Soulwalker (2 page)

He, and many like him, looked down on her because she wasn’t, as they called it, “purebred” albino. The faint bluish tinge in her eyes attested to that fact. But what they considered a fault, she considered an asset.

Despite her tainted blood, she was considered the most powerful in the group and none would openly challenge her. Whether or not that was actually true had never been tested, but Tarris herself didn’t believe it. In her adolescence, Rya had responded to her anger and pain. Her shadow was seen by those who were supposed to rein her in as an almost primal force. Rumor and innuendo of her antics at school had elevated her status to that of “freak,” not that anyone except Corman ever called her that to her face. That didn’t stop the snide remarks though, and she was tired of them.

“I’m not always late. It was a nice day for walking. The sun’s out for Christ’s sake. When was the last time you saw that?”

“Why bother? It’s our enemy, remember?”

“Whatever,” she mumbled. Preaching was pointless. They weren’t going to convert.

“Why do you continue to try to fit in? We’re above all that.”

“Because whether you like it or not, we all live on this speck of dust.”

“Not for long…” Corman muttered, and a murmur of approval spread around the assembled group. Tarris held her tongue for now; she needed to keep silent. Making enemies of those in front of her was very dangerous indeed.

“Report!” a voice called from speakers set in the walls. The group sat round the table in a huddle, their attention turned to the small screen in front of them.

“One, go,” Tarris said. Because of her perceived power, she always answered first. How many times had she said that? Another life snuffed out in the name of government security.

“Two, go.”

“Three, go.” All reported successful missions. Just once she wished it was for something other than death. When she first started in the group, their missions comprised stealth and covert operations, spying on their enemies, collecting secret information and sabotage. Now… now it was only assassination. One by one, anyone who opposed the government came to their attention.

Tarris kept her mind firmly closed to wall off any errant thoughts that might be picked up by someone in the room. She kept everything about herself to herself.

Rule One in her Survival Handbook: Never reveal anything that could be used against you.

Her survival handbook had been her bible. She had compiled it in her head over the years, and each rule had been a hard-won lesson in her life.

“Your next assignment will be in two days’ time. It’s a group operation.” A metal microchip rose up through the desktop. She picked it up between her finger and thumb and stared at it. The chip was such a small thing, and yet it held so much power, the power of life and death. She placed it in her wrist computer to read their next assignment. It seemed simple enough.

What worried her was the frequency of these missions, which occurred on a nearly daily basis. They needed downtime to recharge. She suspected that the powers that be didn’t understand the need for rest. She didn’t have an unlimited power supply like her atomic batteries. If she didn’t rest her mind, things could go wrong.

“Sir.” She didn’t want to be the one to bring it up, but no one else looked like they would do it. “We need rest. This is the fourth operation in as many days.”

“You don‘t think you can do it, soldier?” The intonation set off alarm bells in her head.

“Of course, sir. But lack of rest could result in mistakes.” She vainly looked around to the others for support. She was on her own, as she suspected she would be.

“We don’t make mistakes here, soldier.” There was an unspoken message there. Make a mistake and you’re dead. She could feel hostility from the others, like a pack of wolves circling a downed deer, ready to pounce for the kill. She had revealed herself, and now she was a marked woman.

Her ice-blue eyes swept the room, taking and holding each set of white eyes in turn. She let them know that she was still the leader and that they would suffer if they tried anything. However, she was not so sure she could hold them all off if they ever tried to fight as one. So far they hadn’t figured that out.

“As you say, sir, but our minds need time to recover. Optimum performance comes from a rested mind.” She didn’t mind quoting back their rules.

“Well met, soldier. Very well, the operation will be postponed one solar day.” Tarris breathed a sigh of relief. She had stood her ground and won. The wolves backed down and cowered away. “Dismissed.” The troopers stood and moved away from the table as the meeting was concluded.

Tarris could feel the discrimination. The purebreds found one another and huddled together in one corner of the room, periodically eyeing her. They were narrow-minded fools who looked down on all those who didn’t have the telltale white eyes. And yet she ruled, and it galled them that a pretender outranked them.

Tarris left her underlings to plot and plan and hurried outside to take refuge in the sunlight. She tapped her temple to increase the intensity of her lenses to turn her eyes dark. Her full-length, faux leather coat flapped open as she strode along, and her fingers deftly found the hidden pressure points in the body suit to increase her momentum.

Black hair swirled around the serious face deep in thought. Normally Tarris would return home after the meeting, but anger and concern occupied her. She took comfort from the warming rays; the bright light uplifted her depressed state. She cast her gaze around and observed an easy atmosphere. The sun, especially after such a long spell of constant rain, brought out smiles that hadn’t been around since the last sunny day.

She stripped off her coat, slung it over her shoulder, and allowed the warmth to filter through her long-sleeved shirt and pants. Her legs felt nothing of it, but she knew it was there. Her fellow albinos were horrified that she worshipped the sun so readily, one more thing that separated her from her kind.

Tarris looked up. The onset of clouds already stained the sky. She sighed. Rain was on its way again, thanks to the chemical impact of the gasoline cars of eighty years ago on the environment. Well, that was what the politicians said. Gas had been banned from use years ago when the air became too polluted to breathe. Time had healed the damage to the air and yet pollution was still to blame. So rain and cloud blotted out the sun, perpetual rain the only survivor of the atmosphere. But sometimes Tarris wondered who ruled the planet, the Union or the albinos, because darkened skies were the friends of the white eyes.

Electric cars now prowled the cities, run by the same types of batteries that powered her suit. They weren’t as efficient or as long lasting as what she had, but she knew people in high places, and it always paid to know people in the right places.

The rain returned as she stepped through the front door of her building. She was tired, not only from last night’s activity but also from moving the body suit around the city. The Monitor had given her one extra solar day, so she would make the most of it.

