The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4)

by Zachary Rawlins

  “What do you want in return?” Katya asked suspiciously. “You haven’t told us yet.”

  “Oh, right,” Emily said, slapping her forehead. “Silly me.” She produced a cotton swab and held it toward the Changeling. “Eerie, be a dear and rub this on the inside of your cheek, won’t you?”

  Eerie looked to Katya for guidance.

  “Do I…?”

  “DNA?” Katya took the cotton swab and inspected it. “What do you need Eerie’s DNA for?”

  “Not to worry. I have it on good authority that she has no such thing,” Emily said reassuringly. “I promise, nothing nefarious as far as the three of you are concerned. That’s my price, though, to go any further.”

  “Emily…” Vivik looked distressed. “You didn’t say anything to me about this.”

  “Didn’t I?” Emily put a finger to her moist lips. “I’m sure that I meant to.”

  Katya turned the swab over in her palm, shrugged, and then handed it to Eerie.

  “Go ahead,” Katya said, nodding. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “That’s the spirit!” Emily looked on approvingly. “Do be thorough, Eerie, dear.”

  Eerie turned her back on the group before swabbing her cheek, then returned the damp swab to Emily with a blush. Emily nodded happily, and then stuck the swab in her mouth.

  “Emily!” Eerie cried out, recoiling. “That’s gross!”

  “Really?” Emily laughed. “I thought you of all people would understand, Eerie. Biological protocols are not always as sanitary as one would like, you know.”

  “She’s right, Emily,” Katya said, shaking her head in disbelief. “That was gross.”

  “Fine, whatever.” Emily tossed the swab aside. “Are you coming with me, or what?”

  “Katya?” Eerie looked at her hopefully. “Do you know what to do?”

  Katya nodded absently.

  “Yeah, I think I do.” Katya dropped to one knee in front of Derrida, seizing the dog firmly by the furry folds of his cheeks and staring into his black eyes. “Hey, Hegemony drone! Hayley Weathers? You there, Hayley? I know why you sent your stupid dog, so fess up.”

  Eerie smiled approvingly. Emily and Vivik shared a dubious look. Derrida panted.

  I’m here, Black Sun drone, Hayley thought, her presence made ghostly by distance. What do you want?

  Privacy and a brief word. I have Anathema crawling all over me, so privacy is paramount.

  Katya scratched Derrida’s cheeks with her well-nibbled nails as Hayley forced a private telepathic channel through the substrate of her mind.

  We are as private as I can manage, given the distance and the fact that Emily Muir and her supporting telepaths are trying like hell to break into our conversation. Where are you, anyway? I’m experiencing actual lag, you know – and that’s a telepathic impossibility.

  Impossible seems to be the norm around here. I don’t have time to explain right now, Hayley. You catch this scene with Vivik and Emily fucking Muir?

  A pause that seemed long, in the near instantaneous realm of telepathic contact, while Hayley reviewed Derrida’s recent perceptions.

  I just got caught up. Holy shit, Black Sun girl. You have dug yourself quite a hole.

  Don’t give me any shit. I got my reasons.

  I suppose you must, Hayley allowed, followed by another pause pregnant with telepathic activity. I don’t like leaving Alex behind either, no matter what Ms. Gallow says. What do you want?

  Two things. Can you tell me if Alistair is coming here?

  Can I what? I don’t even know where you are, and the interference...

  Hayley?

  Quiet. I’m working…

  Another pause. Emily and Vivik shared another look of confusion, while Eerie hummed a nostalgically familiar tune to herself.

  I don’t know if it’s Alistair, but there is an intense amount of Etheric activity in your area.

  What does that…?

  Maybe nothing. Maybe a World Tree firing up. Wanna hang around and find out?

  Not really. One more thing…

  Quickly now.

  Tell your fleabag to stay close to Eerie, whatever happens. She’s gonna need the help.

  I already did, before you even left. What are you gonna do, Katya?

  No idea. Whatever the fuck I can.

