Angel Descended (The Awakened Book 6) Page 9

  After dishes, Althea walked her sister to the farm area, hovering at the wall for a few minutes until she could no longer see her among rows of tall corn stalks. She fidgeted with the agate pendant, wondering where Den could have gone. When worry got the better of her, she pushed off the chest-high wall and scurried down the street, guided by instinct rather than thought.

  The Garden, the only expanse of greenery anywhere in Querq aside from the farm, would remind Den of the place he once called home. Warm water shimmered on the sidewalk leading up to the old stadium. With each step, the coarse texture of worn concrete emerged from beneath a slime of algae. Althea moved to the door, peering into the dark, eerie hallway full of old pushcarts containing pipes, machine bits, and canisters of powdered chemicals the Water Man had called ‘food’ for the garden.

  Inside, thick, humid air saturated with the overpowering fragrance of plants caused Althea to break out in a sweat. She ran on the balls of her feet to the interior door and crept along a walkway of loose metal sheets, which led down past a tiered atrium full of hydroponic tanks. The Water Man told her that long ago, the place had been full of seats where people used to watch ‘games.’ She thought it quite silly to think anyone would trade pay-things to see grown men play with sticks and a little ball.

  The walkway clattered with each step, no matter how quiet she tried to be. At the bottom, she stepped into the shin-high grass surrounding a small grove of fruit-bearing trees.

  Wariness gripped her, tensing the muscles in her back. This place should be peaceful, but something hung in the air—something that did not belong here.

  “Den?”

  Her tiny voice echoed in the cavernous space, startling several blackbirds in the rafters beneath the opaque, white dome. She cringed, raising an arm at the sudden noise, but sighed at the sense of normal animals.

  “Greetings, Althea.”

  As soon as the gravelly voice came from the cluster of small trees, her heart leapt into her throat. Her toes gripped the dirt as she turned her head to the right, finding the decrepit old cowboy standing a few paces away from her, gazing at a fallen orange in the grass.

  His black, wide-brimmed hat obscured his eyes but not his seaweed-colored smile. His hands hid in the pockets of a long, leather duster coat, which fluttered about his boots. Under his stare, white crept over the surface of the orange before a dusting of corroded-copper green took its place. The fruit deflated, withering into an unrecognizable lump.

  The sour smell of fermented, rotting orange crossed her nose. She wrinkled her face in response, trying not to breathe. Althea stared at him, at once wanting to tremble in fear and scream with anger.

  “Leave us alone.”

  The figure straightened; the brim of his hat pulled away from red, luminous eyes. “You surprise me, child. I thought you were trying to kill that woman.”

  Her conviction faltered with regret and she stared at the ground. “She had bad inside her.”

  He feigned a gasp, removing one hand from his pocket to cover where a heart would be. “I’m hurt. I was only trying to help her.”

  Althea looked up, her face stern. “Bad can’t help.”

  “Can you say she would have been alive had I not?”

  “I don’t know what you just said.”

  He frowned. “Do you think she would be alive without my help?”

  As confusing as it sounded, he had a point. The condition of that woman’s body should not have let her live. “I…”

  “Don’t understand.” He approached, taking care to place his boot on the fetid orange, crushing it into the ground.

  She stepped back, cringing at the awful squish.

  “We agree that I destroy, yet that piece of fruit becomes part of the earth and feeds the next crop. In destruction, I make life.”

  “You kill people. People don’t grow out of the ground.” Althea set her stance, refusing to back away further. “You want to trick me.”

  He stopped at arm’s length, smirking down at her with an expression part way between sneer and smile. Contempt, disgust, and fear swirled around him.

  “You’re afraid of me?” She tilted her head.

  “Of course not. You’re a pitiful little child who doesn’t understand the way the world works.” His breath carried the reek of the dead, making her cough.

  “I understand you are bad.”

  “You only exist because of me,” said the man.

  Althea clenched her hands into fists. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well.” He shifted to the right, gazing at hanging grapes overhead. “Perhaps in some form, a girl that resembled you would have existed, but would not have been you. You’ve come to destroy me. I cannot let that happen.”

