The Far Shores (The Central Series) (70 page)

His voice was warm and
full of implied threats, which Emily brushed aside.

“Of course not. She’s
been like that since I brought her here. I have no idea what the issue is, nor
do I care. Eerie is intact, and that’s all that matters. She won’t be our
concern much longer.”

Alistair studied her
from a distance, attempting and failing to penetrate her alien mind with his
telepathic protocol. Emily could have told him the effort would have been
fruitless – the Changeling had proved impervious to even Rebecca Levy’s vaunted
talents while at the Academy – but he hadn’t bothered to ask, and Emily wasn’t
feeling inclined toward charity at the present. She was, frankly, eager for the
operation to wrap up, to be done with the unexpected awkwardness of dealing
with her former rival (and the ghosts of her own pettiness, in that regard –
though all that had occurred in both a literal and figurative other life), and to
return to the Outer Dark to her long-anticipated reward.

“I suppose that I should
go have a little chat with her, make sure she is nice and cooperative for her
end of this...”

Emily was about to
interrupt, to explain the Changeling’s resistance to such manipulation – not
that she expected Alistair to heed her advice, but still – when she herself was
interrupted by sudden activity from the portal. Two figures stumbled through
and into the center of the room, one supporting the other, who was limping
rather badly. A number of people gasped simultaneously, Emily among them, as
she locked eyes with one of the interlopers.

“Emily?”

“Alex?”

Eerie looked up for the
first time in the better part of an hour, eyes wide and startled.

“Alex?”

He turned his attention
to the Changeling, looking both pleased and alarmed to see her, and Emily was
surprised to feel a sudden burst of resentment that she had thought herself
long past. Apparently her empathy still had something of a blind spot when it
came to self-analysis.

“Katya Zharova,”
Alistair said, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. “And little
Alexander. What a pleasant surprise.”

Katya glanced around the
room.

“Oh, shit. Isn’t this
just great?”

***

Rebecca Levy burst into Gaul’s office
with the same lack of decorum and respect that she had always shown. He
wondered where it was that Mrs. Barrett had gotten off to, and how he might similarly
flee the situation.

“Gaul! I came as soon as
I could. What’s the emergency…Gaul? What the hell is going on?”

Gaul was in the process
of packing his files into milk crates that he had found in a neighboring
administrator’s office, taking them for himself in a last-minute executive
decision. He didn’t imagine that he would have the opportunity to collect
anything that he left behind now, and he had no intention of leaving his
private files for the Auditors to review.

“A number of potential
futures have been cut off, while an equivalent number of even more
extraordinary futures have arisen.” Gaul sighed and sat down heavily behind his
desk. He was suddenly very tired; more tired than he could ever recall being.
“I am attempting to navigate Central through a number of difficulties toward
the best possible outcome. In other words, the usual.”

Rebecca looked pointedly
at the stacks of files littering his desk and the half-full milk crates
scattered around the floor. She was so out of sorts that she didn’t even think
to light a cigarette.

“None of this,” she
said, gesturing at the disarray in the room, “looks anything like usual to me.”

“I admit that much of
what has transpired in the past few hours has taken even me by surprise,” Gaul
said, nodding to himself. “We live, as they say, in interesting times,
Rebecca.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s
supposed to be a bad thing.”

“An uncertain thing,
yes. Bad is subjective.”

“Okay, Gaul, quit
fucking around and just tell me...”

Gaul took his glasses
off to rub his sore eyes.

“You need to go to the
Far Shores, immediately,” Gaul explained, setting his glasses aside. For the
moment, he decided, he was more comfortable in a blurred world. “I have
summoned an apport technician. They are waiting for you in the lobby. I suggest
that you stop by the infirmary on your way – if I have calculated your arrival
time correctly, you will miss the danger, but arrive in time to save at least
some of the students.”

“Gaul, I told you
already,” Rebecca said, with controlled but obviously increasing anger. “I’m
not an Auditor anymore. I’m a fucking school councilor...”

“I have not forgotten.
You cited concern for the children, in your resignation. I assure you, in this
particular situation, that the safety of the children that your prize so highly
is paramount. Assuming you wish to have the opportunity to help them work out
their various personal and psychological issues in the future, I urge you to
make haste.”

“What’s going on, Gaul?”
Rebecca said, leaning forward to study his face. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Oh, all sorts of
things,” Gaul responded giddily. “None of particular import to our discussion,
however. Not to worry – by the time you return, much of this will be clear. The
rest, I assume, will come out in due time.”

“You’re scaring me,
Gaul,” Rebecca said, biting her at her nails in nervousness. “You’re acting
weird.”

