Elite: A Hunter novel

by Mercedes Lackey

  “And the minions they brought were not the sharpest knives in the drawer,” added his brother. “Minotaurs? Harpies? A Gog and Magog? Pretty dim, all of them, when left to themselves. If the Mages had been controlling the underlings, that still could have been a viable attack force—but they weren’t. As a distraction, though, they were perfect. They forced us to divide our forces, and that gave them an opening to separate Sturgis from the rest of the army Mages so they could grab him.”

  Kent held up his hand. “No need to convince me. We were played like fiddles. I don’t know why the Othersiders wanted Sturgis, but it can’t be for any reason that’s good for us.”

  They all discussed this for a while; meanwhile, I had been struck by an entirely different idea, and I wondered how many of them had thought of the thing I’d just thought of.

  In order to pull all this off, somehow the Othersiders had been able to communicate with Ace while he was under observation and incarceration.

  Kent pointed at Archer, Hammer, and Hawk. “You three are the senior Elite and our best tacticians; you know everyone’s strengths and weaknesses and how best they can work together. I want you to brainstorm combinations with me today. The rest of you, take your normal routine. All but you, Joy, I want to see you for five minutes first.”

  Does he have cam footage of the Folk Mage talking to me after all? I throttled down anxiety. The rest filed out—all but the three he’d indicated and me. “Joy,” Kent said soberly. “Sturgis was after your head, and I don’t imagine that’s changed at all. How are you doing?”

  I bit my lip. Tell the truth and make him think I wasn’t up to being Elite? Or try to hide it and get caught anyway and prove I wasn’t? Either way I could be in trouble. “Better than last night,” I said finally, deciding to try and cut down the middle ground. “When it happened, all I could think of was Ace getting his hands on me and throwing me to the Folk. And the same last night. It was a rough night.”

  Kent nodded in sympathy. “Not a surprise, I’d have been more surprised if you weren’t worried. So what are your thoughts?”

  “I’m still worried,” I admitted. “But I’ve got a pack of eleven, and two of them used to be his. They should know him better than anyone. I’ll put my trust in my Hounds.”

  He nodded, satisfied. “Just to be on the safe side, I’m going to move your quarters. He shouldn’t be able to get into the city, and he’s a wanted man; every cam system has his face in it. But he’s human; he can pass the Barriers without getting fried, and he might get some sort of illusion magic from the Folk that will change his face even for the cams, so I’m taking no chances.”

  That actually hadn’t occurred to me last night, and I think I would have been in hysterics if it had. I resolved to sleep with one of my Hounds from now on.

  “It’ll be taken care of by the time you’re back from your stroll in the underground,” Kent continued. “Just check your Perscom.”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied, and took that as a dismissal.

  The storm sewers were very uneventful. Just small fry, and very few of them; if I’d had a channel, my viewers would have been very disappointed. By the time I got back, as Kent had promised, all my things had been moved to another part of HQ. I got a slightly better suite of rooms out of it; the shower was amazing, and it did so many things that it came with its own manual. The next time I needed to have a good long cry, I could do so seated under a waterfall of hot water, and finish up by steaming myself in a steam bath or in a one-person hot tub. No more sitting on the bottom of the tub and blubbering—I could recline and weep in style.

  I still felt shaken and scared and desperately wanted to go back to the Mountain. I had done a pretty good job of covering that while I was patrolling, but not so much once I was alone. I contemplated having another good cry in my new shower…or maybe, going to the lounge and joining in the snarky critique group, if they’d still have me now that I was Elite. Should I call Josh? I wanted to, I wanted to so badly, but…

  Poop. I’m calling him.

  “Hey,” Josh said as soon as he accepted. “You all right? Need me to come stand guard over you while you sleep? I look awesome with a fire-ax.”

  That made me laugh for the first time since Ace escaped. And it also let me know that Josh knew about Ace escaping. “No, not really. I think Bya would resent you trying to take over his job.”

