Sanctuary. Prague, Czech Republic.
If Gareth hoped they’d be able to get out of going out on hunts with Thomas, he was wrong. When the sun was truly down, Thomas gave them a crash course on being bait, which Gareth felt was the stupidest possible goal to have. After assessing all three on their “drunk” walks, Thomas promptly announced Thomas would play the drunk for the night, but promised to work more with them. Great.
Reeve and Gareth stood off to the side of a different bar than the night before, while Thomas went inside. Alyosha was comfortable back at the Sanctuary, along with their firepower. To avoid attracting attention, they’d left their largest weapons at home.
In replacement, Thomas had given Gareth a small blanket.
Thomas had rigged it up with his knack, and Gareth had been instructed to casually throw it over the dog’s head. Because that sounded totally reasonable, like it was a goddamn canary. Gareth tapped it against his thigh nervously. Reeve looked like he might try to strike up a conversation while they waited, but one look shut that down immediately. If he had to fight a monster with a blanket, he wanted zero distractions besides his own extensive inner ranting about how ridiculous that sounded.
When Thomas came out, Gareth was ready, nerves strung taught. Thomas came through the door with his arm over the shoulder of a small blonde woman. His footsteps sounded heavier than they should have; he could really sell the drunk thing without turning it into a fake stagger.
He steered her to the right to walk past them and just as they were right next to Gareth, Thomas gave an exaggerated slow blink and put a fist to his mouth. He stepped back from her, putting up a hand and bending at the waist, and even managed to make himself look a little green. That was Gareth’s cue. He snapped the blanket open and threw it over the woman’s head, but the blanket didn’t stop. As though with gravity, it kept falling. For half a second, Gareth could both see the woman’s legs in her black heels, and the top of the blanket as it drifted to the ground. His arm kept moving downward until he hit the end of his reach and he dropped the blanket. It fell to the ground with zero resistance. Gareth glanced around with a pang of panic, but it had happened so quickly that no one seemed to have noticed. He was almost a little pissed at how well it worked.
Thomas stooped to pick up the blanket where Gareth had dropped it. He carefully folded it and straightened, stone sober.
“Now what?” Gareth asked. “Can we just leave it in there?”
He shook his head. “I can only hold it for so long before it collapses and spits out whatever’s in there. Now we have to take it somewhere quiet.”
They walked to the nearest public park, which was by the local train station. Gareth walked at the back of the line so he could better keep watch. Reeve could say all he wanted that there was no Entropy presence, but it didn’t mean a damn thing. Every face that lingered on them as they walked by made his heart race just a little more. The park wasn’t that big, but it was unlit and choked with trees in enough areas to obscure them from view.
“This still feels really public,” Reeve muttered while they stood, waiting to get their night-vision back.
Thomas didn’t respond, just laid the blanket out on the grass, portal side down, and nodded at them. Gareth flexed his jaw and pulled out the long knife. His whole body felt pricked by chills.
“We’re going to want to do this fast,” Thomas said. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet slightly, like a boxer. “No hesitating.” He bent down, picked up one corner of the blanket and looked at each of them. After a beat, he yanked it up, revealing the crouched, off-balance form of a short woman. She looked small and confused, eyes wide.
Gareth hesitated. Reeve did too, which helped some, but not in that moment. Before the blanket hit the ground, Thomas launched in, swooping low for her neck. Gareth almost flinched when the knife went in too low as she bolted up, and it stuck fast. That helped. Gareth came in next with Reeve from behind her while she was still getting her bearings. A white heat tore down Gareth’s arm as she swiped back at him with her nails, deflecting. Thomas was instantly back in the fray, his own teeth bared. They were in close, a huddled fray. Gareth set his jaw to lean in with the others. It went quickly. Quicker than any hunt he’d been on before. There were too many of them and she was surrounded in close quarters. They overwhelmed her.
Reeve tied the head up in an opaque sack while Thomas covered the body with the blanket, where it promptly disappeared. Gareth knelt down and scrubbed the blood on his healed arm off on the grass. He took a moment longer than he needed to, focusing on the sensation, where he was, trying to smell the grass and not the ichor.
Thomas stood and tucked the blanket under his arm. “I know you’re new, but it’s important not to wait. They always look like people.”
