The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4)

by Zachary Rawlins

  The phone rang.

  ***

  “I’m sorry, but that’s nothing to do with probability,” Vivik said excitedly. “Not even close! That’s full-scale reality manipulation, the kind of stuff the Founder supposedly did…”

  “Same thing,” Eerie said, with a modest shrug. “No difference.”

  “What?” Vivik looked befuddled. “You eliminated Alexei Rostov’s existence completely…”

  “No, that’s not it. I just changed the odds that the assassins would mistake a different body for his,” Eerie explained. “People remember that he existed. At least, I think they do…”

  “Oh, yeah,” Katya said. “They do.”

  “They just think he died.” Eerie’s fingers dug into Derrida’s coat. “With the rest of his family.”

  “He doesn’t remember any of that, though,” Vivik said. “Alex has no memory of who he used to be…”

  Eerie paused, a hint of blush making a teasing appearance on her pallid cheeks.

  “That was me. You know. Chemical,” Eerie admitted haltingly. “Not the Kismet Protocol.”

  ***

  Without a clear idea of what to do, Eerie suspected that the Black Sun would continue to follow the original plan. So, she waited, cross-legged and eating Skittles, on the couch in the bedroom of the little house she shared with all the other freaks, vampires, and prodigies.

  They brought her to the boy once the confusion passed.

  The Black Sun apport technician was gruff and abrupt with a bristly black beard and a bulbous nose, snatching her without warning, while a telepath apologetically attempted a psychic blindfold. The telepath had a bad time of it and eventually gave up, unable to make sense of the interior of Eerie’s head.

  The Changeling could not blame him for being disconcerted. Eerie rarely felt comfortable there, and she had a great deal more experience.

  The Black Sun facility could have been anywhere, and it looked like a corporate laboratory – lots of stainless steel machinery and expensive glassware and Indian and Malay technicians striding purposefully between displays and workstations – and it could have been anywhere in the world. Not that it mattered. The apport delivered them to a secure room, where she was searched, if not at gunpoint, then certainly not far from it. Eerie was then led through the facility under heavy guard, and met by Renton Hall at the door to a nondescript room. He looked tired and angry, which worried her a little, based on her experiences with him at the Academy. Renton could be mean, she knew, especially to girls.

  “I can’t believe you’re involved in this, Eerie.” Renton accompanied his words with an unpleasant smile. “I thought you steered clear of cartel business.”

  She nodded. Eerie was frankly afraid of even speaking to Renton. He had a way of misunderstanding her words, and then taking advantage of those misunderstandings.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I was asked.”

  “I must be missing something,” Renton said, with an expression that invited her to clear things up for him. “Why involve yourself in Black Sun affairs?”

  “Can’t tell!” Eerie sang. “Circle business.”

  Renton looked intrigued and taken aback all at once.

  “Really? Is that so? Then, if you are here…”

  “Renton.” Anastasia emerged from one of the adjoining hallways with a clumsy escort of nervous scientists and suited security personnel. “Control yourself.”

  “Of course,” Renton said, giving Eerie an apologetic bow and a loaded smile. “Please act like I’m not here.”

  “Good advice,” Anastasia said drolly. Renton opened the door at a gesture from his Mistress, who then indicated that Eerie should follow. “The only good advice you are likely to hear from him, I’m afraid. Wait here, Renton. I will be out shortly.”

  Anastasia’s entourage and Renton waited in the room behind them, while Anastasia led Eerie through an airlock. The interior door slid open, and the lights came on automatically as they entered. Eerie caught her breath, and made a soft, shocked noise that Anastasia inevitably noticed.

  There was nothing she could do about it. In the room, blindfolded and bound, the boy slept the fitful sleep of the chemically altered. He was young, obviously, perhaps twelve, but Eerie could instantly see the various older boys, teens and men that he would/might/could become, extending out from where he lay like a many segmented caterpillar, the threads of his remaining futures reaching out like the branches of a tree seeking the sunlight.

