Sunset cover art of Alex trapped in a truck surrounded by black tendrils [https://64.media.tumblr.com/8c9501b2fc432a23d5f954fd61a9a811/6e62218ccc805724-24/s640x960/0e65001875f6b2b6dfb881cedbf50021efcd894d.pnj]
Natal, Brazil.
Reeve didn’t dare reach out and touch Alex’s mind yet, but they were finally close enough that he could do it if he tried. He could close his eyes and pinpoint exactly where Alex was through the trees. Not telling him they were nearby, not scanning his thoughts to see if he was hurt, might have been the hardest thing Reeve had ever done.
They were inland, far beyond the tourist zone and miles down cobblestone roads with nothing but palms and few locked gates on either side of the road, dark houses set deep down long driveways. It was quiet except for night insects, and the moon was filtered through sparse clouds. He’d had Gareth stop the car when they were about a quarter mile away.
Hannah, still invisible, touched his arm and thought, Do you have a layout?
Reeve shook his head and kept his voice low. “He’s up there on the left. Either the road curves or there’s a turn or a house.”
“I’ll take a look,” Hannah’s voice came from beside him as the touch of her hand slipped away. The soft sound of her footsteps quickly faded into the rustle of palms in the night wind.
“Keep good track of her,” Gareth said, staring after her. Turning nearly a full circle, he scanned the road. “So what do we have?” He pulled out his two handguns and placed them on the hood of the car. Reeve set his gun next to it. “Okay,” Gareth cocked an eyebrow. “And I know Hannah had a .22 and her razor blades in her shorts, so those are in the car.”
They stood back and looked at it in the moonlight. There were a few extra magazines but it wasn’t much. Reeve didn’t usually rely on firepower when a mind can be manipulated, but he hadn’t ever fought against other knacked people in a way that wasn’t friendly sparring. Neptune would be well trained to resist telepathy. In his mind, he could sense the bright spot that was Hannah closing in on the spot that was Alex. He didn’t know why that somehow made him feel worse, more terrified.
“How many agents did you see in Alyosha’s head?”
“Three. High profile Retrieval teams are more like four or five. A three person Neptune team is usually sort of like a sleeper cell. They’re spread all over, stationed in areas without a Sol presence—until they get orders to sweep their region.”
Gareth was staring at him. “How the fuck do you know all this?”
He shrugged. “I made sure I was as informed as possible.”
Gareth sighed. His mind kept folding in on itself, eating its anger like a black hole pulling and crushing in with nowhere to go.
“So we’ve got three Neptune agents, four guns, the two of us, and someone full of stitches.”
The point in his mental map that was Hannah was closing in on them. “She’s back,” he said quickly, knowing how jumpy they both were. She stepped onto the road and became visible. Her side was bleeding again, but not badly, and no one brought it up.
“Did you see him,” Gareth asked, tucking his weapons back in his pants.
“No, but there’s a house.”
Reeve took a step closer to her. “Show me.”
Slipping in behind her eyes, he saw rushes and broad leafed palms as she waded through the brush following the line of the road. There was a narrow dirt driveway up ahead on the left side of the road. She followed it, moving through the bushes, low to the ground now, and crawling slowly. It was long and it emptied out into a sandy clearing in the brush with a small, almost comically square house. It had a floodlight above the door illuminating the clearing, which was empty of everything except a car and one Neptune agent in full gear sitting on its roof with what looked like a submachine gun. Skirting the edges, she found a spot where the blowing sands got clogged on some roots, forming a small hill in the weeds—a place where they could lay hidden and get a good view.
“Get your stuff,” Reeve said, even before he had fully snapped out of her mind. “We’ve got a workable hiding spot. We’re going to get him.”
They crawled low in the loose dirt to the hill he had seen—little more than a bank of sand barely high enough to cover them. But they could see it now: the small house with curtains drawn and lights on inside, and the car out front with an agent on watch. Reeve looked to the house, but Alex’s presence wasn't there.
