Walker

by Michael Langlois

  “Oh, well sure, honey. You wait right here while I make you a copy of Lauren’s folder. I’ll be right back.”

  Ten minutes later they were back in the car, Magnolia Acres receding forever in the distance behind them. Daniel went over each photocopied page, seeing kidnapping and loss on every grainy black and white page. The information on the paper was worthless. State lawyers, fake medical information, the address of a residence supposedly owned by his mother that didn’t exist.

  His ‘uncle’ was apparently a Joel Thorsen, whom Daniel had never heard of, and who now held his mother’s Power of Attorney, a fact that made Daniel seethe with anger. It was unreal how easily the process of law could become swift and decisive when under the direction of the Guild, rather than the ponderous and uncertain beast he was used to dealing with. The sheer effortless nature of it was offensive. Daniel threw the folder on the floor and looked out the window, not seeing the vibrant summer world racing past him beyond the glass.

  Iyah twisted around and faced the back seat, briefly putting one hand on Daniel’s knee. “I’m sorry. They don’t make plans around the fact that your Arc is locked, or that you shouldn’t have the resources on your own to travel back home and rescue your mother. They scheme as if to strive against one of their own, with all that entails, and they do it with foresight and skill. Always.”

  “So you knew she would be gone? Why didn’t you tell me that? Why go through all of this?”

  Iyah shrugged. “I had the same hope that you did. Could you have left it untried, even knowing that she was most likely already taken?”

  Daniel ground his teeth and shook his head.

  Iyah touched his hand briefly in sympathy, and then turned back around.

  Daniel rode on in silence, pressed down into the seat by worry and defeat, eventually falling into a half-doze. He was jarred awake as they drove over the one-way tire shredder that protected the boundary of the car rental lot.

  After Saul had paid for the car, he led them around to the back of the building, out of sight of the employees and customers milling around in front of the terminal bus stop, into a small spot between the dumpster and the back door of the rental office.

  “Before we go back,” said Daniel, “I need one more favor. I need to talk to somebody back at the Guild.” Saul opened his mouth to protest, but Daniel went on. “Lyle knows what happened to my mom. Please.”

  Iyah shrugged and Saul sighed. They crossed.

  Daniel bolted out of Saul’s office and ran all the way back to the student quarters, worry and frustration knotting his guts ever tighter until he finally hammered on Lyle’s door.

  Lyle opened it with a smile, which quickly turned into a sneer when he saw who it was. Daniel stepped past him and closed the door.

  “Where’s my mother, Lyle?”

  “You better get the fuck out of my house if you know what’s good for you, Thorsen!”

  Daniel felt like he was going to fly apart, his anger mixed with fear and a wild abandon, like walking out onto a ledge. The words leapt out of his mouth without a thought. “Where is she, you piece of shit?”

  Lyle opened his eyes wide for effect. “What did you say to me? We’ve got your mother, and we’ll do whatever we like with her, just like I’m gonna do to you!”

  Lyle drove a fist into Daniel’s gut hard enough to double him over. Daniel never even saw it coming. The old fear, the old paralysis came welling up, the shame and the helplessness and the frustration. Lyle jerked him upright and hit him again, this time in the mouth, snapping his head to one side and dropping him to the floor. Daniel tasted blood.

  He crouched there gasping, Lyle’s words ringing in his head. We’ve got your mother, and we’ll do whatever we like with her. He thought of Lyle hitting her and what her voice would sound like crying out.

  And suddenly, he could do for her what he had never been able to do for himself. He stood up from his crouch and suddenly there was too much inside him. Too much hate and anger and shame to cram down, burning away his fear and self-control. His lips skinned back from bloody teeth.

  Lyle stared at Daniel’s expression in shock and recoiled. A torrent of white vapor poured off of Daniel’s Arc. Tiny hissing noises came up from the floor where drops of liquefied air fell to the tile and sizzled where they hit. Daniel never noticed.

  He watched as Lyle pushed his fist through the air towards him, face contorted. He reached up and grabbed it, wrapping his hand around it.

