'Really? That's interesting.' He kept a smile off his lips with difficulty. 'That was lucky, considering how little you feel the cold.'
She peeled off her jacket, revealing a tight-fitting black top edged in white fur trim, and ran over to stand in front of the dinner machine. Head tilted to one side before punching in several codes, she turned to talk to him over her shoulder.
'I guess so. But it would have got me if it hadn't been for Faith.'
He frowned. It was good that she imagined enemies for herself, bad that she was telling herself she needed external help to overcome them. 'Really, Sara, you must learn to defend yourself. You're telling me that it got a little cold, and Faith kept you warm?' He let his disdain show.
She scowled round at him. 'It didn't get a little cold, it got super cold. My breath froze and fell to the ground, and my eyes froze shut. It got so cold I could hardly move, and Faith half dragged me till we got back inside the barrier.'
Her breath froze – what an imagination she had! Her face did look a little reddened, though, he noticed, as she returned with a tray loaded with a plate of soy fries and a large mug of hot vegetable soup. She angrily thumped them onto the table, making the soup splash and the dishbot jerk forward in readiness. Her eyes also looked a little red, and there was something odd about her eyelashes. Were they shorter?
'Well, a cold snap is possible, but what made you decide it was It attacking?'
'’Cause the frost ended in a big circle about a hundred meters from the main doors. I remembered you said there was a magic barrier that kept us safe, inside. That means it must of been a magic attack. Plus, I sensed something out there, afterward.'
'Must have,' he automatically corrected as she shoveled a handful of fries into her mouth, looking pleased with herself. He considered. The Warding did extend that distance from the buildings. Which suggested that she had somehow sensed the barrier – quite encouraging, really – and woven the fact into her fantasy. Unless there had been an incident outside? He took out his MetaStylus, traced “Shanahan” on the table, then pressed the connect button.
'Problem, doctor Harmon?' Shanahan's voice sounded tinnily in his ear.
'Probably not. Has it been quiet this evening? Any incidents?'
'Nope. All inmates snug in their rooms. And nobody trying to break in, either,' he laughed.
Sara scowled, leaning forward as she obviously tried to hear the other end of his conversation.
'Ah, good. Has it been unusually cold outside, perhaps?' Harmon asked.
'Well, the sensor in the entry hall did register a twenty degree drop a quarter hour ago. Only lasted a few minutes, though. Probably a faulty thermocouple. And a sensor out front, too. Hmm. That's odd. Looks like Faith headed out on an extra patrol on her own after I'd settled her; and I see here that her telemetry went offline for maybe half an hour, an hour and a half later. Hang on: there was an accompanying heat signature at her kennel when she headed out… Wait: are you there with Sara? Did she sneak Faith out again? Did she-'
He paused, and when he continued, his tone of surprise had shifted to anger. 'Ah, shit: she did something to them, didn't she? To Faith's sensors. Which means I've ordered replacements for no good reason. Dammit! Tell her to stop fucking with my security systems: they're there for a reason. Maybe I should charge the replacements to you.'
Harmon sighed. 'I will speak to her.' He disconnected. So. She must have decided that it could attack via cold, and done something to the sensors to fit the fantasy, constructing her small adventure. Quite well thought-out and executed, really.
'Well?' Sara demanded, taking a mouthful of her soup, fries already finished.
He smiled, rather pleased that she had been able to manipulate the security system without Shanahan's knowledge. She was becoming quite resourceful. 'Yes, a sensor did register a temperature drop,' he told her, not wishing to weaken her fantasy, then changed the subject, indicating her plate. 'Still hungry? You ate quite a large dinner.'
'I got cold. From its attack. This is just to warm me up.'
He eyed her figure. It was a good thing she stayed active, or with the quantity of food she ate she'd soon be overweight.
Sara just smiled at him over her mug of soup, looking self-assured, even more so than usual.
A scan of her in the Imaginal supported her account. She looked as he would expect had she faced an ordeal. But fantasized or real? If there had been a twenty degree drop in temperature registered in the entry hall, then there could have been a larger drop, outside. But what could do that? A weather elemental? But elementals and “foreign” spirits would be unable to penetrate the external Wards. He examined her again, hoping for a hint of magical Unfolding, but there was nothing, as usual: she remained stolidly normal.
Did she look too pleased with herself, though? Planning some mischief, perhaps? He cast mindmeld and skimmed her thoughts, but she was focused on the warmth and taste of her soup; just an occasional darting memory of cold, of struggling on leaden limbs. Nothing else. Surely…?
'Sara, you haven't been visiting Godsson, have you?'
Bizarrely, she immediately pictured the vintage “Mario Brothers” cap she had begged him to purchase, some months back – and which he had never seen her wear. Then she grew angry, remembering herself standing on the chair which had been removed, holding up the broken cleaning bot which had also been taken from her.
She slammed her mug down on the table, soup splashing out. 'I'm not allowed to!'
Then stormed off.
For some reason, he was not as reassured as he should have been. The mind link, of course, snapped as soon as she disappeared from sight. He sighed. She couldn't be visiting Godsson. Shanahan had tightened the security. They'd changed all the passcodes. And he had just probed her, too.
