There was a stirring at the other end of the telepathic link – like breathing over an otherwise silent phone line.
“I think I understand you, though, and I know you’re not the type to take the easy way out, and save yourself a frankly unimaginable amount of suffering and debasement. So, at that point, assuming wiring you up and waterboarding you hasn’t gotten us anywhere – we previously established that you’re a tough one, remember? – so, at that point, we put some bleach in your eyes, just to show we’re serious. Then we start taking little pieces. There’s one school of thought that says to start with the fingers, but personally, I start with the toes. After all, whose gonna be upset over their pinkie toe when they already lost their thumb? It screws up the flow. I always try to leave myself room to escalate. I’m assuming you have the full complement of digits? That’s twenty, then we move on to the ears…”
Enough, Ms. Gallow!
“…and the nipples. You’d be surprised how upset people get over their nipples. It’s like, what are they even good for? You’re not gonna miss ‘em the way you’re gonna miss your thumbs. Ever try and eat without using your thumbs? Like a dog, you know, from a bowl in the floor. It’s undignified. Anyway, then we gotta retire the bolt cutters and move on to hot irons…”
Please, Ms. Gallow. Stop. I give. Just please stop.
“…and there you basically got two options, but since I still want you to be able to talk…what did you say there, son? I might’ve missed something.”
Silence. Alice’s smile widened.
“Okay; hot irons. Skin sticks, you know? And the smell! I’ll leave it to your imagination…ah, hell. I’ll go ahead and tell you now and spoil the surprise! We start with the soles of your feet, and then…”
Enough, please! I give up, Ms. Gallow. I surrender; formally, if possible. I didn’t even want to join the Anathema – this was all my father’s idea! I want to reform, I swear! Please just don’t do any of those terrible things to me.
Alice hesitated, her smile collapsing.
“You don’t wanna try and make some sort of noble-but-doomed last stand?” Alice grumbled. “We’re sort of committed to the hard way, at this point.”
Absolutely not! I insist on surrender, like they told us in class at the Academy. Call Director Levy! I throw myself on the mercy of Central and the Director and, uh, the Assembly and whoever else. Please don’t hurt me?
“Oh, fine.” Alice frowned. “Release telepathic control. Now.”
Alice shook out hands and feet that were suddenly her own again.
“Okay, kid. Let’s hear it. What’s waiting for me on the other side of that door?”
Another brief hesitation, which she allowed, due to the finality of the pause. You have to allow a stricken wall to fall over, after all.
An Anathema kill squad. There are three of us.
“Must be bring your kid to work day in the Outer Dark. A bunch of kids, for Christ sake. Are they listening in to this?”
No. They believe I am still trying to bring you here. They believe your arrival to be imminent, but expect a warning. I have prevented them from noticing your presence.
“Friends of yours?”
Pardon me?
“The people standing next to you. You close?”
Oh, no, not really. Arturo I know a bit, just because his family defected around the same time as mine, but Taylor I hardly know at all.
“Lucky for you, then. What sort of Operators are they?”
Arturo is a telekinetic, D-Class. Taylor does directed energy as well, though I don’t know what sort or to what degree.
“Don’t need ‘em. Shut them down, will you?”
What?
“Telepathic mercy kill, kid. You were all up in my involuntary movements a minute ago. Just mess with their respiration. I’ll wait.”
Please be reasonable, Ms. Gallow! I want to surrender and I’m happy to cooperate, but you can’t possibly expect me…
“I do, though.” Alice shrugged. “Your choice. You wanna negotiate, we’ll do it in Administrative Detention.”
Ms. Gallow, don’t make me…
“I’m not making you. Let’s be clear about that. You have a choice, kid. You can follow orders and maybe live through this. You make my day any more of a pain in the ass, though, and it’s Administrative fucking Detention. You have thirty seconds, and then I’m going to open the door.”
Alice waited exactly twenty-nine seconds and then strolled in like it was her home. Two young men lay on the floor inside – one suffocated, another well on his way – while another young man squatted in the corner, crying into his hands.