  “Where. Is. My. Mother.” He forced it out through his bared teeth. Then he squeezed. The bones in Lyle’s hand splintered in his fist. Lyle screamed. A trickle of blood ran through Daniel’s fingers.

  Daniel clamped his other hand around Lyle’s mouth and jaw and squeezed until Lyle’s eyes bulged out. He fought with the desire to keep squeezing until he couldn’t close his fist any tighter. He could feel vibration under his hand, Lyle was shouting against his palm. With an effort, he took his hand away.

  “We don’t have her. Somebody came and killed our guys, checked her out of the home, I don’t know where she is. My uncle thinks it was Gray! I swear, please God, I swear! I swear!”

  Daniel released him. Lyle hugged the ruined mess of his hand to his chest, sobbing.

  “Tell your uncle that if he ever threatens my mother again, I’m going to come for him. Do you understand?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Daniel left. He went back to his room and scrubbed his hands in the sink, watching the pink suds as they fell away down the drain.

  By the time he had pulled himself together and made it back to Saul’s office, he was hollow inside, scoured clean and empty of the nervous fear that had dogged him for days, light and detached.

  Iyah raised her eyebrows in question when he entered the room. Daniel just shook his head.

  Without a word, Saul gripped their wrists and pulled them back under the surface of the secret ocean at the heart of the universe.

  One weightless, eternal moment later they found themselves in Saul’s room at Bentil Feme. A robed man closed his book and stood up.

  “Thanks, sorry about the short notice,” said Saul. Giving a quick lopsided smile, the man gripped Saul’s shoulder for a moment and then let himself out.

  “Get some rest, you two. We have a job to do in the morning.”

  19

  Saul and Iyah arrived at Daniel’s door, which opened just before they could knock. Daniel stepped out and closed the door behind him. He was dressed in the modified Protector’s uniform he had been given, ready to go. His eyes were grim. “Let’s get this over with. I need to get back to the Guild so I can ask a few questions.”

  “They probably aren’t going to be giving up any answers. That’s not really their thing,” said Saul dryly.

  Daniel had been up all night exploring his connection with the Veil, testing himself. He had a few ideas about how he might get those answers, but all he said was, “We’ll see.”

  As they walked across town, Saul and Iyah both asked questions which Daniel refused to answer. They eventually gave up when Saul stopped and pointed across the street at an enormous stone building that was several blocks wide. It was surrounded by a tall fence made of pencil-thin black bars. The bars weren’t completely straight, but instead deviated individually, like branches or sticks of some kind, rather than metal rods.

  “That’s the Piellette, where we’ll make the pick up,” said Saul.

  “Piellette means ‘House of Life,’ which is ironic if you know what’s inside.” The voice was deep and came from a man standing on the other side of a low wall that ran parallel to the street. The speaker was a tall, lean man with a shaved head and the darkest skin Daniel had ever seen. He was dressed in the same modified Guild uniform that Daniel was wearing. He had a narrow face and a wide mouth, giving him an aristocratic look that might have been arrogant had he not been smiling.

  Iyah turned to look at the man. “Daniel, this is Sika. He’s not supposed to be here, because he knows it’s fo
rbidden for any other Guild personnel to be in the city when the pick up is made.”

  Sika vaulted easily over the wall in one fluid motion and walked over to them. Iyah and Saul stiffened warily, but held their ground. For the first time Daniel had some appreciation of what it was like to be in the presence of a potentially hostile Channeler.

  It was one thing to know intellectually that Iyah could lash out and break your neck before you knew what was happening, but it was something else entirely to be near a person who might actually do it. It was unnerving.

  At least he had the protection of his own Veil enhanced body, for whatever that was worth against a trained fighter who could tear a car in half. Daniel looked at Saul’s resolute stance and completely fearless gaze, and then straightened his own shoulders and stood a little taller.

  Sika raised his hands, palms outward in a sign of peace. “I’m here to help, that’s all. I’m on your side.”

