“What do you think, Alex?”
“I am sort of excited,” Alex admitted, taking in his uncharacteristically opulent surroundings. “This is my first time in a limo, after all. On the other hand, I’m still regretting some things that happened earlier, and wondering if I‘ve ruined my life by going along with this. I guess I’d say my feelings are mixed.”
“Don’t be like that,” Emily scolded. “We are on vacation. You have to try and have fun.”
“Right,” Alex said. “Besides, except for Timor, it’s me in a limo full of girls. That is definitely pretty cool.”
“Actually, Timor won’t be much competition for you,” Emily said, tipsy from three glasses of Champagne, patting his Alex’s affectionately. “He told me so.”
Timor blushed and muttered to himself. Katya laughed uproariously. Svetlana looked vaguely uncomfortable. Anastasia attempted to murder Emily with her eyes.
“Right, then,” Alex said lightly, hoping to change the subject. “So, uh, where are Renton and Therese?”
Anastasia gave Emily one last glower, clearly wishing she would move away from her cousin, then reluctantly turned to face Alex.
“They are taking the long way. Security procedures,” Anastasia said, sipping from the glass of mineral water she had taken, rather than the excellent sparkling wine that had been handed around when they got in. “Not my idea, Black Sun regulations. Therese had to be psychically blindfolded so she couldn’t find the island again. Renton’s taking care of that. Not that she won’t be able to figure it out the first time one of the fishing boats or the vendors come by. But I don’t make the rules,” Anastasia said ruefully. “At least, not yet.”
“Does that mean I shouldn’t ask where we are going? Because I definitely won’t figure it out.”
“Ha Long Bay,” Anastasia said, shrugging. “And before you ask, that is in northern Vietnam.”
“Oh, shit. Don’t they, like, hate Americans?” Alex asked curiously. “I saw Full Metal Jacket. I would hate us.”
“Actually, that doesn’t come up much,” Anastasia said, clearly taken aback by the reasonableness of the question. “Probably because my family isn’t American, but also because Vietnam is a pretty young place — not many people are old enough to remember the war, and most people are too busy trying to make money from tourists to worry about their country of origin. The government can be a bit passive-aggressive, and they have any number of rules about what foreigners can and cannot do, including owning land. Technically the island is held by a Vietnamese development group, and on paper, they run a small resort there. In reality, the resort is my vacation home, and the only guests are my family, but we pay taxes as if it were full year round, so no one objects. You will like it, I’m certain. It is beautiful, the weather should be nice if very warm, and there are beaches.”
“Wow,” Emily said, shifting over in her seat to be nearer to Alex. “This is so cool, Anastasia!”
“How come we didn’t just go straight there?” Alex asked, finishing off his own glass and setting it aside. “Couldn’t we have skipped the flight from Tokyo and the drive out and stuff? Couldn’t Svetlana port us directly?”
“Yes, but there are people in Central who can track apports,” Anastasia said, frowning at the thought. “We never go there directly. I had Svetlana take us to Narita Airport in Tokyo because it’s the regional transportation hub; all that tells anyone watching is that we went somewhere in Asia. The Black Sun has holdings throughout the region. They might know about the island, but they don’t know we are going there.”
“Doesn’t that seem a little bit paranoid? It’s only a vacation, right?”
Anastasia sneered at Alex.
“You are naive, boy. I was still in my mother’s womb the first time someone tried to kill me, an abortifacient slipped into her poached egg. The precognitives knew I was coming, so the cartels didn’t even wait for me to be born. That is the world we live in. You will learn this, eventually.”
“It seems like you are going a little far…”
“You think this was the extent of my subterfuge? You underestimate me,” Anastasia said haughtily. “At the marina on Ha Long Bay, we will be met by an old friend and employee of the family, Mr. Bao, who will handle both the payment and the telepathic memory wipe of the driver who took us here, and then after, the ferryman as well. Meanwhile, Renton, Therese, and a few others are on an overnight flight from London to Beijing, then to Hong Kong the next day. They won’t meet us in Ha Long Bay until Tuesday, at the earliest.”
“Anastasia! That’s mean,” Emily said. Her tone was chiding, but she seemed delighted.