  “Well, all right, then. In that case, how about if we go for a walk in the Hub? It’s fun this time of night, and it’s not something you’ve ever seen on foot before.” He paused for a moment. “This is one of those ‘hide in plain sight’ things. Unless cams are specifically looking for you, and they won’t be, you’ll go unnoticed. Everyone knows that Very Important People only travel by pod. Nobody is going to pay any attention to us if we just dress like normal people. There’s street food if we get hungry.”

  That pretty much decided me. I’d wanted to see the Hub afoot anyway, and I was used to doing a lot of walking. Josh would probably get tired before I did.

  “I’d like that,” I said. He smiled.

  “I’ll send a pod,” he replied, and before I could reply, he signed off.

  On a whim, I dressed in some of my old clothing from home; the oatmeal-colored tunic that Kei had embroidered for me, a wide leather cincher belt, and my doeskin pants. I left my hair loose and didn’t put on any makeup at all. Then I went out to the door to wait for the pod. The sun set while I was still en route.

  It dropped me off at a corner just on the edge of the Hub, and Josh was waiting under a streetlight for me. As if he had somehow read my mind, he was in some of the casual stuff he’d worn during the storm, and he looked nothing at all like a Psimon. I was positively ambushed by the relief and happiness I felt seeing him like that, waiting for me. I hadn’t realized until just now how much better I felt when I was with him.

  He grinned to see me. “See now, here we are, just two turnips in the big city, going for a stroll to gawk at the lights and all the things famous people do. Nobody is going to pay the least bit of attention to us.”

  That actually sounded very appealing. Right now, being completely anonymous was exactly what I needed.

  We held hands and wandered in the direction of things that looked interesting. I had not expected it, but I found the lights outside clubs and entertainment places rather lovely. We joined the crowds who were not privileged to go inside and watched the lights change on the façades of places like the Strauss Palais, the Jungle Club, and the House of Tech. I hadn’t realized when I’d gone to the Strauss Palais that the lighting went through a cycle; one palace façade faded and was replaced by another, all equally fanciful. And why not? The only thing that these grand “structures” depended on were the whims and talent of the artists who created them.

  I also hadn’t noticed that there was waltz music playing outside and a rose scent in the air. Was that to make the people out here feel as if they were a small part of the experience?

  Most of the people—a lot of them dressed pretty much like we were—didn’t seem to be here for the lights, though. They watched every pod going by like kingfishers at a pond hunting minnows, waiting to see if the pod stopped and who it dropped off. Most of the time they were disappointed, as whoever it was that got out was not someone who had a vid channel. But once, it was an actor and actress, and not long after that, it was Dazzle and one of the greenies—Levy, I think it was. That surprised me a bit; I hadn’t pictured Dazzle as liking Straussing, but there she was, with her hair all piled on the top of her head, a little crown holding it in place, and wearing one of those “cake dresses,” bell-shaped and covered in fluffy lace ruffles. It looked good on her, and she moved naturally in it. I’d have felt utterly stupid in such a getup.

  When the people gathered around saw her, they pressed forward, calling her name, while we hung back. Dazzle laughed and pulled pictures out of some hidden pocket in that enormous dress and signed until everyone was happy. Only then did she and the greenie g
o in.

  “Why didn’t we get any of that when we came here?” I whispered as we moved on.

  “Because when extremely important people—like you—are supposed to arrive, the venues send out security to keep people back,” Josh whispered. “When you turn up to something like that”—he waved at the Strauss Palais behind us—“you’re there to be seen, not do fan service. Every minute you spend signing pictures is a boring minute on your channel. It’s astonishing how much is stage-managed and you won’t even know it unless someone tells you.”

  Well, I was pretty surprised. And resentful and glad all over again that I was Elite. If Josh and I came here again, I’d make sure to do what Dazzle had just done.

  When we got thirsty and hungry—well, Josh was hungry, anyway—we stopped at a food truck, which was really a cargo pod with a window set in the middle that served as a food counter. “Street food” is what Josh called it. Pretty basic stuff, very cheap and filling. Falafel and lettuce, peppers, and tomatoes in a pita. It reminded me of home, actually. I was hungrier than I thought after I took the first bite. Maybe my stomach was settling after all the anxiety.