“So nice to finally meet you!” Alice strode over the young man who was still twitching like a gutted fish, to where the telepath cowered. “What’s your name?”
“Cavan! Cavan Marshall.”
Alice smiled wide, and then punched the wall just above Cavan’s head, causing him to shriek and scuttle away.
Please don’t hurt me! I did just what you said.
“Shut up.” Alice inspected the other two Anathema, to be on the safe side. “Marshall. As in the Marshall family, once a member of the Hegemony? Candidate branch of the Muir family, back one generation?”
One of them wasn’t breathing, his eyes wide and unblinking, though he still had a bit of pulse. Alice didn’t worry about him. The other had enough composure to make a feeble effort to crawl away from her.
“H-how do you know all that?”
Alice planted her feet on either side of the boy, crouching down to grab his head by the hair. He moaned and thrashed his arms helplessly.
“We have precognitives in Central too, you dopey brat.”
Alice smashed the boy’s head against the ground. Cavan moaned and scrabbled further into the corner. Alice examined the results dispassionately, checked his pulse, and then repeated herself. His head did not have the same bounce, the second time it hit the concrete, and the sound was different.
Alice let the Anathema fall to the floor without bothering to check further. She could always tell by the sound, like a chef tapping the shell of a bad egg.
“The precog pool mentioned that I might bump into one of several interesting people, and one of ‘em was you.” Alice grabbed Cavan by his hair and dragged him out of the corner. “I’ve got all sorts of ideas as to what to do next. Let’s go back to Central and have a chat, ‘kay?”
Ten.
In a city of mirror and rumor, underneath alien constellations, Alex cowered and scurried, too afraid of the darkness to linger there, too petrified of what followed him to stay in the open or the light. Behind him, something nebulous and mortifying walked the streets, teardrop shaped claws scrapping across flagstones, eyes the color of bronze tracking every movement.
He wanted to whimper, but was afraid to make noise. He wanted to run, but his movements were sluggish and clumsy. The shadows and the doorways of the place whispered to him that he was hunted, the stars urged him forward in his slow flight. His feet seemed to sink into the ancient roadway, and the signs were all in a language that made his eyes ache in their sockets.
Inevitably, he was stalked, and before he was devoured, Alex somehow knew exactly how the teeth would feel, cracking his bones to extract the marrow, how cold it would be as his blood spilled out on the stone to be lapped up by things older than names, things that had owned the darkness since long before the time of mankind.
***
“Either you are the best hall mate in history,” Katya observed gleefully, accepting his hand as she descended the debris-covered slope, “or a total fucking idiot. Which?”
“I’m an idiot,” Vivik said, the conviction in his voice surprising Katya. “No doubt about that.”
Derrida barreled by them, tongue lolling out of one side of his pink mouth, heedless of slope or dust.
“Whaaat?” Katya laughed, coming to a halt on the trail at the base of the hill. “I don’t believe it.”
Vivik was surprised to see Ee
rie, still hesitating at the top of the slope, clutching the hem of her hoodie in distress.
“Eerie? Are you coming?”
Eerie shook her head emphatically.
“No way! Scary!”
“Well, you said we had to go this way…”
“I did! But now I’m scared!”
Vivik shook his head and glanced at Katya, who was doubled over and laughing.
“Not my problem,” she said, waving him off. “You take care of it.”
Vivik gritted his teeth and made his way back up the slope, where Eerie waited nervously. It took him a few minutes of sustained effort, the treacherous footing nearly sending him sprawling. Derrida trotted by as he neared the top, glancing at Vivik with thoughtful brown eyes. Vivik was entirely out of breath by the time he made it to the Changeling. He extended his hand to Eerie, puzzled by his own apprehension.
“I’ll help you. Are you ready?”
Eerie shook her head slowly.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not that steep…”
“It looks steep.” Eerie took one nervous step toward the slope, then skittered back as the pebbles went sliding beneath her uncertain feet. “My balance isn’t very good, you know.”
