The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4)

by Zachary Rawlins

  Four.

  Objectively speaking, the courtyard was perfect.

  The dimensions were precise and regular, the perfect length to pace beneath the soft shadows cast by the feather-leaves of the Japanese maples. The white stone perimeter was well-raked, each stone chosen for its brilliance and pleasing roundness, and the gentle mound in the center of the ground was covered in exactingly trimmed, lush grass, crowned with a twenty-year-old Weeping Plum. The fences and the markers along the path were cut from fragrant cedar, and in the far corner of the garden, beneath the bows of a particularly formidable maple, was a small pond lined with blue rocks, the brilliant hues of the Koi fish beneath the water mimicking the fallen leaves that floated in the water. It contained elements of traditional and modern gardens, blending the elements of both that he enjoyed into a comfortable unison.

  The gate was hand carved, also of cedar, with images of demons from the residents of the various Buddhist hells, capped with a portrait of the single-eyed ogre, Hozuki, wielding his massive iron club. The arch above the gate was inscribed with a forgotten and potential heretical sutra favored by a clan of half-Korean mercenaries generally thought extinguished in the Edo Era, the long arc of wood strung with tiny brass bells that made soft and melodic music from the gentle wind off the nearby mountains.

  The man who had built the garden sat beside the Weeping Plum tree, which, even at twenty years, was only just tall enough for him to fit beneath – but the blossoms were indisputably handsome. He took in the whole of the scene around him, the chosen examples of nature he had trained and arranged, and could find no fault.

  It was a good place, whatever the outcome, he decided. He took a pack of Chinese cigarettes from his Italian blazer, along with an ungainly metal lighter designed by Rolex three decades earlier, but set them aside when a pleasing trill from the brass bells warned him that his guest’s arrival was imminent. He folded his hands in his lap and waited. It did not take long.

  The woman made no noise when she walked. She wore the sort of tank top he forbade his daughters to wear, with spaghetti straps that left the bra strap exposed, emblazoned with an upside down cross and two lines of unintelligible text he assumed was English. Beneath that was a heavy leather belt with an engraved antique buckle he admired, along with tight, well-worn black jeans and biker boots with polished metal toes. Her sunglasses sported reflective lenses set in gun-metal frames by Porsche. He recognized them because one of his associates, a television producer in Tokyo who specialized in promoting idols, wore them habitually. Her hair was in disarray, and greasy, looking like she hadn’t washed it in several days. The honeysuckle fragrance of the garden was overwhelmed by the scents of dried sweat, earth, and gunpowder that she brought with her.

  “Gonna give you a chance, Jin. For old time’s sake. Nobody’s seen that crazy ass letter you wrote but me, and I burned it. Tell me it was a temporary case of insanity and I’ll forget about the whole thing. I’ll walk into your shadow and out of your life. Okay?”

  “I am afraid I cannot do that, as much respect as I have for you, Chief Auditor.” He brushed his hands across the grass on either side of him, enjoying the sensation along with the awareness that it could well be the final time. “With all due respect, you have failed in your mandate to protect Central – repeatedly – and more importantly, you have failed in your responsibility toward the safety of the students at the Academy. I cannot allow the wellbeing of the children of the Matsumoto Cartel, Chief Auditor, and I will not have them imperiled by your recklessness.”

  The Chief Auditor came to a halt at the edge of the grass, the white stones crunching and scraping beneath her boots. She tracked something tarry and black that marred the perfection of their whiteness, and that was something else from which he took a perverse satisfaction. Jin was a Christian, after all, and the stain from outside marring the perfection of the garden was symbolically satisfying.

  “I get what you’re saying, Jin. I do. I’m, you know, about fifty percent sympathetic. But none of that shit happened on my watch – so relax. We’ve gone back over everything, rectified the mistakes and made improvements. Your kids are gonna be fine.”

  “They are,” Jin said, with a respectful nod. “Because they will not be at the Academy.”

  “Jin, don’t be an ass. This is stupid. You are bound to the Charter, the same as everybody else. Your kids saw the precogs and got the injections. Now they need to attend the Academy. You knew all this going in.”

  “That is true, and it troubles me. I apologize. The welfare of the children must take priority, however.”