“Am I? It is possible.
It has been a
very
strange day.”

“Why won’t you just tell
me...”

“Because I don’t have
time to explain. And if you continue to delay, you won’t have time to rescue
the students from rather certain harm.”

“You don’t give me
orders anymore, Gaul,” Rebecca declared defiantly. “I don’t like this.”

“You don’t have to like
it,” Gaul countered, returning to his files. “And I am not ordering you. This
is a request. I assumed that you would want to do this. If I am wrong, well,
then, I suppose that we will have the opportunity to discuss this at length
during the funerals.”

Rebecca stared at him,
lips trembling with outrage.

“And somehow I’m the one
with a reputation for being manipulative,” she said finally, sounding more
wounded than she ever had, in their years of working together. “Alright, Gaul.
I’ll do what you want. But when I come back, you and I are going to have a very
long chat about this.”

Gaul shook his head,
dumping another set of files into a handy milk crate.

“When you come back,
everything will be different. And I have serious doubts that you will want to
talk to me at all. But I assure you, Rebecca, whatever happens – I have nothing
but respect for you, and my door is always open for you.”

Rebecca stomped to the
door, tugging her hair into a quick ponytail.

“I don’t get you at all,
sometimes, Gaul,” she muttered. “Not sure I want to.”

She slammed the door
behind her. Gaul continued packing up his office, serene and at least partially
entranced by the constellation of new possibilities that were opening up by the
minute – not all good, obviously – but the sheer novelty of entering
unexplored, unanticipated territory had its own appeal nonetheless. He was
invigorated by the newness of the concerns and probabilities that he weighed
with the same measured and thoughtful precision that he had used to deal with
the old. For the first time in years, Gaul wasn’t certain what would happen
tomorrow – he could explore the possibilities, obviously, but the details were
fuzzy – and the uncertainty was oddly refreshing.

“Incidentally,” he said,
still talking to Rebecca, despite the fact that she was gone, “I think that you
will be excellent at the job. I have absolute confidence in you.”

“While I am afraid this represents a
certain pettiness on my part,
I must admit that I have been looking forward to the
opportunity to set matters right between us.”

Alex hesitated, studying
Alistair’s expression in confusion.

“I don’t get it,” he
admitted. “Are you going to apologize or something? Because it seems a little
late for…”

“No, you idiot, I am
not
,”
Alistair said, shaking his head ruefully. “You really are as dumb as they say,
boy. What I mean is that our last encounter left you with a false set of
impressions as to the balance of power between us. I mean to rectify that.”

Katya stayed close. They
stood nearly back to back in the center of the room, attempting to keep their
eyes on all of the Anathema. It was a logistical and physiological
impossibility, but a natural response to being surrounded. The Anathema
chambered rounds into submachine guns and tracked the pair of trainee Auditors
with reflex scopes, waiting for Alistair to give the word, while Alistair
watched in obvious amusement. Emily expression’s wavered between enthusiasm and
unease. Talia Banks ignored all of them, in favor of the passive surface of a
digital keyboard. When Samnang Banh stepped through the portal and into the
room, no one paid her much attention besides Eerie, who flinched and pressed
her back against the wall as if she hoped to pass directly through.

“First one to move gets
a handful of needles in their brain,” Katya declared, eyes darting from one
Anathema to another. “It’ll paralyze you, and it’ll hurt, but I guarantee
you’ll be a long time dying. Fair warning.”

Alex wished he could
think of something equally threatening to say, but even now, in the midst of
tension and imminent death, he could feel a rising tide of sleepiness eroding
the jittery amphetamine rush that propped his eyelids open. He wondered how
long he had before the consequences of using the Absolute Protocol caught up
with him, and how many more times he could use it before he spontaneously fell
asleep. It was irrational, given the likelihood that he would be dead shortly,
and therefore immune to such concerns, but he still found himself troubled by a
nagging worry that this time he would fall asleep much longer. On the last
occasion that he put his protocol to extensive use, it had cost him more than a
month of his life. Assuming he survived this encounter, Alex had the feeling
that his actions today would cost him a great deal more.

It was an insane thing
to worry about with half a dozen guns and a homicidal telepath’s eyes trained
on him, but it bothered him anyway. Maybe it was some sort of coping mechanism,
Alex thought, stifling a yawn.

“How many of us do you
think you can take, Katya, before we kill you?” Alistair spoke softly,
nonchalantly descending the short staircase down to the floor where they stood.
“One? Maybe two?”

“Could be,” Katya
allowed, the needles in her hands glimmering under the fluorescent lights. “But
who wants to volunteer to be the lucky ones?”

