The Far Shores (The Central Series) (5 page)

Svetlana closed the door
before Timor could finish his objections, and the driver drove slowly away, as
he had been ordered. Anastasia looked at the blank sky of Central with
distaste, then opened a black lace parasol and started her walk.

The villa was only six
blocks distant, well inside the secured Administrative district of Central. She
had walked the distance by herself many times in the past, head bowed,
seemingly lost in thought. She had carefully cultivated a reputation for
frequently – but not always, that would have been suspicious – preferring the
option of a night walk home after a meeting of the Committee-at-Large. Years of
deception, leading up to this night.

Anastasia felt almost
giddy, holding her shawl and skirts carefully as she walked to avoid tearing
the fragile silk. The sky she saw through the lace of the parasol lacked any
indication of stars or moon.

The silence was broken
only by the sound of the heels of her handmade Italian shoes clicking against
the sidewalk. After she walked a full block unmolested, Anastasia started to
mutter to herself.

“Oh, come now. Here I am,
all alone after leading the most controversial vote in Committee history,
walking an empty street, unescorted. Who could be afraid of a young lady all
alone in the dark?”

The street was
artificially devoid of even the smallest indications of traffic. The silence
took on a palpability that grew dense and claustrophobic as it wrapped around
her. Anastasia allowed herself a small smile, raising her hand politely to her
mouth to conceal it.

She was no longer alone.
She smelled the burnt-ozone taint of an apport protocol.

She counted eleven,
heads wrapped in black cloth and features obscured with concealment protocols.
The night air surged and eddied as protocols activated, fire spilling out from
the clenched fists of one, while another formed a spear of what appeared to be
pure light. The wind eddied around telekinetic effects and the distortion of
barrier fields, massive temperature differentials and electromagnetic fluctuation.
Most wore night-vision gear, heads as swollen with arcane devices as the tactical
armaments they held. Anastasia could feel the cold fingers of uninvited
telepathic intrusions, caught in the web of her defenses like repressed
memories of childhood abuse.

Anastasia carefully
snapped her parasol shut.

“Oh,” she said
neutrally. “Dear me. What a terrifying and entirely unexpected development.”

A canvas sack and a pair
of handcuffs landed near her feet.

“I offer you one chance.”
The voice was maliciously sharpened with empathic suggestions of despair,
hopelessness, violation. “Put the bag over your head. Bind your hands.”

Anastasia nudged the bag
with the toe of her extraordinarily expensive burgundy shoes.

“I think not. It would
not go with my outfit at all.”

The shapes in the
darkness rustled impatiently, currents of motion and uncertainty running
through them as they wavered. Anastasia basked in the face of their collective
indecision.

“We have been warned of
your Deviant Protocol. We have taken every precaution. Whatever the nature of
your abilities, we are more than capable of subduing you. We offer you a chance
to avoid...unpleasantness. I cannot promise good treatment or safe transport if
you do not surrender.”

“How crude,” Anastasia
said coldly, leaning the tip of her parasol on the ground. “Do you actually
think you can defeat me? That would be a novel occurrence, would it not?”

“We have been warned...”

“Of what?” Anastasia
said crossly. “I am well-versed in the art of keeping secrets. If you knew what
I was capable of, you would not have come. It is hard to tell behind that mask
– who are you? Which cartel has come for my head this time? I prefer to know
the names of those who are about to die.”

More uncertainty.
Anastasia could feel the Ether ripple as the empaths among them reinforced
their collective nerve.

“This is your final
warning,” the man advised her, gesturing at the bag with the muzzle break of
his rifle. “I would advise you to consider your situation.”

“Oh, I have, not to
worry,” Anastasia reassured him, adjusting her shawl to cover her neck from the
cold night wind. “All alone in an isolation field. No bodyguards...no
witnesses. Almost as if I planned it that way. Rather convenient, isn’t it, Vera?”

She didn’t bother
talking to the man who had addressed her. He was just a mouthpiece. Anastasia
gave her attention to a girl near the back of the group, who shifted
uncomfortably as she stared.