  Alice Gallow studied him, a truly unnerving experience, and then grinned.

  “Cut the bull. Since when are you a devoted family man, Jin? You’ve sent three kids to the Academy already, and then let them in on your cartel’s little wars after graduation. Didn’t you bury your second-eldest, a few years ago?” Alice scratched her head. “Pretty sure I remember that.”

  “Yes,” Jin said stiffly. “Satsuki. She died valiantly, defending the cartel’s honor.”

  “Is that what you call it?” Alice grinned. “Like I said. Doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t remember you as particularly bereaved at her funeral. If I recall correctly, you pulled the stone-faced Asian routine.”

  “Perhaps that is simply how I express grief?” Jin suggested, returning her manic grin with a thin smile of his own. “We are not confidants, Auditor.”

  “I don’t know,” Alice said doubtfully. “You strike me as a crier, Jin.”

  “Perhaps that is merely racism on your part?”

  “Not possible. I’m sleeping with a black guy.”

  They both laughed, Alice uproariously, Jin to cover his discomfort with the Auditor’s vulgarity. He was hardly a traditionalist, allowing the women in the Matsumoto Cartel to hold positions of power and serve in combat forces. It appalled him, nonetheless, to hear the Chief Auditor speak so crudely.

  “Your lack of propriety does you no credit, Auditor.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Alice said, following the white stone path around the garden to the sliding wooden door that led to his study. “I don’t remember, myself, but I hear you’re an Operator from way back. Ice water in the veins, or so I’m told.” Alice’s grin widened another notch. “What’s really going on?”

  Jin smiled back, this time with a bit more enthusiasm. Truly, he was never one for subterfuge, given the choice. He was prepared for any outcome, and this path only played to his strengths.

  Even if she was an Auditor.

  That was the important bit, Jin remind himself, weaving a telepathic net and then casting it in the area about his home. He was always watched. If he was not successful in drawing out all his watchers, then this exercise would be worse than fruitless. Nothing less was demanded than a flawless performance.

  “Is that so? Do I truly seem so ruthless?”

  “Pretty much,” Alice confirmed, pushing the sliding door open a few centimeters and peering inside. “You seem like a total bastard. Takes one to know one, I suppose.”

  “You might be right, Chief Auditor.” A search of the area turned up not a living soul, and the telepathic trap Jin had laid around the house remained undisturbed. “If a bit forward.”

  The Auditor slammed the door and then marched recklessly across his garden, scattering white pebbles and trampling green grass.

  “Aw, Jin.” Alice hooked her thumbs behind the steer skull belt buckle. “Are you tryin’ to fuck with me?”

  “Nothing so vulgar,” Jin said, enjoying the moment as he dragged it out, employing his protocol to its utmost, sweeping their surroundings for the Auditor who simply had to be nearby. “It’s just good to see you again, Ms. Gallow.”

  “You get one warning,” Alice said, planting her feet. “Watch your fucking tone with me, Jin, or I will make this conversation a whole lot more unpleasant.”

  “You said something similar years ago, when we met last,” Jin said, his voice light and amused.
“As it turned out, I went relatively unharmed. Not that I would expect you to remember.”

  The Auditor’s smile wavered momentarily. Jin pressed his advantage.

  “You were lost, the last time we spoke, Ms. Gallow,” Jin said softly. With the utmost caution, he added just a slight suggestion of authority to his words, a blend of empathy and telepathy to giving them added depth and impact. “Have you found yourself, since?”

  “You sound like some loser in a bar,” Alice said, with noticeably less bravado. “Planning to woo me with compassion and tales of our past adventures?”

  They both heard an engine downshifting and the laboring of overheated breaks from the front of the house. Jin sighed, wondering exactly how much of his painstakingly maintained frontage had just been destroyed.

  Alice Gallow’s fingers twitched and her pulse accelerated. Jin explored the neglected edges of her psychic defenses with psychic kid gloves. The fortifications were top quality, but installed by an outside telepath, rather than self-generated. There were always mistakes to take advantage of in that scenario, particularly for a telepath of Jin’s stature.