“They never used to have limousines here,” Katya said, sounding a bit sad about it. She was still wearing an unnecessary windbreaker, despite the heat and humidity, and eating bright red battered shrimp she had bought from a vendor outside the airport. “Remember those Chinese jeeps that we used to have to take, Ana? I hated those things.”
Anastasia nodded, and then, to Alex’s absolute astonishment, she laughed.
“Timor got sick every year, do you remember?” Anastasia asked, laughing from behind her hand. “Poor child. Never could stomach the roads or the suspension.”
“Thank you for reminding me,” Timor said glumly. “You are both just showing off for Alex and Emily.”
“I wasn’t doing anything!” Katya protested. “I was harmlessly reminiscing.”
“They are trying to con you,” Timor said, leaning over Emily to confide to Alex. “Normally, they fight the whole way here about what movie they plan on watching on the big television downstairs.”
“Now who’s showing off,” Katya muttered, closing her eyes and leaning her head against the window.
It wasn’t a long trip, perhaps four hours with traffic, which was generally heavy and varied from bicycles to massive Chinese cargo trucks, all crowded together on the same narrow roadway. Most of the vehicles they passed were vans and trucks, all sitting low on their suspensions, loaded with cargo or covered in passengers clinging to every available surface. Anastasia and Katya quarreled briefly, then both appeared to go to sleep, while Emily stared out the window at the lush countryside, Svetlana read, and Timor and Alex played Gin on the foldout table in between the seats. They crested a particularly large group of hills, and then started to descend back down into an urban area.
“I recognize this part of the road,” Svetlana said, in her clipped, Russian-accented English. “It is not much longer, now.”
“You know, you never say anything when I’m around,” Alex observed, discarding one bad card and getting another to replace it. “I started to worry that you hated me.”
“No,” Svetlana said, shaking her head. “But I am a servant, not a member of the family, not a favored guest like yourself. It is not my place to speak, so I don’t.”
“Wow, that’s a really fucked up attitude you have,” Alex said, tossing his cards down in disgust. “Does Anastasia own you or something?”
Svetlana gave him a wan smile and returned to her book. Timor put the cards aside and turned to chat with Emily, leaving Alex to stew impotently. Anastasia’s eyes snapped open a few minutes later without a trace of sleepiness in them.
“Mr. Bao,” she said softly, staring at indeterminate point above Alex’s head. “It’s good to hear from you again.”
Then Anastasia switched to what he assumed to be Vietnamese, which impressed the hell out of Alex, but didn’t seem to come as a surprise to anyone else.
Alex stared glumly out the window and wondered if the whole trip would be that way.
Gaul sighed and let Alistair knock twice before he finally called for him to come in.
“Sorry boss, I know you’re busy. But I just got my marching orders…”
“Yes,” Gaul snapped irritably. “Get to the point, Alistair. There is a problem of some kind? Something that you don’t understand?”
“No, I get the mission,” Alistair said, unflappable, as he took a seat in front of Gaul. “You’ve had me working on this for months, whatever it is, so it must be important. ’I'll do it, I’m not arguing. I’m simply wondering when I will get my old job back.”
“What does that mean?” Gaul asked. “I’m not in the mood for games, Alistair. Say what you have to say.”
“For quite a while, you’ve had me running errands while you do my job. In case you have forgotten, I am supposed to be your Chief Auditor. Instead, I barely even see my subordinates,” Alistair complained. “They take their marching orders from you. Hell, you and Alice Gallow seem tight these days. What gives? Did I blow it?”
“On the contrary,” Gaul said, pushing his glasses back into place. “I have no one else that I can trust with this matter, no one else who is capable. I am not demoting you, Alistair, I am relying on you.”
“If you say so. I’ve spent months running down rumors about your old classmates, and about our friends out in Egypt, the Anathema. They haven’t tried anything in fifty years, Gaul. They’ve been dormant since they were expelled from Central. No one I’ve talked to knows anything about this ‘Rosicrucian’ person at all, at least, not in the sense that you mean it. You have me talking to conspiracy theorists and French Royalist weirdoes. Is all of this supposed to make sense?”