She stripped off her clothes with the aid of her mechanical “helper” and sighed with relief when she was finally out of the power-driven suit. Her body slumped after being held up for so long by metal and wires. Once more in her bed, she stimulated the medication tag in her wrist, feeling the drowsiness grab her and drag her down to sleep.

*   *   *

Fleeting shadows disturbed the night. Tarris awoke to the whispers of shifting air. Helpless to fight effectively despite the body suit, she sought out her shadow warrior to defend her. With great difficulty she calmed her mind, drew up the assassin, and felt the familiar rush as Rya left her.

Blackness became light as ghostly eyes surveyed the room. Two of Rya’s kind were in the room and shifted in concert toward her reclining body. Tarris knew Rya had never been in this position before. How could she find weaknesses in ghostly forms that had none?

Tarris did not back down. She blocked the simmering anxiety of her own imminent death and didn’t allow her actions to falter. How dare they even try to take her down! Though she was impure of blood and body, Tarris was pure of mind and spirit. She didn’t fight with deceit or dishonor like they did. She was an assassin, but she had a soul.

The larger of the two warriors feinted toward Tarris’s warrior and drew her off. Rya always attacked her enemies without fear, and a shadow warrior was no different to her. This, Tarris thought, was why she would always succeed. The two of them fought as one, one lending strength to the other when the need arose. Tarris knew this one truth that the rest of them would never understand.

Tarris realized the error almost a moment too late. She sensed the swift movement behind her as Rya faced her enemy. Rya moved with great speed to cover her unprotected body and took the brunt of the attack on its shadowy form. With a strength unknown to Tarris, Rya lifted her useless body and moved it out of the way as the two specters increased the attack. There was nowhere to run.

Darkness became bright light as they passed across a portal that had not been there before. Rya struggled to hold form under the harsh light of day. Tarris was placed in the shadow of a great rock and felt her ghost warrior lose her battle with the light. She was safe, but at what cost?

Exhaustion lapped at Tarris's reserves as she floundered in the shade. She closed her eyes and rested. She would worry about her future later.

Tarris woke to someone hovering over her. There was no strength left to fight it off, so she quietly accepted that this was the end of the line. A hand reached down to help her to her feet.

She was a striking woman, with short, dark hair and rich blue eyes. “Arrloovarite?”

*   *   *

Tarris awoke with a jerk. What was that? She was not a Seeker of Truth, prone to premonitions, but could she deny what had transpired in her dream? Or was it her anxious mind playing out what she was afraid of? Either way, could she afford to ignore it?

“Light on.” Too wound up to sleep, she tapped the button above her bed and slid easily into the waiting wheelchair. The muted brightness of the light forced her to touch her temple to darken the implanted lenses to a tolerable level. She had never regretted having the operation, because it made her life easier. Of course, her fellow assassins saw it as a betrayal to the cause and another wedge between them. They, and especially Corman, were proud to be albino, so any enhancement to their appearance was considered a betrayal of their heritage. She could never understand their position to stay “pure” and give up the comfort the lenses provided.

She touched the buttons on the chair to move smoothly to the kitchen, barely an alcove in these times. She punched in her order and waited moments for the food to be reconstituted and heated automatically. Tarris wondered what it would have been like before all the automation, to survive on her own skills, her courage, her guile, and her instincts. It was but a pipe dream. She would never be allowed to travel outside the metropolis to find out.

She had heard of wild adventure holidays that did just that. They would take you to a barely habitable piece of the planet and leave you there for several solar days to scratch around in the dirt. You never knew where they were going to take you; if you were lucky, you ended up in an area with vegetation. If you pissed them off, might as well kiss your ass goodbye. It was a highly regulated industry because of the risks involved, but it was extremely popular among the naturalists who found the environmentally controlled parks not enough for their adventurous spirits.

The food was tasteless in her mouth. Its only redeeming factor was that it had all the nutrients she needed. Of late, everything was not as satisfying as it used to be. The food was a little blander, sleep a little less restful, and her job a little less appealing. Life was missing something, and she didn’t know how to change that. She grabbed what was left of her meal and moved her chair over to her computer that sat on a desk in the far corner of the room. While she ate, she tapped away on the computer monitor to check her mail. Several messages beeped at her, and she knew she couldn’t avoid calling her mother. No time like the present…

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mom, just returning your calls.” Tarris thought she looked a little worn out.

“How are you, Tarris?”

“I’m fine.”

“You look a little tired, honey.” Tarris couldn’t help but smile. “What’s wrong?”

“I was just thinking the same thing, Mom. Are you working too hard?”

“Don’t you worry about me. I just wanted to see your face again. I… I miss you.”

She didn’t want to hear it because it would be the final straw to her day. “Me, too, Mom. Me, too. How is it at the commune?”

“The same. Nothing ever changes here, you know that.” Yeah, she knew that. The government communes were nothing more than free labor in exchange for a bed and food. Many times she had tried to get her mother to move into the metropolis, but the older woman was set in her ways and didn’t want to change. Maybe it was better that way; it avoided any explanations.

“So, how’s work going?” Her mother’s voice cut through her thoughts.

“Fine. The same as usual.”

“You know, Tarris, you should find something more exciting than computer work.” They had the same conversation every time they talked.

“What else am I good for, Mom? Bound to a wheelchair limits my options.” No way in hell was she going to tell her own mother what she really did for a living.

“Still, you don’t get to meet people, hon. You need to get out more.”

Tarris mentally rolled her eyes. Get out more. Sure. Like that was possible. “I tried, you know that. It was more trouble than it was worth. Now I just live my life free of the stares and sly remarks.” All communications were monitored, so the talk with her mother was always superficial. Protect what is yours was her motto. “When are you coming next to visit?”