Authors: Selene Edwards
Zanek nodded. “Wise as always, my lord. Do you require anything else?”
“Not presently,” the Angel said. “Soon our sister will be returned to us, and we can leave this accursed place.”
“Perhaps with a few dozen fresh Demons as well,” Zanek added. “Quite the catch.”
Marivean’s smile widened and his dark eyes glimmered. He slowly pivoted back towards the window, hands clasped behind his back.
“Yes,” the Angel said softly. “Quite the catch, indeed.”
Chapter Eleven
“I still think it’s a mistake to keep him in the base,” Shyrah said, rolling up her sleeve. “If they have managed to track him somehow, we’re about to have a platoon of Covenant mercenaries bust the door down.”
Kronn sighed as he filled the injector with serum, glancing at the readouts to make sure the dosage was correct. “Corin assured me he’s clean.”
“I really don’t think an Angel is going to rely on something as mundane as a tracking device,” she countered. “What if he can monitor him telepathically or something?”
“Sariel doesn’t think that’s possible, and neither do I.”
She snorted. “Sariel picked out a man in a crowed of a hundred thousand people yesterday. I know it’s not exactly the same thing, but that’s a pretty big risk if you ask me. This guy might be way more powerful than she is. You saw her face when Avrick mentioned his name.”
“And that’s why almost everyone has already moved out. This is as much of a skeleton crew as we get here.”
“Yeah, well, I still think a safe house would be better.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “You want to get this over with? I’d like to go back to glaring at him inside his cell.”
Kronn realized belatedly he had been staring at the readouts for a good minute. The dosage was in order, just as it had been five seconds after he had checked it. But for the first time in nearly two years, he wasn’t sure he wanted to give it to her.
In her eyes, the serum was designed to help her deal with the headaches and nightmares that had afflicted her since she first hit puberty and had to deal with her Demonic abilities, but that was only a part of its purpose. The mixture was a suppressant designed to disrupt the neural patterns that gave Demons their empathic powers, and as a side effect it had helped with her headaches. It had also neutered her abilities.
The Shyrah whom the Asurans had saved from the Valerian Syndicate had not been a powerful telepath like Damien, and in many ways her empathic skills had actually been below average for most Demons. But she had been showing early signs of something even rarer—true telekinetic ability. Angels had such abilities, of course, but in Demons it was unheard of. As Kronn liked to remind people, most Demons were little more than modest empaths, capable of reading feelings with a touch but that was about it. Only a scant few could muster the power to actually do anything to another’s mind, and he had never actually heard of a confirmed case of a Demonic telekinetic. None except Shyrah.
And he had taken it away from her. With good reason, or so he had long believed. While much of the public feared the legend of Demons, in practice most of them were no threat at all. Even men like Portis and organizations like his ESI understood that. But in order to get to the truly dangerous ones—Demons with telepathic power like Damien, for example, or the ever-growing army of Covenant Angels—they had to start somewhere. His research had made breakthroughs on all fronts, and in time they believed he could create a serum capable of neutralizing the Covenant’s most powerful weapon.
He had believed that once, too. Now he wasn’t so sure—of his chances of success, or of his right to even try in the first place.
“Hey, you awake?” Shyrah asked.
Kronn turned and forced a smile. “Your readings are getting more consistent. I think maybe it’s worth taking you off the serum for a while to see how it goes.”
She frowned. “And what if the nightmares come back? Or the migraines, for that matter? I can’t afford that right now.”
“All right, well I’m going to drop the dosage a bit. Better to get you off it entirely eventually if we can.”
She studied him for a moment, and he wondered if she would see right through him. Eventually she just shrugged. “Fine, just get it over with.”
He nodded, tapping commands into the console. Instead of changing the dosage, he removed the serum and added a placebo. A moment later he pressed the small injector into her arm.
“All right, I’ll come meet you at the cell in a few minutes,” he told her. “I think he’s had enough time to simmer.”
Shyrah grunted, rolling her sleeve back up. “Assuming Sariel didn’t just bust in there and start talking to him. I’m not sure the two of them should be alone.”
“Not at first, anyway,” he agreed. “I’ll see you in a few.”
She nodded and left. Kronn waited a few seconds and then sighed heavily. His hands were actually shaking, and he felt on the verge of falling completely apart. He liked to consider himself a rational man, capable of calmly analyzing any situation and dealing with it. He had always had that reputation, and the people here believed it. But right now he felt anything but.
He should have just given her the damn shot just like he had the others. They only had a few days to make this all work. If he couldn’t get anything out of Avrick or Sariel by then, Portis would order him to bring them in. The years he had spent inside this organization getting to know its people and building their trust would be gone. The Demons here would probably spend the rest of their lives in an ESI cell or government prison camp as little more than lab rats. Sariel would be dissected—perhaps even literally—to learn as much as they could about Angels.
And he would be back in a clean office with a real research staff, possibly overseeing it all. Most of the Asurans probably wouldn’t even know he had betrayed them.
But some would. Shyrah would, if for no other reason than tenacity alone. Sariel would too, assuming she lived long enough.
Kronn dropped onto the edge of the desk and started to put away what was left of his equipment. If he was going to prevent that from happening, he needed to get information, and the only way he was going to do that was to press the issue. First with Avrick, then with Sariel. If nothing came of it…
Well, he would figure that out when he got there. He was a rational man, after all, and rational men didn’t panic under pressure. They got the job done, whatever it happened to be.
And sometimes whoever it happened to hurt.
