SolCorp’s Kyiv Office.
Walking through the halls on her way to meet up with Mark for another lesson, Anise did a double take at a group of three kids around nine or ten and one teen walking in the other direction.
“Asher?” she called, coming to a stop and stretching to remember his name. He had been several years behind her in Academy, but there weren’t so many kids that they didn’t all mostly know each other—and it had been forever since she’d seen a familiar face.
He slowed and looked at her, brow pinched. “LAHQA?”
She nodded. “Anise.”
“Oh yeah. Hold up,” he called to the younger ones he had with him. She walked to him as he herded them into a small grouping like a mother hen.
“Hi!” a little girl with brown curls piped at her. The two little boys didn’t seem to care that she existed.
“Hi, there.” Anise bent down to her with a smile. She wasn’t a kid person, but she had enough training to fake it. “What’s your name?”
“Beth.”
“Hi, Beth. What department do you want to be in when you grow up?”
She looked down, suddenly shy. “I wanna be a veterinarian.”
“Oh?” Anise gave Asher a confused look. “So, Uranus?”
“They said I can be a firefighter if I want,” one of the boys crowed.
She knew enough to know they weren’t strange answers out among civilians, and that was the idea of the program, but it still rattled her to her core. They looked small and excited and, in some strange twist of fate, their mentors wouldn’t have to break it to them that they’d never be firefighters or have any life like they’d seen on television. Straightening, she turned back to Asher, needing to get off the subject. “When did you get here?”
“Just a week ago.”
“How is it so far?”
He shrugged and scolded two of the kids to be quiet. “It’s fine. It’s cool to be able to go outside again and the classes are way more interesting.”
“They let you out?” She’d figured the fact that she’d been able to leave right away had been because she’d graduated.
“Yeah,” he smirked. “Something about how Academy kids end up all stunted. Before LAHQA, I did live in the real world for a bit, and I think they’re right. I’m sick of wearing these, though,” he said, holding up one wrist and showing her the thick black dampener band designed to weaken his knack. “But I’ve got my Post Breathe at the end of the week.”
Anise couldn’t help but cock her head at that, but before she could ask, the little girl tugged on his shirt. “Come on,” she complained.
“Sorry, they’ve been bothering me to do this training thing. I’ve got the forms memorized better than them.”
Anise glanced at her watch. She could stand to be only on-time to her meetings every now and then. “I’ll walk you.”
They started off together, following the tiny ones in front, who seemed to have taken to the map of the place better than she had. “Your Post Breathe is this week?” she pressed, trying to sound casual.
“Yeah. Did it really suck?”
“I haven’t had mine yet.”
“That’s weird. Why?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just had like a half a dozen calibration sessions.”
“Calibration?”
She shook her head at him. “Must just be because we have different knacks. And you’re nat-born.”
“Yeah, must be.”
Ahead of them the kids disappeared into a room on the right. Asher waved at her, saying, “See you,” as he followed them inside.
Unsettled, Anise hovered across the hall to get a good view into the room. It was a small sparring space with thick red mats on the floor, and the kids had jumped right into their training as if it were a game they’d been dying to get permission to play.
They paired off and Asher helped the odd kid out while reminding them the right order of the moves. It was some sort of hand-to-hand combat, but there was something chilling about listening to Asher say, “Careful, this is where you would break the arm, but we’re just practicing,” and explaining why it was important to aim for the nose when you stomp on the opponent’s face. Anise tried to think back to when they had started training her to go that hard, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t until high school, or junior high at the earliest. All those lessons were burned in her memory but this felt worse, somehow.
“Crazy, right?”
Anise startled. She was too distractible today. A woman in a Pluto coat had stopped to stand beside her, looking into the room. “Yeah.” Anise watched the small girl with the curls sweep her leg, throwing a young boy to the ground with a thump and bringing her little foot down next to his head with a wordless yell.
“That’s not Krav Maga,” Anise commented, swallowing.
“No, I think it’s called Line—L.I.N.E. I forget what it stands for.”
The more drills they went through, the more Anise noticed a pattern. “Every technique ends with a killing blow.”
