The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4)

by Zachary Rawlins

  “My orders? Who delivered these particular orders?”

  “Ah…Miss Muir, as I recall, sir.”

  “So Miss Muir let herself in. What happened then?”

  “Nothing, at first. Then, we started to get stuff,” the soldier explained, gesturing at an assemblage of thermal monitoring and motion detection gear. “Readings. Heat – relative to the background, anyway – and motion. Two bodies worth, maybe three. And then…”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing, sir. Emily Muir left, and she took the prisoner with her. Readings indicate an apport.”

  “You don’t say! What about the Yaojing?”

  “Nothing, sir. Hasn’t moved since…whatever happened. Her body seems to match the ambient temperature.”

  “This is all fantastic.” Alistair briefly considered doing something terrible, and then decided it was not worth the trouble. There was a good chance that he would need cannon fodder soon. Talia, what the hell has been going on my absence?

  The technician was ready, as Talia always was. If only he had a hundred Talia’s, Alistair mused, Central would already be invaded and the Auditors long dead.

  Treachery and misdirection, sir. Emily Muir and Marcus Bay-Davies are up to something, but I’m not sure...

  I have some ideas. What else don’t I know?

  An oddity, sir. We have a couple unexpected visitors.

  What? In the Outer Dark? Talia, even we can barely get here. How…?

  I’m not sure, sir, but it happened. There were four of them, but one of them slipped our surveillance.

  The other three?

  Still have them, sir. The Network identifies the Signatures as Katya Zharova, Eerie – no last name on that one, sir – and Derrida.

  Derrida? Like the philosopher?

  Yes, sir. I believe it is a dog, sir.

  Eerie and Katya are in the Outer Dark, and they brought a dog with them?

  Yes, sir.

  This I must see. Get me an apport, Talia.

  Yes, sir.

  Now that I think about it, have Michelle wake up the rest of the squad while I deal with this. I have the worst feeling about today.

  Alistair felt a chill in his right foot, and then realized that he was standing in gathering pool of melted water, ice thawing as the atmosphere slowly reverted to survivable temperatures. He stepped clear with an annoyed shake of his head, giving the mute soldiers around him a baleful look.

  ***

  “North Vegas, sir?”

  “Yes. What about it?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “I don’t ask questions because I like to hear myself talk, Nero.”

  “Sorry, sir. It’s just that nothing good ever happens in North Vegas.”

  ***

  The bartender tried a smile when he delivered their drinks. Rebecca ignored him entirely, shooting her tequila with the urgency of a deprived alcoholic. Alice returned the smile, and the bartender found something else that urgently needed doing, all the way on the other side of the room.

  Alice tapped her shot glass against the bar while Rebecca started in on her beer with greater-than-usual enthusiasm.

  “So?” Alice said, getting impatient. “What now, boss?”

  Rebecca poured beer down her throat, while simultaneously signaling the bartender with a wave of her other hand.

  “Christ,” Alice said, doing her shot, and then setting the glass down on the bar, upside down. “I always forget you were a frat girl.”

  “Sorority,” Rebecca corrected, putting her empty beer glass on the bar. “The girl ones are called sororities.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  “We were a society of young Jewish ladies, interested in charitable works and liver damage.”

  “That’s great, boss. Back to the present day. We got a war in the making, remember?”

  The bartender returned with new shots, and Rebecca sent him right back to refill her beer.

  “Oh, yeah. I remember.”

  “One that would be easier, if you’d let me have a talk with Emily Muir, instead of letting the Anathema bitch run loose…”

  “I have my reasons, Alice. Thanks to her, we know where Alistair is, or where he will be.”

  “So? That all?”

  “Of course not, but I’m not obligated to tell you everything. At this point, the Anathema are number two on my list of problems.”

  Alice nearly choked on her first sip of hoppy, citrus-scented beer.

  “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “Nope. Not joking. Here’s the thing…”

  Rebecca paused to drain her second shot, a distant look in her eyes as she stared into the massive mirror affixed to the back of the old bar, reflecting the pair of women through a filter of hundreds of multihued bottles.