"I think he's in the car," he sputtered. Reeve shifted his body back and forth, trying to triangulate the signal he was getting. "He's in the fucking trunk!"
Gareth huffed a breath out through his nose. "Hannah, any chance you could sneak your way in there?"
She shook her head. "The floodlight. I still cast a shadow."
He looked to Reeve next. "If we can get rid of the guy on watch quietly, we've got a chance.” Gareth rubbed at his face, brushing off an insect. “Last time, we caught Neptune by surprise and it was still a close thing. This one’s a trap."
Reeve was apprehensive to put his telepathy to use against another agent. "They're heavily trained to defend against telepathy. Best chance I have is to make him turn his gun on himself, because he's readying himself to shoot someone now anyway. But that will give us away to the others."
"You can't just…" Gareth lifted one hand to mime an explosion.
"Maybe. If anything, I'm in a good space for it now. But it won't be instant like with a civilian, and he could get off a shot to alert his team."
Gareth thought, nodding.
"It’s more risky to do it quietly, but that’s still our best option."
"I know," Gareth said.
There was a pause. Everyone was looking at the car. Hannah leaned close to whisper, "You stay here and do that. If he gets off a shot, put his next one through his brain. Gareth and I will sneak over to the grass behind the house, so we can take them out as they walk out the door."
They nodded. It wasn't a bad plan. "Let him know we're here," she continued. "He might need to be ready to run."
A breath went out of Reeve, having been given some kind of permission to contact Alex in a way that wasn't just for his selfish need for comfort.
"Guns up on the watchman,” he cautioned. “We don't know their knacks and they might sense me." Reeve reached out to that bright point and stepped inside. It was as familiar and easy as turning over a leaf to study the spidering pattern of veins underneath. The agent on watch didn’t react. Reeve’s awareness flooded with Alex’s stomach-churning fear. He was in pain, but not seriously injured—curled on his side with blood dried into his hair. Reeve was confident that image would be fuel enough to liquefy that agent’s brain instantly. He took another breath and tried to calm his own racing mind.
Don't react, he thought softly to Alex. Reeve’s name surged from Alex’s mind like lightning, with a feeling too intense for words. We’re here. Just stay like you are and we're coming to get you.
Okay. Alex’s jumbled emotions flooded and clogged behind Reeve’s eyes and he struggled to contain it all. Fucking hurry.
Reeve nodded to the others. “He’s hurt, but okay.” He felt Gareth beginning to unleash some of the rage he'd been squashing—a lot of it was anger at him. That was fine. He could use it like that, direct it at targets. Hannah was breathing deep and fast, over oxygenating, psyching herself up to go.
Her breath cut off short and she pointed through the trees out to the road. There were headlights, the first they'd seen all night. Reeve held his breath as they drove past the driveway and he kept holding it as they slowed to a stop just down the road. The lights shut off. Someone else was coming on foot.
"Do we go now, or reassess?" Hannah urged. All his weight was on his toes and fingers, ready to set off at a run. Reeve looked back at the car. The agent was standing on the car roof now, on high alert. They’d lost any element of surprise.
“We have to wait.”
There was no sound for a while, and they concentrated on warding the direction they had come. Neptune backup could have been flanking them. It could be something else Reeve hadn't thought of. He didn't dare touch their minds to find out. When they could finally hear footsteps, they came from the driveway proper, unhurried and unquiet. Reeve peered through the leaves, trying to get a visual.
"Sounds like two, maybe three," Gareth hissed. "Now what?"
"We can't put ourselves between what might be two Neptune teams. We need to wait until they're all in one place." There were, in fact, two figures now blurred in the dark and walking down the drive toward the house. As they got closer, they could see the two men were in civilian clothing, not tactical gear. Reeve lowered his brow, considering options.
