The Far Shores (The Central Series)

by Rawlins, Zachary

  ***

  Emily hurried over when the woman came tumbling out of the portal, not entirely sure what to make of the situation. She was relieved when Alistair followed a moment later, a handful of Anathema troops filtering in after him, most of them bearing the grimaces of a child preparing for the pain of an injection. Alistair helped the woman up, who rubbed her bruised backside and shot him a resentful glare.

  “Sorry about that, Talia,” Alistair said, with a winning smile. “There wasn’t time to explain. Couldn’t take the chance of losing the best and brightest of our technicians when we are so close to bringing this one home.”

  The technician gave him a halfhearted glare, then turned her attention to the bag of equipment she had brought with her, attaching readouts and digital displays to the machinery in the room.

  There was no need for empathy for Emily to spot the transparently mollifying intent behind Alistair’s compliments, but apparently they worked, because the woman’s expression softened. His unfailing ability to win over women was one of a number of qualities that Emily did not appreciate in Alistair, but she was prepared to tolerate her commander’s failings, as long as his authority was temporary – a reality that Emily had every intention of ensuring, whether or not John Parson lived up to his word.

  More than enough decisions had been made for Emily Muir in her last lifetime. This one, she was determined, would be quite different.

  “Good to see you in one piece,” Emily lied sweetly, surprised at how battered and small the Anathema force he led appeared. “How did things in go in the Ukraine?”

  “Successful,” Alistair reported, with a smile she supposed was intended to be ingratiating. Alistair had attempted to seduce Emily not long after her arrival at the Outer Dark, shortly after her transformation – an attempt she had gently but firmly rebuffed. She would never understand why Mitsuru Aoki fell for him. “It was a closer thing than I would have liked, but successful nonetheless. Song Li and Leigh should be able to hold their end long enough for us to align the World Tree and prepare it for transport. Even if the Auditors destroy the Tree we rooted in the Ukraine, possession of this World Tree makes it irrelevant. That is, if Talia can replicate the performance,” Alistair added, with a vile little wink in Talia’s direction, “that she put on back in the factory.”

  “Save the flattery,” Talia said unconvincingly, turning to Emily as if she were little more than a functionary. “Is the area secure?”

  “Of course,” Emily replied smoothly, mentally adding Talia to the list of people who were going to regret their lack of respect. “I neutralized the majority of the Far Shores security, and the corridors leading to this chamber are flooded. It should take them some time to reach us, assuming they try.”

  “What about the equipment?” Talia asked brusquely, brushing past Emily to inspect the racks and towers of chattering electronics. “You didn’t damage anything, did you?”

  Emily controlled herself, but it took some doing. She limited herself to gesturing toward a monitor at the heart of the nearby control center, which displayed the luminescent crystal branches of the World Tree, confined to the adjoining sealed chamber and shielded from outside observation with an Etheric interference generator.

  “Of course not.”

  “Fascinating,” Alistair said enthusiastically, peering over Talia’s shoulder at the monitor. “It must have been quite an endeavor, assembling this in such secrecy...”

  “Not particularly,” Emily opined. “Didn’t we just do the same?”

  “Yes,” Alistair allowed, “but we didn’t do it inside of the Auditor’s base.”

  Emily hesitated, frowning.

  “I suppose.”

  “What an interesting place. Such a shame I hardly had occasion to visit when I was an Auditor,” Alistair said, wandering about the machinery. “If only I had known all the things Dr. Graaf had gotten up to, out here on the Fringe.”

  At a wave and a nod from Alistair, the few remaining troops that he had brought with him distributed themselves around the room, a pair moving to the door while another set headed for the equipment room, the last remaining by the portal with an assault rifle at the ready.

  “We need to run some tests,” Talia said, studying a digital readout protruding from the side of the machinery. “We need to prepare the World Tree for extraction, and perform a trial run to test the resonance...”

  “Naturally,” Alistair agreed. “Though it does seem to be operating. After all, we made it through, did we not?”

