Sunset cover with logo and red-scale illustration of Misha (young man with scruff and Catholic imagery tattoos) [https://64.media.tumblr.com/f0fe7d7e93f411db4d473c6b701b1615/cd11b0a9af9da0fb-9f/s640x960/02bcd5a50c56de7705691bcbc504019560e97b96.pnj]
Sanctuary. Munich, Germany.
Misha was awake before the rest of them. Gareth woke when he silently lit the lantern on the counter and started running the kitchen sink. He blinked, sitting up quickly in the sunken, battered armchair. He shook himself off, hoping Reeve wouldn’t notice he had fallen asleep when he was supposed to be on watch. The grimace on Reeve’s face proved he was too occupied with the things a body is occupied by when it spends the night on a hard floor. Gareth wondered how long it would take for Reeve to realize Gareth was never going to argue when he offered to take the least comfortable spot in the house.
A cloud of steam was rising up from the sink as Misha rinsed out a large travel thermos before filling it with hot water.
“‘Morning,” Reeve said, bleary-eyed. “I half thought you were a dream for a second.”
“I am happy to see you too,” Misha replied blandly. He opened a cabinet, empty except for a tall canister of instant coffee and a spoon. He tossed a few scoops into the thermos, closed it, and shook. “Help yourself to whatever you can find. You won’t find much. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Where are you going?” Reeve asked a little sharply.
“I said I would look for this Network nonsense. I have to see a contact.”
“Who?” Alyosha asked.
“What?” His voice sounded genuinely shocked at the question.
Reeve stood up and stretched his stiff limbs. “I’m coming.”
Misha shook his head. “No.”
Hannah and Alex came down the hall looking a little tussled. Alex climbed over the back of the futon to sit beside Alyosha.
“You think I should just trust you?” Reeve asked.
Misha took a sip of his awful looking coffee. “That would be nice, yes.” Reeve didn’t respond. “Fine, you are paranoid. You are a little smart after all. You can come and listen from outside,” he said, tapping his temple. “My friend is a private man.”
“Fine.”
Hannah shook her head. “No one goes anywhere alone.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Misha muttered.
“I’ll go,” Gareth said, standing up and trying to smooth the worst of the rumples from his pants.
“Okay,” Misha snapped. “The rest of you should consider doing a sweep of the area. I think I’ve cleaned out all the stray dogs, but at least try, for appearances.”
Alex had a concerned look to his pinched eyebrows that made Gareth think that they would definitely not be doing that. Hannah watched them as he and Reeve hurriedly got dressed the rest of the way. Her eyes were strangely unreadable.
Misha clicked his mouth when they were done. “Do you people even try?” He bent and rummaged through a bag on the floor, pulling out two necklaces with oversized crucifixes and held them out, one wood and one metal. They took them, told the others to be careful, and followed him down the stairs into the night.
Misha told them to wait by the corner of a battered, abandoned building while he went across the street to an autoparts garage. Reeve leaned his back against the brick, crossing one thin ankle over the other. Gareth shrugged his shoulder, feeling tangled in the too damn big coats the Church wore. It was a shit area of town and it made Gareth’s palms itch. He clenched his jaw and tried not to pace.
“What is this?” he hissed to Reeve, jutting his chin out.
Reeve’s voice had that flat tone of being two places at once. “It looks like organized crime.”
Gareth screwed up his face. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound most of the time?” Reeve didn’t answer and kept his head down, eyes vacant. “‘Organized crime,’” Gareth mocked under his breath.
“We don’t have to do this,” he said quietly.
“Do what?”
“Find this Network. We can stay in the Church if you want. We can split up, if you all decide it’s safer. We can rethink all this.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up.”
He did, thank god. The sky was clouded over and blank under the dull streetlamps. The side door to the garage opened and two men stepped out and began to cross the street. Lit under the garage's lights, one was young, late teens, and the other looked to be in his forties. One, then the other, noticed he and Reeve and continued to stare hard in their direction, slowing their pace.
"What's with them?"
"Who?"
"These two guys who just walked out."
"What about them?"
“They're staring at us."
"Well, they just left the place of a man who appears to sell illegal firearms and we're loitering on the corner, watching the building. They're probably worried we're cops."
