Chapter Sixteen
Sasha came out of her hiding spot and rushed to Rebecca’s side as soon as she saw her fall. She wrapped her arms around her sobbing lover and tried to suppress her rage at Danni Sharabi. Part of her wanted to chase down the other woman and hit her with a psychic blast that would shut down her higher brain functions for the next week or two. It wouldn’t accomplish anything, though, and Rebecca wouldn’t want her to do it, so she tried to focus past her own feelings and offer Rebecca whatever strength and focus she could manage. I wish Fiona were here. She’s better at this part than I am.
Fiona… That brought up a whole other set of problems that she didn’t have time to deal with right now. Her heart still ached from the fight between Fiona and Rebecca this morning. She hoped that Miriam would be able to say something to Fi that would get through to her, but she wasn’t optimistic about her chances. Sasha had been Fiona’s closest friend since the age of thirteen and her lover since the age of sixteen, and Sasha still found that there were things that Fiona held back from her. She didn’t know what had made Fiona so afraid of making herself vulnerable, but it had created a fault line that ran straight through the middle of their family. With the added pressure the Hive was putting on them, and now this trouble with Rebecca and Danni, the cracks were starting to show. That scared Sasha more than she wanted to admit. This family was the center of her universe, and the idea that it might fall apart in the face of hardship terrified her more than death itself. As she helped the weeping Rebecca to her feet, she vowed that she would do anything, sacrifice anything, in order to keep her family together.
Rebecca took a deep, shuddering breath, then coughed as she tried to find her voice. “It’s … it’s worse than I thought,” she said. “I thought maybe I could get through to her if he wasn’t here, but … oh, gods…”
“Stay with me, Becks,” Sasha urged, as she led the way back down the hall. “We’re not finished yet.”
Rebecca looked up at her, surprised. “What can we do against that?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Sasha admitted. “But I think I know where to start.” She pulled out her phone and dialed a number.
“Hello?”
“Nathan, it’s Sasha. I need you to look someone up for me.”
“If I can. What’s the name?”
Sasha clenched her teeth. “Get me whatever you can dig up on a wizard named Artax.”
“Artax? He runs the SPELLS 4 U magic shop. I thought everyone knew that.” He read off the address, and Sasha pulled out a pen and wrote it on the back of her hand. “Funny you should mention him, actually. He’s the guy who did the potion Danni used to take the Curse for a test drive.”
“Figures,” Sasha muttered. “Thanks for the info, Nate.”
“No problem. What do you need him for, anyway?”
“He’s the only person who’s gotten a close look at Danni’s head since all of this happened,” Sasha said. “I’ve got some questions for that son of a bitch.”
SPELLS 4 U was closed by the time Sasha and Rebecca reached it, but the lights were still on and Sasha wasn’t about to take no for an answer. She pounded on the door with one small fist until a gray-haired man in a bathrobe came slouching out of the back room to answer it.
“If you’re attempting to put me in a more accommodating mood, you are failing miserably,” he growled.
“We can pay you well,” Sasha said.
“That’s a start. Come in if you’re coming, Ms King.”
Sasha blinked.
“He is a wizard,” Rebecca said. “He scryed that we were coming and what we wanted before we finished parking the skimmer.”
Artax turned and looked at her, his bushy eyebrows raised. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. “You seem to have rather impressive foresight yourself, Ms Brower.”
She shrugged and blushed. “I am an esper, you know.”
Unexpectedly, Artax laughed. “Quite so, my dear. Come inside, please, and I’ll get you a seat. Pregnancy is never kind to the feet or the back – and unlike some of my colleagues, I know that from experience.”
The old man turned and headed back into his shop. Sasha exchanged a puzzled look with Rebecca, then shrugged and followed him.
Artax took them to his office in the back, where he offered the one cushioned chair to Rebecca and took a plastic chair for himself. He listened intently as Rebecca and Sasha related the details of their encounter with Danni, as well as the strange changes in Nathan’s behavior and the vision Rebecca had channeled in Jared’s apartment. The wizard made notes on a legal pad as they spoke, and occasionally stopped them to ask a few clarifying questions.
When they had finished, he grunted thoughtfully to himself and set the pad aside.
“So … what do you think?” Rebecca asked.
The old man’s eyes grew distant, and he chewed on the end of his pen. Nearly a minute passed before he finally spoke.
“I was afraid of this,” he muttered.
Sasha felt her eyebrows go up. “You were? Danni said you told her that it was impossible to change a person’s soul.”
Artax snorted. “Typical. They always hear what they want to hear.”
“Then you didn’t say it’s impossible?”
He shook his head. “I told her that we know piss-all about the soul or how it works. If there’s a way to change someone’s soul without any sign of tampering, I’ve never heard of it – but that’s not the same as saying it’s impossible.”
“Is there anything we can do to help Danni?” Rebecca asked.
Artax tapped the end of his pen against his lips. “Possibly. But are you certain that’s the best choice, Ms Brower? It might be kinder to leave her as she is.”
Rebecca shook her head firmly. “You want me to leave her with a guy who can make her do whatever he wants? No way.” She lowered her eyes and sighed. “She may be happy, but she’s losing herself. Daniel would never have said those things to me.”
“She’s right,” Sasha said. “I know D pretty well, and that wasn’t him. Her. Whatever.”
Artax nodded. “Very well. I have an idea for something that may help. Wait here.”
He returned a few minutes later with a scroll, three candles and a stoppered vial.
“Ritual magic?” Sasha guessed.
Artax grunted in acknowledgment. “You’re a lucky woman, Ms Brower,” he said, setting the spell components on the desk in front of Rebecca. “Since my last meeting with Ms Sharabi I’ve been doing a bit of research into this area myself. As I said, there’s next to nothing on soul lore in the published literature … but I called in a favor and managed to get a few days with a very old text on the subject. If my calculations are correct, then Danni’s Curse may be the one thing that allows you to reach her.”
Rebecca frowned. “What? Why?”
“Bifurcation,” Artax said. “The androgyne version of the Curse of Metamor splits the soul into two aspects. It’s an oversimplification to call them ‘male’ and ‘female’ – souls aren’t inherently sexual – but that’s how they express themselves when they’re filtered through a human brain. The upshot of it is that where you once had one essential nature, you now have two.”
“Wait a minute,” Sasha said. “I thought that bifurcation only happens when you have several generations of androgynes in a row. A first-generation androgyne is still the same person in both sexes, but after six or seven generations you basically have two people in the same body.”
“That is the way it’s usually presented, but it’s not quite the truth. The bifurcation always happens, but in the low-order generations the two souls normally cooperate with each other closely. The split becomes easier to spot in subsequent generations because the Curse does something to the genetic code that makes it easier for the brain to handle parallel processing from two souls. When your brain is fully formed, it isn’t able to change very much, but in the children the effects get stronger with each new generation that takes the Curse.”
“So Danni’s souls are like two teeps in a gestalt,” Rebecca said.
“Not quite,” Artax said. “Danni’s been using an imitation of the Curse that I crafted myself. Superficially, the effects are identical, but there’s no true bifurcation; I shan’t bore you with the details, but the illusion of two personalities is constructed on the mental level. I’m good, lass, but even I can’t split a soul.”
“But Danni just had her suppression chip removed this morning,” Sasha said.
“Exactly. The Curse is taking hold of her, but it won’t be complete for another twelve to twenty-four hours. Once the bifurcation takes place, you’ll have the chance to help her.”
“But how?” Rebecca asked. “I’m sorry, Mr Artax, but I still don’t understand what we’re supposed to do.”
“I’m getting there, dearie. Bear with me.” Artax settled back into his seat and picked up the scroll. “If your information is correct, then Jared Tamlin has somehow been suppressing the part of Danni's personality that you knew as Daniel. Her personality has already been fractured along lines of masculine and feminine identity. When the Curse takes hold of her, the bifurcation in her soul is going to follow that fault line and split her down the middle. Now, Jared has already been here once to buy a second dose of the pseudo-Curse for Danni, so it’s safe to say that her feminine side is the only part of her he’s interested in. After the split, his subconscious desires will be focused completely on the female soul – which should leave the male soul, the Daniel personality, free to be himself again.” He waved the scroll in his hands. “This incantation will temporarily strengthen the Daniel personality, giving him a chance to come back to the surface.”
Rebecca reached for the scroll. “This will turn her back into Daniel?”
Artax pulled it out of her reach. “No, it just alters the balance of power between the two personalities. Daniel will get more of the brain’s processing power than he’s been able to use lately, and if he wants to come out, he’ll be able to. But he won’t have to take control.” Artax chuckled; it wasn't a pleasant sound. “Also, he’s likely to be a bit addle-pated at first. The bifurcation is just now starting to happen, and it may take some time before he’s self-aware enough to do anything.”
“How do we do the ritual?” Sasha asked.
“It’s all on the scroll; just follow the directions. You’ll need some open floor space, and a sympathetic link of some sort to connect you to Daniel.”
“I have pictures,” Rebecca offered. “And a locket he gave me for my eighteenth birthday.”
“That will work,” Artax agreed. “Remember, you have to wait until the Curse has finished taking hold of Danni before you cast the spell. Otherwise, it’s useless.” He offered the scroll to Rebecca, and she took it.
“How will I know when that is?” she asked.
The old man smirked. “You’re an esper, my dear. I’m sure something will come to you.”
Friday, June 21. Viscount Security Solutions, Main Office.
Brian swiped his hand over the electronic card reader, and the door to the office opened obediently. He slipped inside and crouched behind the desk, leaving the lights off as he powered up the computer.
Things were going well. He, Fiona, Sasha, and Miriam Bakhtavar, together with her team of psi-op agents, had entered Viscount’s offices two hours ago, posing as a tour group from a computer networking firm. According to their cover story, their company had recently been raided by industrial spies, and they were looking to increase security at their home office. They had been under constant supervision during the tour of the facility, but Brian had used the time to familiarize himself with the floor plan and identify likely access points for the second phase of the mission.
Less than a minute ago, Fiona had waylaid their escort in the restroom during lunch, and Sasha had given the woman a false memory that Brian had left the group to deal with an emergency back at the home office. With the human element of Viscount’s security thus out of the way, Brian was able to slip away from the rest of the group and hide inside this office, whose occupant had taken the day off.
The computer’s operating system came online and asked Brian for his username and password. Brian put his finger into the data port and extended his consciousness into the system, intending to bypass the OS and give himself administrator-level access.
The SPECTIR was there waiting for him.
Brian had only milliseconds to react. He used five of them to raise a virtual barrier between his mind and his attacker, forcing the system to enter a verification protocol before taking further action. That bought him nearly a second of real time, which he used to hide himself inside a low-priority maintenance subroutine. The SPECTIR broke through the barrier moments later and clawed its way back into active memory, scanning through open programs in the effort to find the intruder.
Brian steadied himself and tried to catch his virtual breath. The SPECTIR, more formally known as the Security Protocol for Electronic Countermeasures and Tactical Infiltration Resistance, was one of the nastiest defensive programs in existence. An elaborate set of heuristic algorithms fused with an elemental spirit of air, the SPECTIR lived on a firmware module installed on the network’s server. It couldn’t be cracked, overwritten, reprogrammed, or subverted. It had its own independent power supply, multiple redundant access points into the network, and the ability to send an electric shock directly into the hardware of anyone attempting to crack the network. If you were unlucky enough to be physically wired into the system at the time, either through a spelljack or through a direct link like the one Brian was using, the shock would fry your nervous system, as well.
SPECTIRs were illegal for private companies to use, and Brian had only seen three or four government systems that used them, one of them being the network at MID. He wasn’t really surprised that the vampire syndicate had gotten their hands on one, but it did underscore exactly how serious they were about protecting this office and its secrets.
He pulled himself out of the system and sat back against the wall. Reaching into a hidden pocket on the inside of his pants, he pulled out three portable mini-drives – one black, the others red. He turned off the computer’s power supply and turned it back on again, forcing it into a hard reboot, then inserted the mini-drives into three of the computer’s data ports while it was still starting up. For good measure, he unplugged the network cable from the jack on the wall.
The black drive contained a set of instructions that would bypass the computer’s normal start-up routine, ignoring the operating system on the computer’s hard disk and running a simplified OS directly from the mini-drive itself. Brian wouldn’t be able to access anything on Viscount’s network, nor could he use any programs on this unit that required files or user privileges granted from server-side, but he would be able to access the computer’s memory and hard disk, and the SPECTIR wouldn’t be able to interfere. Normally he used this drive to help resurrect a computer after a catastrophic system crash, so he appreciated the irony of using it for what he currently had in mind.
With the emergency OS up and running, Brian accessed the two red mini-drives and installed their contents onto the computer’s hard disk. Unlike the black drive, these were not rescue equipment; they were weapons. Each drive contained over ten thousand computer viruses, crafted by some of the most ingenious and diabolical computer crackers the world had ever seen. They all operated in different ways and triggered under different circumstances, but any one of them could cause serious damage if it escaped into the network and propagated itself on other users’ machines. Brian issued instructions for each of them to start running the next time that the computer was turned on. With the trap set, he turned off the computer, unplugged the mini-drives, plugged in the network cable, and then started it up again. As the OS started up, he put his finger in the data port and sent himself back into the machine.
He arrived to find the system in a state of chaos worthy of Lord Klepnos himself. His malicious programs were popping into active memory all over the place, rampaging through the system registry and assaulting the network connections in an effort to escape into other computers in the office. The SPECTIR chased after them like a cat in a room full of frightened mice, overwhelmed by the sheer number of simultaneous intrusions. It would catch them all in time, but meanwhile Brian slipped by unnoticed and quietly granted himself an administrator-level username and password. He allowed himself a smile, and silently thanked the Hive for sending him to MID. Very few people knew about the SPECTIR’s weakness, and most of those who did had been members of Brian’s department.
Brian accessed the security system and edited the tracking logs to show that he had left and turned in his badge. As far as Viscount was concerned, he no longer existed inside their offices. Satisfied, he turned off the machine and went to the shelves at the back of the room.
The ceiling tiles were the cheap gypsum variety found in most modern offices, and he was able to push them up and slide them out of the way without difficulty. Hoisting himself up into the rafters was a little trickier, and for the thousandth time he cursed the five kilos of excess weight that he could never seem to work off. At last he pulled himself up onto a steel support girder and slid the ceiling tile back into place; there might be a fine dusting of gypsum powder on the shelves and desk below, but it was unlikely that the security guards would notice any sign of his intrusion.
He sent a tendril of thought out into the mindlink. I’m in position, he said.
Copy that, Sasha replied. We’re finishing up with lunch right now. I’m guessing we’ll be out of here in another hour. After that I’m heading back to the nest to help Rebecca.
Good. For what it’s worth, I hope you two are able to help Daniel. Just be careful.
You too, love. I’ll be praying for you.
Brian smiled. I’ll take all of those we can get, he said. Leaning back against a support column, he closed his eyes and waited for nightfall.
As she left the hospital that evening, Danni waved good-bye to her co-workers at the front desk. "Have a good weekend, ladies!"
"You too, Danni!" the receptionist called back. "Yeesh, look at you, you're glowing! You got a hot date or something?"
Danni grinned, as a familiar thrill ran through her. "Every night," she said. "See you girls on Monday!"
As she headed out to the bus stop, she pulled out her phone and dialed Jared's number.
He picked up on the second ring. "Tamlin here."
"Is this the office of the luckiest man in the world?" Danni asked.
He chuckled. "It is now. I'm going to be stuck here a little while longer finishing this report, but I have something special planned for tonight."
"Special, eh?" she purred. "Should I dig out my 'special' dress for the occasion?"
"Actually, no," Jared said. "You're going to want jeans for this. Jeans, and sturdy, comfortable shoes."
Danni frowned quizzically. "Is there some new definition of 'special' I'm not familiar with?"
"Trust me," he said, the smile evident in his voice. "You're going to like this."
She chuckled at that. "All right, Mr Mysterious, you have your fun. I'll just…"
She broke off in mid-sentence, as a strange tingling sensation ran through her. Her vision faded and she stumbled, suddenly dizzy. She grabbed hold of the sign by the bus stop and managed to stop herself from falling. She felt something tugging at the back of her mind, and for an instant she got the crazy feeling that there was someone else inside her head with her—
—and then, as quickly as the sensation had come, it was gone.
She was dimly aware that Jared was calling her name. "Yeah, I'm here," she said, as her vision cleared up once more.
"What happened? Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," she assured him. "The doc said I might experience a few weird sensations as the Curse finished taking hold. I think I just got the last of it." She laughed, as a sudden, giddy joy filled her heart. "Looks like it's official, Jared: Danni Sharabi is here for good."