  “I tried my protocol on both of them,” Rebecca admitted, tousling her hair in frustration. “It didn’t work on Anastasia; then again, it never does. She’s immune to telepathy and empathy – fuck, she’s a big black psychic hole, for whatever reason.”

  “Her protocol,” Alice said, trying a second sip and wincing at it. “That’s what the science guys at the Far Shores say. I heard ‘em talking about it, once, how she pops up every now and then on the Etheric scans, but never for very long.”

  “Whatever. She’s a blank to me, so I expected that much.” Rebecca picked up her beer, but did not actually drink. “Gaul, on the other hand…” She took a deep breath and set her glass back down on the bar untouched. “When I tried to influence Gaul, he parried.”

  “Maybe he has people? An empath on staff, or…”

  “No,” Rebecca said, shaking her head for emphasis. “This was Gaul himself. I know his signature.”

  “How could that happen? Gaul is a precognitive.”

  “Implant,” Rebecca said quietly, tapping the side of her head. “You know.”

  “That’s…no. No way. Without access to the Etheric Network…”

  “Yeah. That’s what bothers me.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” Rebecca admitted. “How could I?”

  “But…”

  “I told you, I don’t know. We kicked Gaul out. The Far Shores guys reset all the encryption, set up all new server keys and access points. It was the first thing I did, when I took the job. It took a month and a half, and it was a huge pain in the ass for everyone.”

  “I remember. Our comms kept going down at Audits and…”

  “Yeah. It worked, too,” Rebecca mused. “At least, I think it did. Analytics did any number of deep scans, and all the math checked out. Gaul was severed from the Etheric Network, and his implant was rendered useless.”

  “Maybe that was always a ruse,” Alice speculated. “Maybe he was just pretending.”

  “I doubt it. Maybe. I don’t know.” Rebecca put her head in her hands. “One way or another, Gaul has access to the Network, and can use his implant, in defiance of all expectation.”

  “Can’t you just cut him out again?” Alice asked hopefully. “There can’t be that many administrative accounts with the sort of permissions he needs, and…”

  “Tried it,” Rebecca snapped. “Told our telepaths in Central to do that as soon as he parried my attempt to influence. Contacted Processing, too, and got their best technician – kid named Adel – scheduled to take a look at it.”

  “What about the telepaths?”

  “Fucking nothing residual, that’s what,” Rebecca fumed. “It’s all up to the nerds at Processing, now.”

  “How is that even possible, not to leave traces in handling?”

  “Beats me. Gaul is smarter than our people, I guess. Who knows how long he had access, or what he arranged. Main takeaway for me – he didn’t need to use it. He could have saved that trump card for another day and let a servant do the work. Gaul wanted us to know. Not only that, he was so confident we couldn’t kick him out, he felt comfortable letting us know he was there.”

  “Oh.”

  Alice picke
d up her beer, and then set it down just as quickly, muttering to herself.

  “Now you see it.” Rebecca gave her a sour grin. “Gaul’s back in fucking business, running us all in circles.”

  “Shit. Why would he want to us to know that?”

  “Right? This is the guy who played his cards so close that he classified the Advanced Studies class syllabus. Now he plays a trump card as an opener?”

  “So…what now?”

  “We have a drink, while I decide who needs to die.” Rebecca shrugged demurely. “Then you make them dead, Chief Auditor. Same as always.”

  ***

  “What’s the deal with the crown on your neck, Nero?”

  “My old life, sir.”

  “Gang stuff?”

  “Yes, sir. Nothing I’m proud of, but nobody ever asked me if I wanted to do anything else.”

  “What about working for the Black Sun, Nero? Anyone ever ask you if you wanted to do that?”

  “Yes, sir.” Nero flashed a quick smile in the rearview. “I merited a three-minute recruitment meeting with Lady Martynova, believe it or not. Not that I needed persuading, sir, but it’s nice to be asked.”