The men didn't change the direction they were walking, but they didn’t stop watching them either. They crossed the street and ended up on the sidewalk across from them. The younger one kept his eyes down and was glancing over quickly, but the older one’s head didn't waver. It was too dark to see their faces now. Gareth's heart was beating loud in his ears.
"Can you check?"
"Gareth, I'm actually pretty busy. I still have a net up for anything Neptune, but I need to focus right now."
His tone made Gareth sniff automatically. The two turned down a side street and he heard a car drive away. He paced a few times before settling in to lean against the wall next to Reeve. Out of the corners of his vision, he carefully watched the streets and intersections for any flickers of movement. His limbs felt frozen and heavy, his muscles twitching as a car turned the corner and slowly drove past them. Gareth prepared for it to kick off, but it was an elderly couple inside who barely noticed them as they passed.
"He's coming out." Reeve said, opening his eyes and stretching his neck.
Gareth tried not to flinch as he watched the door swing open again and Misha walked out. "Everything okay?" he asked Reeve, watching Misha jog across the street.
"Yeah."
Misha got to the corner and tapped out a cigarette. "You get all that?" He asked, his mouth curling into a little sneer.
Reeve nodded.
Misha cupped his hand around the cigarette as he lit it and looked at Gareth. "He's going to look into it and have someone call me," he muttered around the filter. "In case this asshole didn't say."
Reeve shook his head and started walking. "What the hell is the Church doing dealing with crime families?”
“Where the hell did you think those closets full of weapons came from? Jesus?”
“Why haven’t we heard about this until now?”
“It’s unspoken. Most Children aren’t involved, but there’s a small group willing to get our hands dirty to keep things running and the pious supplied.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Gareth said. “Entropy works with the families. They wouldn’t fucking tolerate crossing paths with the Church.”
Misha shrugged. “It’s business. They don’t have much of a choice but to put up with it.”
“In what world is Entropy forced into anything?”
Misha shrugged again, without stopping. “Just how it’s always been. Entropy needs the families for manpower and an information network untouched by Sol. The Church needs access to falsified papers and weapons--a lot of weapons. The families like Entropy’s money. And they like the Church as reliable repeat buyers, and help with jobs they don’t want to do themselves. Especially when non-Entropy blood-sucking filth becomes a problem. You are thinking it’s about principle. I say it’s about—”
“Money,” Reeve finished, blandly.
Misha looked back, “Yes.” He shook his head at Reeve.
“So now we wait?” Gareth asked, stretching his fingers and glancing around.
“Yeah, but we’ve got to talk about you,” Misha said, looking at Reeve.
“Christ, what about me now?”
“Your head,” Misha said, tapping his own forehead. “You’re being an idiot with it.”
Gareth raised his eyebrows and kept his mouth shut, tensing his lips to keep from smiling.
“Will you please complete a whole thought?” Reeve sighed as they turned a corner.
“Shut off your telepathy.”
“Are you kidding?” Reeve laughed.
“I am not kidding. Drop your net.”
“Hey,” Gareth called, looking around at unfamiliar store fronts. “This isn’t the way back. Where are you taking us?”
Reeve grabbed Misha’s shoulder to turn him, but Misha deftly shrugged him off. “Keep walking.”
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“Where are we going?”
“Shortcut. Do it now.”
“I’m keeping track that the others are safe,” Reeve snapped.
“This will keep them safer, or do you think I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about? Has Neptune found you yet?”
Reeve and Gareth exchanged a quick look. Reeve’s face looked pained but he nodded. They took another turn. Gareth was turned around and had no idea where they were now. Misha stopped at a bus stop sign on a quiet street and held out a cigarette to Gareth.
He said, “I don’t smoke.”
Misha’s hand didn’t waver. “Pretend. Try looking like you’re in the Church.”
Gareth snatched it and fumbled with the box of matches in the oversized Church coat.
“What the fuck is going on?” Reeve snapped under his breath.
“Did you sense any Neptune before you dropped your net?”
Gareth’s blood went cold.
“No.”
Misha smiled. “That’s because Neptune isn’t here.”
“You realize I won’t get detention if I punch you now.”
“You ever hear of Comets?” Misha said quietly, glancing at his phone.
“Recruitment teams.”
He nodded. “Are you scanning for Comets?”
