The Far Shores (The Central Series) (36 page)

His expression soured.

“I see. That is how it
will be between us, then?”

“I hope not,” Alice said,
standing and shrugging. “I prefer to think of this conversation as an anomaly
in an otherwise congenial working relationship.”

***

It was weird to see his homeroom
class at the Far Shores, gawking at the buildings like they were kids on a
class trip. Which, technically, was exactly the situation, but the context was
all wrong. Alex was used to being the one out of his element. Watching his
classmates tour the campus that was currently his home, broken into small
groups and assigned a white-coated minder, gave him a bizarre feeling of
seniority.

Of course, he knew that
the feeling was exaggerated, having only been here a matter of weeks himself.

“Alex!” Eerie waved to
him as she abandoned her group, ignoring her minder’s pleas and hurrying in his
direction. Alex met her halfway, in the center of the concrete plaza, bordered
by sod so fresh that it was still fenced off to foot traffic. “It’s good to see
you!”

She hugged him as if
they had been apart more than a few days, and he couldn’t help but reciprocate.
He wasn’t sure what had changed since their evening together, but he had missed
Eerie more fiercely over the last few days than he had in the past several
weeks combined. In her embrace, he found reassurance that the feeling was
mutual, and that was gratifying.

“You wore the hat,” she
mumbled into his chest, clearly pleased. “It looks good.”

Alex mentally
congratulated himself for having worn the knit cap Eerie had made for him
during his period of prolonged unconsciousness that winter. Not that it had been
a clever move on his part or anything – he actually had been wearing it with
some regularity, as the cold wind that blew perpetually through the Far Shores
toward the sea of Ether practically required it. That it pleased his Changeling
girlfriend was an added bonus. And it was grey, so he didn’t have to worry
about it matching anything.

“Thanks. For making it,
and everything,” Alex said, strands of blue hair tickling his face, carrying
the faint scents of sandalwood and fresh hair dye. “How was the trip?”

“We had to take a bus,”
Eerie complained, releasing her hold on him only to take his hand, her back
firmly to her group and their dismayed guide. “The drive was long. Vivik got
carsick.”

“That’s not fair,” Vivik
objected, approaching from behind them. “I
felt
sick. I didn’t actually
get sick.”

“Same difference.”

“Vivik!” Alex exchanged
an awkward handshake with Vivik, because he didn’t feel comfortable hugging him
– and anyway, it would have been impossible with Eerie clinging to his other
hand. Behind Vivik, another group was halted by an equally dismayed tour guide,
who could only watch and voice objections as the students fragmented to talk to
various friends. “Good to see you, man. It’s been a while.”

“Yeah,” Vivik agreed,
smiling. “I’ve been really busy. Sorry I missed you the last couple times you
came to the Academy.”

“It’s okay,” Alex
assured him. He was actually curious to know what had occupied Vivik’s time and
attention so thoroughly, but that would have to wait for another time. “What do
you think of the Far Shores?”

“Pretty amazing,” Vivik
said enthusiastically. “The labs here are better equipped and more extensive
than the very best facilities at the Academy. I can hardly believe it. The
place must have cost a fortune to build.”

“Several fortunes,
actually,” Dr. Graaf offered amiably, joining their little group with a smile
and Katya in tow. “We were fortunate to have access to the level of funding we
needed. But I digress – I am afraid that your little reunion is proving
somewhat disruptive to our scheduled tours...”

Vivik nodded
reluctantly. Eerie pouted and tightened her grip on Alex’s hand. Katya rolled
her eyes.

“Ah, yeah. Sorry about
that,” Alex said, not sure why he was the one apologizing. “We haven’t seen
each other in a while...”

“No need to apologize,”
Dr. Graaf assured him. “Quite the opposite. This is actually rather convenient.
I have a particular need to discuss matters that pertain to all three of you,
so why not take the opportunity that has presented itself? That is, if you wouldn’t
mind a bit more walking?”

“If it’s okay,” Vivik
responded, glancing nervously at his departing tour group.

“I’m staying with Alex,”
Eerie said firmly.

“Then it is settled,”
Dr. Graaf said, chuckling and clapping his hands together. “I believe you will all
find this very much of interest.”

Katya folded her arms
and cleared her throat.

“Um...”

Alex struggled to find a
way to defuse the situation, but Dr. Graaf proved imperturbable.

“And, naturally, Miss
Zharova will accompany us,” Dr. Graaf added. “Why would I pass up such a prime
opportunity to deflate some of her unfounded suspicions? And I am certain that,
somewhere, Miss Martynova is simply dying to know what we are up to.”

***

“You are a very curious creature,
Miss Martynova. I must confess that I had no expectations that the two of us
would ever have the opportunity to speak, much less find ourselves in our
current circumstances. I find it fascinating, the way our lives are dictated
almost entirely by fate, despite our pretensions of control and free will.
Would you not agree?”

Brennan Thule paused to
pour brandy from a crystal decanter at his side into a cut-glass snifter. The
decanter sat on a modest wooden table, and in stark contrast to the rest of the
room, which had the sanitary feel of a medical examination facility, if one
ignored the reinforced doors and the absence of windows.

There was pain. Of
course.

Her memories of the last
many hours were fragmented by injections and trauma, but the pain was a
constant, threading through her awareness like a live electrical wire, vivid
against a drug-dimmed background.

“I am aware of your
reputation, naturally,” Brennan Thule remarked, swirling the brandy in his
glass and then setting it abruptly aside. “Despite my relatively short tenure
in Central, it would be nearly impossible not to hear the rumors and
speculation. There are any number of parties that have sought your demise,
after all, and none that have achieved that particular satisfaction. I am
somewhat surprised,” Brennan admitted, with a small smile that exposed crooked
teeth, “to count myself among their ranks. Forewarned is purportedly forearmed,
and the Thule Cartel invested significant resources into your investigation.
Our plan was constructed on the basis of past failures.”

