The Far Shores (The Central Series) (65 page)

Alex followed her arm,
and then noticed the horrible bulk of the World Tree looming over them, no more
than twenty meters distant, apparently unaffected by the metal wreckage that
had cascaded down all around it.

“Okay.” Alex steadied
himself beside Min-jun, trying to figure out the best way to lift him. “Then I
guess we know what to do.”

He hoisted Min-jun up
and across his shoulders in the fireman’s carry he learned in the Program,
groaning beneath the weight. It would have been better for his neck and back to
drag him, but the protruding metal ruins on the ground made that a bad
proposition. In any case, the fire was increasing at an alarming pace, and he
wasn’t entirely sure that he could drag Min-jun clear of it in time.

“What about Mitsuru? And
Katya? Shouldn’t we try to find them?”

“Katya can handle
herself,” Alex said, with a bravado that he absolutely did not feel. “And
frankly, I feel sorry for anyone Mitsuru happened to land on. They’ll be fine.
We’ll probably find them on the way. Anyway, the sooner we get to the thing and
call Chike to blow it up, the sooner we can get out of here.”

Haley swirled around him
in a series of quick revolutions, like a startled fish in an aquarium.

“But how will we contact
Chike? I can’t even seem to find Mitsuru, and she must be nearby...”

“One thing at a time,”
Alex said through gritted teeth, and his took his first few painful steps,
barely able to move between his body being injured in the fall and the weight
of the slight Korean boy on his shoulders. “Let’s get there, first.”

Haley nodded, hovering
just in front of him.

“Find me a way through
this mess, okay?”

“Sure. One second.”

The girl blurred and
disappeared from his vision, while Alex focused on breathing and continuing to
move, putting one foot in front of the other despite the way his back screamed
at him. He made it perhaps two meters in what seemed like an eternity before
Haley reappeared, looking slightly less worried.

“I found a path I think
will go through. Follow me.”

Alex nodded, too
involved in his struggle to speak, following after Haley’s ephemeral form. To
his surprise, it actually got a little bit easier, the further they went. His
back still complained with every step, and his calves and thighs burned with
exertion, but the dizziness and feeling as if he were going to pass out slowly
receded. The smoke gradually diminished as they left the fire behind them, and
it was easier to breathe.

They passed piles of
wreckage and twisted metal, sometimes with bodies beneath. Often he couldn’t
see more than an arm or a leg protruding from beneath, but none of them
appeared to be anyone he knew. Haley dashed about wildly, checking each of
them, watching his back and sides for him, which was mildly reassuring.

“Anything?”

“No. I don’t see anyone.”

That was good and bad.
Good, because Alex didn’t feel up for much fighting at the moment; bad, because
he would really have liked to have Katya around to tell him what to do right
about now. Alex would have felt much safer at the particular moment if Katya
had been walking with him, giving him shit and distracting him from the
realities of what was very obviously a blown mission. He had to give Haley
credit – despite the direness of their circumstances, she remained focused and
effective, monitoring their perimeter and finding a relatively unobstructed
path. Of course, she wasn’t actually physically present, so that probably made
it a little bit easier.

“Are you sure you should
be carrying Min-jun? We could leave him somewhere safe, and then come back for
him.”

“Where would be safe? We
have to assume some of the Anathema survived.” Alex groaned as he shifted
Min-jun’s weight to a slightly more comfortable position, his lower back
throbbing with the effort. “Plus, that fire is getting big. I’m not gonna leave
him to burn.”

Haley glanced back at
the steadily growing blaze behind them.

“You’re right.”

“You have any luck with
the link?”

Haley shook her head.

“No. Something is
interfering with my telepathy...”

They were interrupted by
the sound of a woman clearing her throat. Haley dashed around him, pointlessly positioning
herself between Alex and the new arrivals, while Alex turned slowly and with
great difficulty.

A man and woman were
emerging from the wreckage. The man was large and heavily tattooed, carrying a
rifle, while the woman would have been pretty, if there hadn’t been something
wrong with her head. Alex didn’t recognize them, which meant that they must
have been Anathema.

“I believe I might be
responsible for that,” the woman said, with a self-congratulatory tone. “So
sorry.”

“You don’t sound sorry,”
Alex observed, moaning with pain as he set Min-jun carefully aside. “You sound
like a bitch. No offense.”

“Be hard not to take
offense.” The man punctuated the statement by spitting tobacco juice on the
splintered I-beam nearby.

“Yes,” the woman agreed,
with a smirk. “Who taught you children such terrible language?”

“Stay away,” Haley said,
shimmering between them. “I’m warning you.”

“And what are you going
to do, I wonder?” The woman smiled at Haley. “I don’t think you are really even
here.”

Alex had to admit she
had a point. It didn’t matter though. He didn’t have the time or patience to
deal with this, and he had lost his weapons during the fall, which limited his
options severely.

“In fact,” the woman
continued, a strange aura glimmering around her head, “why don’t you just
leave?”

She stared at Haley,
hard, and Haley screamed. Her scream was brief, though, because she was gone in
an instant.

“Any reason not to kill
these brats?” The man asked, bringing the rifle to his shoulder. “Alistair want
them alive?”

“He didn’t say so.”

“Well, then...”

“Wait,” Alex said,
holding up a hand. “You,” he said, pointing at the woman with the oddly shaped
forehead. “You said you’re the one messing with our telepathy, right?”

“Yes,” she confirmed,
smiling indulgently. “Why?”

“Just wanted to make
sure,” Alex said, opening the Black Door wide.

