A Division of Souls - A Novel of the Mendaihu Universe (8 page)

Matthew silently led them into the room and
sat himself down within the cage. He glanced at a few of the
monitors, tapped something on a few keyboards, and then turned to
another. At this second computer he hammered away at the keyboard
for a full three minutes, without word. Caren opened her mouth to
say something, but thought better of it. Muscles aching, she found
an empty chair and sat down to wait. She thought of Denni; by now
she was heading off to school.

Stay safe, Denni,
she thought.
I
know you're smart. Just stay safe.

“So...” Matthew said, still tapping away.
“An awakening ritual. What do you have?”

“Not much, I’m afraid,” Poe said. “Nothing
you don’t already have, I’m sure. Short version…shockwave hits the
city, bleedover appears above the Mirades Tower, and some witnesses
feel the energy reading they recognize. That’s pretty much it. We
have a few people doing field work right now.”

Matthew nodded silently, and finished off
what he was typing. “Okay,” he said, finally turning in his seat.
“What do you need?”

Poe laughed nervously. “Everything.”

The corner of Matthew’s mouth lifted in a
half-grin. “Starters?”

“Names. Anyone from the Tower linked to
adepts of the Mendaihu
and
the Shenaihu, however
distant.”

He let out a low whistle. “Tall order,
Alec,” he shook his head. “Might take a while.”

“Sooner the better, kid,” he said. “You know
the playing fields better than I do.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “I did a bit of work
already. Dug up some of the more obvious choices for you to look in
on. I went for the easiest ones first.”

Poe nodded. “Hard copy?”

“Not yet,” he hedged.

Poe sighed and shook his head. “Don’t push
it, Matt. We’ve been up too long and you know I don’t have anything
in return that you don’t already have.”

“You have a theory. Both of you do.”

Caren heard Poe’s knuckles pop. “Bless
it…I’m not in the fucking mood, kid.”

“I just want to know what it is, is all. I
can’t give out private information to just anyone, you know.” The
kid cleared his throat and scratched the back of his head,
temporarily looking away. “Let me put it this way. The two of you
are some of the very few that I can trust in this town, don’t get
me wrong. I know I can give you whatever you need and know that
you’ll share it only with the necessary people, and no one else.
But I need to know why you need this, before I can give it to
you.”

Poe gave him a deathly stare. “The One of
All Sacred, Matthew. It’s that time again. No one sets off an
awakening ritual that wide, not even the revivals at the ‘Drome.
Something’s up and we’re looking at something potentially
catastrophic here.”

Matthew studied him for a few moments. He
hadn’t flinched or grimaced; he merely nodded slightly and let it
sink in. “I’m inclined to agree,” he finally responded. “I can’t
promise everything, but I
might
be able to get someone to
help. If that’s okay with you.”

“Someone we can trust?” Caren asked. “No
leaks?”

“I completely trust her,” he said with
conviction. “She’ll be able to do the tracking work if you end up
being right.” He paused, looking away and tapping his knee.
“Anything else?”

Poe frowned, thinking before answering.
“Yeah. We need as much information on Shenaihu uprisings in the
local area over the last two Sacred Cycles. What caused them, how
they were settled.”

“The last fifty years?” Caren said, looking
at him in surprise. “A bit far back, don't you think?”

He shook his head. “The farther back we go,
the better. I’m looking at cycles, patterns, events. The
enlightened are notoriously patient when it comes to uprisings.
They can wait years between one attack and another. Makes no
difference to them, they've been around as long as the Meraladians
have been in the Universes.”

Caren had a sudden idea, despite her
exhaustion. “See if you can create any cyclic calendars as well,”
she said. “We can compare them with other events and people, what
was going on at the time. Put it into perspective of what went on
before, compare it to what’s going on now.”

Matthew thought about it for a few moments.
“Shouldn't be too much of a problem…I’ll see if I can get someone
at the Data Research Library to lend me a hand. Give me a few days
on it and I'll call you.”

Poe relaxed, a soft, tired smile playing
across his lips. “Much appreciated.”