“I know.”
Vivik surveyed the slope grimly, and decided that Eerie had a point. The hills were volcanic, strewn with enormous boulders and jagged basalt outcroppings. The stone was brittle and perpetually disintegrating into sharper fragments. The rocks lining the slope were unstable and treacherous. Vivik had enough trouble descending the first time around, without baggage.
“I think we can do it,” Vivik said, hoping to sound convincing. “Take my hand, and we’ll try…”
Eerie shook her head, eyes wide.
“No way! You’ll have to carry me.”
“Huh?”
“Carry me down the hill,” Eerie whispered bashfully. “I’ll fall, otherwise.”
Vivik glanced down the hill. Katya likely could not hear them, but she clearly still found the whole thing hilarious.
“It’s not that steep…”
“Steep enough. Please?”
“I don’t know, Eerie…”
“Pretty please?”
Katya was folded over at the bottom of the hill, bent in half and clutching her sides…so maybe she could hear them.
Vivik sighed, straightened his jacket, and then nodded.
“You win,” he said, turning his back and bending his knees. “Let’s go.”
Eerie nodded and then leapt on to his back. They almost tumbled over while Vivik figured out his footing. Katya’s laughter was audible from the bottom of the slope.
“I’m not too heavy? Am I?” Eerie asked shyly. “Do you think?”
“Oh, no,” Vivik exclaimed, not born yesterday. “Not at all. I can hardly tell you’re there.”
“Oh.” Eerie hummed to herself, satisfied. “Okay.”
Truthfully, the Changeling was compact and probably not heavy at all. Vivik had spent his time at the Academy doing everything within his power to avoid the gym, however, with an admirable degree of success. Even with the assistance of his internal nanomachinery, Vivik’s strength and endurance were lacking. The last few days of walking had been one of the greater exertions of his life, and the slope was rather steep.
He took a halting step and nearly rolled his ankle.
The next step sent rocks cascading to the ground and a swearing Katya running for cover. Vivik considered turning around, but with the extra weight on his back, he felt that he might fall over if he did. His next three steps were rapid, as pebbles rolled beneath the soles of his hiking boots. The porous stone snapped beneath their combined weight with a melodic complaint, bouncing debris ringing pleasantly off volcanic glass. Vivik slid and shuffled, his feet turned perpendicular to the slope, his knees bent as far as he dared.
Slow progress.
Eerie leaned her cheek against the back of his neck, apparently unbothered by the sweat that beaded there, and Vivik shivered. Her skin was cool and mildly fragrant, not at all affected by the sun that beat down overhead and reflected off the bare rock. She smelled like herbs or essential oils, but not even vaguely like a human being, which made Vivik even more acutely aware of his own distressing odor. Vivik’s boots skittered across a flow of volcanic glass, black stone as slick as ice, and he was forced to release his hold on Eerie’s legs to free up his own hands and prevent them from falling over. Eerie responded by scissoring her stockinged legs around his midsection and making it difficult to breathe.
“Eerie,” Vivik gasped. “Not so tight!”
“Sorry!”
The constriction around his abdomen relaxed to a degree. Vivik found a depression in the hillside that offered clearer transit than his original path and stepped carefully down into it, pleased to find more secure footing at the gravelly bottom of the wash.
“Can I ask you something, Eerie?”
“Sure!” The gentle melody of Eerie’s voice resonated with proximity. “We’re members of the same club on a club outing, after all. We have to stick together.”
“Right. Why are you so hard on Katya?”
“Hard on Katya?” Eerie sounded bemused. “I don’t see it that way.”
“You two have been going at it since we left Central,” Vivik insisted, struggling to maintain his balance. “What’s the problem?”
Eerie was quiet for a little while, giving Vivik time to focus on a particularly tricky section midway down the slope where a convergence of boulders forced him to shuffle from one side to the other along a narrow seem.
“We both want different things, I guess.”