Alistair laughed,
leaning against the handrail as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

“We’ll take our chances
– isn’t that right, boys?”

The Anathema soldiers
shifted and exchanged glances in a way that made Alex think that they did not
exactly share their leader’s confidence. He wondered if that would be enough.

“Don’t forget about me,”
he volunteered, fighting the urge to steal a glance at Eerie, confirm that she
was still all right. “Ice in the brain is a bad way to go. I’ve seen it.”

“Assuming you are fast
enough,” Alistair chided. “Which I doubt. Even if you are, that changes the
arithmetic slightly, not the outcome.”

“What if I skip to the
chase and take out your technician?” Katya said, jerking her head in the
direction of the black woman who continued to devote her attentions to the electronics
before her. “Bet that would throw a crimp in your plan.”

Alistair laughed.

“I won’t allow you to do
any such thing. Given the mess you people were making in Kiev, I have no idea
whether the World Tree will be usable. I can’t leave this sort of technology in
your hands, in any case, even supposing that I don’t need it myself.”

Alex didn’t believe him
– not entirely. He didn’t think that Alistair was the type to gloat, or the
Director would have never selected him as Chief Auditor. He was either playing
for time or trying to rattle their nerves – otherwise, he would have simply
given the order to attack and then dealt with the consequences.

“Bullshit,” Katya said,
obviously coming to the same conclusion. “You aren’t so sure. Or you would have
done it already.”

Samnang Banh walked
across the room calmly, as if she weren’t strolling through a potentially
lethal crossfire, giving Alex a brief nod as she passed. He flinched when he
heard Eerie gasp, and only avoided the suicidal decision to look over in their
direction by an act of will. A moment later, he was glad that he hadn’t.
Because suddenly, above one of the Anathema soldiers who aimed a bullpup
assault rifle across the top of a server rack, there was something worth
seeing.

Haley emerged from the wall,
holding one insubstantial finger to her lips as she drifted toward the
soldier’s head. Alex saw Katya’s hand tense around her needles, and he readied
himself to operate his protocol. The wispy ghost-image of Haley invaded the
soldier’s head, like watching video of a smoker exhaling in reverse.

The Anathema’s movements
were clumsy, but no one paid him any attention as he turned to his left and
oriented his sights on the soldier beside him. Then the room was filled with
the deafening sound of high-velocity automatic fire. The soldier nearest was
cut down before he could react. The technician froze in place, staring at the
soldier beside her in horror while he pivoted to target the Anathema on the
opposite side of the room. Alistair looked bemused, and opened his mouth as if
to object. Katya moved in his direction, and Alex followed her cue, employing
the Absolute Protocol to punch a cluster of tiny holes to the Ether, localized
entirely inside the head of the soldier hovering near the door.

Moving slowly and with
an expression out of a nightmare, the soldier that Haley possessed raked the
room with gunfire. Alistair ducked while the rest of the Anathema scrambled.
The soldier Alex targeted stumbled, tearing the bulletproof helmet from his
head in a panic, whining like a beaten dog. Across the room, one of the
Anathema troops was struck several times by the bursts fired by the possessed
Anathema, but his companion had the wherewithal to return fire. Alex knocked
Katya down with a lunging tackle, covering her without thinking while bullets
passed overhead and ricocheted off the metal walls of the chamber.

The possessed soldier
was struck in the chest with a round from an enemy carbine, wounding him
grievously. Haley was already gone, darting across the room and diving into the
head of the remaining soldier guarding the door, forcing his aim up and wide,
so that the shots he intended for Alex and Katya went wide. Alex activated his
protocol, and a nearby soldier writhed and convulsed as the blood in his brain
flash-froze. The soldier Haley had possessed turned and expended the rest of
his rifle’s magazine, but her control of the man’s movements were too crude to
achieve accuracy, firing wildly in the general direction of her target, who was
crouched behind a large steam pipe for cover.

Alistair disintegrated
into a cloud of spinning embers and ash, Katya’s needles clattering to the
floor and bullets passing harmlessly through. The cloud quickly coalesced into
the form of a man, Alistair’s features gradually reforming out of the swirling
soot. The last of the Anathema fired several rounds from his carbine at the
soldier Haley had possessed, wounding and knocking him to the ground. Haley
forced him to toss aside the rifle and charge his assailant, ignoring bullets that
embedded in his Kevlar vest and punched through his arms, leg, and neck. The
possessed soldier opened his mouth in a soundless scream, blood pouring from
numerous wounds, and then leapt across the pipe the Anathema used for cover,
knocking his carbine aside and pummeling him with the one arm that was still
intact enough to move. His momentum carried both to the ground, where they
struggled briefly, while Alex and Katya cautiously returned to their feet.
There were three quick shots, muffled by the bulk of a lifeless body; then the
Anathema pushed the corpse aside and rose, sidearm aimed at Alex.