  Katya petted Derrida roughly and then stood, wiping her hands clean on her jacket. “Okay, what the hell. What’s the plan, Emily?”

  “Oh good. My apport technician should be here directly,” Emily said, with an encouraging nod and a little splash. “I am so pleased you decided to trust me.”

  “I haven’t. Then again,” Katya said, “we’re all traitors here, aren’t we?”

  “Close enough,” Emily agreed. “So, am I a member of the club now, or what?”

  ***

  The tiny closet grew hot and stale. Alex long ago sweated through his grimy, second-hand uniform, and the cheap cloth hung heavily from his aching limbs. The last indeterminate period had been passed in a fit of constant motion, working his legs and adjusting his back, trying to find a less uncomfortable reality.

  Nothing worked. How long had it been? Had he been forgotten?

  There was no way to measure, no sight of the sun. Had he been brought a meal? The bucket in the corner wasn’t full yet. Had it been emptied? Had he slept?

  He threw himself to the floor and whined, curled into a ball and hugged his knees. He was assailed by vision of a darkened building, evacuated or condemned or simply forgotten, nothing in the halls, no one to remember him, trapped and suffocating under a bare lightbulb in a hanging fixture. Had they left him in here?

  Alex called out, voice quavering, hating himself for it. Cries for help that slowly became pleas, for release, forgiveness, even conversation. Eventually he must have lost his voice, dry from the dust and lack of water. Under the relentless light, suffocating on hot stale air, Alex pressed his lower back against the marginally cooler concrete, and sobbed loudly.

  ***

  The apport was deftly done. Katya felt the ground beneath her feet an instant after arrival, with only the mildest jolt on impact. Katya opened her eyes, a backhanded compliment on the tip of her tongue, intended for Emily Muir’s dreamy apport technician. She swore instead, but the oath was half-hearted.

  Beside her, Eerie made her way clumsily to her feet, leaning on Derrida’s ample back for support.

  The Club stood beneath a sky as dark as it was before the universe began, a void still waiting on God’s word. They were in a shallow valley, carved from the lifeless plain like it was gouged with some great tool, scrub trees and unusual weeds clustered around her legs and poking through her tights. At the upper edges of the valley and along across the plain about them, a layer of black mist lingered, so dense that she initially mistook it for water, obscuring the dry riverbeds and impact craters beneath. Across the whole of the alien sky, slow lightning bolts crawled and forked, casting baleful light, but making no noise. A wind chilled her beneath her sweater, and the only sound she could hear were the frantic whispers it carried with it.

  Horrors grazed on the sluggish lightening in the near distance. At the edge of the vast plain, great mountains rose into the ebon sky, skirted with black mist.

  “Fucking Emily fucking Muir!”

  “Katya?” Eerie looked around nervously. “Where are we?”

  “Exactly.” Katya sat down heavily on her pack. “What a bitch.”

  ***

  Alex came back to himself slowly, his awareness returning in staggered bursts.

  A body, first, along with a litany of complaints that were becoming familiar – eye, leg, fingers.

  Then the beach, same as before in the simulation, but at night. There were no stars, just a black mist that obscured any sense of place or distance.

  Then Samnang Banh, staring at him with jack-o’-lantern eyes.

  Words returned to him slowly.

  “Fuck.” He shook his head; tried to spit an
d discovered he could not. “How long?”

  She cocked her head like an inquisitive bird.

  “From my perspective? About ten seconds.”

  Alex moaned, and buried his head in his hands.

  “For you,” Samnang continued, “I would guess something along the order of a year or two.”

  ***

  “Thank you, Prosper,” Emily said appreciatively, taking his hand while she had navigated the narrow stair that allowed access to the Spire’s basements. “Did you see the girls off safely?”

  “Yes, ma’am…”

  “Miss, please. Let’s not give away my youth before I’ve had a chance to misspend it.”

