“We can give you some help. Your task is not to eliminate the Shayatim though, your task is to find them and notify us. You’re a scout.”
Chaudry kept his eyes on the floor.
“Where was the more recent incident?” he asked. “What happened?”
The Enki turned and eyed a bookshelf in the room dismissively. With his back to Chaudry he continued. “Two days ago we detected unusual signals in Barcelona and inserted agents to investigate. They encountered two individuals who behaved in much the same way you described. They fought back viciously and killed two agents, using technologies that were unexplained. Yesterday, we had reports of a similar encounter in Marseilles. Today in Lyon. They have found a holy object and are using it. It’s the only explanation. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword for them though—we can track the object if we’re in close enough proximity to it and use that to find them.”
Chaudry felt excitement well-up inside of him at the chance for vindication.
He turned abruptly to face Chaudry again. “You were the first to encounter this behavior,” the Enki continued. “And you were correct in identifying the agents your fellow police officers so clumsily detained as the devils they were. You’ve earned this. If you can successfully complete this mission, there will be substantial reward for you. We expect that the Shayatim are making their way to Paris,” he said, moving closer. “We’re taking you with us. There are some modifications we can give you that will help.”
Chaudry nodded resolutely. He was a brave man, and showed no fear in the face of this unknown mission. But as he stood, ready to follow, he couldn’t help but to think to himself grimly: he didn’t say what would happen if he failed.
The Enki brought Chaudry aboard one of their orbiting ships. He found himself in a very gray room with a number of Enki gathered around.
“I promised you rewards if you succeed in this mission,” the Enki he’d met before said, “but we’re going to give you some of them now—to help you succeed.” Chaudry was very aware of the eyes on him. He would have felt uncomfortable if he hadn’t already become accustomed to them doing things to him.
“Your ancestors, long ago, served us as scouts and were granted certain gifts to accomplish that mission. I am granting some of those to you as well.”
Some time later, Chaudry woke in the test chamber. He didn’t remember falling asleep.
“How do you feel, Rajat?” his handler asked.
He looked around and flexed his fingers and toes. There was a slight crick in his neck but otherwise, nothing. “I feel fine.”
“Excellent. Look now at the wall ahead of you and tell me what you see.”
Rajat looked to the wall the Enki was indicating. There was an eye chart like at the doctor’s office. He read it.
“Excellent. We’ve enhanced your senses. Your visual acuity is now ten times better than 20/20 and you can see in low light, like a cat. Your hearing is ten times as sensitive as a normal human’s and we’ve modified your metabolism and body composition to give you much greater endurance than before. You could probably run a marathon right now, in fact.”
Rajat took a moment to absorb what he was hearing. He stared at the chart and it occurred to him that the last line he’d read was in fact nearly microscopic. It hadn’t occurred to him before—it was clearly legible to him so he’d just read it. He looked down at his arms and flexed to see if he felt any different. He didn’t think so, but maybe.
“I could run a marathon?” he asked.
“Oh yes. Your respiratory capacity and efficiency are significantly higher than a normal human’s, as is your muscular endurance. Your muscles produce much less lactic acid now, so you can go for much longer. You’re still limited by your actual skill level, but your capacity is vastly improved.”
The Enki walked around him, examining him more closely.
“If we had time, we’d give you some useful training and a particular piece of equipment, but you’d need time to learn its use and there isn’t any. This is a mission of extreme importance, so we’re going to insert you ourselves. Remember that your task is to locate and report back—not to fight.”
“Yes, I remember. How do I report though? Usually I wait until you reach out to me.”
His Enki handler turned to the doctor and spoke so that Rajat could not understand him.
“Are the implants active?” he asked in Enki.
“Yes. The communicator output is in his palm and the input is connected directly to his auditory nerve. I’ve not tested them yet, but they’re activated.”
“Okay. Let’s try it now,” he said.
Speaking to Chaudry again, he said, “Rajat, press your palms together. Do you feel anything?”
To his surprise, he did. “Yes. I felt something. Like a wave of electricity pulsed through my body.”
“Good.” He left the room and shortly after, Rajat felt the same pulse, but behind his ear. He rubbed his ear instinctively and heard the Enki speaking in his head. He said: “we have raised your level of vibration. I can speak directly to you without going through your external ears and no one but you can hear. You’ve already figured out how to answer my call. To speak to me, press your palms together and speak into them. Rajat felt silly doing so, but he pressed his hands together and spoke.
“Like this?” he asked. Like a prayer.
“That’s perfect.” He could hear the smile in the Enki’s voice. “Last activity on the Enlil fugitives was Lyon. We’re going to insert you outside of Paris. You’ll have to make your own way from there. Use your abilities to find your quarry. This is what we’ve been preparing you for.” Rajat continued to listen.
Just as he seemed to have gone, the Enki added: “Rajat. Do not disappoint us.”