Reeve shook his head. “Not specifically.”
“You are all thick. What knacks do they put on Comets?”
“Knack sensing.” His voice was flat.
“Yes. Neptune is looking for you, and they’ll send word out to Comets, since they travel so much. They’ll know they’re looking for a telepath. Telepaths don’t tend to stay off Sol radar long, so if no one’s picked you up yet, it’s a red flag. You’re in hiding. Act like it.”
“So, what?” Reeve asked through gritted teeth. “Is my knack just completely useless the rest of my life?”
“No. I forget how isolated and stupid they keep you all in Sol. Your net is loud. You need to learn to be quiet.”
“I’m not going into anyone’s mind,” Reeve argued. “I’m only listening.”
“Okay, it’s like this. You are keeping an eye on a room of people, and even if you’re not physically searching them, you’re still stomping around the room. People familiar with telepaths can hear you.”
Misha jerked his head in one direction and set off walking. Gareth flicked the cigarette away with a burst of sparks.
“It’s not your fault,” Misha said. “They don’t teach you to evade other knacked people, so why would you need it?”
“So, I can learn.”
Misha gave Reeve a quick up and down, and if Gareth weren’t fighting his own fear, he’d have thought it was hilarious. “Probably.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” he snapped. “Ask a telepath in the Church.” If Reeve had a retort, he kept silent.
“So now what?” Gareth asked.
“We go the long way home, just in case, and he keeps his head quiet and we wait to hear from my friend. It might make you feel safer, but there’s no sense in being a damn beacon.”
They followed Misha as he weaved in and out of side streets. Reeve wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Back at the fire escape, Misha hesitated. “You go on,” he said, waving at Gareth. “I want to talk about old times with this one.”
Gareth stopped. Reeve looked more nervous than confused, which wasn’t comforting.
Reeve shook his head at Gareth. “It’s fine. I’ll be right up.”
There was only so much Gareth could deal with in one night, so up he climbed. Alyosha was sitting on the futon facing the doors, shotgun over his knees, waiting. He stiffened when Gareth closed the door.
“Where is Reeve?”
“He’s just outside. Misha wanted a private word or some bullshit. Who knows. Shout if something goes wrong.” Gareth threw off the heavy coat and went to take a long shower.
---
Reeve had barely slept. Without casting his wide net of surveillance across several blocks, the only way he could relax even a tiny bit was with his eyes watching the door, the windows, or listening to the silence of the apartment and the predictable rumbles of the city throughout the day. He told time by sound. The blackout curtains cast the whole day under a pall, so he listened to the change in traffic, in the music downstairs, and the changing voices of birds.
He wasn’t the only one who slept fitfully. Reeve felt Gareth wake up several times, shaken by nightmares. Reeve absorbed the pressure of his thoughts in the room without prying. They were wordless and sweat-filled. It took Alex a long time to fall asleep. Reeve felt his mind buzzing loudly in the small bedroom after they had turned in, and for long after Hannah had fallen asleep. For what felt like a long time, he and Alex were the only ones awake. Reeve listened passively without reading, nervous of what he might find. Instead he pictured him, curled up on his side, inventing a scenario to keep him from pressing into his thoughts, invading his privacy. But that’s how he slept, how he always ended up, one arm practically off the bed, with his murmured snoring.
When Alex couldn’t sleep back in Beatty, he’d normally lay on his back, an arm above his head, and stare at the ceiling in the dark, unintentionally thinking loudly about his homework or some other problem that had come up in the day. Except for the times his mind wandered elsewhere and Reeve used every inch of his telepathy to ignore the warm buzz melting through the wall they shared. It was distracting, to say the least. Now Reeve just pictured him on his back, tapping one lazy foot, and wondered what of the many things was keeping him up tonight. He didn’t press and eventually even Alex slept.
When night came, he woke Shvedov with a gentle shake. He handed him the gun and gratefully took a seat in the armchair Shvedov had been sleeping in. His bloodshot eyes burned like a branding iron when he closed them. He closed them anyway.
He woke hearing Gareth say, “Hey,” and feeling a boot tap his foot. He jolted as he came awake and scrubbed at his face.
“Misha heard from the guy. Thought you’d want to know.”
He nodded, swallowing a yawn. “What is it?”
