Sun

by J. C. Andrijeski

  She’d approached so quietly, Brooks hadn’t heard her move.

  Kneeling in the dirt not far from her, Chandre took a metal spike, what must also be an organic, and drove it into the hard ground. Standing, she stomped it deeper with a US Army combat boot. Only then did Brooks notice it had a thin chain attached to it.

  She flinched back when the seer approached her, then grimaced when she saw the cuff at the end of the chain.

  “Only one wrist,” the seer said. “The chain is long enough. You should sleep.”

  Relaxing marginally, Brooks held out her right arm in resignation.

  The seer clicked the cuff over her wrist, then stood again, walking back to her large rucksack. Pulling out a rolled up blanket, she returned to Brooks and unrolled it with a flick of her wrists, making a thin pallet for the ground.

  “There’s a thermal wrap in your bag,” the seer grunted, after she’d patted down the blanket. “I’d pull it out if I were you. It will get cold in a few hours.”

  Brooks grimaced, but only nodded.

  This wasn’t her first night out here.

  Reaching for the bag, she rummaged around inside for the thermal wrap while the seer set up her own bed on the opposite side of the fire.

  Finding the metallic, collapsible material at the bottom of her nylon bag, Brooks pulled it out and around her shoulders, scooting back to lay on the blanket Chandre put out for her. The cuff around her wrist was annoying, but it was close enough to the blanket that she had plenty of room to arrange her body.

  The ground was hard. It was also cold.

  The thermal wrap helped. It also got warmer the longer she lay there, looking up at the stars, watching her breath plume.

  In minutes, she was dead asleep.

  SHE WOKE WITH a start.

  Jerking under the metallic wrap, she stared up, breathing harder, sending thicker plumes of steam into the sky. She strained her ears, listening to the silence.

  It was cold. It felt predawn cold.

  More importantly, at least right then, something had woken her up. She didn’t know if it was a dream, or something she’d heard out in the desert.

  Still breathing harder than normal, she turned her head, looking across to where the seer had made her own bed.

  The fire had burned almost completely down. A few coals shone between darker logs, but she could barely feel any heat, and the steam coming from her lips was thicker now. Luckily, the thermal wrap reflected all of her body heat back at her, so that she only shivered a little.

  She could see the seer. She lay on her back, the rifle by her side.

  From her breathing, she was asleep.

  Whatever woke Brooks, it hadn’t woken the seer.

  Something about that simple fact reassured her. She couldn’t imagine anything dangerous waking her and not waking the seer.

  Pulling her arm deeper under the thermal, she remembered the cuff when it got stopped by the chain. She must have moved further from the stake in her sleep; the chain had less play than she remembered when she first lay down.

  Turning her head, she looked over her shoulder for where the chain disappeared into the ground.

  Staring at it, she frowned.

  Her eyes returned to where the seer lay on her back, breathing deeply and evenly under her own metallic wrap.

  Brooks meant what she said, when she told the seer she didn’t have a prayer of outrunning her, especially out here, in the middle of nowhere and with no human civilization anywhere in screaming distance.

  Chandre would pick her up in a matter of hours.

  Well, under normal conditions, she would.

  Brooks’ eyes returned to where she’d seen the seer stomp the metal spike into the packed ground, leaving her chained to their campsite like an unreliable dog.

  The stake had been long––and sharp.

  Carefully, Brooks tugged the metallic wrap off her body, doing it as silently as she could.

  Rolling to her side, she climbed to her feet.

  She’d lost weight, just being out here for the past week. That, added to the weight she’d lost since C2-77 hit and she’d been forced to go into hiding, made her the leanest she could remember being since college.

  She’d also gained muscle.

  She walked to the stake, glanced periodically at where the seer lay, making sure she hadn’t moved. Moving as silently as she could, she treaded carefully around where the top of the stake lined up flush with the hard red earth. Tugging experimentally on the chain with both hands, she leaned into it more when it didn’t move.