  There was a bigger crowd outside the Jungle Club; we didn’t bother joining them because I didn’t care what notable notable was turning up to dance. But the lights on the club façade were really amazing in a completely different way than the Strauss Palais. It was like we were on a river, passing through deep jungle. Now and then there would be some animal drinking there; sometimes the critter would just pick up its head and stare, other times it would bolt into the deep green underbrush. There was music out here too, mostly drums, and the scent in the air was something heavy and exotic.

  “Had enough of being a turnip seeing the sights?” Josh asked me after a while. I nodded, because to be honest, although the real turnips were probably looking at shop windows, admiring the clothing they couldn’t afford, or the accessories, or the gadgets, I was paying attention to those broad expanses of glass, and worrying about how vulnerable they’d be if there was an attack.

  Josh turned down another street after consulting his Perscom, and I saw something unexpected just a block away.

  Trees.

  Well-lit trees, mind, but trees, and lots of them. We headed in that direction, and when we reached the end of the block, we were standing across the street from a one-block-square bit of forest.

  There was a waterfall at one end that fed into a “stream” that cut the whole area in half. And it was all covered by a wire dome.

  “People need nature,” Josh said as I stared and blinked. “It’s called an ‘arboretum.’ It’s one of the nice things around here that you don’t have to pay to get into. The dome keeps most trouble out. Lots of not-obvious protection on the spot, so the very few Othersiders that get in through the wire don’t last very long.”

  Josh held the gate open for me, and we both went inside.

  A graveled path led from the gate, meandering away under the trees. And it was so weird to me because it all looked so wrong. After a while, I figured out why. It was all manicured and groomed, until it bore about as much resemblance to wilderness as the version of “me” that had gone Straussing with Josh bore to the real me. The path was so smooth it looked as if it was someone’s entire job to come through here every hour or so and rake the gravel, the way some of the monks at the Monastery did in the Zen garden. The grass was no more than an inch high…everywhere…and flowers and (very obviously) ornamental foliage plants gave the impression of being carefully placed, out of the way of trampling feet. Bushes were trimmed so that no errant twigs reached out to snag the unwary, and as for the trees, they were a carefully spaced mixture of deciduous and conifers, arranged so that everything would still be attractive even after the deciduous trees lost their leaves.

  We rambled along the path, and I sighed. “This is the first time I’ve felt ordinary since I got here,” I said finally.

  “That was the point,” Josh told me. By this time we were over by the waterfall, and he gestured at a bench seat near it; it was in an extremely well-lit spot, so none of the other couples had claimed it. I went and sat down, and he sat down next to me.

  “So, how are you holding up?” he asked, taking my hand again. “Don’t worry about saying anything you shouldn’t. The sound of the water will cover up anything we say unless someone goes to the trouble of finding this recording and running background-noise removal on it.”

  “And if someone does that, they’ll be someone entitled to know what we’re talking about anyway,” I said, giving him a small smile. “I’m…I dunno. Scared. I think as scared as I was when we didn’t know who it was that was after me. It’s a different sort of scared, though. Then we didn’t know anything. Now we know it’s someone who knows Apex and Hunter HQ inside and out.”

  “He still has to get to you,” Josh reminded me. “You’ve got a lot of layers of protection between you and him.”

  I nodded. “I’m not as scared as I’d be if I was running solo patrols in Spillover, I guess. There were already Wyverns and stuff out there, and Ace wouldn’t have any trouble at all setting up an ambush for me. If They let him, that is. That’s the thing. We’re all groping in the dark about this.”

  “We’ve all been given orders to keep watch for him,” Josh said somberly. By “we” of course, he meant the Psimons. “Which really just breaks down to watch for a crazy person, so it’s not much help.”

  “Even less help if he’s wearing the equivalent of a Psi-shield,” I pointed out. “The Folk have magic and psionics. Given that we’ve never been able to tell when one of the Folk was about unless we laid eyeballs on him, it’s pretty logical to assume that they do have something like a Psi-shield and they might be able to put it on Ace.”

