by Frank Morin
“How?” She was hanging upside down in a slick-sided stone well. The cracks between the stones, if there were any, were too small for her to see, and when she slid her hands across the stones, she felt no joints.
Far below, she heard something banging, almost like a hammer against stone. She didn’t want to find out what was making those sounds.
“You need to sit up,” Gregorios said. “Reach up and grab onto my arm.”
Mai Luan’s voice reached her from the torture room above. It was faint, but clear. “Let’s have a little fun, shall we, my little hunter?”
“Release me,” Alter shouted.
“All in good time. You’re fighting for Gregorios, really? I never expected you to forgive him and Eirene for what they’ve done to your family.”
“That’s none of your business,” Alter cried.
“I’m making it my business,” Mai Luan said. “Did they tell you who really killed your great grandmother?”
“What are you talking about?”
Sarah frowned, trying to understand what Mai Luan was playing it. Why would she bring up that painful memory? How would she even know about it?
“You still think it was a kashaph plot, don’t you?”
“It was.” His voice didn’t sound so sure.
“Not good,” Gregorios muttered. “Hurry, Sarah.”
It took a couple of tries, but Sarah managed to do a vertical sit-up and grab Gregorios’ arm. He released her foot and she righted herself.
“Climb up,” he ordered. His face was beaded with sweat, and his arm quivered with the strain of holding her.
A new sound rose from the depth of the well below her. A hissing of gas and sound like rubber stretching.
One more reason to get out of the well fast.
Sarah pulled against Gregorios’ arm. The strain was intense, but with the recent training she’d been doing, and the enhancement of her rune, she found the strength to pull herself higher and grab his shoulder. He braced one foot against the wall and she wedged her foot against his hip and heaved again.
He wrapped an arm around her thigh and helped. With that extra support, she lunged and grabbed the lip of the well.
“I’m going to grant you a gift,” Mai Luan said.
“I want no gifts from you but freedom to take off your head,” Alter snarled.
“Perhaps you’ll reconsider who the enemy really is after you see this.”
“Come on!” Sarah helped Gregorios get his other hand onto the edge of the well, and together they pulled themselves up and out of the well. She rolled away from the dangerous edge, her muscles screaming from the abuse. The stone floor was cool, and this little room smelled less like old blood.
Out in the torture room, Mai Luan stood over Alter, who still lay on the torture table. She held his struggling form down with one hand, and was doing something with the other hand that Sarah couldn’t make out.
He started to shout.
Sarah rose, but Gregorios shouted, “Get out of my line of fire!”
An automatic rifle with a scope had appeared in his hand. As soon as she moved, he sighted in on Mai Luan. “We need to stop this.”
Just then, a bright red balloon rose silently out of the hole. It was huge, a long, slender balloon that barely fit the five-foot diameter of the well. With one hand, Asoka held a chain attached to the bottom of the balloon. He looked wet and dirty and very angry.
With the other hand, he held a saber, which he raised to strike Gregorios’ unprotected back.
“Look out!” Sarah cried, tackling Gregorios out of the way. The rifle fired, the sharp report painful in the small room.
Asoka released the helium balloon just as it reached the ceiling. He landed on the lip of the hole, wobbled for a second, then charged.
Gregorios rose to meet him, a Roman gladius short sword in hand. The two circled each other, blades flashing like living silver, striking so fast, Sarah couldn’t follow the movements. The clanging of steel reverberated through the room, making it sound like far more than two men fought there.
“Help Alter,” Gregorios shouted.
Sarah scooped up the heavy rifle, dodged around the fighting men, and rushed into the torture chamber.
Mai Luan still stood above Alter, and Sarah realized she was marking a rune onto Alter’s wrist with her fingernail. He beat against her arm, his expression terrified, but couldn’t break free.
Sarah couldn’t see the rune clearly, but didn’t need to see it to know it had to be bad. She brought the rifle up, took aim at Mai Luan’s face, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Only then did she realize it was a bolt action rifle.
“Really? Gregorios?” she muttered, cycling the bolt with frantic speed. Why couldn’t he have summoned a semi-automatic?
She brought the rifle back up just as Mai Luan raised her hand, her index finger capped with its bloody nail.
The new rune began to glow with blue-white light.
“No!” Alter shouted. “I refuse to ...”
His voice faded away, and his body slumped motionless on the bed.
Elizabeth has a depth to her that I have found in no other woman, not even enhanced girls I’ve known growing up. It’s amazing to think she’s gained so much wisdom while still so young. I find it refreshing to see that one short life can be enough, that runes or soul transfers are not needed to find happiness.
~Ronen
Chapter Sixty-Four
Alter stood in a comfortable bedroom beside a window overlooking his family’s compound in Jerusalem. He recognized this room. It was his parents’ bedroom, the room where each leader of his clan lived. His thoughts were fuzzy and his senses duller than normal. He realized he was watching the world through the eyes of another. He was peering into the memory of another person.
A shadow moved outside the window, which was three stories above the ground.
Rune-marked hands grasped the windowsill.