“More travel. Misha got us a train.”
Reeve stood up stretched, looking around the room. People were up and dressed, eating something from a takeout bag. “Where?” he asked Misha.
“Berlin. He’s got a friend who may be able to give you information. We can leave today.”
“Good.”
---
Alex watched Misha give some counter-sign to the man at the gate and exchanged a few quick words in German. He let them in and gave them the number of the train car they needed. No one paid them any mind as they all clamored into a train car, hauling inside the heavy duffle bags Misha had brought with them. Inside, it was dim and empty but for a few crates.
Misha dug out a battery lantern and switched it on. The light was harsh on the eyes in the confined space, but there was plenty room enough for everyone to spread out instead of being packed against each other. Still too many people in one train car, though.
“Now what?” Alex asked, plopping down to sit in front of the light.
“We wait and enjoy the ride?” Alyosha suggested.
“And the fact that we can’t be expected to hunt dogs while we’re in a moving train car?” Alex added. “We can’t, right?”
“There are some things I have to get done before we arrive.” Misha said, rooting around in his bag. “And for us to get straight.”
“What now?” Gareth’s voice was that low grunt of a thing that he used when he was annoyed.
“The contact in Berlin is willing to trade for information, yes. But he does not want money. He is most likely going to have a job for us.”
“What kind of job?”
“Nothing legal.”
“This is what you do? Pull hit jobs to arm religious zealots?”
“Gareth,” Hannah started.
“I do the things I do to stay alive. Just like, right now, I am doing the things I do because you have asked it of me. This isn’t Sol. There aren’t mission reports. It’s messy.” He shrugged. “You’ll learn or you won’t, but right now, Noah’s made it my problem.”
Gareth huffed and sat back.
“It’s a transport job.” Misha relented sourly. “They need us to make sure some cargo gets from point A to point B. I told him you could handle that. If you idiots can’t, tell me now so I can jump off this train and walk home.”
“It’s fine,” Reeve said from across the traincar.
“What is it you need to get done?” Alex asked.
“I like this one,” Misha mused. “He listens.”
It was just condescending enough to irk him, but Alex was finding he didn’t mind too much. Mostly because of how supremely annoyed Reeve had looked when Misha said it.
“You have to join the Church,” Misha finished.
Gareth paced a little, looking at Reeve. “He really does give non-answers all the time. Are you sure you weren’t best friends in school?”
“Yes,” they both said, running over each other, though Reeve’s voice was bland and Misha’s a fair bit more colorful.
Misha shook his head with a silent laugh. He shrugged one arm out of his patched coat and untangled his sleeve with a snap of his elbow. He yanked up on the cuff, revealing a forearm covered in tattoos and stripped with irregular scars. They were a mis-matched patchwork of different styles, colors, and sizes.
“Here,” he said, touching one just below the bend of his elbow with two fingers. “This was my first. It’s the mark of the Church. Every one of us has this and without one, the contact will not help you.”
“No one in the Sanctuaries ever asked to see it,” Alyosha said, cocking his head.
He shrugged. “We are trusting. And anyway, you don’t need to be a Child to be accepted into a Sanctuary.”
“You want us to get tattooed?” Gareth asked, a little incredulous.
“Nyet,” Misha replied with a curl of his lip. “I want to tattoo you.”
“You’re joking,” Hannah deadpanned.
“He’s not,” Reeve said with a small groan.
“What is it?” Alex asked, leaning forward into the lamplight to get a better view.
Misha held out his arm to him. Alex put out a hand as if to touch it, but froze in midair. The tattoo was simple black ink: two matchsticks, one crossed over the other, squared off at the center to form an equilateral cross. One of the matches had a bright red tip and the other was burnt, skinny and slightly bent, twisted from the fire. “It’s called a Sun Cross.”
“I thought not everyone in the Church was Christian.”
“They aren’t. A version of the Sun Cross has been used by religions across basically all cultures and faiths. If Noah were here, he could give you examples. Draw you the versions used by the Celts, Norse, Jews, Islam, Chinese—but you’re stuck with me. I can tell you it’s been used in some way by practically all religions back to prehistory. It’s a sign we can all connect to and a symbol of power the dogs can’t survive.”
“I assume it’s just the Church that makes them out of matchsticks,” Reeve commented with a raised eyebrow.