“Would you care to hear
the main difficulty with a Deviant Protocol, cousin-once-removed? It must be
kept secret, naturally – from the Auditors, and therefore everyone. This rather
sharply limits the usefulness of said protocol. Do you see my dilemma?”

The girl made her
decision, pushing her way to the front of the crowd, pulling aside her mask as
she approached. Her hair was as black and long as Anastasia’s, but despite her
name, she favored their great-grandmother, with finely sculpted Han features
and skin the color of gently aged parchment.

Anastasia could not help
but note, even in her moment of power, that Vera was almost six centimeters
taller. Not to mention the issue of her chest. Vera was only four years her
elder, but their appearance was decades apart.

“You are rambling, Ana,”
Vera snapped, brown eyes livid with weaponized telepathy. Behind her one of the
men removed a glove and touched the ground, his skin rippling as it took on the
form of the concrete. The group was gradually closing around her, a spiral
becoming a closed circle. “You cannot be allowed to ascend. I cannot allow a deviant
at the helm of the Black Sun. Even if your father and brother have been cowed,
even if the honor of the Martynova Clan has been broken, I will stand against
you.”

“Oh, don’t be foolish,”
Anastasia chided her cousin, planting her feet and waiting. The time was so close
that her hands trembled with anticipation. Her protocol slithered through the
recess of her mind like a predatory reptile. “The Black Sun belongs to me
already. Has the Elling Cartel suffered for it?”

Vera’s hands twisted
through the routine needed to activate her protocol – according to Anastasia’s
memory, a variety of telepathic assaults that focused on trapping the target in
a nightmare memory loop – and advanced as she spoke, her troops following her.
Anastasia glanced at the distance, and decided to give it a moment more.

“Are you certain you
won’t reconsider? It seems a shame to waste your talents...”

“All together,” Vera
hissed, her words heavy with power. “Give her no quarter.”

Anastasia held out her
umbrella like a sword, the polished silver tip gleaming in the reflected light
of the encroaching protocols.

“No need to be gentle,”
she urged, too excited to smile, her eyes burning with the frightful geometry
of her Deviant Protocol. “I won’t break.”

***

Gaul paused his labors over the
endless paperwork when the cut-out he had secretly added to the various
monitoring systems built into the Etheric Network activated, readouts shifting
into the red and querulously alerting him to the flagrant discharge of a great
deal of Etheric energy in the heart of Central, not far from the Great Hall
where he had been not long before. Doubtless the simultaneous usage of a number
combat protocols, including one that was well into the Deviant range.

He sighed heavily, then
activated his implant and manually overrode all of the early-warning systems,
before they could activate the main alarms and alert the rest of Central, as he
had agreed. This was unfortunate, because without the advanced processing and
parsing abilities of the Analytics department, he would be unable to perform a
proper analysis and breakdown of the Deviant Protocol. He did, however,
download a few seconds of the signal before he erased it from the Etheric
Network’s database, in the hope that Vlad might be able to do something with
it.

Then, having quelled the
appropriate and legally required response to such activity, Gaul returned to
his documents, using a downloaded telepathic protocol to erase his memory of
the event until necessity triggered its remembrance, all the better to deceive
his telepathic subordinates, should questions arise.

Gaul sighed, the room
silent outside of the sound of a fountain pen scratching along a piece of
paper. Plausible deniability always depressed him.

***

Timor arrived arm in arm with
Svetlana, to facilitate their rapid apport. Anastasia had to squash a momentary
and unbecoming burst of jealousy.

“You are unhurt?”

Timor hurried to her
side, ignoring the puffs of ash that he kicked up from the ground and stained
his tailored grey slacks, and Anastasia abruptly forgave him. She understood
his worry. There was a great deal of blood.

“No,” she said sadly.
“My dress is ruined.”

Timor hissed at her
through closed teeth, then pulled her close in an embrace that she would have
given a great deal to extend into perpetuity. Infatuated with her cousin who
didn’t like girls. So perfectly stupid.

“Was it worth it, Ana?
The risk was terrible.”

“More than worth it,”
Anastasia said, looking up obediently so Timor could use his silk handkerchief
to wipe her face clean of gore. “Our enemies have revealed themselves. I was
absolutely done struggling with shadows. And...”

