Trickster

by J. C. Andrijeski

  I looked around at them as well, and shrugged.

  “You know as much as I do,” I said.

  “Fuck-all, then,” Paulo muttered under his breath, dumping his own bag on a counter.

  I scowled, but I couldn’t argue with his observation.

  I even let them feel my agreement.

  Unzipping the bag in front of me, I stopped once I had it open, gripping the metal table and leaning back to stretch out my arms. Letting out an irritated laugh, I shook my head, looking around darkly at the rest of them––Cat, Ringu, Jaela, Paulo and Orcai––the five seers who more or less formed my leadership team.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You said that, boss,” Orcai said, smiling a little.

  But something about my words broke the tension in their faces, causing them all to exhale, even if those exhales were peppered with irritated clicks of their tongues.

  “Are we really just off this junket, then?” Cat said. “Going home, brother Quay?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, sighing as I ran a hand through my hair. “Probably. In the meantime, they want us to help the guards get things back under control.”

  “So we really just leave the rebels alone then, boss?” Orcai said. “They really did just pull us off that shit, lao ban?”

  “Or, maybe the opposite?” Jaela reminded us all, quieter.

  “Are we going anywhere near that lab?” Paulo said, his voice deceptively casual. “You know. The one out back. The one those Black Arrow fucks are protecting?”

  I gave him a sharp look. “No.”

  “Good,” Cat muttered, unzipping the front of her suit.

  “Why good?” Paulo muttered back.

  She stared at him. “You really want to see that shit, Paulo?” Bending down to resume packing her belongings, she grunted. “Let me guess. You were one of those kids who liked to pull wings off flies, na?”

  Clicking softly, I smiled as I looked over at the female seer.

  Her nearly-black eyes flashed at me, even as they reflected in the overhead hanging lights. Her muscular arms glistened with sweat below the cut-off sleeves of a plaid shirt she’d worn under the snow suit and fur-lined jacket. She’d already done three perimeter walks, moving fast enough to heat herself up under the thermal suit. Now that she was indoors, in the heated bunker, I could see the dampness of sweat on the back of her neck.

  I watched as she unbuttoned the front of that lower layer shirt with deft, brown fingers, getting ready to change into the skin-tight, armored, long-sleeved variety that all of us would wear under our vests and jackets before we walked the actual camp.

  We’d all seen one another naked so many times, she barely seemed to notice that we could all see her bare upper torso now. Even so, she caught my stare and raised an eyebrow, one that wasn’t devoid of interest.

  When I only clicked at her softly, she smiled.

  She let the shirt hang open as she propped a boot on the lower rung of another metal table and began unhooking the locks so she could pull on the armored pants that went with the shirt. I watched her pull the boot off a second later, using the toe of her other shoe to wrench it off her heel before she reached into her own giant, black duffel bag, open down the seam and now coated in mud along the canvas bottom from sitting outside.

  Glancing up at me again, she shrugged at my distracted look with her muscular shoulders.

  “Do you think something more is going on, boss?” she said, her voice deceptively casual. “More than just the op changing priority-cat all of a sudden? Maybe we are on the front lines now, eh boss? Like Jaela was implying in her usual sneaky fucking way?”

  I gave Jaela a look, then sharpened my gaze back at Cat.

  “We don’t know shit. I don’t want any of you encouraging a bunch of gossip while we’re here. Just do as you’re fucking told.”

  Cat shrugged, unaffected by my words. “Radio silence while they determine if this is a military op then, boss?”

  I thought about that.

  She was my lieutenant for a reason. It was her job to point that shit out to me, maybe especially when I was pissed off.

  Anyway, it put a different spin on the intelligence blackout, and a significantly less sinister one. It was also one I hadn’t considered in my flash of paranoia.

  If this op had changed security designation because they were worried about real fighting breaking out here, then they were likely to be bringing in real troops to take our place, likely from one of the human militaries. They wouldn’t want to risk a specialized extraction and security team like us for regular ground fighting.

  Could the treaty with the rebels be going that badly?

  I supposed it was definitely possible talks had broken down.

  Either way, it wasn’t our business––or our call.

  They hadn’t pulled us entirely yet, so maybe they didn’t yet know themselves, which way things would go. The blackout could be a precaution.

  “Look,” I said, making my voice as neutral as Cat’s. “We don’t know shit, okay? So yes, radio silence. We assume the blackout is total for now.” I gave Cat a harder look. “But don’t get creative, sister. Not until we have a reason. We do the job. In and out. Like always.”

  I watched the lights of Orcai and Paulo slowly lose their charge.

  Some of the excitement went out of their faces too, but I could live with that.

  Their boredom wasn’t my problem.

  “We just fucking got here,” Paulo muttered again.

  Cat’s own light let out a faint flicker of approval, one clearly aimed in my direction. Before I could react, she went back to exuding that neutral hum, like before.

  She was damned smart, I thought to myself.

  I needed to remember that more often.

  At the thought, she gave me a bare glance, and that time, I felt a whisper of pain leave her light. It occurred to me again that I hadn’t had sex in a long time. In fact, I hadn’t had anything approximating sex in months.

