Tung Do shifted nervously in his Aeron chair. It was the most expensive office chair available five years ago, and something of a status symbol at the time he bought it, even if it was second-hand. They didn’t tend to open up direct retail outlets for things like high-end office furniture in obscure Philippine port towns. But Tung had bought it solely for the mesh back, as it was supposed to reduce back sweat, a source of great embarrassment for him. Generally, Tung liked to blame his nameless American G.I. father and the godforsaken, roasting hot Philippine climate for his tendency to sweat like a pig.
Today, however, he blamed the spreading dampness that had glued his chino shirt to his back on the three people opposite his modern, blond-wood desk.
The Chinese guy hadn’t spoken and refused to take a seat, instead standing behind the two women, wearing what appeared to be a ‘clean-room’ style mask, goggles and gloves. Then there was the Japanese woman with livid red eyes, who didn’t talk much either, but stared at him constantly, with an unnerving intensity. But the woman in black, who did all the talking through an obscenely smug grin, she was the worst.
She’d been the only one to accept his offer of coffee — and despite the fact that it was Vietnamese-style iced coffee, sweetened with condensed milk, she’d insisted on adding several more spoonfuls of sugar to it. Just watching her drink the stuff made him slightly ill.
Tung had heard of Alice Gallow, which meant the other two must be Auditors. And what he had heard about Gallow, well, that was making him very nervous indeed.
“How is business, Mr. Do? It seems like you are doing alright for yourself,” Alice observed, gesturing at the plush office around her.
Tung attempted a modest smile. The Auditors must have activated a translation protocol; whenever Alice spoke, he heard perfect Vietnamese with a slight northern accent, exactly like his own.
“This has not been our best year, I’m afraid.” Tung wanted desperately to shift in his chair, to fidget and fiddle with his hands, and fought to suppress the urge while keeping a calm, unworried expression on his face. “Exports to North America are down, what with the bad financial climate, and it has had a negative impact on overall revenue.”
“Huh,” Alice said, sounding genuinely surprised. “I’d have figured people would be more interested in smack during a recession.”
“Nguyen Exports handles a broad range of products for an array of reputable clients,” Tung sputtered defensively. “I do not appreciate the implication that we would deal in anything untoward. Our firm has operated for decades and enjoys an excellent reputation, here and in Central.”
The woman nodded and crossed her legs. She was attractive, if a bit too pale; even Tung, who wasn’t the biggest fan of Caucasians, had to give her that, with her long legs and lithe figure. Or she would have been pretty, rather, if she hadn’t had that ludicrous smirk plastered on her face.
“You have no need to be concerned about that, Mr. Do. The Audits Department is well-aware of everything that your company transports, even when it somehow doesn’t make it on the manifest,” Alice observed dryly. “If we had a problem with it, we would have gotten involved some time ago. Moreover, the quality of the services you provide is universally recognized. At several points, we have contracted work to your organization, as a matter of fact.”
“I hope the services were rendered to your satisfaction?” Tung inquired politely. He was impatient to get the Auditors out of his office, but he couldn’t think of any way to do so. The right of an Auditor to compel cooperation was absolute, when conducting an Audit, and he’d already inspected the paperwork. Tung shifted in his expensive chair, and wished he could go change his shirt.
“Yes.” Alice waved her hand dismissively. “Enough of these trivial matters. You are a busy man, and I do not wish to waste your time. I wonder if I might show you something, Mr. Do.”
Alice dug through the duffel bag she brought in with her, and Tung panicked briefly. He hadn’t had the right to demand a search of the bag — he could not interfere with an Audit — and he tensed up, aware that he was being ridiculous and unable to stop himself. After a moment’s search, Alice produced a stack of printouts, each page a photo headshot of a Vietnamese or Cambodian man.
“Do you know any of these men, Mr. Do?”
Tung made a show of putting his glasses on, and then looking closely at each of the photos in turn. Alice’s smile broadened a notch, and he felt slightly queasy, like the whole affair was turning into a farce.
“I have never seen any of these men before,” Tung said honestly. “I am sorry I cannot be of more assistance.”