Gaul looked up at him briefly, and then he solemnly shook his head.
“Not to you, it isn’t. Don’t misunderstand me, Alistair. I put my faith in you because you are capable, but your remit does not extend as far as doubting me,” Gaul said critically. “I have guided the Academy through a dozen crises before this, and I will lead us through this one as well. As Chief Auditor, you are my right hand. My right hand is not permitted to question my intentions or my judgment.”
There was no sound in the room except for Gaul’s pen scratching on the paper.
“You’re the boss,” Alistair said, sighing and standing up. “I wish you’d let me delegate this, though.”
“The most important part of managing people is knowing which jobs you absolutely must do yourself,” Gaul said coldly, motioning toward the door without looking up. “I eagerly await the day that you come to this realization yourself.”
Alistair shook his head doubtfully and left, closing the door behind him. After he left, Gaul put his pen down, rubbed his forehead, and then sighed, looking at the chair where his Chief Auditor had sat.
Mr. Bao was nothing like the wizened old Vietnamese man that Alex was expecting. He was short, stocky, and middle-aged, with neatly trimmed hair and designer glasses. He spoke unaccented English and was evasive about where he’d picked it up. Since he and Alex both ended up in the front cabin of the ferry, they talked about the Lakers, to whom Mr. Bao was devoted, despite the fact that Alex knew nothing about basketball. He was likable, and the trip to the island and was short and breathtakingly beautiful. The bay sparkled in the afternoon sun, azure blue with grey columns of stone jutting out from the water like the ruins of an ancient city, some crowned with livid green flora, others concealing impossibly perfect white-sand beaches. Mr. Bao pointed out each islet and told him what they were called, but Alex got confused, as they all seemed to have variations on the same name. The island that they were going to was at the end of the harbor, tucked inside the arm of a much larger barrier island. There was a fishing village across the water on the mainland, and a swanky resort on the adjoining island.
They disembarked on an amazingly level beach that was flooded with two inches of warm seawater so clear he could see the grains of sand beneath, extending to the rock walls that surrounded the cove. While a taciturn Samoan dealt with the luggage, they followed Anastasia along narrow path through dense undergrowth and unfamiliar trees. This was followed by lush, formal gardens, dotted with fountains and bisected by a miniature stream. Maintaining it must have required an army of gardeners, but Alex didn’t see anyone on the entire walk.
The house was nestled at the rear of a great clearing, surrounded by cultivated fruit trees and a dazzling array of exotic flowers. It was less grandiose than Alex had feared; two stories painted a uniform white and in a Western style. The house was clearly old, maybe even dating back to the French occupation, with significant modern renovations. They were greeted by a small army of servants, who were a mix of Chinese, Vietnamese and Russian, and then Alex was shown to his room by a tiny smiling man named Phon. He informed him in heavily accented English that dinner would be served in an hour and a half, and then disappeared before Alex had a chance to thank him.
Alex paced across the room, taking stock: one bed, giant and comfortable, too many pillows. One mirror, floor length. A massive armoire into which he had unpacked his meager things. An uncertain looking writing desk that he placed his laptop on with some trepidation. A vase, with perfectly arranged flowers. A window that looked out on the bamboo garden to the rear of the house, and what he assumed was jungle rising up behind it in a verdant green wall.
Alex couldn’t hear anything, despite the fact that he knew the house was filled with people. He was afraid to walk on the lacquered wood of the floors in his shoes, so he stayed carefully on the patterned rugs instead. He sat on the bed for a while, staring out the window. He checked his laptop, confirming that he had internet access, but then he didn’t do anything with it. Restless, he changed into board shorts and his weird Israeli sandals, and then headed for the beach.
The halls of the house seemed deserted, though once he heard people talking somewhere nearby. He was worried that he might have to ask directions, but the first path that he took led directly to a cove, no more than a quarter-mile from the house, fifty meters long and flooded to the extent that only a sliver of white, dry sand remained, at the very edge of the dense rock that bordered the beach. He threw his things down and took off his shirt and sandals, realizing belatedly that he hadn’t thought to bring a towel. As there was nothing for it now, he jumped into the water, which was pleasantly warm, particularly in the shallows of the flooded beach. Gradually, he waded out further, to where the water was deeper and turned a darker shade of blue, and then swam in the freestyle stroke that Michael had taught him. He didn’t go far, instead making lazy circles around the cove, pausing every now and again to float on his back. He stared up at the sky as the sun diminished, licking the salt from his lips and brushing his wet hair back from his eyes. Alex wasn’t the most confident swimmer, having only started a few months ago in the Academy pool, but the bay was calm and he felt safe.
