Walker

by Michael Langlois

  After being disarmed, they were led out the door and down into the bowels of the building. They were stopped frequently as the riflemen took up positions in advance of their progress to cover them as they turned corners, and to alternate trailing shooters, two to drop to one knee with rifles raised and ready, and two to walk behind and to the sides. After twenty yards, the walking guards dropped to a knee and the previous set jogged to catch up. At no point were there less than four rifle barrels yawning open at them.

  Once they reached the security level, they passed through several checkpoints equipped with massive iron doors and sour-faced guards behind bulletproof glass. Daniel peered down the corridors they didn’t take, but as often as not, his view was blocked by more doors and guards. He guessed that they were inside the containment area, and most of the corridors led to cell blocks.

  They finally ended up in the processing room, where their Arcs were to be exchanged for restraints. The room was very large with dingy white walls and harsh fluorescent lighting. The floor had lines painted on it, marking prisoner boundaries in red. The far wall was crowded with Bruce’s cohort, most of them already processed.

  As Daniel watched, a thin man with an angry expression was shoved towards the hulking machine in the corner. A technician sat on a stool at one side with a pair of short metal probes in one hand. A trooper forced the man’s arm out towards the technician, who touched his Arc with the probes. The Arc spasmed open, and the trooper pulled it off with his free hand and tossed it into a box on the floor. It hit the pile of other Arcs with a dull clack. He then slipped a very thin bracelet around the prisoner’s wrist. As it touched the man’s arm, it constricted closed. The man cried out in pain as the bracelet frosted over. The trooper pushed the groaning man back into the group and reached for the next person in line.

  It took several minutes for the man to quiet down after the restraint was applied, which puzzled Daniel until it occurred to him that drawing a small amount of Veil power unconsciously was unavoidable, regardless of whether you were a Walker or a Channeler. Daniel figured that you would eventually block out your connection to the Veil to stop the pain, which would mean that you would actually brainwash yourself into blocking your own abilities. Ugly.

  Most of the prisoners had no reaction to the restraint, having no ability to tap the Veil in the first place. Still, Daniel figured there were other equally unsavory reasons to put them on people besides just cutting off their access to the Veil.

  “So,” said Bruce conversationally, “that’s the machine that removes Arcs. I’ve always wanted to see it.”

  “No talking,” said Commander Keiler.

  “I understand it takes the restraining bands off as well,” continued Bruce, as if he hadn’t heard.

  “Shut up, or I’ll have you disciplined!” said Keiler, with force this time.

  “That means that we have everything we need right here.”

  None of the troopers in that room were stupid, and all of them were nervous. However, each of the riflemen had lowered their weapons after getting the prisoners to their final destination. It was only human nature. As Bruce spoke, the quicker ones began raising their rifles, some expecting the threat alone to deter any action, and some fully expecting to be ordered to fire.

  On cue, Iyah reached up, grabbed the necklace that Bruce had put around her neck and yanked. The cord holding the opalescent spheres snapped, showering the floor with pearls. As they hit, the thin white shells cracked and shattered, exposing the solid steel ball bearings concealed inside. Except, of course, for the ones now in Iyah’s fist.

  The Commander began to shout even as Iyah’s arm whipped outward, throwing the deadly projectiles with all of her might.

  The three guards directly in front of her took multiple impacts in a spray from collarbones to eyes. Where the spheres struck riot helmets, ballistic plastic shattered, as did the bones underneath the thin neck lining of their padded armor. One guard died instantly, the other two were rocked back by the impact, severely wounded.

  At the same time, Sika sprang at the nearest guard and snatched the rifle out of his hands. It was one thing to be briefed on ‘safe’ distances and to intellectually understand that some exceptional Channelers were very fast. Facing someone like Sika in close quarters was somewhat less academic.

  Sika snapped the rifle butt up into the guard’s helmet, caving in his faceplate. Even as he was falling, Sika threw the rifle at the remaining guard and knocked him to the ground, breaking several of the man’s ribs in the process.

  Not a single guard had managed to get a shot off.

  The Doc addressed Commander Keiler.

  “Don’t be tempted to draw your sidearm, sir. I apologize for the violence, but we needed to use your machine here, and this was the best way for us to get access to it. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course,” replied the commander. “By the same token, I needed to make sure that you exhausted whatever tricks you might have up your sleeves, or around your necks as it turned out, before we actually attempted to get close enough to put the restraints on.”

  At that, both doors to the room slammed open and two dozen men streamed in holding weapons at the ready. Francis Keldon strolled in behind them.

  “Thank you, Commander Keiler, you’ve proven yourself more than the equal of your prey once again.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “As for you lot, turn around and face the back wall, if you please.”

  Daniel and the others did so, with teeth clenched. A second later, each of them felt the icy barrel of a gun on the back of their necks.

  “If anyone moves, each of the other members of your little group will be shot, and my men will also open fire on the prisoners on the back wall. Let’s not have any more heroics today,” said Keldon.