"It's happened."
Sasha looked up at Rebecca. She was dressed in her coveralls and thoroughly splattered with paint, but her eyes were clear and focused.
"You're sure?" she asked.
Rebecca nodded emphatically. "I've been channeling Danni all afternoon — it was easy to find her once I knew what to look for. I know the soul-split's happened 'cause now I can feel her and Daniel. Come on an' see for yourself."
Sasha followed Rebecca back into her studio, where a series of images of Danni were drying along the walls. The painting that stood on the easel was a dramatic image of one person splitting into two, male and female, with each of them reaching in opposite directions. Sasha saw their faces and immediately recognized Daniel and Danni.
"All right," she said. "We're all set up for the spell, so let's do this." And hope we don't screw it up, she added silently.
Sasha had never really liked magic. Oh, certainly she understood the need for it, but she looked at it the way many people looked at nuclear power: it was mysterious, finicky, and really, really dangerous if it got out of control. Sasha had spent her childhood in a small rural town dominated by the Ecclesia. They had used magic only sparingly, and with tremendous caution. Here in Metamor City, which depended on powerful magic just to remain standing, people seemed far too cavalier about using it — and ritual magic was the worst of all.
The great thing about ritual magic was that anyone could do it: a few simple instructions, some reagents, and a written incantation provided by a wizard were all you needed for most spells. As far as Sasha was concerned, that was also the terrifying thing about ritual magic. Mystical, arcane energies, beyond the ken of mortal man, could be summoned forth to change the shape of reality … by bored university students with some spending money and an hour of spare time. Sasha much preferred the psionic powers of the Collective; the mages might call them "spookies," but at least their power came from inside themselves.
She frowned. Not that that's kept Jared Tamlin from causing a whole lot of trouble, she thought. Assuming that 'Becca is right, and we aren't all just being paranoid for nothing.
Sasha had prepared the ritual spell in the dining area, after sliding the table out of the way to make room on the floor. A chalk circle about eighteen decimeters wide established the outer limits of the casting area, and the three candles formed an equilateral triangle inside it. A smaller chalk circle inside the triangle held a photograph of Daniel and the locket he had given Rebecca. The scroll and the stoppered vial sat on the kitchen counter next to a book of matches.
Rebecca looked over the setup carefully. "Everything looks right to me," she said. "I'm not getting any danger-sense from it, so I think it's okay."
Sasha picked up the scroll, then handed the vial and the matches to Rebecca. "After you," she said.
She helped Rebecca get down on her knees in the middle of the circle, then double-checked the circle to make sure there were no breaks in the chalk-line. Satisfied, she stepped in behind Rebecca and unrolled the scroll.
"Okay. Got the matches ready? Go."
Rebecca struck a match and lit the first candle while Sasha began chanting the incantation. Artax had been thoughtful enough to write it phonetically, using a large and easy-to-read font. It came out sounding gentle and musical, and Sasha wondered if it was based on Elvish.
"Nah more RAY-tay en SHALLA fee-liss…"
Rebecca reached over to their left and lit the second candle.
"Tu RI OH-nah en vor-uh MON-tiss…"
Reaching to the right, Rebecca lit the third candle.
"Man-tu AR-ah say all-vuh KEEM-shoh…"
As soon as the third candle was lit, a curtain of light rose up around the edges of the circle, creating a shimmering barrier between them and the room beyond. Rebecca let out a little squeak of surprise, but she kept her hands steady as she withdrew the stopper from the vial.
"AH-lay ALL-muh nor val-uh SEEM-koh."
Rebecca up-ended the vial over the photograph and the locket, pouring out a fine, sparkling powder. It covered the contents of the smaller circle and immediately began to glow with a soft blue light.
"Daniel Sharabi," Rebecca said, speaking his name firmly and clearly. "Daniel Sharabi. Daniel Sharabi."
The glowing powder vanished into the photograph and the locket, which began to glow with blue light themselves.
Sasha spoke the final word of the incantation: "KOO-ee-voh!"
There was a bright flash of blue-white light, a rush of wind, and a sound like a thunderclap. When Sasha could see again, the ring of light around the circle had vanished and the objects in front of Rebecca had stopped glowing. The candles had been extinguished, as well, so quickly and so completely that they were not even smoldering.
Rebecca craned her neck to look up at her. "Did it work?" she asked, her voice hovering between fear and hope.
Sasha grimaced. "It did something," she said. "Whether it did what we wanted, there's only one way to find out…"
"So. Um … how you doing over there?"
Fiona turned her impassive green eyes on Callie. "Fine. You?"
Callie looked down at the nearly five hundred meters of open air below her. Then she looked back up at her climbing harness and the slender cable attached to the railing ten meters above her.
"Oh, you know," she said, forcing herself to smile. "Just hanging around."
The other woman's eyes narrowed slightly and she looked away, saying nothing. Callie sighed. "Everyone's a critic," she muttered.
Normally Callie might not have bothered trying to get a reaction out of Fiona, but this op was making her nervous. She wasn't particularly afraid of heights, but there was something intimidating about hanging suspended inside one of the tower's support columns. The shaft ran from the base of the building all the way to its summit, a hollow tube twenty meters across and over 600 meters tall. Meter-thick walls of steel and spell-hardened concrete surrounded them on all sides, the surface far too smooth to climb without rappelling equipment. Sixteen storeys below them lay the landing for Viscount's emergency staircase, which spiraled down around the inside of the column to the exit on the fourth skyway level.
That staircase would have been the obvious way to reach Viscount's escape hatches, but because it was obvious, it was also trapped, warded, and monitored via camera. Brian had told them that he couldn't deal with all of the nasty little surprises down there while also looping the camera feeds and keeping the alarms from tripping, so they had decided to bypass the issue entirely by coming at the landing from above. Viscount's designers had apparently never seriously considered the possibility that someone might try to climb down from the fifth skyway to reach an escape hatch that had no visible handles, hinges, or weak spots.
Callie looked down again and fought off a wave of vertigo. There's probably a damned good reason for that, she told herself wryly. This has got to be the second-craziest thing you've ever done.
She turned back to Fiona. "Any word from Brian yet?"
"Negative." The woman's eyes grew distant for a minute, as if she were trying to do a difficult math problem in her head. "Elder Bakhtavar reports that her espers see no sign of the door opening yet."
"Got it." Callie hung there for another minute, thinking. She frowned as something occurred to her. "Hey, how come Sasha and Rebecca aren't in on this? I thought they were gonna be our eyes and ears for this op."
Fiona's mouth pressed into a thin line. "Change of plans. They were needed elsewhere."
Callie raised an eyebrow. "We're trying to pull off the biggest heist in the last five years, against the biggest organized crime outfit on the planet! What's more important than that?"
Fiona looked away. "The answer to that, apparently, is subject to … interpretation."
Callie's communicator beeped once, and Fiona's demeanor became instantly calm and detached. "It is time," she said.
Disengaging the locks on their climbing cables, Fiona and Callie rappelled down the side of the wall toward the landing. Callie felt a thrill of adrenaline coursing through her: hanging in one place wasn't her idea of a good time, but this was something she never got tired of.
As the hatch came into view below, Callie saw Brian peeking his head out and looking up at them. The hallway beyond the hatch was as dark as the shaft itself, but Callie's supernaturally-enhanced night vision allowed her to spot him without any trouble. He gave them a quick grin as they touched down and unhooked themselves from their climbing gear. Without a word, they followed him inside and headed for the vault.
Danni winced and put a hand to her head as a twinge of pain ran through her. She pressed her fingertips into her temples and rubbed in small circles, trying to dispel the feeling.
Jared glanced over at her from across the skimmer. “You okay, hon?” he asked.
She grunted noncommittally. “I’ve been getting this headache off and on for the last hour or so. Probably something to do with the Curse finally taking hold.”
His hand found hers and clasped it. “Should we go home?”
She shook her head and forced herself to smile. “No way. I want to see what this big surprise is that you’re planning. I took a painkiller before we left, so I should be fine in a few minutes.”
Danni could feel Jared take reassurance at her words, and he smiled and turned his eyes back to the freeway. She raised an eyebrow when he took the exit that led down to the Square; the only place down there that would be worth going to at this hour would be the Citadel itself.
“I hope we’re not planning a return trip to the Panoramic, because I am severely underdressed.”
Jared grinned. “I don’t know if underdressed is the right word. That dress you wore last time showed off a whole lot more than what you’re wearing now.”
Danni mock-punched his shoulder. “You know what I meant, pixy-wit.”
“I do,” he agreed. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t do that to you. I have something else in mind.”
They arrived at Street level and merged onto the eight-lane divided road that led toward the Citadel. The massive north face of the arcology rose up in front of them, swallowing the sky, and the entrance looked like a tunnel into the side of a mountain. They passed out of the darkness of the Street and entered a world where night never fell.
Though it looked as quiet and forbidding as a mountain from without, inside the Citadel was a beehive of activity. The transit tunnels were congested with one- and two-passenger electric vehicles, most of them using wheels instead of lift turbines. Skimmers were too large to be permitted in most of the Citadel’s passages, so they followed the signs to one of the twenty parking garages that filled the basement levels of the structure.
After parking, Jared opened the trunk and pulled out a large tote bag, about three decimeters wide and nine decimeters long. He slung it over his shoulder, then shut and locked the skimmer.
Danni eyed the bag with curiosity as they headed for the lift that would take them back to ground level. “Okay, I’ll bite. What is this, some kind of sports adventure date?”
Jared just gave her a mischievous look, as if to say Wouldn’t you like to know, and kept on walking.
The pedestrian areas at ground level were just as busy as the transit tunnels had been. A network of brightly-lit passageways connected high, domed chambers the size of skyball stadiums, all of them teeming with the Friday night crowds. Tiered walkways lined with shops ran around the outside walls of the chambers, rising four or five levels over open plazas decorated with fountains and well-tended gardens. Bands of street musicians performed wherever they could mark out the space to do so, and here and there impromptu dance parties took shape as the shoppers were drawn in by the music.
A grin had spread across Danni’s face before she even realized it. She scanned the crowds around her and saw members of every race and every sentient species, humans and lutins and Silvaan and two dozen different kinds of theriomorphs, all rubbing shoulders as they moved to the music of a dozen different cultures. It was the melting pot of Metamor City on a micro-scale, a tapestry of sentient life where differences of bloodline and ethnicity were swallowed up in a larger concept of “We.” For tonight, at least, those differences could be forgotten. The Citadel was alive, both figuratively and literally, and in the shelter of Majestrix Kyia her citizens were invited to share in the joy and delight that she felt for each and every one of them.
Jared and Danni walked through three of the domed chambers before coming to a main junction, where twenty lifts and two internal monorail lines provided access to distant parts of the Citadel. They boarded an express lift, and Jared pushed the button for a floor that was nearly at the summit of the central spire. Danni looked at the button, then back down at Jared’s tote bag. She smiled; she had a pretty good idea of where they were going now.
Her suspicions were confirmed a minute later. They reached their stop, the doors opened, and Jared led the way to a moving slidewalk labeled TO OVERLOOK PARK. It took nearly two minutes to traverse the distance, even on the slidewalk, but then the walls opened up around them and they stepped out into a world of green. Cobblestone paths wound through grassy hills, groves of trees, and gardens filled with flowers from all across the Empire. Birds and butterflies flitted here and there, and the sounds of birdsong filled the air. Hidden somewhere among the trees, Danni knew, there was even a large pond stocked with prize-winning koi, a gift from the emperor of Yamato. And beyond it all were the lights of Metamor City itself, visible through the massive transparent dome that was the Citadel’s most distinctive feature.
A gentle wind blew from somewhere, and Danni closed her eyes and breathed in the smell of pine trees and flower blossoms. I don’t get up here often enough, she thought. Overlook Park was as close to wilderness as you could find in Metamor City. Even Glen Avery, with its towering trees and Elven architecture, was ultimately a residential community; if you wanted to get lost in nature without straying too far from home, Overlook Park was without equal.
Jared brushed her hair aside and placed a gentle kiss on the back of her neck. “We’re almost there,” he said.
She turned and looked at him, running a loving hand down the side of his face. “Lead the way,” she said.
They were not the only couple in the park that night, but there was nothing like the crowds they had seen at ground level. Friday night was a night to party for most of Metamor’s young professional class; like Jared and Danni, those who came to the park at this hour were looking for a little privacy.
It was easy enough to find. Jared led her through a dense grove of woods to a secluded spot near the edge of the dome. The clearing looked out on the city below and was surrounded by trees on its other three sides. For all intents and purposes, they were completely alone.
“Look at that view,” Danni breathed, staring out at five layers of lights that surrounded the Square. It was a surreal feeling, standing here in the middle of a forest and looking out at the largest city in the world. They were more than a kilometer above the highest level of skyways, and from up here the skimmers looked like fireflies. “Makes you wonder if this is how the gods felt when they used to look down on us from the Nine Heavens.”
Jared opened the tote bag and removed a rolled-up blanket, which he spread out on the grass. To Danni’s surprise, he then also pulled out a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a basket containing cheese, fruit, crackers and cold cuts. The bag didn’t look nearly large enough to hold everything he’d had inside it. She suddenly noticed the logo on the side of the bag, and laughed.
“You have a Cornucopia bag?” she asked.
He shrugged modestly. “Just a small one. The internal capacity is about two cubic meters.”
Danni whistled. “Still pretty arc, though.”
Reaching inside the enchanted bag, Jared pulled out one more item: a portable stereo system, about three decimeters wide and two decimeters high. He set it on the grass beside the blanket and queued up a playlist. When the music began, Danni recognized the singer’s voice; it was the same local band they had heard playing at the Cellar a few weeks ago, on the first night Jared took her to his apartment.
On the first night they had made love.
Danni sat down beside him on the blanket and kissed him, slowly and tenderly. When they parted, he poured a glass of wine for each of them. They fed each other morsels of food from Jared’s picnic basket, laughing and talking in hushed tones while the music from the player mixed with the sounds of birdsong. On impulse, Danni took some wine into her mouth and then kissed Jared, letting her mouth become a chalice for him to drink from. Some of the wine trickled out of the corner of his mouth, running over his jaw and down the side of his neck. Danni giggled and licked it off of him before finding his lips once more.
When the picnic basket was mostly empty they sat back and cuddled up together, looking out at the city below. Jared’s hand found Danni’s, and she opened up a mindlink between them, letting her happiness and contentment radiate through their connection.
So, he asked. What do you think of our little mystery date?
She took a sip of wine, then leaned over to rest her head against his chest. She thought about her headache and realized it was gone, at least for the time being.
She closed her eyes and smiled. It’s perfect, she said.
“So. What do you think?” Brian asked.
The runner, Callie Linder, looked up at the vault and chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Always did love a challenge,” she murmured.
Physically, it resembled a top-of-the-line bank vault that one might see in any major city. The two-meter high door sported a large wheel-shaped handle in the center; Brian was familiar with the design, and he knew that the door was held in place by a solid wedge that ran along its full length from top to bottom. There were no bolts to slide tools between, no weak points that could be compromised; any attempt to force the door open would just tighten it further. Above the wheel were two combination dials, which could only be used after the proper authorization card had been entered in the electronic reader that stood to the right of the door.
It was arguably the best security that mundane technology could produce, but that wasn’t what worried Brian. He was far more concerned about the thin, glowing red lines that surrounded the vault door, weaving their way across the floor, walls and ceiling in intricate patterns. Moments ago, Callie had tossed some sort of fine, silvery powder into the air, and it had revealed the wards that stood between them and the vault’s physical defenses. Brian didn’t know much about reading spellweave, but what he saw looked decidedly unfriendly.
“All right,” he said. “Should we give you some space?”
Callie smirked. “You mean, ‘Will this kill us all if I screw up?’ ”
“The thought had crossed my mind, yes.”
She peered more closely at the lines of magic. “It doesn’t look like it,” she said. “I see an alarm spell, a strength-sapping curse, and a trigger for a binding spell. It looks like it’s designed to capture intruders alive and keep them helpless until the vamps arrive to deal with them.”
Fiona put her hands on her hips. “A killing curse would have been preferable.”
Brian suppressed a shudder, but he had to agree with Fiona. “What’s the range if it goes off?”
“About ten meters, from the looks of it,” Callie said.
Brian caught Fiona’s eye, and she nodded fractionally. “We’ll wait in the hall,” he said.
They stepped out of the vault’s antechamber and went fifteen meters down the hallway, just to be on the safe side. Brian took a seat in the chair at a nearby cubicle, while Fiona took up a watchful pose in the direction of the main entrance. He sent out a tendril of thought in her direction, trying to open up a mindlink, but her shields were up and she gave no sign that she had heard him.
