“Thanks, Xia,” she said, wriggling her toes as he crouched in front of her. “You’re a lifesaver.”
Hayley ran out of water with shampoo in her eyes and her dreadlocked hair, so Min-jun and Grigori were forced to lug pans of water from the tap to the shower reservoir. Hayley draped a towel across her shoulders to preserve her modesty while they refilled the reservoir. Xia finished one set of toenails, and then started the other, each stroke of the tiny brush measured and judicious.
“You are surprisingly good at that,” Grigori observed, dumping the empty pan into the sink. “Where did you learn such a thing?”
“Xia and I have been partners for…actually, I have no idea. A long time. Right, Xia?”
Xia nodded, patiently adjusting as Alice shifted about.
“He’s very good at compensating for my shortcomings,” Alice said, her head resting on the lowest shelf of the refrigerator. “That’s what good partners do.”
“I see,” Min-jun said, picking his tablet back up from the card tablet. “Do you perform a similar role in Xia’s life, Ms. Gallow?”
“You could say that, kiddo,” Alice said, laughing. “We’re both still here, after all. Auditors typically have a limited lifespan.”
Hayley, just emerged from the shower, a towel wrapped around her head, looked horrified.
“Oh, God, really?” Hayley covered her mouth. “Is it that bad? Are we all gonna…?”
“What? No! No, that’s not it. I mean, probably not. An Auditor will usually spend a couple years in the field, and then a few more supervising other Auditors remotely, only working big jobs. Then they move on to other things. You know, like becoming Director, or betraying all of us. That sort of thing.”
“Oh.” Hayley sat down across from Min-jun. “That’s good.”
“That’s the Auditors that don’t die in the field,” Alice said, smiling broadly. “Or manage to piss me off.”
“That’s not constructive,” Hayley said, squeezing her matted locks dry one at a time. “You’re supposed to be the Chief Auditor, Ms. Gallow. You could at least try to be a leader.”
Several jaws dropped, including Alice’s, but Hayley just continued to dry her hair, ignoring the stares set in her direction.
Xia finished Alice’s little toe, dabbed a tiny bit of excess paint from the skin beside the nail with a tissue, and then nodded once before retreating.
No one said much of anything else until the evening came.
Alice had the ringer volume turned up on her cell, so when she started to get a flood of notifications, everyone knew about it.
Alice fiddled with her phone while the Auditors waited with differing amounts of patience.
“What’s the matter, Ms. Gallow?” Hayley asked. “Still don’t know where to start?”
Alice continued to tap away.
“No. Becca finally figured out how to send me an email – I mean, the Director did – so we’ve got our way out of here. I just need to make a quick call...”
“Who are you calling?”
“I’m on the phone,” Alice said, putting it to her ear. “Shut up now.”
Hayley flopped back on her bunk in frustration.
***
Hans Model was elbow-deep in a disassembled console when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He glanced at the man across the room, and the man nodded encouragingly, gesturing for him to answer. Hans took out the phone, glanced at the notification screen, and was just able to keep from sighing when he saw the caller ID.
The call was from a field phone assigned to the Auditors, a unit stored locally in an emergency cache.
It was already a bad day, Hans reflected, and there was no way this was going to make it any better.
He tapped his phone and then put it to his ear, saying nothing, half-heartedly praying that there would be no one at the other end.
“I’ve forgotten all the recognition codes,” a familiar voice said, infused with a familiar glee. “You’re going to help me anyway.”
“Chief Auditor Gallow,” Hans said, for the benefit of the other man in the room. “I am Field Supervisor Hans Model, and I run the Las Vegas station. We’ve been instructed by the Director, of course. No recognition code is required.”
“How nice of Becca to anticipate that I’d forget,” Alice said, nearly shouting. Hans moved the phone further from his ear. “I need your help, Hans.”
“Of course, Chief Auditor,” Hans said. “What can I do?”
“I need a fucking apport, obviously. You run an apport station, yeah?”