Anastasia stared at
Brennan Thule with dispassionate eyes, weeping at the corners, a side effect of
the drugs that still wreaked havoc throughout her system. She became aware of
powerful, profound thirst, and once she became aware of it, the sensation
swelled and became maddening. Her vision was clouded, and his face swam and
mutated as she watched, fixated on his bad teeth for unknown and unknowable
reasons.

She succumbed to the
fixation. It was better, after all, than looking at the tools arrayed neatly on
the countertop behind him, better than ruminating over her thirst. To the
untrained eye, the tools would have appeared to be instruments of surgery, but
Anastasia harbored no such illusions, and steeled herself for things to get
worse.

“I have no objection to
sharing our reasoning with you,” Brennan Thule offered generously, taking up
his snifter again, but not drinking. “We felt that previous attempts on your
life failed because of their dependence on the usage of protocols. This is
rather natural for our kind, is it not? They are the abilities that
differentiate us from the chattel, the tools that define and exalt us above
others. When one is capable of causing instantaneous, telepathic death, or
empathically inducing suicide, a firearm seems a crude instrument by comparison.
More than one Operator has fallen due to overreliance on their protocol, so we
were determined not to repeat past mistakes, when it came to the necessity of
your elimination.”

She was dressed in a
hospital shift, a garment that implied vulnerability and accessibility, which
was not lost on Anastasia. She – and by extension, the Black Sun itself –
abhorred such blunt and crude methods, on the rationale that they debased the
questioner as much as the subject of the questions, but her reasoning on the
subject was far from universally acknowledged. The rough fabric of the shift
was wet beneath her, soiled as a result of her prolonged restraint. Another
tactic to embarrass and degrade. The restraints that bound her wrists and
ankles were metal, tightened to the point that they abraded her skin, and
angled so that her shoulders and legs were pressed painfully against the table,
forcing her into a contorted and exhausting position.

If she could, Anastasia
would have laughed at the base and pathetically transparent tactics of her
captors. But her brain was heavy with drugs, and her tongue swollen in her
mouth, so she did not.

“The initial attack was
made via cruise missile,” Brennan Thule added, taking a sip from his glass and
then setting it aside. “The high-explosive warhead demolished your vehicle, and
the impact and shrapnel were assumed to be more than sufficient to kill all
occupants. Nonetheless, I dispatched a unit of assassins in its wake, to make
certain what too many have assumed. They discovered the partially incinerated
corpses of your two security guards and your driver, and yourself, unconscious
with smoldering clothing, otherwise unharmed.”

Brennan Thule paused for
effect, studying Anastasia for any hint of a reaction. Whatever he expected, he
was apparently disappointed by her continued stoicism. His expression briefly
soured.

“There proved to be
insufficient time to finish the job before your servants could respond,”
Brennan Thule added airily, gesturing as if what he described was meaningless
to both of them. “Given the shortage of time, the decision was made to
transport you to a more secure location, where a more prolonged and thorough examination
could take place. As you are doubtless aware, further attempts have proved just
as fruitless. We have established, over these last few days, that you can be
injured, that you can suffer, but you are rather persistent in your refusal to
die. That is rather vexing.”

Brennan Thule paused for
another long drink. The sluggish nanites within her were slowly purging the
drugs from her system. Despite her parched throat and thick tongue, Anastasia decided
to risk speech, sensing that he would shortly end his monologue if not provided
with a response.

“I am puzzled by your
actions.” She managed not to slur, but her speech lacked its normal crisp
diction. Anastasia was mildly disappointed in her body’s weakness, but the
value of silence had run its course. “It would seem to me that, if you viewed
me as an adversary, then the potential worth of my capture – for both
informational and bargaining purposes – would greatly exceed the reward of my
demise.”

Brennan Thule clapped in
evident delight.

“Finally, a word for
your hosts! Truly, this morning’s progress has been astounding.” Brennan Thule
stood and walked across the room, to a callbox inset near the steel-lined door,
and whispered a series of commands in Danish that Anastasia was too hazy to
understand. “Allow me to clarify. You deeply underestimate the amount of
respect that we of the Thule Cartel accord you, Miss Martynova.”

Anastasia glanced at the
examination table, the soiled shift, her contorted body.

“I wonder how I could
have misunderstood that.”

Brennan Thule laughed
uproariously.

“In our decades of
exile, we have had ample time to consider possibilities. Our return was
inevitable – the Director would have declared us Anathema and been done with
it, otherwise. It was natural that we would speculate on the circumstances that
would await us, when we were welcomed back. We watched all that happened, all
of the affairs of Central, with great interest,” Brennan Thule explained, standing
to her right, his hands resting on the table. “You may take some satisfaction
in the fact that there were only two factors which gave us pause – yourself,
and the Anathema.”

“My ability to take
satisfaction in anything is quite limited at the moment.”

He laughed again. The
door opened with a clang as magnetic bolts slid back. Two functionaries in featureless
white masks entered and deposited a carafe of water and a pile of what appeared
to be clothes on the countertop, beside the tools of examination, and left
without saying a word.

“To extract information
from you, or to use you to bargain, would mean it would be necessary to keep
you alive.”

“A tragic necessity.”

“Indeed. One that we
decided outweighed any possible gain. Though circumstances have conspired to
bring about that which we feared nonetheless. Something I would guess you are
beginning to understand yourself, no?”