Then time seemed to blur in a gut-wrenching twist of half-seen images. When his sight cleared again, he stood over the broken body of a woman whose face had been beaten into a bloody pulp. His own rune-covered hands held a blood-splattered fire extinguisher.
He moved to the window just as the outer door opened to reveal a strong man cradling a young boy. Alter instantly recognized the man from old family photos.
His great grandfather, Ronen.
Ronen screamed in anguish at the sight of his fallen wife. “Elizabeth!”
Alter turned for the window and caught sight of his reflection in the glass.
Eirene.
She was younger, wore a different body, but he recognized her face.
This was her memory.
Still trapped in Eirene’s memory, Alter leaped out the window, chased by the echoes of Ronen’s weeping.
Alter rocked against the steel bed, gasping with shock from what he’d seen in the memory. Tears he didn’t remember shedding streaked his face.
Could it be true?
He sat up and turned to Mai Luan, who stood beside the bed, one eyebrow raised in silent question.
Behind Mai Luan, standing in the broken doorway to the well room, Sarah held a rifle pointed at Mai Luan’s back. Behind her, he caught glimpses of Gregorios and Asoka battling with swords.
He waved Sarah to wait. She didn’t fire, but didn’t lower the weapon either.
“Why did you show that to me?” he asked Mai Luan.
“You call me evil,” she said. “You strive to destroy me without knowing anything about what I’m doing other than what these facetakers have told you. And yet, they’ve lied to you, they’ve mocked your family for generations.”
“The memory was a lie,” he said. “You’re ways are never the ways of truth.”
“What you saw was real,” Mai Luan insisted. “I discovered it when I walked Eirene’s memories during the first test.”
The explanation was plausible, but he didn’t want to believe it. She was the evi
l one. She had to be lying.
And yet, what if she wasn’t?
The murder of great-grandmother Elizabeth had rocked the family, dishonored Ronen, and triggered a fierce hunt for previously-unknown kashaph cells around the world. Before that time, the family had been fighting an escalating conflict against the facetakers. Could the demons have orchestrated the assassination to distract the family?
Alter rose and picked up one of the fallen torture knives.
“Are you all right?” Sarah cried.
“No,” Alter said softly.
“Will you fight me again, hunter, and die before wreaking vengeance?” Mai Luan asked. “Or will you honor your family?”
“What’s it to you?”
“We may have different purposes,” she said. “But I prefer fighting someone who knows who they are and why they’re fighting. Only then can you honor your family.”
He couldn’t argue against that logic, and that disturbed him as deeply as the recent memory had. Cui Dashi were devils incarnate. Everyone knew that. And yet, for the first time in his life, a tiny doubt cracked his previously unshakable zeal.
Sarah approached cautiously, rifle still held at the ready. “What’s going on, Alter?”
Gregorios had come to Jerusalem seeking help against the Cui Dashi, but Alter’s goal had always been to bring vengeance upon the hated facetaker. Somehow the purity of his mission had become twisted, but now he had glimpsed a deeper truth.
He had to know. In that, Mai Luan spoke the truth. Only then could he know what to do next.
Alter began marking a rune into his arm with the knife.
“Wait,” Sarah cried. “What are you doing?”
“I need to know,” he said, firm in his new resolution.
“We need your help,” Sarah pleaded. “Whatever lies Mai Luan showed you, I know we can work it out.”
“No dear one.” He would avenge his family honor and perhaps then she would allow him to show her the truth and set her free from the subtle chains they used to shackle her soul. “I will work it out. Right now.”
“Wait, please.”
For the first time, the pleading of her voice, those bright eyes that usually blanked out all thought held no sway over him. He knew his purpose and he would not deviate.
Alter completed the rune and it flared to life.
The dream faded to black.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. The runes will do the rest.
~Theodore Roosevelt
Chapter Sixty-Five
Tomas stood outside the northwest corner of the Suntara building on the west side, directly below the council room window, wearing body armor and tactical vest dripping with weapons and equipment. Four enforcers in similar full battle gear stood nearby. They all wore vests with SWAT emblazoned across the back. Other members of the Tenth had placed portable barriers across the street and were acting as crowd control. The disguises should gain them the few minutes they need before the real authorities arrived.
“Sir,” Domenico spoke into his earpiece. “The medical team was just inserted, including three enforcers.”
“No issues?”
“Negative. They barely looked at our men. Just ushered them into the council room fast. Video link coming online now.”
Tomas breathed a sigh of relief. He’d worried Behram would have intercepted the enforcers. They’d taken a terrible risk, and he would’ve carried a heavy burden of guilt had it not worked.
He remembered every man who had died under his command. The list was long, but he honored that burden and refused to allow the faces of those men to dim from his memory despite the passage of the years. It was a weight that came with command, and embracing it helped him remember to never send his men into harm’s way lightly.
Getting the enforcers into the room was a huge win. The elevators and the stairwell were situated on the east side of the building, closer to the main entrance. Once they launched the assault, it would take the Tenth precious time to secure the east side and advance up the central hallway, flanked as it was by several offices and two smaller conference rooms where enemy could attack them from.