17
Tati and I spent the day laying low in Barcelona then left that night. We used the bronze caduceus to jump onto a cruise ship headed up the Mediterranean coast to Marseilles, and then a train to Lyon. When we made it aboard the ship without attracting notice, I felt very confident, but we encountered more Enki agents in Marseilles, and then again in Lyon. Fortunately they were no better than the ones in Barcelona. Considerably worse, in fact. This wasn’t just the JV squad they were throwing at us, this was JV third-string. For understandable reasons, they only tried to come after us when there was no one else around. That worked great for me and Tati; not so great for them.
The attack in Lyon confirmed for me that Tati’s theory was right: they were keying in on the ancient caduceus somehow. Unless I could figure out how to shield it, they’d be able to find us anywhere as long as I had it on me. But they hadn’t been able to find it when it was hidden in the mountain, so obviously it was possible to shield it from detection—I just needed to figure out how. As we walked along a broken road just outside the train station in Lyon, I had an idea.
“Why do you think the caduceus was shielded from detection when it was in that mountain?” I asked Tati.
She looked at me like I’d said the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. “Because it was in a mountain,” she said.
“Yes, but what about the mountain was important? Was it the distance? Or the altitude? Or the thickness of the walls, or what?”
“I’m gonna go with all of the above,” she said.
“I think you’re probably right, but I think the rock itself explains it best. That mountain was made of granite. It’s got a crystalline matrix that dispels energy. That also explains why it was so hard for me to find the biosim—it was hidden behind that energy-dispelling crystal matrix. I can probably hide the caduceus from detection if I can surround it with a similar crystal matrix.”
“Ok, but how are you going to do that?”
I smiled. “Fortunately for you, I have an idea.”
It didn’t take us long to find some likely looking rocks and a nearby FedEx. I packed the ancient caduceus in bubble wrap, surrounded by the rocks we’d found and shipped it global express to the Enlil safe house in Virginia. The rocks woul
d shield it from detection on its journey, and getting rid of it would keep the Enki from using it to find us. Now we were free.
So far the Enki had been unwilling to come after us in highly-populated areas, so staying in the open amongst people was to our benefit. But it also made us easier to spot. And the larger the population, the more likely it was that they would have moles, especially in the police and security forces. During Tati’s training in Virginia she’d heard that the Enki’s area of influence was concentrated in Asia and the Middle East, but that clearly didn’t mean they didn’t have agents in Europe. We needed to stay in the open and get to a large airport with lots of international flights to get back home. Paris was the obvious choice, but if it was obvious to us, it would be obvious to the Enki too.
We had to do something else. I expected they’d be watching the train station and Charles de Gaulle for arrivals from Lyon, but without the ancient caduceus on us and with Tati using Neuroconceal, I figured we should be able to slip through. From Paris we could catch a bus to the Normandy coast and ferry across the channel. They’d probably think we’d gone to ground in France or maybe headed to Germany. I hoped that the old caduceus was the only way they were finding us. If they’d learned some other way to track us, this plan might not work at all.
We pulled into the Gare du Nord station in Paris that afternoon. We were both on the lookout for anyone who seemed to be paying an inordinate amount of attention to us, especially police or security personnel. We just had to blend in for a few hours before we could move on.
I saw the slim brown man smoking a cigarette on the platform ahead before Tati did. “Look, isn’t that Inspector Chaudry?” I said in French, nodding towards him.
She barely glanced before she said, “Not all Pakistani people look alike, Nathan.”
I scoffed. “No, I’m serious. Look. I think it’s him.”
If this was Chaudry, he’d definitely come up in the world. He looked very fashionable. I didn’t think he had it in him to look so cool.
Tati noticed too. “No way that’s the same guy,” she said. “This dude could be a model. Chaudry…couldn’t.”
As if he heard us say his name, the man turned and looked in our direction. I resisted the urge to turn away. If we both turned away quickly, he’d know he’d caught us looking. His gaze lingered on us for a second, then went on to the Indian couple who walked past us at just that moment. He watched them intently for a few moments, then he moved on.
“I think you’re right,” Tati whispered. ”He’s become a whole new man. I never would’ve expected to see him here. Do you think he’s here for us?”
“Unless he just happens to be on vacation at the exact same place and time where we are, yeah, I think so. Just be cool, we’ll be fine. He doesn’t know what we really look like, remember?”
“Do they not have agents in Paris?” Tati asked. “They had people after us in Barcelona and Marseilles and Lyon, but they have to pull in assets from Pakistan to find us here?”
It was a good question, I was wondering the same thing myself. Tati giggled a little and let out a gasp. “Or do you think he’s the expert?” she asked, grabbing my arm. “They couldn’t catch us so they’re bringing in the big guns now. Oh my god, Chaudry’s the big gun.” She laughed again. She was looking at me and didn’t see the guy glance back again. His gaze still didn’t settle on us, but something about it caught my attention.
He stopped to fiddle with his phone and I got a better look at him as we walked past. It was definitely Chaudry. He didn’t show any sign of recognition, so my concern that maybe they’d found a way to detect us other than the old caduceus seemed unfounded. Neither Tati nor I said anything until we were in the terminal and among the crowd.
“You were right,” Tati said.
“Yep. He didn’t recognize us, though. Let’s just go get something to eat. And don’t say his name again.”
