The Far Shores (The Central Series) (8 page)

“Hello, leeches! My name
is Alice Gallow…”

The guard assigned to
the elevator had admirable reflexes. He had his sidearm out of his holster
before she opened her mouth, firing half a magazine worth of armor-piercing
rounds toward the Auditor’s back before she finished her sentence.

Not a single round
connected. With anything, the target or otherwise. Wan-Li, an avid reader of
enemy dossiers, assumed that they had disappeared into Gallow’s own shadow. He
was flabbergasted at the level of intelligence the Auditors must have had on
the facility to be so precisely aware of the arrangement of the lighting in the
room – as Alice Gallow stood a meter away on the raised podium of the command
center, directly beneath a large bank of lights that cast a cluster of slight
shadows in a half-circle behind her. He wondered where the bullets had been
sent.

Alice Gallow spun
around, firing an automatic shotgun from the hip Judging from the destruction caused
by the thunderous volley, she was using buckshot, emptying her magazine in her
attacker’s general direction. The guard was hit in a dozen different places, and
collapsed in a bloody heap, along with several other unlucky staff and
virtually all the equipment that occupied the space between them. Wan-Li’s ears
rang, and the air stank of gunpowder and burning plastic, while staff fled or
scrambled to aid the screaming wounded.

The Auditor casually
surveyed the room while she ejected the fat plastic magazine and replaced it
with another from her belt, scanning for any remaining potential interruptions
in the room. Wan-Li remained perfectly still, not bothering to reach for the
pistol he kept in the top drawer of his desk. He was well aware of the futility
of trying to outmatch the Chief Auditor. He was an administrator, not a gunman.

“…and I am here in
regard to an ongoing Audit, the subject of which is classified,” Alice Gallow
continued calmly, as if she hadn’t just killed someone, “but that probably won’t
come as any surprise to you assholes. I bet you’re wondering what happened to
your little apport interference machine, right?”

Wan-Li nodded. He would
have agreed with anything she said, but in this case, he was legitimately
curious. The device had multiple redundant power supplies, electromagnetic
shielding, and two centimeters of composite armor housing protecting its
innards, so sabotage seemed near impossible.

“You got some smart boys
out here in Shandong. Build all sorts of clever things, including your little
toy. Guess the Outer Dark doesn’t have much of an industrial base, or they’d do
that sort of thing in-house.” Alice Gallow shrugged and sat down on one end of
Wan-Li’s desk. The remainder of the staff moved toward the perforated elevator
in fits and starts, torn between the desire to flee and fear of being noticed.
“Did a pretty good job covering your tracks, I have to say. Distributing
production between a number of firms, so that none of them could figure out
exactly what they were building, that was a good move. Killing off three of the
project engineers and two industrial designers so they couldn’t repeat the job
was even better. All you left us to work with was a bunch of broken little
pieces.”

One staffer made it as
far as the elevator console, extending a trembling hand toward the call button.
Alice whipped the combat shotgun around to point in his direction, gesturing
him away from the elevator with the muzzle. The staffer took the hint and scurried
away from the elevator to hide behind an intact desk.

“’Course, if you are
basically a living supercomputer, then a bunch of fragments and some time is
all you really need to put Humpty Dumpty back together. Took the Director all
of a weekend to figure out what you bloodsuckers had built. Not like he
reversed-engineered the thing – that would take weeks – but we didn’t need to.
Didn’t need to know how it worked, just how to break it. And there are
so
many smart guys in China these days. Betcha some of the engineers that put your
toy together helped out with ours – and what we wanted was a lot simpler.
That’s the thing about your machine – the Etheric interference kept us from
porting in, but it also stood out like a sore thumb to the remote viewers when they
surveyed the area. Like using a loud radio to screw up hidden microphones. You
might mess it up for the spooks, but neighbors are gonna notice the noise.

“Found one of your
maintenance technicians during his off time, and provided him with some additional
machinery to install in your generator the next time he changed out the fuses. Haley
worked him like a puppet – made him install the new gizmo and then erased the
memory. All we needed was to get you to pull all the scary guys with guns out
to the perimeter, so that I wasn’t jumping into the middle of a shooting
gallery. Kids did alright with that, don’t you think?”

