The Far Shores (The Central Series) (49 page)

Brennan Thule’s mouth
opened, then closed again, without making any sound. He swayed uncertainly, his
breath ragged and labored.

“I would not move, if I
were you. Our current position is rather delicate.” Anastasia smiled
benevolently. “You were eager for some sort of intimacy with me, were you not? Oh,
but you look confused, poor thing. The principle is not difficult to understand
– if you were to run directly at a wall, you would either bounce off of it or
break it down, yes? Both you and the wall are solid, after all. Quantum theory,
however, treats everything in the universe as waves and particles, matter and
energy alike. Which means there exists some probability that the particles
within yourself and the barrier could be precisely arranged in just such a
manner as to allow you to pass directly through the wall without ever truly
making contact. Fascinating to consider the implications, is it not?”

“I…I – I don’t…”

“Hush,” Anastasia
scolded. “Don’t spoil the moment. I took an antidote, you see, before I
immersed myself in your poison fountain, and I am afraid that while it
protected me from your maddening drug, it left me a bit shaky. Since you have
been so forthcoming with me, I thought it only fair that I share another
peculiarity of my Reign Protocol. You see, if I deactivate it while I am in the
process of passing through something solid, my mass will displace whatever is
occupying the same space. The material involved is irrelevant – a phenomenon
that no one has ever been able to explain. A miracle of the technology we are infused
with, you might say. One of those things that humankind was not meant to know.
Although,” Anastasia said, cocking her head to one side and looking at him
speculatively, “it can be
experienced
, if not understood. Would you care
to?”

Brennan Thule opened his
mouth, but whatever he intended to say, he did not get the opportunity.
Anastasia whipped her hand sideways, tossing a handful of wet red flesh to the
side, while he fell to the ground. She stood in front of him for a moment, red
to the elbow, then bent and carefully wiped her arm clean on the back of his
jacket, leaving behind a smear of gore.

“What an unpleasant man,”
she observed.

“I could not agree more,”
the guard responded levelly, advancing on her. “That scene was very difficult
to witness.”

“All the more so to take
part in,” Anastasia agreed. “What took you so long, Renton?”

“Nothing important,”
Renton assured her, casting aside his mask and sweeping her from her feet in
one fluid gesture, then lifting her and carrying her as if she were a bride. “I
simply didn’t wish to interrupt you when you seemed to be enjoying yourself.”

“You are an impudent
servant, Renton,” Anastasia observed, leaning her head against his chest and
closing her eyes.

“True.”

“However, given the
circumstances, just the once…I will allow it.”

Renton stepped casually
over Brennan Thule’s body, and carried Anastasia carefully from the chamber.

***

“Miss Aoki…”

It was honestly hard to
decide if the situation was incredible or terrifying. Maybe, Alex thought
dizzily, it was both.

“I am quite serious. Shut
up,” Mitsuru commanded in a hushed voice. They were uncomfortably close, so
that any casual observer would assume that they were locked in a passionate
embrace, her back pressed to the wall. “They are making a phone call. We might
have done a lot better than a couple of Weir.”

“Okay,” Alex said,
Mitsuru’s face so close to his own that their lips were almost touching. “And
that’s a good thing, right?”

“Very good,” Mitsuru
said happily. “I’m glad I brought you, Alex.”

“Because I’m good bait?”

“Well, there is that,”
Mitsuru admitted. Alex was starting to react to his proximity to Miss Aoki, a
complicated mesh of fear, excitement, and guilt. The only thing that allowed
him to hold it together was the rigidly professional expression on her face. “But
I was specifically referring to the effect you have on me.”

Alex’s hands were
planted against the cold brick wall, on either side of her shoulders, careful
not to touch. Not that Miss Aoki wasn’t beautiful – she was, despite the
collection of scars on her arms – but she was even more frightening.

“I’m not sure what you
mean, Miss Aoki.”

He was careful to make
his voice as devoid of implication as possible.