He was tired by the time he made his way back to shore. Alex was relieved to find that his fears had not been realized, and that the tide had in fact receded slightly, leaving his clothes dry and intact. He was less relieved to discover he had company.
“I thought I might find you here,” she said shyly. “Well, maybe not here. Actually, this was the second beach I came to. I brought you a towel.”
“Thanks,” Alex said, suddenly very self-conscious of his shirtless physique. Things had improved, thanks to Michael and the nanites, but he still felt pretty inadequate. “I forgot.”
“I thought you might,” Emily said, obviously pleased with herself. “Are you done swimming? Because I was sent to collect you. Dinner is happening soon. I don’t know why Anastasia has such a problem with her cook. He seems alright to me.”
“Maybe it’s because she doesn’t eat meat,” Alex said grumpily, running the towel through his hair. “Sorry for the trouble, by the way. I didn’t mean to stay out so long. I kind of freaked out once I got here, and I had to get out of that house for a little while.”
“Culture shock,” Emily said sympathetically. “Anastasia’s world will do that to you. I have no idea how rich she is personally, but it must be a substantial fortune,” Emily said, shaking her head and looking, to Alex’s eyes, more than a bit jealous. “Her family is considered the wealthiest and most powerful among all the cartels. She’s lived this way since she was a child. It gives you an idea how she became so comfortable giving orders.”
Alex nodded, and finished pulling his shirt over his head. He ran a hand through his hair, stepped into his sandals, and nodded at Emily. She started back down the path and he followed, drops of saltwater running down the back of his neck and tickling his ears.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you… Are you and Anastasia, like, friends now? Or is that part of some sort of deal you’re working, or what?”
Emily laughed, the sound dying in the brush around them.
“You are so not subtle, Alex. I like that about you,” she said, giggling. “Anastasia and I are for-real friends, at least on my part. We didn’t make any kind of deal. She did me the favor of inviting me and a few other people along on her spring vacation. If things work out the way I hope, then I won’t owe her anything more than a favor. And if they don’t, well, Anastasia wouldn’t be my first option for help.”
“No?” Alex said encouragingly. “You mean the Hegemony?”
Emily shook her head.
“No. It’s… become very complicated. But, let’s not waste our time talking about this,” she said, seizing his arm and clinging to it. “That isn’t important. Because I’m very confident that everything is going to work out for both of us.”
“For you, maybe. For me, I’m not even sure what that might entail,” Alex complained.
Emily poked him in the side, between his ribs, making him jump and cry out in surprise. He rubbed the spot and stared at her resentfully.
“You are the least romantic boy,” Emily chided.
“What do you think, Vlad? Has Alice brought me something I can use?”
“I think so,” Vladimir said slowly, chewing on the end of his pen. “It’s hard to work out the hierarchy, but there’s no doubt — the Witches are at the top. These two should be worth something to them, if we can figure out how to contact them and how to make the offer.”
Gaul adjusted his glasses, looking at the two figures, each in their own individual and mostly barren cells, one-way glass inset between them and their observers. Both were women, both wore bulky red jumpsuits with no pockets, and both were shaved smooth and bald. One still had splints on the fingers of both hands, and a healing bruise on the side of her jaw, while the other seemed in relatively good shape. Though wouldn’t have been apparent to the casual observer, neither of the prisoners were even remotely human.
“What do you suppose they would be worth?”
“That’s hard to say,” Vladimir said, fussing over the piece of machinery that he had been messing about with since Gaul arrived, something that looked quite a bit like a slide projector. “Since we started the operation, we’ve managed to kill six of them and capture two. That’s in contrast to the dozens of Weir and human causalities they’ve suffered during the same period. Clearly, they are willing to sacrifice their pawns in order to protect the Witches, so they must be valuable. But how valuable? That’s hard to say when we don’t know their priorities. What do you want to do with them?”