  She started to lower her gaze, but acting demure had only ever gotten her into trouble before. How many times had she simply surrendered to being taken prisoner, when all the while she’d had the power to protect herself? “I don’t want to hurt you. I never wanted to.”

  “You are an awful liar.” He edged away. “Why else would you be here? They are so obsessed with balance.” The word rolled off his tongue with contempt thick enough to feel in the air.

  The odor surrounding him—charred flesh and rot—watered her eyes, but she took a step closer. “I don’t know what you mean. All I want is to help people.”

  “If not a liar, a fool.” He backed up another few feet. “Do you expect me to believe you don’t know what you are?”

  “I’m Althea.” She nodded as if to underscore the point.

  “Nauseating,” he muttered, drawing the word out into a grating throat noise. “Are you really that blind?” His eyes flared from red to orange.

  Dark vaporous smoke welled up from the ground at her feet. The air gathered around her legs like syrup, crawling up and over her skin with a clammy wetness, over her arms, heading for her throat. Her body tensed with revulsion as if she’d stepped barefoot in dog poo. At the instant she wanted it gone, a wave of energy issued forth from her, flattening the miasma outward in a widening disk away from her.

  “Part of you is human.” The man seemed to fight his trepidation to lean closer. “Fascinating.”

  “What did you do to me? Where’s Den?”

  “Do not worry. Merely a curiosity. Perhaps you would agree to a truce.”

  Althea blinked. “I’m not lying.”

  He gazed into the distance, letting off a sigh that leaked smoke between his teeth. “Not truth. Truce. La tregua. We stop trying to destroy each other, and we both get what we want.”

  “Oh.” She smirked. “I do not want to kill you. You are all all angry. I can feel your sadness, and I’m sorry you died. It is okay for you to be angry that you died, but if you hurt others, you’re the same as the people who killed you. I want to help you.”

  She reached out a hand.

  He bared his teeth with a cringing sneer. The glow in his eyes brightened, and the air filled with the roar of a thousand voices crying out in anguish. Smoke obscured the garden, trees and plants replaced with before-time skyscrapers awash with flame. Gunfire rang out everywhere, interspersed with spikes of emotion. Random flashes of anger, anguish, panic, and a terrible desire for revenge came out of nowhere. A deep scraping sound like a boulder dragged across the sky went overhead, following a vision of a before-time flying war machine. Objects fell from it, blossoming into great clouds of fire, anguish, and death.

  Althea collapsed in a heap, arms crossed over her face, trying to fight off the pain of a young boy who had watched his mother die in a hail of bullets. The whooshing noise ended with a powerful explosion that rattled the dome. Expecting pain, she screamed, but the symphony of war had stopped, leaving her cry echoing over silence.

  She peered between her unfurling arms, finding herself alone in the garden. Althea eased herself upright, trembling from the emotional echoes of terror, suffering, and agony still hanging in the air. A wisp of sweet rot from the stepped-on orange teased at her nostrils.

>   “Why?” She yelled, moving in a slow turn, searching for any sign of life among the trees and corn. “Where did you go?”

  Only the distant sound of dripping water answered.

  “Den?” She yelled, her voice echoed until the garden fell silent once more.

  Head down, Althea trudged along the wet, mossy path to the exit.

  8

  No Signature Required

  Anna

  The dull thrum of heavy tires might have lulled Anna to sleep if not for the way the flat-faced van created the illusion of floating above the street. She pondered the paradox of how ‘flying’ seven feet off the road made her more nervous than a hovercar at fifty stories.

  Randall hadn’t said much more than “yes, ma’am” since they’d started the drive to the wharf. Blue light from the console painted his already dark face in harsh shadows and glare. He’d made no attempt to peek at her mind, though whether it came from his fear of Awakened or something else, she couldn’t say. Kinetics like him sometimes lacked telepathic ability.