Timor paused in the act
of cleaning her face, his fingers resting temptingly close to her lips.

“Yes?”

His eyes were filled
with a warm mix of humor and curiosity. Anastasia wondered what would happen if
she were to kiss him – and in a moment of self-indulgent impulse, promised
herself that, one day, she would try it. Just because she could.

What was the advantage
in absolute power if she didn’t exercise it occasionally?

“...that was rather
fun
,
Timor, dear,” she said, taking a hold of his arm so she wouldn’t fall over. “It
has been a terribly long time since I enjoyed myself to such an extent. I
think...”

Timor pulled her close
out of concern, and Anastasia made a mental note to worry him more often.

“Yes, milady?”

“I think that it is
rather about time,” she said, pushing him gently aside and raising her parasol,
“that I stopped holding back. Don’t you agree?”

The dead man floated peacefully on
his back,
rising and
falling with the rhythmic swells of the waves that pummeled the grey beach. The
current carried him slowly toward the horizon, where the dawn was not quite
ready to make an appearance. Though he would have preferred not to look, Alex
found his eyes dragged periodically back to the bobbing shape of the corpse, feeling
a strange envy at the apparent ease of his movement in the water. Alex was troubled
by the nagging suspicion that envying the dead was some sort of sin, but of
course it was far too late to worry over small transgressions. He had far more
terrible things to do before the night was over.

He stepped in Katya’s
footsteps, the way he had been taught. They were half-full of seawater by the
time he put the soles of his waterlogged boots in them. He wore neoprene liners
below the leather, which kept his feet dry and slightly warmer than freezing,
but also rubbed against the delicate skin of his instep in a way that Alex just
knew would leave blisters. The moon was hardly more than a sliver in the sky,
but there was enough light for Alex to navigate his way across the almost
featureless beach, moving toward the black edifice of the cliffs that never
seemed to get any closer. Somewhere ahead of Katya, Miss Aoki blazed the trail,
using a downloaded protocol that made her sensitive to the slight
electromagnetic emanations of the buried mines that surrounded them.

Another thing it was
better not to think about.

Min-jun followed a
careful distance behind him, carrying the heaviest pack in the squad, despite
his diminutive frame. Alex had called him “Kim” for three months after he rejoined
the Program, back from a year of cryptic “field study” with the Audits
department, before Vivik had explained that the given name came second among Koreans.
Alex was still a little embarrassed about that – and unsure whether Min-jun had
avoided correcting him out of politeness or disinterest.

The wet sand tugged at
his boots with every step, the extra weight from the pack he carried only
adding to the effort needed to cross the beach. Michael made them run on sand
for three weeks before the assignment, but there hadn’t been an invisible
minefield presumably just centimeters from his feet during training, so Alex
wasn’t sure the preparation helped all that much. The beach here – wherever
that was – looked nothing like what he had seen in California. The sand went on
for tens of meters before it finally gave up at the foot of the slowly eroding
cliff face. For reasons no one had bothered to explain, the boat had dropped
them more than a kilometer north of their target, which made for a long and
arduous slog through cold, gritty sand that Alex was not enjoying.

Thus far, their small
group had eluded discovery by virtue of good luck, careful path finding on
Mitsuru’s part, and the utterly soundless murder that he had committed while
still ankle deep in the surf. Katya could have done it, of course, but Miss
Aoki thought it good practice for him. She was probably right, for all Alex
knew.

He didn’t feel guilty.
That was too simple a summary of the complicated mesh of negative emotions that
spun through his mind in a numbing, repetitive cycle while they walked. The
guard had been armed with an FAL assault rifle, and was probably no stranger to
violence himself. Whether he knew the purpose of the facility that he
protected, he must have been aware that he worked for a criminal organization
engaged in a morally dubious, if immensely profitable, business. He probably
also had a family, or a wife, or someone who would grieve for him, when
whatever the fish left of his body washed up on shore, but there was no point
in indulging in that sort of fanciful regret.

Alex had known perfectly
well what he was getting into.