  “Commander Keiler, if you would be so kind?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Keiler picked up five restraint bands and walked over to the group. “Forgive me for straying from procedure a bit, but rather than remove your Arc and then put a restraint on you, we’ll be putting the restraint on first, then removing your Arc. Normally the tiny amount of time between the two operations is far too small for anyone to summon the concentration to Walk, but we certainly don’t want to take any chances with you lot.”

  “There will be some pain, quite a lot actually, until we get your Arc off as the restraint tends to interfere with its operation.”

  He walked to Bruce who was the closest and pulled him over to the machine. He slipped a restraint onto his wrist which constricted shut with a crackle of discharged energy. Bruce dropped to his knees and screamed, low and hoarse.

  The technician reached across and removed Bruce’s Arc with a touch of his probes and the screaming was replaced by ragged breathing. When he stood back up, Daniel could see there was blood running out of his nostrils and a thin line of red between his lips. Bruce was Veil blind, so Daniel could only imagine how bad the feedback would be for the rest of his group.

  Next in line was Iyah. The restraint was clamped onto her wrist causing her to gasp, but she refused to scream. The technician reached out with the probes, but Keldon stopped him, watching her face.

  A fat line of blood ran slowly out of her left nostril and her face quivered with the strain, but she still refused to respond. She lasted only a few seconds more before her breath escaped explosively from her lips in a bloody spray and she cried out.

  Daniel involuntarily started to move towards her, but the guard behind him jabbed him hard in the back of the head to remind him to stay put. He could hear the creak of leather as someone else was being held in place.

  Smiling, Keldon allowed the tech to remove her Arc. If Keiler disapproved, he didn’t show it, his face was neutral.

  Sika was next in line. Daniel didn’t want to abandon his friends, but at the same time he knew that the only chance any of them had was for someone to win free. Back when he had first arrived at the Guild, the feedback c
ircuit in his Arc had been enough to keep him from Walking. He’d come a long way since then, farther than even his friends knew.

  He tried not to listen to Sika’s hoarse yell when his restraint was put on, and instead concentrated on two things. The feel of Autumn, and channeling the flow of the Veil away from his Arc.

  It was the hardest thing he’d ever done. He was scared and nervous, there was a gun stuck in the back of his head, his friends were in trouble, and his turn to receive a restraint was rapidly approaching. Also, the Arc affected the Veil weirdly as he attempted to separate it from his own flow, pulling the currents that he was striving to control this way and that, accelerating the flow in some directions and impeding it in others. Trying to control the Veil currents and achieve the state of mind required to Walk to Autumn was like learning to juggle while reciting Robert Frost poems. With a gun to your head.

  He forced the gun and the room out of his mind, brought Autumn sharply into his mental focus, and twisted the Veil currents with the Arc, rather than against it, while gently guiding them in a larger pattern. The further the whorls and spirals got from the Arc, the weaker its influence became, until the Veil was untangled from it completely and it went inert. Bingo.

  Daniel vanished in full view of everyone in the room, his Arc ringing loudly as it bounced off the hard floor. The stunned silence was broken only by the sharp bark of laughter escaping from Saul’s lips.

  25

  Fatigue dropped him to his knees, where he remained, gasping for long minutes before he could rise. His panic and trip-hammer desperation dimmed to a faint echo as the cool, bittersweet wistfulness of the place rolled over him. The panic was still there, but it was hard to get to, hard to focus on.

  He blinked his almost-teary eyes and took a deep breath of crisp autumn air. The perpetual sunset was heartbreakingly beautiful, pouring rich coppery light over the trees and grass in pools and stripes. Each tree that stood in front of the sunset was haloed with orange fire, its edges glowing and translucent.

  He looked around for familiar landmarks. He could see the park with its assortment of prams and parents in the distance exactly where he remembered it. And there was the bench behind him. He was relieved to see that William was still there as well.

  Instead of his stained smock, he was wearing an ancient brown suit with dust on the shoulders and hanger creases across the legs. The suit was elegantly tailored, and likely very fashionable in a previous age.

  Daniel sat down on the bench and put his face in his hands.

  Images of dead and wounded people crowded his mind. A girl lying on the floor in her own vomit. Crushed black riot helmets oozing gore. The sounds of gunfire and screaming forced themselves unwanted into his consciousness. Living men and women bulging with parasitic vines, tendrils and creepers nesting deep inside their flesh. Like his mother.

  The last twelve hours of nearly fatal encounters and desperate gambles presented themselves as proof that he had used up his luck and then some. His skin crawled with near misses that were hours old, became clammy with horrors witnessed and gone. He began to tremble and crave somewhere to hide, someplace where he couldn’t be seen or reached. He remembered pulling the covers over his head as a child, scared but convinced that as long as he didn’t move or breathe, he wouldn’t attract the attention of whatever lurked in the darkness. He screwed his eyes shut and pressed his fists into his chest.

  Slowly but inexorably, Autumn pried the terror out of his grip. It eroded his horror and insinuated melancholy in its place. It transmuted his fear into a clinging sadness, an enervating self pity. His face relaxed and he stared at his hands, now loosely curled in his lap.

  He spoke out loud, expecting nothing from William, who was still lost in the horizon.