  Saul spoke up. “No offense, but we’ve already had two attacks from people inside the Guild, one of them not a mile from here. You’ll forgive us for being a little cautious when a man in your line of work suddenly shows up in the middle of what used to be a top secret operation and offers to help.”

  “I’m not surprised to hear about the attacks,” said Sika. “With the council voting tonight, the fighting between the contenders is starting to spill out into plain sight. This is their last chance.”

  “Tonight?” exclaimed Iyah.

  Sika nodded, his eyes on a small group of pedestrians walking past on the other side of the street. “It’s getting fairly ugly. Vincent pushed for a vote of confidence this morning and he got it. If Francis doesn’t deliver tonight, there’s going to be a new chairman in the morning.”

  Saul frowned. “That would put the Scinte delivery and Daniel in the same place at the same time.”

  “True.”

  “So, this might not even be about the chairman’s seat,” said Saul. “If you had the entire package to yourself, plus access to a new world that nobody else could get to, you could do anything you wanted, and there’s no way the Guild could strike back at you.”

  Iyah spoke up hotly, “And since that’s how the Guild rules all the other worlds, I can see why they would be unhappy at that turn of events. I’d love to see how they’d like being dictated to for a change!”

  Sika ignored Iyah’s outburst and turned an appraising eye on Daniel. “Is it true? Can you really Walk to a new world?”

  “If I could, do you think it would be smart for me to tell you?” replied Daniel.

  Sika cracked a smile, white teeth flashing momentarily. “Good point. What matters is that everyone believes you can. Come with me and I’ll take you somewhere safe until the council meeting. They obviously know you’re here, so there’s no point in staying.”

  Iyah stepped forward. “He’s not going anywhere without us.”

  “You think it’s a good idea to have the Scinte and the key to a new world in your possession at the same time? You think that’s the smart thing to do?” Sika shot back.

  “Smarter than just giving him to a Guild assassin and walking away!”

  Sika sighed heavily. “This isn’t just my plan. We’re both working for the same side, you understand? You’re risking more than Daniel’s life here.”

  Daniel saw Sika’s power flare up in his mind’s eye as the man reached over and placed one iron hand on Daniel’s collarbone, covering the area where his neck met his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry that I have to force you to do what’s right, but I can’t let your pride endanger us all.”

  There was a time, even a few hours ago, when it would have been perfectly safe for Sika to put his hands on Daniel. But not now.

  Daniel reached into the Veil and parted its flow around the assassin like a rock in a waterfall, cutting Sika off from his power. Sika’s eyes flew wide as Daniel effortlessly peeled off his hand with a Channeler’s strength.

  Surprise didn’t slow Sika down for long. Unlike most Guild assassins, he had never allowed himself to become dependent on his strength. He spun away from Daniel while at the same time drawing his dagger with his free hand. Superhuman strength or not, its razor sharp edge was still a lethal threat. As he began to extend his knife hand towards Daniel, he froze.

  Iyah’s knife hovered just a hair’s breath from his throat. As unsettling as that must have been, Sika was completely focused on the cavernous barrel of the ugly black gun Saul had pointed at his head. Daniel hadn’t seen either one of them move, much less draw weapons.

  Sika very slowly re-sheathed his knife and turned his palms up. “If you won’t see reason and let me take him to safety, then I’m coming with you until you return to Olympus.”

  Iyah shook her head, “I don’t think so.”

  “Then you’ll have to kill me,” said Sika, “because I’m not leaving without him.”

  Daniel fervently hoped that they would decide something soon, as it was all he could do to not to let the strain of holding Sika apart from the Veil show on his face. Already spots were beginning to dance at the edges of his vision. An eternity passed while everyone looked at each other.

  “Fine. You can come, but you do what I say. Deal?” said Saul.

  “Deal.”