Miss Gallow had warned
them ahead of time that there would be killing involved, and Rebecca Levy had
made sure they were all offered a chance to refuse. Alex assumed they each had
their own reasons for deciding to accept the assignment. He had no way of
knowing what went in on the others’ minds, but that didn’t stop him from speculating.
It gave him something to think about besides the soreness in his calves, or the
proximity of buried high-explosives armed with highly sensitive pressure
triggers and packed with flechettes and ball-bearings hidden just below the
sand.

Miss Aoki was here
because she was an Auditor, and because she hated teaching. Alex got the
disquieting feeling that Mitsuru
liked
combat, and resented the time the
Program forced her to spend away from tactically advantageous acts of cruelty.

Chike Okoro had agreed to
the operation with the same good humor and enthusiasm with which he greeted all
of his responsibilities as an Auditor. Alex could never hope to aspire to the
apport technician’s positive attitude or willing demeanor.

Neal Blum was assigned
to the mission as a remote support telepath, and therefore stayed on the boat a
safe distance away to facilitate communications.

Haley Weathers was
present as little more than a ghost, so what did she have to worry about?

Kim Min-jun had agreed
to come because he wanted to be an Auditor, and was well on his way to that
goal. In a brief conversation he had with Alex in the gym one day, he mentioned
that his father was a high-ranking officer in the South Korean military, and so
had intended to follow in his footsteps until his potential had manifested and
Central intervened.

Katya Zharova came
because Alex had agreed to come. Normally, her affiliation with the Black Sun
Cartel would have created a conflict of interest, performing tasks for the
Audits Department – but Anastasia Martynova had charged her with looking after
Alex, which meant the assassin went pretty much wherever he did, not
necessarily without complaint.

As for the rationale of
one Alexander Warner, the only person there whose motivations he was actually
qualified to speak for, he felt a certain amount of uncertainty. The death of
Margot Feld weighed on him, as did his brief capture by the Weir. The things
that Miss Gallow had shared with him during the briefing regarding the purpose
of the facility they were targeting upset and enraged him, as she had no doubt
intended. Those reasons, though, Alex had puzzled out after he had volunteered,
during the endless boat trip to the beach, between bouts of seasickness. He was
aware that those answers were altogether too convenient to be the final word on
the matter.

His real rationale was
likely baser – though Alex never would have admitted it to anyone but Rebecca
Levy, who already knew anyway. Alex was angry, and this operation offered as
good a chance as any to express some of that anger in an allowable, possibly
even laudable, manner.

At least it seemed that
way until he froze the blood in the cerebellum of a guard on the beach, causing
him to briefly convulse and then rapidly die on the sand, waves gradually rolling
his body into the sea. Then his anger had departed, leaving Alex alone to
finish what he had started.

“Alex,” Katya hissed,
“hold up.”

He stopped gratefully
and crouched down, waving his hand to indicate to Min-jun to do the same. Of
course, the Korean already had. He wasn’t prone to losing focus or daydreaming
in the first place, and certainly not in the middle of a combat op. Then again,
nobody had asked him to kill anyone – and they probably wouldn’t. Min-jun was mainly
there to keep them from getting killed.

Alex waited in the dark,
the sweat cooling beneath his fatigues and chilling him. His patience ran out
quickly, then his curiosity won over. He shuffled closer to Katya so he could
whisper.

“What is it?”

“Dunno,” Katya said,
shrugging indifferently and chewing on a scrap of jerky. She was relatively
unburdened, having somehow convinced Alex to carry the bulk of her share of the
necessary goods. It was only fair, he supposed – she did promise to keep him
alive. “Miss Aoki called a halt, then she went on ahead with Haley. She’s
running who-knows-what surveillance protocol, and Haley’s in remote-viewing
mode, so they probably saw something that I can’t.”

“No surprise. I can’t
see shit out here, unless it’s right in front of me.”

“I can. You aren’t
missing much. This isn’t a beach that I would take a vacation on.”

Alex got curious despite
the situation.

“Wait. You can see in
the dark?”

“More or less. I’m
pretty amazing, you know.”

