A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) (31 page)

As Alyshur had explained it, she would be sharing her mind with the Thuur’s own consciousness: each of them distinct, yet within one body. It was a state that only the Thuur elder could create, and Alyshur would arrive soon with her.

“It must be done,” Marette said. “If there is a weapon to be used against Suuthrien, we must do all that we can to find it. And this act will build trust between us and them.”

“I remember,” said Sheridan. “And trust is good. I just don’t know anyone I trust enough to let into my head like that.”

“We must begin somewhere.” The AoA had injected Marette with a tracer solution as a safeguard against Alyshur usurping her body for some nefarious purpose, and an AoA member would accompany Marette at all times. It was likely that Knapp ordered more safeguards Marette did not know about, in case Alyshur tried to use her knowledge against them.

It was in keeping with part of the AoA mantra, Councilor Knapp’s own favorite:
Plan for the worst to prepare for the best.

Yet in her heart, something told her such things were unneeded. Was that instinct? Or did she just need to persuade herself into a danger that she believed necessary? Regardless of the source of the feeling, she had made her choice.

Marc lay unconscious in the neighboring medical bay. She wondered if he would wake before she left Omicron, or at all.

The door slid open and Councilor Knapp entered. Alyshur came after, followed by a taller Thuur, Uxil, and a fellow agent with whom Marette had yet to interact. With regret for forgetting the agent’s name, she turned her attention back to the taller Thuur between Alyshur and Uxil. Was this the elder? Her skin, rather than the subdued gold of the other Thuur, had edged toward a silver. Asymmetric patterns of thin dark streaks adorned her exposed skin. Marette could not tell if the streaks were painted, tattooed, or a natural feature, but they matched in color the black strands that jetted through her short, rust-colored hair.

Alyshur motioned to the elder. “I bring to you in trust the last surviving elder aboard the
Sillisinuriri
. She bids you greetings.”

The elder regarded Marette and Dr. Sheridan with solid eyes of aquamarine. She brought up her hands, fingers together, and then spread them like an opening flower.

Councilor Knapp cleared her throat. “Alyshur tells us that elders give up the ability to speak vocally. She communicates through them instead.” Knapp fixed her gaze on Marette, in her eyes a mix of wonder and worry. “Telepathically.”

Marette returned the elder’s greeting gesture. “Thank you for coming. Do you have a name we should call you?”

“The elder requests you to call her Sephora,” said Uxil. “Her precise name would cause you difficulty.”

Marette blinked. “That is also a French name.” Marette had known a Sephora growing up: a troubled mouse of a girl whom Marette had bullied. The regret of her own childhood cruelty still stung her to think about.

“Knowledge of your language brought with it many of your culture’s names,” Alyshur explained. “The sound of ‘Sephora’ appeals to her.”

Marette paused on the brink of voicing her wish that she’d chosen a name with less unpleasant associations. It was a petty thing, after all. Yet before she could say anything at all, the door slid open again, this time admitting Doctor Yejun Seung, Omicron’s medical chief. He hesitated a step at the sight of the Thuur, and then continued to a medical console behind the exam tables.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said with a glance at Knapp and Marette, “but everything is set on our end to monitor. I’ll be standing by if anything goes medically wrong.”

Marette turned back to Sephora. “Then I am ready.”

Sephora seemed to smile, and then turned to Alyshur with a motion to the empty exam table beside Marette’s. Alyshur took to the table, sitting on one edge to mirror Marette’s position. He met her gaze with solid green pools that almost seemed to reach across the distance between them.

“If you have objections,” said Alyshur, “give voice to them now.”

Marette took a deep breath of the clean but sterile air that filled the Omicron Complex. The air on
Paragon
was sweeter, a product of the recycling properties of the organic black material—like a forest, one of the first humans to enter had observed. Soon she would again breathe the air on Earth. It had been over a year.

It was a strange thing to be thinking about, given the circumstances.

“No objections. But if you abuse my trust, it will be not only a personal violation but an act of war.” She smiled to soften it. Though she understood the Thuur habit of full disclosure, it felt brusque coming off of her tongue.

None of the Thuur seemed to take it as anything but polite. Alyshur gave one of his alien nods and motioned upward with both palms, then he lay down on his table. Marette did the same.