  “Of course, Miss Muir.” Prosper agreed, suppressing a blush while his halo glowed with vivid pink puppy love, with deeper undercurrents of sanguine lust and bone-white loyalty. “I left them exactly where you indicated. Without a World Tree, they are far beyond retrieval. I confirmed, there are no Horrors, or anything else, anywhere even remotely close to them. My return was a struggle, even with assistance and plotting.”

  “Brave Prosper,” Emily said, touching his shoulder approvingly, stoking his halo ever brighter. “Well done. I need to ask more of you before this is done, I’m afraid…”

  “Fatigue isn’t a problem for me.” Prosper assured her, puffing out his ample chest. “I’m ready to do whatever’s needed, Miss Muir.”

  She studied his halo briefly, and with a restrained amount of pride found his statement to be true. Emily made a few tweaks anyway, steading his nerve and solidifying his intent, out of affection and long habit. Prosper was the only other full Anathema under her command, aside from Leigh, so it was important to her that he be at his best.

  “Excellent. Hurry back home and retrieve Leigh, won’t you? I need her here. Update Mark as well, if he’s up and fit. Warn him that he will have company shortly, and should therefore make himself presentable.”

  “I’ll try, Miss Muir. You know how Mark is, though. I’m not sure…”

  “I won’t hold you responsible for his failings, Prosper,” Emily said, laughing. “If he’s conscious, throw him in the bath and call it a day. Ask Thu to keep him from drowning, if he’s particularly out of it.”

  Prosper nodded and took a pocket mirror from the breast pocket of his tailored shirt. He stared at it intensely for a moment, and then appeared almost to fold, turning a corner at an impossible angle, and then was gone.

  Emily continued.

  The next basement chamber was aggressively occupied by Alistair’s troops, who had setup a variety of probably superfluous monitoring and recording gear. Everyone was armed, and the air was agitated with the energy of a dozen barely suppressed protocols, the atmosphere dense with body odor and gun oil. Nobody looked happy to see her, until Emily adjusted their responses, turning the line of halos a benign shade of blue, feeling the usual surge of pride that her enhanced abilities evoked within her.

  ***

  “How are you even doing this shit, Samnang?”

  “Dream state manipulation. My protocol. I can control all parameters of the dream, including your perception of time. I could have left you in the closet – or the bus, or the circle – for a hundred years, Alex. Or a thousand.” The light from Samnang’s eyes stung his own. “I was hesitant to start with such extremity, but you appear to have adapted to a certain amount of prolonged confinement, and the Church is impatient for results.”

  Alex smiled.

  “You keep saying that.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Perhaps then we should resume?”

  “Okay, okay! It’s really not…it’s just, when you talk about the Church or whoever rushing you…it doesn’t really make a lot of sense.”

  “Oh?” Samnang looked smug. “Please, do explain.”

  “You told me yourself. Time isn’t linear for you – Fey, Yaojing, what-have-you – and your masters aren’t even part human. If the Church of Sleep is weirder than you are, Samnang, I can’t imagine that they could be impatient for anything. If they know it eventually, wouldn’t that be the same as knowing it now? Isn’t that pretty much what you were telling me?”

  “That’s not it at all.”

  “I think it’s close enough. You wanna know what else I think?”

  “Not particularly.”

  Alex studied Samnang closely, but detected no trace of sarcasm.

  “I think that you’re lying to me.”

  That got a muted, ambiguous reaction.

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t think your creepy tentacle monster masters…”

  “They don’t have tentacles, for the record.”

  “Whatever. I don’t think they are rushing you at all. I think it’s something else. Tell me the truth, Samnang – the Auditors are coming to rescue me, aren’t they?”

  Samnang’s poker face was as perfect as a statue in the museum.

  “A rescue from a dream, within the Outer Dark? You are naïve to entertain such thoughts, Alex.”

  “Maybe. You do seem worried, though, Samnang. How close are they?”

  “Even if your imagined rescuers were at the very door, what difference do you think it would make? One second of subjective time is all that I require to keep you here forever.”

  “What good does that do you?”

