“The boss sent me,” Alistair said jovially. “There was something I had to take care of here.”
Alistair looked up at the cells that hung across the second level. The traumatized witch that Alice had brought home was the only current occupant. Alistair winked at her, her eyes widened in terror, and she shrank back into the corner, as far away as her cell would allow.
“That’s odd,” Vladimir said, frowning. “I was sure Gaul told me that he had sent you out on assignment a few days ago.”
“Oh, now I understand the confusion. You see,” Alistair confessed, rolling the pipe around the palm of his hand, “I don’t work for him anymore.”
Vladimir spun to face him as he advanced, gripping the table top next to him for support, water leaking out of the corners of his wrinkled, weepy eyes. Around him, a circle flickered to life, a frenetic ring of unintelligible words burning faint orange.
“Alistair, you can’t be serious.”
“I can,” Alistair said, swinging the pipe at the his wrinkled head and connecting with the side of the skull. Vladimir toppled without making a sound, the orange ring around him disappearing as he hit the floor. “You never gave me enough credit, Vlad. None of you did. For such ambitious men, you could be very short-sided when it came to your protégés.”
Alistair’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he strained with the effort of wide-spectrum broadcast telepathy.
“Come on,” he said, to whoever was listening. “The door’s wide open.”
Across Central, apports were completed and gateways opened. Central had scarcely sunk into darkness when they begun to kill.
23.
“Here is the thing,” Gaul said patiently, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. “There is an excellent possibility that things are about to get ugly, and that I may be forced to deal with this situation without a number of my usual tools. This is why I have brought you back early from your vacations. For whatever reason your potential in this situation was overlooked by my unknown adversary, but not by me. In short, I am going to need your help, ladies and gentlemen.”
The small group of people in his office muttered, exchanged glances, whispered and nudged each other. However, no one left, and no one looked anything more than excited and eager. Grigori and Margot exchanged challenging glances, while Vivik was already occupied in pouring over the probability matrices on Gaul’s desk.
Kids, Gaul thought sourly.
“Very well,” Gaul said crisply. “Let’s discuss the plan, shall we?”
* * *
“Alex, I need you to pay attention, because this is very important.”
Someone, a girl, in front of him. Who was it? He couldn’t seem to focus his eyes, and his head kept lolling forward and to the side uncontrollably. She put one hand on his cheek, steadying him, while she put something else behind his neck. The sensation was so overwhelming that it took him some time to identify it, but eventually it came to him.
A cold towel.
“An unfortunate thing has happened, Alex. I’m honestly not sure exactly what yet, and I find that very upsetting. You have had an experience, no need to think about it right now, that you also found quite upsetting.”
White face, red lips, pale blue eyes, black dress… Anastasia? Could the girl be Anastasia? No, Alex decided, it wasn’t possible. Because this girl looked as if she might have been upset, worried about him, and that could never be.
“I need you to stay with me, Alex, because I have a number of things that I am taking care of, at the moment, and frankly, you are hardly my priority. Please try and focus. I am tired of repeating myself.”
She had ribbons in her hair. It could only be Anastasia. But, how? And why would Anastasia be helping him? But maybe he was being unfair to the girl. In some ways, she had done nothing but help him since he had come to the Academy.
“We are not the only ones who were attacked, and there are things that all of us need to be doing. You included, I’m afraid. I have already spoken to The Director, and I have full command of you and the rest of the students here. I also have duties in the Black Sun, so my hands are full. This means that I cannot accompany you where you need to go.”
There was a pause, and when his vision cleared again, Anastasia was embracing her two younger sisters, Molly and Diana, while Renton looked on in obvious satisfaction. When Alex saw the look Anastasia gave him, he understood why. The crying girls then hurried off to Svetlana’s waiting arms. Anastasia returned to patting his face with a cold washcloth, looking much more composed.