“Yeah.” The Pluto agent let out a deep sigh. “It’s different in practice, you know? It’s one thing to talk about, think about it in theory, and another to actually see it.”
“What do you mean?” Anise couldn’t pull her eyes away from Asher helping to better position the little boy’s arms to properly break an elbow.
“It’s brutal. The kids, the Post Breathes, all of it.”
This time, Anise didn’t look at her on purpose, worried her expression would scare her off. She could feel the goosebumps on her arms and the fear emanating from this woman’s mind. Something wasn’t right. “It’s not so different,” she said quietly.
The woman laughed. “Then you haven’t been here that long. You’ll see.” She fiddled with the ID badge clipped to her waistband. “It’s worth it. We both know that. Those kids could have a life we never had a chance to consider. Omelette and breaking eggs and all that. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. How long have you been here?”
“Under a year. I know him from Academy,” she said, nodding to Asher.
The Pluto agent went pale. “Are you a student?”
“There you are.” Mark’s voice made her turn before she could answer. A vibrating panic from the Pluto agent shivered in Anise’s chest as they watched him walk toward them.
Anise checked her watch. Shit. She’d lost track of time. “Sorry,” she cringed. “I ran into someone from LA.”
He stood stock-still in front of them, face stern, more stern than she was used to seeing it. “Anise, can you go wait in my office?”
She nodded and stole a glance at the Pluto agent as she walked away. She looked terrified. Anise walked slower than normal, waiting to hear what he would say to her, but she didn't hear anything except for the distant shouts from behind the training room doorway.
The walk to his office was long and she tried to keep her mind empty on her way. Anything else felt like she was breaking some sacred tenet, though she couldn’t explain why. Mark’s office had beautiful windows on two walls and she sat in a plush armchair set in the corner by a tall potted fig tree. She couldn’t shake the butterflies in her stomach as she waited.
When Mark finally arrived, every tell in his body language spoke to him being in a foul mood. His eyebrows were a straight line instead of their charmingly cocky lift, his fingers were restless, and he was walking too fast. He sat at his desk without speaking and she moved to sit in the chair across from him.
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” he answered. He had an impressive ability to temper his voice. “It’s just exhausting to keep everyone on the same page. It’s fine now.”
Anise closed her eyes against a surge of pressure in her head. The butterflies settled and were replaced with a warm calm. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s fine,” she agreed.
---
Sol LAHQ. Terre Department.
Darwin paced in the hallway, waiting for his boss, Whitney, to be ready for him. His ears were out. He didn’t even bother trying to put them away. He was far too nervous and half-wished he’d thought to bring a hat. Ever since Ollie’s team had gone rogue, he was sure that every out-of-the-ordinary contact or meeting was to break it to Darwin that he was being fired, demoted, investigated, or all of the above. He couldn’t understand what the team had been thinking. What possibly could have happened? He tried hard to not use the telepath’s name even in his mind, but he didn’t know his Icarus number to replace it with and that wasn’t the kind of thing you could really ask about.
Whitney’s door opened and called his name.
Freezing mid-step despite the strange look from a couple of teachers passing by, he made his way to the door.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked. She gestured for him to sit, so he did, knee bouncing.
“You’re not in trouble,” she began.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” There was a smile. Thank god. “One of your students—” Darwin’s heart began to pound. “—is being transferred.” His shoulders dropped.
Working to control his expression, he did his best to respond. “Oh? Um, which one? For what reason?”
“Madison is being moved to the Kyiv pilot program.”
He took a moment of silence despite feeling self-conscious and rude for taking up her time. There were too many questions piling up behind the dam of his mouth. Madison was a good kid, if not as mature as the Sol academy standard. He settled on the one that was most important to Madison. “When?”
“She was moved yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” She was only a couple years to graduation. He’d probably never see her again. She had one of those giggles that wouldn’t quit, unable to hold it together, keeping him from moving the conversation along. “Why?”
“She was regarded as a good fit for the new pilot program.”
He thought back to the first time he’d heard about Kyiv, the student and her struggle with her knack, but couldn’t remember her name. She hadn’t really been one of his students to begin with, but it was irking him. He should have known her name.
