Tremble in the Dark: A Gwen Farris Novel (39 page)

It
didn't settle the woman's life, but by the time they all left for bed, a few
hours later, the woman had some options that didn't require her to take
anything up her behind that she didn't want to. It was, Gwen knew, about the
best she could really do for the lady.

Present
a chance to improve her life, and then push her, enough that she actually tried
a few things, to see if she could do them.

Anything
else would be trying to live her life for her, and that, she knew, wasn't her
job. No, Gwen had quite enough life of her own to live.

Thank
you, very much.

That
it was true now, well that was nothing short of amazing. Thinking that she went
off to bed, actually feeling happy for once.

Gwen
woke up, wearing a padded leather combat outfit that had been provided to her
for the testing, with a taste of blood in her mouth, a sore jaw and a strange
feeling that her little helper had cheated somehow. She wasn't the only one, it
was clear, since, even as she managed to stand up, some of the others that had
been involved were still on the ground.

It
wasn't unfair though, was it? Yes, it was pretty clear that Peter had stunned
them with a blast of telepathic force, partway through the fight, but his
instructions had been to figure out a way to
win,
unarmed. There had
been no other guidelines given. Since he was still standing, and the rest of
them weren't, that had to be considered valid. Before anyone else could speak
about it, Gwen rubbed at her jaw and faked a laugh.

"Well,
there we go! Why don't you go and get healed up, Pete, and then you can collect
your reward?" She waited for the boy to scamper off, a lot less hurt today
than the one before. Really, even though she'd been knocked out pretty hard,
the rest of them seem less hurt too. It had been a very fast and efficient
fight really.

Adam
Westmorland, the man in charge of them all, looked at her and made a face that
was incredibly sour and let it stay there until everyone else stood, even as
Bethany stood by with a composed expression on her face, with Clara right next
to her. It was funny, seeing the differences in expression. The older man shook
his head a little, seeming disgusted with her, but his words didn't reflect
that at all. She didn't know why it was, but it was pretty clear that he just
didn't like, or seem to respect, her very much.

 He
grumped at her, rather than simply speaking. "I suppose that you'll
recommend we put all our Special Service personnel through your new training? I
have to admit, it seems effective. Less traumatizing too. Peter seemed happy at
the end there, which is a thing that we normally don't get to see at the end of
training."

Gwen
thought for a minute and then shook her head, which got a surprised look from
Adam at least.

"No.
I'd go slower than that. It works, and will have powerful longterm effects, but
he's addicted to the device used in training. That's a problem, and might alter
how he can be deployed in the future. Just as a general rule, we have to make
sure that we never let anyone have control over a unit like that if they're
going to use it on themselves. That means keeping people in some kind of
significant training all the time, for now at least." She shrugged, then
wished she hadn't as a horrible pain ripped through her right shoulder. "I
had a single ten second exposure to it, about five days ago now. I'd knife you
in the back for another hit, if it was offered, just from that. So, no, we
shouldn't do that to the already trained troops. It's a very different program
so, I'd suggest we use a few trainees, and go slowly at first."

There
was a snort, and Adam actually smiled at her, as if to let her know he'd
already realized all of that.

"You
wouldn't stab me in the back just in the normal course of things?"

That
nearly had her taken aback. After all, she'd always been relatively nice to
him
,
hadn't she? Any negative feelings came from the other direction. Or had at
least started there.

"Nope.
You're practically one of my best friends. I might even try to resist doing it
for the reward, but I can't
promise
that." Which was, she realized,
true. She just didn't have that many people in her life. More than she'd ever
had before, but it was still a pretty tight group of people. Adam wasn't her
real pal, maybe, but she knew that, if she needed something reasonable and
possibly not even all
that
safe or sane, he'd get it for her.

Since
that had basically happened with Peter, she knew it was a real thing too.

The
man snorted again, adding a stuffy sounding little harrumph to the end of it,
which made him seem both grumpy and oddly pleased. She just didn't get that at
all.