Wan-Li nodded again.
There didn’t seem to be any reason not to. The best he could hope for at this
point was that the Auditor needed him alive for something, so he intended to be
cooperative.

“You’re a good listener.
I appreciate that.” Alice looked so pleased that he was prepared to believe
that she actually did appreciate a receptive audience – excepting the fact that
her smile was grotesque. “I’ll get to the point. We know what you’ve been doing
here – and since I’m here, I bet you’ve already figured out that it ends today.
Have to assume that you are doing it all over the place. What we don’t know,
though, is where.”

Another nod. He understood,
and felt slightly fortunate.

“Million-yuan question
here, my friend,” Alice said, resting the shotgun across her thigh so that the
contoured muzzle break pointed at – but did not touch – his midsection. “Do you
know?”

Wan-Li nodded.

“Talkative motherfucker,
ain’t you?”

***

Regarding the transported bullets.

They didn’t
dematerialize. They just disappeared from Alice Gallow’s vicinity. They
reappeared a microsecond later, retaining their original velocity and
orientation. Another fraction of a second, and they were embedded in the
internal organs of one of the vampires standing in front of Katya. It wasn’t
enough to kill a vampire, of course, but it was enough to get its attention.

On cue, Min-jun dropped
the barrier around them. Alex’s ears popped as if they had changed altitude. He
jumped when he felt the hands of the African apport technician on his shoulder.

“Hello, friends,” Chike
said, his smile easy and unworried, as it always was. “Your work here is done.
I have come to retrieve you.”

“Good enough for me,”
Katya said, grabbing a hold of the arm that rested on Min-jun’s shoulder. “Give
’em hell for me, Xia.”

The man in the mask and
goggles gave the briefest of nods. He was already surrounded by a faint,
flickering light. The last things Alex heard as the apport took hold were the
vampires screaming in rage and frustration at the disappearance of their prey,
and the crackling as the air around Xia’s fingers ignited.

***

Alice limped through the embers,
motorcycle boots crushing charred bone and scattering ashes. Xia waited for her
at the mouth of the compound, wreathed in a translucent cloud of accelerant,
cooked flesh, and burned silicon. The edges of his Kevlar coat were singed, and
he bled from a wound in his shoulder.

“Nice work,” Alice said
approvingly, her blood-spattered features diabolical in the light of the dying
fire. “Any trouble?”

Xia shook his head in
the negative, eyes invisible behind the reflective tint of his goggles. He
methodically peeled off his latex gloves and tossed them aside, replacing them
with another pair taken from a plastic container stored in his coat pocket.
Then he took a handkerchief from another pocket and mopped the sweat from his
brow in a series of concise movements, and discarded it on the sand when he
finished.

“Good to hear.” Alice’s
eyes sparkled; her voice was tinged with satisfaction. As she left the shadows
of the entrance mouth and stepped onto the beach, poorly illuminated by the
first light of the rising sun, the limp in her wounded right leg became apparent.
“Things went okay inside. Got what we needed, but somebody wired the head leech
with a neural relay. Triggered a whole series of claymores when he flatlined.
Just dumb luck that it didn’t take my head off.”

Xia took one hesitant
step toward Alice.

“Naw. Nothing to worry
about. Just a couple ball bearings in my thigh. ’Nother trip to the infirmary
won’t break me.”

She hobbled across the
sand to stand beside Xia, watching the flames in front of the compound flicker.
A few seconds later, the ground shook, there was a series of sharp cracking
sounds, and the beach beneath them lurched briefly. A portion of the cliff face
sheared off, crashing down on the concrete building, while smoke and ash
belched out of the entrance to the facility. There was a protracted rumbling
that shook an alarming amount of stone from the cliff, then the structure sank
and skewed to one side, settling half-collapsed.

Xia gave Alice a
questioning glance as the dust settled.