  “I want to be sure,” Talia said, pushing past Alistair to the control center. “It will take time to align everything correctly.”

  “By all means,” Alistair invited, gesturing at the waiting equipment. “Do your magic, Talia.”

  She hurried off, but not before Emily caught her giving Alistair a look that was equal parts pride and attraction. Emily could feel Alistair settling his empathic hooks in the technician’s mind, and watching it made her vaguely ill. While his talents were mainly telepathic, Alistair had sufficient empathic ability to flatter a receptive audience into performing, in the field – and then probably in bed, after.

  Men, Emily thought with distaste. So disgustingly transparent.

  “You said that you neutralized the Far Shores security?” Alistair asked, bending to adjust one of the armored shin guards that he wore.

  Emily shrugged modestly.

  “The opportunity presented itself.”

  Alistair must have noticed the Changeling cowering in the corner of the room, head between her knees as she continued whatever breakdown had afflicted her fragile persona, because he froze, and then gave Emily a questioning look.

  “Emily, please tell me that you didn’t damage the Fey...”

  His voice was warm and full of implied threats, which Emily brushed aside.

  “Of course not. She’s been like that since I brought her here. I have no idea what the issue is, nor do I care. Eerie is intact, and that’s all that matters. She won’t be our concern much longer.”

  Alistair studied her from a distance, attempting and failing to penetrate her alien mind with his telepathic protocol. Emily could have told him the effort would have been fruitless – the Changeling had proved impervious to even Rebecca Levy’s vaunted talents while at the Academy – but he hadn’t bothered to ask, and Emily wasn’t feeling inclined toward charity at the present. She was, frankly, eager for the operation to wrap up, to be done with the unexpected awkwardness of dealing with her former rival (and the ghosts of her own pettiness, in that regard – though all that had occurred in both a literal and figurative other life), and to return to the Outer Dark to her long-anticipated reward.

  “I suppose that I should go have a little chat with her, make sure she is nice and cooperative for her end of this...”

  Emily was about to interrupt, to explain the Changeling’s resistance to such manipulation – not that she expected Alistair to heed her advice, but still – when she herself was interrupted by sudden activity from the portal. Two figures stumbled through and into the center of the room, one supporting the other, who was limping rather badly. A number of people gasped simultaneously, Emily among them, as she locked eyes with one of the interlopers.

  “Emily?”

  “Alex?”

  Eerie looked up for the first time in the better part of an hour, eyes wide and startled.

  “Alex?”

  He turned his attention to the Changeling, looking both pleased and alarmed to see her, and Emily was surprised to feel a sudden burst of resentment that she had thought herself long past. Apparently her empathy still had something of a blind spot when it came to self-analysis.

  “Katya Zharova,” Alistair said, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. “And little Alexander. What a pleasant surprise.”

  Katya glanced around the room.

  “Oh, shit. Isn’t this just great?”

  ***

  Rebecca Levy burst into Gaul’s office with th
e same lack of decorum and respect that she had always shown. He wondered where it was that Mrs. Barrett had gotten off to, and how he might similarly flee the situation.

  “Gaul! I came as soon as I could. What’s the emergency…Gaul? What the hell is going on?”

  Gaul was in the process of packing his files into milk crates that he had found in a neighboring administrator’s office, taking them for himself in a last-minute executive decision. He didn’t imagine that he would have the opportunity to collect anything that he left behind now, and he had no intention of leaving his private files for the Auditors to review.

  “A number of potential futures have been cut off, while an equivalent number of even more extraordinary futures have arisen.” Gaul sighed and sat down heavily behind his desk. He was suddenly very tired; more tired than he could ever recall being. “I am attempting to navigate Central through a number of difficulties toward the best possible outcome. In other words, the usual.”

  Rebecca looked pointedly at the stacks of files littering his desk and the half-full milk crates scattered around the floor. She was so out of sorts that she didn’t even think to light a cigarette.

