Angkor’s face twisted, and he looked away.
“Why?” Norgay asked.
“The Deacon told me that he has foreseen the future,” I replied. “And that Angkor and Charles are instrumental in summoning something he called an ‘Engine’ to Earth.”
Zarya made a low, throaty sound of stifled pain. “Oh, no.”
Instinct told me to reach for her, comfort her with touch. I held off. Zarya was still a stranger: a stranger who was involved with Angkor. “Funnily enough, he didn’t mention you, Zarya.”
“A Temporalist can’t see Zarya through time. She’s a Gift Horse.” Angkor did reach for her, and the stubble on the back of my neck bristled as she leaned into him and turned her face into his neck. “She’s a wildcard, part of GOD’s acquired immunity defense system.”
Zarya’s voice was muffled. “So are you. All of us are. Even this meeting is an immune response.”
Angkor nodded, as stern as I’d ever seen him. “So… That explains why the Templum Voctus Sol and the Vigiles are both looking for the Shard.”
Norgay grunted. “If an Engine is headed to this Cell, we will have to see what we can do about selective evacuation.”
“What are you talking about?” I frowned, looking between them.
“Engines are troop carriers and planet-wreckers,” Angkor said grimly. “The small ones are about the size of the Moon. Big ones can be larger than Earth.”
“Can’t this military force of yours do something about it?”
“No, bat’ko.” Zarya shook her head.
I clenched my teeth. “Well, we have to be able to do something. I’m not letting this thing just run over us.”
“We will do what we can. Recovering the Tree is our absolute first priority, followed by the Shard,” Norgay said. “I am going to call the group conversation here, however. I wish to speak with Alexi, Angkor, and Zarya individually and in private, in that order. You are dismissed.”
“Understood, Sir.” Angkor bowed again and bustling off away from me. Doug followed, and then Zarya, leaving me alone with the black screen and the eerie sensation of being watched by someone I couldn’t see.
“Alexi Sokolsky,” Norgay said wryly. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“From Angkor?” I narrowed my eyes.
“And Zarya,” he replied. “Tell me what Kristen had to report.”
I recounted the facts I could remember—easier now that I’d been dosed with Phi and had slept. Norgay listened in utter silence until I concluded, and when I stopped speaking, he made a thoughtful sound over the line.
“Is that all?”
I looked down. “Lee gave me the coordinates to the Shard. She asked me to relay them to you, but before I say anything, I want to know why you want it.”
“We will carefully extract it from this Cell and join it to a larger, independent Shard of Eden,” Norgay replied. “Shards are fragmentary, as their name implies… they’re used to rehabilitate MahTrees and other Edenic beings, but we have very little space and far too many Trees in the queue. Combining Shards into larger Edenic islands gives us space to work with, and means we don’t have to risk creatures like Zarya and the Tree on Earth-like Cells.”
“I see.” I looked down at my arm, taking a moment to make sure I remembered the code accurately. “Seventeen thirty-seven, zero two point nine, north. Eighty-nine, thirty-seven, zero nine point two, west. The Vigiles are looking to weaponize it.”
There was a pause as Norgay noted down the numbers. “Thank you. You have done a great service, but I admit that I’m curious as to why you decided to bear this burden.”
Where did I start? The endless cycle of offense, violence, and revenge? The realization that I was eating my own tail all the time? The profound, bottomless exhaustion? I straightened my shoulders. “I’m tired of being nothing but a thug with a couple of magic tricks.”
“Fair enough. I will let Angkor know that he needs to modify your memory, lest you are ever compromised and forced to divulge this information,” Norgay replied. “Thank you. You have been an immense help. However, I wanted to speak with you about one other thing.”
“Go.”
“I want to offer you work.”
My stomach tensed a little. “What kind of work?”
“Contracts, all expenses paid. You would be assigned Morphorde targets to take out using whatever tools you require,” Norgay said. “You would have the full support of my organization, insurance, and are in no way required to subscribe to its philosophy provided you do the job.”