Gareth sniffed at that and spat reflexively at the smell. He brushed his knees off, standing. “You don’t need to tell me that.” He let the hardness into voice—didn’t bother trying not to.
“I think I did.”
“Let’s finish this,” Reeve broke in, ever trying to be the fucking protector. “Burn it.”
Gareth didn’t argue.
---
The Twins. Bologna, Italy.
They stayed with the twins for almost a week. Objectively, it should have been a vacation, but Hannah was practically climbing the walls. She liked to think she had a decent core of zen, but between Gareth and Reeve being gone, and living with goddamn Misha, her ability to stay centered was severely lopsided. Alex seemed better, though, and after a couple of days he was a little more like himself. His energy was off but she didn’t push it. There was great food and they basically just relaxed, helped Helena clean, or watched subtitled TV. Misha was in a decent mood, probably from being surrounded by other Children. He went out every night on the hunt. She’d overheard Helena giving him a bottle of pills, which she hoped were some sort of sedative. The other residents were quiet, several recovering from awful looking wounds. The energy of the house seemed to dissipate that desperate, post-apocalyptic vibe the Children had, and it was all a little bit more mellow than usual. They didn’t find many dogs, either, which helped, she was sure. Hannah was not better, but not worse at least.
The sun was down, but the Children hadn’t set out yet when Hannah stepped out on the front porch with a beer to get some air. The smoke got to her a little and they’d all agreed she and Alex weren’t prisoners to the point that they couldn’t get any fresh air at all. The breeze smelled good, like cooking and city traffic and kicked up leaves. Across the street, beyond the line of parked cars, a figure caught her eye, standing mostly in darkness. Too still. She blinked, waiting for them to move or for her night vision to adjust a bit more to get a clearer view, but neither happened. It made something inside her curl inward and pricked the hairs on her arms. She went inside, locking the door.
“Misha,” she called, walking back to the kitchen.
“What?” he asked, annoyed, clomping down the stairs.
“There’s…” she started, then stopped. She closed her eyes and blew her hair out of the way. This was stupid. She pressed on though. It’s not like Misha could dislike her more. “It’s probably nothing, but there’s someone just standing across the street from the house.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. At least for the couple of minutes I was on the stoop.”
He let out a long sigh. “Turn off the lights in the front room.”
“The red ones?”
Misha rolled his eyes. “Are those the lights that are on? Yes.”
She did and followed him to the window. He stuck his head through the blackout curtains and swore. “These fucking shutters. No way to do this quietly.” She heard him fumble with the latch then go still again, head behind the curtain.
“What’s going on?” Alex hissed, suddenly beside her, making her jump.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“I don’t see anything,” he said when he came back out.
“Let me in.” She pushed past him. Hannah squinted into the night, trying to avoid glancing at the street light coming from down the road, focusing on the dark patch in front of them. There, just barely. Her heart began to pound. That same outline sticking up from behind a car. “He’s still there.”
“There’s nothing there, your eyes are shit.”
“You’re shit,” she replied automatically.
“She’s a sniper,” Alex reminded him without as much venom as Hannah would have liked.
When Misha didn’t respond, she blindly reached back and yanked him down with her. He shook her hand off but settled in next to her.
“Where?”
“Follow my hand.” She drew a line down in the air and waited, staring hard at the dim shape.
Misha clicked his tongue. “I don’t see anything.” Then it moved. The figure shifted, pacing a little, before returning to the same spot.
“Please tell me you saw that,” Hannah whispered.
“Stay here,” he told her softly and stood up. Alex slipped in beside her.
“What the fuck’s going on?”
She swallowed. She really hadn’t wanted to bring this to Alex unless she knew for sure it was something to worry about. “I think someone’s watching the house.”
Misha came back before Alex said anything. He tugged at her to move, so she stood. He’d brought Emma with him.
“Still there?”
“Hasn’t moved.”
Misha ducked in to check, because he was a complete asshole who didn’t trust her at all. She turned to the others to try to convey this in a look, but it was too dark. He motioned to them. “Emma, come tell me if you see anyone.”
It clicked with Hannah just then, why he’d gotten Emma.
“There’s a couple of people down the road across the street on their patio.”
“No, right across the street.”
“No. No one.”