***

Alice collided with the wall so
forcefully that she bounced off the concrete, curling reflexively into a ball
around newly shattered ribs. The back of her head hit the ground with a muffled
thud and sharp, immediate pain. When she looked up at the small crowd of
Anathema arrayed in front of her, her vision was doubled and blurry.

“Poor Alice,” Alistair
offered solicitously, dumping brass from his Smith & Wesson revolver to the
ground, the clattering sound ringing through her aching skull. “Waits decades
for a chance to be Chief Auditor, then has it all unravel in a matter of
months. Aren’t you tired of taking beatings on Gaul’s behalf? Tired of being
outnumbered and betrayed? It must be frustrating to be stuck with so many
problems that you didn’t create...”

Alice grinned while she
struggled to her feet, her immaculate teeth stained pink from biting her
tongue. Her legs trembled uncontrollably, and she had to lean her back against
the wall to avoid falling over, hugging her injured side with one arm.

“Problems? What are you
talking about?” Alice asked cheerfully, pausing briefly to spit blood before
resuming her unnerving smile. “I’m about to kill my old boss with my bare
hands. I don’t have any problems. I’m living the goddamn American Dream.”

She wasn’t sure who the
bravado was for – herself, or her audience of Anathema. Alice was reeling from
a thorough and professionally administered beating, and was rapidly running out
of ideas for rectifying the situation.

Everything had started
the way she had planned – Michael and Xia had laid waste to the bulk of the
security forces before they even knew exactly what was happening, and she
apported from target to target, killing guards and technicians until the barrel
of her USAS-12 was too hot to touch. Alice had moved to a safe distance while
the Anathema were still in disarray to replace her expended magazine when
everything had gone sideways.

Michael had engaged an
Anathema who employed a light manipulation protocol, which should have been
fine, given his extraordinary energy absorption modifications, but when he
tried to finish the job with his fists, all he succeed in doing was knocking
the Anathema backward, and throwing off his aim. The beam of light was focused
like a high-powered laser, and it tore effortlessly through the catwalk in two
separate places, taking a chunk of the ceiling along with it. There had been no
time to attempt a telepathic warning or an apport rescue before Mitsuru’s team
tumbled to the factory floor. In the absence of contrary evidence, Alice had to
assume they had all been killed, which left the destruction of the World Tree to
her and whatever surviving forces she could muster.

Scanning the wreckage,
she located Xia, locked in a struggle with three or four Anathema. Before she
could apport close, he went nova, filling the air around him with a ball of
flame that obscured her vision, bursting the propane tanks that powered the
machinery the Anathema had assembled. The explosion knocked her senseless –
Alice wasn’t sure how long she lay there. But when she had come to, she found
herself surrounded by ten or so Anathema, with Alistair at the head of the
group. Even that hadn’t worried her, until she realized that one of them, a
bearded man that Alistair called Martin, had somehow disabled her protocol,
leaving her only a single gun and her hands and feet.

She took two of them
before they got the upper hand and disarmed her. Since then, she had received
an extended and somewhat humiliating beating, and the best she could do was to
stumble from one set of fists to the other. A bullet had taken a chunk of flesh
from just above her hip. A knife had been driven into her shoulder, and another
had been used to cut a wound across the length of her back. Alice had lost
track of the number of times she had been hit and kicked, but judging from the
way her body screamed at her, she figured it was plenty.

“Alice, my dear,”
Alistair said, laughing. “Your confidence remains unshakable, even in the face
of unavoidable defeat. I always hated that about you.”

He took aim and pulled
the trigger. Alice tried to apport, and failed. She was too tired and injured
to even consider dodging. The bullet passed cleanly through her left hand,
leaving behind a grotesque hole and earning howls of laughter from the
assembled Anathema. Alice fell to her knees again, uncertain whether she still
had the strength to stand.

“Enough.” Alistair
holstered the pistol and turned from her, gesturing at the group, half of whom
split off to follow him. “We have other priorities. Martin, I leave Alice to
you. Do what you like, but remember – Parson wants her alive. Short of death,
anything is fine.”

The Anathema gave her an
oily grin while Alistair disappeared. She tried to apport after him, away,
anywhere, but her protocol remained dormant.

“Sounds good.”

They watched and laughed
while Alice fought her way back to standing. It took a long time.

“He only left five of
you?” Alice asked with a smile. “I’m insulted.”

***

The Black Door opened, and Alex punched
breaches to the void around the Anathema. The water in the air crystallized as
the temperature plummeted. The man with the rifle scrambled away, but the woman
never had the opportunity. Alex aimed squarely for her head, opening a hole in
reality the size of his fist below her hairline. She toppled to the ground, her
frozen cranium shattering on impact, sending shards of icy blood and bone
skittering across the factory floor.

The man with the rifle stared
in shock. Alex dropped to his knees, the world around him wavering.

“Haley? If you can hear
me, now would be a good time to intervene.”

The man grimaced and
turned his rifle in Alex’s direction, aiming from the hip. In the stillness of
the moment, Alex saw the muscles in his forearm flex as he pulled the trigger.
The first shot went wide, the bullet passing close enough that Alex felt the
wind on his arm.

Then the rifle clattered
to the ground, the man clutching at his throat as he fell, coughing blood and
staring with wide, horrified eyes. Katya emerged from behind him, one hand
filled with needles.

“Sorry,” Katya
apologized, ducking under his arm to support Alex. “No word from the ghost
girl. Take second best?”

***

Gaul stared out the window, the overwhelming
weight of potential futures and their waning and waxing probabilities resting
heavily on his shoulders, when there was a gentle knock at his door. This was
odd, because Mrs. Barrett never knocked, and in any case, none of the many
futures that he contemplated included a visitor at this particular juncture.