  “That is not my intention,” Jin assured her. “I simply needed to distract you long enough to locate your friends, or for mine to arrive. One of those eventualities has just been realized.”

  Alice Gallow dropped abruptly into a crouch, reaching into her shadow, arms disappearing to the elbow. They came back cradling an automatic shotgun with a toothy muzzle break and a stiff metal plate along the base of the stock.

  They watched each other warily, each unwilling to be the first to show their hands. Jin found a seam, a place where the Auditors own innate defenses interfered with the arbitrary structure of the implanted psychic shield. He proceeded cautiously, careful not to alert Alice Gallow, or any potential telepaths who might be monitoring the encounter, but the first, probing contact provoked no reaction. Jin was emboldened.

  “Nobody’s dead yet, Jin.” Alice shouldered the gun, but did not level the barrel at him. “Obviously too late to keep this from becoming a thing, but it doesn’t have to be a massacre. Do the right thing for your cartel, and back down.”

  The overlap was tailor-made for intrusion. Jin slid past her defenses with an effort, then turned his attention to the core sequence implanted by Central’s telepaths, gingerly disassembling various key processes.

  “I prefer not to.” Jin stood slowly, trying to avoid aggravating the disc he had herniated in his back, moving the stones around the pond a few months earlier. “Would you consider taking your own advice?”

  Alice Gallow sighed and clicked the fire selector on her shotgun to semi-auto.

  “Last chance, Jin.” Alice trained the gun on his chest. “Your people are gonna die if we do this.”

  The fencing collapsed, wooden debris flying in all directions.

  “Oh no!” Jin put his fingers to his temples. “I told you – not until I gave the sign. My poor fence!”

  Alice Gallow shifted her footing slightly, but she kept the gun on him. She snuck occasional glances at the Operators who had flanked her. Jin gestured to indicate the seeming gargoyle to her right, moving slowly and minimally to avoid getting shot.

  “This is Hyun-Li Matsumoto, my associate, who has provided close protection for myself and my family since we graduated the Academy together.”

  He was massive, employing the Medusa Protocol to transform his epidermis into a rough, rocky exterior. His exterior was deep grey, mottled with blue and green inclusions, with an arrangement of spars around the top of the head that resembled a crown. The hands that had effortlessly splintered the fence were massive, large enough to wrap around Alice Gallow’s head like a baseball.

  “And his cousin and subordinate, Takahiro Matsumoto,” Jin added, indicating the man standing nonchalantly in the ruin of the fence to her right. “Occasionally a bodyguard, but more frequently an assassin.”

  “I know, you tiresome bastard,” Alice griped. “Obviously. Chief Auditor,” Alice said, taking her hand from the trigger to tap her chest, “remember? We have files on this bunch back at Central. The Director frowns upon keeping your own little kill squad handy in the best of circumstances. This bunch has had a bad reputation since that stunt in Hong Kong.” Alice slung the shotgun over her shoulder and walked over to where Hyun-Li stood, massive stone arms crossed. She tapped the stony exterior of his knee with the attitude of a researcher performing an experiment. “That was an ugly business. Now that I think about it, shouldn’t there be three of you bastards?”

  Alice wandered back toward the center of the garden, adjusting the sling on her shotgun so that it rode level with her waist. The wind rang the brass bells, the pond rippled, a flock of pigeons wheeled directly overhead, oblivious to the impending conflict below.

  “Yeah, that’s how I remember it,” Alice said, affirming it with a nod. “Let’s see...you must be the one who punches holes in things.” Alice indicated Takahiro with the barrel of her gun. “Telekinetically augmented combat, right?”

  Takahiro shifted uncomfortably, glancing at Jin several times, waiting for an order that Jin was in no hurry to give. With great care, he started a covert memory download into the Chief Auditor’s mind.

  “Obviously, you’re the living statue,” Alice said, with a contemptuous jerk of her thumb at Hyun-Li. “Don’t worry much about collateral damage, do you? Even the kids?”

  Hyun-Li glowered and ground his fist into his palm, a thin stream of sand piling on the ground beneath.

  “Gonna take that as a yes,” Alice said, with a sly grin. “Very subtle.”