He wasn’t talking about medical insurance: he was offering me the paper trail that Ayashe had refused to provide. “Sounds too good to be true.”
“It’s not. Hunting Greater Morphorde is dangerous, thankless work. We can provide you with specialized training to deal with the kinds of challenges you would face as an operative.”
“’We’ being ANSWER?”
“’We’ being C.E.I.D.R.” Norgay spelled out the acronym. “CEIDR is the Cellular Espionage, Intelligence, and Direct Response agency within ANSWER’s Intelligence and Research division. We have three main functions: we research, target, and either rehabilitate or eliminate key Morphorde operatives, and we root out any Morphorde attempting to gain a foothold in ANSWER and other related communities and organizations.”
“What kind of ‘Greater Morphorde’ are we talking about?”
“Anything from organized crime bosses through to Ruinicornu like Providence and Munificence. Morphorde come in human varieties, as well as alien or monstrous forms. Your first targets would be the key players in this Engine business.”
Alexi Sokolsky, interdimensional assassin? I smiled ruefully. I could see myself doing work like what he’d described—I’d taken hits several times a year, every year, since I was seventeen. Backed up by a powerful organization, with tools and expenses covered, all I’d have to worry about was staying alive.
I shook my head. “I want to, but I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Tell me what’s holding you back.”
Brows creased, I looked down. “First thing is that the Vigiles have taken my friends. They’re probably already dead, but I have to try and pull them out before they’re rendered down for their souls. After that, I have to take out my old boss and put my best friend out of his misery. He’s suffering.”
“I understand,” Norgay said. “Perhaps better than you’d expect. And I can see that the foreknowledge of the Engine weighs on you almost as heavily as these personal matters, so I’d like to make you an offer.”
I was getting tired of the offers made by mysterious shadowy men. “I hope it’s better than the Deacon’s.”
“We can offer support in retrieving your friends,” Norgay said. “And it’s not a purely altruistic act on my part. Most Weeders are our allies by default. We’ve been wanting to bust the Vigiles’ holding center for months, and if you know the location…?”
“I do.”
“Then something can be arranged,” Norgay said. “And your second objective is to kill Sergei Yaroshenko, is it not?”
I froze in place. “… Yes. How do you-?”
“Sergei happens to be one of our high-priority targets on this Cell,” Norgay said, “Would you like to know what information we have on him?”
“Yes. Everything.”
Even without an image, I could tell Norgay was smiling. “Do you know the story of Sviatopolk the Accursed?”
“He was a pre-Christian Ukrainian prince,” I said, heart sinking. “He killed two of his three brothers to take the throne, was deposed by the third—Vladimir the Great—and died in exile. You don’t mean to tell me-”
“Sviatopolk didn’t die in exile,” Norgay confirmed. “Now, some of this is speculative, but I have an idea of his distant history. He was a Phitometrist—a necromancer, to be exact—and fully awakened into his magic. He knew his Soul and was in cooperation with it. My suspicion is that he attempted to sacrifice his Soul—murder it—and in the
process, he became a vampire.”
Murdered his Soul? His Neshamah? Being cut off from Kutkha was bad enough. The thought of him being hurt or killed... it made my stomach quake. “If he was, is Sviatopolk the Accursed, that would make him nine hundred and eighty years old.”
“Nine hundred and seventy-two, actually. Sergei is the Thronos of the Fifth Choir on your world: the founder of a linage of vampires. Every Feeder in the Fifth Choir is descended from him, and are distinguished by their iron teeth and their feeding preferences for flesh and pain.”
“I’ve never heard of a ‘Choir’. I always figured a group of vampires would be a coterie.”
“A group of Wrath’ree is a Howl,” Norgay replied. “And given that the existence of Wrath’ree and that of Feeders is bound together, vampires throughout GOD refer to their collectives as Choirs. The leader of a Choir is generally referred to as the Thronos or Maester.”
So that’s what Dogboy had been talking about. “Do you know... if Feeders have free will?”