  “You seem startled.”

  There was no time for a deep breath. Eerie began her performance, taking refuge in the general low opinion of her comprehension.

  “I thought,” Eerie said hesitantly, “that you were bringing a girl…?”

  “No.” A brief ripple of annoyance across the still water of Anastasia’ face. “Were you not told?”

  She had not been told. Eerie knew, of course, but shook her head like it was news to her.

  “No. What happened?”

  “This has been a very trying experience,” Anastasia said, holding her forehead. “I am afraid that Leila Rostovaya was not successfully retrieved.”

  “Oh. Poor Katya. She’ll be very upset.”

  “I’d imagine so. We still need your assistance, in any case,” Anastasia admitted. “We retrieved a civilian, in error, and now that situation must be rectified.”

  “You still want me to make him seem dead?”

  “Yes. It is hardly the simplest way to deal with the situation, but I do not have it in me to put another Rostov to death this evening.”

  “Okay.”

  “The process you designed to obscure the survival of Leila Rostov. Can it be repurposed for her brother?”

  “Yes!” Eerie felt that her response was too eager, but it was hard not to get excited. “It’ll be hard, but…”

  “That isn’t all we need from you, Eerie,” Anastasia said briskly. “I need you to make the boy disappear.”

  Anastasia was a blank spot in her future history. Eerie could try and parse her actions and intentions from the ripples they created, the effects on other people, but it was like trying to find someone based on their reflections in a constellation of mirrors.

  “Disappear? You mean…”

  “…just that. I have no present use for the boy,” Anastasia said, leading her through the door into a rather typical looking hospital room. “He needs a new identity, new memories – he must remember nothing of himself, nothing of his life before, or Black Sun telepaths will eventually discover him and hunt him down. Can you do that?”

  Eerie followed Anastasia across the room unsteadily, every breath weighted with the gravity of potential futures.

  “I think so.”

  “How curious!” Anastasia’s eyes barely registered any interest, so great was the exhaustion within them. “Is that a biological function, or an application of your protocol?”

  “Not saying.” Eerie stood at the edge of the boy’s bed, not trusting herself to get any closer. “We aren’t friends.”

  “Of course,” Anastasia said, apparently losing interest. “Shall I leave you alone to begin your work?”

  Eerie gingerly took hold of one of his out-flung arms, running her fingertips along the soft skin of the underside of his wrist, tracing the perimeter of an injection site.

  “You did something,” she said quietly, frightened by the unexpected deviation from the history she had not yet experienced. “There is…something is different. What?”

  “You do seem to know quite a lot.” Anastasia watched her intently. “Why is that, Eerie?”

  “My nature,” Eerie said, shivering. “What did you do to him?”

  “An Introduction,” Anastasia said. “We injected the boy with nanites, after the precognitives marked him as a probable high classification Operator, and then had the empaths perform an Activation.”

  ***

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “Vivik, seriously,” Katya
snapped, “shut the fuck up.”

  “Oh, come on! You’re saying that Alex was injected with nanites and activated when he was just a kid?”

  “That’s what I said,” Eerie hummed softly. “Right? It was, wasn’t it? Now I’m confused!”

  “You did say that, yeah,” Vivik agreed hastily. “I’m just trying to process the idea that when he came to the Academy, that was the second time he’d experienced Introduction and Activation. I’ve never heard of anyone going through that process twice.”

  “Yes, you have,” Katya said. “Gaul Thule, for one. Mitsuru Aoki, for another.”

  “Right, of course,” Vivik said. “But that was deliberate, part of an intentional implant procedure.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “How could the Administration miss that?” Vivik wondered aloud. “Even if the initial Activation didn’t yield a usable protocol, Director Levy should have been able to tell that Alex already had nanites in his system…”

  “Nope!” Eerie gave him a satisfied smile. “I fixed that. They couldn’t tell!”

  “Oh,” Vivik said, quieted by the implications. “Then, you did all this…on purpose?”