“The first part is true,” Mitsuru said, her voice devoid of emotion. Her entire contribution to the conversation up until this point had been limited to occasional confirmations of what he’d said — she was obviously running an Audit protocol, some kind of lie-detector. “But he isn’t actually sorry.”
“Good for you, Mr. Do!” Alice said enthusiastically. “But if I’d asked if any of these men had been clients of yours, it would have been a different answer, right?”
“Nguyen Exports does business with many different clients each year. Only a fraction of them ever deal with me personally. And even then, many of our clients employ another agency as a buffer, to ensure confidentiality,” Mr. Do explained patiently. “There is no way for me to be totally certain that my firm has not contracted with these men, indirectly, at some point.”
“It was a trick question, Mr. Do.” Alice’s expression was smug. “These men are all members of a Hmong Weir tribe, one that has done contracting work for your little operation before. Surely you remember that little deal-gone-bad in Myanmar that they helped you resolve? We know that your cartel recently arranged transportation for them to the United States, on one of your vessels. That was a big mistake, Mr. Do.”
“Please. Do you have any proof to support these outrageous claims?” Tung said indignantly, waving his finger as he spoke. “Auditors or no, speculation of this kind is meaningless.”
“Tung, shut the fuck up, before you piss me off,” Alice said coldly, her smile bright and cruel. “Mitsuru isn’t here to determine whether or not you are telling the truth. I don’t need her help to figure that out. She’s been acting as a conduit for one of the best telepaths in Central, who has been quietly ransacking your brain during our little chat, while I kept you nervous enough not to notice.”
Alice stood up and slammed her hand down on Tung’s desk, causing him to flinch backwards.
“Guess what we found, asshole? Any ideas? Mitzi?” Alice glared down at Tung, eyes hard and brilliant.
“Don’t call me that,” Mitsuru said coldly, her eyes focused and aware. Clearly, whatever protocol she’d been running had been allowed to dissipate, and for the first time, Tung felt the red eyes studying him. It was not a good feeling.
“We have indisputable proof, Mr. Do, of the Terrie Cartel’s involvement in the smuggling of Weir to California, and additionally of your own personal involvement in said transaction,” Alice said cheerily. “These Weir were used in the commission of an attempted assassination of an Operator, which you have kindly confirmed was also contracted by the Terrie Cartel.”
“This is outrageous!” Tung protested, his eyes bugging out of his head, turning red in the face. “You cannot simply invade my mind at your discretion! I have rights under the Agreement!”
“Wrong,” Alice gloated, slamming a document down on the desk in front of Tung. “This writ is signed by the Director. As far as the purposes of this Audit go, your rights have been suspended until such a time as we decide to return them to you. Do you think I’m the kind of woman who would return them, Tung?”
Tung looked at the woman, and her terrible smile, his mind gone blank with panic. He hadn’t wanted in on the deal the cartel had brokered in the first place — he had no love lost for Central, but the whole affair seemed destined for trouble from the start. Still, he hadn’t expected Auditors, with a mandate for the dissolution of his cartel from the Director no less, to be staring at him like he was a gift they were dying to unwrap.
He hadn’t expected them to be so damn unnerving, either. Beneath his desk, he started to slowly shift his foot.
“Let me make our position clear, Tung.” Alice leaned over the desk, her face inches away from his, her grin a mile wide. “Your whole damn cartel is dirty. We’ve already got enough on you to make it stick — which means that somebody set you up for a fall, right? Because as stupid as you are, there’s no way the whole Terrie Cartel decided to commit mass suicide like this. Whoever hired you for the job, well, now they’re trying to feed you to us. And the bitch of the situation,” Alice continued gleefully, “for you, anyway, is that we are very hungry. We could just eat you and your whole operation up right now. You see, Mitzi over here…”
“Mitsuru,” the red-eyed woman said, her voice icy. “Please.”
“Right, Mitsuru,” Alice said dismissively. “Anyway, my very good friend here, she got caught up in your little scheme. She had to bust up your trap, over in California, and she’s real fucking pissed about it. And I’m sure you heard about those two Operators in San Francisco — that was a real fucking shame, wasn’t it, Tung? We are none too happy about that, either. Do you appreciate how precarious this makes your position?”