"Very
well then. We'll go with that plan. Work with Manly on that. I take it that
you'll be using the older protocols for your own training then? Mona hasn't
mentioned a change there."

"Yeah.
I'm not looking forward to it, but I also don't want to mess things up, given
what I'm trying to learn. Doing it the way it always has been done is probably
for the best." Even if it would leave her shaking and trembling in the
dark, more than she already did at night.

That
thought left her afraid for a bit. Not of the training, but of dark things
coming out of the air. She looked around and suddenly wondered if becoming a
full blown addict to pleasure might not be better than living with that? As
time went on it was becoming worse, not better.

She
could still see the rent in space with the old things behind it, every time she
closed her eyes. She could feel the fear, and it was growing. If Erin Debussey
had been alive, she would have slapped the woman while lecturing her on not
being a moron. Who heard about super terror beasts and thought that it sounded
like a brilliant idea to invite them over to tea?

Dead
magicians and evil scientists?

Gwen
wanted to limp back to her own room, in order to change into real clothing and
to wash herself, after the beating she'd taken at the hands of the boy. There
was work to do though, first. That, it seemed was up to Beth however,
thankfully.

She
moved forward, her face still wonderfully composed.

"Adam?
This is Miss Clara Samberg. She's interested in meeting with more of our
people, perhaps with an eye toward future employment with us?"

The
man smiled and looked at the well dressed, but medium good-looking woman. For
her it seemed legitimate and like he was, suddenly truly interested and
possibly entranced. Gwen nearly felt slighted by the reaction, since she always
got a mildly disapproving vibe from the man, herself. Then, Clara wasn't a
strange woman from another reality, or half as bossy as she was. Maybe it was
just that?

"Certainly!
Do you come with recommendations? Do you have prior work in a related area?
Child care perhaps?"

Clara
smiled a bit and then flipped a single palm upward. Her voice wasn't shy
sounding at all, which was about right, given that she was surrounded by
Westmorlands, and they weren't going to really judge her, Gwen didn't think.

"I
can cook and clean, and Bethany has helped me learn the basic commands to get
people into their A-states, as well as some other things. I helped with my
younger sisters, when I was younger." It was actually pretty good sounding,
to Gwen. The women looked side long at Beth, who was still facing Adam directly
and kept going. "I was a whore for ten years, so I worked with a lot of
different people. I have to admit that I only recently realized that you
Westmorlands weren't evil, however. I was... Ill informed."

The
admission seemed nearly like too much to Gwen, but Adam looked even more
interested, about the Westmorland bigotry part and how the woman was reacting
to the change in information, rather than the prostitution part. That got
ignored totally.

They
discussed that for a while, and the only time Adam made a face, it was when
Gwen's name was brought up, as having been part of what changed her mind.

It
was enough that, finally, Darrick, who had a nice black eye on the left hand
side, winced and looked at the older man.

"Adam,
perhaps you could make an attempt at not being a
complete
arse? Miss Farris
may have made your job a bit harder, but she's also done many things for the
Kingdom. Even the King finds her tolerable, for those reasons." As a
dressing down went it wasn't that great, but Adam made a sour face and glared a
bit, at Gwen, and then gave his own man a nod.

"A
point. Well, we should be getting back to our day then. Miss Samberg? I hope to
see you again soon. You should come and review the facilities at Central? We
have several field agents that would love to have a new companion.
Everyone." Then he walked off, leaving Manly and Beth behind, but taking
the rest of the people with him, walking about ten feet away and being handed
Teletransport spheres. They vanished one by one, which took about forty
seconds, since they weren't all in a hurry. They would push that to five
seconds each if they had to. They'd all come out at exactly the same spot,
which would make a mess, along with killing people, if they did it. Technically
you could also die if someone put a solid object in the path of the person
coming in too. It had been mentioned during her new training, though she
couldn't recall who had said it. Part of what she'd done had been learning to
avoid things like that.