  “None of this,” she said, gesturing at the disarray in the room, “looks anything like usual to me.”

  “I admit that much of what has transpired in the past few hours has taken even me by surprise,” Gaul said, nodding to himself. “We live, as they say, in interesting times, Rebecca.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be a bad thing.”

  “An uncertain thing, yes. Bad is subjective.”

  “Okay, Gaul, quit fucking around and just tell me...”

  Gaul took his glasses off to rub his sore eyes.

  “You need to go to the Far Shores, immediately,” Gaul explained, setting his glasses aside. For the moment, he decided, he was more comfortable in a blurred world. “I have summoned an apport technician. They are waiting for you in the lobby. I suggest that you stop by the infirmary on your way – if I have calculated your arrival time correctly, you will miss the danger, but arrive in time to save at least some of the students.”

  “Gaul, I told you already,” Rebecca said, with controlled but obviously increasing anger. “I’m not an Auditor anymore. I’m a fucking school councilor...”

  “I have not forgotten. You cited concern for the children, in your resignation. I assure you, in this particular situation, that the safety of the children that your prize so highly is paramount. Assuming you wish to have the opportunity to help them work out their various personal and psychological issues in the future, I urge you to make haste.”

  “What’s going on, Gaul?” Rebecca said, leaning forward to study his face. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Oh, all sorts of things,” Gaul responded giddily. “None of particular import to our discussion, however. Not to worry – by the time you return, much of this will be clear. The rest, I assume, will come out in due time.”

  “You’re scaring me, Gaul,” Rebecca said, biting her at her nails in nervousness. “You’re acting weird.”

  “Am I? It is possible. It has been a very strange day.”

  “Why won’t you just tell me...”

  “Because I don’t have time to explain. And if you continue to delay, you won’t have time to rescue the students from rather certain harm.”

  “You don’t give me orders anymore, Gaul,” Rebecca declared defiantly. “I don’t like this.”

  “You don’t have to like it,” Gaul countered, returning to his files. “And I am not ordering you. This is a request. I assumed that you would want to do this. If I am wrong, well, then, I suppose that we will have the opportunity to discuss this at length during the funerals.”

  Rebecca stared at him, lips trembling with outrage.

  “And somehow I’m the one with a reputation for being manipulative,” she said finally, sounding more wounded than she ever had, in their years of working together. “Alright, Gaul. I’ll do what you want. But when I come back, you and I are going to have a very long chat about this.”

  Gaul shook his head, dumping another set of files into a handy milk crate.

  “When you come back, everything will be different. And I have serious doubts that you will want to talk to me at all. But I assure you, Rebecca, whatever happens – I have nothing but respect for you, and my door is always open for you.”

  Rebecca stomped to the door, tugging her hair into a quick ponytail.

  “I don’t get you at all, sometimes, Gaul,” she muttered. “Not sure I want to.”

  She slammed the door behind her. Gaul continued packing up his office, serene and at least partially entranced by the constellation of new possibilities that were opening up by the minute – not all good, obviously – but the sheer novelty of entering unexplored, unanticipated territory had its own appeal nonetheless. He was invigorated by the newness of the concerns and probabilities that he weighed with the same measured and thoughtful precision that he had used to deal with the old. For the first time in years, Gaul wasn’t certain what would happen tomorrow – he could explore the possibilities, obviously, but the details were fuzzy – and the uncertainty was oddly refreshing.

  “Incidentally,” he said, still talking to Rebecca, despite the fact that she was gone, “I think that you will be excellent at the job. I have absolute confidence in you.”

  Twenty-Two.

  “While I am afraid this represents a certain pettiness on my part, I must admit that I have been looking forward to the opportunity to set matters right between us.”

  Alex hesitated, studying Alistair’s expression in confusion.

  “I don’t get it,” he admitted. “Are you going to apologize or something? Because it seems a little late for…”

  “No, you idiot, I am not,” Alistair said, shaking his head ruefully. “You really are as dumb as they say, boy. What I mean is that our last encounter left you with a false set of impressions as to the balance of power between us. I mean to rectify that.”