  A few seconds later, she had her whole weight on it.

  Digging her booted feet into the dirt, she leaned into it harder, pulling with both arms and leaning backwards at an angle––gritting her teeth to remain silent, to control her breath.

  She was starting to despair––

  When it moved.

  Not much, but she felt the jerk.

  Pausing briefly, she caught her breath, glancing at the seer and panting as quietly as she could. She was sweating from exertion, enough that the cold air felt good when she just stood there, letting it wash over her.

  She didn’t rest long.

  Throwing her weight, arms and legs behind the chain a second time, she pulled with all of her might.

  That time, it started to give after only a few seconds.

  She watched the metal slide up slowly. When it was about halfway out of the ground, she pulled her weight up somewhat, so she wouldn’t fall into the dirt when it jerked free at the end. She wasn’t worried about falling so much as making noise that might wake the seer.

  For the last part, she went down on one knee, using her hands to tug it the rest of the way out of the red earth.

  Seconds later, she held it in her hand.

  She panted, silent, looking at the sharp spike at the end of the stake.

  Then she turned, glancing over her shoulder at the sleeping seer.

  Wrapping the chain carefully around her arm so it wouldn’t drag and make noise, she rose shakily to her feet. Gritting her teeth, she wrapped her fingers tightly around the stake, and held her breath, walking closer.

  She kept her mind blank, her eyes on the seer.

  She listened for any change––in her breathing, in the position of her hands or head.

  Kneeling down next to the seer’s body, she bit her lip, hard enough to taste blood.

  Still barely breathing, she raised the stake high above her head. She turned her head, staring at the seer’s face, at her closed eyes, the braids fanning the dark blue blanket.

  She held it there for a few seconds, panting.

  Then, making up her mind––

  ––she drove it down into the seer’s thigh with every ounce of her strength.

  It shocked her how easily it went in.

  It didn’t jar her arm until it hit bone, and by then, the seer was thrashing.

  She kicked her off, screaming, her eyes wide as she threw Brooks off her with a hard buck of her body. Stumbling backwards, Brooks tripped over the stone around the fire pit, falling into the fire itself before she shrieked and pulled herself up.

  Still stumbling backwards, she reached the other side of the fire, closer to her own blanket.

  Panting, she raised her head, staring at the seer in the dark.

  Chandre held her thigh in both hands, gasping, her face contorted in pain.

  She ripped the gun off the blanket while Brooks watched, raising it and aiming it right at her. Brooks held up a hand, panting.

  “No! Stop!” she shouted.

  “Stop?” The seer panted, her voice filled with pain. “Stop?”

  She swore in the seer language, letting out a progression of what had to be obscenities in a near-lyrical string.

  “…di'lanlente a' guete. Stop? D’gaos! I should shoot you right now!” The seer paused only to gasp for breath, still gripping her thigh where the stake stuck out of her. “I should shoot you in the fucking face! I should k
ill you right now, you worm ridvak cunt! This is the thanks I get? For giving you enough rope to sleep on your back?”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill you!” Brooks continued to hold up her hand, panting as she looked down the barrel of the assault rifle. “I only wanted to slow you down!”

  “Slow me down?” The seer stared at her. “You’ve killed me, cousin. Moreover, you’ve killed yourself! We’re both dead. Do you understand? Or haven’t you yet figured out that we’re being followed? Who the hell do you think would follow you out here, if it wasn’t Shadow’s people?”

  “Your own people, maybe?” Brooks shot back. “Or had you forgotten they’d like to kill you too?”

  Chandre’s voice grew colder still.

  “My people are not following us… cousin. I left them with wounded. I left them with seers who would die if they went unattended. I left them with an operational nightmare to deal with before they could prioritize coming after me.”

  She swallowed, her voice growing thick.

  “I left them without their leaders. With the Bridge and Sword dead, Balidor would order them back. He would need them to aid in protecting the remaining List seers.”

  There was a silence after she spoke.