It
was, along with how expensive the things were to have charged, one of the
reasons why regular people didn't often get to use the things. It cut way down
on accidents. Gwen had never heard of one happening in real life, but it was
clearly a real risk. It was one reason why they weren't used in war very often.
Since a bit of pre-planning could have all your forces dying before they even
got into the right location.

Now,
she'd been in on a battle where they used exactly that trick to get into place,
only to have the enemy block them, but even people without magic could have
beaten it with just a bit of creativity. Stringing some wire over the best
landing fields would do the trick, she bet.

The
remaining two Westmorlands just ignored how rude their boss had been to her,
and walked back into the house, moving smoothly and without limping or seeming
hurt at all. That was due to them being smarter than she was and staying out of
the testing area, altogether. It made sense, being that Beth was only so-so as
a fighter, at least without weapons, and Manly was needed to provide the sweet,
sweet pleasure as a reward.

That
sounded dirty, even inside her own mind.

Clara
however frowned.

"There's
one that has a strong dislike for you, Miss. Did you tell him to go and suck
his own cock, or something?" She was being crude, and knew it, but Gwen
didn't respond to that part. She was a virgin, but not a prude. Not really.
Except that she sort of was. Otherwise she would have used Katherine's body to
get with a few men already, wouldn't she?

"Nope.
He never even
asked
, or I probably would have tried it." She
grinned. It was a fake thing, but she thought she nailed the expression pretty
well. "I would have failed at it utterly, no doubt, but I would have done
my best. I don't know what the deal is, to tell the truth. No one will explain
it to me. Well, maybe it's just one of those things? Sometimes people just
don't like each other."

There
was a look that passed between Manly and Bethany then, a lingering thing that
spoke of inside information. Gwen let it go, since neither of them said
anything about what, specifically that might be. If they weren't saying, then
chances are, they wouldn't. They'd just get that stuffy look and go silent like
everyone did in this place when they knew something you didn't but it wasn't
polite to speak about.

Instead
of being grumpy about it, she started back into the house. After all, if there
was a healer around, she might be able to catch some healing, if it was
allowed. That meant, since she had the idea, that Gwen needed to go off and
find Peter, which worked out pretty well, since the lady that was there to help
him, who looked to be about thirty or so, started in on
her
without
asking if it was supposed to happen. She was hurt, there was a healer, so it
took place. That was all.

"This
was a bit hard, wasn't it? Pitting a boy against five adults like that? Not
that he didn't do a good job, but..." Then the Westmorland woman went
quiet, laid a hand on Gwen's left cheek, very gently and caused her to heal. It
didn't hurt, but it did feel funny. There was a strong flow of magical energy,
and a sense of everything being right again.

She'd
felt that before, once. Healers like this were rare. It took a lot of
discipline, as well as a very top level talent.

Of
course there were benefits to learning how to do it too. It took even the
Westmorlands about ten years to really learn to do it well, and regular people
longer, but Gwen had noticed that all of them seemed young, regardless of how
they learned. They often lived for several hundred years too, so it was
probably worth ten or twenty years out of a life, if a person had the right set
of talents.

Nearly
everyone that could do magic had the basic ability to heal too, if Gwen had it
right.

The
lady working on her sighed gently, still clearly thinking about Peter, who'd
gone directly over to Manly, for his reward. They had him sit first, so that he
wouldn't end up just standing there for an hour, unmoving.

The
healer looked ridiculously happy about it however.

"That
is so much better than the pain techniques. Powerful, and effective too. I
could teach anyone to be a healer, using that kind of reward." She
blushed. It was a strange thing, but Gwen was too close not to notice it.
"Well, I mean, I could get people to volunteer for the training. It's
really hard to convince those with the needed base skills to sign up for all
the work that's needed. Only the most selfless even try. Unless they're Westmorlands."