  “Maybe if you let her finish,” Katya growled, “we’ll find out.”

  ***

  Eerie held her breath.

  “And?”

  “Nothing,” Anastasia said, studying Eerie intently. “He survived, obviously, but his Etheric Signature is flat. No sign of a protocol. He’s not cut out to be an Operator.”

  “Oh. That’s too bad.”

  “Is it? I think he will find another life simpler.” Anastasia glanced at the digital clock on the wall, and then grimaced. “In any case – do you think you can do what must be done, Eerie?”

  “I think so,” Eerie said, biting her lip. “I’ve never done it before, of course, but in another sense, I’ve already done it…”

  “What did you just say?”

  “Nothing,” Eerie sputtered, jarred from her reverie. “Sorry.”

  Anastasia watched her for what felt like a long time, waiting like she expected Eerie to perform an amusing trick. It was extremely nerve-wracking for the Changeling.

  “Very well,” Anastasia said slowly. “Then our arrangement still holds?”

  “Oh, no,” Eerie answered cheerfully. “Not at all.”

  “I see,” Anastasia said coldly, after a long pause. “And why is that?”

  “Different person,” Eerie said. “Different thing.”

  “Is that so?” Anastasia sounded too tired to disagree. “If you say. What will it cost me to make this boy disappear?”

  “Nothing now,” Eerie said. “But one day…”

  “…and this day may never come, you will ask me for a favor?”

  “Sort of?” Eerie looked dazed. “How did you know?”

  “I must have heard something like that before,” Anastasia said, with a shake of her head. “I agree, incidentally, though I warn you not to be greedy. Are we done, then?”

  “Yes,” Eerie said, eyes fixed on the sleeping boy. “I’ll need some time and privacy.”

  “Of course,” Anastasia said sourly, heading for the door. “Do forgive me if I don’t see you again on the way out.”

  Eerie held her breath until she was sure that Anastasia was gone. Once she was certain, Eerie went to work.

  She settled in a chair beside his hospital bed, uncertain whether she had done this already or would do it someday. Eerie pulled the sheet aside, scrambling for the boy’s cool hand. The boy moaned in his sleep and cried out in Russian. Eerie didn’t bother to understand. In a few minutes, he would not even remember how to speak the language.

  Was it okay, she wondered, to call him “Alex”, yet? Or too soon?

  Eerie was surprised, at first, that his touch was nearly inert. Then she remembered she had yet to arrange Alex’s second Activation. His catalyst protocol was only days old, and without the constant influx of power from the Absolute Protocol, the effect was negligible, only a hint of signal when their fingers entwined.

  Eerie knew that Alex would eventually become the greatest catalyst in the recorded history of Central. Eerie also knew that she had a very active imagination, because Rebecca was always telling her as much. Knowing that Alex would be a potent catalyst, one day, was enough for Eerie to make it work. She felt energy course through her like a glowing tide, illuminating the secrets that were or would be hidden inside of her.

  There were three different cameras in the room, along with audio monitoring gear and a thermal imager. The chance of all those devices failing in simultaneous and undetectable fashion was greater than zero, but in that neighborhood. That took her a few minutes, and brought her a few steps closer to her eventual self.

  The operation to purge the Rostov Cartel was a high-casualty event. The chances of one of the corpses awaiting retrieval being misidentified as Alex were a hair above nothing. Ten minutes of biting her lip and tapping the toe of her shoe on the floor, and a misidentification was compounded by a corrupted dental records file. Another body went into a bag in a morgue near Moscow with a tag reading “Alexandrov Rostov” attached.

  There were a hundred other considerations. The possibility of Anastasia Martynova discovering her true intent, or deciding on a whim to reclaim the boy later. The chances of loss in cartel violence were easy enough to evade, by locating him away from all of it.

  Away from everything. Somewhere cold, maybe?

  Then there were the possibilities emanating from the boy. Despite her previous efforts, his potential futures were still as innumerable as the constellations in the sky on a moonless night in the Far Shores, beneath which she would one day hold his hand.