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Something happened in Gareth that stung through Reeve’s connection to him like a red hot spike. Gareth grabbed his wrist in a painful, too-tight grip and leaned in close enough that Reeve could feel the heat of his breath against his ear.
"You tell Alex not to move a muscle and to take the slowest breaths he can. Tell him…tell him to plug his ears."
Reeve turned and stared at him, bewildered, mouth open but silent.
"Tell him,” Gareth spat in a low growl. “Then get back in your own skull and stay there. That," he pointed to the two men, "is Entropy. Do it now."
A tremor ran through him. He did.
Alex, we're coming soon. I need you to block your ears now until I say so. He waited. Alex was as confused as he was, but he slowly reached his fingers up to his ears, too frightened not to trust him. Good. Now don’t move. You've got to stay silent and take really slow breaths. Slowest you can, like when you're meditating with Hannah.
Reeve?
He was scaring him.
This is really important. We're coming to get you, but I have to pull out now. Don’t reach for me—I'll be back.
He pulled his awareness before he lost his nerve and nodded to Gareth.
"Shut your telepathy off. All of it. They will sense you and then we'll die." The cold tone of Gareth’s voice made the hair on his arms stand on end. Reeve pulled inward more than he had in a long, long time. The meds made it disturbingly easy to fold it up and tuck it away. He could never completely stop it, but it was as silent as it gets. Alex’s light blinked out as he lost touch, and so did Hannah’s and Gareth’s and distant Shvedov’s. He hated it. They were looking at Gareth, waiting. Reeve and Hannah had never encountered Entropy before. This wasn’t in their training.
"Now you, too. Don't move. Slow breaths. The one on the right’s an Elder. We need to slow our heart rates down and hope he doesn’t notice us." All three of them flattened themselves to the dirt and forced their shaking muscles to breathe deep and measured. Reeve knew a little about them, but he had never seen one of the Anthropophagi before. He had assumed they would look different from humans, but this one didn’t—at least not from this distance. Reeve felt blind and helpless, slowly filling his lungs in the dirt. They listened to the footsteps slowly pass them and continue on into the clearing.
"I need to see," Gareth breathed. “Slowly." Reeve and Hannah slid up the bank on their bellies with him, what felt like one grain of sand at a time. The two men were walking slowly toward the car. The one on the left kicked at the dirt as he walked, swinging one leg aimlessly while looking at the night sky.
"Why does Alex have to plug his ears?" Hannah whispered, barely audible.
Gareth didn't answer for a few seconds. They watched the two men stop in front of the car. The Neptune agent had his gun trained on them and they raised their arms above their heads as if surrendering.
“Because if this goes how I think it’s going to, he won’t be able to stay still or quiet if he can hear it.”
Reeve turned to make Gareth explain, but was interrupted by the sound of gunfire.
---
Sol LAHQ.
Jake could feel the driver of the airport shuttle working not to give him a final weird look as he pulled to a stop to drop him off at the front doors of SolCorp. While the driver pulled his duffle bag out of the back, Jake stared up at the building’s intimidating facade of glass and steel. He’d been to LA once before to redo his evals at graduation and double-check his telepathy score, but not at all since then. Now it was supposed to be his new home, somehow.
He realized he’d gotten lost in thought for too long and turned around to apologize, but now it was the driver who was staring—just not at the building. He was standing, frozen, Jake’s bag in his hand, looking just behind them at a car in the first row of the parking lot. A man, short, round, and maybe five years younger than Jake, was busy working to clean out his passenger side. What stood out about him was the set of burnt orange and black furry ears sitting high on his head. The man fumbled, dropping a handful of empty plastic water bottles, and when he turned to gather them up, he locked eyes with the driver and then Jake. With a look of fear, his ears folded back, held close to his hair, and Jake grimaced.
He could feel the driver’s confused interest at seeing this. And the shapeshifter, even from his car, could see it too. With a clear look of panic, the shapeshifter started toward them while pulling his phone from his pocket with visible terror he was trying to cover with a nervous grin.