  Weapons vanished and Daniel let go of the Veil with a poorly disguised gasp. Sika staggered slightly as his power returned to him in a rush. Looking at Daniel, he inclined his head briefly. Acknowledging the point? A sign of respect? Daniel didn’t know, but it brought him a warm glow nonetheless. He gave the dark man a grin despite himself as they set off across the street, heading for the House of Life.

  20

  The Piellette was nearly a small city all to itself, surrounded by a moat of neatly cut grass that set it far back from the road and any foot traffic. Halfway between the road and the building stood the black fence, a thin and fragile barrier for such a massive edifice.

  The group crossed the street and walked up the narrow cobble path that led to the gate. There were signs on either side of the path sporting aggressive orange and black color schemes, with warnings that were no doubt dire printed on them in the native script.

  As they approached the fence, Daniel noticed that the bars were indeed branches of some kind, and that they were covered with a variety of long needle-like thorns. The largest were no bigger around than a sewing needle, where the smallest ones were thin as a strand of hair. All of them stood straight out from the branches at a right angle. Five feet from the gate, Saul stopped.

  “They’ve already seen us, so now we just wait here until they open the gate,” said Saul. Looking at Daniel, he continued, “Stay as far away from the fence as you can when we go in. It might not look like much, but those thorns are as hard as steel and even sharper than they look. They’ll go right through leather and your silk armor like it wasn’t there. Worse, they contain a neurotoxin that causes permanent paralysis.” Saul looked at him seriously. “Permanent, as in it doesn’t wear off. Ever. And there’s no cure.”

  Daniel didn’t actually step back, but his skin crawled like it was trying to bunch up on his back, as far away from the fence as it could get.

  “It’s true,” said Sika conversationally, “you’ll drop instantly. And, as you would expect, your bowels will let go at the same time. It doesn’t affect the involuntary nervous system, so you’ll remain breathing, with a pulse, and awake. If it’s any consolation, they won’t let you suffer for long. They kill people who touch the fence very quickly.”

  Daniel raised his hands to ward off any more helpful descriptions. “I’m convinced, okay? Thank you. Thorns are bad. Got it.” Fortunately, at that moment two men stepped out of the Piellette and approached the gate.

  They were both dressed in dark blue military uniforms. The younger man carried in his hands a wooden pole that was taller than he was by a couple of feet. One end of the pole was clad in metal and sported a tube welded on the end. It looked like the world’s longest croquet mallet.


  Saul said something in the local language, to which the older one smiled and replied in English.

  “Welcome Saul, it’s been a long time. And it’s always a pleasure to see Iyah again, so lovely. One moment while Bienue opens the gate for you. Take care to stand well back until it is fully open.”

  With that, the solemn Bienue reached out with the pole and carefully slipped the hollow end over a small vertical post on his side of the gate. He gave it a quarter turn to unlatch it, and pulled the gate open, stepping back with the gate so that he was never any closer to it than the length of the pole. After the gate was fully open, the group was waved inside. They went through the wide gap one at a time, and slowly.

  Saul made the introductions. “The less attractive parts of my escort are Daniel and Sika.” Each nodded at the mention of their name. “Daniel, Sika, meet Garrison Commander Viental Dochleir.”

  The commander gave the men a welcoming smile and a formal bow. Then he swept forward and kissed Iyah’s hand, officially making him the bravest man that Daniel had ever met. Iyah just dimpled at him and said, “Always a pleasure, Viental.”

  Daniel attempted to ignore the spike of irrational jealously that he felt. He was doing pretty good until Saul surreptitiously elbowed him in the side and rolled his eyes.

  “Mr. Gray’s party is already here,” said Viental. “They are waiting for us in the Vault.”

  Daniel felt himself tense up. Gray was here?

  “Really?” said Saul, carefully keeping his face neutral. “Well, no sense in keeping him waiting. After you, sir.”

  They left Bienue to secure the gate, and entered the building. The interior was just as austere and stout as the exterior. Great stone blocks of granite armored the walls all the way up to the stratospheric vaulted ceiling, leaving only the silver flecked black marble floors to relieve some of the prison-like ambience. Silent guards stood at each of the interior doors.