  Brooks could only stare at her for a few seconds, making out her outline in the dark. The stars were so bright, she could see the seer even without the moon.

  She believed her. She couldn’t have said why, but she did.

  Slowly, she lowered her hand.

  “I’m sorry––” she began.

  “Fuck you, with your sorry! What the hell can I do with your sorry––”

  She turned her head, cutting off her own words as her eyes went wide, their whites visible even in the dark by the burnt down fire.

  Brooks followed her gaze, tensing before she knew what she was reacting to.

  They were no longer alone.

  Figures appeared out of the dark, forming a circle around their camp and around the two of them. They moved silently––so silently, Brooks blinked up at those nearest to her, wondering if they were ghosts.

  For a long moment, they didn’t speak. They only stood there, staring down at them.

  Then Chandre raised her gun, aiming it at the form nearest to her.

  He stepped forward, holding up a hand.

  “No,” he said only. “Do not. Or we will be forced to kill both of you.”

  There was a pause.

  Then, defeat evident in her movements, not to mention her facial expression, Chandre lowered the rifle slowly back to the red dirt. Releasing the stock once the barrel rested on her blanket, she raised her hands slowly in the universal sign of surrender, still gasping in pain, the metal spike glinting faintly in starlight where it stuck out of her leg.

  Seeing the grim, pained look on Chandre’s face, Brooks realized she had no choice but to do the same. Raising her hands carefully above her head, she slid up to her knees, looking around as more and more faces appeared out of the dark.

  They must be seers.

  They must be, or Chandre would have pushed them by now.

  Staring around at those grim faces, seeing how hopelessly outnumbered they were, it struck Brooks that Chandre had been right.

  They were both already dead.

  14

  THE LAST PEOPLE

  TOREK ROSE SLOWLY from a crouch, looking around at the rest of them.

  Dust coated his face and arms, giving him a dusty, reddish complexion in Declan’s mirrored sunglasses, even apart from the sunburn and tan that darkened his skin from the desert sun.

  He wiped his face with a checkered cloth he wore around his neck. He’d first put it on for the occasional dust storms they’d encountered out here, but now he found himself tying it around his neck every morning. Even without dust storms per se, grit pitted his skin painfully whenever the wind kicked up in the right direction.

  “How far?” Declan said, his voice cold.

  Declan’s voice hadn’t changed much since they’d first found the bodies of their friends at that intelligence building at Langley.

  “We’re catching up,” Torek said. He frowned faintly. “She’s got help, though.”

  He pointed at the faint tracks on the clay and rocks, difficult to discern, even for him, given that the strong wind up here had blown most of them clean.

  “At least ten, fifteen more with her. I don’t know where they came from.” He pointed east, in the direction of the sun, which was still only halfway up in the sky. “Somewhere over there.”

  “Who are they?” Declan said.

  Torek sighed, clicking, hands on his hips.

  “Brother, I don’t know,” he said, still clicking regretfully. “They could be human. Locals she pushed to expand or disguise their numbers, to afford her extra safety… or just to make us hesitate. They could be seers dropped here to reinforce her numbers in a more concrete way. They could be a patrol group by Shadow. There is no way to know when only the physical imprints remain. And barely those.”

  He pointed at another set of faint markings on the stone, but couldn’t tell if Declan could see what he aimed his fingers at.

  “Someone with them is wounded,” he added. “They’ve got them in a stretcher of some kind. Looks homemade, whatever it is. Probably cowhide and poles out here.”

  Jax frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Torek turned, meeting Jax’s gaze from where he stood on Declan’s other side.

  The East Indian seer looked like he’d dropped about ten pounds in the past week, and likely had, from water weight alone. Alone among them, he looked paler, rather than darker-skinned, despite the beating sun.

  Even as Torek thought it, Jax wiped his brow with a reddish-brown hand.

  “Well?” Jax prompted. “What makes you say that?”