Tung nodded, sweat pouring down his face. With one foot, he gradually eased the thing he needed into place. It was good that he’d prepared for all eventualities, even one as unlikely as this, and a good thing that this Alice Gallow person liked to talk so much. If the mirror wasn’t in exactly the right spot, it wouldn’t work, and then he wouldn’t have a way out of this terrible situation.
“Please — there must be some way we can resolve this,” he implored, nudging the mirror into place. “I am willing to cooperate with your Audit. I will assist your investigation, if only you would…”
“You will do exactly what I want you to, Tung,” Alice advised, folding her arms. “What happens after that, nothing you do can change.”
“You stupid bitch,” Tung spat, red-faced. “That doesn’t give me much incentive to cooperate, does it?”
He inched the mirror into place, and then dove underneath his desk. He saw understanding flash in Mitsuru’s eyes, right before he dropped, and knew that she would be too late, even as she stepped forward. He slipped underneath his desk, and then kept falling, through the mirror he had hidden there, like breaking the surface of cold water. The destination had been prepared in advance, so that he could operate the protocol without thought; he passed through the rigid surface of the mirror, and then beyond that, the stifling fog of the Ether. The apport was as efficient as he could manage; he hung in the cold grey for only a moment, and then he was out, standing up on the other side on shaky legs and brushing the dust from his pants.
Tung hated the jungle, the humidity even more than temperature. Not to mention the bugs that found him upon arrival, and immediately set about making his life miserable. The camp was a miserable collection of shacks and Quonset huts, populated by a large number of shabbily-dressed, heavily-armed Philippine men, most of whom were shocked to see Tung emerge from the mirror that he had hung, suspended five feet above the dusty ground, on the outside of one of the storerooms several months ago, as an insurance policy.
“Get ready,” Tung hissed in mediocre Tagalong at the nearest of the men, his coat and skin still steaming with the vapors of his transit through the Ether, his chest laboring with the effort. “We will have company shortly.”
After Tung disappeared Alice paused briefly, then giggled and walked casually around the desk. Mitsuru stood in the middle of the room, halfway to where Tung had disappeared from, and looked at Alice in confusion. Xia stood impassively in the corner of the room, aloof and unconcerned.
With the worn toe of her heavy boots, Alice pushed the mirror out from under the desk. It was a cheap bathroom mirror, just wide enough to accommodate Tung’s plump frame. The glass was uniformly smeared with grease, as if someone had run their hand across the whole of the surface, and it was warped in the middle. At the very center, the glass had already begun steaming and running, rapidly becoming a hissing pool of silvery liquid on the office carpet.
“Amateur,” Alice laughed to herself. “Calls himself a transporter, but still needs a mirror to do a port.”
The remains of the mirror continued to boil and steam, gradually eating away at the floor beneath. The room filled with the stench of melting plastic and burned carpet.
“Cooperate?” Alice spat, sounding genuinely angry. “I didn’t want you to cooperate, asshole,” Alice said to the vaporizing mass at her feet, “I wanted you to run. Are you really so stupid as to think you could close the way behind you? This won’t even slow us down.”
Alice walked over to the desk, nudging out several of the larger fragments of the mirror in front of Mitsuru.
“There should still be traces,” she said firmly. “Tell me where he went.”
Mitsuru was as good as Alistair had described. The time it took her to determine what protocol was needed, and to download it from the Etheric network was barely noticeable. The actual download itself took bit longer, and looked alarmingly like a brief seizure. Mitsuru bent down to her knees, her eyes furiously red, and peered into the broken mirror.
“Okay,” she said, after a few moments, her eyes twitching rapidly. “I can see him. They broke the mirror on the other end, after he came through, but one of the pieces is still big enough… I think it’s the camp, the one Alistair was talking about.”
Alice nodded thoughtfully.
“Tell me again, Mitsuru, what was the briefing on this place?”
Mitsuru looked up from the fragments of mirror.
“The Philippine Army and the CIA both believe it to be an Abu Sayyaf camp,” Mitsuru said, voice dead as she consulted her Etheric uplink. “It isn’t, of course. Its run by the Witches, the terrorist angle is just to keep the curious away. Satellite shows fifteen structures, arrayed in a rough semi-circle, on the bank of the river. The terrain around it is primarily jungle; the only road access is a dirt track. They’ve got a crude airfield, too, big enough for private planes.”