He tried using speech instead. “Elder Bakhtavar asked for permission to talk to you yesterday,” he said quietly. “Did she find you?”
Fiona didn’t look at him, but after a moment she gave a sharp nod.
“Did she say anything useful?”
Another pause, longer this time. Just when Brian thought that she might never answer, Fiona spoke. “She said that there is a deep pain inside of me,” she said, her voice hoarse but steady. “Some injury that I have hidden from the world, yet it continues to … color my judgment.”
Brian nodded thoughtfully. “Is she right?”
Fiona lowered her head, though her back remained rigid. “I do not know,” she said. “I have been thinking back on my life, trying to recall some moment of trauma that might have had the effect she describes.” She hesitated, then added, “I have come to the realization that I do not remember much of my childhood before joining the Collective. This is … unsettling.”
Brian came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She tensed for a moment, but then relaxed against him. He slid his arms around her waist and rested his head against hers, saying nothing.
“I am sorry that I hurt Rebecca,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I know.”
“It was never my intention to bring discord into our family.”
He planted a soft kiss on her cheek. “I know.”
She covered his hands with hers, and opened a tiny thread of telepathic contact between them. She could not give voice to the fear inside her, but for an instant she lowered her defenses enough that Brian could see the image she held in her mind: a vast ocean, contained by walls of rock and iron, but so deep that no light could reach the bottom. Though the water’s surface was calm, he could sense the roiling currents underneath.
I do not know what I will find if I go down there, she said. The pressure, the cold, and the darkness … it is possible that I would not return.
You will return, Brian promised her. We won’t make you face this alone.
She shook her head slightly. In the end, we all face the mirror alone.
“Am I interrupting anything?”
Brian and Fiona turned to see Callie watching them, her fingertips glowing faintly in the dim light.
“Sorry, but I managed to hex down the wards and I’m not sure how long it’s going to last. Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better do it quick.”
They followed her back inside the antechamber, where Callie had drawn out a ritual spell-circle that had suppressed the vault’s magical defenses. Brian stepped carefully around it and went over to the electronic card reader. As he had hoped, the phony administrator-level access he had created for himself earlier was recognized by the vault, and a green light illuminated above the card slot.
“You’re up, Fi,” he said quietly.
Fiona nodded and stepped over to one of the two combination dials. Brian gestured to Callie to leave the room, and he walked out after her.
Callie looked back over her shoulder at Fiona, who was carefully turning the combination dial while pressing her ear against the vault door. “The tumblers in that thing are made of polyamide thermoplastic,” she told Brian. “They’re too quiet to hear when they click into position.”
“Not for Fiona,” Brian said. “She channels her psi power into her ears and fingertips to enhance their sensitivity. It’ll take some time, but she can crack it.”
“But not if you stand there talking about it,” Fiona said, her voice flat.
Brian smiled at her in apology and led Callie well out of earshot. They stopped just inside the main entrance, and Callie perched on a desk to wait.
“How long do you think it’ll take her?” she asked.
Brian shrugged. “It’ll take what it takes. We’ve got plenty of time. The wards shouldn’t reactivate as long as the vault thinks an authorized user is accessing it, right?”
“In theory,” she admitted. “Let’s just hope there isn’t some sort of time limit on how long you’re allowed to access it.”
Brian sat down to wait again, but after a few minutes he got up and started pacing. Fiona’s confession gnawed at the back of his mind, dragging his attention away from the mission. He regretted even bringing it up, and wished that he had a little more of Fiona’s ability to distance herself from her emotions.
“So what’s up with you and Fiona?”
Callie, apparently, was disturbingly perceptive for a mundane. “What do you mean?” Brian asked.
The runner tucked her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. “Look, you don’t gotta tell me if you don’t want to,” she said. “Client privilege and all that. But I’ve been trying to figure out how all of you are connected since this run started, and it’s driving me nuts. At first I figured you and ‘Becca were married, what with her having the kid on the way. Fiona and Sasha obviously share the apartment with you, and given that there’s only two bedrooms, I figure they’re married, too, or at least lovers. But now Sasha and Becks are suddenly off the mission, Fiona’s all tense about it, and I walk out and find you and her having a moment together.” She spread her arms. “Now, I don’t normally butt in on people’s personal lives, especially if they’re clients. But if I’ve gotten myself mixed up in some kind of … primetime romantic drama that’s about to go nova around me, I’d like to have a little advance warning.”
Brian lowered his head and turned away, hiding a private smile. Callie had seen more of the breeding cell than any mundane had in years, and she still hadn’t grasped the reality of it. Maybe she wasn’t as perceptive as he’d thought, though he supposed he couldn’t blame her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s nothing adulterous about what Fiona and I share. We’re not just flatmates; we’re all part of the same cell. Each of us belongs to the others. And nothing happens without all of us knowing about it and agreeing to it.”
She nodded slowly. He could tell she wasn’t quite sure that she grasped the whole situation, but she was willing to go with it for the time being. “Okay, so if you’re not cheating with each other, what’s got everybody so up tight?”
Brian sighed. “Fi and ‘Becca had an argument yesterday. We’re working through it, but it did bring up some things that Fi hadn’t realized about herself. We’re all willing to help her, but she’s never really taken well to needing help – hence the tension.”
"With her powers, I can see why," Callie said. "I'll bet she doesn't run into much that she can't handle."
“Not much, no,” Brian agreed. Only the things inside herself.
At the end of the hallway, Fiona came out of the anteroom and beckoned to them. They quickly closed the distance, and as they entered they found her spinning the wheel on the vault door. The wedge-lock disengaged, and she pulled the door open. Beyond the meter-thick barrier of concrete and steel, the interior of the vault was dark and forbidding. Fiona looked around inside.
“I don’t see a light switch,” she said, turning to look at them. “Hand me a—”
No sooner had she turned her back on the vault than a dark shape came rushing out and tackled her to the floor.
Chapter Seventeen
The bottle of wine was mostly gone now, and Jared and Danni lay back on the blanket together in their private corner of Overlook Park. With the exception of the observation dome, the ceiling had been glamered to resemble a blue sky spotted with clouds, and they watched and pointed out shapes to each other as the clouds blew past.
“So, what name did you decide on?” Jared asked idly.
“Mmm?”
“For your ID records. Now that you’re a woman, what did you pick for your full, official name?”
“Ah, yes.” Danni turned to rest her head on Jared’s chest while she ran her fingers in lazy circles over his stomach. “Well, I went with Danielle, of course, just to prevent any possible confusion. My middle name used to be Roger, which is both awful and has no female equivalent, so I replaced that completely.”
“With what?”
She looked up at him. “Phoenix,” she said. “Reborn from the ashes, that’s me.”
He smiled. “Danielle Phoenix Sharabi. I like it.”
She let out a contented little sound and tucked herself in closer to him. “This was such a good idea.”
“I’m glad you think so. Because I have a few more surprises for you, if you’re ready.”
Her curiosity piqued, she sat up and watched as he reached inside the tote bag again. He pulled out a small box, about a decimeter on each side and tied shut with white ribbons. He smiled almost shyly as he handed it to her.
“For you,” he said. “A little celebration of your official transition to womanhood. There’s actually three layers inside.”
With a flush of excitement, Danni untied the bow and opened the box. The first layer held a small silver locket; it was heart-shaped, and had Danni engraved on one side and Jared on the other. Inside were two tiny photos of them both.
“Ohh, Jared,” she said, “it’s beautiful!” She slipped it around her neck immediately, then kissed him. “Thank you!”
He grinned. “Two more layers,” he reminded her.
She pulled out the little tray that had held the locket, revealing two small pastilles that looked like chewable vitamins. She looked at the label on the wrapper and blinked in surprise. “Shimmer tabs?” she asked. “Jared, I don’t want you to do anything you’re not comfortable with…”
“It’s all right,” he said, taking her hands in his. “I did some checking on it. It really is legal, and the side effects are minimal. The only reason it’s listed as a Class B is because it makes it easier to read people’s minds.” He touched her cheek fondly. “I know you miss being able to be in a real gestalt when you make love. I do, too. This way, we’ll be able to, at least once. I’ll let you decide when the time is right.”
She looked into his eyes and saw the honesty there. He really did want to do this for her. Deeply touched, she took out the pastilles and handed one to Jared. “No time like the present,” she said.
He blushed and looked around. “Here? Now?”
She smiled wickedly. “Who’s gonna see us?” she asked, before slipping the tab under her tongue. It tasted sweet as it dissolved; she supposed that they probably used some kind of powdered sugar in the binding agent. “Come on, don’t tell me you haven’t been thinking about it since we got here.”
His blush deepened, but he gave in and took his own tab. While she waited for it to dissolve, she planted light kisses along his cheek and the side of his neck. Her hands found the buttons of his shirt and began undoing them.
“Mmm…”
“Danni?”
“Mm-hmm?”
“One more layer in the box.”
“Oh! Right, yes.” She giggled, and wondered exactly how much alcohol had been in that wine. “Okay, here we go, layer number three…”
At the bottom of the box was a smaller box, a velvet-lined clamshell case.
“Ohh, Jared,” she whispered, pulling it out of the box and cradling it in her hands. “Holy crap, Jared, is this what I think it is?”
She looked up and saw that he had changed positions. He was now on one knee in front of her.
“Danni,” he said, “I never thought I could be happy again the way you’ve made me happy these last few weeks. I know some people would say it’s too fast … but the way I see it, why would I want to wait?” He put his hands over hers, resting them on the lid of the box. “You’ve gotten into my heart in a way that I never would have dreamed possible … and I already can’t imagine my life without you.”
Then he opened the box, revealing an old-fashioned but frankly beautiful diamond ring. “Danielle Phoenix Sharabi, will you marry me?”
Danni was crying, and she wasn’t sure when it had started. She fingered the ring, reverently, and as her fingers made contact with Jared’s she picked up a mental image from him: Catherine, Jared’s first wife, pressing the ring into her hands and smiling at her.
“This—” She sniffled. “This was Catherine’s ring, wasn’t it?”
Jared nodded, and she felt a wave of uncertainty run through him. “Yes, it is,” he said. “Um … if that’s a problem, I—”
“What? No!” Danni took him in her arms and kissed him, hard. Then she wiped away her tears and sniffled again. “It’s perfect,” she insisted. “It’s like…” She picked up the ring and held it up in front of him. “It’s like, this is a part of you, right? Like a piece of your heart. And you gave it to Catherine. And when she died, it was like … like that piece of you was locked inside here, waiting.” She tried the ring on; it was a little loose, but it fit well enough for now. “And now she’s giving you to me,” she whispered.
Jared gently touched her chin and turned her face toward his. “Then that’s a yes?”
She laughed and tackled him, knocking him back onto the blanket. “Yes, silly, that’s a yes!” she said. She felt like her heart would burst from the joy inside her. “Yes, yes, now and forever, yes!”
“Fiona!”
Brian rushed forward to help, sudden fear running through him like ice water. Fiona’s psychometabolic powers could enhance her strength, her speed, or her senses, but she had a limited amount of psychic energy to distribute between them. She’d had all of her power pumped into her senses of hearing and touch in order to crack the safe, which meant that at the moment she was no stronger than a mundane.
Fortunately, where strength failed, training took over. As the dark figure struck her, Fiona went to her knees and reached up to grab her attacker’s clothes. She turned her fall into a combat throw, redirecting the attacker’s momentum and sending it flying over her shoulder. The figure tumbled three meters across the floor and came up to its feet almost instantly, but by that time Fiona was ready for it. They faced each other across the room, and for half a second Brian got a good look at the enemy.
The man wasn’t exceptionally tall, nor was he muscle-bound, but he was wiry and fast, and moved with a predator’s grace. He had been human once, a dark-haired Kitchlander in his mid-twenties, but his face was distorted by bloodlust into a feral look that no human could imitate. He grinned at Fiona, exposing long fangs, and his eyes glinted like a cat’s in the dim light.
Vampire. In that half-second before the creature could move again, Brian reached out with his electrokinesis and found a power conduit in the wall behind it. With as much strength as he could muster, he pulled on the current and summoned it to his outstretched hand. Lightning erupted from the wall and tore through the vamp’s body, flash-frying his hair into a puff of foul-smelling smoke. Brian caught the lightning bolt in his left hand and channeled it back toward the vamp with his right, shocking him again as the current reentered the wall behind him.
The bolt didn’t do as much as Brian had hoped it would. Vamps were normally vulnerable to fire, and he’d hoped to set this one’s clothes alight, but the nondescript black uniform wasn’t even smoldering. Must be flame-retardant fabric, he thought. The vamp must have fed recently, as well; his scalp looked like it had suffered a bad sunburn, but he showed no signs of being ready to burst into flames. Mostly, he just looked really pissed.
The vamp closed the distance with Brian in an instant, striking out at his throat with clawlike hands. Brian dodged, but couldn’t get out of the way completely, and he felt three lines of fire flash down his left arm. He gasped at the pain and stumbled backward, but he saw that his distraction had done its work: the vampire had taken its eyes off of Fiona to deal with Brian. She struck with a vicious kick that connected squarely with the side of him knee, snapping the tendons and sending the monster to the floor.
With an inhuman snarl, the vampire lunged for Fiona, but she danced quickly out of reach, wary of getting into a grapple with him. The vamp clambered away on his hands and one foot, spider-like, then braced himself against the wall and shook out his ruined leg. It snapped back into place, the tendons healing almost instantly. Fiona started to move toward him again to attack, but there was a blur of motion and suddenly he was pointing a pistol squarely at her chest. She came up short, hands held up in front of her. Her face was a mask, as usual, but Brian was pretty sure he knew what she was thinking: even she couldn’t dodge bullets, not when they were being fired by a creature as fast as this one.
Callie whistled softly. “Damn. They put you inside the vault? What kind of skag job is that?”
The vamp pointed at the Viscount logo on his shirt pocket. “Night watchman,” he said, flashing her that same predatory grin. He took a step toward her, sniffed, then took another step and sniffed again. His head cocked to one side like a wolf’s, and his grin broadened even further. “Heyyy, I know you. You’re that runner girl, ain’tcha? What’s the name … Linder? Callie Linder?”
Callie nodded once, her eyes wide.
“Well, ain’t you the lucky one.” He gestured to her. “Lie down on the floor with your hands behind your head and I'll let you live, runner. You've done good work for us in the past. No reason you have to die here.”
Brian looked over at Callie. The runner’s eyes were wide, and she bit her lip as she looked back and forth between the guard and Fiona. Finally she looked over at Brian, her expression apologetic. “Sounds like a deal to me,” she said softly. She stepped over to the opposite side of the room, as far from Brian as possible, and laid down on the floor as the vamp instructed.
“Smart girl,” the vamp said. Keeping his gun trained on Fiona, he edged over to Callie and put a pair of handcuffs on her. As he locked the second cuff into place, though, he glanced down at her and frowned.
“Hold it!” His clawed hand shot out and gripped Callie’s neck, pinning her to the ground. “You’ve got something in your hand, runner,” he snarled. “Give it here, now!”
“All right, all right damn it!” Callie yelped, sounding almost hysterical as the vampire’s grip tightened around her. “Here, take it! Take it!”
She opened her hand and released the object she had palmed, letting it roll to the floor in front of her. It was a soft yellow mass, roughly the same shape and consistency as a small hard-boiled egg. It had a single rune etched on its surface, which was glowing softly.
The guard released Callie’s neck and snatched up the object, peering at it closely. “What is this?”
Callie hesitated.
“Tell me what it is, or I’ll turn you myself,” he snarled. “Don’t think I’m not authorized to do it!”
The runner turned over on her side and looked up at him. Even if he hadn’t been a telepath, Brian would have been able to see her thoughts written on her face: No fucking way am I letting this guy turn me into his blood slave.
“I’m not gonna ask you again, runner.”
Callie winced and bowed her head. “Fuck,” she muttered. Then, more loudly, “It’s a reagent pod.”
The vamp smiled knowingly. “Ahh. Planning a little magic, eh, niblet?” He held up the pod in front of him and gave it a little shake as he peered at the glowing rune on its side. "And what sort of ‘gents do you have in here? Anything valuable?"
Callie glanced up at him, then lowered her head again. “Not really,” she admitted. ”Edra!”
The reagent pod burst open, releasing a cloud of fine yellow dust, and the sharp smell of garlic filled the air. The vampire doubled over, gagging and choking, as his skin broke out in a mass of angry red welts. His grip on the pistol slackened, and Brian called up an electromagnetic field that tore it out of his hand. He passed the gun quickly to Fiona, and with psi-enhanced senses she took aim and fired twice.