  She’d seen him shoot pills out of the air for fun. If this went south, it would be good to have him along. Her face soured. Why didn’t Archon send that new empath? Then, they wouldn’t have to give money to a criminal organization. Was Archon afraid of the Syndicate, or too lazy to put forth the effort to control them? Perhaps he didn’t trust Talis either. Again, she looked over at Randall. His nervousness might as well have been a glowing NanoLED tattoo across his forehead calling her a horrible bitch.

  “I didn’t kill that girl.”

  He nodded, though remained as tense as before.

  Anna glanced at the automatic weapon he’d left on the seat between them. To keep herself distracted, she focused on it until threads of amber light appeared to her wherever its circuitry carried power. She plunged her awareness into it, mapping out the path from the battery in the pistol grip to the tiny metal dot that sparked the rear end of the propellant in the chamber. Her mental wandering along the wires leading to the ammunition counter came to an abrupt halt when the van bounced over a bump. She held on to the door to keep from winding up on the floor as Randall hit the brakes a few feet away from a sliding security gate.

  A man in a black raincoat and sunglasses leaned against the non-moving part of the barrier holding a full-length assault rifle. I’ll never get used to that. Even after five years in the UCF, the idea of civilians carrying firearms felt wrong. Worse was how brazenly he held it, pretending to be some manner of soldier. Archon had made sure all of them knew firearms were legal over here. Guns that threw bullets could be owned by anyone over eighteen—lasers, not so much.

  “What do you want me to do, ma’am?” asked Randall.

  “Please stop calling me that. I’m no one’s grandmother.” She pushed a button on the center console. The passenger door let off a hiss, slid an inch away from her, and glided backward into the wall. “I’m not even twenty-nine yet.”

  “Yes, ma—miss?”

  “It’s alright if you call me Anna, you know. We’re not in the damn army.” She clung to the handles around the doorframe, managing a somewhat graceful descent via a built-in boarding ladder. With her boots on the ground, the seat cushion hovered higher than eye level. “Bloody hell. Did he have to steal the biggest one?”

  Randall tapped his fingers on the wheel, saying nothing.

  Anna approached the sentry, confirming via surface thought read he worked for the Syndicate. She allowed a little concentration, searching for cybernetics inside him. “Pardon the delay, we hit a traffic snarl. Some idiot decided to steer a motorbike into the PubTran tube and hit an oncoming taxi.”

  “Ouch. One less dumbass in the world.” Amber threads shimmered down his right arm, highlighting wires, as he raised it and banged on the metal wall twice. “Ivanov got called away, but there is no problem”—the gate shuddered, grinding open with the labored whine of a small motor—”provided you have the money.”

  She smiled, enjoying the ironic feeling of being less afraid of him for having so much cyberware, and flicked her thumbnail on the credstick in her coat pocket. “I do, and there won’t be any issues from our side so long as all of our guests are all accounted for.”

  Anna walked around him, slipping past the end of the still-moving gate. The guard followed her across an empty parking lot in front of a small three-story office building bearing the logo of Sentinel Corporation. The hulking silhouette of an intercontinental cargo ship blackened the sky beyond the roof. She gathered her coat close about her neck, already shivering from the sound of the wind on the ocean before she got past the corner and stepped into a stiff, salt-scented breeze.

  Two hundred yards of open metal tiles, scattered with coils of heavy chain and stacks of boxes, separated her from the wharf. In the shadow of a wheeled loading crane, a box big enough to be the trailer of an articulated cargo transport sat on the ground behind three men. Two had dark skin, while one looked like he’d emigrated from Sweden only hours ago. She moved up to a brisk stride, eager to get out of the sea breeze as soon as she could. Randall crept along behind them in the van.

  Anna smirked. “When did the Syndicate start issuing uniforms?”

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve all got the same coats and glasses. If you’re trying to be inconspicuous, it isn’t working.”

  “Hmmf.” He shook his head, grumbling.

  The blond man concerned her the most, due to his massive size and lack of embedded sources of electricity. Still, she sensed plenty of juice in power lines underfoot, should the need arise. Anna walked right up to him, showing little sign of intimidation despite the top of her head coming up to his swollen pectorals. He’d obviously had work; he looked too perfect.