  It took an hour and more of labor, her hands wrapped tightly around his, body trembling, as Eerie extinguished every potential future, save one. A toxin coursed through his body as she worked, discretely disrupting a specific group of neural processes, killing a select billion or so neurons.

  The process was more collaborative than she had anticipated. At one point during the process, the unconscious boy imposed his will, demanding conditions on his future that Eerie felt uncomfortable with, but acceded to anyway. Employing the Kismet Protocol was often like that. She never knew what to expect. The Changeling did not dictate terms to reality, but rather negotiated a compromise via the medium of her protocol.

  The boy’s futures died soundlessly, sinking like poisoned fish into the sea of Ether, and his past was relegated beyond all recall, save in states of intoxication or sleep. Eerie left him his name, to serve as an anchor for his persona, and because she liked the way her mouth felt, saying it. She hid an important piece of herself, then, by impulse, in a secret place in one of her favorite potential moments, one that was unlikely, but pure and perfect and sweet like a gummi bear. She hid that inside of Alex, concealed part of her among that which he had chemically forgotten, and would never meaningfully recall.

  That was not part of her plan, but it felt right in the moment, and Eerie knew enough to allow room for improvisation.

  She opened her eyes, exhaled with a whistle, and then regarded the boy fondly. Was this love, she wondered, the warm and proud glow she felt in her chest, regarding their singular destiny? If it wasn’t, Eerie thought giddily, then she didn’t want to know otherwise – she didn’t think her heart could handle more than this excitement.

  Humming a cheerful tune under her breath, Eerie let herself out, leaving the boy to sleep. The chances of the guards at the door missing her departure were infinitesimal – so her departure took slightly longer than expected.

  ***

  “Fucking hell,” Katya said, with a shake of her head. “If anyone had any idea what you can do, Eerie, you would’ve grown up in a lab.”

  Eerie nodded solemnly.

  “Why didn’t you change his name, though?” Katya asked incredulously. “Isn’t that the most obvious thing to change?”

  “He didn’t want a new
name,” Eerie explained defensively. “Besides, I like Alex. It’s a nice name. Don’t you think so?”

  “What about the new identity?” Vivik asked. “Alexander Warner? Where did that come from?”

  “The Circle provided the paperwork,” Eerie said, with a shrug. “I arranged it with Sofia the next day.”

  “Sofia Morales-North?” Katya’s face was strange and rigid in the light cast by the coals of the dying fire. “Wife of Lord North?”

  “Yes. She was very nice,” Eerie said. “In return, I made her some socks!”

  “Uh huh.”

  “They were very warm, and blue! All sorts of different blues! She looked cute in them!”

  “I bet she did. She always looks cute,” Katya said sourly. “I wondered how Lord North found Alex to save him from the Weir, that first night, before Ms. Aoki brought him to Central. I must have read that file a dozen times, staring at the probability charts and wondering how Lord North could have known to be there at that specific time. I figured he must have followed Ms. Aoki, somehow, but how would he even know to be there? It all makes sense, though, if Sofia knew where Alex was the entire time. That stuck-up bitch probably kept closer track of him than you did. I always kinda suspected that North showing up to save the day was your plan, Eerie.”

  “No,” Eerie said. “Miss Aoki was my plan.”

  “Not how I would have done it, but whatever.” Katya bit her lip. “I can’t believe you just out and said that shit! You know how many people would kill to find out the answer to that one question? The Analytics pools back at Central all spent months poring over the charts, trying to determine how that all happened. Lord North nearly faced an Inquiry over his involvement! And here you knew all along.”

  “Yes.” Eerie blinked unselfconsciously. “Is that bad?”

  “If Alex’s past is fictional, and he’s some Black Sun refugee, then why the murdered family in his cover story?” Vivik cut in indignantly. “Why make him think he was responsible for something like that? I mean, it never even happened, right?”