Misha shrugged. “All Children have a Sun Cross, but the style varies and you can trace who trained you by the shape of your mark. Almost like a lineage. You’ll see many have a simple cross inside a circle. Some just look like plus signs, others are more ornate. I got mine from Noah and he got it from the woman who trained him.”
Hannah frowned, her mouth squished into a flat line. “Aren’t you afraid someone will think you’re just really into the Zodiac Killer?”
Misha looked at her, his head cocked and mouth slightly agape. “It’s never come up.”
Reeve cleared his throat, “Does this really have to happen?”
“Yes.” Misha’s head snapped back.
“Hey, Reeve, it’s not what I planned, but now you can finally stop telling me I can’t get a tattoo,” Alex said with a grin.
“Where?” Reeve sighed.
“Just not on your face. Or anywhere you need to take your pants off to show it.” Misha pulled out a smaller zipped bag. Inside was a package of gloves, a spool of thread, a bottle of black ink, and a small glass jar filled with rubbing alcohol and sewing needles. He heard Reeve swear under his breath. “How the fuck did you think I was going to do this?”
Hannah shook her head. “I’ll lose my invisibility. I don’t think we can afford that right now.”
“You can hide razors in your mouth,” Alex said. “Won’t the ink be below the skin?”
“Not while it heals.”
“Fuck.”
Misha snapped on some gloves and gestured vaguely with one hand, palm up. “You can hide razors in your mouth.”
Hannah’s eyes and lips tightened.
Misha dipped a length of white thread into the jar and began to wrap it around the needle.
“If she needs to sit this out with your contact, we’ll be okay with the rest of us, yeah?” Reeve asked.
Misha rolled his eyes. “If you’re going to be difficult, we can skip one of you. I told him there’d be five people, so we’d have someone to stay at the Sanctuary.”
“I can’t,” Gareth said from the far end of the car.
“Then why the fuck bother being here?” Misha snapped.
Gareth shook his head. “No, I mean I actually can’t. I’ll heal it. You can try, but I've been through this and I’ll heal it in minutes. My body will reject the ink.”
Misha let out a streak of Russian that Alex truly wished he understood. He looked back at Hannah. “Then let’s make this work, huh?”
The sun had long been up when the train pulled into a station in Berlin. They had felt dawn break by the way the metal warmed after the long, cold night, and by the thin bars of light spilling in through the gaps around the doors. They hadn’t slept much. Alex held his bandaged left forearm in his other hand and marveled at the odd sensation. His arm felt bruised and raw and a little numb at the same time.
Underneath it all was a strange sensation, like an undercurrent. He could feel the ink, Read it. There was a hum of fire and the papery crack of soot. It hung like white noise in his head, distracting him.
“Misha,” he called softly, putting voice to a question that had been plaguing him. “What are they? The Phagi, I mean.”
Misha grunted by way of response and cleared his throat. They were all tired. “They are something wrong with the world.”
“I’m not saying I don’t want all of them dead, but what are they?”
“Sol’s line is that they’re just differently-powered people.”
Alex frowned. “Sure, and they really buried the lead on that whole cannibalism bit. But think about it, with how science-y Sol is, you’d think Venus would’ve hauled one in and studied the hell out of it.”
“Must've,” Reeve agreed quietly. It was satisfying to teach Reeve a thing or two.
Misha slouched. “If Sol knows anything, they’d never just give that knowledge away.”
“So you don’t think they’re demons or something?” Reeve asked Misha, with more than a little of his standard Reeve tone.
“I do.”
Alex turned to look at Misha in the odd light.
“Demons,” Reeve repeated.
“If you had to describe a demon, could you describe something worse than them?”
“It doesn’t make sense though,” Hannah mumbled, sitting glumly on a crate with gauze shoved between her teeth and lower lip. “The whole cross thing working.”
“What’s to make sense of?” Misha sneered. “God exists. It’s stupid to think anything else.”
The sound of the train changed, becoming louder, like the metal was uncomfortable.
“Do we go straight to this contact or find a Sanctuary?” Alyosha asked. He’d been so quiet, Alex startled at his voice.
“Sanctuary. I’ll call and let him know we’ve arrived from there. Pack up. It’s going to be a trek from the station.”
***