“Don’t speak of the devil?” She eyed me—amused yet quizzical. “Never figured you for the superstitious type, Nathan Carter.”
“Not superstitious, cautious. He looked at us both times we said it.”
“Makes sense to me,” Tati said. “No need to put that energy out there and invite it.”
We stored our gear in station lockers and walked out to find food. I wanted a croissant and Tatiana wanted quiche, so we found a nice café and sat down in a window seat.
Chaudry had, in fact, heard his name. He didn’t think anything of it at first. He turned more from reflex than for any other reason and no one seemed to be talking to or about him. He assumed the Indian couple he saw had spoken it. It was a common South Asian name—they were probably talking about someone they knew. But when he heard it again, the Indian couple had already passed him by. He thought it was the young French couple he saw.
They didn’t seem to be looking at him either, and of course, they could be talking about someone they knew too—there were plenty of Chaudrys in France. But he kept an eye on them anyway. He got a sudden chill as they walked by and felt a little tingle. They weren’t paying attention to him, but for just a split second, the guy looked at him. It could’ve just been a curious glance, but to Chaudry’s sense, it seemed as if the guy was trying to look without being seen—as if he were surveilling him. He tried to put a finger on what it was that gave him that impression, but it wasn’t coming to him. It was just something about the way he moved.
What Chaudry did not know was that his enhanced vision let him see microexpressions—the tiny tells, generally invisible to the naked eye—that reveal human feeling and reaction. He was a walking polygraph.
He didn’t want to waste time on them if there was nothing to it, but he watched as they left the platform to see if anything else caught his attention. He checked the bracelet the Enki had given him to detect the artifacts and it didn’t register anything. It was probably nothing, he thought, and he lost sight of them as they went into the terminal.
The area behind his ear pulsed and then he heard a voice.
“We have others to watch the trains,” it said. “Circulate in the city. We will guide you as we can.”
Chaudry did as he was told and went out into the city. He hailed a cab and told the driver to just drive around the city. A sightseeing tour. If the driver thought anything of the request, he didn’t say.
The route around the city took almost two hours to finish and he didn’t see anything unusual. He considered the possibility that his targets weren’t even here. But the path they’d taken thus far pointed clearly to Paris. Maybe he’d do better walking the streets rather than riding around.
He pressed his hands together and spoke.
“I’ve driven around the city and haven’t seen anything yet. Where should I go?” The answer came back, directly in his skull.
“Look for them in popular, crowded areas. They’re arrogant. If they bother trying to hide, it will be in plain sight.”
Chaudry decided to think like a tourist and walk along the Champs d’Elysees up to the Arc de Triomphe. He had the driver drop him off at Pont du Neuf along the Seine.
Tati and I had a wonderful lunch and we decided to take a walk and see as much of the city as we could in the limited time we’d be there.
“Three hours until our bus,” I reminded Tati as we stopped along the Seine to watch people boarding a tour boat. “And we still have to go back and get our stuff.”
She sighed deeply. “I’m not ready to leave yet.
“It is nice here,” I said. “Very relaxing. Beautiful. We’ll come back when we finish our mission and don’t have to sneak around.”
“And we have to bring Tashmit too,” she said.
I still couldn’t believe my luck with that situation. Of course I agreed.
“And we’re staying in a five-star hotel,” she continued. “And the Enlil are paying for it. After all the seedy hotels and other shit we’ve had to put up with for their mission, they owe us.”
I laughed. “They do owe us,” I s
aid. “And the Enki owe us more than the Enlil do.”
“Oh, they’re paying too,” she said. “All of this shit is their fault as far as I’m concerned. And when we’re in Enki land, I’m taking as much of their shit as I can get my hands on.” We laughed together and I kissed her again.
Inspector Chaudry walked across the bridge and stopped in the middle to admire the view. Just because he was on official assignment didn’t mean that he couldn’t appreciate the city. He’d never been to Paris and it was as beautiful as he’d heard. He watched the boats going by and scanned the riverbank. He was enjoying his new ability to eavesdrop on anyone within a few hundred feet, but most of what he heard was in French, which he couldn’t understand. He listened in on the conversations he heard in English, but there was nothing useful. Then he heard the word “Enlil.”
He listened in—they were speaking a language he didn’t recognize, maybe “enlil” was a word in that language. He looked around until he found the speakers. It was the couple he’d noticed at the train station. He’d assumed they were French, but now he wasn’t sure. He listened more intently. He still couldn’t understand them, but he made out the word Enlil again, and then Enki. That was too much to be coincidence. He looked at them closely. It was these two that had said his name earlier—which meant they’d recognized him. And now they were talking about the Enki and Enlil. He pressed his hands together and spoke.
After he’d called in his report, he wanted to get closer to confirm what he was reporting. He had to be careful not to be seen—the man had seen him earlier and he assumed now they knew who he was and would try to avoid him. He watched them carefully as he drew nearer, but scrupulously avoided looking directly at them. He managed to get pretty close before the man saw him and tapped his knee against the woman’s to get her attention.
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