The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4)

by Zachary Rawlins

  “Give me a minute,” Talia said curtly. “I’m not finished. Emily Muir pulled a request for an apport earlier today, about eight hours ago.”

  Alistair tossed his bloody tissue on the ground.

  “What was her destination?”

  “Las Vegas.”

  ***

  Nero collapsed after breaking down the first hinge on the final door. Renton slapped him across the face, hard, several times, and shouted his name repeatedly, to no effect. Dropping his unresponsive body to the ground, Renton screamed and punched the housing, immediately fracturing his knuckle.

  Renton!

  It was like being shouted at from the other side of a very long tunnel. His primary, most fundamental telepathic channel, the one reserved for the most important person in the world.

  Renton, where are you?

  Not someone. Ana.

  Renton pushed, dropping to his hands and knees, blinded by a sudden and crippling headache. His ears were filled with the dissonance of squealing feedback, but Renton persevered. He ground the enamel from his teeth and beat his hands against his skull.

  The face of his beautiful watch shattered against the basement floor. Blood poured from his nose and mixed with the sweat dripping from his face to stain his collar pink. Renton collapsed on the floor, not far from where Nero’s body slowly returned to room temperature.

  The apport hardly registered. Renton was only dimly aware of a number of people suddenly occupying the small hallway between the security doors, little more than blurry figures from where he lay on the floor.

  Twenty-Four

  “That’s a silly name for a club!” Emily Muir giggled demurely. “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”

  “I…”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing!” Emily said brightly. “What about you, Vivik?”

  “Me? Ah…” Vivik gulped. “Didn’t you say that the Yaojing was a dream manipulator?”

  “Err…I mean, I think so, but…”

  “They don’t do much teaching at the Academy these days, do they?” Marcus Bay-Davies looked disappointed. “Yes, that’s the traditional domain of the Yaojing. You didn’t encounter Samnang Banh during the Anathema’s telepathic interrogation, did you?”

  “I’m not really sure I remember any of that,” Alex said, shaking his head. “But…”

  “You have to understand that the trauma you’ve been through is the source of the confusion you feel, Alex. That’s natural, even to be expected. You need to stop putting credence to things that happened only in your head, however,” Marcus said. “The Yaojing manipulated you in a state of sleep, in a dream. All sorts of things could have seemed to have happened.”

  “Maybe? Look, this doesn’t really…”

  “I would guess she put you to sleep biologically,” Vivik offered. “Like Eerie, you know? A Yaojing’s body manufactures psychoactive compounds, and she could have touched you any time after the Evolution Chamber was breached.”

  “When you think about what you were going through – what Samnang put you through – it all makes a certain sense,” Emily mused. “Save Alex from the Dark Club? Sounds like a dream to me.”

  “Back to Eerie,” Alex said, gripping the table in front of him with both hands. “Do you at least know where she is?”

  “Well, not precisely,” Emily said, looking surprised at the question. “But I’m sure she’s back at Central, in front of her computer, safe and sound. There’s no need for concern.”

  “I’m pretty fucking concerned,” Alex snarled. “What the fuck is going on here?”

  “Please don’t talk to me like that, Alex,” Emily said lightly. “I don’t like it.”

  “Be honest with me!” Alex demanded. “That club name is so absurd, Eerie had to be the one to make it up.”

  “Maybe a fantasy of hers, to come and save you?” Emily considered, patting his hand comfortingly. “We don’t know what the Yaojing did to you, or how her abilities work. Marcus said it was a dream…”

  “It sure didn’t feel like a dream,” Alex muttered. “But Eerie…”

  “Maybe you had some kind of unconscious contact, while you were in the Yaojing’s stupor?” Emily suggested. “We know so little about Changeling biology, after all, and Yaojing are theorized to be similar…”

  “This…are you really suggesting…?” Alex scratched his head. “I don’t think…”

  “Why don’t we go to Central?” Emily offered, putting her hand lightly on his shoulder. “We’ll go right now, and find…well, Katya might be dangerous, but we’ll go find Eerie! Then you’ll know that…”

  “Miss Muir, might I remind you that I helped you rescue Alexander Warner as part of an exchange of favors?” Marcus glared at them over his beer. “This rescue was a costly affair. You owe me, my dear.”