Alice nodded again, and Mitsuru went back to surveying the mirror shards, which were beginning to melt into the carpet.
“The strip is empty right now,” Mitsuru said distantly. “Barbwire around the perimeter. The angle is terrible, so I can’t see much else.”
Alice inspected her chipped nail polish critically.
“What kind of nonconventional assets can we expect, Mitzi?”
The glare Mitsuru gave her went way past insubordination.
“I told you already. My name is Mitsuru. Alistair tried to scan it a couple times already — he says it’s shielded, by someone who knows what they’re doing. They definitely have some fairly capable Operators, to keep a telepathic barrier like that up twenty-four hours a day. I can’t see anyone at all.”
“Could be a Witch,” Alice suggested. “They make artifacts that do stuff like that. It could have been set up in advance, or there could even be one there now, maintaining it.”
“That is entirely speculative,” Mitsuru said woodenly, still connected to Etheric network. “During attempts to scan the site, Alistair reported a number of Etheric signatures in the nearby wilderness, very probably Weir.”
Alice gave Xia a look. He gave her a very small nod in return.
“So, we’ll assume they have Operators and Weir, at the very least. Witches are a possibility too — though they tend to bail before things get heavy, unless they think they have all the cards. Plus probably a handful of normal humans.” Alice though for a moment, glancing over at Xia, then nodding in agreement, as if he had said something. “We’ll wait until twilight. They’re probably running around in a panic right now, waiting for us to come busting in. Let’s give them some time to start thinking that they got away. They’ll be more lax in a few hours.”
“Can we clear the camp on our own?” Mitsuru asked, her voice normal, disconnected from the uplink.
“Xia could clean that place out by himself,” Alice snorted. “I probably won’t even have to take my hands out of my pockets. I brought you along,” Alice leered at Mitsuru, “’cause I like watching you cut people up, baby. It makes me feel all funny.”
Alice winked at Mitsuru, who stared at her, mouth half-open.
“Don’t be dense,” Alice said sympathetically, “this is a big job. We’re not just going to take care of it — we’re going to make sure that you’re there, helping out, every step of the way, Mitzi. And once we wrap up a successful Audit, no one’s going to be able to argue with Gaul making you an Auditor, right? So, be a good girl for a little while longer.”
Alice giggled at her shocked expression.
“Oh, dear me, I said it again, didn’t I?” Alice gave her arm an affectionate pinch. “I swear, I meant to say Mitsuru…”
As the sun hid itself behind the low hills beyond the river, the camp fell into shadow.
The air was so humid it felt dense, and Alice felt the sweat bead on her neck the moment she stepped out of the shadow of a storehouse on the eastern edge of the compound, near the fence. She crouched and then surveyed her surroundings, her finger tight on the trigger of her shotgun. She needn’t have bothered. Aside from the sounds of the insects and the ever-shifting wall of vegetation, the area was deserted.
Even the best trained guard will fall into routines when patrolling the same ground every night — inevitably, given the boredom inherent in the job, and the limited number of routes available. The camp was protected by guards with sufficient professionalism to shift their patrol routes, but they’d been stationed there long enough to fall into a routine anyway. The jeep that they were using to patrol was on the other side of camp; Alice could see the mounted spotlight on the back from where she crouched. She reached one hand into her own shadow.
She pulled Mitsuru from the shadow first, but she emerged stumbling. Mitsuru shook her head several times, before crouching beside Alice, disoriented. Alice reached down and rested her hand on Mitsuru’s cheek, gently pressing the dizzy Operator’s head against her leg, reaching back into the shadows with her other hand.
Xia stepped out a moment later, in his heavy black coat and surgical mask, clutching Alice’s hand with his own latex gloved one. He glanced at the still dazed Mitsuru, and then looked questioningly at Alice. She nodded curtly.
At that moment, the night was rent by the sound of gunfire, followed by panicked yelling in a cacophony of Tagalong, French and English. There were two groups of guards approaching, and in the distance a gunman had climbed to the flat roof of one of the temporary structures and was taking potshots with his AK-47. At that distance, there wasn’t much chance of him finding a mark, particularly as they were only partially exposed to his aim, but Alice tugged the befuddled Mitsuru back behind the protection of the outbuilding, just to be safe.