The bullets put out both of the vampire’s eyes and drilled two holes in the back of his skull, spraying blood and gray matter across the opposite wall. He fell to his knees, blinded and stunned, and Fiona moved in to grapple him. She dislocated the vampire’s hips with two brutal moves, then locked his arms behind him.
“Stake!” she shouted.
Brian pulled one from his belt and tossed it to her. With psi-enhanced strength, Fiona drove the sharpened length of wood between the vamp’s ribs and into his heart. Immediately the vampire went limp and fell to the floor, immobilized and as senseless as any other corpse.
Callie got up and dusted herself off, the handcuffs off of her wrists as quickly as they had gone on. “We’d better hurry,” she said. “Odds are he set off some kind of alarm before he attacked us. You've got maybe ten minutes to get out of here, tops.”
Brian nodded. Pulling out an electric torch, he headed for the vault, Fiona and Callie close behind him.
Fortunately, like all things associated with the vampire syndicate, the vault proved to be extremely well-organized. File cabinets lined both sides of the vault, and a long, narrow table in the middle of the room provided a space where files could be opened and examined. The far end of the room housed a computer terminal connected to a set of file servers. Brian examined the computers and quickly found that the network didn’t extend outside the room, but that was easily remedied.
He gestured at the file cabinets. “See if you can find any hard copies that look relevant. I’m going to run a cable from an outside line.”
Fiona nodded once, then pulled open the nearest cabinet and began scanning through the tabs.
Brian quickly located the spare network cables in a nearby storage closet and plugged one of them into the closest data jack he could find, in the first row of cubicles outside the antechamber. When he came back to the vault, he saw that Fiona had located the index for the file cabinets and was speed-reading through it, occasionally stopping to pull a file and set it on the table beside her. On the opposite side of the room Callie was opening cabinets and pulling out files at random, trusting to her uncanny luck. Both of them had high-resolution digital cameras ready to photograph anything that looked relevant.
Brian plugged the network cable into the terminal and used his phony administrator ID to log in. The SPECTIR stirred in interest and came over to the newly-connected servers, looking around for anything suspicious, but it had already tagged Brian as a friendly user and dismissed him from its mind. That left only the encryption on the files themselves, which they could worry about cracking later once they got out of here. Brian connected to a WorldNet server controlled by the Hive and began a rapid-fire transmission of all the data files on the vault’s computers, beginning with the night of May 26th and working forward. As the files began uploading he went over to the table and began helping Fiona and Callie photograph the hard files.
He couldn’t make much sense of what he was looking at, and he didn’t bother to try. They worked quickly and silently: pulling out files, photographing them, replacing them in the drawers as soon as they had been imaged. Brian kept an eye on his watch and an ear tuned to the office outside. Vampires were incredibly quiet, as the guard’s ambush of Fiona had demonstrated, but there was a good chance that they would at least hear the doors opening if the vamps were in a hurry.
Brian called time at six minutes. “That’s it. Pack it in,” he said. Going back to the terminal, he cut the connection to the Collective server, then put a finger in the computer’s data port and scrambled the machine’s history files with a thought. As he had promised Callie, he wouldn’t destroy of Viscount’s data, but this would at least keep them from finding out what he had taken or where it had been sent. He pulled out the network cable and quickly followed Fiona and Callie out of the vault. As soon as they were outside, Callie used a nondetection scroll to erase any forensic evidence of their presence. Silently, they fell into step behind Brian and headed for their exit point.
They were halfway there when Fiona grabbed Brian and dragged him behind a line of cubicles, a split second before a burst of gunfire tore through the hallway. Callie hit the floor next to them, stifling a curse.
Fiona answered the shots with three of her own, and Brian heard a clatter of office furniture as some of their assailants took cover. He chanced a quick look over the top of the cubicle and quickly ducked back down again. From the far side of the office, moving through a maze of cubicles, a Syndicate fire team was closing in on them.
“Are they out of there yet?”
“Not as yet.”
Sasha bit her lip. “This is taking longer than we thought it would.”
“Somewhat, yes,” Miriam Bakhtavar agreed, “but not overly so. Surely I don’t need to remind you that no mission ever goes precisely to plan.”
The Elder sounded far more at ease about that than Sasha felt. The younger teep gripped the phone more tightly and paced back and forth between the kitchen and the living room. With Brian and Fiona out of contact, the nest was feeling more like a cage.
“I know; I’m just not used to being stuck at home for them. C&C is supposed to be my job.” And instead I’m stuck here, waiting for some sign that our spell kicked in – all so I can go help ‘Becca rescue her boyfriend. Damn it, the timing on this couldn’t be worse.
“I understand how you feel, child,” Miriam said, “but there is little you could do even if you were here. The extraction team is already in position; as soon as we regain contact with Brian, we’ll move to pull them out.”
Another voice said something that Sasha couldn’t quite make out over the phone. “We’ve just received word that Brian has linked up to our server,” Miriam said. “The files are coming across as we speak.”
Sasha nodded, glad of the news, but the knot in her stomach didn’t unclench itself yet. She wouldn’t be able to relax until she knew that Brian and Fi were safe.
“Sasha?”
Sasha turned around and saw Rebecca waiting for her. She’d changed into street clothes and pulled her hair back into a ponytail.
“We’ve gotta go now,” ‘Becca said. “It’s starting.”
Jared Tamlin and Danni Sharabi made love in their secluded corner of Overlook Park, their minds and bodies joined as one. The Shimmer had temporarily amplified their telepathic sensitivity, and for the first time the two lovers had entered a true gestalt. Thoughts, emotions and memories intertwined freely, and together they rejoiced at the love, acceptance and sense of belonging that each of them had found in the other’s arms.
Neither of them realized that there was a third person who had been excluded from their bond. Somewhere deep inside the mind of Danni Sharabi, a tiny spark of ego that still thought of itself as Daniel was becoming worried.
Daniel hadn’t felt worried in quite some time. In truth, he wasn’t quite sure whether he had felt anything in quite some time. He felt like he had just been awakened from a dream, and he still wasn’t sure what the dream had been about or how long he had been asleep. Something outside of himself had grabbed hold of him and pulled him out of the dream, shaking him back into awareness. It wasn’t as jarring as, say, having a bucket of cold water poured on him, but the force tugging on him was relentless and insistent. Part of him thought that it might be easier to slip back into the dream and forget the outside world completely, but the force held him fast and refused to let him give up so easily.
As consciousness returned, Daniel found that he was aware of his body again, though he was not in control of it. From the way his body was moving and the sensations he felt, he knew that his female side was in control, and that she was making love to Jared. He had never thought of Danni as being a separate person from himself, but now it was obvious that that was exactly what she was. Daniel vaguely recalled someone telling him about that before, but he couldn’t quite seem to access the memory.
That wasn’t the only memory he was missing, either. He reached out for his past, for the experiences that had made him himself: the breeding cell where he grew up, his parents and siblings, his life in the crèche, even the trials and loneliness of the last year. The museum of his mind had been ransacked, the paintings and sculptures replaced with crude drawings. He didn’t need to ask where the memories had gone: Danni had taken them for her own.
Desperate for something to stabilize his sense of self, Daniel reached out for the one facet of his past that Danni left almost completely untouched: his relationship with Rebecca. He clung tightly to those memories, from their first meeting to their last kiss.
These are mine, he thought fiercely, as if daring Danni to try to take the memories away from him. Danni didn’t seem interested in contesting the point; she had Jared, which seemed to be all she wanted or needed.
More importantly, she had their body.
That thought sent tremors of fear running through Daniel. Danni, or the Danni-Jared group mind that now controlled both of their bodies, had buried Daniel inside his own mind, and buried their love for Rebecca along with him. He didn’t know how it was even possible, but Danni seemed to be cutting herself off from anything that would get in the way of her love for Jared – even if it meant trapping Daniel inside her forever.
Like hell, Daniel thought. He turned and shouted into their shared mind, with as much effort as he could manage. It’s my body too, Danni! You can’t just turn me off because I’m inconvenient. Damn it, I’ll fight you if I have to!
For a moment, Danni-Jared almost seemed to stop and listen to Daniel. Then another orgasm crashed through Danni’s body, and she did not think of anything for some time.
Fiona sent two more shots across the office of Viscount security. Brian heard one of the syndicate agents gurgle and stumble backwards, but Fiona shook her head as she darted back under cover.
“Missed the eyes,” she said. “One hit to the throat, but he’s still up.”
Brian grimaced. He’d been hoping that the vamps had sent their human ghouls to deal with the break-in, but obviously that wasn’t the case. He glanced over at the runner crouching beside him. “Got any more of those garlic bombs?”
“A couple,” Callie said, pulling out the soft yellow reagent pods. “You’ll have to hit ‘em dead-on to really knock ‘em out of commission, though.”
“Give one to Fi,” Brian said. “Between your luck and her skill, we ought to hit something. Here, both of you hold on to me. Wait for my signal and be ready to run.”
The runner’s eyes questioned him, but she didn’t protest. She linked hands with him and Fiona, and Brian put his finger to a nearby electrical socket. Taking command of the current, he sent his thoughts down into the power lines that crisscrossed the room. In moments he found the points of resistance, the fine wires and delicate circuitry that lay in every computer, every card reader, every single piece of advanced equipment in the office. Once he had found these vulnerable spots, he reached out and channeled the current into the weak points surrounding the vampires, concentrating the power in the places that were least able to handle it.
The response was nearly instantaneous. Computer consoles sparked and popped all over the office as the overheated circuits set fire to plastic and rubber. Countless tiny explosions joined into a deafening chorus, further adding to the confusion. Little clouds of smoke rose up all over the office, quickly spreading into a haze that filled the room. Printers burst into flame as they ignited the paper inside them, and those fires spread to the paperwork that littered the desks of the employees. Overhead sprinklers came on and doused the room in water, which added steam to the smoke and provided further concealment. The water also provided a new outlet for the current, and two vamps who had been standing too close to the computers were thrown back by the force of the electricity running through them. Brian kept an insulating barrier in place around himself, Fiona and Callie, forbidding the current from touching them.
The vamps fell back, wary of the fires that the sprinklers had yet to extinguish. Brian knew that the smoke and steam would confound their heat vision, and they would conserve their ammunition rather than risk emptying their clips into nothing. He squeezed Callie’s hand and sent a telepathic signal to her and Fiona: Now!
Brian rose to his feet and summoned a magnetic field, then pushed in the direction of the vamps. A wave of invisible force flew across the room, blasting down cubicle walls and sending a barrage of office equipment down on the vampires. Moving as one, he, Fiona and Callie turned and ran for the hallway that led to the emergency exit. Fiona paused at the entrance to the cross-corridor, took careful aim, and threw the garlic bomb at one of the vamps who was already crawling free from the wreckage. Callie chucked hers wildly into the haze a moment later. The resulting howls and retching noises told Brian that both bombs had hit their marks.
The fire had triggered Viscount’s evacuation protocols, and the blast door was already unlocked when they reached it. Brian opened the door a few centimeters, and immediately Miriam’s thoughts came rushing into his mind.
Brian! she said, both fright and relief evident in her telepathic voice. My espers show four more vampires guarding that exit. An image flashed in his mind, showing him the exact locations of the four gunmen. He passed the image along to Fiona and Callie. “Too many to take before they hit us,” he murmured.
“I have an idea,” Callie said. If she was surprised by having the picture shoved into her mind, she didn’t show it. “Stay close behind me and get ready to grab their guns with that magnet thing.”
The runner took two deep breaths, then put her shoulder to the blast door and shoved it open. An instant later a magic field sprang up around her, enveloping all three of them in glowing pink light. The vamps on the staircase and the landing below opened fire, but tiny white motes of energy danced through the air and struck the incoming bullets, deflecting them safely away.
The vamps hesitated, and in that instant Brian sent out his magnetic field, summoning their guns to his outstretched hands. Two of the vamps instinctively tried to hold on to their weapons and were carried into the air along with them, flying away from the landing and into the open air. He saw the look of horror in their eyes as he dispelled the field halfway before the guns reached him. They screamed as they fell into darkness.
Fiona took advantage of Callie’s shield by carefully lining up her shots against the two remaining vamps. Her bullets found eyes and kneecaps, blinding and disabling the undead soldiers. Before they could regenerate, she darted down the staircase and threw them bodily over the railing, sending them to join their comrades at the bottom of the 400-meter shaft. Brian shoved the blast door shut to slow down any pursuit from behind them, then followed Fiona and Callie down to the fourth-level exit tunnel and out of the tower.
Miriam had a getaway skimmer already waiting for them at the curb. They piled into the vehicle and raced off at breakneck speed, disappearing into the chaos of Metamor City traffic.
Chapter Eighteen
Sasha gritted her teeth and tried to focus on driving. Miriam had just sent her the images from outside Viscount Security Solutions: a team of vampires were going inside, with more watching the emergency exit. She tried to reach out for some sign of Brian or Fiona while the blast doors were open, but the reception area was shielded just like the outer walls and it acted as a sort of airlock against magical or psionic intrusion. The blast doors slid shut again, and Miriam’s espers lost the vision.
I should be there, she thought bitterly. I should be helping Brian and Fi get out of that damned office, not trying to rescue Daniel Sharabi from his own stupid decisions. Damn it, couldn’t Rebecca have waited a day to try this?
Rebecca gave her a hurt look. “I can hear you, you know,” she whispered.
Sasha winced. “Shit. I’m sorry, Becks. I didn’t want to send that.”
“Maybe not, but you still meant it.” She crossed her arms over her swollen belly. “Could you wait if it was Fiona in trouble? What if Jared figures out what he can do and learns how to control it? That happens, an’ we might never get Daniel back.”
Sasha reached up and fingered her crucifix. The thought of Fiona getting turned into something she wasn’t horrified her. She felt a fresh stirring of pity for Daniel.
Rebecca found her hand and clasped it. “I love Brian an’ Fi, too, but they’ve got Elder Bakhtavar and her team looking out for ‘em. Daniel’s got nobody except me.” She looked out the window at the buildings rushing past. “And I haven’t been there for him like I ought to.”
Sasha tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry, Rebecca. I’m with you on this – really.” She paused. “I just…”
“You’re afraid I’m choosing Daniel over our family,” Rebecca said, her voice quiet. “You’re afraid we’re gonna break up over this.”
“I’m not blaming you,” Sasha said quickly. “Not just you, anyway. I just … I’m thinking of all the things that could happen if we get Daniel back, and what it would mean for us if we do. I already know you’re not going to let him just go back to living without you.”
Rebecca shook her head, saying nothing.
“Right. So what’s that going to look like? There’s the four of us, and then you’ve got Daniel on the side? Is he going to be happy with that, just sleeping with you and never having any kids of his own? What happens to our children if you decide you want to live with him instead of us?”
Rebecca looked at her sharply, then hesitated. Sasha could tell that the reality of the situation was sinking in. “Daniel’s … an androgyne now,” she said, tentatively. “He changed so he’d have a place in the Collective, right? He could join us.”
Sasha grimaced. “That’s got its own set of problems, Becks. We still don’t even know if we can undo whatever Jared did to Danni. If she’s going to be part of the family, she has to be ready to commit her life to all of us, not just you. If she can’t do that – or if the rest of us can’t live with her – then it could tear us apart faster than if you’d just had an affair.”
Rebecca nodded heavily. “Yeah. I know.” She squeezed Sasha’s hand again. “Promise you’ll at least try?”
Sasha squeezed back. “Of course I will. I just … don’t want you to get your hopes up too much. If you do this, it isn’t going to be easy.”
“Nothing that matters ever is.”
Just then a sudden rush of thoughts broke into Miriam’s mind-link. Brian? Fi? Sasha asked.
They’re alive, Miriam said quickly. She sounded distracted. Hold on, Sasha. I need to help them get out.
The link went disconcertingly quiet. Sasha looked at the clock on the dashboard of the skimmer and started counting the seconds.
After two minutes and twenty-three seconds the link opened up again. She heard Miriam, Brian and Fiona, all of them sounding exhausted and relieved.
We did it, Sash, Brian said. The intel’s out. No casualties.
“Thank Eli,” Sasha whispered, wiping tears out of her eyes. She focused her thoughts again and added, We’re on our way to get Daniel now. ‘Becca thinks he’s ready to come out as soon as he gets a chance.
Fiona’s mind reached out and brushed tentatively against hers. Be careful, she said. Both of you.
Sasha returned the touch, sending a wordless assent back to her. Rebecca joined them a moment later and did likewise. They had so much to say to each other, so many things that needed to be set right, but they needed to do it face to face. By unspoken agreement, they let it rest for now.
See you back at the nest, Brian said. Then he and Fiona withdrew from the link.