“What? Oh, yeah. Of
course I got the cargo out first. Was the main point of this exercise, right?”
Alice’s smile flickered out like a fluorescent light dying, dimming before it
went out entirely. “They had ’em in cages, you know. I don’t like that. Even if
Gaul had wanted prisoners, I don’t think I could have done it.”

Xia gingerly touched her
shoulder, and Alice touched his gloved hand lightly with her own, her smile
returning.

“Nothing to worry about
now,” she said, smiling at the scattered flames, a series of small funeral
pyres. “They do burn nicely, don’t they? One good thing you can say about
vampires, anyway.”

They stayed on the beach
until the fires died out.

“Well, that
was fucking awful.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.
It wasn’t that bad. Nobody got killed. Nobody even got seriously hurt. The
operation was successful. In our business, that’s as good as it gets.”

“I know. It’s just...”

Katya sighed, throwing
aside her damaged armor.

“You had to kill some
people. It happens, Alex.”

“I know.” Alex stripped
off his vest and let it fall to the floor of the staging area, beside his kit
bag and the rest of his gear. The Spectra plates were lighter than Kevlar, but the
reinforced gear was bulky and hot, and he was always glad to be rid of it. The
only time it was possible to be grateful for body armor was when someone was
actually shooting at him – the rest of the time it was a humid and
uncomfortable burden. “I get it, I really do. I just don’t feel good about it.”

“Okay, okay,” Katya
grumbled, tearing open a cellophane package of mixed nuts and pouring a large
portion of it directly into her mouth, then continuing with her mouth full.
“Tell your Auntie Kat everything. Are you having nightmares? Sudden urge to get
familiar with your bible?”

Alex made a joking
attempt to slap her, which Katya dodged easily. Alex ducked the nuts that she
threw at him, then responded with an underhand toss of a water bottle, which
clanged harmlessly against the field locker behind her. At the other end of the
room, Miss Aoki paused in the process of pulling off her battered combat gear to
glare at them, but she didn’t actually get involved. They quieted nonetheless.

“Nothing like that,”
Alex admitted, sitting heavily down on the bench and beginning the process of untying
his knotted boot laces. “I just don’t know why we are doing what we are doing.
And that bothers me.”

“Oh, I see. So, you’d be
cool with killing some guys you never met as long as Miss Gallow cleared the
reasons with you, first? Maybe you should just explain that to the Director,
let him know that they need to loop you in.”

“That’s not what I meant.
Look – you were raised in a cartel, right? You buy into the Black Sun ideology
or whatever...”

“So you say. I don’t
recall you asking me.”

Alex blinked and
hesitated.

“You don’t subscribe to
the party line? Really?”

“Didn’t say that
either,” Katya said, chewing thoughtfully. “Finish what you were saying.”

Alex sighed and shook
his head.

“I was raised white-trash
in Kern County. I don’t believe...in anything, I suppose. When I came to the
Academy, I decided to just go along with whatever happened. That’s part of it.
Then when the Anathema attacked, I – I don’t know really. I was angry. About
Emily, about Margot. About everything. Rebecca convinced me that I could do
something about it, about losing people that I didn’t want to lose. She told me
I could make a difference, going out for Audits. Maybe I just put it on her
because I don’t want to take responsibility for the decision. Or something.
Whatever.”

Alex focused on a
particularly stubborn knot in his laces, too embarrassed to meet Katya’s eyes.

“I get you – even if
that was total nonsense. You think you are the only one with doubts, Alex? What
we do, it isn’t easy for anyone but the psychos. We’re all haunted by something,
and we all carry that burden in our own way. It’s natural. Eventually, you’ll
figure out how to live with it.”

Alex pulled off one
boot, then started on the other, mulling her words over.

“You really think so?”

“Yeah. Probably. Or, you
know, you won’t. Could go either way.”

Alex laughed despite
himself.

“Thanks, Katya. Real
helpful.”

“I’m a helpful girl.
What do you want me to say? I can’t make you a hero. I don’t have a reason for
you.”