Matthew sat up and turned back to the
monitors. “In the meantime...” he trailed off. He tapped at the
keyboard again, much quicker this time, then abruptly stopped,
hitting the last keystroke with a proud staccato finality. A few
seconds later, he flipped open a drive, extracting a thin crystal
rod. He placed the rod in a small plastic case and handed it over
to him. “Your hard copy,” he said. “This is what I got this
morning. Just a few names and links. I admit there isn't much, but
I haven't read through all of it myself yet.”

Poe took the data crystal and shoved it in
his inside jacket pocket. “By the way…do you suspect the Shenaihu
as the impetus behind the Mendaihu’s ritual?”

He merely shrugged. “Just a guess, really.
Nothing this intense happens in B-town without the either one
involved somehow, even if the Mendaihu were behind it. Could just
be a rogue adept, but I doubt it.”

“Why is that?” Caren asked.

Matthew's face brightened briefly. “I
learned from my dad how to read politics. From politics I learned
how to read people. Again, I’m no sociologist, but I know the seeds
of an uprising when I see one.” He paused, glancing at his screen
one last time, his expression fading as quickly as it had appeared.
“And this is a spiritual one, no doubt.”

Caren nodded…she hated the idea, but she
understood. Both of them had avoided saying anything or admitting
it to themselves, but Matthew was right. This was more than just a
ritual or an uprising…it was an awakening, and one that would
continue to affect Bridgetown — and eventually, possibly, the world
— if it were not controlled.

Matthew faced them again. “Go talk to
Reverend Miriam if you need a spiritual explanation,” he said.
“He’s over at Saint Patrick’s up near your neighborhood, Poe. He
should be able to explain it better than I could.”

*

Caren finally reentered her apartment almost
thirteen hours after she had last exited it. It was just past two
in the afternoon, certainly not the first time she wandered home
after a long shift with the sun shining high overhead. Such was the
job of the ARU. She dropped her work duffel bag on the living room
floor and groaned, every overtired muscle screaming for rest. And
yet like damned clockwork, she couldn’t stop her brain from heading
off in twenty different directions at once. Every time…every damned
time she and Poe were roped into a particularly intense case. Her
muscles ached, her eyes stung, and her brain was stuck in
overdrive. It was going to take hours for her to fall asleep.

But she was home again, and that meant more
to her than anything else. She closed her apartment door, locked
it, and leaned heavily against it, exhaling deeply. She scanned the
small front room, searching for an anchor to quiet this chaos in
her head. This constant, unending buzz in her brain, more intense
than ever, that would not go away without a fight. It never did.
But she was home…it always calmed her, one way or another. She
enjoyed the familiarity of her surroundings, yet she now felt
alienated from her own belongings. They were like a lucid
dream…distant, forgotten, yet she knew them to be hers.

And right now, she was too tired to fight
it. She wouldn’t find peace here. Not yet.

She escaped the front room to her own cave,
her bedroom. It was still pathetically, distressingly out of order,
just as she’d left it. Madeleine, her elderly next door neighbor
and an old family friend, had taken care of their apartment when
needed, but the woman would always leave Caren's bedroom for her to
clean up. She rarely had the time to do so, but his was actually a
good thing, because this mess added to the familiarity she needed.
This was the one room out of the billions of rooms in the Sprawl
that was truly hers and hers alone.

Denni had taped a note on her bedroom door
to say she was over at Madeleine’s and would let her sleep in.
Caren felt a knot in her stomach…she felt guilty that she had
missed tucking her in for the night. That she'd missed seeing her
off to school. Seeing her coming home. Of all the things she hated
about this job, this was the worst. If this case was as big as she
feared, there was a good chance she wouldn’t be seeing her for days
at a time. She stopped herself from getting angry, however…now was
not the time. She was home and on familiar ground, and she
desperately needed to sleep. Exhaling one last time, she got
herself ready for bed. She’d have time enough for all that
misplaced anger later.

Stepping back out of the bedroom moments
later, she began her own post-work ritual with a series of long
deep breaths and muscle stretches. She had freed herself from the
uniform and pulled on a pair of overworn sweatpants, a stretched
out and faded black tee shirt, and her hair draped loosely over her
shoulders. Every hindrance, anything that held her back, had been
willed away and disposed of. Her body and soul were free.