Sasha turned her eyes to the Citadel looming before them. “One rescue, coming up,” she murmured.
Miriam took Brian, Fiona and Callie to the subway station at the east end of the Square. While they seemed to have made a clean getaway, they couldn’t be completely sure that the vampires weren’t following the skimmer. The station was a major transfer point for people traveling to and from the Citadel, which made it easy for them to disappear into the chaos of the Friday night crowds. Once they were certain they weren’t being followed, they put on disguise charms and boarded a train for home. Meanwhile, two of Miriam’s agents used their own charms to impersonate Brian and Fiona. Brian never saw them, but he knew that they would let themselves be seen boarding a long-distance train to Ainador. Vampires couldn’t survive in the Holy Land’s mana-dead terrain, so Miriam’s people would probably be safe from any reprisals.
“They must be awfully loyal to you to just uproot their lives like that,” Callie said.
Miriam chuckled. “Oh, they didn’t live in Metamor City, child. They’re friends of mine from the Yesulam Hive. I wasn’t born in Metamor, you know.”
The runner smirked. “With a name like Bakhtavar, I figured.” Leaning back in her chair, she turned to Brian and raised an eyebrow. “So. You ready to settle up?”
“Of course.” Brian pulled out his mobile phone and sent the text message that would order the transfer of a hundred and fifty thousand marks into Callie’s account. “Done,” he said. He offered a hand to her. “We couldn’t have gotten out of there without you, Callie. Thank you.”
Callie clasped his hand and grinned. “Hey, I couldn’t have gotten into there without you, so we’re even. Once Malcolm gets over wanting to kill me, this is going to do great things for my rep.”
“And how long will that take?” Miriam asked.
Callie shrugged. “Probably not too long. Two or three months, I’m guessing. Good runners are hard to find, and Malcolm’s not the type to let a grudge get in the way of business.”
Brian hoped she was right. The damage to Viscount’s office would be covered by their insurance company, but the damage to their reputation might linger for years. Clients would have a hard time believing in Viscount’s security systems when word got out that their home office had been cracked.
A chime sounded overhead, and a synth-voice spoke from the loudspeakers. ”Now approaching Morris and 29th.”
Callie got to her feet and turned to look at them. “This is my stop,” she said. “It’s been great working with you guys.”
Brian smiled. “Keep it on the bright side, Callie.”
She winked at him. “Thanks, but the bright side isn’t where I work.”
“Heh. I guess not.”
Callie’s eyes fell on Miriam, and her expression grew serious. “Good luck finding that girl,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically subdued. “Just be careful, okay? This Victor guy … I know his type. You take something away from him, he’s not gonna forget it.” The doors of the train slid open, and she stepped out onto the platform. There she hesitated, clenching her jaw, while people pressed past her on the way into or out of the car.
“Callie?” Brian asked.
A chime sounded, warning pedestrians to step away from the doors. She turned and looked back at them. “Felipe Deveraux didn’t kill your people. I never worked with him.”
Brian gaped at her. “What?”
But then the doors closed, and Callie stepped back out of the red zone. She locked eyes with Miriam and stared at her until the train pulled away from the station. Miriam sat back in her seat, visibly shaken.
“What is it, Elder?” Fiona asked. “What did she tell you?”
Miriam looked up at them. It took several seconds for her to find her voice. “She said … that Victor deceived everyone he ever worked with.” She swallowed. “And that we should kill him the first chance we get.”
Sasha stood with Rebecca at the entrance to the park, looking out at the stands of trees planted here and there throughout the enormous chamber. Lots of places to get lost in here, she thought. “Do you see them?”
Rebecca’s eyes glowed yellow, and after a moment she nodded. “That way,” she said, gesturing toward the transparent dome at the far end of the park. “They’re in a little clearing close to the edge. Looks like they’re already asleep.”
Sasha looked at the clock on her phone and almost laughed. She’d been expecting to stake out the area for a couple of hours, at least; it was only a quarter to one. “Wow,” she deadpanned. “Quite the endurance champ Danni’s got there.”
Rebecca grimaced, her eyes returning to normal. “Well, there’s a mostly-empty bottle of wine next to ‘em, and two empty wrappers for Shimmer tabs.”
“That would do it,” Sasha admitted. “Let’s do this before they sleep it off, then.”
They made their way across the park toward Danni and Jared’s hiding spot, Rebecca leading the way. When they got close, ’Becca gestured to the specific stand of trees, and Sasha went ahead without her. Her time with MID had trained her in how to move quickly and quietly in any terrain. A pair of sleeping psis was a lot easier to sneak up on than most of the things she’d faced on her missions.
She found Danni and Jared lying naked on a picnic blanket, Danni’s head pillowed on Jared’s chest. Neither of them stirred as she crept up beside them.
Now comes the hard part. Reaching out with her telepathy, she gently brushed against the minds of the two lovers. She waited there for a long moment, listening. Jared and Danni floated in a dreamless sleep, their thoughts calm and sluggish – but underneath the surface of Danni’s mind, a third voice stirred in response to Sasha’s touch.
Who…?
It’s me, Daniel, Sasha said.
The voice seemed to perk up at that. Sasha! Sasha could see thought patterns changing all over Danni’s brain, as Daniel’s submerged personality suddenly realized that it could take over.
Stay calm, Sasha commanded, putting a psi-compulsion behind the words. Jared’s right underneath you and we don’t want to wake him up.
She felt a sudden rush of confused emotions run through Daniel’s mind. Yeah, he said. Sasha, I think I’m going crazy. At first I was Danni, but now it’s like Danni’s this other person inside my head, and she’s been taking all my memories and leaving me locked inside her and—
I know, Sasha said. We’ll talk about it later, okay? For now, I want you to get up slowly, get your clothes on and follow me out of here. Rebecca’s waiting for you.
Rebecca? She – she came back for me? If Daniel had been in full control of his body at that moment, Sasha was sure he would have burst into tears. She pushed harder on his emotions, dampening them under the weight of raw telepathic force. She needed him calm and rational if they were going to get out of here without waking Jared.
Of course she did, you dummy. She loves you. Now get that body moving, for Eli’s sake!
Okay, just a sec. It doesn’t respond to me very well like this … I think I’ve gotta…
Before Sasha’s eyes, Danni’s body began to change. Her breasts shrank, her hips became slimmer, and her face became more androgynous. She opened her eyes and carefully got to her feet, her eyes on Jared the entire time. As she turned, Sasha saw that Danni — Daniel — was now at least technically male. He still looked very effeminate, though, especially since he was still wearing Danni’s makeup. In a dress, he could have passed for a flat-chested woman without any trouble.
You can’t change back more than that? Sasha asked, wondering how Rebecca would react to seeing him like this.
Daniel looked down and blushed. I … I probably could. He mouthed the words while he sent them; he was probably still feeling the effects of the alcohol, and Daniel had never been a strong teep in the first place. It’s just … I still need to fit into Danni’s clothes.
Sasha glanced at the scattered clothes and nodded, conceding the point. She began collecting garments and handing them to Daniel, who put them on as quickly and quietly as possible. If there’s anything you need at Jared’s place, we should get it tonight before he wakes up, Sasha said. I don’t think it’s safe for you to see him again.
Daniel looked at her sharply. You think he’d hurt me?
Not on purpose, no. But he has some kind of power over Danni, and we don’t understand what it is or how to block it.
I see. He pulled on his pants and shirt, then turned to look at her. I feel like I should be freaking out right now, but I’m not. Is that you?
She nodded.
Thank you.
Thank me by being faster, she said. It’s taking a lot out of me to keep this compulsion going. You’ve got a lot of emotions in there and they’re all screaming to get out.
Daniel winced. That doesn’t sound promising.
Would you rather I left you here?
Daniel looked down at Jared, then raised his own hand to look at it. A diamond engagement ring sparkled on his fourth finger. That’s … a complicated question, he said.
Sasha gaped. Blood of Eli! It was that serious?
Daniel pulled off the ring and held it up to the light, his expression torn. They really do love each other, he said, picking up the clamshell box and putting the ring inside. The trouble is, neither of them love me. He put the box next to Jared. He leaned in closely to look at the other man’s face, and Sasha saw in his eyes such longing and regret that she thought Daniel was going to kiss him good-bye. After a moment, though, he closed his eyes and turned away. Setting his jaw, he rose stiffly to his feet and strode to the edge of the clearing.
Let’s go, he said. While I still can.
Just as Sasha had promised, Rebecca was waiting for them on the other side of the trees. She rushed to embrace him, but he stopped her with an upraised hand and a shake of his head.
Her face fell. Daniel, she sent, sounding hurt and confused as she touched his mind.
He gestured over his shoulder. Not here, he said, mouthing the words. It was so hard to form the thoughts clearly enough to send them, but he didn’t dare speak aloud. It’s too close. The things I’d need to tell you … even Sasha won’t be able to keep me steady.
She bit her lip and nodded; she didn’t like it, but she understood. She turned and fell into step beside him as they fled the park.
They entered the express lift that would take them back down to the ground floor. Halfway down, a surge of sudden grief and fear rose up out of nowhere and wrapped its claws around Daniel’s heart. He staggered and fell back against the wall of the lift, unable to speak, hardly even able to breathe.
“Daniel!” Rebecca cried. Her terror surged through his mind, amplifying the crushing feeling in his chest.
“Damn it!” Sasha hissed. She grabbed his head in her hands and shoved her thoughts inside him, pushing down on his emotions with renewed effort. Gradually the pain faded, replaced by the dull numbness of Sasha’s mind control. That ought to have made him even more terrified, given what he’d been through the last few weeks, but he actually felt relieved.
He looked up at Sasha. Her eyes were bloodshot and a trickle of red ran from her nose. She took slow, deep, steady breaths as she kept her eyes fixed on him.
“Sorry,” she breathed, with the distracted air of someone performing ritual magic or handling high explosives. “Lost my hold on it for a second there.”
Daniel took a deep breath, then took her hand in his own. “Just hold me together long enough to get to the skimmer. ‘Becca, I need you to take down directions to Jared’s place.”
“We already know how to get there,” Rebecca said. She sounded like she was fighting back tears, too. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure we get all the stuff that’s important to you.”
Daniel thought of the engagement ring and fought back the feelings of loss that tried to seep through Sasha’s shield. “Thanks, Becks.” He turned back to Sasha. “Later, before we leave the condo … I’m going to need your help again. To … to write a letter.” He swallowed back the lump in his throat. “He deserves to know why. Can you do that for me?”
“I’ll try,” Sasha whispered.
He squeezed her hand and nodded. “Thank you.”
The lift doors chimed and slid open, revealing the ground floor lobby. Daniel rose unsteadily to his feet and got out, clutching Sasha’s hand on one side and Rebecca’s on the other.
The night life was still going strong in the Citadel’s plazas. No one paid them any attention as they made their way back to the lift for the parking garage. Once they reached Sasha’s skimmer, Rebecca opened the back door and got inside, gesturing for Daniel to follow. He did so, then looked back at Sasha. The whites of her eyes had turned completely red.
“All right,” he said, as Rebecca wrapped her arms around him. “You can let go now.”
She did so. Half a second later, his world collapsed.
“How’s it look?” Brian asked.
At the other end of the phone line, Nathan snorted. “Who knows?” he asked. “This is top-of-the-line crypto, man. It could be weeks before we even have a rough idea of what you recovered. Actually making sense of it all could take months.”
Brian sighed. “All right. Pull in everybody you can get on the decrypt. I figure every code-cracker in the Hive is going to want a piece of this one.”
“Wouldn’t bet against you,” Nate said. “I’ll see who I can dig up. The rest of the Collective may want in on this, too.”
“Great. Send it to the Yamato hive and let them start playing with it. Maybe by the time they call it a night I’ll have finally gotten some sleep.”
“Aye, aye, Captain. See you when the world turns.”
Brian rang off and turned to Miriam, who sat on one of the living room chairs with her hands in her lap and her eyes closed. “Any word from the Hive?” he asked.
She turned her head and looked at him, her eyes slowly coming into focus. “Yes,” she said. “Most of them are asleep, but those who have heard the news are greatly impressed. Even with the data still encrypted, the hard copies prove that the syndicate is developing a nanotech weapon of some kind. Once we know its purpose and specifications, we should be able to counter it.”
Fiona leaned back against the kitchen counter and crossed her arms. “What about the manufacturer?” she asked. “If they are crafting weapons to use against telepaths, then a reprisal would seem to be in order.”
Miriam sighed. “I don’t disagree, Fiona, but that isn’t our fight. I will pass the word to the Kitchlande hives and let them deal with the nanotech laboratory. They may find better ways of … persuading the lab to break its ties to the syndicate.” She smiled. “For you, the battle is over. You’ve more than proven yourselves to the rest of the Hive. It’s time for your cell to get back to doing what it was made to do.”
Fiona looked away from both of them. Her hand rose unconsciously toward her birth control amulet, then stopped halfway and lowered again.
Miriam rose to her feet. “And now, I think that I shall take my leave of you. I’m afraid this is well past my bedtime.”
Brian and Fiona bowed, and Miriam returned the gesture.
“Thank you for your help, Elder Bakhtavar,” Brian said. “It’s … good to know that there’s at least one person in the Hive’s leadership who hasn’t lost touch with her conscience.”
She gave him a rueful smile. “I should hope there is more than one, for all our sakes … but I do thank you for the compliment. Good night to you both.”
After Miriam had left, Fiona went over to the couch and sat down. She perched on the front half of the cushion, her back stiff. She stared out the window at the lights of the city and said nothing.
Brian turned on the phone again and called Sasha.
“We’ll be home soon,” she promised. “We’re at the condo getting Daniel’s things — or at least the important stuff. We’re going to have to leave a lot behind.”
“How’s he doing?”
There was a long pause. “He’s a mess, love,” she said, her voice full of pity. “Sobbing. Screaming. Clutching Rebecca like the world’s gonna end if he lets go. He’s apologizing a lot – mostly to her, I think, but to some other people, too. It’s hard to tell what he’s saying, a lot of the time.”
Brian frowned. “You can’t read his mind?”
“To be honest, I’ve been doing my best to stay away from him, at least mentally. I’m going to need all my strength to help him write his good-bye letter.”
Brian winced. “So, what? You left them in the skimmer and you’re loading the boxes by yourself?”
“Pretty much. It’s not that big a deal; we can’t fit that much in the trunk, anyway. Mostly it’s just a matter of hunting for the things Rebecca tells me he’ll want to keep.”
“Well, don’t stay there too long,” Brian said. “I’d rather replace some of his clothes than risk you being there when Jared gets back.”
“No kidding. I’ll call you when we’re ready to leave.”
“See you soon, love.”
“You too.” Sasha paused. “Is Fiona there?”
Brian looked up to see Fiona standing in front of him, hand outstretched. “Just a second.” He handed her the phone.
Fiona raised the phone to her ear. Her eyes drifted to Brian, then to the hallway leading to the bedrooms, then back to Brian. At last she spoke, apparently deciding to stay where she was. “Hello, love,” she said softly.
Brian was still close enough to hear Sasha’s voice through the phone speaker. “Hey, Fi. I, uh … I guess I don’t have much to say that can’t wait until later. After that mission, I just wanted to hear your voice.”
Fiona closed her eyes. “And I yours,” she said. She paused, then opened her eyes, looking straight at Brian. “I have a problem, Sasha.”
Normally, that was the sort of straight line that Sasha would have gleefully grabbed hold of, but she wasn’t joking tonight. “What is it, love?”
Fiona reached up and touched her birth control amulet. “Fear,” she said.
The line went silent for a moment.
“Tell me about the fear,” Sasha said at last.
Fiona glanced at the clock on the stove. “I will,” she said. “But later. You need to finish your work there and come home.” She looked down at the floor. “And then I promise to tell you.”
Brian’s heart swelled then with sudden pride. When Fiona had said her good-byes and turned off the phone, he took her in his arms and held her tightly.
“That was brave of you,” he said, his voice warm with approval.
She huffed a quiet laugh. “Amusing, isn’t it? How honesty can require more bravery than a firefight.”
Brian kissed her. “Just a different kind of bravery,” he said. “You can do this, Fi. We’ll help you.”
She nodded, but didn’t look completely convinced. “I can’t take off the amulet,” she said. “Not yet. These … feelings of mine are not going to go away just because I acknowledge them.”
“Of course not,” Brian said. He reached up and placed his hand over her chest. “You can keep this for as long as you feel you need to. Sasha will have our next child, and that’ll give you another six months to work this out.” He shrugged. “And if you’re not ready by then, we can wait.”
She placed her hand over his, then leaned in and kissed him again. “I appreciate your faith,” she said. “You must be taking lessons from Sasha.”