  Stone ground against stone. Hyun-Li waited with barely restrained fury. Jin knew that if he didn’t give the word shortly, Hyun-Li would act without it. The pigeons made another pass and then settled in the rafters beneath the roof.

  “The telekinetic, the pet rock...where’s your other friend? What was his deal again?”

  It happened quickly. There was a blur of motion behind her – that must have been Masahiro, using his active camouflage protocol to get beside the Auditor and looping a piece of wire around her neck. Alice Gallow fell backwards, dropping to the ground between Masahiro’s legs before he could strangle her. The shotgun discharged, tearing meat from his left calf from the bone. Roiling with the recoil, she slammed the reinforced stock into the side of his ankle.

  To his credit, Masahiro made no noise, toppling over a meter or so away from Alice Gallow and curling into ball, clutching his maimed leg with a horrified expression. Alice rolled to her feet before anyone could think to do anything, pulling the trigger several times in quick succession, each slug tearing through the bulletproof vest Masahiro wore and bursting from the padding in the back. Masahiro opened his mouth, but all that came out was a whispered sigh, and a trickle of deep red blood.

  “I’m sort of insulted.” Alice blew a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. “The guy with the stealth protocol is supposed to just sneak up next to me? God, you are a bunch of assholes. I read the files, you know. Kinda saw that one coming when, oh, I don’t know – everybody on file showed up but him?”

  Alice kicked one of the spent shell casings in Jin’s general direction, advancing slowly.

  “Was that it? The best you can do?”

  “No. This is.” Jin took a deep breath, raised his voice, spoke with Authority. The strain thinned his blood and caused his heart to flutter, but it was a crucial part of the performance. Alice Gallow, you have no protocol.

  Jin clapped. Hyun-Li and Takahiro charged forward, but Hyun-Li moved with fury, plowing aside soil and grass as he made a bee-line toward Alice Gallow. The Auditor dove for the lacy shadows beneath a middle-aged maple, hitting the ground like she did not expect it to be there. Hyun-Li swept one massive stone hand like a cat pawing at a mouse, and Alice rolled with the blow, catching his jagged stone fingers on her shotgun. Hyun-Li roared and tore the gun from her hands, bending the barrel and then tossing it aside as Alice scrambled away.

  “Sh
it! C’mon!” Alice backed toward the near corner of the garden, not far from the sliding door that led into the house. “Hayley? You having any luck with these assholes? ‘Cause three on one is a little...”

  “Takahiro!” Jin called out. “Pacify the Auditor!”

  Jin turned his attention to Takahiro, as did Alice Gallow. He was crouched, with his hands on either side of his head, rocking on the balls of his feet and muttering to himself. The seconds ticked by. Hyun-Li circled the perimeter nervously, trampling what little remained of the garden.

  “Takahiro? What is wrong?”

  The muttering got louder, but there was no intelligible response.

  “Takahiro! I need you to engage the Auditor. She is helpless, for god’s sake.”

  “Yeah, Takahiro,” Alice said, with a smirk. “Engage me. Hear I’m helpless.”

  “Would you all please be quiet?” Takahiro stood slowly, his hands clutching his head. Jin could not remember ever hearing Takahiro say “please” before – or speaking English at all, for that matter – and found the development concerning. “I’m trying to get things sorted over here.”

  “Don’t let me hurry you,” Alice said, rubbing her scraped palms against her thighs. “I’m only your fucking boss.”

  “What is this?” Jin demanded, taking a step toward Takahiro. “Some sort of betrayal?”

  “Not really.” Takahiro lowered his hands slowly. “There’s not much consent on your friend’s part.”

  “What are you talking about, Takahiro? Have you gone mad?” Jin asked, shaking his head. “Hyun-Li, put the Auditor down.”

  The statue advanced, crushing vegetation beneath massive, blunt feet.

  “I don’t mind,” Hyun-Li rumbled, “but I cannot guarantee her survival.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls,” Alice said, cracking her knuckles. “Hayley, dear, I’d rather not punch a giant talking boulder.”

  Hyun-Li charged like a landslide, gradually gaining momentum.

  “A telepath?” Jin speculated, trying in vain to force his way into Takahiro’s head. “Are you being controlled, Takahiro?”