“Shortly, Svetlana will return and take you to Central. As I was saying, I can’t come with you, because matters must be settled here, first. I will join you there when I can, when I have marshaled whatever is left of the Black Sun. I am not certain how much of Central is still under our control, or anyone’s control for that matter. So I am sending Katya with you.”
Alex moved his fingers, and found that they would obey him. His tried his toes and found that they were equally as willing. He blinked his eyes several times, and his vision started to clear. The strange sense of distance, the idea that he was watching a movie or having an incredibly vivid dream had receded, but didn’t depart entirely.
“The Director has explained the situation, and I agree with his assessment. It is critical, Alex, that you get to Rebecca Levy. Nothing else matters as much as this. You see, Gaul believes, and I believe as well, that contact with you might restore Rebecca. It could kill her, too, but that is a risk that we are willing to take. Because without her things are going to keep getting worse, and the longer she is incapacitated, the harder the damage will be to repair. Now, I know that this is not what you want to be doing…”
“What about Eerie?” Alex managed, a little surprised that his tongue remembered how to handle the complicated challenges posed by language.
Anastasia shook her head and sat back, wringing out the washcloth in the bowl of water that sat beside her.
“Back with us, I see,” Anastasia said, sighing, but he was fairly certain the sigh was of relief, rather than exasperation.
“Is Eerie okay?” Alex demanded, trying to sit up and, after a few abortive efforts, just managing it.
“I knew you were going to ask that,” Anastasia said, with a slight smile. “Let me assure you that, if anyone in Central is currently safe, then Eerie would be that person. And if you don’t help us with Rebecca Levy, you won’t be able to help Eerie anyway, because she, and everyone else in Central, will be dead.”
“You don’t know?” Alex asked, shivering as the sweat on his body cooled. “No one has heard from her?”
“Alex,” Anastasia said with unaccustomed gentleness. “No one has heard from anybody, because the same thing is happening everywhere. Central, here, at Hegemony and Black Sun operations the world over. This is much bigger than you realize.”
Alex tried to stand, but his body wasn’t ready for that level of overall coordination. Anastasia pushed him gently back down.
“What are you going to do?” Anastasia said, dabbing at his forehead with the washcloth. “You can’t get to Central till Svetlana comes back, and you won’t survive there very long without Katya’s help. The whole place is overrun, Alex. But I promise you that Eerie can take care of herself. What she cannot do is live through the day without some help from Rebecca Levy, and the only way we get her back is your catalyst effect. You see, Alex, we have been betrayed. By the Chief Auditor, no less.”
“What?”
Anastasia nodded grimly. Alex’s vision had cleared to the point that he could see that they were still in the main house, back on the island, in the kitchen. There was continuing gunfire outside, but it was more distant and sporadic. The threat, he reasoned, was less immediate.
“I don’t know all the details, but apparently, Alistair is leading the attack on Central,” Anastasia said, apparently judging him well enough, placing the washcloth across his forehead and standing up to pace across the kitchen. “They hav
e destroyed whole portions of Central’s defense and transportation departments, and we can’t seem to port directly to the Academy at the moment. I will have Sveta drop you and Katya somewhere not too far outside the gate, and you will have to make your own way there.”
“Fuck that,” Alex said, peeling the washcloth from his head and standing up unsteadily. “I’m finding Eerie first. If she’s okay, then I’ll…”
To his utter shock, Anastasia whipped around and grabbed him by the ear, pulling him down and coming up on her tiptoes until they were almost eye-to-eye. There was no mistaking it, now that he was this close – tears had run through her eyeliner and mascara, leaving dark streaks down her cheeks, but those eyes were filled with nothing other than burning anger now.
“Listen to me very carefully, boy,” Anastasia commanded, and Alex, despite the painful grip on his ear, found that he could do nothing but listen. “I have looked out for you since you arrived at my doorstep. In that time, I have been very patient putting up with you and your whining and indecision, your self-pity and narcissism. I don’t have time for that right now. Those fools are trying to tear apart everything that I have built, everything that is mine. They are trying to kill my family, the Black Sun, all my people. My cartel needs me, so I must be there. If you think that what you need to do is to go find Eerie – who, by the way, does not need your help – then you go ahead and do that. However, keep in mind that I will decide at that point that you are disagreeing with me. And this, I promise you, is going to be a very bad day for people who disagree with me. Please think about that very carefully before you open your mouth.”