“The catalyst effect,”
she said, bloodshot eyes fixed on whatever was happening behind him, in the
mouth of the alley. “Rebecca told me all about it. She said that what I
experienced after limited contact with you was just the tip of the iceberg. You
are aware that my Black Protocol is still difficult for me to access?”

Alex wished that he
could back away for a moment, to clear his head. He was aware that their
proximity was an operational necessity, that their embrace was feigned, but his
body stubbornly insisted otherwise. He really hoped that Katya wouldn’t see
this. And not just because she would never let him hear the end of it.

After all, who knew what
she and Eerie talked about when he wasn’t around?

“But I thought you could
do that on your own now,” Alex objected, staying as close as possible while
averting his eyes. “Katya said as much.”

Mitsuru laughed mirthlessly,
her eyes darting back and forth, tracking whatever movement was happening
behind his back, something that was making him feel even more vulnerable. The
situation was tense and unpleasant, and his whole body shivered, expecting
something to sneak up or strike him from behind.

“Katya should mind her
own business,” Mitsuru said softly. “She is only half-right. My ability to
activate it is sporadic, and even when I can achieve activation, maintaining it
long enough to be useful presents another challenge entirely. The control I
have over it at the moment is well below the level it needs to be operationally
useful. So do me a favor…”

She paused, and then pulled
him close to her, moving so fast he had no time to react. Her head rested
against the side of his nick, her body pressed briefly against his own. Alex’s
breath caught in his throat, and his hands clutched at the wall behind her for
support. He could feel the transfer of energy between them, an echo of the
euphoric feedback cycle that Rebecca had induced during their sessions. Just as
abruptly, Miss Aoki pushed him aside with a casual disdain while her eyes turned
sparkling jet-black, blacker than her silken hair.

“…and keep this our
little secret, okay?”

“Is there a blackmail class
at the Academy that everyone takes but me?”

Alex leaned against the
wall with his outstretched arms, palms resting on the chilled brick. It took a
minute of deep breathing and staring at his shoes to compose himself. By the
time he dared to turn around, he found himself alone in the alley.

Well, relatively
speaking.

There were four people
walking down the alley toward him, with a businesslike purposefulness to their
stride that hinted at their confidence in the situation. The two in front were
Weir, no doubt about it – the excessive body hair, unibrows, and elongated
canine teeth gave them away. The women behind them looked more or less like
normal people – impossibly beautiful people wearing clothes that even Alex
could tell were expensive. One wore a red dress that seemed to change hue as
she moved and the light shifted, while the other wore a pale, loose blouse and
grey pants, accessorized with a belt buckle that was nickel-plated and
approximately the size of Alex’s head.

“Oh shit,” Alex
whispered, talking a couple furtive steps back. “Witches.”

The Witch in red reminded
Alex vaguely of a news anchor whose name he couldn’t remember, with her
relentlessly cheerful voice and platinum-blonde hair.

“Boy,” she called out,
in lilting Russian (or Ukrainian, probably, since Alex could understand her), “would
you mind terribly coming with us?”

“Gee, thanks, but...how ’bout
no?”

Alex reached for the
Black Door, but didn’t open it. Those were his instructions, and when the
source of the instructions was Alice Gallow, Alex felt that it was imperative
to obey them to the letter.

The other Witch, a
brunette with too much gold jewelry, and high heels nearly as ridiculous as
those Miss Aoki had worn, smirked and put her hands on her hips.

“What do you plan to do,
child? Do you think yourself capable of resisting?”

“Me? Oh, no. I’m kind of
a pushover. But I didn’t come alone…”

“Yes,” the blonde Witch agreed,
turning about to glance around the alley at irregularly placed dumpsters and
bags of refuse. “Where did she run off to? Have you been abandoned to the
wolves, child?”