He shook his head. She was beginning to make him think of her as something more than a mere child. If only she would Unfold! He brought his mind back to the matter at hand: her “ordeal” tonight.
Just her fantasy. He would have to watch that: if she began taking too much satisfaction from make-believe activities, such a relief mechanism could interfere with his own experimental programme.
A part of him, though, worried. Could there have been some kind of magical assault? But from who, or what? Nothing supernatural could penetrate the Institute's Wards – at least, not without such a massive display of power that it would be noticed. And the imaginary creature was just imaginary.
Surely?
She, however, still remained utterly convinced it was real; he knew that from his mindmelds. Her “Robo.” A most peculiar choice of name, given his suggestions of an unsettling invisible creature. Odd that she was imagining robotic behavior for the thing.
It was also odd that she was still so certain it was real, since in many ways she was quite the little pragmatist. It had been years since he had used his telekinesis to encourage her belief.
Then, too, there had been that singular occasion very early on, when he had secretly followed behind her, reading her mind, and felt what seemed like some kind of backlash effect. Even, for a moment, had felt he sensed the same thing she did.
Something about the situation definitely made him uneasy. But in the end there was little he could do except stay alert, and keep an open mind.
At least she had appeared uninjured – even unconcerned. Indeed, she had seemed in very fine fettle. And by her own account, Faith too had come through unscathed. So even if something odd had happened, it had not been dangerous.
At least, not at this stage.
He felt a shiver run up his spine.
Chapter 30
I am so ready! The last six months had taken forever, but finally, it was the summer solstice.
The FBI man watched her carefully as her uncle concealed the keypad from her sight. She looked away while he entered the code, hoping it'd make him go faster. Why was he so slow? She always did it much faster. She bounced up and down on her heels: the sun had already set and she was s
ure She would already be attacking.
Sure enough, as soon as the final door was opened she could hear Godsson's cries from below. Wrenching her hand free from her uncle's grip she raced down the stairs. Thanks to his shouting, the FBI agents along the corridor swiveled to face her as she sped toward them.
Maybe some of them recognized her from the year before, because no one shot at her as she dodged between them to press her nose up against the bottom of the window into Godsson's cell, squinting against the terrible golden glare.
It was bad. He was turning, not quite spinning, as if She were coiling around him, trying to make him dizzy.
'Don't let her trick you, Godsson! She's just tryin’ a confuse you!' She had learned spinny things recently: how to make things whirl and flash in bewildering ways that were hard to look away from. 'Just shut your eyes!'
She felt a wave of hatred, from Her of course, and pulled back, even as masculine arms pulled her away from the window and lifted her onto the bench opposite, which she didn't really need.
The man who'd lifted her so easily was a tall stranger she hadn't seen before. He was dressed in actual skins, with pale gray fur still on them, the edges curling loosely open over a broad, tanned, and well-muscled chest. Complicated feathery knots and little tiny dangling jewelry things hung from the skins, and around his neck a leather cord held up a small lumpy bag drawn tight shut.
His eyes were a dark brown, very clear, and she realized he was studying her just as closely as she was studying him. For some reason it made her blush.
He looked well-fed, and for some reason he was sweating slightly, as if the air-conditioned corridor was too hot for him.
Past him, looking on, were two others almost as strangely dressed, a man and a woman. The man was bald, his face painted in bright and dark stripes. The woman had long blonde hair and a slightly cross face. Both looked older than the man who'd moved her away from Godsson.
Whose cries had eased after she'd warned him. But only for a while. Soon enough, She attacked again.
And it kept getting slowly worse, hour after hour. She called encouragement till her voice grew hoarse; and then kept calling. But by midnight, it had gotten worse than she ever remembered it being, worse even than that awful first time she'd seen him being attacked.
She went quiet, willing him to win, to keep fighting, to not let Her beat him. She eyed the keypad, wishing she'd managed to spy out the combination.
If only she could get in there somehow! Then she'd really help. But entering from above wouldn't work: even if she could still get in undetected past all the new security gadgets they'd sneaked in up there, she remembered how the area over his cell had been super strong. Real different to the rest of the old, thin ceiling tiles.
If only she could get in there! She kept willing him on. It felt especially awful now that she'd gone quiet. But she had to: she felt suddenly sure that something was creeping up on her, and she had to stay still and quiet to hear. Waiting in the silent moments was horrid, like she could feel hooks or barbs trying to sneak into her own flesh.
She looked carefully around. Godsson's agonized grunts and howls gripped them all. Everyone had their eyes focused on the speaker where the terrible sounds escaped the cell.
But it felt different. It felt wrong. Like She was tricking them. She looked around, trying to see… and like a puzzle coming into focus, saw how the edges of the skins the handsome shaman wore curled too sleekly against his skin.
'It's here! She's here! She's come through!' She screamed and threw herself onto the strange shaman, tearing Her off his clothes. Clinging to him with her legs, she felt seams and ties rip and tear as she clawed at the invisible thing wrapped across his broad chest and round his waist.