“Alright, Xia. No point in subtlety now. Let ‘em know we’re here.”
Alice helped Mitsuru to her feet. She shook her head again, cautiously, and then nodded at Alice, apparently steadied.
Xia walked casually out into the open, rounding the storehouse corner and exposing himself to fire from both of the patrols, as well as the rooftop sniper. The 7.62mm rounds made a strange hissing sound as they hit the field of intense heat that surrounded Xia, visible only by the distortion in the air around him, then flattened and melted like solder into hissing pools on the muddy ground.
Xia closed his eyes, and then slowly raised both of his arms until they were above his head, palms to the sky. Though there was little wind, his heavy coat rippled and swayed, and the grass around him wilted and charred. A white luminescence appeared at the ends of his hands, and then slowly expanded, covering his entire body in a translucent shell. Xia spoke then, just once, but what he said could not be described as a word.
One of the Jeeps caught flame, burning from beneath its undercarriage. There were angry voices yelling in Tagalong, as some of the guards attempted to douse the flames with an extinguisher, while others milled about in confusion. The first explosion was dramatic, a terrific bang that sent chunks of metal flying in all directions as the jeep tore itself apart. The gas tanks on the other vehicles followed shortly, all three detonating in rapid succession, each sending a ball of black smoke and flame skyward. Looking through the filter of a combat protocol, Mitsuru watched the guard’s Etheric signatures snuff out, torn apart by shrapnel, their bodies left to turn to charcoal in the flames.
The jungle around the camp smoldered angrily, and then burst into a conflagration, the lush vegetation withering and charring in the sudden blaze. In an instant, they were surrounded on three sides by a towering wall of flame, bathing the camp in a flickering orange light, the barbwire fence protesting and warping in the heat, sparks carrying the flames gradually across the whole of the camp.
“You’re up, Mitzi,” Alice said softly, watching the flames with a rapt expression. “They have to come this way to get away from the fire. Put on a show for me.”
Mitsuru nodded, shifting her grip on the wrapped handle of her sheathed knife, and then disappeared into the shadows, moving in the direction of the nearest patrol.
Alice smiled to herself as she watched Mitsuru’s Etheric signature flit from building to building, her movements accelerated to a blur by a downloaded alacrity protocol, almost invisible in the flickering firelight.
The closer patrol had stopped to have a panicked conversation — one was talking rapidly in Tagalong into a walkie-talkie, while the other stared at the inferno, open-mouthed. Mitsuru rounded an outhouse, then crossed the open space between them in a half-dozen bounding steps, the only sound her cheap Thai sandals slapping against the soles of her feet. She was behind them before either of the guards had time to react, the knife reflecting the ghastly orange glow of the flame.
She slid the point of the knife into side of one of the guards, aiming for a breach between the Kevlar pads on his vest, the tip sliding smoothly past the ribs. With a flick of her wrist she turned the knife in the shape of a ‘C’, the blade emerging red and glistening from his side, slightly above his hip. The guard fell to his knees and made awful, wet sounds, too stunned to scream, his arms wrapped protectively around his ravaged and leaking torso.
The other guard yelled and spun around, leveling his rifle at Mitsuru and pulling the trigger. The rifle was firing at full auto, but the acceleration of Mitsuru’s protocol was such that she heard each individual shot, and saw the flare of hot gas that punctuated each shell’s ignition. She fell forward, under the arc of the bullets that plodded toward her, and then rolled, her perception so agonizingly acute she could see the wake of distorted air the bullets left behind. She let the momentum of the roll carry her close to the gunman, and before he could lower his rifle and aim, her knife darted out and in, cutting his ankles out from beneath him. He cried out as he fell backward, but that was the last noise that he made, as Mitsuru wrenched his arm aside and drove the point of her blade into his throat. The gunman’s scream cut off, his hands clasping Mitsuru’s blade, his eyes bugging out of his head. Blood trickled from his throat, splashing weakly into the dirt beside him. Then the light went out in his eyes, all at once, and his face went slack.