“One of the teams we lost in Shanghai,” Gaul said quietly, his voice terse. “They didn’t die; they simply disappeared from Alistair’s grid in mid-operation. The current theory is that they are alive, and are held somewhere. We have had similar incidents in the past few years. There could be as many as a dozen prisoners, assuming any of them are still alive. I want them back. Failing that, I want their bodies. After what happened with Edward, I don’t want any repeats.”
“Prisoner exchange, huh?” Vladimir said thoughtfully, as he extracted a lens from the device that he was working on, setting it down carefully on a sheet of wax paper. “That might work. Hard to say, when we don’t even know if they want their prisoners back. We don’t know if their culture puts any kind of priority on individual Witches. Maybe they write them off as soon as they are captured. Maybe this was prompted by us taking prisoners in the first place. They may as well be aliens. Who knows what they think?”
Gaul leaned up close to the one-way glass, peering through it at their longer-term captive, the less battered of the two Witches. She perched on the minimal cot she had been provided, staring at the featureless wall in front of her, her expression blank.
“Do they ever do anything? Every time I come down here, they are sitting there, staring into space…”
“They scream when Alice and Mark come to take them downstairs,” Vladimir said, shaking his head disapprovingly. “The new one, the one that Alice brought back from New York, she still spits and claws at anyone who comes into her cell. We have to restrain her just to hose the thing down every other week. The Witch we captured in San Diego was the same way until Alice got upset, and broke both her arms and her left knee. Since then she’s been more talkative. Her name is Evelyn, apparently — or at least, that’s what she calls herself. She’ll respond if you talk to her, she’ll answer if you ask her a question, though I don’t think they’ve gotten anything particularly useful out of her.”
“Because she doesn’t know anything or because she’s recalcitrant?”
Vladimir took a replacement lens from a rack on the nearby table, carefully handling it by the edges, and slotted it cautiously in an arcane machine. A circle flared briefly around him, a swirl of dancing letters that disappeared as fast as they had materialized.
“I’m not certain,” Vlad admitted, breathing an obvious sigh of relief as he screwed in the new lens. “But since our own dear Alice Gallow is involved, I wouldn’t put any money on her holding out. She’s seems traumatized, if that’s even possible with these creatures. Rebecca suspected that they might not have emotions at all, or not the same ones as us, but that they have learned to mimic ours to their advantage. She certainly seems frightened of Alice, but who isn’t? Go talk to her, if you are curious.”
“I might,” Gaul said, looking through the glass at the women on the other side. “How are you holding up, Vlad?”
“Better than most,” Vladimir retorted, glaring at Gaul. “And if that’s what you came down here to discuss, then you wasted your time.”
“If you say so,” Gaul said, turning back to the window. “How do I talk to her?”
The lights were already on in the kitchen when Anastasia walked in, glad she’d bothered to put on a nightdress. She cleared her throat and then waited politely for Emily to notice her.
“Oh,” she said, looking up from the refrigerator. “I guess you didn’t have enough dinner, either?”
“No,” Anastasia admitted, walking into the kitchen, the silk of her slip moist with the humidity of the night. “I have this problem with cooks. The ones that aren’t vegans hate cooking for me because I’m a vegan. The vegan ones are all so crazy that I can’t stand to eat their food three days in a row. Have you ever had a jackfruit-and-tofu scramble? Because I was served one, and I’m still not sure if it was an attempt on my life or a sincere effort to feed me.”
Emily laughed, closed the refrigerator and opened a nearby cupboard, stretching to see what was on the upper shelf. The t-shirt she wore was tight enough that it had to stretch to accommodate the movement.
“You’ve lost weight,” Anastasia observed.
“Thank you,” Emily said brightly.
“And that’s why you’re here…”
“Yeah,” Emily said, looking a bit embarrassed. “I never actually eat enough at dinner these days. Oh! Do you want popcorn?”