Tomas tapped a small screen strapped to his left forearm. It came to life and video started streaming within seconds. They had secreted five of Quentin’s mini cameras within the medical gear. A technician in the Tenth’s dedicated communications room managed the feeds.
The various video angles revealed the council chamber in chaos. Shahrokh was present, as were Aline and Meryem. They all looked worried, and Sharhokh was standing, shouting at Tereza for explanations.
Another video showed the reason for the concern. Asoka and Mai Luan were connected to one of the machines. Asoka wore the helmet with the phoropter-looking faceplate, but Mai Luan’s helmet sported a faceplate that barely covered her eyes, leaving her cheeks and jaw exposed. Both dreamers were covered in blood, and more had dripped to the floor.
They looked whole at the moment, although the medical teams were working with some of Mai Luan’s white-coated technicians to clean them off and look for more wounds.
As the video continued to cycle through the various feeds, Tomas noted the other two machines Mai Luan had brought in for the council were positioned at opposite corners of the room. He had expected them to be set near the door, close to the first machine, and the placement seemed strange.
He didn’t have time to worry about the oddity. The next video feed showed Tereza. She was not running the machine, as Tomas had expected. Another facetaker he didn’t recognize, a woman with a wide face, powered the machine. Three soulmasks were strapped to it too.
Tereza stood at the table with a tall, slender, blond man with a pinched face and long nose. They had extracted seven more dispossessed soulmasks and the man was marking runes onto them. The angle wasn’t great, but still showed that the runes were very complex. He noted at least two of Mai Luan’s people working with the medical team wore fanny packs.
“We’ve got enhanced for sure. I see at least a couple charlies.”
“We spotted them too,” Anaru said. “So far we’ve counted four.”
“Plan on the rest being occans or channelers,” Tomas said. “And we’ve definitely got an enchanter in there.”
“Has to be,” Domenico said. “He’s fast.”
Anaru added, “Our best rune expert is already analyzing the runes. He just suggesting they’re supporting Mai Luan and Asoka, fostering healing and keeping them alive.”
“Try to capture that one alive,” Tomas ordered.
“Roger,” Domenico and Anaru said together.
“What’s going on?” Anaru asked. “It’s like they’re in the middle of a fight.”
“They are,” Tomas said. “Gregorios is fighting them in the memory.”
“How is that possible?” Anaru asked.
“What’s important is that he appears to be successfully stalling her,” Tomas said. He worried that Gregorios might be in trouble. If Mai Luan and Asoka were getting so much extra help, Gregorios couldn’t hold out for long. He silently urged Quentin to get home fast to send him an update.
He needed to get his men into position and end this before Mai Luan won past Gregorios. “Are the other teams in position?”
“Almost,” Anaru reported. “We have teams ready to storm the stairwell, and others moving into position under each of the elevators. They’ll have the floors wired in two minutes.”
“Good. I’ll be in position shortly. We’ll move together.”
Tomas faced the wall and adjusted the unique piece of equipment Quentin had helped him assemble before leaving for the mansion. The Suntara building lacked any external stairs or fire escape, so he needed to scale the four-story building. A gas-powered grapple could be launched, but Tomas had a far more elegant solution in mind.
With the push of a button, he fired up the specialty machine strapped to his back. At its core, it was a vacuum pack, supercharged, and customized to run virtually silent. It
produced several hundred pounds of suction that ran through stirrups strapped to his shins. The stirrups included wide paddles with a soft, rubbery coating that could seal to almost any exterior building surface.
Tomas pushed one leg against the wall and it sealed in place. He stepped up, pulling himself off the ground, and pressed the next leg higher on the wall. By pulling up on his foot, he triggered the release that broke the pressure and allowed him to pull the paddle from the wall and take another step.
The revolutionary design allowed him to literally walk up the side of the wall with remarkable ease. The Tenth had taken a preliminary design originally developed by an American university working with grant money from the US military, and redesigned it.
With his legs locked into the stirrups, Tomas could walk up the wall, leaning back at a slight angle. The design allowed him to do all the work with his legs, leaving his hands free to fire weapons or use equipment as needed. Since no one was firing at him, he had also attached secondary paddles for his hands, connected to the main paddles with suction hoses and support wires. Using his hands allowed him to move faster, climbing the wall like a high-tech Spiderman.
The design was so new Tomas had only tried it once before. Even the militaries looking into the idea were years away from fielding a comparable model. As Tomas climbed the side of the building, he only hoped he’d get into position fast enough to make a difference.
The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode, but the true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows. The beauty of a woman grows with the passing years. With the right rune, a woman can let a little more of that beauty shine forth than she might otherwise manage, but all things being equal, I still believe happy girls are the prettiest girls.
~Audrey Hepburn
Chapter Sixty-Six
Sarah stared at the spot where Alter had just faded away, but could barely believe he had really left them.
Mai Luan laughed and turned toward Sarah. “One down. I suppose I’ll have to kill you after all, Sarah. Once Alter assassinates Eirene for me, I’m not entirely sure what will happen to you in here.”