by Adam Thielen
Daria shrugged. “Eh, so she’s frozen. She probs don’t care.”
Taq chuckled then shook his head.
“Ey, he awake?” Abriham called from outside the room.
Taq looked at Cretu quizzically.
“He sees and hears all,” she informed. “Lemme duce ya.”
Neen, Sai, and Abe stood next to a raised platform surrounded by a wall of corrugated metal. Computers and terminals lined its interior with cables stretching to the ceiling.
“Thank you for hiding me,” said Taq.
“The UTI scrambled you good,” said Sai. “How’s upstairs feeling?”
“I am fine, now.”
“We don’t know what we’re doing with you yet,” said Nina. “We don’t want to kick you out, but we can’t hide you forever.”
“I understand. I need to contact my friend, but she isn’t answering.”
“That’s never good news,” said Abe.
“Ey,” said Daria. “Tsenka is fine.”
“We’ll give you a few days,” said Nina. “Contact the Republic, I’m sure they’d help you get out. Right?”
Why had that not occurred to me? he wondered. Then he knew. “I’m not done here yet.”
“Great,” said Sai. “Another revolutionary. We are all full up.”
“Lay off, Sai,” Cretu said.
“Right. I’m going to go monitor their security network so I’ll know when to expect the death squads.” He climbed a set of stairs to the platform and sat in front of a large screen.
“Sai’s a good guy,” said Neen. “That’s just his personality. Whatever your plans are, don’t fuck us over.”
Taq nodded, and Nina nudged Abe, signaling for him to follow her back to where they lounged and enjoyed simulations and feeds from the comfort of unwanted furniture they had scavenged. Abriham nodded at Taq before following Nina, his muscles rippling with his motion.
“You saved me. Why?” Jones asked Cretu.
“Come on,” she said, walking back to his assigned area. She stopped and looked toward the platform in the middle, then at Taq. “My… Desre put me on a mission.”
“Ah, of course,” he replied. “And you do whatever she wants.”
“Ey, rescuing your crusty butt took some convincing,” she fired back while leaning forward.
“I’m grateful. Thank you,” he said.
“Ya,” she replied, relaxing her posture.
Jones’s amusement at her behavior turned to concern as he felt a chill in the air. He moved back and instinctively peered into the Ethereal plane. In front of him was an aura much paler than any he had seen, and he remembered his earlier travels.
“You’re the one I saw before,” he said. “Outside the hotel and in a nearby building.”
“You alright?” she asked.
“I recognize your aura; it’s like no other.”
“Neat.” Daria shrugged. “I maybe stalked Tsenka a little.”
“You’re drawing Ether toward you,” said Taq. “Like polonium does. But I don’t see any implants.”
“Used to have one,” she said. “Made me cuckoo.”
“Are you a mage?” he asked.
“I got electricity in ma fingers,” she said with a goofy expression while holding up her hands.
“Touch me,” commanded Jones, still rapt by her aura.
“Whoa, dude, I don’t think we’re there yet.”
Jones held up his palm. “I want to see what it looks like. Please?”
“Yite.” She eased her fingertips close to his palm and Taq’s eyes widened as slivers of his own aura broke off and joined with hers. Then, as she pressed against his skin, white sparks, seen only in the Ethereal plane, shot outward from the contact point.
Jones chuckled at the tingling sensation. “Weird.”
Daria pulled her hand back. “Aye. I can see these weird blue bits flying at me.”
“You can?” he asked. “What else can you do?”
She shrugged. “I dunno, I don’t really try to do anything, I just do it.”
Taq frowned and lowered his hand. “I don’t believe there’s a skill in the world that works that way. You are gifted, perhaps, but if you aren’t practicing, pushing yourself, then you aren’t fulfilling your potential.”
“Geez, gramps, what do you want?”
“What if I were to teach you?” he asked. “Or at least impart what I know. You aren’t like anything I’ve ever seen, but among the various mage types there are many similarities in methods and training.”