“Yes. Yes, I do want popcorn,” Anastasia said seriously. Blitzen came wandering cautiously in, following his mistress’s voice. His head emerged from the door tentatively, until he determined that the staff, who would not have tolerated him in the kitchen, were nowhere in sight. He sidled up next to them and nudged Anastasia’s hand until she relented and scratched behind his ears. “Emily, why aren’t you with Alex? It’s only ten…”
Emily’s smile was utterly joyless.
“He fell asleep,” Emily said resentfully. “Do you know where the popcorn maker is?”
In fact, Anastasia had only been in the kitchen on a half dozen occasions in her entire life, and didn’t know where anything was. As such, she was reduced to helping Emily open the dozens of identical, white-painted drawers, hunting for anything that resembled a popcorn maker. At the very least, she managed to salvage some of her ego by being the one to find it, on her fifth try. She still had to let Emily operate it, though, since she understood the making of popcorn only in theory.
“Anastasia, can I ask you something? Are your… what are those, um, things on your slippers?”
“They are Domo,” Anastasia said helpfully, pointing at them. “These are Domo slippers.”
“I see,” Emily blinked. “They’re cute. Where did you get them?”
“Same place I get everything,” Anastasia said with a shrug. “Tokyo. I have Svetlana take me there every so often so that I can go shopping in Shinjuku. They have all the cutest stuff, and my build,” Anastasia said, grimacing, “is common in Japan. That makes shopping easy.”
“That’s amazing,” Emily said, raising her voice above the whirring motor of the air popper. “I can’t believe you go all the way around the world to go shopping. That sounds so cool.”
“Would you like to go?” Anastasia asked, searching cabinets for salt. “We could go sometime during break. Sveta can take us.”
“Could we?” Emily asked, excited. “Of course I’d love to go! I don’t have any money, but it would be fun to see. I haven’t really been anywhere exciting before this.” Emily waited until the popcorn was finished, and Anastasia returned with a saltshaker, before she went on. “Anastasia, it isn’t that I don’t appreciate it, but I have to ask — why are you being so nice to me?”
“Am I? I hadn’t noticed. Perhaps it is because you are the first people from outside of my family or cartel to visit this place, and I want you to get a good impression.”
“Maybe,” Emily said, looking dubious. “Do you want to watch a movie or something?”
Anastasia nodded and headed toward the room with the giant television in it.
“Yes, but probably not the same one you want to watch…”
Negotiations followed. They settled on Heavenly Creatures, because they were both feeling maudlin. Emily cried a little, near the end, but Anastasia remembered it being better.
“I would appreciate it if we could have a frank conversation, Evelyn.”
The woman rubbed her wrists and looked befuddled by her surroundings. Gaul tried to remember Rebecca’s warnings about the relative humanity and the possible falseness of their emotions, but it was hard. The woman seemed genuinely distressed, and he didn’t like being a party to it. The room they were in was sterile white except for the bare wooden table they sat at and the plastic chairs they occupied. It looked like a disused meeting room, not an interrogation chamber, but Gaul still felt like an inquisitor. Normally, he thought resentfully, he had people for this sort of thing.
“Whatever you want,” Evelyn said, nodding accommodatingly. “I always cooperate. You don’t have to force me.”
“I hadn’t planned to,” Gaul said distastefully. “Can you tell me, please, Evelyn, your relative position in the Witch hierarchy?”
Evelyn ran a hand across a head made bare, and Gaul felt a dull guilt.
“I can, but you won’t like the answer,” Evelyn said flatly, looking at the table. “I’m nobody special. I don’t know how to make a comparison to your standards, but I’m about as low as our totem pole gets, without being like you people.”
“Then what would the relative worth of a captured Operator be?”
“It depends what they are using them for,” Evelyn explained dully. “If they took them prisoner, and they are still alive for you to recover, chances are they wouldn’t trade to get me back because they have some specific use for them. Otherwise, they would have gotten rid of them a long time ago. There’d be no precedent for something like an exchange, anyway. We are expected to hold our own.”
“Is there someone I could talk to? Someone who might be concerned about your wellbeing? Or might want to see you returned on the basis of security?”
Evelyn shook her head hesitantly.
“A superior? A central organization?”