“Ah, yes, we do…”
“Perfect. I need to get back to Central. I’ve got priority access from the Director.”
“I would love to help, Chief Auditor, but there is a problem,” Hans said, in complete honesty. There were several problems, actually, but one of those problems was sitting on the other side of the control booth, smiling and holding a gun on Hans, so he wasn’t about to say anything unnecessary. “We are not online yet. The disturbance in the Ether damaged crucial systems, and we will need to realign the equipment before we can…”
“Becca said the beacons were working.”
“They are. The Network is still down, however, and the Ether is very disturbed. We must do the calculations by hand and configure the station manually. It is quite a process, I’m afraid.”
“Hans, you really aren’t making my day any better with all this shit,” Alice grumbled. “How long do you need to get up and running?”
“How long?” Hans said, as if thinking aloud, though it was for the benefit of the man across the room. “Let me think.”
Just tell her what you told me two hours ago, Hans. Best to be honest.
“Ah, yes, we can be ready in twenty-four hours.”
“A day? A whole day? You’re killing me!”
“I’m very sorry, Chief Auditor,” Hans said, with complete sincerity, unable to take his eyes from the gun pointed at his chest. “I wish I could do better for you, but current conditions are as unfavorable as I have seen in my career, and without the assistance of the Network and the servers in Central, we must be very careful.”
“People are gonna die, Hans,” Alice said. “Every extra minute it takes me to get to Central, lives get lost. You understand that?”
“Perfectly,” Hans said, staring at the gun.
“Then get to work,” Alice said. “You have no idea how much is at stake.”
Hans suspected that he might, but he did not say anything about that.
“You need any extra hands?” Alice asked. “A couple of my people are pretty technical. You’re out by the airport, right? We aren’t far. We can be there in…”
The man across the room shook his head.
“That won’t be necessary, Chief Auditor,” Hans blurted. “I have a full staff on hand already, and I doubt that they will do their best work in the presence of the Auditors, with all due respect.”
“I don’t know, Hans,” Alice said. “I’m a pretty good motivator.”
Hans looked at the man across the room desperately.
Their Etheric Signatures, Hans. Tell them the shields are down.
“Our shields are down. The hard installation as well as the staff telepath,” Hans said, trying to put as much conviction in his voice as was possible. “We are completely open to any sort of scan or remote viewing, Ms. Gallow.”
“Really? That’s weird,” Alice said. “Everything is intact over here.”
“We had a cascade of system failures,” Hans said, sweating heavily. “If you were to come to the station, your Etheric Signatures would be freely visible, Chief Auditor. To maintain the integrity of the station, we need to limit that window of exposure.”
“You sure are bossy for someone who is supposed to do what I say, Hans.”
“I meant no disrespect! I have my people to look after,” Hans babbled. “The same as you, Ms. Gallow. I’m sure you understand.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Hans. I really wouldn’t.”
He just waited, afraid to say anything more.
“Okay, fine,” Alice said finally. “We’ll wait here. You’ve got one day. Okay?”
“Yes, Chief Auditor,” Hans said, nodding eagerly. “We will be ready.”
“Yeah, I figured you would,” Alice said. “Nothing is ever easy, is it?”
The connection went dead. Hans sighed heavily and wiped the sweat from his face.
“I thought that went well, all things considered,” Alistair said, setting the gun aside. “I’ll need you to expedite the repairs. Neither of us wants me to be here when Alice Gallow shows up, now, do we?”
***
“This is it?”
He couldn’t see Daniel but guessed where he was from the weeds he crushed with each step.
“This is it,” Daniel confirmed. “That’s the car intel flagged.”
The warehouse sat on a lot of dead grass and crumbling asphalt, aluminum siding reflecting the setting sun, the wooden skeleton of a former barn sinking into the overgrown marsh behind it. Skinny willow trees had forced their way through the gravel roadway and the parking lot, providing the Black Sun Operators with plenty of cover on their approach. There was no wire on the chain-link fence that lined the perimeter, and the lock on the gate had rusted away long ago.
