alley.

  Once we got away and found somewhere secluded, we sat down to rest.

  After a moment, Tati said, “Something happened in Mohenjo-daro. The Inspector said something about tripping a ward. That’s the same time our power started bleeding out. What do you wanna bet it’s related?”

  “I think you’re right,” I said. “But we’ll have to figure it out later. For now, we need to get the hell out of here.” We were covered in mud up to our knees.

  “Let’s get back onto the main street,” Tati said. “We can catch a cab, get our shit and get to the airport. If anyone says anything, we just say we slipped in the mud.”

  The taxi driver who stopped for us a couple of streets over looked askance at our clothes, but didn’t say anything. We had him drop us off a couple of streets away from our hotel, then walked over and collected our things. I wanted to leave right away, but Tati wanted to rest first. We seemed to have made a clean escape from the Lyari district, and we’d slipped into the hotel without being spotted, but I still felt anxious. I was sure the airport and train stations were being watched, and the sooner we headed out the less time the police would have to find someone that could describe us. On the other hand, neither one of us had any energy left. If we went out now and ended up in a fight, we were screwed. But even fully recharged, if they found us, we’d be screwed.

  A quick text conversation with Luis resolved the issue. Within minutes we were each booked on three separate flights under three different identities. It was our choice which one to use depending on conditions at the airport, but they all left that afternoon.

  I stood guard while Tati took a quick shower, then we switched and headed out. The desk clerk waved absentmindedly as we passed through the lobby.

  There was a lot of traffic on the way to the airport, but the ride was uneventful. We were both watching for signs of increased police presence, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I wondered how long it had taken before the Inspector realized we hadn’t been captured.

  When we finally got to the airport, it was crawling with police and agents like Inspector Chaudry. Part of me wanted to see him, just to walk past without him being the least bit aware, but he wasn’t there.

  Using fake American IDs, we checked in to a short flight to Bombay that boarded in an hour and didn’t attract even the slightest attention. From there we flew to Paris, and then to New York, then to St. Louis. We both wanted to go to Enlil for some answers.

  11

  It was past 3 a.m. when Inspector Rajat Chaudry finally climbed into bed. It had been a very long day. First there’d been the tripped ward signal from Mohenjo-daro, then, just by chance, he heard over the radio that two officers had stopped a couple at the train station because a traveler had reported that their faces had shifted.

  The witness actually said she thought they were wearing computerized disguises—that their faces had flashed from their own to another, then back again. The officers mentioned it in their first radio transmission, but changed it after that because it didn’t make sense. Fortunately, they’d been a
couple of dimwits whose greatest aspiration from day to day was to find someone they could flash their badges at to make extra cash. It was a blessing that he’d been listening to his radio at that exact moment and had the presence of mind to recognize what he was hearing.

  The Enki first visited Chaudry when he was a small child. When he was two or three he spoke often about his friends that came to him at night when everyone was asleep. He said they were tigers, like the ones on the wallpaper in his room. His mother wanted to encourage her son’s imagination, so she indulged him and always made sure to ask how his friends were and what they’d said. At first, she dismissed it as the imagination of a child, but her son always knew things—“big” things—that he should not have known at that age. He said his friends told him. Years later she revealed to him that one morning she’d asked him about his tiger friends and he got very angry and refused to ever speak of it again.

  The family moved several times over the next few years and he forgot about the old house and the tigers, but when he was ten, something else started coming to visit him. At night they would take him from home to some unknown place. He always knew when they were coming because his head would be filled with a rushing sound and then an almost overwhelming sensation of falling or flying. It was terrifying to wake up, night after night, to that sensation.

  He never saw them at first. They put him to sleep before they took him, and he’d awake in his bed, with hazy memories at best, but a driving sense of terror. Eventually they showed themselves.

  They didn’t look that much different than humans, but something about their appearance was mystifying. They were tall and slender and wore radiant clothing that seemed to be made from quicksilver. Just being in their presence made his skin tingle.

  They said they were angels, and called themselves the Enki. They told him that they had walked the Earth many thousands of years ago, sent by their father the Creator to bring humans into the light. They had brought salvation to the human races, and lived among them, taught them and protected them. They had also enslaved them, they admitted without the slightest hint of shame. They were superior beings and had to be recompensed for the enlightenment they brought. He learned that the Enki had brought Earth into a golden age, full of wonders that could only be dreamed of now. They spoke of great cities with flying cars and amazing technologies that humans were only just now beginning to believe possible again. They spoke of traveling to the stars, and of great monuments to the Creator.

  They spoke to young Rajat of war the likes of which humans could not even comprehend. They said there were others of their kind—gods like them—who had lost their way and turned against their Enki brothers. Shayatim Enlil, they called them. “Enlil devils.”

  Millions had died in these wars, they said. Whole cities simply erased from existence, never leaving a trace. And then they withdrew from the realm of humans. The Shayatim Enlil had been quiet for many years, Rajat was told, but lately they’d begun to renew their evil activity, and the Enki were preparing for war against them.

  They told Rajat that he had been marked because he had special abilities they would need to call on. And they confirmed what he’d begun to suspect—that the tigers had really been them, but they knew that if he saw their true form, he would be frightened, so they appeared to him as something his child’s mind would accept. He had a special mission, they told him. When he was older, he would be able to help them find the missing sacred objects that had been lost on Earth. Objects they needed to fight the Enlil menace.