  Alex shook his head.

  “Listen, I’m grateful and all, but I don’t think…”

  “You don’t think,” Marcus agreed. “You would still be locked in the nightmare if it weren’t for Miss Muir, here. She gave up a great deal to see that you were rescued, Mr. Warner. Miss Muir assured me that you were the sort of man who could be counted on to pay his debts. Is that not the case?”

  Alex shifted uncomfortably.

  “No, that’s not it. I mean, I’m really…I…I’d be…what is it you want me to do, again?”

  “Oh, Alex!” Emily threw her arms around his neck. “I knew you’d help!”

  “Um. I, uh,” Alex stammered, cheeks flushed. “Okay.”

  “Yeah,” Vivik said sourly. “Great.”

  ***

  Eerie wept in the corner, curled into a ball, while Katya paced from one side of the cell to the other. She did not understand why they had not separated them. She had been ready for it, when they tore Derrida’s lifeless body from the sobbing Changeling’s arms. They were each given an injection by a taciturn orderly, who did a hurried, but acceptable job. The Thule soldiers good conduct lasted just as long as Gaul Thule lingered, and then they got rough. Katya bruised her wrist against one of the concrete sleeping platforms, when the guards tossed them into the tiny cell, and Eerie’s injured shoulder was painfully jarred.

  The lights were on all the time, and there were no windows, aside from the small grated one inset in the reinforced door. There must have been cameras, because they experienced no check-ins for welfare or security. Katya squatted beside the door and listened for a long time, ear pressed to the steel, but heard nothing.

  “Katya?” Eerie whimpered, wiping her cheeks. “What are we going to do?”

  “Escape,” Katya said, sitting down beside Eerie and putting her arm around her. “Find Alex. Rescue him. Same plan. This is just a setback.”

  “You’re so brave! Why are you so…?”

  “I’ve been here before,” Katya said, something unreadable crossing her eyes. “I lived through it. I’ll do it again.”

  “Wow!” Eerie looked at her worshipfully, pupils massively dilated in the dim cell. “You’re amazing, Katya! I was really scared! What do we do next?”

  “I have no idea,” Katya admitted, closing her eyes. “Let me know if you come up with anything.”

  ***

  The day had been a long one, in a series of such, and Serafina Ricci was eager to return home, shifting impatiently on her seat on the bus from Central proper. Her supervisor at Processing, Adel al-Nadi had been running them all ragged in the previous week, working on the decryption of a virtualized database. Sara came bursting in the front door, calling out a greeting to which she received very little response, only a muffled acknowledgement from somewhere upstairs, likely from her father’s overburdened library on the second floor, where he preferred to received guests. The smile left her face as she dropped her bag, forgetting all about the sequencing problem that she had been working on at Analytics. She glanced about nervously, looking for any sign of who the unexpected visitors might be. Given the present circumstances, Sara knew enough to worry. She found nothing illuminat
ing, however, and so slid off her shoes with evident reticence, making slowly for the ornate ironwork of the main stair.

  She climbed the stairs with care, applying knowledge gained while sneaking out of the house to avoid the steps she knew would creak and groan, vaguely reassured by the murmur of conversation she heard from the library. At the very least, Sara told herself, they were still talking.

  She knocked on the door as she entered; comforted by the familiar smells of leather polish and old paper, and the pipe smoke that was verboten everywhere in the house except this one room. There was a fire in the old fireplace, though the necessity was debatable, and the curtains were open wide to let the sun in. Her mother Ghada offered her a wane smile from the old Quaker chair reserved for her infrequent visits to the library, wearing a good dress and hastily applied makeup, while her father nodded from beside an open window, the pipe in his hand smoking like the chimney of a coal plant, and the smile on his face looking a great deal like an apology. For reasons of decorum, neither spoke until their guest had been greeted.