“You don’t understand,” she said, with something that sounded like pity, as impossible as that was. “You couldn’t possibly understand. We aren’t organized that way. I told you all right from the start, but none of you believed me. We have a… an awareness of each other. There is no word to describe it. Nothing that you have done has restricted, in any way, my connection with them. You may as well be talking to them directly when you speak to me. They do not care what happens to me. Understand this, please — I am very, very afraid. I do not want any more bad things to happen to me. But they do not care.”
Gaul sat back from the table and pushed his glasses back up.
“I see. Interesting. So, are some Witches more valuable than others?”
“Certainly. Older, wiser, more powerful Witches command more respect. Those who control the cattle, the humans. Those successful in the war against your kind. All of them, they are above me,” Evelyn explained, her voice wandering and distant. “But there is no hierarchy as you understand it, no leader for you to speak to. There are those among us who would listen to what you had to say out of curiosity, but they would be no more able to sway our society as a whole than you would.”
“So, if I understand you correctly,” Gaul said tiredly, “There is no way to negotiate with your kind. Not even to secure your own release.”
Evelyn looked him in the eyes, her expression desperate but not quite, he thought, defeated.
“Not even to surrender,” she said flatly. “We have some understanding of your concepts of diplomacy. But we do not agree with the philosophy behind it.”
“That is… unfortunate,” Gaul said reluctantly. “That would require one side or the other to be completely wiped out for the conflict to end.”
Evelyn nodded mutely.
“The intelligence you provided us has proved valid,” Gaul said woodenly, consulting the Etheric Network. “Empathic and telepathic probes, as well as basic self interest, indicate that you are being honest with us, as far as that goes.”
“Of course,” Evelyn said shakily. “What would I gain with lies? I am dead to my people as it is. Even if I were somehow to escape, they would kill me out of distrust. I have been contaminated by you people.”
Gaul’s frown tightened.
“One of my associates has made a rather alarming suggestion. She claims that your emotions are manufactured,” Gaul said, his voice returning to normal as he regarded her critically, observing her through the filter of the empathic protocol that he had downloaded. “She claims that you have fabricated a persona, complete with the kind of emotional responses to stimuli that we would expect, for the sole purpose of feigning humanity, and appealing to our own.”
Gaul waited and watched while Evelyn fidgeted and twitched, but nothing came of it. He hated downloading empathic protocols; it was all too touchy-feely for him. He always felt dirty afterward, as if he gotten too close and caught something.
“Well? Is it true?”
Evelyn spoke slowly when she responded, as if she were under tremendous pressure, as if the words were torn from deep within her, and only at a grievous personal cost.
“If my persona is manufactured, then I would have no more awareness of it than you would. Do you understand? I would not be able to differentiate between the persona and my own identity. For all intents and purposes, an implanted persona completely replaces the preexisting personality when it is installed.”
“And this would be true if a human was implanted with a persona?”
“Certainly,” Evelyn said, with a muted nod.
“An Operator?”
“If that is possible, then yes.”
“Evelyn, when the Auditors took you, were you working for the Anathema? With Anathema? With any Operators at all?”
“No,” Evelyn said, shaking her head vigorously. “As far as we are concerned there is no difference between you and them. An Operator is an Operator, regardless of your petty disputes. We do not engage in alliances. We have slaves, but we do not have allies.”
“Then why is it,” Gaul asked, leaning forward, “that we keep finding Witches and Operators working together lately?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about the Terrie Cartel?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Evelyn said, shivering. “Alice Gallow didn’t believe me either. Nevertheless, I genuinely don’t. I can tell you this much, though. It’s a lesson that we teach our young from their first days — anyone can be controlled. All that’s needed is the right leverage.”
“You think the Anathema have found a way to manipulate Witches?”
“What do I know?” Evelyn answered, spreading her hands helplessly. “I’m not important. It isn't impossible. As far as I know, there are no Witches working with Operators, so any you have encountered have either gone rogue, or they are under outside control. Do you believe me, Director?”
Gaul shrugged concomitantly.
“My fear, my pain, is every bit as a real as yours,” Evelyn said, her hands out imploringly. “I don’t want to be hurt. I don’t want to see Alice Gallow again. I don’t want to die in that cell, and I will ransom my life with whatever I can offer. Is there something that you want from me, Director?”