“For Alex, you mean?”
Vivik rounded the last of the boulders, and relaxed a bit, past the worst of it and near the bottom of the hill.
“For lots of things. We can’t both get what we want. Sometimes it’s hard for us to get along, I guess.”
It was Vivik’s turn to think it over.
“Is there any chance of resolving your differences? I mean, we’re all here for Alex…”
Eerie hopped off his back as the slope moderated, offering him a smile as sad as a poorly attended birthday party.
“Katya and I have already reached a sort of understanding, or we will soon enough. You don’t need to worry about us, Vivik. You need to worry about what we will do once you tell your story. You aren’t really here for Alex, but then again, we all have our reasons.”
“That’s not necessarily…”
“It is.” Eerie shrugged. “You know it. As do I.”
Vivik followed Eerie with a head full of contradictory thoughts, rejoining the still-giggling Katya at the base of the slope. There was something odd about the sunlight, a filter in the sky that refracted and distorted the light in subtle and migraine-inducing ways. Vivik had already lost track of the days, as Eerie warned that he would. It felt like an eternity since they had left Central, and there was no sign or assurance of progress from their Changeling guide.
“Where to next?”
Katya asked the question casually, but Vivik caught the way she studied Eerie out of the corner of her eye. Eerie pulled her laptop from her bag, and opened it on a convenient piece of basalt. Vivik looked over her shoulder as she booted up her custom-built OS, as he always did, but the software she ran via DOS prompts was unbelievably arcane. She plugged in a handful of commands, waited briefly, and then intently studied a mess of numeric text. The Changeling nodded to herself, slammed the lid of her laptop closed, and then spun around in a circle several times. When she came to an unsteady halt, she pointed in that direction.
“This way,” Eerie said confidently. “We aren’t very far now.”
“From the Outer Dark?”
“No.” Eerie dashed Vivik’s hopes with a shake of her head. “From the tracks.”
***
Somewhere abstract, Alex dreamed of falling.
The sky he fell through was blue and familiar, the ground ap
proached with a slow and inevitable clarity. At times, the wind seemed to pass through him, while at other times it tore at his extremities and rolled him mercilessly.
There were impacts, he was certain, though the details escaped him. When he opened his mouth to scream, his breath was torn away by winds that seemed almost malicious in their treatment of him.
***
Two parallel lines of steel, on a raised bed of predominantly white gravel, stretching out into the haze and the uncertain horizon. Vivik was so relieved to see the tracks that he found himself grinning. It was all he could do to prevent himself from charging across the remainder of the bone-dry creek bed that they had followed for the last several…hours? Days? Vivik tried unsuccessfully to remember when the sun had last set, or he had slept last.
Gravel rolled beneath his boots, and Vivik threw out his hands for balance. Long-forgotten water had rounded and smoothed the small stones of the creek bed, and it rolled like marbles underfoot.
“Eerie?” Vivik stopped beside a rock that still showed the impressions of a changing water level from centuries or millennia earlier. “I think I found what we’re looking for. Over here.”
Tens of meters back, Eerie nodded and made no comment. Katya followed behind a distance, watching the Changeling with narrowed eyes. Neither of them seemed inclined to hurry, so Vivik crouched in the minimal shade the rock provided, running a bandana across his forehead. He took a long sip from the valve attached to his backpack’s water reservoir.
A bird made disconcertingly regular circles overhead, at such an altitude that Vivik could only guess at the outline. It was the first animal he had seen since leaving Central, and at this point, even a vulture was welcome company. Vivik ached to know where they were, but by the third day, he had learned better than to ask the Changeling, who seemed to wander by a combination of inscrutable software and intuition. It was better not to think about whether he could trust any of that.
The Changeling arrived, flushed and panting. Vivik offered her the bite valve, but she shook her head, and instead took a pull from her own – which Vivik knew was filled with a cloying mixture of Kool-Aid and instant lemonade, so thick it was practically a syrup.
The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4) Page 21