“Vitals are all in the clear,” Dr. Seung reported from his console. “Monitoring and ready on this end.”

Marette nodded to Knapp’s questioning look, and Knapp in turn nodded to the elder. “You may proceed.”

The elder’s fingertips settled on Marette’s forehead like soft leather against her skin. Her thumbs, somehow warmer, pressed firmly to Marette’s temples. The slightest tingle began just behind her ears, and for a fleeting moment she could smell cinnamon.

Uxil appeared beside Marette’s table as her vision began to blur. “The elder suggests that you may wish to close your eyes, for your own comfort.”

Marette nodded, but kept them open. In her mind, something stirred that was not her.

THE SOUND OF HIS OXFORDS
over the concrete echoed in the corners of the modest underground parking garage of the RavenTech satellite facility where the gate lay. Save for a few executive sedans and the two guards at the access elevator, toward which Adrian now strode, the garage was deserted.

He smiled to both guards as he reached the elevator. “Trisha. Ethan. How’s everything?” Adrian pressed a hand against the screen of the security reader.

Ethan, a stout, dark-haired man in his early thirties, looked uncomfortable behind his well-kept beard. “Been an interesting day, Mr. Fagles, I’m sorry to say.”

“Oh? And why is interesting a sorry—” The security reader flashed red.

Trisha set her jaw. Ethan’s equal in height, with a glowing crimson triangle tattoo on her left cheek, she said with reluctance, “Ms. Thomson revoked your access. You’re not allowed in.”

“Yes, I believe I figured that’s what ‘revoked your access’ meant, thank you.”
We’ll see about that.
He brought up his cyberscreen and called her. No answer. “Is she here?” he demanded of Ethan.

“I’m not authorized to answer that.”

Adrian clasped his hands behind his back and forced an easygoing smile. “Given the circumstances, I can’t believe she would be anywhere else. So if you would be so kind as to get her on the screen for me. Please.”

The guards exchanged glances. Trisha touched her earpiece. “Ms. Thomson: He’s here and asking to speak with you.”

Adrian stifled a frown.
Asking
, indeed. Within moments, Camela Thomson’s face appeared on the elevator’s security reader screen. “Adrian. Go home, and wait to be contacted.”

“My home is currently charred to a crisp thanks to a mysterious fire that got me out of this facility conveniently prior to project completion. Would you care to explain that?”

The woman had the nerve to laugh. “Convenient is exactly the word I’d use. This facility is attacked and you’re nowhere to be found? Suspicious, Adrian.”

“Camela, do give me some credit. If I’d tried to pull something I would’ve been in the observation room, right by your side, to allay suspicion. I had nothing to do with the attack, but I do have vital information you’d do well to listen to.”

She said nothing, apparently content to let her frown speak to her skepticism.

“It’s sensitive information.” Adrian gave the guards a meaningful glance. “Come up to the garage. We’ll speak in my car.”

“Go to your car and call me instead.”

“You’ll answer this time?”

“If you do it quick,” she said.

He made a show of considering it, glancing to Ethan and Trisha in turn before answering. “No, I’d really rather you come up here. You remember the thing I warned you about doing that you did anyway? I
know
what happened on the other side, Camela. If you want to stay in control of that situation, you need to know what I know.”

Camela folded her arms and sat back, regarding him as she might something she’d found on the bottom of her shoe. “Wait there.” The screen went dark.

Adrian turned a smile onto the guards. “So. How well are they paying you these days?”

Ten minutes later Camela sat in his passenger’s seat, arms still crossed. “So you’re saying
it
hired a team of freelancers to bust in and give it MEDAR access, completely independent of you?”

“Yes!”

“In order that it could do the very thing you’d been pushing me to allow it to do.”

“To give Suuthrien access to the gate, yes. Ah, which did turn out to be a good idea, I might add.”

She rolled her eyes. “The point is—”

“The point, Camela, is that we need access to what’s on the other side of that gate, and Suuthrien has achieved that. Security systems, technological secrets, unfettered access to everything aboard! Like it or not, that A.I. is RavenTech’s ticket, and I’m the only one she trusts—especially since you tried to circumvent her. If RavenTech wants to avoid her circumventing
you
again, I’ll need a seat at the table.”