  “Guten abend, fräulein,” said the blond. He seemed amused by her blank stare. “Forgive me. Good evening, Miss. I am Ulrich, your point of contact.”

  Anna’s discomfort at dealing with the Syndicate showed on her face. “There should be fourteen, correct? There better not be any missing.”

  “We have honored our end of the bargain. Besides, there is no market for young girls with”—he tapped himself on the head—”gifts. The clients who”—the man stifled a cringe—”favor that sort of thing often have secrets they do not wish eavesdropped.”

  Anna scowled. If selling thirteen-year-olds to executives bothers you so much, why do you work for them? “Let’s be on with it then.”

  “The money?” he asked, eyebrow raised.

  “I’d like to see them first.”

  “Of course.” Ulrich glanced at one of the men behind him. “Open it.”

  “Si,” said the shortest, still a head taller than Anna. He waved a hand at the door, summoning a holo-panel with a ten-key pad. After he fed it a code, the entire cargo box resonated with a heavy clank.

  Two men each grabbed one of the half-doors and pulled them aside with a grating metal-on-metal screech that launched an explosion of pigeons off the wharf in the distance. One feeble LED bulb, swinging naked on a wire in the middle of the container, illuminated a group of bedraggled people. The stink of bathroom buckets rolled out, watering Anna’s eyes and making her cough.

  “Raus,” said the blond man, waving his arm in a beckoning gesture.

  Four women, the oldest about Anna’s age, the youngest barely eighteen, moved first. They each took hold of small bags and approached the open end, fear plain in their eyes. A pair of Middle Eastern looking men followed who seemed happy, smiling at Anna as they stepped into the glare of a pole-mounted light. One held his arms up as if to embrace the sky.

  Eight figures remained huddled in the dark—all kids. After a moment of fearful staring, two preteen girls in the outfits of British schoolchildren were the next ones brave enough to emerge, dirty and disheveled, clutching backpacks. Their rumpled skirts looked as if they’d been wearing the uniforms nonstop for weeks. Long, raven hair obscured the face of the taller girl while the other wore her straw-blonde hair clipped up. They didn’t l
ook related but clung to each other as if siblings.

  It’s all right, said Anna, telepathically. We’re going to protect you.

  They brightened at hearing a familiar accent in their minds and hurried over to her. One of the Syndicate men caught them by a hand on each backpack, halting them in their tracks. He forced them into the forming line by the rest, half carrying them by their schoolbags like kittens. They stared at Anna as if to ask what they did wrong. She narrowed her eyes at the man.

  “It’ll be alright, give us a moment. Apparently, I have to pay for you first.”

  “Come, come, Anna. You are paying for their passage. This isn’t the middle ages.” Ulrich’s perfect teeth showed from a used-hovercar-salesman’s smile.

  The girls took their place near the women, eyes downcast and on the verge of crying.

  Anna squinted at the taller girl. Did they hurt you at all?

  No, Miss. Just kept us locked in that horrid box for over a month.

  “Tell me again why you shipped them on a bloody boat?”

  Ulrich made a clucking noise with his tongue. “I thought you understood how these things worked. No one really uses boats anymore. Much less scrutiny.”

  Four boys, whispering amongst each other in Russian, got up and ambled to the exit. Unlike the others, they showed no trace of fear. They all had the look of a hard life: gaunt faces, lanky bodies, and hollow eyes that made Anna wonder if they’d killed. The oldest couldn’t have been more than fourteen, the youngest about eight. All of them tried to read Anna’s surface thoughts.

  She let them in, enough to see images of the tent city and other people like them, trying to make it seem welcoming. Their suspicion diminished but remained. One of the boys, about twelve, glared a challenge at her as he passed.

  Anna looked at the line. “There should be two more.”

  Ulrich offered an exasperated sigh to the short man.

  “Paren de esconderse y vengan aquí.” yelled the thug. “Rapido.”