It was true. There
really was no arguing. Katya Zharova was the least powerful protocol user in
the Program, and by far the most capable and deadly. She was also a committed
drinker, with a voracious appetite and a mind almost as filthy as Renton. There
was little not to like.

“How?”

“Hush. Later.”

Alex shut up. Katya was
the closest thing he had to a friend in the Program, and anyway, who would
argue with a girl who made her living teleporting needles into critical
portions of other people’s anatomy?

He crouched in the sand
behind Katya, fingers sinking into the wet grit, and waited for something to
happen. It was an oversight to the Program, he decided – one of a very few – that
while the instructors did a fairly thorough job of simulating the pain and anxiety
of a real combat op, nothing prepared Alex for the long periods of boredom that
bookended brief episodes of conflict and terror. Alex ran through a series of
subtle stretches to relieve the pressure on his thighs and lower back. The wind
picked up, and cold worked its way through the waterproof base layer he wore
beneath his fatigues. The crashing of the breakers obliterated any sound aside
from the steady onslaught of the sea against the shore, and the moon’s wan
light didn’t allow him to distinguish anything further than a few meters away, aside
from the hulking silhouette of the cliffs.

“Next time you are
carrying your own shit,” Alex whispered, leaning close to Katya so she could
hear him over the waves. “How did you talk me into carrying everything,
anyway?”

“You were overwhelmed by
my irresistible charm. Also, I need my hands free to babysit your helpless ass.
Now, shut up, okay?”

Alex rocked back onto
the soles of his feet and scanned the shoreline fruitlessly, letting his mind
wander.

He wondered where Eerie
was, what she was doing right now. They had departed Central in the unreasonably
early morning, around two o’clock, but there had been two apports, a short flight
in a small prop plane, and a seemingly long boat ride since then, so Alex was
unsure what time it was back in Central. If he had to guess, then he would have
assumed it was late afternoon or evening, which meant that Eerie was probably
on the bus returning from her shift at Processing, or already back at the
little house she shared with a handful of other “exceptional circumstances”
residents – meaning those students deemed too dangerous or alien to house with
the rest of the student body – sitting in front of her computer in her messy
room with headphones clamped over her ears, or knitting on her couch, pausing
occasionally to pour the contents of a Pixy Stik on her artificially colored
tongue.

Alex missed her, and
took a measure of comfort from that. It meant something, he was sure of it –
the loneliness he felt apart from her brought a measure of normalcy to what he
thought of as their relationship. However much of a relationship he could have
with a half-human, half-Fey hybrid whose emotions and motivations were
virtually opaque, anyway. All he knew for sure was that he would have been
happier lying with her on the slightly too-small surface of her couch,
half-asleep and dreading the alarm that would wake him to return to his room
before curfew.

Either Miss Aoki made no
noise when she moved, or the waves disguised the sound, because she seemed to
materialize out of the darkness in front of Katya, startling him, Haley nothing
more than a shimmering image floating over her shoulder. A moment later, Neal’s
disembodied voice broadcast across the group telepathic channel that he was
hosting for them, with the detached tone common to all telepathic
communication. Typically, Haley or Mitsuru handled their telepathic channel,
but apparently they were giving Neal a tryout for the support team.

Channel active and
secure, Miss Aoki.

Acknowledged. We are
through the minefield, kids. Assume assault formation, I’m on point. Advance
cautiously – I’ve cleared and marked a path to the facility, but there are
still active screamers and proximity alerts if you stray. I’m going ahead, to
flank and interface with Xia, then create a diversion. Questions?

There were none. There
never were. Miss Aoki on campus was detached and remote, but vaguely
approachable if you caught her at the right moment, or had a serious question.
Miss Aoki in the field, on the other hand, was entirely different animal. The
enthusiasm that permeated her demeanor was genuinely disturbing.

We do this just like the
simulation. Once inside the perimeter, keep your heads down, locate and secure
a point of entry. Xia and I will ensure their attention is elsewhere. When
entry is secured, hold for instructions. Move out in five.

Miss Aoki leaned close
to Katya briefly, then walked to where Alex crouched and put her hand on his
shoulder.