Katya was faster,
needles disappearing from her hand and reappearing embedded in his hand, arm,
and neck. The soldier cried out and dropped his gun from his punctured and
immobile hand, grabbing at the needle that punctured his windpipe in horror. It
was a relief for Alex when Katya finished him off with a second set of needles,
his body crumpling to the ground while Haley floated above, like a cartoon
ghost departing a body. Alex turned his attention to Alistair, meaning to
activate his protocol, but found himself staring at Alistair’s pleasant smile,
unable to trigger the hypnotically implanted routine that opened the Black
Door.

Haley shrieked as her
glowing form shattered like dropped porcelain, the fragments disappearing
before they could hit the ground. Katya’s eyes rolled back in her head, and
Alex grabbed her shoulders before she could tumble, her body in the throes of a
grand mal seizure, bloody foam leaking from between her gritted teeth.

“Back to work,” Alistair
snapped at Talia, who was huddled behind the intact server racks. He strode
purposefully across the room, snatching Katya’s rigid body from Alex and
casting her aside to collide with a nearby wall with a dull thud, then grabbed
a handful of Alex’s hair and dragged him to his feet.

“You brats are such a
pain in my ass,” Alistair said, punching Alex in the stomach so that he doubled
up and dropped to his knees, retching. “I have had about enough of that. What
do you say we resolve this thing,” he suggested evilly, taking a machete from a
sheath attached to the body of a nearby Anathema soldier, “just the two of us.”

***

One theory concerning the
manifestation of protocols suggested that their presentation was influenced by
the subconscious preferences of the Operator. Vivik was personally inclined to
agree with the idea, if only because his own remote-viewing ability, the Vigil
Protocol, manifested as an array of malleable windows – not unlike a multitude
of computer displays – that surrounded him in a series of orbiting rings,
rotating to match the demands of his desires. At the moment, six different
views hovered front and center, offering a stunningly comprehensive overview of
the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine and at the Far Shores.

“I’ve been a fool,
haven’t I?” Vivik shook his head. “An utter idiot.”

“Don’t be so hard on
yourself,” Anastasia said gently. “Boys are generally hopeless in these
matters.”

“That doesn’t…”

“I don’t blame you at
all, myself,” Renton offered, watching over Anastasia’s shoulder. “Emily’s hot,
Anathema or no.”

“That isn’t what…”

“We all make mistakes,
Vivik,” Timor said, clapping him on the shoulder. “It happens.”

“I appreciate it, but
you guys don’t understand,” Vivik said bitterly, one of the displays shifting
to show a woman with facial tattoos approaching Eerie, while Alex cautiously
circled away from Alistair in the background. “I knew what Emily was doing. I
just thought I could change her mind. I hoped that she still wanted to come
back, if someone would open the door for her. That was my mistake.”

“The heart of a woman
scorned is treacherous and savage,” Anastasia intoned solemnly, watching Alice
Gallow wobble and stagger her way across the chemical factory floor. “Your
intentions were good, Vivik. It is time to put that aside, however, and focus
on remedying the situation.”

Vivik nodded, and the
screens blurred and reshuffled, a view of Gaul sorting the contents of a
recently emptied file cabinet coming to the center.

“You’re right, of
course. I’m not sure how I can help, though, unless all you needed was a remote
viewer.”

Anastasia laughed
quietly. Behind her, a servant shooed Renton to the side so that she could
resume her efforts to style Anastasia’s hair.

“Hardly. Should I
require the services of a remote viewer, my cartel’s resources would prove
sufficient, I assure you. Though, I must add, your own talents have grown
prodigious. I do not remember the Vigil Protocol being so comprehensive.”

“It wasn’t. That is a
recent development. One that I suspect might have something to do with emotional
proximity to Alex. Am I right?”

Anastasia smiled
cryptically.

“I cannot discount the
possibility. Tell me, Vivik – are you certain that you wish to enter the
service of Central upon your graduation? I would welcome you in the Black Sun…”

“Thanks, Anastasia, but
the answer’s still no. I don’t believe in the cartel system.” Vivik glanced
away from the Vigil Protocol’s myriad views briefly to glance at the diminutive
girl beside him, partially obscured by the servant applying curlers to her
hair. “As much as I respect you personally, of course.”