  Shoving the thought from my mind, I caught hold of my suit jacket lapels and flipped the dark jacket off my shoulders. I tugged the sleeves off my arms, one at a time, grunting a little when the fabric stuck to my shirt and skin with sweat under the oversized coat.

  I tossed the wrinkled jacket down on the table, the remainder of the civilian clothes I’d worn under my fur-lined coat when landing in Moscow. I untied my tie and slid it from around my neck, as well, unhooking the collar of my shirt.

  I could feel Cat’s eyes on me again, and fought to decide if I should reciprocate.

  I needed her as an agent.

  I didn’t know if I wanted to complicate that.

  Then again, pods always had their mini-dramas, as well as their long and short-term sexual liaisons.

  Moreover, the hunger in her light amplified mine.

  Instead of unbuttoning my shirt the rest of the way, I reached behind me, gripping the collar with my fingers and tugging it over my head. I tossed it down on the table once I’d peeled it off the damp skin of my back.

  I unhooked the front of my dress slacks next, kicking the shined shoes off my black socks. Looking down, I noticed my brand-new, Italian leather loafers already wore a coat of reddish-brown mud.

  I felt Cat watching me again.

  That time, when her light got closer, I didn’t push it away.

  “Give me a run-down of what you got before blackout,” I grunted towards Orcai. “Make sure we’re all on the same page before we go out.”

  Orcai made a brief gesture of respect.

  “Specs are in the portable construct, boss, and still loaded on the dead-net for VR.”

  By dead-net, he meant the electronic network, not the semi-dimensional one in the Barrier. We had our short-hands for everything.

  “Give it to me verbal,” I said, motioning towards Cat. “Blackout. Remember?”

  Orcai nodded, then immediately began reciting the intel he’d received from Central before the blackout, using hi
s seer’s memory.

  “At oh-five-hundred, at least one untagged, unreg’d asshole wandered inside the perimeter of the rabbit box…” (adult work camp yard, my mind translated) “…No age pinpoint. Aleimic signature didn’t come up in any of the ‘banks, so no criminal records on file or legal human employers. After second contact, at oh-five-twenty-two, five camp guards took chase. They reached security limits for the pursuit, assessed the threat, and decided they couldn’t pull enough Barrier imprints to reliably pinpoint an ID. Looks like they followed regs to a T, sir, so no issues there. Someone still might’ve been helping from the inside, but they were smart enough not to be blatant about it. I saw zero anomalies in the last time jump.”

  Another A+ for Orcai on the regs, I thought softly, smiling at Cat.

  I appreciated the seer’s thoroughness.

  “And? What have we got on the unreg’d?” I prompted. “Anything? Anyone pick up a sex? Physical characteristics? Height, weight––”

  “No.” Orcai shook his head, then made a more conciliatory gesture with one hand. “No reliable secondaries, sir.”

  I frowned, straightening from where I’d been peeling off my last sock. “What does that mean? They must have them on the cameras?”

  “No.” Orcai shook his head. “The locals claim they saw the intruder, meaning with their eyes. But their descriptions all contradict.” At my frown, Orcai added, “Most of them guessed male… presumably from the weight and height averages from witness reports. At least two, if not three centuries old from the complexity of the aleimic signature.”

  Orcai shifted on his thick legs, which were already wrapped in black, armored combat pants, since he’d been the first to head inside for a shower and to change. Which made sense, as I’d assigned him to be our liaison with the private-sec guards.

  “…They picked up some weird signals, too, sir,” Orcai added.

  Remembering my own taste of that odd light lingering just outside the compound walls, I frowned. “Define weird.”

  Orcai shrugged, stone-faced. “Don’t know, sir, to be truthful. They got a few snapshots of aleimic structures they’d never seen before. They showed me, and it was some weird shit, boss. Highly complex. Functional traits I couldn’t ID. I’m still not convinced that’s the original unreg’d they were tracking though, sir.”

  “Network analysis? Or did you not get one before we got shut down?”

  “I did, sir. Bare bones. High correlation to expert-level time jumping skills.” Orcai shrugged again. “…and some documented cases of prescience.”

  “Prescience?”

  I looked up sharply from where I’d been pulling clean clothes out of the open duffel in front of me. I stared, frowning at the larger male.

  “Did you say prescience?”

  There was a silence.

  The other five seers were all staring at me now.

  Orcai only nodded. “Yes, boss.”

  I felt my stomach contract into a painful cramp.

  I felt that nausea worsen, and squelched it, if only to keep it from the others.

  Even so, I saw Cat and Ringu exchange a look, right before Cat fixed her gaze on my naked body, her light exuding another hungry flicker of pain. I felt Paulo and Jaela look at one another too, their glances holding more confusion.

  Apparently, this prescience thing was news to them, too.

  Either that, or they were in on whatever this was.

  For all I knew, they weren’t really my pod at all. They could all be here to spy on me for Galaith, for the network higher-ups. Maybe this was all some kind of test.

  Or maybe they’d just kill me out here, now that they had me in a place where there’d be no witnesses. All they’d have to do is get me out of sight of the camp’s cameras.

  I shoved the thought from my mind.

  Prescience. Jesus.