“We can see someone,” Hannah murmured. “But they’re cold?”
Misha latched the shutters and stood up. “There’s a dog watching the house.”
“Is that normal? Just stalking a Sanctuary?” Alex asked.
“No.”
He and Emma rushed out of the room and Hannah followed after them.
“Is it Entropy?” she called.
“I don’t know.”
They stopped in the sitting room where the one other Child who wasn’t recovering from some awful injury was suiting up to go out. Hannah couldn’t remember his name.
“There’s a dog standing outside, watching the house.”
“What?”
Alex put a hand on her arm and leaned against her slightly. “I don’t get it--why doesn’t it just come in?”
“Every inch of this house is warded with symbols of faith,” Emma told him, her voice hard. “They can’t touch it.”
“Are we going out?” Hannah asked.
“You fucking stay here,” Misha snapped.
“No one’s going out until I say,” Emma barked.
They waited and watched, but it didn’t move. There was a strange simmering fear in Hannah’s chest. She didn’t know exactly how much she should be afraid. It had the Children spooked, which was enough to get her blood pumping, but as the hours passed and nothing happened, the threat seemed more and more distant, more desensitized. At the same time, flashes of what was left of those Neptune agents in Brazil kept pressing in from all sides, blotting out her thoughts and her logic. She and Alex were too silent. She doubted she could say anything he wanted to hear.
“That’s enough,” Emma called, late in the night. “Let’s go.”
Hannah and Alex stood up, but Misha shook his head as he walked past them. “Not you.”
They watched out the window, Alex’s hand crushing her fingers. The Children went out the back and circled around the house. She saw them appear from the left, a moving jumble of dark outlines against the grass. Misha wasn’t with them. They got as far as the street before stopping for half a minute and turning back around. The figure didn’t move. Hannah began to question if it was even there at all, that it was some trick of the light, a shadow.
“What the fuck is going on,” Alex hissed.
She shook her head but couldn’t peel herself away from the window until she heard boots on the hard tile as they came back in.
“What is it?” Alex asked.
“Get upstairs,” Misha said, his voice flat. “Get your bags.”
Hannah stood up. “Wait, is there anything out there?”
A muscle in Misha’s cheek twitched. “Yes, you idiot. Get your bags.”
“Is it—” Alex started, but stopped as Misha drew in a quick breath to shout.
They got their bags. Misha was waiting with his packs. Emma was with him, her face hard. The room was too quiet.
Alex dropped his bag on the ground. “What’s going on?”
“We’re leaving.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Alex snapped. “Tell us what’s going on.”
Misha rolled his eyes and bent to scoop up Alex’s bag from the floor, adding it to his armful of straps, and turned on his heel. “Tell Helena goodbye for me,” he called without looking back.
Hannah stared at Misha’s back and then at Alex. She could see a faint tremor in his face as the anger built in him. She shook her head slightly at him, hoping he’d follow her lead and relent for now. At least until they knew what the fuck was going on. She hated living in this world where they didn’t quite know the rules enough to feel grounded, but enough that when they fucked up, there were consequences.
They followed Misha around the corner of the back hall, mouthing a thank you to Emma as they walked by. Hannah had no idea if she could even see something like that. Misha led them through a door and down a narrow stair into the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, he set his bundle of bags down and handed Alex his pack.
“What are we doing?” Hannah asked, as calmly and quietly as possible. The cellar was cool with slightly damp air that brushed at her face when she moved. The walls and floor were stone. Crates and boxes sat in huddled corners. Misha didn’t answer—of course he didn’t—and instead, went to one wall with a row of rolled up floor rugs leaning against it.
“Help me,” he muttered as he started to move them.
Hannah let out a breath, but they didn’t argue, working silently to shift the tall awkward bundles. The carpet was heavy and had a musty smell that made Hannah purposefully avoid thinking about whatever smelled like that entering her lungs. It became clear pretty quickly that the rugs had been covering a squat, wooden doorway. When it had been cleared enough for him, Misha motioned to them to get their things and set his shoulder to the swollen wood of the stuck door until it gave way. Alex grabbed a couple of flashlights from a pile of them hidden under the stairs and handed one to Hannah. Misha shook his head at them, but could fend for himself. She wasn’t going in blind.