Mitsuru pulled the knife from his throat and wiped the blade against the dead man’s shirt before sheathing it. Her vision was permeated with information from a combat protocol; translucent text and data boxes informed her of the positions of the six remaining guards. Four of them had abandoned their gear and were moving in inhumanly low crouches, their spines contorted and bent, their skulls elongated and feral. The two in the rear moved to supporting positions, taking cover behind the nearby buildings and scrambling to maintain a clear field of fire.
Weir hated humans, so Mitsuru felt safe in assuming that the two rear guards were Weir maintaining a human appearance. That was unusual, as they preferred to fight in their swifter lupine form, or the monstrous hybrid shape the other four guards had already assumed.
They had Egyptian-manufactured AK-47s, the same as the other guards and common to insurgencies the world over, but even through the smoke and the flimsy Quonset hut walls, Mitsuru could see the yellow glow of the bullets, radiating from the working that a Witch had laid on each of them. There was no alternative source — only Witches were capable of creating such artifacts — though to lavish such power on bullets was unprecedented. The workings Witches created took time. Mitsuru had no idea how long it would take to place one on each bullet in a clip, but it hardly seemed worth the effort.
Mitsuru walked calmly into the open, right in the middle of the burning camp, exposing herself to the six guards that remained. The four in the front came roaring around the corner of the main building, their paws kicking up mud and pebbles, hundreds of pounds of rage and sinew and yellow teeth. They charged immediately, fluid as shadows, smelling of the jungle and death, their fur matted with clumps of dried blood. One howled as it ran, a loathsome, high whining that set her teeth on edge.
The two in human form were more cautious, but only somewhat. They rounded the far corner of the building they were using as cover, rifles at the ready, staying low to avoid fire.
Mitsuru smiled at all of them, and held out her hands.
“I’d hoped that the silver one would be here, but still, I’m grateful to you,” she said, in the face of the charging beasts, calm and unhurried. “I can’t normally do this, you understand.”
There was a slight glow at her fingertips, a silvery aura, and the wind picked up from behind her.
“Compliments of Alistair,” Mitsuru said, her eyes rolling back in her head with effort, the borrowed protocol flooded through her mind in a wave of information and pain, the silvery protocol writ large against the field of black that consumed her vision. “A souvenir, from San Francisco.”
Mitsuru dropped her hands like a conductor, and her whole body was encompassed by the strange silvery light radiating from her chest. The wind tore at her clothing, and a fine spray of water from the river behind drenched her.
“Shining Cloud,” she whispered, but her words were carried away by the sudden gale that whipped past her.
A dense silver fog swirled around, and then burst forth in all directions, the main part of it making a rapid, twisting path toward the charging Weir. It passed through the two in front before they had time to react, and they disappeared into the metallic fog, little more than a few brief howls, and then a rapidly dissipating red mist. The two Weir behind them had time to try and stop, talons scrambling for purchase in the mud, before the fog encompassed them as well.
They had more than enough time to howl and cough wetly, trying in vain to expel the millions of tiny sharp particles they had inhaled. One even tried to transform as he was cut to pieces, spitting his insides onto the mud as he died, not quite human, not wholly wolf.
One of the remaining guards abandoned his position, dropping his rifle and running, struggling to free himself from his bulky bulletproof vest so he could transform. The other was either braver or more foolish, and opened fire at Mitsuru with his rifle, or at least in the last place he’d seen her before she’d been obscured by the mist of nanometer blades.
It didn’t make any difference.
The bullets were shredded by the rapidly advancing silver cloud, and a moment later the gunman himself was reduced to a pile of horribly uniform small pieces of meat. The runner made it the furthest, all the way to the edge of the camp before he came up short, faced with the wall of flames. He stood frozen there, torn between the fire in front of him and the glimmering silver cloud that pursued him.
The first tendrils of the fog licked his back, and where they touched him, they left deep voids in the flesh, gouging through bone and muscle. The Weir screamed and leapt into the fire, caught somewhere between his human and lupine forms. Mitsuru dispelled the protocol with a sigh of relief, and listened to the screams of the Weir as Xia’s inferno finished it.
Alice walked up next to Mitsuru, dripping river water and smeared with someone else’s blood, and smiled at her approvingly. After a brief hesitation, Mitsuru gave her a small smile back.
“You’re a nightmare, Mitzi,” Alice enthused, her kohl-lined eyes shining. “I got all excited just watching.”