  Sara met his eyes for a moment, and then bowed clumsily, the idea of performing a curtsey in skinny jeans too absurd for her to consider, self-consciously brushing an errant dreadlock from her eyes.

  “Lord Thule,” Serafina Ricci murmured, eyes on the throw rug beneath her feet that her grandmother had brought back from Afghanistan during the British days. “It is an honor…”

  “Serafina, a pleasure,” Gaul Thule said, with his habitual sternness. “It has been some time.”

  “It has, sir.” Sara kept her breathing steady and calm and her head strategically blank, her family’s secrets secure behind a protective wall of nonsense and nursery rhymes. “Can I offer you something to drink?”

  Gaul waved her off.

  “Your parents have already made arrangements.”

  Sara glanced at her mother, who gave her a nod and a look of inexplicable sorrow.

  “Sir.”

  Gaul looked ready to speak, and then sighed like he had been interrupted. The Ricci family shared a blank look, and then a few seconds later, two servants entered with a soft knock, bringing with them a pot of tea and sandwiches, which they set up on a low table in the corner, not far from her father’s discrete bar. Her mother hurried over to prepare tea for the Lord Thule, waving Sara off when she attempted to help. Puzzled, but doing her best to conceal it, Sara prepared herself a cup with lemon, and another with milk and sugar for her father, who accepted it with a sad smile. Lord Thule wandered the library, examining the titles and making occasional appreciative noises.

  “You have amassed quite a collection, Stefano.”

  “Thank you, Lord Thule. It is my passion, and my father’s passion before me.”

  “I recall. Your father was a capable man, and a remarkable scholar.”

  “Indeed.” Stefano Ricci smiled, ignoring the tea on the table beside him. “It was my good fortune to be adopted into the Ricci family. I have never regretted that decision, and I like to think I never gave him cause to regret it, either.”

  That earned a curious look from Gaul Thule, who paused briefly in his inspection of the volumes, but Stefano simply smiled in fond recollection.

  “I am certain that it is so,” Gaul grumbled, returning to his perusal of the French language section of the library. “You know, Stefano, we are often thought of as rulers – those of us on whom the burden of cartel leadership falls – as captains, and our cartels our vessels, if you will pardon the metaphor, but I have never seen it that way.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I do not see myself as a captain.” Gaul glanced at her father again with his cotton-candy pink eyes. “I see myself as a navigator, steering my cartel through times of peril and uncertainty, from one safe harbor to another, just ahead of the storm.”

  Her father chomped on the mouthpiece of his pipe as he considered it.

  “An apt comparison, though I must confess that I am subject to seasickness,” he said, with a toothy grin. “Can’t even abide whale watching, you see.”

  “There is a storm upon us, Stefano,” Gaul said, appearing not to hear her father. “The skies grow dark indeed.”

  Lord Ricci shifted and then quickly turned his attention back to his pipe, but in that moment, Sara saw his worry clearly, and her heart sank. Sara looked to her mother, but she was lost in apparent contemplation of the placid surface of her tea.

  “It does seem tense,” Stefano allowed, like a man reluctant to talk behind his neighbor’s back. “Don’t you think it will pass, though, Lord Thule? We’ve seen such times before.”

  “You have not yet heard, then?” Gaul affected surprise, but to Sara’s eyes, the reaction was disingenuous. “Forgive me – I forget that the smaller cartels are frequently denied the most crucial intelligence. Allow me to deliver unfortunate news, then – the Black Sun is officially at war with the Hegemony. Telepathic summons will be issued within the hour for an emergency meeting of the Hegemonic Council, to consider a response, but hostilities have already begun.”

  The room went silent, not just of speech, but of all the little noises that three human beings make in due course of being alive. For what seemed like several minutes to Sara, neither she nor her parents dared to draw breath or make even the slightest movement. Her heart beat so loudly in her chest that she worried it would be overheard.