  From then, young Rajat Chaudry was filled with a sense of divine purpose, and as he got older, with the Enki’s assistance, he learned to identify and use sacred objects. They visited him throughout his teenage years and taught him many things, but they were demanding beings and it was often difficult to discern their true intentions or desires. They were capricious and mistakes could be punished severely. He wondered at times if he was not mistaken about his visitors—perhaps they were the Shayatim and were deceiving him.

  Near his twentieth birthday the Enki told him that his training was complete and he was ready to work for them, as his ancestors had done thousands of years before.

  Chaudry could sense sacred devices. He also had some ability to use them, but had always been frightened to do so, even when the Enki approved. Despite his fear though, he practiced with the objects that they gave him and learned as much as he could.

  He thought of all of this when he heard the radio chatter about a woman reporting people switching faces. He’d seen the Enki change their appearance at will, so hearing of a human flashing between faces immediately made him think it was Enki or Shayatim Enlil. He felt relief when he heard that the people had been apprehended. That meant they weren’t angels or demons, they were just human.

  He’d gotten to the station as fast as he could and his suspicions were confirmed when he entered the room. He sensed sacred objects immediately, although the feeling became muted in short order. He searched the suspects’ bags and their persons thoroughly, but he didn’t find anything. But his senses wouldn’t have alerted otherwise.

  At first he assumed that they were a couple of thrill seekers—artifact hunters—but he was sure they’d taken an object, even if it wasn’t on them at that moment. However the more he talked to them, the less sure he was. Despite his bravado, he’d begun to wonder if he had the wrong people.

  But then the man had pulled that stunt to escape. He’d clearly used some kind of power to knock out two special agents—two very large, former special forces, agents. So he wasn’t just some random artifact hunter. He had a divine object, and he knew how to use it.

  Chaudry was still tossing this idea over in his head when he fell asleep. He woke up not quite an hour later and looked over at the clock on the nightstand.

  3:53.

  He thought about getting a glass of water, but decided to just lay in bed longer. And then he felt it.

  There was no good way to describe it—it was just a sensation that he had when he knew they were coming. Almost like hearing distant whispered conversations on the street. Or a rushing wind coming from afar, but coming surely and without any doubt. No matter how many times he’d experienced it, it was terrifying. He tried to reach for the lamp on the nightstand, but he couldn’t move. He tried to sit up in bed, but the only movement he could make was to blink his eyes. The urge to scream was incredible, but he resisted it. He knew no sound would come out, and there was no one there to hear him anyway. And then they were there.

  Four beings were in his room. He couldn’t tell if they were they same ones that had visited him regularly since he was a child or if they were different. He became aware that he’d been released from his paralysis. Timidly, he sat up and then went to his knees.

  “Do you know why we’re here?” One of them asked in a gravelly voice.

  Of course he knew. It was all he’d been thinking about all day. It’s why he’d just gone to sleep an hour ago and his eyes would be red and puffy in the morning.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then you know that one of our triggers was tripped. Tripped and destroyed. We didn’t know it was offline for at least a day. Did you find the culprit? Or recover any items? I don’t sense anything in here,” he said, looking around.

  Rajat was unsure what he meant about triggers and offline, but before he got a chance to respond, one of the others spoke tersely in their language to the one who’d just spoken, and the first speaker seemed chagrined, though Chaudry couldn’t be sure.

  The second Enki spoke now. “Rajat, do not be confused by the language our brother speaks. He is imprecise with his words. We have come for the holy relics. We sensed the dissolution of wards that were woven long ago to protect them. We expected that you would have accosted the thieves and collected the relics, but I don’t sense them here—”

  “No, you don’t,” Chaudry said contritely. “I found the thieves who dissolved the wards, and detained and questioned them, but I didn’t
recover anything. I sensed the presence of a holy relic, but then I lost the sensation. I searched through all of their bags and possessions, but there was nothing there—just clothes and normal things.”

  Chaudry expected to be interrupted, but none of the Enki spoke. He felt like he was talking too much, but their silence unnerved him, so he went on.

  “I began to think I’d made a mistake, but then one of them used some unseen demonic power that almost killed me and two of my best men. We barely escaped with our lives and the thieves ran off. Other units cornered them elsewhere in the city and moved to arrest them, but they somehow escaped.”

  He paused for a moment to gauge the reception his story was getting before he went on.

  “None of the officers that cornered them could give a description. None could agree what they looked like, and none could say what happened.

  Two men were killed in the attack, but the only one who would speak about it said the attackers used some invisible power to kill them. It terrified him. I don’t know where they went, or what they took.”

  His visitors switched back into their language briefly to speak with one another.

  “There was no Imperial authorization for an operation at Saranjia. What he’s describing is not of Earthly origin. Do you think there’s a rogue agent?”

  “It could be. Or organized crime. They might know how to use whatever they found—”

  “Maybe. But what do we think they found? Clearly something biogenetic. How did they find what we haven’t been able to?”

  “Perhaps they’ve got something that allows them to track it. He said they gave off a signal, then cloaked it.”

  “We need to try to find them and follow them. If they’ve found some better way of finding artifacts, we need to know what it is. And find out who they work for.”