“In two days?” she asked. “Nah.”
“You’d be surprised what I can show you in two days,” he pitched. “Besides, maybe you can convince your friends to keep me around.”
“Let me ask you somethin’, maestro,” Cretu said. “When the goddess calls, you gonna answer?”
“I’m fortunate that she doesn’t bother me,” said Taq.
“But she will. I been thinking. She’s got a plan, and it’s the only reason she does anything. You are part of that plan now, buddy.”
“I follow my own beat,” he said in defiance.
“Maybe you do, maybe you just think you do,” retorted Cretu. “Thing is though, Sai’s been hacking into Cepheid systems for a while, and I know something big is going down from the way Neen and him talk. Me, you, these guys, it’s not an accident.”
“Fanciful thinking,” said Taq.
“It ain’t. You paid today’s tab with scrip.”
“I did what?”
“You owe.”
“Get in line!” Taq said, raising his voice. “I got matters to settle with Courtemanche, Cepheid, maybe the whole UTI.”
“Hmph,” uttered Daria, folding her arms.
“I’m sorry,” said Taq. “If Desre wants something of me, I will try to appease her. Now would you humor my attempts to teach you something?”
“I got nowhere to be,” she said, then, “I mean, thanks.”
Picking out an empty spot inside the storage building, Taq instructed Cretu in breathing exercises, then moved to meditations meant to clear unwanted thoughts, and then to basic mental routines. He watched her aura shift colors based on the activity, but after several hours, she still had no success in casting evocation or body manipulation spells.
They took a break and Abriham prepared dinner. The five sat around a small table, stained, chipped, and scuffed from decades of use. Jones stared at its marred veneer in contemplation. It had a history they would never know. Hundreds of meals had sat upon its surface feeding dozens of different faces that had come and gone. And there they were, eating together, here now and gone tomorrow. He wondered who would use it after they were gone, and would they consider the fate of those that used it before them?
Jones snapped out of his reverie. “So, Sai,” he said. “You like to hack into Cepheid?”
Sai lowered the hunk of tough bread from his mouth and shot a look at Daria, who in return stared at her plate. “Sure, why not?”
“Isn’t that a little risky?”
“I know what I’m doing,” said Sai. “And someday I’ll find something that I can use against them.”
“Well,” said Taq. “I hear there are big things going on right now. Nothing useful from that?”
Nina looked nervously at Sai while Daria continued table-gazing and Abe continued eating.
“Err, listen, Taq. You just got here, and you won’t be staying,” explained Sai.
Taq nodded, and Daria looked up at Sai.
“Ey, you hold on,” she said. “Desre brought him here so he could help.”
“You brought him here, dear,” said Neen.
Abe nodded as he chewed.
“We all share a common enemy,” said Jones. “I don’t know how long you’ve been here waiting for your chance, but when I walk out of this building, I am going after Courtemanche. If you have something I can use, then maybe we can help each other.”
“You’re talking about suicide,” said Nina. “Just go back home
.”
Sai grabbed a pinch of rice and shoved it in his mouth. “Listen to her,” he said after swallowing. “Their arsenal is vast, and you want to know what’s big? A missile the length of a football field that can go anywhere, penetrate through anything, carrying a massive antimatter payload. And it’s sitting right next to Cepheid tower, hidden in the middle of the campus. That’s not a defensive weapon, and the area has been lit up with men working on it overnight for the last week. Does that help?”
Taq brooded for a moment, then said, “Would be a shame if something happened to it.”
“Well, sure,” said Sai. “If they happen to misplace it, I’m sure they’ll be upset.”
Abe laughed, bits of rice and bread falling from his mouth.
“Clearly you’re a capable hacker. This one,” Jones said, looking to Cretu, “just took down a small army. I bet Nina has some skills, Abe here looks as strong as a bear, and I’m probably the greatest mage that ever lived.”