  Katya stayed close. They stood nearly back to back in the center of the room, attempting to keep their eyes on all of the Anathema. It was a logistical and physiological impossibility, but a natural response to being surrounded. The Anathema chambered rounds into submachine guns and tracked the pair of trainee Auditors with reflex scopes, waiting for Alistair to give the word, while Alistair watched in obvious amusement. Emily expression’s wavered between enthusiasm and unease. Talia Banks ignored all of them, in favor of the passive surface of a digital keyboard. When Samnang Banh stepped through the portal and into the room, no one paid her much attention besides Eerie, who flinched and pressed her back against the wall as if she hoped to pass directly through.

  “First one to move gets a handful of needles in their brain,” Katya declared, eyes darting from one Anathema to another. “It’ll paralyze you, and it’ll hurt, but I guarantee you’ll be a long time dying. Fair warning.”

  Alex wished he could think of something equally threatening to say, but even now, in the midst of tension and imminent death, he could feel a rising tide of sleepiness eroding the jittery amphetamine rush that propped his eyelids open. He wondered how long he had before the consequences of using the Absolute Protocol caught up with him, and how many more times he could use it before he spontaneously fell asleep. It was irrational, given the likelihood that he would be dead shortly, and therefore immune to such concerns, but he still found himself troubled by a nagging worry that this time he would fall asleep much longer. On the last occasion that he put his protocol to extensive use, it had cost him more than a month of his life. Assuming he survived this encounter, Alex had the feeling that his actions today would cost him a great deal more.

  It was an insane thing to worry about with half a dozen guns and a homicidal telepath’s eyes trained on him, but it bothered him anyway. Maybe it was some sort of coping mechanism, Alex thought, stifling a yawn.

  “How many of us do you think you can take, Katya, before
we kill you?” Alistair spoke softly, nonchalantly descending the short staircase down to the floor where they stood. “One? Maybe two?”

  “Could be,” Katya allowed, the needles in her hands glimmering under the fluorescent lights. “But who wants to volunteer to be the lucky ones?”

  Alistair laughed, leaning against the handrail as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  “We’ll take our chances – isn’t that right, boys?”

  The Anathema soldiers shifted and exchanged glances in a way that made Alex think that they did not exactly share their leader’s confidence. He wondered if that would be enough.

  “Don’t forget about me,” he volunteered, fighting the urge to steal a glance at Eerie, confirm that she was still all right. “Ice in the brain is a bad way to go. I’ve seen it.”

  “Assuming you are fast enough,” Alistair chided. “Which I doubt. Even if you are, that changes the arithmetic slightly, not the outcome.”

  “What if I skip to the chase and take out your technician?” Katya said, jerking her head in the direction of the black woman who continued to devote her attentions to the electronics before her. “Bet that would throw a crimp in your plan.”

  Alistair laughed.

  “I won’t allow you to do any such thing. Given the mess you people were making in Kiev, I have no idea whether the World Tree will be usable. I can’t leave this sort of technology in your hands, in any case, even supposing that I don’t need it myself.”

  Alex didn’t believe him – not entirely. He didn’t think that Alistair was the type to gloat, or the Director would have never selected him as Chief Auditor. He was either playing for time or trying to rattle their nerves – otherwise, he would have simply given the order to attack and then dealt with the consequences.

  “Bullshit,” Katya said, obviously coming to the same conclusion. “You aren’t so sure. Or you would have done it already.”

  Samnang Banh walked across the room calmly, as if she weren’t strolling through a potentially lethal crossfire, giving Alex a brief nod as she passed. He flinched when he heard Eerie gasp, and only avoided the suicidal decision to look over in their direction by an act of will. A moment later, he was glad that he hadn’t. Because suddenly, above one of the Anathema soldiers who aimed a bullpup assault rifle across the top of a server rack, there was something worth seeing.