“…hra khera, hra mehra…” she whispered in
the Anjshé tongue, breathing slowly and fully. “…hra khera, hra
mehra…”
To be here, to be at peace.
She repeated the mantra
slowly with every breath, in her ritual to relax. It took her
several minutes before she felt the beginnings of an inner calm,
when her muscles no longer twitched and her brain had stopped
racing. She would ignore hints of anger and distraction, instead
focusing on that calm she so briefly held moments before. It was a
tough ritual, one of the hardest she had to perform on herself, but
she would not give up.

That was her problem…her brain was
always
in overdrive. Always thinking, always plotting out
scenarios in her mind. It made her the strong investigator that she
was, but at the price of inner peace. This constant and
directionless energy would plague her at the end of every shift.
Her dreams were vivid, on the rare instances she had them, and her
sleep was often short and restless. Some nights it would take her
an hour to even attempt the first stages of sleep, and she’d often
wake up multiple times throughout the night. Tonight would be no
different, but she’d already accepted that.

Hra khera…hra mehra…

This was the only way she could reach her
inner calm. The civilian Caren fought to surface, but Special Agent
Johnson wouldn’t let her out so easily. She stood center in the
room, legs akimbo and her hands gently reaching out to opposite
walls, and closed her eyes. She visualized the stress and fatigue
in her body and gathered it together, within her soul. The excess
energy swelled within this space, and with a deep breath and a
push, it began draining through her and out her limbs, pouring out
of her hands and feet, away from her like rainwater.

Hra khera…hra mehra…

To be here.

To be at peace.

Denni
.

Calm.

Finally, the tension inside her body began
to melt away. Blood circulating evenly throughout her body now,
energy balancing itself within her spirit. Every part of her being
wound down, slowing down to a crawl, until everything within
equaled all that was without. She pushed out a final deep breath,
completed the ritual, and opened her eyes. Meekly, the civilian
climbed out of her shell and assumed Caren’s person, felt it safe
to be there, and let the last of the tense energy disappear.

She brought her hands slowly together,
fingers entwined, her index fingers resting on her lips as she
nodded. Smiling, she opened an eye and glanced at a framed picture
hanging on the wall in front of her. Aram and Celine Johnson
watched over her, handsome and regal in their Mendaihu uniforms,
smiling back at her. This was the same picture she saw in her
lumisha dea, the one over the mantel at her parents’ old house, but
whenever she saw the real thing, it comforted her. She whispered a
silent prayer to them, thinking of them fondly, and brought her
hands back down. They had taught her that meditative technique when
she was young, and it had never failed her. Satisfied, she turned
to her living room sound system, and tapped a preset. Ancient
Celtic rhythms filled the room with a soft, safe ambience.

She fell into the cocoon of the couch, and
closed her eyes.

Safe…

The spinning in her head wound down to a
stable balance. “…hra khera, hra mehra…” she whispered again. She
closed her eyes, taking in slow rhythmic breaths, and before she
sought to thank her parents again, she was asleep.

*

All is Light, my dearest.

The voice of a young man, someone she did
not know, crept into her dreams and invaded the solace of her
lumisha dea. No—not invading. Merely stopping by, saying hello. A
friend. She hadn’t had visitors here in years, so she hadn’t
expected to hear anyone here, ever. Who was it? It was a voice so
desperately familiar, someone she’d known for a very long time. She
knew this person well, but had forgotten him somehow. She risked a
single thread of sensing, probing for the source.

She spoke quietly in her inner voice.
Who
are you?

I am a friend, dear
, he answered.
You called me Anando.

Something deep within caught at her heart at
the sound of that name, and without expecting it, her sensing
thread whipped around and stretched out in front of her. It knew
where he was,
who
he was. Her spirit knew him, had known him
for years. Decades. Lifetimes? Despite her natural wariness she
followed the sensing thread, trusting it would bring her closer to
him.
Why are you here?