  “It means that we have all the time in the world, regardless of outside events,” Samnang said. “You should yield now, and give me custody of the memory, saving yourself several lifetimes’ worth of suffering.”

  “Why do you bother asking? Can’t you just take what you need from my head? It makes you sound like some sort of movie vampire or something…”

  Samnang shook her head with unnecessary vehemence, exactly the way Eerie would have done, and Alex was flooded with nostalgia and uncertainty.

  “Not at all. I am not a vampire, and this is not telepathy. I am Yaojing, and you are dreaming – a dream of my devising, yes, but the dream itself is still yours. You may have no control over what happens to you, thanks to my protocol, but your permission in this environment is paramount. The sanctity of your mind is inviolable until you decide that is not. The rest of you – your awareness, perceptions, and memory – does not enjoy such good fortune.”

  “That’s not a fucking answer. Just be honest with me! What is it you want?”

  Samnang frowned and a full spectrum of color rippled through the characters engraved on her cheeks.

  “I have told you. A memory that is not your own.”

  “Why would you want something like that?”

  “Ériu cares for you, in her own diminished manner, so you are the most logical place for her to hide it.” Alex recoiled from Samnang and her burning eyes. “You need only to recall the memory of which I speak, and our encounter will be at an end.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Samnang. I barely remember my own life. I certainly don’t remember anything from anybody else’s!”

  “You are lying,” Samnang decided. “That is a terrible mistake, on your part.”

  “God…it’s…this whole thing is terrible, you know?”

  “By its very nature, the Outer Dark is terrible,” Samnang agreed. “You currently exist within the condensed manifestation of a reality in which life never developed and light never shone. The Outer Dark hates you, Alex, and we – Ériu and myself alike – are creatures of the Outer Dark. My sister can only hurt you, whatever her intentions.”

  “You’re not the first person to tell me that.” Alex knew his smile was weak, but any sort of smile felt like a victory. “I suppose you also think I should’ve stuck to dating humans?”

  “I am not so ignorant as to think you ever had a choice in the matter. You have been my sister’s puppet for so long that you have ceased to have any other identity.”

  “Wow! That’s…you know, a guy could take that personally.”

  “Is it untrue, then?”

  “I don’t really
care. You say you dug all sorts of crap out of my head, and maybe you did, or maybe you made it all up. Maybe I used to be some kid that nobody even remembers, including me…and so? You think it would change anything? Your sister is the most fun person I’ve ever met, once you get to know her. And she’s smart. And – no offense – she’s cute! Like, way out of my league cute! Maybe she was a little over-involved, but a girl like that is…not the worst. You know?”

  “Are you insane? Ériu has doomed you, Alex.”

  “I don’t know. I like to think I doomed myself, thank you very much.”

  Samnang’s expression did not change, but Alex got the feeling she was angry.

  “You mentioned my worst, earlier,” Samnang said. “A brief inventory of the contents of your mind has helped me to identify those experiences that would qualify as such.”

  “Hey, you know, there’s no need to…”

  “Allow me to give you a demonstration,” Samnang said, closing his eyes with a thought, “of the worst that I can do.”

  ***

  Alistair’s guards were easy to persuade. Emily had been left in charge of the continuing disaster at the base of the Inverted Spire, after all, even if no specific mention of her venturing into the guarded area had been made. Emily fixed security’s glum and suspicious attitudes, turning their halos friendly and flirtatious shades of blue and pink, and they were more than happy to help her descend the remainder of the fractured stairway to where the debris field slowly ground itself out of existence. The field commander was nice enough to take her hand and help her to where she had stood beside Alistair previously, at the very base of the Spire, and was rewarded with a quick peck on his unshaved cheek.

  Emily wanted to laugh as she watched the field commander blush and grin, shouting something at one of his subordinates in an excessive display of authority. She stood atop the mounds of rebar and cracked stone, and imagined that she could feel the frigid and yawning void beneath her bare feet, expelling matter into the Ether like air escapes from a puncture in a balloon.