“All of the Furies—the Wrath’ree—who animate the Feeders in a Choir answer to their Thronos,” Norgay said. “But they typically have choice. However, Feeders created from the dead are an exception to this.”
“Explain.” I regarded the screen stonily.
“That Feeder’s Fury is under immense strain,” Norgay replied. “It is generally a Wrathling—a baby Wrath’ree, you could say—and it animates the corpse by replacing the non-functional parts of the HuMan with its own Phitonic mass. To stay animate, it is constantly on the verge of starvation. Because of this, its will is weak.”
“So it isn’t even really Vassily at all, then? Just this Fury, this Wrath’ree?” Hope stirred in me. If it was just some ghostly creature using his body to look like him, that was much better than the alternative.
“That depends.” Norgay sounded cautious, now. “It depends on whether or not Vassily’s soul was still tethered to his body at the time of his raising. If it was, the Wrathling acts as a glue binding his soul to him. There is functionally no break in personality. If it wasn’t, then the Fury will have essentially downloaded whatever neural mapping was left in the body, and will use that as a basis for a personality that is functionally similar to the original HuMan’s. But it is a copy, and that personality will sharply diverge as the Wrathling matures.”
“I see.” I rubbed my jaw. “You... may or may not know this. But is it... do Feeders suffer from being what they are?”
Norgay made a soft sound—sympathy, maybe. “Not inherently. No more than any other thing within GOD, at least. And whatever you see or experience when dealing with Feeders, remember this: Wrath’ree are not Morphorde. They are the front-line soldiers of the Third War. Proud, ruthless, fierce, mercenary, and harsh they may be, but they are not evil. Wrath’ree will be the first ones to try to save your planet, and when the Hive arrives on your world, most of the Feeders, barring DOG-tainted characters like Sergei, will join them in battle. That includes your friend, if you can free him.”
“I see.” The information left me feeling numb. It was strange how hope could sometimes feel like mania, and other times, like anesthesia. “So you’re wanting to take out Sergei?”
“He’s an ardent, if mercenary, Greater Morphorde who is active on a number of Cells,” Norgay replied. “So my offer to you is this: work for us, complete your trial mission, and your second guaranteed mission will be an assault on Sergei, his resources, and the liberation or euthanization of your friend with our full support.”
“Assuming I survive.”
“Assuming you survive.”
There was no solid reason for me to trust this man. Agent Cross and Lee had fought for him, Angkor had thrown me away for his sake, but I didn’t know Norgay from Adam. But without knowing that I’d taken the Tree’s Rhizomes and seen the Engine, he’d hit it on the head. The knowledge was weighing on me, and without a leap of faith, it was going to bear down on all of us while I convulsed in the death grip of that old Mafiya life.
Whoever—whatever—Norgay was, he was holding an open door for me. One that wasn’t haunted by Sergei, or my father, or Vassily. I’d settled for the zero-zero draw because I couldn’t see outside of the cycle, but as Kutkha had told me, the road to understanding was long and bitter. Sometimes, there were forks in the path. On one side, the future stretched out into a familiar wasteland where I was destined to run in circles for the rest of my short, violent life. The other fork was dark, but it moved forward. Perhaps it led to what was right.
“Alright.” I squared up in front of the screen. “Tell me what you need.”
Chapter 41
My head was spinning by the time I left the computers to search for the others. Angkor, Doug, and Zarya were waiting behind the tents. Angkor was smoking, leaning against the wall, and didn’t quite meet my eyes when I beckoned to him. “You’re next.”
He pushed himself up, and stalked off past me in sullen silence.
“Bat’ko, we need to talk,” Zarya said once he was gone. “In private.”
“Sure, leave me here,” Doug sighed. “In the snow, in the cold. Alone.”
Zarya laughed, a musical sound that gave me goosebumps on my arms. “You’re so full of shit.”
“Hey. My bowel problems are none of your business.”
She wagged her head from side to side. “If you weren’t addicted to sugar, the roadblock might ease up a little.”