They both looked up at
the sound of a throat being cleared. Miss Gallow stood in front of them,
already changed into a tank top and jeans, so Alex could see the furthest twisting
branches of the tree tattooed on her back creeping around her arms. She
appeared relaxed and grudgingly amused by the situation.

“Oh ye of little faith.
Crisis of conscience, little Alex? Put your shoes on and follow me,” Alice
said, running her hands through her black hair. “As it happens, I just might have
your reason.”

***

Renton slunk beneath the trees,
between the hillocks, over the first fence so quickly that there was no chance
for his face to reflect the moonlight. He stopped briefly in a dry culvert, observing
the next fence for several minutes before deciding on a spot. He scaled it in
seconds, every handhold decided in advance and every movement precise. He hit
the ground on the other side with only the slightest sound, and then he didn’t
move at all.

Half an hour later, Renton
had crept as far as the bushes beneath the house, kept trimmed and sparse so
that they offered little cover. He stayed there for quite a while, watching,
counting lights and footsteps.

Three guards, two on the
first story. One on the second story, confined to the anteroom on the opposite
side of the house. He knew the last part from experience. There was no way she
would let a guard any further into her sanctum.

He stood, dusted himself
off, and then started up the side of the house.

It was easy, but then
again, he’d done it before.

They’d changed the
traps, of course, since then, and he had a tricky moment on the second story
when he found his way blocked by a cleverly placed nest of screamers and
crushed glass, but he arrived on the roof, just outside her bedroom window on
the third floor, out of breath but intact.

“I heard that you were
pathetic,” Timor observed from the chimney he sat on. “But this is really…you
must have spectacularly low self-esteem, Renton.”

“Saw me coming, huh? I
thought you could perceive a few seconds worth of future.”

“Not a bit of it,” Timor
admitted. “I’ve actually been out here for the past two nights, waiting for you
to show up. I didn’t ‘see’ that you were going to come, I just figured that you
would. After all, you must have heard about the attack, even in intensive
diplomatic training. Now, why don’t you go back to your room and get some
sleep, Renton? I won’t mention this incident to Ana, and we can all go on just
like before.”

“Not a chance, faggot,”
Renton said, smiling.

“Such crass vulgarity,
Renton,” Timor chided, dropping down from the chimney. “You realize that you’re
embarrassing yourself, don’t you? Even I feel a bit bad for you. Get it through
your head, Renton. She doesn’t belong to you. As a matter of fact, you belong
to her.”

“You think I don’t
know?” Renton continued to circle, his hand drifting to the small of his back, beneath
his jacket. “Where were you when she was attacked? You can’t be much of a
bodyguard to allow that to happen. I just want to talk it over with Ana, try to
make her understand she’s safer with me around.”

“I’m not sure whether
that’s pathetic or hopelessly romantic, but either way, this sort of behavior doesn’t
suit you, Renton,” Timor said, flashing his winning grin, his own hand near his
belt, where his jacket flared out just slightly. “We are killers, Renton. And
when we want something, we take it. Am I right?”

“Right,” Renton snarled,
his face contorted with anger. “We gonna dance, or what?”

“You aren’t my type,”
Timor said pityingly. “I’d rather not. If you think you are getting anywhere
near that window, though, I just don’t see it happening…”

The two stood in near-perfect
silence, faces luminous with reflected moonlight, fingers twitching and
restless. Then an abrupt clatter sent both of them scrambling for their guns.

“Enough,” Anastasia
said, leaning out of the window she had forced open, yawning in her nightdress.
“You two talk and posture so much a girl simply cannot sleep.”

Renton lowered his Beretta,
while Timor made a Glock disappear back into the folds of his jacket like a
magician, here and then gone again. He smiled at Renton, as genuine as a
three-dollar bill.

“Apologies, milady,”
Timor said smoothly. “Sometimes I get carried away with the dramatics. The full
moon, the rooftop, and pistols in the dark…it was too much to resist.”

Renton stood mute, his
arms folded in front of his chest, waiting. Anastasia looked both of them over,
eyes brimming with withering contempt.