  I let that sink in for him for a moment. He bit his lip. “So, if Ace has a Psi-shield…and some sort of way to disguise himself…”

  “It’s possible to cross the Barriers without going through the pylons if you’re human,” I reminded him. “It hurts like bloody hell if you aren’t inside a vehicle, but it can be done.”

  “It can?” Josh’s face got a bit pinched. “I didn’t know that.”

  “There’s no reason why he couldn’t just get himself down the train line to a settlement and buy a train ticket to Apex either,” I continued. “You Apex Cits are used to thinking that no one can buy anything without a bank account tied to your Perscom. But out there”—I waved my hand—“little towns and villages don’t have banks, and a lot of people wouldn’t trust their income to something that can get fried in an EMP anyway. We deal in physical cash; banks with Apex-issued scrip. If Ace wants to get legitimately inside Apex, all he needs to do is go to some small place with something valuable he can sell, like jewelry, then take the money to a train station and buy a ticket to Apex.”

  Josh looked at me as if he didn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Yes, but once he’s here, there’s—” Josh stopped. “I was going to start detailing all the security stuff. And none of that matters to a Mage. Does it?”

  “Not if all the stories about how Folk Mages have been able to disguise themselves or even turn invisible are true. Especially one like Ace, who knows Apex,” I said, glumly. “Heck, the easiest way for him to disguise himself would be as a Psimon. You guys are always Psi-shielded right? So that would be natural. No one ever tries to look a Psimon in the eye—”

  “No, I can rule that out right now. We’ve got ID chips in our collar insignia, and every time a Psimon passes any kind of scanner, it registers. Even a Perscom if you point it at the right place.” He nodded as I looked at him skeptically.

  “Why?” I asked bluntly.

  “Who’d be easier to impersonate than a Psimon?” he pointed out. “So if a scanner registers a Psimon uniform but no ID chip, it sends out an alert.”

  We sat together, holding hands, but I didn’t feel all warm and fluttery inside. I felt sick and scared.

  And this conversation didn’t seem to be mak
ing him feel any better either. It was more as if, once we’d gotten obliquely on the topic of the Psimons, he was feeling stressed out. There were probably plenty of things he could be stressed out about, of course. It was pretty clear to me at this point that PsiCorps didn’t want people to know much about Psimons. And PsiCorps didn’t want Psimons to get too familiar with anyone at all. But I had the feeling there was more to it than that, even though I couldn’t put my finger on it. Did it have anything to do with what I was doing for my uncle? Did he know about the dead Psimons in the sewer and wasn’t telling me about it? Why would he hide that from me? “Sorry I spoiled the night out,” I said after a long and increasingly uncomfortable pause.

  He sighed. “I’m the one that brought the whole mess up. I’ll tell you what, this has got PsiCorps and the army and the Prefecture stirred up. Your uncle is coming out looking good, since he’s the one that wanted Ace in solitary confinement in a maximum security cell, but everyone else is trying to cover their asses. The army is blaming the PsiCorps operatives that were supposed to be keeping Ace under tight observation for not noticing that he was planning this escape. PsiCorps is blaming the army for letting Ace out on such a long leash. There’s always been a fair amount of competition in the premier’s cabinet, but this incident is bringing the knives out.”

  We stayed there for a little while longer and I even relaxed a bit, but neither of us went any further than a couple of kisses. I didn’t want to “perform for the cameras,” and after a while I remembered again that among all the other safeguards in this place, there just might be a Psimon stationed here around the clock. Josh absolutely would not want PsiCorps snooping on him getting romantic. That could get him in a lot of trouble. It was one thing to perform for the cameras, but it was quite another for a Psimon to risk himself getting attached to someone.

  So we ended the evening going back to HQ together in a pod; we might have made out a bit in the pod, but both of us still had Ace in the back of our minds, and something like that isn’t going to make you feel in the least bit like fooling around.