He chuckled. “I’m a long way from having Sasha’s faith,” he said. “Eli and I still have some trust issues.” He reached up and caressed her cheek. “But faith in you? That’s easy.”
Dear Jared,
I think that writing this may be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I wish I didn’t have to. I wish there were some other way. But then, the Fates have never really shown much interest in what I wanted, so why should now be any different?
I was such a fool. I had no idea what the Curse would do to me – how much it would change me. Evan and Eva make it look easy, but it’s not. Eva warned me that I would be two different people, but I never really understood that until now.
Danni loves you – she really, truly does. But Danni’s only half of who I am. This me, the Daniel me – that’s the other half. And between you and Danni, there wasn’t any room for me.
I know you said that it didn’t bother you, but I don’t think you knew what dating an androgyne actually means. You can’t just take one of us and expect the other to go away. I would have been like a brother to you, but you didn’t want me – you just wanted Danni, always and forever. And you can’t have her that way. Danni’s stronger than me, and most of the time she can shut me up – but if she spends all her time fighting me, she’ll never be at peace. We’ll never be a whole person.
That’s why I have to go. If I could leave Danni with you, believe me, I would — but we’re stuck together, and we always will be. So I’m going, until she and I can figure out how to live together – how to find a life that both of us can share.
I’m not going back to the apartment; please don’t try to find me. I’ve got to work this out, and I’ll never be able to do that if you’re here.
Good-bye, Jared. I am truly sorry. I wish to the gods that things were different.
—Daniel
Chapter Nineteen
By the time they reached the nest, Daniel could cry no longer. The pain and grief and guilt had burned themselves out in one terrible firestorm of emotion, leaving him numb and exhausted. There was nothing left but a dull ache, and the sickening dread of what tomorrow would bring.
Sasha went up to the nest ahead of them. She was already deep in conversation with Fiona and Brian when Daniel and Rebecca reached the door. They fell silent as Daniel entered, their eyes following him as Rebecca helped him across the kitchen and down the hall to the second bedroom. Daniel didn’t look at them as he went past. He didn’t want to see Sasha’s pity, or Brian’s shock, or Fiona’s suspicion. His pathetic telepathic talents, temporarily boosted by the effects of the Shimmer, already told him more than he wanted to know.
Daniel slipped off Danni’s shoes and fell onto the bed without a word. He was so, so tired. He wanted to bury himself under the covers and wait for everything to stop. To stop hurting, stop thinking, stop feeling … to just stop. Oblivion would be preferable to facing the consequences of his own fucked-up choices.
But then he remembered what oblivion had felt like, and the fear fell over him like a blanket of ice. He remembered being trapped in the empty museum of his mind, where Danni had stolen his memories and left him with almost nothing of himself to hold on to. He shuddered. Some things, it seemed, were worse than living.
Rebecca clambered onto the bed behind him, wrapping her arm around him as her pregnant belly pressed against his back. At the same time her mind wrapped around his, gentle thoughts running over him like cool water. He closed his eyes and sighed, placing his hand over hers where it touched his chest. Her fingers spread open and intertwined with his, the way they had a thousand times before. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like.
“Rest,” Rebecca whispered. “Just rest now. It’s gonna be all right.”
“…I’m afraid,” Daniel said, after a moment. “Afraid that if I go to sleep I’m going to lose you again. That she’ll take control.”
“She won’t,” Rebecca said, her voice soft and gentle. “It’s all about who wants it more, right? Who wants to be here?”
Daniel nodded. “That’s what Eva told me.”
She kissed the back of his neck. “Then rest in me,” she said. “I’ll stay here and keep you safe. Sleep now, and know that I’ll be here when you wake up.” Her arm held him closer, and her hand turned to clasp his. “That’s enough to make you come back to me, isn’t it?”
Daniel squeezed her hand and let his thoughts open up to her, welcoming her presence in his mind. He breathed in her scent, and in spite of everything his body began to relax. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
“Always,” he whispered, as he closed his eyes again and let himself drift into darkness. “Always.”
Brian sat with Sasha and Fiona around the kitchen table. His eyes strayed to the door of the second bedroom before turning back to his cell-mates.
“This is a problem,” he said.
Sasha smirked, but there wasn’t much humor in the expression. “No kidding.”
“Actually,” Fiona said, “it is several problems.” She raised a hand and began counting off points on her fingers. “What shall we do about Rebecca and Daniel? Can anything be done about the rift between Daniel’s personalities? And, most importantly, what shall we do with the knowledge that there is a man with the power to change people’s souls?”
Brian took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Priority One is figuring out if we can help Daniel. We need to know if whatever Jared did to Danni is permanent, or if it only lasts as long as she’s in contact with him. If it is permanent, we need to know if there’s any way to reverse it.”
Sasha raised her eyebrows. “I don’t suppose we want to bring the Hive in on this.” She didn’t look enthusiastic about the idea.
Brian shook his head. “Out of the question. If the Hive knew what Jared can do, they’d try to turn him into a weapon. And then they’d start testing every other teep in the Collective to find more people who can do what he does. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the idea of the Hive getting its hands on the power to change the minds of anyone who disagrees with them.”
Sasha shuddered. Fiona looked like she’d swallowed something unpleasant. “A year ago, I would have disagreed with you,” she admitted. “An ability of this sort would be a powerful tool to protect us from the mundanes.” She shook her head fractionally. “But in light of recent events, I doubt that we would use such a tool responsibly. It must remain secret.”
“What about Elder Bakhtavar?” Sasha asked. “She knows that something happened to change Daniel. She knows we were going to rescue him. Even if she hasn’t read our minds, she’s smart enough to put the pieces together.”
“Maybe,” Brian said. “But she’s as wary of the rest of the Hive as we are, and she’s strong enough to keep this to herself. I expect that she’ll talk to us about it at some point, but I don’t think we should look to her for any help in the short term. She’s got enough to worry about, just trying to find Victor and this girl he took.”
Silence fell over the table as they considered that. All of them had admired Victor hin’Kavos during their years of service with MID. He was their mentor, after all; he had taught them more about covert ops than any other single person they knew. With what Miriam had told them, though, it had become obvious that he was not the man they’d believed him to be.
“We should offer to help her,” Sasha said, her expression troubled. “To think that he took one of his own students…” She reached up and clasped her crucifix, as her eyes went distant.
Brian put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m worried for her, too, Sasha, but we’ve got enough problems of our own to deal with. Miriam has plenty of resources to draw on. She doesn’t need us.”
“Besides,” Fiona added, “if Victor is the threat that Miriam believes him to be, it would be unwise to draw his attention to our family.”
“Agreed,” Brian said. He looked back at Sasha and squeezed her shoulder. “We’ve played the hero enough for one year. If Miriam does come to you for help on this, just tell her that we asked you not to get involved, all right?”
Sasha didn’t look convinced, but she sighed and nodded. “All right. I guess we do have enough on our plates already. You got a plan in mind to help Daniel?”
“More of an idea than a plan. What do you think about taking him to that wizard, Artax?”
Sasha let out a humorless laugh. “I think the guy is a creepy old lecher … but he knows his stuff. He’s been wrapped up in this from the beginning, so if anybody’s gonna be able to figure out what’s wrong with Danni, it’ll be him.”
Brian looked to Fiona. “Any thoughts, Fi?”
Fiona shook her head. “I haven’t met him, so I have nothing useful to add. I dislike the idea of involving a mundane in our problems, but it does have one advantage: his kind have as much to fear as we do if the truth of Jared’s talent should become known.”
Brian nodded. “All right, then. Tomorrow I’ll get started on this decrypt for the Viscount files, and Sasha and Becks can take Daniel off to see the wizard.”
“Sounds good.” Sasha reached a hand across the table to Fiona. “Which leaves just one more thing to deal with,” she said, gently.
Fiona took her hand and looked into her eyes. After a long moment she looked away. “Yes,” she said. “But that can wait for now. I would prefer to have a good night’s sleep before I begin … dissecting my past.”
Sasha’s grip tightened against Fiona’s. “All right,” she said. “But we’re going to start tomorrow, as soon as I get back from taking Daniel to see Artax. I’ll do whatever I can to help you, Fi, but you’ve gotta be willing to open up to me. The healing starts when you decide it starts.”
Fiona closed her eyes and gave one brief nod. “I understand.”
Brian reached out his hand and covered both of theirs. “Let’s get some sleep,” he said. “Our problems can wait a few hours.” He gave them half a smile. “They’ll still be waiting for us in the morning.”
They rose as one and headed for the master bedroom. “They always are,” Sasha said.
Captain Egan Hunter was getting really, really sick of the lower levels of Metamor City. The psi-op had spent the last three weeks trudging through the worst neighborhoods the city had to offer, looking for leads on the whereabouts of Victor hin’Kavos and Abbey Preston. It was an exercise that would try the patience of the Prophet herself.
For one thing, it was always dark down here. The towers got wider the closer they got to the ground, so more than half of the neighborhoods were actually inside – and even when you were outside, the walls always felt like they were closing you in. It was dirty, too; with fifteen million people and four layers of skyways overhead, every piece of filth you could imagine washed down to the Street sooner or later. And then there were the people; gods, don’t even get him started on the people. They were twitchy, and nasty, and they smelled bad, and they hated to see guys like Egan come around asking questions. Especially dangerous questions, like whether they knew where to find a former government operative-turned-mercenary or the teenage girl who was running with him.
Fortunately, Egan didn’t actually need them to answer the questions most of the time. As a Level 10 telepath, he could usually pluck the answers out of their heads as soon as he asked the questions. Some of them required a bit more … persuasion to open up, but Egan had plenty of experience with that, too. He’d worked Counterintelligence for the MID for the last ten years, looking for leaks and traitors inside the Empire’s top spy agency. There was no one better suited to resisting interrogation than an MID operative – and no one better suited to finding a rogue operative than Egan Hunter.
Especially this rogue operative. Egan and Victor had been roommates at Westfall and graduated together back in 1980. They’d served together for five years in psi-ops before Egan was pulled for CI duty, partied together, trained together, chased the same women together. Egan wasn’t sure he ever would have called Victor a friend – Victor had never been the sort of guy you could get close to – but he probably knew the man better than anyone else in the Collective.
For that reason, more than anything else, Elder Bakhtavar had tapped him to help find Victor and close this pathetic little chapter of Hive incompetence. Victor had played them all for suckers, and Egan suspected that was the real reason the Elder was so eager to find him. The old lady probably just hated to look like a fool.
Fortunately, she was paying him very well to cover her ass for her. Egan hadn’t gotten this sort of cash in his discretionary account since—
No. Don’t think about that. Just don’t go there, man. Leave it the hell alone.
Egan looked up at the building in front of him and grimaced. Another trashy, low-rent apartment complex built into the side of a tower. He was on the first skyway level, not the Street, so it wasn’t quite the slums, but it was a long way from being one of the nicer parts of the level. He looked at the crumbling red brick facade and imagined what the place must smell like.
He pulled out his phone and dialed a number. Someone answered on the second ring. “Yeh?”
“Mackie, are you sure about this address? I wouldn’t let my dog spend the night in this trash heap.”
“Look, guvnah, wha’ ye do wit yeh dog is y’own bidness, roight? Don’ concern me one way or another. You asks, ‘Mackie, where can I find dis here bloke an’ his bird,’ roight? So as I put out the word, so t’speak, an’ I hears back, ‘Dey’s stayin’ at dis here buildin’.’ Den I passes the word back to yeh, don’t I? But Mackie doesn’ vouch for the … the// veracity of the source. I only knows what I hears.”
Egan rolled his eyes and sighed. “All right, fine. Thanks again, Mackie.”
“Keep it on the bright side, guvnah.” His phone beeped as Mackie rang off.
Egan looked at the apartment complex closely. Since it was half-built into the side of the tower, all of the windows faced in one direction, directly out toward the skyway. Likewise, there was one entrance from the outside – no doubt there was an entrance on the tower side, too, but they could always pull the tower’s internal security feed to watch that end. On the whole, it wouldn’t be a terribly hard building to do surveillance on; all he needed was a good vantage point.
He found it on the opposite side of the skyway, where a cheap hotel sat facing the apartments across the street. It was after two in the morning, but the light on the hotel sign still read VACANCY, so he went up to the security window and pushed the call button.
The night manager’s face appeared behind the bulletproof glass a moment later. “Whatcha want?”
“I need a room with a window,” Egan said. He didn’t bother to add that it needed to face the skyway; all the windows in this dump were facing the same direction. “Gonna need it for a while; maybe two or three nights, maybe longer.”
The night manager looked at Egan, looked behind him, and frowned. “Just you?”
Egan spread his hands, as if to say, I’m the only one here, dipshit. The man grunted, then rustled through some papers that were lying outside Egan’s line of sight. The guy was nervous, just like everybody else Egan dealt with down here. Everybody was afraid that someone was going to poke into their pathetic mundy lives and discover their dirty little mundy secrets – like Egan gave a rat’s ass if this guy was dealing drugs, or fucking his neighbor’s wife. Egan kept out of the guy’s mind; he didn’t want to know what was in there. Rooting around in the heads of bottom-feeders always made him feel like he needed a shower.
Finally the night manager turned back to Egan. “Rate’s fifty marks a night,” he said, “or two-fifty for the week. You pay cash, and you pay up front, before three o’clock in the afternoon, or I throw your crap over the edge of the skyway.”
Egan resisted the urge to glare at him. For a place like this, the rate was outrageous, but it wasn’t like it was his money anyway. He pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket and peeled off five twenties, then put them inside the box under the window. After he closed the box, he heard the man unlatch it on the other side and pull out the money. A moment later he held up a room key in front of the window, then put it inside the box. Egan took it and looked at the number; it was on the third floor, which would give him a good vantage point on the apartment where Victor and Abbey were reportedly staying.
The front door buzzed as the lock disengaged. Egan pushed his way inside, then bypassed the dingy-looking elevator and took an equally dingy-looking set of stairs up to the third floor.
The lighting was sparse in the long hallway. Most of the bulbs seemed to be underpowered, and a few of them had burned out and hadn’t been replaced. The carpet frayed at the edges and the baseboard badly needed a new paint job. The wallpaper was starting to peel at the seams. Gods, this place is a rat hole. Egan had seen better-looking places at Street level. Not many, granted, but a few.
As he walked toward his room, he pulled out his phone and called Elder Bakhtavar. She didn’t answer – not surprising, given how late it was, but he did have his orders. A single beep told him that the voicemail service had picked up.
“Elder, this is Agent Hunter,” Egan said. “I got a tip that Victor’s holed up in an apartment on the first level.” He pulled out his small notepad and read off the address Mackie had given him. “No visual yet, but I’m setting up surveillance now. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything further. Hunter out.”
He put away the phone just as he reached the door to his assigned room. He unlocked it and pushed his way inside. The door gave a loud creak as it swung open and shut.
The room was dark, with only a little light creeping in from the skyway lamps outside. Egan groped for the light switch, found it, and flipped it on.
Nothing happened.
“Prophet Fucking Starchild!” Egan snarled, slamming his fist against the wall in exasperation. He turned to the door, intending to go back and give the night manager a piece of his mind.
An invisible force picked him up and flung him into the bathroom. He hit the wall and then fell on top of the toilet.
“Ow! Fuck!”
The door to the bathroom swung shut, leaving him in darkness – but it was the silence that frightened him. A Level 10 teep lived with a constant background hum, all the thoughts and emotions of the people around him. Egan had stopped noticing it a long time ago, but when it was taken away, the resulting lack of noise was unsettling. He pulled out his gun.
Then the door briefly swung open and shut again, and there was something else in the room with him. Not a human mind – or if it was, it wasn’t a sane one. The thoughts were all fragmented, disjointed, incomprehensible. He tried to reach out and grab that mind, tried to bend it to his will, but there was nothing there that he could get a hold on. Every thought that his mind touched was incomplete, and every compulsion he sent into that mind seemed to bounce right off of it.
It had been a long time since Egan had been truly afraid. He’d gotten used to his powers and his skills as an operative seeing him through most situations without too much trouble. Now, with his senses blinded and his powers seemingly useless, he reacted like a cornered animal. He pointed his gun in the direction of the thing whose mind he couldn’t read and squeezed off three shots.
The sound of the gunshots was deafening in the enclosed space. He’d seen someone standing in front of him in the light of the muzzle flash, but the image was there and gone before he could identify it. His ears rang with the sound of the blasts, and he wondered how much damage he’d done.
Then the figure in front of him laughed.
“Really, Egan. Has that ever worked?”
Ice water ran down Egan’s spine. “Fuck,” he whispered. “No way. No fucking way.”