“Boys,” Anastasia
proclaimed, the word tinged with obvious distaste. “Timor, you may get some
sleep. Renton, use the front door, as if you were a normal person. I will meet
you downstairs in my office in five minutes. During that time, I suggest rather
strongly that you determine what it is that you must tell me, because my
patience is short at this hour.”

He was sure that she
made him wait. Anastasia certainly didn’t look as if it would have taken her
twenty minutes to prepare. She hadn’t bothered to do much more than tie her
hair back and wash her face.

He squashed an insane
urge to tell her how beautiful she was.

Renton stood as she
walked in the office.

“Ana,” he said urgently,
“do you want me to…?”

She cut him off with a
look, and advanced on him menacingly. Or, at least as menacingly as a tiny,
flat-chested girl in a nightdress and Domo slippers could possibly manage.

She took him by the arm,
briskly rolled up his sleeve, and then smoothed a flesh-colored patch across
his forearm.

“What the – ” Renton
begin.

“Not another word. Total
Isolation Protocol,” Anastasia commanded urgently. “Right now.”

Her voice brooked no
disagreement. He began activating the protocol, pushing aside any questions as
to the necessity.

It was no small endeavor.
A typical isolation field concealed an area from conventional surveillance. A
Total Isolation Protocol rendered an area invisible to any manner of intrusion,
Etheric or otherwise. Renton was familiar with the protocol, and had even
performed it on occasion, after several hours of concerted effort. He sustained
the effect for a bare few moments, under tremendous strain.

The experience this
time, however, was very different. Almost before he finished framing the
necessary routine in his mind, he found the protocol complete. Renton’s skin
glowed with diffuse power, and he felt a rush of proficiency, then rubbed the
patch on his arm thoughtfully. The structure of the protocol was so
concentrated and sound that it took very little concentration to maintain.

“What is this? What did
you give me?”

“Nanites. Alexander
Warner was unconscious for several minutes during the attack on my island. I
used the opportunity to take a blood sample. The nanites expired, of course,
but we are very good at replicating them in the laboratory. They were isolated,
then duplicated into these transdermal patches. The bioengineers say they are
equivalent to about five percent of his full capabilities. They last only a few
minutes, and are frightfully expensive, so be quick about it.”

Renton hesitated for a
moment, then he smiled ruefully.

“This is hard.”

Unexpectedly, Anastasia
smiled fondly back at him.

“I have to admit that I
have been enjoying it.”

“You are mean, Ana.”

“That is my job.”

He shook his head and
dropped down on his knees in front of her. She ruffled his hair fondly.

“I don’t want to do
this,” he said miserably. “I miss you already. I hate diplomacy. I hate the
Committee-at-Large, and drinking with fat old men who think they run
everything. It’s all pretension and ego massage. I can’t remember the last time
I had a genuine conversation with someone who didn’t totally disgust me.”

“I know,” Anastasia said
patiently. “It is only going to get more obnoxious, with the Thule Cartel back
in circulation. But I don’t have time to deal with the niceties of democracy at
the moment.”

Renton’s brow creased.

“
The risk worries me,” he admitted. “Without
my protection, you are vulnerable…”

“The decision is mine,”
Anastasia reminded him primly. “Even so, what I do is simply what must be done.”

“Great,” Renton moaned.
“I feel much better knowing we have no choice.”

“Honestly, Renton. You
don’t
ever
have a choice – that is a right I reserve for myself. Speaking
of which, do you think our little act is going over successfully? I know Timor
and Katya are fooled. I heard them gossiping about us the other day.”

“Pretty sure the
generally consensus is that you hate me,” Renton acknowledged, his eyes
twinkling. “Story is that you sent me to the Diplomatic Corps because you
couldn’t kill me, after that thing you arranged with your sisters. You were
right about the surveillance. Everyone was watching that scene.”

“All eyes are inevitably
focused on Alexander Warner,” Anastasia said, smoothing out his hair and
straightening his collar. “I need you to be exceptional for me, Renton. My life
remains thoroughly in your hands, albeit in an indirect manner. And should
circumstances become dire, you are positioned to act freely. Were you at my
side, you would simply suffer the same fate.”