  “Yeah.” Renton looked at his own tired reflection in the window. “Ana’s good at knowing what people need. Not giving it to them, necessarily, but then again, knowing is often enough.”

  Renton could see Nero considering the possibility of asking a question. Amused by his subordinate’s curiosity, Renton gave him a little telepathic nudge toward bravery.

  “Have you known the Mistress a long time, sir?”

  Renton yawned.

  “Yeah, but I keep her secrets…”

  “Nothing like that, sir. I just wanted to ask…is she as cool as she seems? You know, sir, in real life.”

  “You wouldn’t believe it, Nero.” Renton turned his attention firmly back to the window. “Cooler, even.”

  ***

  Vladimir could hardly open his eyes, which in turn were little more than reddened slits folded deep within a series of wrinkles, but the boy was patient. The only sound in the room was the failing struggle of Vladimir’s breathing and the unsteady complaint of the gleaming, sanitary machinery that nearly filled the room, but something alerted the apparently old man to his presence. The boy sat atop the rolling laptop platform that the doctors used to take notes, perched like a crow on a buttress, watching with focused, unreadable intent.

  A nearby machine pulsed with greater intensity, and Vlad rolled over in the bed slowly, with a sound like leaves rustling in a slight wind, and then opened his eyes, blinking at the gentle afternoon light. The boy waited without comment.

  “Yes?” Vladimir’s voice was reedy and aggrieved, like a child who resents being woken. “What do you want?”

  The boy nodded in seeming satisfaction.

  “Lord Thule sends his regards,” the boy said. “Also apologies. He wishes he could be here.”

  Vladimir’s expression was difficult to make out, behind an oxygen mask and decades of apparent age, but he might have smiled.

  “Very consistent,” Vlad wheezed. “The mask?”

  The boy nodded, hopping down from the equipment rack and then removing the prostrate man’s oxygen mask with unexpected tenderness.

  “Better,” Vlad said, closing his eyes again. “Now we can talk. You are…?”

  “Egill Johannsson,” the boy explained, studying the readouts on the equipment. “Sorry, I never went to the Academy.”

  “Ah. An orphan?”

  The boy nodded.

  “The Thule Cartel found me in primary school in Kiel and adopted me, raised me.” The boy shifted self-consciously. “Lord Thule is my cousin, they say, but he’s more like an uncle, wouldn’t you agree? Too old to be a cousin, in my opinion.”

  “Oh, Gaul.” Vladimir shook his head. “You’ve been done a great disservice, young man, and I’m sorry to hear it. How old are you?”

  “Fifteen,” the boy said, with an air of boastful suspicion. “Old enough.”

  “Too old,” Vlad corrected. “You should have been enrolled at the Academy years ago. This all might have been prevented.”

  Egill approached Vladimir’s bedside quietly, his neatly polished dress shoes making little noise on the linoleum.

  “You’re a strange old man,” Egill said, with a hint of sneer. “Were you a teacher?”

  “We were all teachers, at first. I’m not entirely sure how we lost sight of that,” Vlad said, his voice little more than a whisper. “And I am not an old man.”

  “The Lord Thule instructed me to tell you that he is very sorry,” the boy said, reciting from memory. “The Lord Thule bids you to remember the better times, and wishes you to know that he will remember you in the same manner.”

  “Oh, Gaul,” Vladimir said. “What have you done?”

  “Lord Thule wishes that he could see you once again,” the boy said, resting his cocoa-brown hands on the Vladimir’s bedsheet. “Why is that?”

  There was no sound for a time, aside from the persistent clamor of hospital machinery. Several of the displays had begun to flash or beep loudly, but no nurse or attendant came to answer their summons. The boy waited with patience beyond his years, chestnut eyes washed clean with trauma years earlier.

  “Wanting something badly doesn’t mean that it will happen,” Vladimir explained, Egill leaning close so he could hear. “Did Gaul say anything else?”

  “Only what he wanted me to do you,” Egill explained, pulling the pillow from behind Vladimir’s nearly weightless head. “You might want to close your eyes, old man.”