“You need to stop calling this thing ‘she.’ And the fact that it could circumvent anything is exactly the problem! It got outside access without your knowing. Or so you say. This doesn’t bother you?”

“Control is an illusion, Camela. Only influence is real. Without Suuthrien, RavenTech gets nothing. All this does is raise the stakes.”

She lay one hand on the dashboard and stared at the bare cement garage wall. Her nails drummed once. “In for a penny, in for a pound, you mean?”

“I’d buy that for a dollar.”

She turned back to him, one eyebrow raised. Her scowl deepened in thought. He waited.

“No,” she said at last. “
It
might be necessary, Adrian, but you’re not. You may have skimmed your way off the top to get where you are, but it ends here. RavenTech no longer needs you. More to the point, I no longer need you.” She bumped a fist against the door release and pushed her way out, stopping to add, “Best of luck convincing anyone you didn’t hire that assault team. The company’s going to have your head for that. We’re done here.”

“Camela?” Adrian reached into his suit jacket. “One last thing.”

She’d nearly shut the door when he’d said it. She paused long enough to where he thought she might not listen, but then swung the door back open and leaned down. The shadows of the parking lot covered her. All he could see was the outline of her head and shoulders, and the glittering reflection of the dashboard indicator lights in her eyes.

“
What
?” she whispered.

“You’re right about one thing.” Inside his coat, he flicked off the pistol’s safety. “We
are
done here.”

It was a good shot; the bullet took her almost exactly through the center of her forehead. She slumped back onto the passenger’s seat, leaving a stain he’d need to get cleaned.

A figure approached the driver’s side and wrapped knuckles on the window. Adrian lowered it.

“Hello, Ethan,” said Adrian. “All’s well?”

Ethan bent down, sparing a glance for Camela’s body, and then nodded. “Trisha’s handling the cameras, Mr. Fagles.”

“Excellent.” Adrian holstered his pistol. “Now, if you’d be so good as to help me get Ms. Thomson into the trunk, I’ll gladly pay you an extra thousand.”

WITHIN AN HOUR
of Michael’s verified negative test results, he, Caitlin, Jade, and Marette departed Omicron with six other Agents via a Knapp Aerospace shuttle to Alpha Station, ESA’s primary moonbase. From there it was eleven more hours to Sunrise Station in Earth orbit.

Both flights had gone as well as could be expected. The shuttle experienced no navigational issues and no sign of interference from Suuthrien. Though they had not expected any—Suuthrien’s reach off of Earth seemed confined to
Paragon
—Michael found himself breathing easier as the shuttle neared Sunrise.

And yet, he realized, not completely easier. Despite knowing he needed to focus on the immediate future, the past still preyed upon him. The sight of Alpha Station out the shuttle window only tightened its talons.

Jade, sitting across the aisle, leaned over it toward Michael. A few tresses of red hair dangled beguilingly from behind her temples, interspersed with glowing white. “So. What’s new?”

“What’s
new
?”

“I mean, how’re you doing?” She shrugged. “I just got booted off a job, learned some grievous shit is going down that I can’t do dick about, and I just realized I was dumb enough to not convert what Suuthrien
has
paid me into cash, so maybe it’s already wiped what it paid to my account. Dwelling on my own problems is a drag, so . . . ”

Michael glanced at Marette, sitting on his other side, between him and the window. She remained asleep, exhausted from her battle on
Paragon
and the procedure with the Thuur elder. He’d yet to ask her about it; that she carried Alyshur’s consciousness(!) was a secret he had to keep from Caitlin and Jade, and they’d never been out of earshot.

He turned back to Jade. “I’ve been better.”

“Yeah. Can’t really say I blame you. I’m sorry that you’ve— Well, that everything’s . . . ” She frowned and rolled her eyes in a way that seemed directed inwardly somehow, and then stared ahead. Her fingers drummed once on her armrest before she turned back to him. “You’re sure you don’t want to hire me on, yourself?”

Michael sighed. “I can’t do that.”

“Hey, I know your little group doesn’t trust me, but I thought we’d developed an understanding, you and I.”