Gaul’s pale red eyes narrowed.
“As a matter of fact,” he said softly, with quiet satisfaction. “There is. We conducted a raid in Shanghai recently, as part of the mop-up of the Terrie Cartel. Instead of finding Witches, we found the Anathema — heretic Operators. So tell me, Evelyn — we aren’t fighting you this time, are we?”
He could see the surprise in her eyes, and it annoyed him.
“Of course not,” Evelyn said. “Have you only now realized?”
“Exquisite,” Alice said, running one gloved finger across the blood-smear on the pitted concrete floor. “I’ve never seen another protocol like it. This is what Rebecca and Alistair were so desperate to keep secret. I thought that your ability was permanently restricted. I’m pleased to see that isn’t the case. How long have you been able to use it?”
Mitsuru sat down heavily on the floor of the basement room. Behind her, the cement wall was spattered with her blood, evidence of the stomach wound the she had sustained, still dripping on to the floor around her in little rivulets. Of the five Anathema she had found in the basement, there were only two intact corpses, leaking from various bullet wounds. The rest were in smaller pieces that were scattered across the room. It looked like a slaughterhouse, and it was starting to smell that way, too.
“Since last week,” Mitsuru admitted, poking experimentally at the gouge that ran from her side to her belly above her belt line. “I’ve been trying for months, but nothing worked. Then, that night that I brought Alex Warner back…”
“Aha!” Alice cried, delighted, still inspecting the carnage. “I thought it might be down to that little delinquent. I wondered why they were so damn eager to get me to take over your spot, administering The Program.”
“Yeah, me too,” Mitsuru said, leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes, “guess I know why, now. I helped him stretch out a cramp the other day, and the bindings around the Black Door, the ones that the Board installed in me, they snapped like rubber bands.”
“Okay, I see the gunshots, and the knife work,” Alice said approvingly, turning her attention to dissected corpse of a middle-aged man in the center of the room, more a collection of mangled parts than a body, “but what did you do to this unfortunate bastard?”
“He was the one who wounded me,” Mitsuru said, wrinkling her nose in disgust, “I didn’t even see him, somehow, until he was right on top of me. The thing is, when I activate the protocol, I can do all sorts of things. That,” Mitsuru said, inclining her head at the body without opening her eyes, “is what it looks like, afterwards.”
“Nasty,” Alice said approvingly.
Mitsuru gritted her teeth and all around her a deep red tint to the air filled the air, as if Alice was watching through a filtered lens. The blood seeping from the wound in her stomach staunched itself abruptly, coagulating in fast-forward. Mitsuru gasped, opening her eyes and blinking several times to clear her vision.
“Oh, Mitzi, I like you more and more all the time,” Alice said, hugging her knees to her chest and leering at her. “So why did you call me? Not that I mind, you understand…”
“I can’t tell Alistair about this,” Mitsuru said meekly, waving her hand to indicate the massacre around her. “He’d freak. And there was another one with them, who got away before I could stop her. She was an Operator. I was hoping we could go after her.”
“Well, I’d like to, baby, but how?” Alice said, obviously amused. “Bitch has gotta be long gone, if she saw any of what you did here.”
“Right, but I got some of my blood on her,” Mitsuru said, looking embarrassed. “The nanites inside will keep relaying information back to me for a few hours until they shut down. I can track her, wherever she goes, until that happens.”
“That’s a nice trick. But what are you doing here in the first place? What are you working?”
“Alistair gave me the lead,” Mitsuru said hurriedly. “On accident. He doesn’t know I followed up on it, that wasn’t his intention. But I’m angry. About Rebecca. These bastards have something to do with it. That’s what his personal files said, anyway.”
Alice grinned, stood up, and walked over to where Mitsuru sat. As always, Mitsuru was more than a little intimidated by the tall woman with her jet-black hair and her disturbing smile, but as usual, she seemed utterly benevolent where Mitsuru was concerned. She bent down and patted her head affectionately.
“Oh, Mitzi, I swear, I could just eat you up!” Alice said, revealing all together too many teeth for Mitsuru’s taste.