  “You got the right idea, man. Just sit and wait it out. Nothing touches us here, nothing changes. Just one endless sunset.” Daniel let his gaze wander to the distant park shimmering in the late afternoon blaze, watching the small clumps of people next to their prams. “This is where it started, did you know that? If I had stayed here, right next to you, none of the rest would have happened.”

  He contemplated the bodies and the violence in a detached fog, going over the memories like poking at a loose tooth. The terror of being shot, the pain that followed. Sika driving his knife into a man’s chest, motionless guards laying facedown in a pool of black neurotoxin. He also remembered the horror of Iyah charging full tilt toward a machine gun-wielding killer to save everyone’s lives. A chill touched him briefly at the memory.

  “Iyah. She’s something else, Will. Most amazing woman I’ve ever met. First time I ever set eyes on her she was conning me with Saul.” Daniel smiled. “That bastard owes me one for getting me into this.”

  He remembered Saul in his kitchen wearing that ridiculous flannel shirt. Saul saving their lives in the Vault. Saul giving up everything he had in order to try and get Daniel out with the rest of the escapees, because it was the right thing to do.

  “They’re caught now. You know that, Will old buddy? We all got caught, but I ran away and left them there. I told myself at the time that I needed to run so that I could go back and save them, but I really ran because I could. Everyone was counting on me to be the hero. Isn’t that funny? And all I did was abandon them.”

  Daniel sat in silence and stared, letting the insistent flow of Autumn wash over him. He lost track of time, faded out. William spoke.

  “You got those that care about you still alive?” he asked in his antiquated accent.

  Daniel just looked down at his feet.

  “D’ya have any idea what I would do to have that chance still? Mine are gone, taken by time and greed and pride.”

  “I thought it was a fire,” said Daniel gently. “Wasn’t it a fire, Will?”

  William put his face in his hands. “Oh, my poor Mary. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault, always my fault.” He looked up at Daniel and his eyes were wet. “I ran away, too. I ran away and that’s when I found my Mary. But now I’ve lost her, just like I lost myself. I left them to rip at the carcass of my kingdom and fled into the deeps of the sea inside.”

  William looked at Daniel with wide, staring eyes. “I think I left something down there. I Walked out, but I think I left myself behind. Don’t go too far, Daniel. The further out you go, the farther away from the logic of man you get. I should have left it alone. I should never have brought the madness home with me.”

  “Are you talking about the Veil, William? Worlds farther away than this one?”

  William nodded absently into the sunset. “I was first across the sea. I should have drowned,” he whispered.

  Realization penetrated Autumn’s mental fog. “Lord Burchard? Are you Calvin Burchard? The Founder?”

  “William. My mother always called me by my middle name, my father was Calvin, too. He was a better man than I, he stayed where he was needed. I sailed away and left myself behind.”

  Lord Calvin William Burchard gripped Daniel’s shoulders painfully and gasped out, wheezing, “Stay where you’re needed! Fear the depths!” He looked around as though seeing the world around him for the first time. “Don’t be too late. Don’t give them up. Mary!” And then he was gone.

  Startled, Daniel rubbed his shoulders as chills raced up his back and into his hair. The whole thing seemed more visitation than conversation. Still, William was right. If he didn’t go back, he would regret it for the rest of his life. Even now it might be too late.

  If nothing else, he would be with them at the end.

  26

  Daniel felt the immovable mass in the Veil currents that represented Olympus and began sifting through the viewpoints broadcast by the Wayguides. His perception swam in the vast Veil sea, every eddy and current stark and defined in his sight. It had been a long time since his first attempt to Walk, and his understanding of the Veil had expanded mightily since then.

  He discovered that Olympus had many Wayguides working to give Guild operatives a way home, but
he also found that they all broadcast the same kinds of locations, secure return rooms filled with other Walkers, Wayguides and faceless guards.

  Master Giric had said that it was possible to return to your home world without a Wayguide, since its patterns were part of your perception since birth. Perhaps exceptional Walkers could learn to home in on other places given enough time and talent.

  Daniel ran through his memories of the Guild compound, trying to feel the air slip past his face in the corridors, smell the sweet wood scent of the mahogany panels, or hear the echoes of the training rooms.

  The memories came, but they were thin. They lacked the vivid reality required to make the connection.

  He experimentally reached out to one of the Wayguides and tapped into his perceptions. The smell and feel of the anchor room blossomed in his mind. He could feel the solid presence of the building, just as if he were standing there himself. The smell of the place struck him, and the muffled feel of the silent, thickly carpeted rooms.

  Now, holding on to that connection, he pictured his room. Using the concrete sensory input from the Wayguide and his memories of the intimate details of his room, he forged a path.

  The vast reach of Veil-space between himself and his room on Olympus shrank and vanished, pressing this leaf-blown spot into the still and quiet hush of his bedside. He moved between the two overlapping locations with his will and relaxed, allowing the two points to once again take up their positions across the Veil.

  He sat down on the bed and tried to catch his breath silently. He hoped it would get easier with practice, because he might have to make that trip several more times to get everyone out. But first he had to reach them.

  Time in Autumn was trackless, but a glance at his clock showed that only an hour had passed since he was last here. That should have been plenty of time for the prisoners to be secured, and for patrols to go out searching for him. He hoped.