Jake put his hand on the driver’s shoulder and slipped into his mind, causing his gaze to go vacant. With practiced ease, Jake erased everything about the man with the strange ears.
“Thank you,” Jake said loudly as he took his bag from the driver. “Drive safe, now.” He nodded, still a little dazed, and got into the driver’s side just as the shapeshifter made it to them.
“Uhh,” the shapeshifter began, his mouth hanging open at a loss for words, and pointed with distress at the shuttle van as it pulled away. He’d shifted his ears back, but knew the damage had been done. The badge on the lanyard around his neck said “Darwin” and placed him as part of Terre.
“It’s okay, I took care of it,” Jake assured him. He flipped over the badge ID on his belt to show the symbol for Neptune department.
Darwin gulped and Jake heard the plastic of the empty bottle still in his hand crinkle. “Should I be filing an exposure report?” His voice had gone high and tight.
“Don’t worry about it. No harm done.”
“Thanks,” he stammered, clearly terrified.
Jake pointed at the front door. “How do I get to Uranus department?”
The man’s eyes shifted back and forth. “Uh, through the Atrium. Left elevators, twelfth floor? That should get you right in front.”
“Thanks,” Jake smiled. “It’s my first day in LA.”
He shouldered his bag and headed inside.
“Thanks again!” Darwin called after him. Jake waved back at him and headed inside. He let out a deep sigh and pushed his own fears down.
The Neptune agents at the front door scanned his badge, checking him against his photo, and gave him a quick and dirty telepathic scan to verify ID and intent before waving him through. Left elevators, twelfth floor, he remembered and headed up.
The elevator dropped him directly in front of a small reception area with cheery walls and a shallow pot of pastel succulents on the desk. The man behind the desk looked up at him when he didn’t move and smiled.
“Do you need something?”
“Yes,” he said, blinking. He walked to the desk and held up the sealed envelope of files in his hand. “I think I’m supposed to give these to you to establish housing?”
Hugh, according to his name tag, stood with a smile to take them and expertly ripped the seam open.
“Ah, welcome to LAHQ, Jacob del Sol.” Hugh grinned warmly as he read. “You’re being transferred in from Neptune field work?”
“We’re in Cleanup,” he replied automatically, before catching himself with a pang in his chest. It wasn’t “we” anymore. “I wipe sensitive information from witnesses’ heads. I was part of a team.” He tried to explain, but Hugh had moved on.
“Mmhm, and you’re a telepath with secondary on—uh, one—”
“Oneiro-telepathy. I can access people while they’re dreaming.”
“Huh. That’s not one that comes through this desk a lot. Alright. I see you’re marked as a two-point-eight telepath,” Hugh muttered, shuffling through several pages, then froze. “Two-point-eight?” he repeated, “Is that entered right?”
Jake nodded.
Hugh raised his eyebrows. “I haven’t seen a telepath score that high in...ever I don’t think,” he laughed as he continued reading. “Is the rest of your team also on their way?”
“No, I’m the only one who got transfer orders for some reason.” He felt his eyebrows pulling together and made an effort to keep his face neutral. “They’re back home.” Home.
A loud voice coming down the hall made him startle. “Who’s this tall drink of water, Hugh?”
Jake blinked and laughed despite himself, then froze as he turned to see Marek del Sol walking toward him. It was a face he recognized, though he’d never met the man himself.
“This is Jacob del Sol, a Neptune agent who just got moved to LA, and I’m trying to get him checked in,” Hugh responded with more sass than he would have predicted. “Just ignore him,” he told Jake.
Jake laughed again, at a loss for words.
The man was tall, with a pleasant roundness to him and a bright grin. He extended a hand. “Hi, Jacob, I’m Marek.”
“Yes, I know, sir,” Jake said, shaking his hand. “You’re Uranus.”
Uranus waved him off. “Has Hugh set you up with a pet yet?”
“Sir?”