Doug barked a laugh. I bowed my head to him as we left. To my surprise, I felt Zarya’s hand grasp mine, but didn’t resist when she linked our fingers. It felt oddly natural to touch her... like a long-lost habit I was rediscovering.
“You have a good talk with Norgay?” Zarya asked, once we were out of earshot.
“I had an enlightening talk with Norgay,” I replied in Ukrainian, staring at the ground. “Listen. Once you’re done speaking with him, we’re going to be organizing an operation to raid a recycling plant. I’m not going to have a chance to see you for a while after that.”
“He asked you to take a job, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
We’d reached Zarya’s tent by the time I said that. She stopped and turned to look down at me. She was so tall now.
“You need to make up with Angkor, bat’ko,” she said. “He’s upset.”
“Good. He dug himself into that pit when he pretended to care,” I replied. “He should have trusted me. Now, I think he’s hiding things.”
Zarya held aside the tent flap so that I could crawl inside. "Hiding things? We’re all hiding things, Father. How can you hold that against him when you commit the sin you accuse him of?"
She had a point, but it didn’t stop me from feeling prickly about it. I entered the tent, and waited for her to join me before I spoke again, low and urgent. "He’s lied continuously since we met. It's one thing to hide things, and quite another to actively deceive and suspect people of working for the enemy. He stood me up, he-"
"You have got to be kidding me." Her expression turned to astonished exasperation, and she shook her head violently enough to move her shoulders... like a horse. "You were stood up for a fucking date, and you’re going to hold it against one of the best Hounds in GOD for doing his job?"
I wasn't sure what took me aback more: that she was admitting that she was also some kind of spy, or that she was swearing. “Zarya-”
"Have you lost your fucking mind?" She leaned in toward me and pinned me with the weight of her stare. "'Active deception' is my career. Are you going to hold it against me next?"
She had a career? “I...”
Zarya leaned away. “Am not thinking straight.”
I frowned, looking down at the floor. In the dim light, I could see she’d left her knife out, the one she’d used to cut her lips. “The last time I saw you, I was pulling you out of a giant walnut. You were sick, you were weak... I thought you were a child. I didn’t know you had a career. I don’t even know what a Hound actually does, because no one has told me.”
"I know you don't. Why do you think that is?"
“No idea,” I replied. “And it’s clear I don’t know you or Angkor, either.”
Her mouth drew to one side in irritation, an expression I saw every day in the mirror. "Of course you don't. Why do you think that is?"
“I don’t know!” I finally raised my voice, but tamped it down to an angry hiss instead of a shout. “I don’t know, and I’m getting sick of it. I lost everything when I came to your aid. Everything. I’m part of this, whether I want to be or not, and I’m not willing to be kept in the dark while-”
“You are involved,” Zarya said. “And that is, if you think closely about it, precisely why neither of us can tell you everything. Haven't you ever concealed things from a loved one?"
Whatever angry thing I’d been about to say was cut off at the neck. “... Yes, of course I have.”
Her eyes, liquid and inescapably eerie in their power to pierce me, to reach through me, closing a circuit in my soul. No... with my soul. "Have you ever lied to a loved one… because you love them?"
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t keep looking into those eyes, but I couldn’t look away from them. The smell of the peppermint oil she wore in her nose plugs was quieting my other senses. Taste, smell... they were closed down, leaving all of their mental bandwidth to be commandeered by blazing Light. The Whole Color.
"I..." I froze, staring and transfixed. There was no way Zarya was an infant of her kind. Before her, I felt young, immature and awkward. "I... yes, of course."
"Why did you conceal it from them?"
"The work I did was dangerous. It shouldn't have involved them." I flushed, hearing the admission as soon as I made it. "But those were almost always about contracts—illegal, dangerous—or things that would have deeply upset or disturbed them."
"Or they were things that would have deeply disturbed you to confess?"
"Both. Sometimes." I was struggling not to edge away under the pressure of her focus on me. Her eyes bore into places I didn't want seen, places that were too painful, too vulnerable. It was a real pain, a kind of cringing that made me want to twist and wriggle away.
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