The light switch flipped on, filling the room with the sickly glow of a fluorescent tube. Egan immediately noticed the lead blankets that had been nailed to the door, walls, floor, and ceiling of the tiny room – a cheap and very effective way of shutting down a teep’s abilities. Egan was much less worried about that, though, than about the man standing in front of him.
Victor held the bullets in front of him, suspended in midair in his PK shield. He gestured, and they fell softly to the floor while the gun twisted itself out of Egan’s grasp.
Panicked, Egan hit Victor with the strongest mind blast he could muster. The teek didn’t even flinch.
“What the fuck did you do to yourself?” Egan gasped. “You were never good enough to block me.”
“Things change, Egan.” Victor raised a hand, and Egan was lifted off the toilet and slammed up against the wall. Victor held him there without any apparent effort, the invisible fingers of his telekinesis gently wrapping themselves around Egan’s throat.
In spite of his fear, a part of Egan admired Victor’s skill in setting up the trap. It was obvious, in retrospect: the whole thing had been a false trail from the beginning. Mackie, the night manager, the gods-damned hotel with its all-too-convenient location – all of it designed to lure Egan here. It was the sort of sting Egan might have pulled on a suspected traitor in MID, using his own knowledge of the agent’s habits and techniques to create a trap he would walk into blindly.
It was almost funny, really. Egan had been given this job because he knew Victor better than anyone. He’d never stopped to consider how well Victor knew him.
“Now, then,” Victor said. “I’d love to stay and catch up on old times, Egan, but I’m in kind of a hurry so we’re going to have to cut this short. I already know that the Hive as a whole isn’t looking for me, which means someone is running this operation on the side. You’re going to tell me who sent you, and who else they’ve put on this assignment.”
Egan spat in his face. “Fuck you, Vic,” he said. “You’re just gonna kill me anyway. We both know that’s how you operate, right? I’m not telling you shit.”
Victor gave him a patronizing smile. “Allow me to clarify,” he said. “You are going to die, Egan. You’re right about that. But, see, what you should be asking yourself is how you want to die.” He gestured at the side of Egan’s head. “I could pinch a few cranial arteries … hold them shut for, oh, maybe thirty seconds … and you’d just … go to sleep. Quick, easy, and painless.” He pulled a combat knife from its sheath, then placed its point gently over Egan’s crotch. “On the other hand, if you don’t cooperate … I can stop blood flow in lots of other places, too.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve always wondered exactly how many pieces you could cut a man into before he’d finally die. They never let me try it in MID, but, hey – what’s a little experimentation between friends, right?”
He leaned in close, a predator’s grin on his face. “So, what do you say, Egan? You can satisfy my curiosity in one way…” He twisted the knife slightly, until the point was pressing against Egan’s skin. “…or another. The choice is really up to you.”
Chapter Twenty
Saturday, June 22.
Daniel awoke feeling oddly constricted. His sleep-fuzzed brain struggled to remember why this would be, until he opened his eyes and looked down at himself. His body had changed back to its usual masculine shape, which didn’t go well with the woman’s jeans he was currently crammed into. The baby-doll t-shirt Danni had been wearing wasn’t much better.
Wincing, Daniel peeled off the ill-fitting clothes, then lay back on the bed, gazing up at the ceiling. He hoped that Sasha had brought something from the condo that would still fit him; Brian’s clothes wouldn’t come close to fitting right.
Rebecca stirred beside him, mumbling. He looked over at her and smiled. Nestling in close beside her, he brushed the hair away from her neck and kissed it gently.
“You stayed,” he said.
She turned over onto her back to face him. His heart swelled at the sight of those sleepy, love-filled eyes looking at him again. How many times had he woken her up and seen that look?
“‘Course I did, dummy,” she said, then yawned. “I said I would, didn’t I?”
“I guess you did.” He leaned in to kiss her lips; she responded, but then broke off the kiss a second later and turned away, her expression troubled. Daniel immediately felt guilty.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Rebecca nodded distractedly, saying nothing. Her hand strayed down to her pregnant belly. Daniel could sense the unborn girl waking up as her mother touched her mind. Brian’s girl.
Daniel turned and swung his legs over the opposite side of the bed, putting his head in his hands. “I guess we can’t just stay here and hope our problems won’t find us.”
“Never works,” Rebecca agreed morosely.
“Got anything for me to wear?”
She nodded. “Sasha was supposed to get some stuff. Help me get up and I’ll go look for it.”
He came around to her side of the bed and took her hand, bracing her as she pulled herself up. As their skin touched, he felt ‘Becca’s own conflicted desires and the huge amount of self-control she was using to push down her longing for Daniel. She held thoughts of her love for Brian, Fiona and Sasha in her mind, cycling through them in an endless litany to keep her mind off of Daniel’s naked body. He caught her eyes for a moment; both of them blushed, but neither of them said anything.
Rebecca left and came back with a pile of clothes, a bathrobe and a towel. She kept her eyes averted as he put on the robe and went to the bathroom to shower. When he came out twenty minutes later, Becca was sitting at the kitchen table with Fiona and Brian, doodling on her napkin while she stared at the remains of her breakfast. Sasha stood behind the kitchen counter, next to a plate with two eggs over medium, two slices of whole-wheat toast, and a side of extra-crispy bacon.
The little blonde teep forced a smile. “Did I get it right?” she asked.
“Read my mind,” Daniel said, giving her a smile that felt equally fake. “Thanks, Sasha.”
She nodded. “Juice is on the table, coffee’s brewing. You can take my seat.”
Daniel took the plate and sat down between Rebecca and Fiona. He poured a glass of orange juice, took a sip, set it down again. He looked up.
Fiona, Brian and Sasha were all looking at him. Fi was as unreadable as ever, and Sash looked like she’d rather be anywhere else right now. But it was Brian’s eyes that Daniel had the hardest time meeting – not because Brian was angry, but because he wasn’t.
Five years in MID had brought out a side of Brian that Daniel never would have expected in their high school days. His experiences had turned Brian into a leader and a warrior, one who was harder and stronger than anyone could have imagined. That was the person Daniel had expected to find waiting for him at the kitchen table. But when he looked up at Brian now, he saw the kind, geeky friend who had cheered at all his games, helped him get through calculus, and envied the way the girls drooled over Daniel’s perfect body. He saw the friend who had wanted what Daniel had without resenting him for having it – the friend who had, eventually, gotten all of the things that Daniel had.
Even Daniel’s girl.
Daniel looked into his friend’s eyes and saw pity for what he had become – and guilt, that he had benefited at Daniel’s expense. Brian’s thoughts were guarded, but his eyes pleaded for understanding. It was as if he was saying, I didn’t ask for things to be this way. Please don’t hate me for loving the one you weren’t allowed to keep.
And there was something else in those eyes, too: the fear that Daniel had come to take back what Brian had; the fear that maybe Rebecca had really been Daniel’s, and only Daniel’s, all along.
Daniel sighed and looked down at his plate. “Look. I’m sorry I got you guys wrapped up in my problems. I … I thought that I could deal with this myself. That I could find a way to get my life together and actually make it into something I could live with. But everything I’ve tried to do just made things worse.”
He looked up at Fiona. “You’re suspicious of me, Fi. You probably think I’m trying to wiggle myself into your lives and convince Rebecca to run away with me.”
A muscle tightened in Fiona’s jaw, but she said nothing.
“You have every right to be suspicious,” Daniel said. “And the truth is, it wasn’t all that long ago that I thought about trying to do something just like that.” He wanted to look away from those cool green eyes, to hang his head and stare at his plate; but Fiona had been his teammate once, the solid rock that he and the rest of his friends had always looked to for strength and perspective. He owed her this.
“It was selfish, and wrong … and more than that, it was stupid. Because I understand now that she would never leave this cell … this family.” He turned to Brian and Sasha, hoping they could see the truth in his words. “She really does love you. She loves all of you.”
Rebecca looked up, her cheeks burning. “Yeah, I do,” she said, raising her voice as if to remind them that she was still here. They turned to look at her, and she fidgeted. “The thing is … I really love Daniel, too.” She gave them a half-hearted smile. “It’s not an either/or kinda thing, you know? It’s not like I can’t love you, Sash, and still love Brian. Or you, Fi.” She shrugged. “Same thing with Daniel. I love you all, but it’s … it’s different with each of you. You guys get that, right?”
“Of course we do,” Fiona said, her voice surprisingly gentle. “The question was whether Daniel understood it.” She looked back at him, and he saw a glimmer of respect in her eyes. “Which I believe you do.”
He nodded soberly. “I do. I hope you’ll forgive me for thinking otherwise, before.” He turned to Rebecca and touched her hand. “And I hope you’ll forgive me for treating you like a prize to be won.”
Rebecca smiled a little and clasped his hand. Her forgiveness would have been evident in her eyes even if he couldn’t feel it in her emotions. He looked back to Fiona, and she gave one small nod.
A thought struck him, and he let out a choked laugh. “All this time I was jealous of what you guys had together, and you’re the ones who end up saving my ass.” He looked at each of them in turn, tears welling up suddenly in his eyes.
Brian reached across the table to him, and Daniel took the offered hand, gripping it tightly. “That’s what friends are supposed to do,” Brian said. “We take care of our own. And if the whole situation with Josephine has taught us anything, it’s that sometimes ‘taking care of your own’ means that you go out on a limb to help the little guy.”
“Of course,” Sasha said dryly, “at one-eighty-something, you’re sort of pushing the definition of little.”
They all laughed – except for Fiona, who closed her eyes and smirked – and Daniel felt the tension break at last. He grinned up at Sasha, who smiled back and nodded, as if to say, You’re welcome. He felt a pang of regret that he’d ever let himself grow apart from these friends, the ones who had gone to the wall for him when no one else would.
“Anyway,” Brian said, “as soon as ‘Becca realized what Jared was capable of, this whole thing got bigger than just you and Danni.”
Daniel grimaced. “Yeah. Part of me really wants to know what that’s about, and part of me is afraid to find out.” He looked at the clock on the stove; it was already after eleven. “Not that I have a lot of choice. My time-share on this body is going to expire in about two hours.” He looked up at Brian. “I think you may have to tie me up. I don’t suppose you’ve got any rope around here? Maybe some handcuffs?”
Brian exchanged a look with Fiona, his face turning scarlet. Fiona sat back in her chair, her Sathmoran eyes twinkling with amusement.
Daniel felt his face grow hot, and he was glad his dark skin didn’t show his embarrassment as easily as Brian’s. “On second thought, forget I asked.”
“We’ve got a better idea, anyway,” Sasha said, clearly fighting to keep the laughter out of her voice. “We’re going to take you back to Artax and see if he can get to the bottom of this. Maybe he can undo whatever it is that Jared did to Danni, or cook up some kind of shield for it.”
Daniel nodded. “I don’t know what he’ll be able to do now that he couldn’t do before, but yeah, let’s give it a try. Maybe he’s figured something out in the last few weeks.”
“I certainly hope so,” Fiona said. She smirked. “Because if I have to use my toys to restrain Danni, you are going to have to replace them.”
Daniel helped Brian clean up after breakfast while the girls hit the showers together. He found it comforting to be able to do something practical at the nest; he washed the dishes and Brian dried them, and for a while it was almost as if he belonged there. All the same, he was not surprised when Brian broke the companionable silence.
“Hey, Daniel, can I talk to you about something?”
Daniel took a moment to scrub an imaginary spot off the plate he was holding. “Sure. What’s up?”
Brian responded so quickly that Daniel was sure he’d rehearsed this conversation several times before bringing it up. “I want to thank you for your honesty earlier. When you said that you’d thought about trying to win Rebecca away from us?” Daniel just nodded, and he continued. “That took guts, man. And I want you to know that I do forgive you.”
Daniel rinsed off the plate and handed it to him. “Thanks … but I sense a ‘but’ coming.”
Brian smiled humorlessly. “We all know that Rebecca wants to find a way to renew her relationship with you. It’s no secret what you two mean to each other, and I don’t begrudge you that. But breeding cells aren’t just about sex or romance, D. We put this family together for the purpose of raising children. So we need to make sure that whatever we’re doing is providing the best environment for our children that we can manage.”
Daniel nodded, turning to look Brian in the eyes. “I can accept that,” he said. “I don’t have any problem with helping to raise your kids, Bry. I’m willing to commit to this family, if you’d have me.”
“I believe you,” Brian said. “But it’s not just you we have to think about, either. It’s the whole group dynamic. I did some reading on this last night, D. There’ve been a few larger breeding cells in the past that had more than one man in them, but it rarely works well in the long run.” He shook his head. “Blame it on our instincts. Women are natural community-builders, but men are just too competitive by nature to live with potential rivals.”
He said the words without anger, as matter-of-factly as one could say such a thing … but there it was, just the same. Sure, we’ll build our little harems, and we’ve got no problem with it if the women have something going between them on the side, Daniel thought, but bring another cock into the mix and things get ugly. Gods, we’re such hypocrites.
Of course, Daniel had a counter-argument for this. He knew it was probably just going to make the conversation even more awkward, but he had to say it anyway. “I get that, Bry. But you know…” He looked down at the sink full of dishes again. “…I’m only half male now. Theoretically, I wouldn’t have to be a rival.”
Brian sighed. He’d seen the topic coming, and now it sat there between them like a dead fish on the counter. Could you fuck one of your best friends if he were a woman? There might be more uncomfortable topics to bring up between guys, but Daniel couldn’t think of any at the moment.
“Okay, theoretically, yes, you’re right,” Brian said. “But that’s a big step to take, Daniel. For you and for us. And to be honest, I don’t think you’re in a position to be making offers that Danni’s going to have to keep.” He pointed a finger at Daniel’s head. “You are literally double-minded, bro – and last I checked, you and your ‘sister’ aren’t exactly getting along.”
Daniel lowered his head, his cheeks burning. “I understand. If you want me to leave, I’ll leave.”
“I’m not telling you to leave,” Brian said reasonably. “I’m not telling you to stay, either. All I’m saying is that you want us to turn our family into the testbed for a very weird social experiment, and if we’re going to give this a try there are certain things that we expect of you first.”
There’s the leader I was looking for earlier, Daniel thought. “Such as?”
“Three main things. First off, you’ve got to get this conflict resolved between you and Danni. She tried to smother you, D. Sorry, but that doesn’t fill me with a lot of confidence. Show me that you can live peacefully with yourself before you ask me to put my family into the middle of it.”
Daniel could accept that. Hells, if he and Danni couldn’t get along, he was going to have a lot bigger problems to worry about. “Fair enough. What else?”
Brian held up two fingers. “Openness. You’ve got walls around a lot of things inside you right now. Your honesty about wanting to take Rebecca away was a good start, but we can tell that there are other things inside you that you aren’t letting us see. Even I can see it, and I’m nowhere near the strongest teep in this cell.” He spread his hands. “Now, maybe it’s because of guilt, or embarrassment, or just your instincts kicking in, but those walls are going to interfere with the gestalts that we depend on to keep this family united.”
Daniel smiled nervously, as he tried to suppress any thoughts about his involvement with Victor or the deaths of Del and Trace. “What, you’re gonna tell me that you guys don’t keep anything private? I’ve seen Fiona’s walls, Brian. You could hold back the Sea of Stars with them.”
Brian’s expression turned sad. “Yes … and we’ve been learning the hard way what happens when you let secrets fester.” He shrugged. “We’ll give you time to deal with whatever it is, just like we are with Fiona, but you need to commit to the process, okay? To actually deal with this stuff instead of suppressing it.”
Daniel wondered how he could ever trust them enough to open up about everything he’d done, but he nodded anyway. He’d deal with it later. “Fine. What’s number three?”
Brian leaned back against the counter. “Once you’ve got things sorted out with Danni, if you both still want to try this, then you come live with us for a … let’s call it a probationary period. You live like a member of the family. You join the gestalts, help with the chores, pool your food budget with ours, get up in the middle of the night to tend the baby.” He crossed his arms. “But you don’t have sex with Rebecca. Not until Sasha and Fiona and I are okay with it.”
Daniel frowned, putting his hands on his hips. “And how long will that be?” he asked, quietly.
Brian’s posture softened. “Only until we’re convinced that the family matters to you as much as she does. Look, you know us, D. I’m not gonna dangle ‘Becca out in front of you like a carrot on a string. But you don’t build a tower without building the foundation first, and it’s the same with a marriage – even a group marriage like this one.” He put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Building trust takes time, you know?”
Daniel sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I guess I do. All right, Brian, you’ve got a deal.” He gave his friend a wan smile. “Thanks for giving it to me straight.”