“At least in the top five,” amended Daria.
“If they have what you say, then you can’t just let them use it, and you may not get a better opportunity to strike,” concluded Jones.
Sai pushed his plate forward and stood. “Piss off! We aren’t martyrs, and you don’t give a shit about us. Dig your own grave, and leave us out of it. We have our own strategy for shutting them down.” The dwarf walked away from the table and exited through a door to the alley.
“I wish we would do more,” said Nina. “But they’re just too powerful. We’d never get close to that weapon.”
“We should try,” said Abriham. “If they launch that missile, will we just sit around this table pretending we did the right thing?”
“I don’t know if she wants this,” said Cretu.
“I was just throwing it out there,” said Taq. “Maybe it’s impossible, but no security is unbreachable. If we can get inside the launch tube, it should be easy to disable.”
“You might be surprised,” said Abe.
“I bet I can wreck it,” said Daria. “Get me close enough, I can fry its electronics.”
“You sound like kids playing pretend,” said Neen. “And I’ve heard enough. Sai decides what we do.” She picked up her and Sai’s plates and left the table.
After the meal, Daria listened to more of Taq’s lecturing on Ethereal energy and then learned about planar projection. As she lay in her cot that night, she folded her hands together across her chest. Please, Desre, or goddess if you prefer, tell me what to do. I know I doubted you before, but I need your guidance. Tell me what this was all for.
* * *
Tsenka Cho waved her hand at the gold-embroidered door to the successor’s quarters, triggering a chime to alert him to her presence. The door slid open and Diego Gimon beckoned her inside, his hair wet, and his body clothed in plain shorts and a white t-shirt.
“Glad you could make it,” he greeted.
“I realized,” she said. “We have a lot more to talk about than I thought.”
“Indeed,” he replied, exhaling. “But let me get you something to drink, first.” He walked over to a minibar next to a kitchenette. The successor’s room was at least three times the size of Tsenka’s. “I’ve got some rum, vodka, cola, grape drink, red wine—”
“That,” said Cho, glancing at his impressively large bed across the room. “I’ll take some wine.”
He pulled the cork out and poured some into a wine glass textured like a flower and handed it to Cho, then poured himself a glass and gestured to a small round table.
Tsenka sniffed at her glass, pretending to give a damn, then took a big gulp. She sat across from Gimon and locked eyes, waiting for him to go first.
He smiled. “Ya know, I asked you not to hurt him.”
“Who? That first kid? Barely touched him,” she defended.
“Even I hurt watching his arm break.”
“I bet.”
“But not you. You have a sadistic streak. I can see it,” he said.
“Depends on what I’m doing,” she replied, taking another drink. “But breaking his elbow did feel incredible.”
“I knew it,” he said. “But you aren’t in it for the pleasure. You plan on winning. Is it the fame?”
Cho grinned. “I care not one bit for fame. But I find myself surrounded by vampires, and all I want to know is that I’m the toughest, most dangerous nightstalker.”
“And daywalker,” he added, shaking his head with a smile. “How did you get away with that? The council must have been furious.”
“In the New Republic, the council’s power has diminished considerably, and no one dared touch me after Beijing.”
“Of course,” said Gimon, finishing his glass. He set it down and let his eyes travel down from her face. Her top was a thin red silk garment draped over her body then tied tight below her ribs.
Cho cleared her throat. “I’ve been informed that I cannot depart with my monocopter. Am I correct that you oversee these things?”
“Yes,” he said. “Bad news, I’m afraid. We found a sophisticated tracker transmitting a signal whose encryption matches that of other UTI devices we’ve recovered.”
Tsenka looked at the table. “Shit. And if I asked to see the device and where it had been planted?”
“I’d gladly show you,” he said.
“What now?”
“Normally this would go before the council, in case they’d want to charge you with endangering the Refuge,” he explained.
“I had no way to know,” Cho argued, clenching her fists. “I should have never come.”