Miss Aoki stepped out of
thin air in the midst of them, bleeding the black, viscous goo from her
forearms that Alex knew was a concentrated mass of nanite disassemblers – tiny
robots that took things apart at the molecular level and used the raw materials
to replicate. The end of the world, running inside the veins of a petite
half-Japanese woman with blood-red eyes, who had somehow found the time to
change into fatigues with the arms cut off, so she could bleed freely. The black
blood reflected the weak sun like an oil slick, coating both of her arms from
her elbows to the tips of her fingers. The Weir snarled, the Witches recoiled
and reached for weapons or began workings, while Miss Aoki started her attack.

It wasn’t pretty. Alex
would have rather looked away, but he didn’t want to be reprimanded. He had a
job, keeping the Black Door
almost
open, something he had learned to do
only recently. Miss Gallow’s plan did not call for him to use his protocol, but
it did call for him to act as a reserve, in case their lure pulled in something
bigger than Miss Aoki could safely neutralize.

The Black Door existed
as a nexus of pressure in the cavity of his skull, a cold enormity behind his
eyes. It was a difficult state to maintain, not quite open, not fully closed,
but it allowed him to use his protocol immediately and to great effect. It
would have been even more difficult for Alex to explain exactly how it was done.
Like many of the things he had learned from Rebecca Levy, the ability had been
implanted on such a fundamental level that using it was instinctual,
practically like breathing. Extremely labored breathing.

One Weir was bright
enough to dive away. The other tried to spin around to face its opponent. A ligature
of black blood ran between Mitsuru’s hands like wire as she reached over the
head of the Weir in mid-spin. While Alex was still trying to puzzle out her
intention, she drew the cord across its throat, severing the Weir’s head from its
body with no visible resistance, and Alex suddenly understood what was
happening. A garrote. A garrote on the molecular level.

As it turned out, that
Weir was fortunate.

The second Weir spun
around and pounced over the corpse of its companion with claws bared, in mid-transformation.
Mitsuru watched its advance impassively until it was frighteningly close, then
she whipped both arms through the air, droplets cascading on the Weir’s
clothes, fur, and exposed skin. Everything the black blood touched boiled and
vaporized, so neatly that it was impossible to think of the process as violent.
It bordered on clinical – particularly the “olden-days” kind of clinic, where
there was lots of screaming. The Weir stumbled just short of Miss Aoki, falling
to the ground and rolling away from her. It touched the places that were being
eaten away, a reflexive gesture that allowed the black blood to crawl to its fingers.

Alex was sort of worried
that he was going to be sick, once the disassemblers started their work on the
Weir’s face and eyes. Miss Aoki had already moved on, however, with the
ludicrous speed of the alacrity protocol she employed. He could see the Etheric
Signature created by her implant like a great flare mounted in her skull, and
wondered if it hurt.

The short-haired Witch
threw something at Miss Aoki – Alex couldn’t identify it before it exploded,
but it didn’t look like typical ordnance. Whatever it was, it detonated with
enough force that Alex felt it five meters away, almost knocking him to the
ground, but there was no shrapnel, or he probably wouldn’t have survived.
Mitsuru was sent sprawling back, colliding with one of the alley walls with a
sickening impact and then falling limply to the sidewalk.

Alex didn’t wait to see
if she got up. He triggered the routine which activate the Absolute Protocol
and braced himself for the cold. The world around him was abruptly infused with
a glowing framework of energy, Miss Aoki and the Witches were represented as
dense congregations of tiny and brilliant thermal constellations. The Ether
pressed in on everything with a subtle tension as universal and unnoticed as
gravity. He concentrated, poking five equidistant pinholes in an array centered
around the head of the short-haired Witch.

The Witches must have
been sensitive to the activation of his protocol, because they turned toward
him in a disturbing act of unison before he could activate it. The Witch in the
red dress began a complex sequence of ritualistic hand gestures, while the
other sprinted in his direction, darting away from the rents into the Ether
that would have caused her death a fraction of a second later. Even that small
exposure would have been damaging to a human, but it had no obvious impact on
the Witch’s alien physiology.