“You nervous about tomorrow?”
Katya raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“Not particularly. It’s not my first dance, Alex.”
“But it’s our first field op with the Auditors...”
“Killing people is killing people. You get used to it. Trust me.”
Alex was jittery, trust in Katya aside. It was rare for him to be unable to sleep – as a side effect of the particular nature of his Black Protocol, he often slept more than any healthy human being reasonably should have. Sometimes it was more like being in a coma than sleeping. He had lost whole months that way. But he had been tossing and turning since he went to bed tonight.
“I’m guessing you are?”
“What?”
“Nervous. About tomorrow.”
He shook his head. That wasn’t quite right – though he was nervous. It was hard to put words to, and Alex was reluctant to even try. In many ways, he was inclined to keep the nature of the ghosts that haunted him private. At one point, he might have discussed this sort of thing with Rebecca, but their relationship had been damaged by her strategic omissions, and while he still felt a degree of affection for her, he doubted that he would ever be able to put a significant degree of trust in her again.
“Not exactly. It’s not about going out into the field or anything.”
“Yeah? Morality bugging you, then? The necessity of violence, and all that shit? You talk to Vivik too much, you know. Don’t let him fill your head with all those pacifist ideals he’s always spouting. That stuff’s nice in an academic setting, but in the field it will only get you killed. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Anybody we end up tangling with probably had it coming.”
Katya made a loud effort with her straw to suck up the last of her milkshake.
“No. That’s not it, either. I mean, sometimes that stuff does bother me, but not so much that it keeps me awake at night, you know?” It was a small lie, an act of bravado that insulated him from the potential contempt of his peers – most of whom, quite frankly, were professional killers in some capacity, regardless of how they dressed it up. “No. It’s nothing big. Probably just nerves, you know.”
Katya set her empty cup aside.
“Not very believable,” she observed, looking out onto the layer of fog as if she expected something to emerge from it. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I don’t really care either way. But I get the feeling that you have something you want to talk about.”
“Not really...”
Katya smirked at him, then shook her head.
“Quit being so coy,” she said, leaning back on her hands and studying the unfamiliar constellations that shone faintly above. “Spill it. Tell your Auntie Kat everything.”
He hesitated. Alex knew that he probably really did want to talk about it – he would have just issued a flat denial when Katya asked, otherwise, or told a believable lie about pre-mission nerves. And it wasn’t as if he could talk to Vivik about this, or Michael. They wouldn’t understand, even if they wanted to be sympathetic. He even trusted Katya’s discretion, more or less. She probably had to file regular reports with the Black Sun on his activities, and who knew exactly how detailed those were, but nothing he had ever told her or done in her presence had ever come back to him from another source, and she had never held anything over him – even what he had gotten up to on Anastasia’s island over Spring Break with Emily. It was possible that every word he said was relayed to Anastasia, but then again, she would probably find out whether or not he shared the information with Katya. The heiress of the Black Sun had a frightening acumen for finding the truth of the matter, among other terrifying traits. Anyway, she had been a direct witness to the aftermath of what was bothering him, so he could hardly assume that Anastasia wasn’t already privy to what he would rather remain private.
Alex took a deep breath, then another. Katya waited with either patience or disinterest. Neither would have surprised him.
“What do you know about me and Eerie’s trip to San Francisco?”
Katya glanced at him, raised an eyebrow.
“If this is about your sex life, then I already know more than I would like.”
“No. It isn’t...”
Katya sighed.
“The two of you went to SF on some half-baked date. Got a hotel. Did some shopping. Went dancing, from what I hear – though frankly I can’t imagine you dancing.”
That was fair. Alex couldn’t either. He had watched Eerie dance from a safe, cowardly distance.
“Some Weir ambushed you in your hotel room. The two of you got out of it somehow, and then Ana and company collected you. She looked after you until Miss Aoki could arrange an extraction. There was a fight on the way out. Edward Krylov was killed. You actually stopped moping long enough to be somewhat useful. Sound about right?”
Alex nodded.
“Yeah. That’s it, pretty much. Except...”
He mulled it over.
“Yes?” Katya was staring at the sky again, looking bored. “The suspense is killing me.”
“The Weir,” Alex said, with difficulty. “At the hotel. They were waiting for us, when we came back. Captured me before I even knew what was going on. Eerie got away long enough to figure out how to rescue me. But before that...”
Katya was quiet. Alex wasn’t certain, but it seemed as if her expression changed, softened. Either way, she waited patiently for him to speak.
“They wanted to know stuff. Where Eerie was,” Alex admitted, the information rushing out of him before he realized that he had decided to share it. “They...you know. Hurt me. Held my head under water. Tortured me, I guess. It was sort of funny,” Alex said, laughing weakly. “I couldn’t have answered their questions if I wanted to. Which was probably a good thing. I probably would have told them everything, otherwise.”
“Pain will do that,” Katya said softly. “That’s why everyone is so damn fond of it, I suppose.”
“It wasn’t...wasn’t just that.” Alex felt his face burning with shame. He couldn’t look at Katya directly, instead focusing his gaze on a street lamp on the far side of the quad that lit the entry to the adjoining dormitory. “One of the Weir...he tried to...well, I mean, I’m not sure how to say it, but it was...”