If not for the handful of cars parked among the weeds in front of the building, Simeon would have thought it empty.
“Okay,” Simeon said, setting his bag down. “Let’s get ready.”
“You’ll want to ditch the rifle,” Daniel advised, his voice coming from directly behind. “There’s concrete beneath the siding.”
Simeon nodded and opened the mouth of his bag, digging through the contents of his field kit.
The Glock 23 was compact and pleasingly rounded at the edges, the magazine that protruded from the grip loaded with hollow points; the bullets were copper-jacketed and dimpled at the business end. The nylon holster looped around his belt and put the pistol on his hip. A snub-barreled magnum went into a holster at his ankle, for emergencies. He strapped a black-washed knife to the small of his back, and then considered the ballistic armor and helmet in his kit bag for a long moment.
A muffled scream came from inside the shabby warehouse. Simeon decided that he had no more time to prepare.
“You ready?”
Simeon filled both of his pockets with extra magazines.
“Ready,” Daniel said, flickering into existence at his elbow, just long enough for Simeon to see him nod. “Shall I take the lead?”
Simeon nodded, concealing the kit bag and rifle beneath a nearby mesquite bush.
“Find a point of entry,” Simeon said, butterflies in his stomach. “I’ll breach.”
“Sounds good,” Daniel said, nothing more than footprints in the grass. “Do you think there are any Thule family members in there? Or just little fish?”
Simeon did not say anything, concentrating on following his invisible companion, and staying low and out of view. The warehouse windows were boarded over and the parking lot was desolate, but that didn’t mean they weren’t being watched.
The worst part of his plan was leaving Brandon Cree with the refugees, Simeon thought, wincing as he stepped through a cluster of thistles, thorns piercing his fatigues and snagging in his skin. Lacking a true telepath, they had to rely on the anti-telepathy routines that Black Sun telepaths had performed before departure. If the Operators in the warehouse included a competent telepath, they would have little trouble spotting their Etheric Signatures.
No alarm was raised as they advanced, however, and there was no response from within the building, psychic or otherwise.
The Black Sun Operators crept past the cars in the overgrown parking lot, and then worked their way through the brush on the left side of the building, pushing through blackberries and poison ivy. The steady putter of a small generator became obvious as they approached the rear of the building, the ground covered with a layer of sun-bleached garbage.
“Next to the rain gutter,” Daniel hissed in his ear. “An open window.”
A faint light spilled from the window, so dim that Simeon suspected the source was closer to the center of the building.
His hackles raised as he crossed the final meters to the window, his skin breaking out in goosebumps. He put a hand on the grip of his pistol and moved carefully, knees bent and head down.
The sound of his steps in the gravel seemed absurdly loud, and his breath was ragged by the time he reached the side of the building. Simeon threw an arm over the windowsill, and then vaulted inside.
The room was choked with garbage and agricultural detritus, forcing Simeon to wind between pallets of stacked fertilizer and cattle feed, rusting gas cans, and bits and pieces of plows, harnesses, and tractors. The minimal light fed into the room from a door near the far wall, the door partially obstructed by a stack of tires larger than Simeon, the rubber treads worn and gouged.
Simeon turned sideways and wriggled between the tires and the door frame, holding his breath and scraping his chest painfully at the narrowest point. He was glad at least that he had left behind the armor, since he would have been forced to strip it off to make it through the narrowest section. Rubbing his abraded chest and wincing, he crept out into the lighted hallway.
The floor was crudely leveled concrete, the walls precast blocks of the same material. There were water stains and black and green mildew everywhere, and the air was earthy and fetid.
Three more doors opened into a massive, dark room like the one from which he had just emerged.
A murmur of conversation came from the end of the hall.
“Up ahead,” Daniel whispered, close enough for Simeon to smell sweat and old smoke. “What do you think?”