The air beyond was close and wet, mustier than a faceful of damp carpet. Hannah switched on her light, but the hall was too narrow for it to illuminate anything but Misha’s back. She switched it off. Hannah could hear her feet scrape on stone and her elbows dragged painfully on rock if she didn’t keep them tucked in close to her sides. The passage got narrower still, forcing them to turn sideways and awkwardly juggle their bags to slip through before they stumbled out into a startlingly open space with a sudden step down into cold water that came up to the top of her boots.
She switched her light back on and swung it around. It looked too old and too small to be an old subway tunnel, but the water smelled too clean to be a sewer system. Alex turned his light on behind her. He was perched on the lip of the passageway, a few inches above them.
“A secret tunnel? Are you fucking kidding me?” Alex hissed. The arched walls of stone bounced it around them.
Misha started walking and didn’t respond until they fell in line behind him. “They run all under the city.” He was speaking at normal volume but it sounded much louder, enough to make Hannah flinch. “It’s a natural river. I think the Romans ran it down here underground or something.”
“What are we doing?” Hannah asked again. The water reflected the bright burst from her flashlight as it churned with their steps.
“We’re running .”
“Entropy?”
“Yes, it was here for you.”
“How did it find us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t we kill it?” Alex asked, his voice tight.
“What?” Misha slowed.
“The dog. There were like five of us. Isn’t that what you do?”
“Should we be talking this loud?” Hannah whispered, shoulders rounded against their bouncing voices.
Misha turned back and sneered at her. “We’re sloshing through ankle-deep water in an acoustic-nightmare tube. Even if we don’t talk, anyone down here knows we are too.”
“Why are we running?” Alex pressed.
“Because Emma would never have asked us to leave.”
“Why didn’t we fight?”
“Because it probably would have killed us all.”
“I thought this is what you do.”
Misha let out a frustrated sigh that strayed into a growl at the end. “There is a difference.”
“What, are there different species of Phagi or something? Misha, Jesus Christ,” Hannah snapped, “I think it’s pretty clear we don’t fucking get it.”
He stopped, turning to look at them before plodding onward. “There’s no good way to explain.”
“Then do it badly,” Alex said slowly, voice determined.
Misha clicked his tongue and was silent for long enough that Hannah figured he wasn’t going to answer. “Imagine a teenaged telepath,” he eventually said into the loud silence of the tunnel. “Not gen’ed in some test tube. Born out in the world. At seventeen, he’s starting to master his knack.”
“Okay…”
“Would any civilian—just a guy off the street—stand any chance against this kid in a fight?”
“Probably not,” Hannah answered sullenly.
“Now think of an adult telepath, raised and trained in the Corp. A Neptune agent. Would a civilian survive?”
“No.”
“Would police? Military?”
“Not likely.”
“Okay.” Misha emphasized with a head bob. “Kid and Neptune. You get the power differential there? Now scale that up and you’re looking at dogs versus dogs in Entropy. They’re older, they’re trained, and they have purpose.”
“What’s going to happen to them back at the house?” Alex asked. His voice sounded thin.
“I don’t know. But their chances are better with us here than in that house.”
Hannah paused a second to take a few breaths. The humidity was making her chest feel tight. “So why couldn’t they tell us to run?”
“Hakhnasat orchim. We follow the old hospitality laws. They’d be known as untrustworthy if they suggested we leave.”
“So they’re expected to die with us as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got better chances if you book it?’”
“Yes, we are expected to die for each other.” He paused. “But that doesn’t mean they would have. They could have decided the greater good would be to give us up so they’d survive and no one goes on to tell of the violation. I don’t think they would have, but—”
“Okay, hold on.” Alex’s voice boomed in the closed space. “There are sacred rules that say you can’t be rude to people, but you can kill them if you don’t like the rule and no one finds out?”
“Grow up,” Misha scoffed. “That is how all rules work. Everywhere. Learn that right now.” He sighed. “Anyway, it’s always best never to ask someone to die for their beliefs. You might not like the answer.”
“Does the ‘that’s how all rules work’ thing apply to that rule too?” Hannah asked, her face twisted in a sneer.
She expected a sarcastic retort but after a silence, Misha answered in a flat tone, “Yes.”
***