  Torek gave him a grim smile. “This used to be a Native American reservation, brother. Navajo, I think. Maybe Zuni. Or Hopi.” His eyes drifted back behind them. “I think Navajo, though. Zuni land was further south, below Gallup.”

  Jax nodded. His dark violet eyes looked blurred with exhaustion, so Torek couldn’t be sure how much he’d absorbed from what he’d said.

  “Is there any chance the people with her could be made friendlies?” Declan said, blunt. He glanced around at the others. “I know there are only five of us… but last we knew, she had only Brooks with her, right?”

  Torek nodded, frowning. “Right.”

  “So if they are human, we could turn them, yes?”

  “Possibly.” Torek wiped his brow, flicking sweat off his fingers. “With the network down, she won’t have access to the other Shadow seers out here. She couldn’t do what she did at Langley. Not on her own. Not unless she’s telekinetic.”

  Declan shook his head, frowning. “She’s not. I discussed this with Balidor already.”

  Torek nodded. It hadn’t really crossed his mind in a serious way that she could be.

  Hands on his hips, he continued to look down at the ground, thinking. After another pause, he realized Declan was still waiting for an answer from him, and looked up.

  “We should get higher,” he said. “Despite the faintness of the tracks, I think they’re close. I think Chandre’s doing what she can to obliterate the aleimic imprints. That, or whoever she’s with is doing so, assuming they’re seers. The rain storm last night blurred their tracks, but it really hasn’t been that long. I still think they stopped for part of the night back there.”

  He pointed behind them, at the small camp they’d found beneath a bluff a few hours earlier, not long after they’d risen for the day.

  “That’s where they were joined by the others, incidentally,” Torek added, giving Declan a grim look. “They picked up with them at that camp. That’s why I wasn’t positive it was them, at first.”

  Exhaling, he gazed back out over the horizon.

  “So we get higher,” he said, decisive. “It’s so flat out here, we should be able to get eyes on them before we get close enoug
h to endanger our team––well enough to ID them as seer or human. I hadn’t seen that one of them was wounded at the camp. It’s possible they carried that person for a while before they fashioned the stretcher.”

  Again, he pointed to the ground, marking out where he’d seen the distinctive lines.

  “It explains why they’re traveling so slow,” he added. “It also explains why Chan might have brought in reinforcements.”

  “Don’t call her that,” Jax said.

  His voice was cold. Colder than Declan’s.

  Torek turned, looking at him in mild surprise. “What should I call her, brother?”

  “I don’t give a fuck. Call her ‘that traitorous cunt,’ if you need a nickname for her.” Jax’s voice turned harder. “Call her Rook, or Dreng Pawn, or whatever the hell you want. Just don’t use the nickname we all used with her when we believed her to be our sister and friend. Don’t talk about her like she’s that Chandre still… like she didn’t butcher more than half of us in our sleep and kill a few million of our brothers and sisters in Asia.”

  Torek’s jaw hardened, but he only nodded diplomatically.

  “Right.”

  Wiping his face of dust and sweat a second time with the rag around his neck, he exhaled, trying to get some of the dust out of his throat.

  He wished like hell they had a combat drone. It would have saved them a few days’ headache by now. Especially if it was armed.

  Hell, a decent transport vehicle would have saved them this headache. They were damned lucky Declan felt Chandre well enough to know when she left her vehicle and went forward on foot. They’d had to backtrack, sure, but at least he caught it after only twenty or so miles. They’d tried following her across the desert in the truck, but it wasn’t meant for off-road travel and they didn’t have enough reserve gasoline with them to make it far.

  They had to abandon it in the end, when it, too, ran out of gas.

  By then it also had a flat tire. They’d been driving on dead-metal rims.

  Picking his rifle up off the rock where he’d set it, Torek threw the strap over his shoulder and head, letting it settle lengthwise across his chest. Scanning the horizon for a few seconds in the late morning sun, he paused on another rock formation, that one about ten miles to their left and standing alone in the middle of the otherwise flat, almost featureless plain.