At first he stood still like he was in shock, but she knew it was more because She was confusing him, probably whispering to him, or doing other weird stuff. She felt the man's arms wrap warmly around her, cuddling her, and felt something pressing oddly against her, before he jerked like he'd just come awake, and then started grappling her and trying to pull her off.
Inside his cell, Godsson shrieked and raged louder, the light suddenly pulsing and sucking inwards, disorientatingly, as if the burning light wasn't flickering but fighting an opposite darkness.
Still she struggled against Her, her hands scooping and twisting across the large man's now-bare back, wrenching and tearing at threads she could hardly sense.
When she felt the last wisp slip away, retreating, she slumped in relief against his chest.
But only for a moment. From behind her, the other two shamans finally reacted: started making weird words. Tryin’ ta cast a spell on me! She pushed hard, squirming free of the well-muscled man's embrace, dropping between his legs then twisting and jumping up to cling to his back, putting him between her and the other two like he was a human shield.
She felt rather than saw the spell wash past her, and grinned. She hadn't been sure her maneuver would work.
No one moved.
It was suddenly real quiet in the corridor. Even Godsson had gone silent, now. But in a good way, she was sure.
The lights in his cell, like an aurora, winked out.
Still, no one spoke.
Finally, she dropped from the tall shaman's back and stepped back, dusting her hands with satisfaction. She looked up at him, a little bit surprised at just how completely she'd shredded his clothing. He stood there half-naked, tattered swathes of animal hide kind of dangling off him.
She turned, meeting several pairs of wide eyes watching her as she turned to her uncle. 'See, I said you needed me!'
She saw his worried gaze move from her to Godsson's window. He frowned. When she looked, she saw Godsson's strained face staring out at her.
She felt her brow crinkle. She'd kind of expected him to look pleased, maybe even grateful. But instead he just studied her. Finally he looked from her to her uncle, and seemed to study him the same way, too.
Then all at once she was drowning in a torrent of questions.
She sneaked a look at her uncle, who was looking at her and shaking his head. But with the danger past, her eyelids felt like she'd somehow had lead weights glued to them without her noticing. The thought of her bed actually felt kind of nice.
The debriefing, in Harmon's opinion, was quite unsatisfactory. The consensus, reached only after an embarrassing admission from Angakkuq Yakone, the Aleutian shaman, was that his mind had drifted and he had begun thinking of his wife. Missing her.
This had provoked a physical reaction interpreted by Sara as evidence of an invisible seduction. She attacked; the physical assault snapped Yakone from his reverie; Sara declared herself victorious; and Godsson, overhearing, ended his self-flagellation.
It was all too glib. How could a grown man mistake a fourteen-year-old for his wife?
More and more, he suspected something new and unknown was at work.
But his had been a lone voice. That a fourteen-year-old girl and a madman agreed with him had counted against that interpretation, not for.
Still more worrying was what lay ahead three years from now. On top of the increasing ferocity would be another tri-annual high and a peak in the subsidiary cycle. A “king tide.”
Worse still, Sara had looked like she had wanted to enter Godsson's cell tonight. He had seen the way she kept eyeing the electronic keypad on the cell door. Heaven help her should she ever step inside.
Perhaps, by age seventeen, she could stomach the footage of that first solstice? When his two co-workers had ventured inside to help.
He shuddered. He would have nightmares tonight, he knew.
But at least this time no one had tried to shoot her.
Chapter 31
As it happened, Harmon had underestimated Sara's determination to physically enter Godsson's cell during the next attack, even though it was still a year off.
'It's not fair, Keepie. Why does he have to fight it alone each time?'
'Because it's only a fi
gment of his imagination, Sara.' His own burgeoning doubts, though, made it hard to inject the necessary conviction into his voice. 'Going inside his cell would not help.'
'But I can help, Uncle! I can sense it, and I've felt it, ripped it in my own hands, twice before. I know I can help. If you let me go inside, Godsson and I together can end it, once and for all!'
'No, Sara. You don't know what happened, before. It was the most ghastly thing I've ever seen. Inhuman.'
She said nothing, but sat forward eagerly, her whole posture urging him to continue.
'It was the first year. The summer solstice,' and the start point – and maximum – of the strange secondary cycle: not that he would let Sara know of that. 'We didn't know what was happening, what was wrong. Two of my co-workers, fellow therapists, both magically very capable, rushed into the cell despite my warnings. They thought me cruel, uncaring, for not joining them.'
Sara leaned forward, hands gripping the air as if trying to drag the words from him faster.
'I stood in the doorway, uncertain whether I should enter, too. But Godsson did something to them, something terrible. They started… they changed, into monsters for him to fight, along with everything else he was doing to himself.'
'It's not him, Keepie, I keep telling you! It's Her!'
He shook his head. 'Suppose it was “Her?” That changes nothing! Right before my eyes they started… transforming. And then Godsson had three opponents instead of one – and two of them were physically present in his cell.
'Poor fools. He destroyed them in seconds. Incinerated.'
'But Godsson wouldn't hurt me!'
'You can't know that! He might. Sara, you need to understand that during his episodes, Godsson is not himself. You cannot predict his actions based on his normal behavior.'
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