“Madison doesn’t need a Post-Breathe,” he hazarded. His whole body was telling him to say, ‘yes, ma’am,’ and leave, but he couldn’t.
Whitney looked vaguely taken aback by that. She narrowed her eyes at her computer and he could feel his ears flatten against his hair. “You had one of the early ones?”
He nodded. “Kinda?”
“It isn’t only for Post-Breathes. I’m not at liberty to go into the other half of the program, but the two projects support each other well.”
Darwin continued, nodding, “I guess that makes sense. Otherwise the students would be coming right back after their Post-Breathe.” And he hadn’t heard anything about that.
“Exactly,” she smiled. “Now, I wanted to tell you personally because we’re being asked to keep this on a need-to-know basis while the program gets on its feet.”
He bit his lip. “For how long?”
She gave him a pitying look. “I don’t know. I’m just passing along the orders I got. It’s not something you need to worry about.”
The word “orders” sent a chill up his spine. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Darwin.” He was dismissed.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
He took two wrong turns on his way back to his office despite the fact that he’d spent his whole life on these series of floors. Everything about it made him uncomfortable. It felt like a wrinkle in his sock that made it so he couldn’t think about anything else.
By the time he made it back to his office, he’d remembered the student’s name. Anise. Sitting at his computer, he brought up the student database and typed in her name. Instead of hitting search, he sat back and stared at the black text on the page. Anise del Sol.
He’d been given orders. Orders he’d come dangerously close to questioning. Not disobeying, mind you. But pushing for information, clarification. That was his job as a student advocate, he liked to think, but even that didn’t go as far as disobeying a direct order. His mind inadvertently wandered again to his old classmate. Ree—no. He shook the name out of his head, only to see a flash of a different, mostly-forgotten face and the slightest smell of red wine. He felt himself start to hiccup and tried to shrug it off, feeling the too-familiar dissociative haze of his Reintegration filling his senses. Even after all this time, he still felt it this clearly. He knew, to some degree, how it worked. A trauma response—he was a mental healthcare professional, after all, even if it was just in Terre. But this was a helpful response, he reminded himself, even as a half-remembered phrase wandered into his mind. Something about ‘non-violent disobedience for the greater good?’ Gooseflesh raised on his arms and he leaned hard into that hazy feeling, wanting nothing to do with any of this stuff.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
What did he think he would learn from the search, anyway? That she was still in Kyiv. That she’d graduated and been placed. Not much.
And after his questions and the info they’d given him in general, it was more than possible they’d be monitoring him. A search would be recorded in his history. They had the ability to track all his computer activity. They might even already know he’d typed out her name. Darwin began to sweat even more than he already was from the get-go. If they were watching, not completing the search would signal to them that, while he’d had a momentary lapse, he knew better. Proof, a gesture that he would comply with the order to not worry about it.
He exited out of the database.
---
Sanctuary. Flanders, Belgium.
The night air was colder on Gareth’s face than it should have been. The sweat pouring off him had drenched his shirt until it stuck to his lower back. He could feel it running in droplets down his sides. He was sucking in air through his mouth and the sound of it made him sick. Gareth faced the direction of the road they had gone hunting down the other night, but his eyes were unfocused and he wasn’t seeing anything.
A car horn snapped him out of it. He realized he was standing in the middle of the street and the car was swerving to drive around him, laying on his horn hard. Gareth watched him roll down his window and start yelling in a language Gareth didn’t know before suddenly stopping, his mouth frozen open in a dark hole. The driver peeled out, accelerating too fast and fishtailing back into his own lane. Gareth looked down and took stock of himself. His shirt sleeves were covered in blood and the legs of his pants were splashed with something darker. He walked back inside the house.
His eyes had adjusted so he could just barely see by the red lights again. The smell of the room got his heart racing. It smelled like Entropy. It smelled like he was a kid again. His mind blanked. He walked across the room and helped Alyosha tighten the strip of cloth he was tying around one bicep, mindlessly kicking aside a few splintered pieces of chair for more solid footing. Alyosha’s face was too white.
“Thank you,” he told Gareth quietly.