Katya shifted beside him, her arm resting across his shoulders.
“I get it.” Her voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “You don’t have to explain. I know what you mean.”
Alex tried to pull away, but she held firmly. For a moment, he resisted, then he turned and buried his face in her shoulder, sobbing, his own hot tears compounding the shame of his admission, his weakness. Katya didn’t say anything; she held him, stroked his back, and waited until he was done.
After a time, he pulled himself together, turned away, and wiped his face clean with his shirt sleeve. The damp splotch on Katya’s T-shirt made him feel ashamed all over again, but her expression was soft, reflective. They sat in silence, watching the stars make their slow progression across the night sky.
“Tell you a story,” Katya offered suddenly, her voice even, ignoring Alex’s curious look. “From a long time ago. I’d only been in assassination training for a couple years; I was still a kid. The way the Black Sun trains its assassins is sort of like the Program, but more regimented, and less forgiving. Fewer simulations and more casualties. They’ve got more recruits than they need, so they don’t mind much if they lose a couple in the process. Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, you know?”
Alex briefly contemplated the idea of an educational system more brutal than what he had been subjected to in the Program, and found it difficult to believe. The idea of something worse than the savagery he had endured in the process of becoming an Operator was repulsive, and he felt immediate sympathy for Katya.
“They aren’t big on telepathic training. Instead, they prefer supervised field assignments and training missions. Bring-Your-Junior-Assassin-to-Work Day, kinda. You get match
ed up with working teams to tag along on relatively low-risk missions, provide assistance, observe the trade firsthand, that sort of thing. Supposedly they pick operations that are unlikely to end badly for the trainee, but things do happen from time to time. A couple kids didn’t come back first semester, so we were always on our toes when our turn came. It was just a sample of the real thing, but that was still enough to kill you.”
The idea that Alex had been fortunate to end up at the Academy wasn’t entirely foreign, but the comparison had never seemed so stark.
“Anyway, I got sent on a minor retribution thing with a couple full-timers, aiming to take out the head of a satellite cartel over some sort of dispute or insult – the standard tit-for-tat stuff that goes on all the time. Low-level background violence. A walk in the park, they told me. I didn’t even have to do anything, just tag along and stay quiet and learn. Thought I got lucky, as far as that went.”
Katya hugged her legs to her chest as she spoke, her eyes fixed on the horizon where the sun would eventually put in an appearance. There was a faint smile on her face, her tone jovial, but her body language was tense, her fingers whitening around the sides of her knees.
“Target holed up in a big country house in Scotland, some sort of family estate. Security was heavier than the briefing suggested; dogs, cameras and screamers, guards with night-vision gear and automatic weapons – but we went ahead with it anyway. Consequences of backing out of an assignment can be worse than failure, sometimes, and I think we all wanted the kudos that would come with taking the situation in stride. Took a couple hours to get to the house, ‘cause the grounds were locked down tight, but we made it. Figured we were undetected. Set up on the roof, aiming to come in through his bedroom window and poison him in his sleep, make it look like a heart attack.”
Alex was fascinated despite himself. He and Katya talked all the time, but she was guarded when it came to her past, always subtly directing the conversation elsewhere when the subject came up. Alex had the same sort of reticence, mostly because he couldn’t remember enough of his past to discuss it.
“We weren’t as sneaky as we thought. You know how it goes. Telepath that wasn’t supposed to be there, running a detection protocol our shields weren’t rated for. Not long after we got to the house, everything went to shit, and we had all sorts of company. Did our best to run, then when that didn’t work, we tried to fight. Of course, forty to three is no kind of odds, and they didn’t have much trouble subduing us. Held on to me and the senior of the two assassins. Fed the other guy to the dogs. Worst thing I’d ever seen, at the time. Almost pissed myself watching it. Took the two of us back to the house and locked us in separate cells in the basement, made sure I could hear while they asked him all sorts of questions for the next couple days. I was so freaked out by the time they opened my door that I had already decided to tell ’em everything I knew and hope that they’d make it quick.”
Alex shuddered, but Katya continued on indifferently, her voice level and slightly distant.
“The mission leader beat me to it. They already knew everything they needed to know, and didn’t figure on getting anything useful out of a trainee, anyway. But that cartel head took the attempted assassination personally, I guess. Wanted revenge, and I seemed like as good a place as any to start. They didn’t even bother to ask any questions.”
Katya went silent, watching the dark sky with an intensity that seemed misplaced. Alex waited as long as he could, unable to stop his hands from shaking or dispel the queasy, sick feeling from his gut.
“What happened?”
“What? Oh. Exactly what you’re thinking. Worse, probably,” Katya said, giving him a ghastly smile. “You want the ugly details?”