  Contrary to human myth, prescience as a seer skill was extremely rare, borderline mythological. Most seers could do what we called time jumps, meaning use the Barrier to look at the past, or glimpse pieces of possible futures.

  Time jumps were mainly employed as a means of gathering intelligence, usually after an event already occurred.

  I knew the Org had a whole division of seers at Central devoted to compiling variables for plotting future scenarios, trying to mark odds for different outcomes that could culminate in key events, particularly those more critical for broader historical patterns.

  But that wasn’t prescience.

  Nor was it reliable, not when whole incidents could be blocked from view and manipulated in various ways behind the Barrier by skilled seers.

  Events could even be rewritten wholesale, particularly if the block was instituted during or prior to the event. In those situations, often the best a skilled infiltrator could do was to identify the presence of a construct or manipulation. Much more rarely could they determine the nature and extent of the changes made.

  Rarer still could they determine the real truth behind those changes.

  Forward time jumps––meaning those involving the future––were even less reliable.

  The future, by its very nature, was a constantly moving, changing, shifting, reversing, splitting and recombining. The complex matrix of variables, decision points, confluences, coincidences, chaos and collisions––they changed pretty much all the time.

  If ever proof was needed to demonstrate the properties of free will, it lived in the images I’d seen of possible futures. They morphed, wafted, slammed, lingered only to disappear and reappear in different configurations.

  As my trainers long-ago warned me, back in my early days with the Org, there was very little “truth” in looking at the future behind the Barrier.

  That made true prescients extremely valuable.

  A true prescient could somehow see past that mess and tap into some area of the timeline that interpreted those variables into their most likely manifestations.

  Well, that’s how I had it explained to me.

  True prescience was like telekinesis, and only marginally less rare.

  Meaning, one had to be born a prescient.

  One couldn’t be “made” a prescient, no matter how hard one trained.

  According to Varlan, some believed Terian to be a prescient.

  Terian himself half-implied the same to me, in his one, casual reference to having some “commonality” with the female prescient with whom Dehgoies had become so infatuated.

  I had never even heard of a living prescient before Manaus.

  Not once had I heard anything about prescients before that mission.

  It struck me as a disturbing, possibly ominous coincidence that I might be suddenly hearing about one again.

  I made my voice neutral when I spoke.

  “Recommendation from Central? At the time,” I clarified. “Before the blackout. Did they have one?”

  Orcai looked me in the face.

  He shrugged those big shoulders again.

  “Live capture prioritized,” he said, as though that were obvious, which it more or less was. “No kill, apart from emergencies. They were going to check with the brass to find out how high our risk status had to be before we could break with the no-kill, but then––”

  “––The blackout,” I muttered, finishing for him.

  “Yes, lao ban,” Orcai confirmed.

  “Any chance he’d come back here? To the camps?” I said.

  “To the camps?” Orcai’s eyes blanked. “Who? The prescient?”

  “Yes.”

  Orcai glanced at Cat, then at Paulo.

  The muscular male shrugged as he looked back at me, his infiltrator’s mask intact behind those odd, gold-and-red irises. He might have passed for human, if not for those shockingly bright eyes, eyes that even contacts struggled to conceal, at least without blinding him.

  I knew Orcai had some old-school training, too.

  He’d been in the Seven once, according to his file.

  Thinking about Orcai now, and th
e fact that he, Paulo, Cat, Jaela, and Ringu might have more opinions about this blackout than they were willing to say, or even think aloud, I shrugged along with them, deciding to let it go, likely for the same reasons.

  I kept my face blank, my thoughts protected.

  Inside the Org, everything was scrutinized. Everything.

  I didn’t resent that fact. I approved of it.

  We were at war. We couldn’t afford to take chances.

  We couldn’t afford to take chances even on me.

  I just needed to work harder to convince them I wasn’t a risk to them.

  I needed to show them, in any way I could, I was loyal to them, and them alone.

  Twenty

  Being Watched

  West Paddocks, External perimeter

  Parvat Shikhar Work Camp

  The Kingdom of Sikkim, Northern India

  March 13, 1979

  I frowned, once more scanning the open enclosure.

  We were on the edge of the camp now, on its perimeter, and pretty far from the screaming crowds.

  The seers who had originally shouted and shoved at my transparent riot shield through the enclosure fence with their bare hands had mostly been rounded up and returned to their cement holding cells.

  Technically, I could have had my own people return to our bunkers, as well, but I decided we would do one more sweep, pick up any stragglers.

  We’d already found footprints.

  They couldn’t be guards.

  The footprints I had seen in the snow were from shoeless feet, so nothing like the prints left by the boots worn by Black Arrow camp guards.

  We’d gotten most of the camp seers inside just in time for the snow to start coming down again. I’d heard blizzard warnings about an hour earlier on the local feeds, a storm coming through the area that would likely keep our plane from taking off, at least until the next day.

  That might have been part of my motivation for taking another turn around the fences.

  One, the storm would likely kill anyone we left out here, and destroying inventory needlessly was hardly in my mandate. Two, and perhaps more importantly, we’d have plenty of time to crouch in those bunkers like rats, if we got snowed in for a few days.