He nodded, clenching his jaw and forcing himself to look around. The old man was crouched down by the refrigerator, which had been knocked over (or maybe thrown by telekinesis, he hadn’t seen it happen.) There were teeth marks visible on both his arms where he'd locked them around the things’s body. It wasn’t moving anymore and the abrupt, flat plane created by the stump of its neck looked odd, out of place. When he turned back, Alyosha was watching him and they looked at each other blankly for a moment. Gareth wondered if that was what he looked like right now.
Alyosha bent to pick up one of the discarded long knives from the floor and walked over to stand in front of a closet that had one of the last remaining intact chairs shoved under the doorknob. That was where they’d tossed the head.
Gareth walked into the living room where Noah had Reeve on the floor, closing his side while Alex cradled his head on his knees. Gareth couldn’t see much of Noah, but Alex’s back and side were completely drenched in blood. He must have fallen into the puddle at some point. Gareth cleared his throat.
“How much of that’s yours?” he asked. It sounded like a croak to his own ears.
Alex looked at him. His mouth was a hard-set line, and he didn’t answer.
Gareth shifted, stretching his fingers. The healing bones in his hand and wrist weren’t quite ready yet. They felt too light, like they were hollow. It’d be right in an hour, but for now, it just reminded him of that eviscerating grip.
“Noah,” he started haltingly, watching Reeve’s eyes move sporadically behind blue-tinted eyelids.
“He’ll live,” Noah interrupted, voice gruff and tired. “Go help Warren check on the others and get out of my light so I can sew this up.”
Gareth stood there for a full thirty seconds thinking he had begun to cross the room before he realized his legs hadn’t moved. He couldn’t feel them. He bent and scratched one knee—still there, still his—and crossed to head down the hall. Warren was by the shattered remains of the door to the bedroom where they had been holding the Vigil. He was limping badly and had a bloody shirt knotted around his shin. Gareth rushed to catch up and as he did, felt the world break open and rush back into the void. Hannah. He pressed himself sideways to get into the room at the same time as Warren without knocking him over.
Michael was curled up, chin tucked into his knees by what was left of the doorframe. He was covered, dizzyingly, head-to-toe in scrawled crosses, drawn on his skin in black marker. He was in shock, but alive, and Gareth pushed past him. His head whipped around the room without seeing Hannah anywhere, panic making his breath come too fast. He spotted a bath towel caught on the edge of the knocked over cot. He clamored over the cot too quickly, his leg catching on a ripped strap, and he stumbled. Coming down hard on one knee, he stopped to take a breath. He could hear Warren murmuring, trying to snap Michael out of it.
Gareth put a hand out to lever himself up, but his fingers came down on flesh, making the hairs on his arms and legs stand on end. When he looked down, he saw his hand hovering in mid-air and Gareth nearly collapsed with relief. His arm buckled and he eased himself onto the floor, feeling with his hands, to determine how she was laying. An arm there, here the bones of her hips. She groaned as he pulled her upright.
“Wake up now,” he told her, patting her all over her face and arms.
“My head’s killin’ me,” she moaned and slowly bled into visibility. She didn’t appear immediately injured from what he could see. Gareth blew out a breath, slow and whistling.
She squinted at him. “Holy shit,” she gasped, touching his torn and stained shirt. “Is everyone alright?”
“Everyone’s breathing.”
Hannah sat the rest of the way up, looking nauseous. “I’m sorry. It was so fast.”
“It’s dead. What happened?”
“You’re okay?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Of course I’m okay. When am I not okay?”
“Plenty of times,” she mumbled. “We heard yelling from you guys and then suddenly it was happening.”
“It was like…” she trailed off and shut her eyes, brow tense. “Nothing slowed it down. It was on top of Michael, but the drawings kept making it freak out when it would try to bite him. I jumped on it, trying to pull it off of him because—”
“Because you’re an idiot.”
She rolled her eyes and then winced as though it had hurt. “It threw me off and I landed over here. Smacked my head. Really hard. Lost my towel at some point. I must have gone invisible just before I passed out, hoping it wouldn’t find me.”