“We haven’t gotten there yet,” Hugh interjected.
Uranus pointed at Hugh as he walked backwards to the elevator. “Well, don’t forget.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“Nice meeting you!” he called.
“You too, sir,” Jake stammered. When the elevator doors closed, he leaned closer to Hugh. “Was that really…?”
“Yeah.” He shook his head with a small smile and went back to typing. “Like I said, just ignore him. Oh, I’m sorry, agent, you said you were in the Cleanup part of Neptune, but your file says Reintegration.”
Whatever lightheartedness the strange encounter had injected drained out him and his tongue stuck. “Sorry?” he asked, even though he’d heard him just fine.
“You’re here to transfer to the Reintegration division, do I have that right?”
He nodded. “I received word that I was being transferred to work in Reintegration, yes.”
“Okay.” Hugh tapped his fingers against this desk. “Well then, I have you all checked in here with Uranus housing, and I’ve alerted Neptune that you’ve arrived. Generally, new assignees can take a few days to settle in and you’ll be hearing from your new superiors to set up orientation. Oh, and pets—”
“Pets?”
“Yeah, Marek instituted this pet program. Anyone who wants a pet can have one assigned to them. It makes the place feel more like home. Are you interested?”
“Maybe?” Jake stalled. He was tired and confused as to what his role was going to be here. His foster team had a golden retriever when he was a kid, but he remembered that being a lot of work. He was about to say no, but then he thought about coming home at the end of the day to an empty apartment without his teammates. No one to make dinner with. No one to talk to. No one to overhear moving in the next room, a strange comfort, knowing he wasn’t alone. “Something independent?”
“Cat it is. Someone from the pet program will be in touch.”
He nodded. He hoped it would help with the sinking feeling he had from being so far from home and everyone he loved.
“These are your keys and the unit number is attached.” He held them out. Jake took them and ran his thumb over the metal, studying them as though he’d never seen keys before.
“Are you alright?”
Jake snapped out of it and cleared his throat. His voice was a little rough. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” Hugh smiled.
“I didn’t request a transfer.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I didn’t,” he trailed off and turned his head to one side and smiled a smile with no trace of happiness. When he looked back at Hugh, he felt like he could start laughing at any moment even though nothing was funny. “I never passed the psych eval for Reintegration work,” he told him. “I took it standard back in Academy, twice actually, and a few years back at my age twenty-five assessment. I failed the section for Reintegration all three times.”
Hugh glanced around awkwardly, as though looking for backup, but they were alone.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Are my psych evals in my file there?”
Hugh bit his lip. “I don’t think I’m qualified to be reading your psych evals.”
“Are they in there?” Jake asked gently, his voice gone quiet.
He sighed and began to page through the file as quickly as he could. Jake watched the muscles in his jaw grow tighter the closer he got to the bottom of the stack. When he’d gone through the whole thing, Hugh tapped the pile of papers straight again and slid them back into their envelope.
“They’re not in there?” Jake confirmed, his brow low. Hugh didn’t answer. “Are they supposed to be in there?”
Hugh glanced up at the corners of the room and above the elevator and tugged at one sleeve. “Yeah,” he said finally, “they should be there.”
Jake cocked his head slightly to one side and Hugh’s sudden and sharp anxiety cut through his own with a pang of regret. Whatever this was, it wasn’t his fault, Jake reminded himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it. “I shouldn’t have asked you that.” He glanced around too, eyes flicking around the corners of the room where the security cameras sat. “I’m sure it’s just a clerical error. I’ll ask my superior about it.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s what it is,” Hugh agreed with a sigh of relief.
“Thank you and I’m sorry again.” Jake held up the keys and gave his best fake smile. “How do I find the living quarters? East elevator or west?”
“West elevators. Sixth floor. Follow signs for the skywalk. It’s a big place, but you’ll get the hang of it.”
“Thank you,” he repeated. “I’ll figure it out.”
***