Simeon shrugged, and drew his pistol.
“What do you think?” Daniel asked. “Quiet or loud?”
“You go in right behind me. I’ll distract. You secure the target.”
“You know, that sounded a whole lot like an order, and if you’ll recall…”
“Not the time,” Simeon hissed. “Let’s do it.”
He moved, hoping that Daniel would follow.
He did not look back – there would be nothing to see, either way.
Simeon peeked cautiously around the doorway. It was too dark to be certain, but the room looked empty.
Simeon moved through the gloom, doing his best not to trip over seed bags and discarded farm equipment.
Light leaked from beneath the closed door at the end of the hall, along with a murmur of muddled conversation, which clarified slightly as he approached. Simeon felt agitation in the voice of one of the speakers, insistently talking over a smaller and more desperate voice, and he did not like it.
Chandi Tuesday had been taken by Thule Cartel forces almost fourteen hours earlier. Given time in transit, that was a probable twelve or more hours in interrogation.
It was a relief that she was still capable of speaking.
He tried the door gently, and the knob turned just a fraction in his hand.
Simeon turned and nodded to a man he could not see, whom he was not entirely certain was there to see it.
He opened the door, visions of other interrogations discovered too late dancing in his head, the pistol held close to his chest.
There were shouts and sudden activity as Simeon burst in. Operators scrambled for weapons or position, screaming orders at Simeon and each other.
Chandi Tuesday was tied to a chair in the middle of the room. A man with a severely receded hairline stood beside her, his fingers pressed against her forehead. An IV stand stood nearby, plugged into her arm.
Simeon opened fire, keeping his shots at head level to avoid hitting Chandi.
He clipped a man who went running for a rifle on a nearby bench, his first shot clipping the top of his head. Simeon stepped close, putting one foot on the man’s chest, and then put two more rounds through his head.
“That’s enough, asshole!” A Thul
e Operator aimed a sawed-off double barrel at Simeon. “Drop the gun!”
Simeon replied by putting a bullet in the man’s neck.
The remaining two men opened fire with rifles while a woman behind them activated a telekinetic protocol, hurling a barrage of cinderblocks and tractor parts. Simeon ignored them all and focused his fire on the man touching Chandi’s forehead, following the lesson drilled into him from childhood – neutralize the telepath first.
The nearest Operator fired both barrels of his shotgun, while a chubby man in a leather jacket to his right fired a long revolver fit with an even longer suppressor. A cinderblock was launched at his head, while an axle and an enormous tire were hurled telekinetically in his direction.
The bullets flattened and the buckshot deformed against the vivid blue pinpoints of his barrier protocol. The cinderblock was reduced to sand and gravel, while the axle was sheered in two. The barrier manifested at the point of contact, guided by what his teachers had theorized was an instinctual form of precognition.
Untouched, Simeon returned fire.
He hit the balding telepath with his third shot, catching him in the moustache and shattering his jaw and front teeth. Chandi Tuesday screamed, her voice muffled by a strip of silver tape that covered her mouth. Simeon fired again and downed the reeling telepath, and then emptied the rest of the magazine into the prostrate man, filling his damp sport jacket with holes.
The remaining Thule Operators exchanged fearful looks.
“Wait a minute. I give up, okay?” the nearest gunman said, tossing aside his shotgun. “I know who you are. You’re Yurchenko, aren’t you? The Black Sun Donbass division commander?” His voice was too loud, either from fear or the gunfire. “I surrender.”
He put his hands up, earning a look of shock and scorn from the last of the Thule Operators.
“Aníbal, you fucking coward!” The muzzle of the Operator’s gun wavered. “What are you doing?”
“Stand down, Belle,” he replied. “I heard about this guy. There’s nothing…”
The woman took a step forward. Daniel appeared right beside her and opened her up at the belly with his machete, the whole thing appearing to happen by some ghastly magic.
The Church of Sleep (Central Series Book 5) Page 7