“You were lucky it could smell the blood in the other room,” Warren called, purposefully averting his eyes from her. “Let’s get them in the living room with the others.”
“Can you walk?” Gareth asked her.
“Let’s find out.”
He hauled her onto her feet. She wobbled for a moment and shut her eyes tight, gripping her temples with both hands. She steadied and waved him off, bending slowly to pick up her towel to cover herself.
Warren was trying to pull Michael upright, balancing on his one good leg. Gareth rushed over and helped Michael up. The boy’s face was blank and Gareth avoided looking at him. Gareth glanced at Warren’s leg. What he could see through the torn pant leg was badly swollen.
“Is it broken?” he asked Warren.
“Yes.”
Gareth slouched and motioned for Warren to use him as a crutch. He hesitated longer than was probably tactful, before slinging his arm around Gareth’s neck. They hobbled down the hall together with Hannah guiding Michael behind them.
In the living room, Reeve was awake, if a little green looking. Alex, eyes wide and burning, reached out his hand for Hannah from the couch and she took it and leaned down to kiss the top of his head.
“Oh, my god,” Hannah gasped.
“He’s okay,” Noah repeated, annoyed. Noah was sitting next to Alex, leaning over a side table, sewing up a gash in his own forearm.
“Warren,” she called, watching him settle Michael in a chair. “If you’ve got a splint, I can set that.”
“In the bathroom.”
Hannah looked over at Gareth. Her mouth was a little slack, tired, but there was tension in the muscles around her eyes, the way she got when she was feeling his energies. And worrying. He bobbed his chin slightly, nodding to her that he was okay, and she left, her hand gripping Warren’s elbow as they walked.
Gareth settled cross-legged on the floor next to Reeve.
“Hey,” Reeve said, weakly. “I’m not sure that went well.”
Gareth snorted and looked up at Alex but the kid was looking so damn solemn. And angry. Noah gestured and Alex cut the last suture and helped him wrap it. Noah slid to the edge of the couch, ready to stand up. He swept his eyes across the room, looking at the three of them.
“You’re going to stay here and make sure Reeve doesn’t stand up, and everyone ought to drink some fluids. I’m going to go into the kitchen to help the others destroy the dog.” They nodded. Noah licked his lips and stared off at one wall, taking pains to breathe slowly.
“What is it?” Alex asked, his voice smaller than normal, but tightly controlled.
“The second Reeve can travel,” he started, rubbing at one eye, “which should be soon, once we get his blood pressure up, you all need to get out of here. You can’t stay in this Sanctuary a minute longer than you have to. We—” he took a long breath out. “I’ll come with you and get you to the next Sanctuary. Finish up your training. You can’t stay here after this. I don’t think it’s safe for you.”
Gareth looked down at Reeve who, wide-eyed, was craning his head to look at Michael. “Is he?” Reeve asked hoarsely.
“He’s catatonic. Trust me, this isn’t going to be what he remembers about tonight. You’re lucky we don’t have dead bodies here, or else I wouldn’t like your chances—everyone’s got limits,” Noah continued. “I can get you out, but then you have to keep your heads down and do every single damn thing I say. Because the second time something like this happens, I can’t protect you.”
Gareth tried to swallow, but this throat stuck, feeling like it was full of wood pulp. He stared at the floor. He heard Noah stand up and step slowly across the room.
“Wait,” Reeve wheezed, trying to sit up. Gareth pressed him flat with a hand on his shoulder. He could have only used one finger.
Alex looked over at that, eyes hard and voice harder. “You need to shut up and listen. We all do.” Then, quietly, “You two have done enough, don’t you think?”
“I like you guys,” Noah cut him off. “I do. I want you people to make it. I will get you to our tracker once I can swear to him that I trust you. But if you do anything to silence these Children, I will help them kill you. And if you think we couldn’t take down at least one of you, you haven’t been paying attention.”
No one spoke. Gareth could taste bile with every breath.
“Gareth,” Noah called as he walked out of the room toward the kitchen, “don’t let Reeve sit up.”
“Yes, sir,” he responded, meaning it with every trembling muscle in his body.
***