Anastasia finally released his ear, and he rubbed it resentfully. His mind still felt sluggish and overwhelmed, and every time Emily came up his thoughts went around in circles. He remembered her disintegrating into water in his arms, and then, before he could even begin to register her loss, rising back up from a pool of water in the corner of the room, and he felt strangely sleepy, as if he could slip right back into the fugue he’d been in since. And that, he knew, was the only thing he couldn’t allow himself to do.
“Okay,” Alex said guardedly. “Okay, I’ll do it. But if anything happens to Eerie before I can get to her, then I’m holding you responsible.”
To his surprise, Anastasia looked at him evenly and nodded, then took a compact mirror from somewhere and started dabbing her face with a tiny sponge.
“I really couldn’t care less,” Anastasia said curtly. “Katya should be here any moment. Oh, and Alex? One more thing. None of this,” she said, motioning to take in the scene around her, where her sisters had been, where she had nursed Alex back to consciousness, her own smudged makeup that she had already begun to repair in a handy mirror, “is to be spoken of, ever again. Do you understand?”
“Yeah,” Alex said, nodding. “I’d rather not, honestly.”
Her shoulders stiffened, and he thought for a moment that he had made her angry again. Then Anastasia turned around, smiled, and patted his head as if he were a well-behaved child.
“Good boy,” she said approvingly, turning back to the mirror. “In return, I promise that Eerie won’t find out what you did with Emily. Not from me or mine, that is.”
Anastasia snapped her compact closed and walked off, looking cold and firmly in control again. He felt better with her that way, at least when things were like this. It seemed important that someone knew what was going on. He could only hope that she was on their side.
All of a sudden, Alex understood why so many people decided that whichever side Anastasia chose was the right side.
“Hey, Anastasia,” he said on impulse. “Do we still have a chance?”
Anastasia sauntered back over in her torn slip, the ribbon in her hair out of kilter, her mouth curved into the hint of a smile, her eyes implying that it was at his expense. The effect was only slightly spoiled by how much she had to crane her neck to look up at him.
“Don’t be a fool, boy,” she chided. “This game is hardly over. I haven’t even started to play yet.”
* * *
“Alright,” Chris said, apparently finally tiring of the sound of his own voice, or, more likely, his audience. “Martin, put Alice to sleep and call for Tomas, so that we can move her. Leigh, Kim, go ahead and take care of the other two.”
Kim, who Mitsuru figured for a Korean from his features, approached where she was sprawled. He wasn't cautious, so he must have figured Leigh had put her down hard earlier, so much so that he wasn’t worried about her now. She kept her head down as he approached, her hands hidden beneath her body, her guns cocked, a ballistics protocol feeding her information about what she couldn’t see.
“Hey Leigh,” he called out, in accent that that confirmed her suspicions. “Do you know who this one is? Or what it is that she does?”
“No,” Mitsuru heard the girl say, her voice devoid of interest. “Why do you care?”
“Well, I thought it would be better to know, that’s all.”
Mitsuru’s body screamed in protest as she forced it into motion. She rolled and twisted, firing as she rolled. She gave him both guns. She didn’t need to, not in a strictly practical sense. But she found it very gratifying on a personal level. Of course, that meant she couldn’t put one gun on Leigh, who her ballistics protocol had located via acoustic analysis, warning her that she was headed toward her and accelerating rapidly, but she didn’t think that it made much difference. She made it to her feet before Kim hit the ground, and spun toward the vampire girl, hoping to get off a shot or two before they collided…
There was no such time. She was only feet away, and moving so fast that all Mitsuru could hope to do was get her arms in the way of the kick that otherwise might literally take her head off. Then, at the last possible moment, her implant hummed into impossible life, a protocol downloading and activating without any input from her. She watched in amazement as viral command text scrolled down the side of her vision in alien, golden letters.