  ***

  The factory was well north of the core of Vegas, in a cluster of industrial blocks east of the airport along Cheyenne Avenue. Traffic diminished the further they went from the lights of the Strip, dense and identical housing developments alternating blocks with vacant plots of desert and huge parking lots intended for mysterious purposes. Renton cracked with window to enjoy the warm night breeze, and the roar of the wind filled the car.

  “Mind if I turn on the radio, sir?”

  “Yes, Nero. I mind.”

  The warehouses varied only in scale, squat and angular and stretching for the length of enormous blocks, flat roofs colonized by solar panels and a confusion of vehicles in varying states of maintenance strewn about grounds. A tumbleweed rolled out of the darkness and bounced off the windshield before Nero could react, impacting with surprising weight and leaving a small crack behind in the safety glass.

  To amuse himself, Renton counted the stray dogs he saw rooting through the trash, wondering in a distracted manner how they survived the merciless heat of the day.

  The factory sat in the center of a lot that was primarily desert scrub, a squat beige building surrounded by barbwire and an expanse of parking on every side, dotted here and there with planters filled with manzanita and succulents. The sign in front of the building indicated that it was for sale, and the faded print and obscured phone number suggested that it had been so for a long time. The parking lot was clean and none of the building’s windows had yet been shattered by vandals, a minimal array of lights visible inside the building. The parking lot gate slid open at a command from Nero’s cell phone. Renton noticed that the security lights along the fence were universally broken, along with the streetlights in front of the factory, but did not remark upon it.

  Nero piloted the BMW into a spot beside the chromed front doors, a sign reserving the space for the handicapped slowly fading beneath the relentless Nevada sun. Nero killed the engine and the lights. They watched the factory for ten minutes in silence. A coyote made a quick circuit of the parking lot, and found nothing of interest.

  Renton caught himself nodding, and gave himself another jolt of telepathically-induced stimulus, his hands trembling with the surge of nervous energy and eagerness.

  “You see anything wrong with this place, Nero?”

  Nero leaned forward and peered at the factory like a distant object on the horizon.<
br />
  “No one in or out, sir?”

  “That’s obvious. Look closer.”

  The look of intensity on Nero’s face – the way his skin wrinkled against the scar tissue above his eyes – fascinated Renton. He took pity.

  “Think about it from a professional standpoint, Nero. What happened here?”

  Nero frowned, studying the perimeter.

  “The lights are gone, sir. Cameras, too.”

  Nero trailed off as he studied the property.

  “There’s probably a cut in the fence somewhere,” Nero said cautiously, glancing at Renton in the rearview. “Someone took out the lights, probably alarms. The unmanned security. This place has been hit, sir.”

  “Not bad,” Renton said, fighting off the creeping tendrils of exhaustion with another quick hit of telepathic stimulation. “Next question. When?”

  Nero’s frown seemed to indicate intense thought. Renton stared at the dark blue ink beneath his skin, swirls of Catholic icons, skulls, and Spanish text that Renton was too jittery to try and translate.

  “Not that long, but...a while. A week, maybe, sir?”

  Renton nodded, mildly impressed.

  “How’d you get there, Nero?”

  “No tagging on the building, sir, so it couldn’t have been that long. The parking lot is empty, though, so whoever hit this place, they had time to clean up after.”

  “Now you’re getting it. This place belonged to us, as of recently. It was a science facility, and an IT hub. Must’ve been hard and fast, because we never heard a peep. We only noticed it right away because the local network went down.”

  “There was no Black Sun response, sir?”

  “Of course there was, Nero. Don’t be stupid. We mobilized local forces within an hour. They found nothing but bodies and a wrecked lab. It was probably meant to look like a raid, but they didn’t have quite enough time to cover up. Intel figures the attackers left within a fair amount of the equipment on site.”

  “I see, sir. What sort of equipment are we talking about?”

  “An odd assortment of things. This facility was working on hardware-secured data storage, so that’s what they took...”