Brian smiled back and opened his arms, offering a hug. Daniel accepted it, and actually felt a little better afterwards. At least now he knew where he stood.
A voice came from the hallway behind them. “Observe the distinctive bonding ritual between the two males,” Sasha said, speaking with the hushed tones of a nature documentary. “This important behavior is usually practiced in secret, away from the eyes of females, but here our photographer was lucky enough to catch it on film. Note how the male’s dominant arm is kept level with the ground during the embrace, while the two manly thumps on the back serve to convey the ancient message, ‘I love you, man, but not in that way.’ ”
Rebecca giggled.
“Damned straight,” Daniel said, turning around to give Sasha a lopsided grin. Her skin had that bright pink color that pale-skinned folks got when they lingered in the shower too long. Rebecca just looked as radiant as ever. Both of them had their purses and looked dressed to leave.
“Yes, you are,” Sasha said, grinning wickedly back at him. “But don’t worry, we can cure that now.”
Daniel blushed, and Sasha held up her keys. “Ready to go?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s go see the wizard.”
Abbey Preston sat hunched over the small, battered kitchen table, trying to focus on the textbook in front of her. She’d been at it for hours, and she’d barely gotten through five pages. She looked at the stack of loose-leaf paper she used for note-taking and was dismayed to find that she hadn’t even filled a page yet. History wasn’t her favorite subject, but she normally did better than this.
She looked out the apartment’s tiny window and sighed. There was nothing outside it but gray walls, traffic below, and the undersides of skyways above. She’d been spoiled living in Westfall, where they’d had gardens and open sky and you could see the mountains on both sides of the Valley. This was the view that most people in Metamor saw: a world of concrete and steel, hemming you in on all sides. Even when you were outside, you were still living in a box.
She pushed back the book and put her head in her hands. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the importance of studying. She knew that she had to pass the Empire’s standardized tests in order to stay in the home-based education program. If she couldn’t prove that she was learning on her own, they’d make her go to a public school with the mundies, and Victor was sure the Elders were watching for her to show up there. She knew what was at stake, and up ‘til now she had never had a problem with teaching herself.
Today, though, she couldn’t focus on the lesson. Her eyes kept wandering back to the far corner of the table, where a little plastic wand sat atop a pile of tissues.
She looked around the tiny one-bedroom apartment – at the cheap and faded carpets, the peeling wallpaper, the notched and chipped wooden cabinets. She looked at the roach trap in the corner of the room, and the walls that were so thin that Abbey would have known all about her neighbors even if she weren’t a telepath. Nothing was different from yesterday, but everything had changed.
She heard footsteps in the hallway, and instinctively her mind reached out to scan whoever was coming this way. She got only a jumble of mental static, incoherent fragments of thoughts and feelings. There was only one man whose mind sounded like that to her. She pulled the book in front of her again and hid the plastic wand in her lap.
Victor opened the door of the flat a moment later, smiling and humming contentedly. He carried two shopping bags in a telekinetic grip beside him. As he waved a hand and set them on the counter, he locked the door with his free hand and then came over to Abbey.
“Hey there, sweetheart,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. “How’s school coming?”
“Okay,” she said. “Not great, but okay.”
“Well, not to worry. I brought some fresh fish from the market to feed that brilliant little brain of yours. How do you want it, broiled or fried?”
“Oh, I-I don’t know. Either one sounds good.”
Victor waved his fingers and began unloading the bags, the groceries setting themselves out on the table as though they were tied to invisible strings. The drawer under the oven slid open and a pan floated up to land on the stove.
“I think we’ll do fried,” Victor said thoughtfully. “I haven’t had fish and chips in a long while.” He chuckled then, at some unspoken thought that Abbey couldn’t read.
“What? What’s funny?”
“Oh, nothing much,” Victor said, patting her head. Abbey hated that, but she hid her feelings down where he couldn’t hear them. Instead, she imagined that she was happy and put that up near the surface of her thoughts. It was a lot like drama club, only harder.
Victor didn’t seem to notice the difference. “I was just thinking of my old buddy Egan. Fish and chips were his favorite.”
“Oh.” Abbey thought carefully for a moment, then asked, “Is that where you went last night? To see Mister Egan?”
Victor seemed surprised by the question. “Hm? Oh, no, no, Abbey,” he said, chuckling. “Egan is dead, I’m afraid. No, I got a message from one of my contacts and I had to follow up on it right away – you know how the work is.”
Abbey nodded. “How did he die?”
Victor’s smile faded. “The Elders sent him on a suicide mission,” he said gravely. “He should have known better than to take it, but Egan always had more loyalty than sense. That’s what loyalty to the Elders gets you, Abbey: hard work and an early grave.”
“Yes, sir.”
Victor cocked his head and looked at her, his brow creasing. “What’s the matter, baby? You look worried.”
Abbey blushed and lowered her head. When she looked back up at him, she forced a smile. “Sorry, I just wasn’t sure how to tell you.” She pulled the plastic wand from her lap and held it up. “I’m pregnant.”
For a moment, Victor stared at the wand. Then his face split into a huge grin. “That—“ he said, picking her up and kissing her “—is wonderful news!” He laughed, spinning her in a circle. His joy rose to the surface, rising through the mental static that always surrounded him these days, and for a moment he was once again the man she’d fallen in love with. She laughed with him and wrapped her arms around his neck. He wrapped his strong arms around her and she felt safe.
At last he set her down, still beaming. “You’ve made my day, little one. Now, go start packing while I make us some lunch.”
Abbey frowned. “Packing? Why?” She didn’t particularly like where they were living now, but they’d already moved twice since they left Westfall, and every time the neighborhoods got worse.
“My contact said the Elders are getting close to figuring out where we live,” he said. He said it casually, as if he refused to let it spoil his good mood, but Abbey knew it had to be serious for them to move again already. “It’s for your safety, Abbey. I have to make sure nothing happens to you – especially with what you’ve got inside you now!”
He put his hands on her shoulders and smiled down at her. “Don’t worry. Soon I’ll find the people chasing us and make them stop. Then we’ll have all the time in the world.”
Then he drew her into another hug – but this time, Abbey didn’t feel safe.
Daniel fidgeted as Artax’s mind-scanning device hummed and whirred around him. The old man had added a few new components since the last time Daniel saw it, and none of the additions looked very friendly. The feeling of having a technomagical construct combing through his brain was still as creepy as hell.
“Was that really necessary?” he asked, when the straps released and he was able to remove his head. “Again?”
Artax gave him a chiding look, his bushy eyebrows knotting together over his piercing blue eyes. “Proper baseline measurements are always important, Master Sharabi, as you should well know. You’ve been through substantial changes since last we met, not the least of them being that your soul has split in two.”
Daniel shivered. “I wish someone had told me about that.”
“Well, we hardly expected the results to be as dramatic as they were. Something odd has happened to you, boy, even by the standards of magic.” Perversely, Artax smiled. “I’m actually looking forward to working on your case. It’s been a long time since I’ve put my hand in a completely new field of research.”
Rebecca stared at the wizard, sputtering. “How can you say that?” she demanded. “What Jared did to Daniel, it’s – it’s wrong! Evil! I know he didn’t mean it, but—” She waved her hands in the air, incoherently. “And you’re acting like it’s some kind of – of class project!” She pointed at Daniel. “Doesn’t this scare you?!”
“Scare me?!” Artax barked, stepping up to look Rebecca in the eyes. “My dear girl, of course it scares me! The whole notion of a soul-shaper is bloody terrifying! I’ve half a mind to call down a meteor on Master Tamlin’s head and be done with it!”
Rebecca backed away, flinching at the old man’s sudden intensity. Artax seemed to notice the fear in her eyes and immediately lowered his voice.
“All the more reason to learn all we can from Daniel and Danni,” he said, turning back to Daniel. “I’m afraid I’ve yet to find a cure for your alter ego’s conditioning. It may be that it will reverse itself, given time. Of course, that means that we must do everything in our power to keep Danni away from Jared.”
Sasha gave him a worried look. “You’d better plan on taking some time off work, D. You know Jared’s gonna come looking for Danni.’
Daniel sighed heavily. “I have some sick time coming. Brainwashing is a sickness, right?” He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, trying to dispel the twinges of a headache that he’d gotten from Artax’s scanner. “I guess I should put in for a transfer to another lab, while I’m at it.”
Sasha put a comforting hand on his arm. “We’ve got an opening for a med-tech at Eastside General,” she said. “I’ll put in a recommendation for you.”
Daniel gave her a small but grateful smile. “Thanks, Sash. It would be nice to be somewhere I actually knew somebody.” The smile faded rapidly as another thought struck him. “Oh, gods. But if I’m at work as me for ten hours a day, what are we going to do about Danni? As soon as she comes out she’s gonna go straight for Jared. You really are going to have to keep me tied up at night!”
Artax scoffed. “Much as the image of Danni tied to a bed has a certain appeal, I have a better solution.” He beckoned them out of his office and into the warehouse beyond. “Come with me.”
He led them to a stretch of plain gray wall along the back of the warehouse, completely indistinguishable from the walls on either side of it. Indistinguishable to Daniel, at any rate: Rebecca’s eyes widened and began to glow yellow as Artax approached the wall and put his hand up to its surface.
“Secret passage!” she whispered excitedly.
Sure enough, a hairline seam appeared in the surface of the wall, then swung slowly inward to reveal a long, dimly-lit hallway. The hidden door and its frame were both at least two decimeters thick. Artax gestured for them to enter ahead of him. Tentatively, Daniel stepped into the gloom.
The hallway beyond had three doors along its right side and a smooth gray metal wall along its left. At the end of the hall was an open doorway to a small room, which glowed a soft blue with the light from what Daniel guessed were computer monitors. Artax swung the door shut behind them, bolting it into place with a heavy wheel-shaped handle. Sasha stiffened as soon as the door closed.
“I can’t hear anything!” she said, her eyes wide. She looked over at Artax. “Lead in the walls?” she demanded.
Artax nodded. “And cold-forged iron, and a smidgen of mithril. Welcome to the Sanctuary, my dear.”
Daniel went up to the nearest door and pushed it open. It looked like steel, but it was far too heavy for its thickness – more lead, he supposed. Inside he found a comfortably-sized hotel suite, complete with its own restroom, television, closet, cupboards and writing desk – even a tiny refrigerator and a minibar. An old-fashioned corded phone sat on the nightstand. Everything looked clean and comfortable – even the bed, which he found was softer than most hotel-issue mattresses.
It all would have been very comforting except for two things: the cameras mounted to the ceilings, and the heavy locks that bolted shut from the outside.
Sasha and Rebecca followed Daniel inside, though Sasha lingered near the door and kept a wary eye on the wizard. Artax joined her in the doorway a moment later.
“Not everyone who learns magic is able to control their power responsibly,” he said, his voice grave and almost sad. “The Sanctuary was built as a safe haven for young mages who have lost themselves … and sometimes for their victims, as well. Mind control is the most seductive of the magical arts, and both the abused and the abusers often need treatment in places like this before they can be returned to society.”
“Not at the same time, I hope,” Sasha muttered.
Artax chuckled. “Not when it can be avoided, no.” He turned to Daniel. “Danni will be safe here until we can determine whether her conditioning is permanent – and, if so, how to cure her. We can monitor her through the closed-circuit TV cameras and speak to her through the desk phone. No form of scrying or clairvoyance will reveal her location; as far as Jared is concerned, she will simply … disappear.”
Daniel sat down on the edge of the bed. “Which means I have to disappear, too,” he said. “At least for a while. I mean, if Jared can’t find Danni, he might come looking for me next.”
“It would be best for you to stay here full-time for a while,” Artax said. “We don’t know the range of Jared’s influence, so if we want to give Danni’s conditioning a chance to reverse itself, complete isolation is the best option. Plan to stay here at least a few days, until we see whether she’s responding to treatment.”
Rebecca sat next to him and took his hand in hers. “Don’t worry, D. We’re not gonna leave you alone here.”
“Anything you need, just let me know and I’ll bring it by the first chance I get,” Sasha promised.
“Thank you all,” Daniel said. He frowned, an unpleasant thought rising in his mind. “Artax, sir, what is all this going to cost? I don’t have a lot of money.” Not anymore, anyway.
Artax raised an eyebrow in Sasha’s direction. “I thought you said you could pay me well for my help, Miss King?”
“And we did, before,” Sasha said. She fidgeted uncomfortably. “But I’m not sure if even we can afford the bills for magic rehab.”
Artax smiled beneficently. “Not to worry, dear. Most of the patients who come to the Sanctuary are similarly short of funds. In such circumstances, I have found that the best solution is to resort to the classics.”
The three teeps gave him a wary look.
“Your immortal soul?” Sasha guessed, dubiously.
“Your firstborn child?” asked Daniel.
“Seven years, seven secrets, and an old man’s dying breath?”
Daniel and Sasha turned to stare at Rebecca. She shrugged, grinning sheepishly. “My bedtime stories had a lot of faeries in them,” she said.
Artax laughed. “Ha! Nothing so dramatic, children. Let us say that you shall owe me three favors, to be redeemed at a time and place of my choosing. If you, or any member of your little family, has it in their power to fulfill what I ask of you, it shall be done – quickly, expediently, and with a minimum of whining.”
Sasha crossed her arms, giving him an appraising look. “It can’t be anything that endangers our children,” she said.
Artax raised his hands innocently. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“And no sex, either.”
The old man snorted. “Do I look like a fool?”
“Well, you are wearing a pointy hat and fuzzy slippers,” Rebecca said.
Artax glared at her for a moment, then turned back to Daniel. “Do I have your word, Master Sharabi?”
Daniel sighed, but he nodded. “You have my word.”
“Ms Brower? Ms King?”
“You have my word, too,” said Rebecca.
“And mine,” Sasha added.
Daniel felt an odd sensation then, like a gentle tingling on the back of his neck. He swallowed back the lump in his throat. He’d always wondered what a geas felt like. Promises had power, especially when they were given willingly to a man like Artax.
The old man clapped his hands together and smiled at them all, looking like a cat who’d just swallowed a particularly tasty canary. “Very well, then! Now that that’s out of the way, I suggest that we leave here and let Danni come out to play.”
Daniel felt Rebecca straighten up in alarm. “What? A-already? But Daniel just got here! Shouldn’t you be … I don’t know, doing treatments or cooking potions or something?”
“There is nothing more to be learned until we have a baseline of Danni’s behavior when she is isolated from Jared,” Artax said firmly. “The longer we wait, the more time we waste, and the more shifting stress Daniel will accumulate. He’s already past the twelve-hour recommended limit. The longer he waits to relinquish control to Danni, the harder his mind will snap back into her control. It’s time to put your feelings on hold and do what’s best for Daniel.”
Rebecca looked away and blushed, saying nothing.
“It’s all right, Becks,” Daniel said, squeezing her hand. “In another twelve hours or so I’ll be able to come out again. It’s not that bad.”
“If she lets you come out again,” Rebecca said bitterly. “There’s no limit on how long she can stick around.” She looked up at him, eyes welling up with tears. “I just got you back – I don’t want to lose you again! It’s not fair! ”
Daniel took her in his arms and rested his forehead against hers. He closed his eyes, and two tears ran down his own face.
“I have to do this,” he whispered. “You know that.”
She choked back a sob and nodded.
He drew back and gently brushed the tears from her cheeks. “Be strong for me,” he said. “Be strong like you were when you came and rescued me. I know you can do it.” He smiled through his tears. “You were more gutsy and stubborn than we ever gave you credit for.”
She laughed at that, in spite of her tears. “Yeah. I guess I kinda surprised myself,” she admitted.
He took her hands and folded them inside his, pressing them over his heart. “I need you to be that woman for me,” he said. “The woman who would walk through fire to pull me out of that place I was trapped in. As long as I know I have that Rebecca on my side, I’ll never give up. Danni won’t be able to lock me up again – not as long as I know you’re waiting for me on the outside.”
Rebecca looked into his eyes for a long moment. Then she set her jaw and nodded, her expression brave and determined. “I can do that,” she said.
Daniel smiled and raised her clenched fists to his lips, kissing them. “That’s what I needed to hear.”
Sasha put a gentle hand on Rebecca’s shoulder. “C’mon, Becks. Artax says we can watch from the room down the hall.”
Rebecca and Daniel rose to their feet, embracing one last time. Then Rebecca took Sasha’s arm and let her lead her out of the room. Outside the doorway, Rebecca looked back at Daniel and stretched out to him with her mind, sending him waves of love and devotion and a wordless promise to remain strong. Daniel responded in turn, putting on a brave face and sending her as much encouragement as he could muster.
Then the door swung shut, the bolts slid into place, and their mental bond fell silent.