“Not really,” Alex said, shaking his head. “But I’ll listen, if you want to tell me.”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass. Not really what I’m trying to get at,” Katya said, relaxing her pose, releasing her legs to swing over the edge of the roof again. “Point is, when Anastasia tracked me down three days later, I was all sorts of messed up. Kind of shit they don’t fix when they put you back together in the hospital. Ana had me brought back to her house, and Timor slept on the floor next to my bed. Took weeks before I slept through the night without waking the whole house screaming. I thought I would never be able to go back out in the field again. Shit, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go outside again. Anastasia must have known it, too, because she came to see me every day, but she didn’t ask me to do anything for a couple months. Eventually, I pulled it back together, and she asked me to go back to school, finish training, kill for her, all that. So I did. Freaked me out at first. Everything did. But I did it anyway.”
“Why? I mean, weren’t you...”
“Scared? Sure. But it was all like Ana told me – I could stay in my room for the rest of my life, if I wanted, let my brother and Ana look after me. But I still wouldn’t be safe. Because nowhere is really safe, when it comes down to it, and when the shit that scares you is in your head,” Katya said, tapping her temple with a finger, “there’s no running away. Even if I locked the door and never came back out, all I’d be doing is shutting myself up with it.”
“I get that,” Alex said slowly, turning it over in his mind. “But couldn’t you have done something...safer?”
“Sure. I always thought I’d be a great accountant,” Katya said, grinning. “But Ana needed me. It was a way for me to protect her, and Timor – the people I care about. I realized that it was a way to protect myself, too, to be strong and capable. To make it so that no one could hold power over me.”
“I, uh, I don’t follow.”
Katya sighed in exasperation.
“It’s like this – doing what I need to do, even though I’m scared that bad things might happen, that’s being brave. But to have bad things happen, to experience that kinda shit and persevere, that doesn’t make me feel brave, it makes me feel fucking invulnerable. When the worst has already happened, Alex, there’s nothing else to be afraid of. All they can do is kill me.”
“That seems bad enough by itself.”
“Maybe. Matter of perspective.”
Alex gave it some thought, glad the night was warm and windless.
“If that’s true,” he asked, staring at his hands, “then why I am so nervous?”
“We all get nervous,” Katya said reassuringly. “Nervous is normal. It’s natural to have an aversion to experiencing pain or mortal danger, after all. But that isn’t the same as being frightened. Nervous is a biological reaction to stress. A little fear keeps you alive. Being afraid, though – that’s a choice.”
A thoughtful silence. At the horizon, the sun had begun its daily rebirth, staining the edge of the sky blood red.
“Okay,” Alex said finally. “Point taken.”
“Good.”
“Still don’t think I can sleep, though.”
“That’s fine,” Katya said, punching him lightly in the shoulder. “Plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead.”
***
“Our reality is war,” Gaul said sternly, surveying the Committee-at-Large with cold pink eyes. “Whatever our aspirations, whatever ambitions we aspire toward or principles to which we adhere. Despite my desire – which I know many of you hold in common – to provide the next generation with a world more peaceful than the one we were given, the threats we face to today remain grave and implacable.”
There was muttering from the center of the Hegemony camp, where the recently elected Lord North held sway. Gaul ignored it.
“Times have changed. Central is not immune, and our homes are no longer isolated from the danger outside. The conflicts between the cartels have not abated – in fact, they are now enflamed from outside, by an enemy who knows us intimately – the Anathema have returned from their long exile. You are aware of this, ladies and gentlemen of the Committee, for too many of your number were cut down during their violent return to Central.”
Too many, or not enough? I th
ink we could have stood the loss of a few more of the old bastards.
Gaul agreed with Rebecca, who was somewhere in the crowd, soothing tempers and steamrolling opposition, but he didn’t let that show.
“We have lost friends and family. Operators working for the Academy fell alongside cartel members defending their homes. An Auditor gave her life and another...”
The crowd rustled, and it wounded Gaul. He was no empath – in general, he refused to borrow those protocols from the Etheric Network – but he could feel the outrage, the contempt directed at him, a surrogate for Alistair’s betrayal. How could he have not known? How could he go on as Director when his hand-picked Chief Auditor had turned on him? The room whispered the same questions he asked himself.
If Rebecca hadn’t been there, he probably would have lost them. As it was, all she could do was create space for him, and he plunged into it before they could formulate objections.
“...turned his back on us. We have suffered, and worse, the enemy knows exactly how badly they have hurt us. They will be back, ladies and gentlemen, let me assure you – they will be back. To finish the rest of us. Those who resist will die. The rest will find worse fates in the flesh pits and the forced evolution chambers of the Outer Dark.”
Gaul could see confusion and worry ripple through the room, and took satisfaction from that. These were words, after all, that they had planned to aim at him, part of their anticipated denouncement, which he had telepathically purloined.
“This is not the future.” Gaul pointed at the back door of the Committee chamber, and the massive rosewood doors were pushed open. Alice Gallow, reeking of cordite and spattered with blood, led the way, followed by a handful of people, the traumatized remainder of the once proud Lat Cartel. Xia shut the door behind them, while Alice cheerfully led the survivors in their tattered clothes to the Committee floor. “Ask the Lat Cartel, or what is left of it – the rest is gone, a victim of a sudden Anathema incursion in Thailand and Burma. Only swift action on the part of our depleted corps of Auditors halted the slaughter.”
The Far Shores (The Central Series) Page 2