“It’s not that bad,” he said. “The council thinks it is, but it isn’t. One of their stupid transmitters makes its way to us once in a while. For now, I don’t see any reason not to keep this between us.”
Tsenka wore an expression of surprise. She leaned forward, exaggerating her cleavage. “Really? You’d do that for me?”
Diego’s eyes moved down again, then darted up to her eyes. “Of course. We don’t need this kind of scandal and panic. But we’d need you to stay for a few more days until we can reconfigure the tracker. If we are lucky, we can trick them when you do leave.”
“That’s brilliant,” she gushed, pushing her empty glass forward. Gimon grinned and poured more, splashing some off the side.
“I’m sure you’ve run countless ops just like it,” he said.
“A few,” she admitted.
“Speaking of ops,” he said. “How is your detective work going?”
“I’m not sure it matters,” she said. “But at least two current council members helped Makida, and they are two of the three newest members. It appears you had a close relationship with Diana Ellefeld before her appointment, and the Dracul lobbied hard for Benshi before he got his spot. The two of them were very important to the funding of Haven, starting immediately after they gained their seats at the table.”
“Oh my,” said Gimon. “Impressive work, but you said it doesn’t matter?”
Tsenka leaned back in her chair. “I had always thought that Haven must be destroyed and that anyone responsible for aiding Makida should face justice. But I see now how much of a fantasy that was. The world has moved on, and there is no Haven. It’s time for me to move on, too.”
Gimon stood. “Some grudges are worth holding on to.” He opened his fridge and pulled out a platter of cubed cheese, bread, and a small dish of soft butter, then brought it back to the table. His fingers plucked three cubes of varying color and texture and placed them between his teeth. “But you think I was part of Haven?”
“You tell me,” she said, grabbing a handful of cheese.
“No,” he said. “But I knew Diana’s heart. I knew she supported Makida, and when she wanted onto the council, I knew why. I helped her. It’s unfortunate what happened, but I didn’t think much further than simply offering support to a friend, and so I cannot believe I acted wrongly.”
“And among the people here, who would see you as a villain fo
r that?”
“No one,” he said confidently.
“There you have it,” said Cho, spooning butter onto a piece of bread. “So the past is behind us. The only thing left to consider is the future. Do you still talk with Ellefeld?”
“Sure.”
“Do you think members of the council, Ellefeld or the others, want to rekindle the superiority movement?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Diana, like many nocturnals, doesn’t want us to hide here forever, but the world has only become more hostile in the decades after Makida. I think eventually we will need a real homeland of our own. I think to deny us that would ensure future conflict.”
“Life amongst humans isn’t good enough?” asked Cho.
“If it were, this place would be deserted.”
“There’s no denying that logic,” she replied.
“But it’s at least a nice place to visit, wouldn’t you agree?” he said with a wink.
“I feel so… free here,” she said. “I can act how I like, do what I like, with whom I like. I’m surrounded by people that get what we go through and how we think.”
“Beautifully put,” he said. “If it isn’t too presumptuous, would you like to stay here, with me, today?”
“Got any board games?” she asked with a straight face.
“Well… if that’s what you want.”
“No, what I want is you on that bed,” she said, looking almost angry.
Gimon rose from his seat and offered his hand, but Tsenka swiveled in her seat and ignored it, instead cupping one hand against his crotch. With the other, she tugged at his waistband, drawing him closer, then unbuttoned his shorts and pulled his briefs down to his ankles, exposing his uncut cock.
Tsenka leaned forward and Diego placed his hands on the sides of her head. She teased at his shaft with her tongue while it grew and straightened, then pushed the foreskin back with her teeth and licked underneath. Cho grasped his glutes with both hands and pushed her face forward, engulfing him. She commanded her implant to suppress her involuntary gag response, then pulled him toward her, forcing his lengthy member past her tonsils. She pulled back, then pushed forward again.