Mitsuru blushed.
“The Shining Cloud belonged to Alistair,” she admitted. “He implanted it directly before we left. I can’t manage something like that yet.”
Alice patted Mitsuru affectionately on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry about it, Mitzi.” Alice’s grin was wolfish. “We have time. We’ll make an Auditor out of you yet.”
Mitsuru winced, opened her mouth to correct her.
Tung dropped the camouflage protocol that he had activated the moment the Auditors had arrived. One moment, there was a 50-gallon black metal drum standing next to Alice, and then next, Tung stood there, wheezing and gasping, a 12-guage double-barrel shotgun leveled at her head.
“You bitches are all out of time,” Tung snarled, still struggling to catch his breath. He’d had to hold it ever since they’d stopped next to him. The camouflage protocol was powerful enough that they probably won’t have been able to hear him — but he couldn’t risk it. “And truly fucking weird, I might add.”
“Don’t act like such a big shot,” Alice said casually, her body language totally non-plussed. “You aren’t capable of concealing yourself from me. Who set that up for you?”
“Miss Gallow, you aren’t in any position to be asking questions. So how ‘bout you get that freak in the mask to turn the fire off, and then me and your little Japanese friend, we’re going to take a little walk in the woods, alright? I know that you’re an Auditor and all, but there’s no way you’re going to be able to do anything before I pull the trigger on this thing, and at this range, no barrier is gonna save you.”
Tung fished something out of his right pocket and held it, clenched in his fist.
“It was nice of you to leave me one, Mitzi,” Alice said gratefully. “I like to feel useful, after all.”
“I am a kind-hearted woman,” Mitsuru agreed. “Now, please stop calling me that.”
“What the fuck is it with you people?” Tung pushed the muzzle of the shotgun up against the side of Alice’s head. “One last chance here, Miss Gallow. Call off your dogs, and we can both walk away from this.”
“Did you actually think,” Alice said coldly, closing her eyes, “that you could get the drop on me, with power that you borrowed? Do you know my reputation, Tung? Do you know how I got it?”
Tung tried to pull the trigger, but it was already too late. Tung looked down at the weapon and saw something, something a bit like a crude hand that had reached up from the weapon’s shadow and wrapped around the firing mechanism. Other hands were forming, from somewhere deep inside his own shadow, and reaching for him.
Alice turned around to face the gun with her ghastly smile. She folded her hands in front of her like an obedient school girl.
“Oh, my dear Mr. Do,” she said sweetly, patting him on the forehead. The many dark hands clutched him tightly, now, and he could not move away. Everywhere the little hands had attached, do felt a strange aching sensation, and then nothing at all. He struggled against them, but his efforts came to nothing more than straining and grunting. “Thank you so much for showing us your little camp, your doggy-friends and your Witch’s toys. You’ve answered all sorts of questions for us.”
Alice giggled, and then swayed coquettishly up to the frozen, horrified man.
“It was kind of you to cooperate with our Audit, Mr. Do.” Alice smirked. “In regards to your own personal circumstances, I’m happy to report that our investigation is at an end. You didn’t know much of anything, so I’m happy to say we’ve got no reason to hold on to you.”
Tung tried to desperately to crush the egg-shell thin ceramic idol in his other hand, to activate the dormant working inside that the Witches had left with him, the one he’d been warned to only use in desperation, but his hand would not close. When he looked down, most of his hand was gone, neatly disassembled. The little hands had been working him over, tearing away small pieces from his hands, his feet and his chest, and then withdrawing into the shadow. It caused almost no pain, and left behind nothing at all — the skin at the edge of the void was smooth, featureless. There was no bleeding. It was as if what had been taken from him had never been there at all.
Tung screamed, but it was hard to tell, because so much of his mouth was gone.
Alice leaned over what remained of the man’s face, her black-rimmed eyes staring directly into his, her expression rapt and hungry.
“My name is Alice Gallow, Mr. Do,” she whispered. “And I’d like to show you something special. To be entirely honest,” she added, batting her eyelashes, “I’ve developed quite a thing for you. Would you like to see?”
Tung wanted to scream, he really did, but there wasn’t enough of him left to manage it.