Leigh’s kick landed. Then it bounced off, without even touching Mitsuru’s already broken arm, sparks trailing the girl’s leg from where it had impacted against the localized barrier that somehow shielded Mitsuru’s arms.
Um, hello, Miss Aoki.
Leigh was looking at her in shock. Mitsuru took the opportunity to open fire. While bullets might not have been able to kill the vampire, they must still have hurt, because she ran, moving for nearby cover. Mitsuru couldn’t place the voice in her head at first.
Eerie?
Yes?
Mitsuru continued firing one pistol while she slid the clip out of the other, pulling another from her belt and loading it against her thigh.
When did you become a telepath?
I’m not. I mean, I didn’t. I’m using the network, Miss Aoki. I’m using your implant as a relay. Sorry I had to take control like that, but, well, I think maybe that girl is trying to kill you.
Leigh rounded the corner faster than she thought possible, weaving and accelerating so that Mitsuru couldn’t get a decent shot off. She threw the guns aside in disgust and reached for her knife.
Never mind that. Can you do it again?
Sure! I wrote the protocol myself, you know. I call it Point-Barrier, and…
Mitsuru saw Leigh’s punch coming and crossed her arms in front of her face, figuring that Eerie was too caught up in describing the wonders of her protocol to activate it, but she was wrong. The vampire’s punch was no more effective than her first strike, glancing off the golden barrier that separated them, trailing sparks in the wake of her arm. Figuring that was about as certain as she could expect to be, Mitsuru leapt for Leigh, knife in hand.
Can you keep defending me long enough for me to put her down?
Well, I can try, but it’s hard, you know, and anyway…
She didn’t have time for the rest of Eerie’s warning. She was already up close. She kicked Leigh in the leg, right in the ankle she was pivoting on, and it wasn’t quite kicking stone, but it was close
. It must have hurt on her end, too, because she tripped and fell. Mitsuru followed her down, the knife gripped in both hands, aimed for the upper back, below the shoulder blade. Leigh rolled, but Mitsuru had anticipated that, and made sure that her elbow fell right where Leigh’s face was. Again, Mitsuru wasn’t sure whom it hurt more, but on the other hand, it definitely hurt Leigh. Mitsuru snaked her legs around Leigh’s middle for grip and leverage, and then swung the knife for her throat.
Leigh’s punch was stopped by the point-barrier, but apparently she had gotten tired of that happening, because she allowed the knife to sink into the meat of her shoulder so that she could get a grip on Mitsuru’s shoulder and right arm. Mitsuru tried to shift, tried to lock her legs for better purchase, but the girl was too strong. She peeled Mitsuru off her like gum off the sidewalk and then hurled her, casually, into a wall almost thirty feet away, Mitsuru’s shoulder separating painfully on impact. If it hadn’t been for Eerie’s barrier, Mitsuru suspected the impact might have killed her. Judging from the information her ballistics protocol was feeding her, she had a few seconds before Leigh arrived, and made that a certainty.
Miss Aoki? I don’t think it’s enough… she’s getting stronger or something. Her next shot might actually get through. However, there is… something else I can do.
Do it.
There was hesitation, and in that time, Leigh eliminated half the distance between them.
Miss Aoki, are you sure? Because there is no going back if I do this. You see, your Black Protocol isn’t truly active yet. It’s still restrained. There is more. But if I do it…
There’s no time! Do it now!
Mitsuru wasn’t sure whether Eerie did something or whether Leigh hit her. Either way, she hit the ground, hard. So did, Leigh, crashing into a wall that rapidly became little more than debris. Mitsuru wasn’t entirely sure that she would be able to stand again, but at least Leigh didn’t come popping back up, either. The pain was immense. It threatened to overwhelm her.
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