  The Ricci family had defected from the Black Sun, the closest thing to amiable parting that the cartels had ever seen, during a more optimistic phase of the cold war between the Black Sun and the Hegemony. As the family controlled many Mediterranean mercantile operations, their recruitment was something of a coup, and their advancement within the Hegemony was rapid. They were effective on commercial and diplomatic fronts, and were considered valued members of the Hegemony.

  They were also blood relatives of the Martynova family, and maintained semi-covert, mostly cordial relations with them. In better times, this genealogical reality only enhanced the standing of the Ricci family, allowing them to act as go-betweens and valuable commercial and political mediators.

  Now, however…

  “How…how is this possible?” Her father blanched, his sonorous voice strained. “They are celebrating Anastasia Martynova’s debut in Harbin…”

  Gaul nodded distractedly, intent on examining the spine of a first edition of Dante’s Paradiso, the gilt lettering on the side lost to time and handling.

  “Yes. They were attacked at said event. A bombing. Josef Martynova is dead.”

  More silence. Sara noticed that her father had forgotten to close his mouth, and that omission created within her a very peculiar dread.

  “Dead?” Stefano Ricci managed. “Then it is between Pavel and Anastasia…”

  “If rumor is to be believed, Pavel Martynova is hospitalized and unresponsive. Anastasia Martynova appears in firm control of the Black Sun at present.”

  Sara felt a surge of relief at the news of Anastasia’s survival, along with worry for Pavel, who had always been nice to her at extended family events.

  “This is terrible,” Ghada Ricci exclaimed, tears in her eyes. “How did this come to be, Lord Thule?”

  Gaul paused, and for a moment, looked almost ashamed.

  “I bear that particular responsibility, I’m afraid.” Lord Thule ran his finger along the crimson binding on a nearly forgotten German issue of the Count d’Monte Cristo. “The bombing was carried out under my orders.”

  The silence was broken by the thunderous percussion of Sara’s heart.

  “That is a violation of the Agreement,” Stefano Ricci pointed out, beads of sweat standing out on his bronzed skin. “There will be an Inquiry, or even an Audit…”

  “I would expect as much,” Gaul agreed laconically. “I would also expect the Director to accept a fait accompli. The Black Sun will be conclusively defeated before the Director or the Auditors can intervene, and they will be forced to accept the new order of things.”

  “I understand that t
he Black Sun was weakened by the Anathema incursion,” Stefano said, looking a little green beneath his permanent tan. “It was my understanding, however, that they retained something of an advantage over the Hegemony, even so…”

  “It is so,” Gaul agreed. “The balance of power still leans in their direction, ever so slightly. Which is why I picked this course of action. The attack on the Martynova family did not simply serve to deprive them of leadership and enrage them, but also bought us allies in further conflict.”

  “Allies?” Stefano looked hopeful, or frightened – Sara couldn’t say, because both emotions were unfamiliar tenants on the landscape of her father’s face. “Who do you mean, Lord Thule?”

  “A state secret, for now, I am afraid,” Gaul said, looking aloof. “It is enough for you to know that they have a particular fixation, shall we say, on the subject of the Martynova clan, and its close blood relations.”

  Gaul’s pink eyes flitted across each of the three of them, and Sara shivered. She had secretly never cared much for the current Lord Thule – even when he was the Director of the Academy – and she was liking him less and less as the conversation went on, for reasons obscure even to Sara herself. Something about the way he looked past her, rather than at her, maybe.

  “The Ricci Family parted with the Black Sun before my grandfather took power. We have shown the Hegemony steadfast loyalty for generations,” Ghada insisted tearfully. “Our allegiance should be beyond question, Lord Thule.”

  “As it is,” Gaul said hurriedly. “I am not here to censure or question, Lady Ricci. I am here to protect you and your family from the overzealous intentions of our temporary allies.”

  Sara strove to catch her parent’s eyes, but they were both intent on Lord Thule.

  “You mean…?”

  “Yes, Lady Ricci. Our allies would see the Martynova bloodline exterminated, along with any associated families.”

  “We are distant cousins!” Ghada cried out. “Why would anyone…?”