***
All things considered, Avrick couldn’t have hoped for much better. A day ago he had betrayed the Covenant and watched as his best friend was murdered before his eyes. He had somehow managed to escape the clutches of the most powerful creatures on the planet, and now he was, for all intents and purposes, inside the safest place on all of Solace for a man like him.
Things could definitely have been worse. But that didn’t change the fact he was alone inside a small room with dozens of people who wanted him dead lurking just outside. To most of them, he was still a Chosen, a soldier of a God they didn’t worship and a Covenant that branded them all as Demons. He doubted there was anything he could do to change that, certainly not in the short term. But then, he didn’t really care what most of them thought.
He only cared about one of them, and he knew she wouldn’t be any easier to convince.
After an hour of solitude, the door finally opened and a dark-skinned, middle-aged man walked in. He had a cultured look about him, nothing like the typical haggard, war-torn image the mention of a terrorist conjured up. Behind him followed an athletic blonde woman with bright blue eyes and a rather wicked burn scar on her right cheek. The man had a gun, but it was holstered casually on his left hip. The woman stood in the corner with her hand on hers.
“I apologize for the accommodations, but we don’t get many guests,” the man said with a smile. “And I think you’ll appreciate the need for caution.”
“I understand,” Avrick said.
“My name is Samuel Kronn. I lead the Asurans here, but I suppose you know that.”
Avrick nodded. So this was the man who had taken over the Asurans after the Covenant had nearly wiped them out about a year ago. He had seen some image stills, but they were all dated and poor quality. By all reports, Kronn seemed like an impressive enough man and someone easy to sympathize with. A doctor who spent his time working with Demons, allegedly to try to cure them or help them control their abilities…it was blasphemy to the Covenant, of course. To them, Demons were afflicted by a spiritual condition, not a medical one.
“Well, we may as well get right to it,” Kronn continued. “Why don’t we start with what happened after your attack at the stadium?”
“Not as much as you might think,” he replied. “A few days ago we received orders to come to Solace and meet a contact in the city. They believed they knew roughly where Sariel and the Asurans were operating, and they had a plan—which you saw the result of.” He shrugged fractionally. “I didn’t fire.”
“And this Marivean attacked you for it?”
Avrick nodded. “I expected to be shipped back to Louvette and maybe spend a few weeks in isolated repentance at the temple. Or in the worst case, stripped of Chosen responsibilities and left to tend gardens for the next decade.” He drew in a deep breath and looked away. “I never expected what happened.”
“It must have been heart-breaking for you,” the woman replied caustically. “Finally realizing you worked for a bunch of monsters and all.”
“I think the more pressing question is how exactly you escaped,” Kronn said, his voice still cool. “And why you didn’t fire in the first place.”
“Sara will understand,” Avrick told them. “Just let me talk to her.”
The woman grunted. “She’s not coming anywhere near you again until we get some real answers. Like explaining how you managed to get away from an Angel.”
“I don’t know exactly,” Avrick admitted. “When he killed Vaelen, I just fired blindly and ran. I got out the window and broke off in a cold sprint.”
“Do you know the address of this place?” Kronn asked, holding out a datapad.
Avrick nodded and took it. Given how his hands were shackled, it wasn’t exactly a sign of complete trust, but had he wanted to, there was a decent chance he could have killed Kronn before anyone could stop him. He wondered if they knew that, or if they assumed the reputation of the Chosen was simply an exaggeration.
He typed in the address and handed it back. Kronn nodded at it idly then hit a few buttons—likely forwarding it to others for them to head over and check it out. Avrick wondered if the Asurans would actually risk an attack on Marivean. Probably not, but even if they did, it was likely the Angel had moved his people by now.
“You don’t just jump out a window and escape an Angel,” the woman said after a moment. “He could have crushed every bone in your body with his mind.”
“Or attacked me telepathically,” Avrick murmured. “I thought of that too. When I made it a few blocks away, I took a hit of the angel dust we were carrying from the mission just in case. But you’re right—I shouldn’t have even made it that far.”
Her face twitched oddly; she probably hadn’t expected him to admit that. “Are they tracking you?”
“You swept me for everything already,” he pointed out. “I don’t see how. If you’re worried about Marivean, I don’t think even an Angel could pull that off.”
“Are you sure?”
He sighed. “No, but I’ve never heard of anything like it before, and I always thought the Covenant liked to exaggerate the powers of the Angels whenever they could. It helped convince people that God was really looking out for them.”
“Only to a point,” Kronn commented. “Push it too far and you risk terrifying people. But in any case, it’s a manageable risk. I’m curious what made you think to come to us.”
“I knew I had to find Sara and warn her of what was going on,” he replied. “I just got lucky that I remembered we had a lead on that antique dealer.”
He leaned back in his bunk, and as he did so the door opened. Sariel walked in, much to the immediate and obvious annoyance to the blonde woman in the corner.
“What else is going on, Avrick?” Sariel asked.
Kronn looked like he might protest, but quickly covered it and remained silent. Avrick glanced between each of them and finally stopped on Sariel.
“They’re terrified,” he told her. “That’s the only reason they would send an Angel. They think you’re about to do something big, and they want to stop it.” He pursed his lips and thought back to that moment of horror when Marivean had ripped Vaelen apart… “He had an almost feral glint in his eye when he killed the others. It was rage, pure and simple. You know how the others are most of the time; they never seem to get strong feelings like that. They’re distant, aloof…but Marivean is different, at least when it concerns you. It’s all he cares about.”
“I’m sorry about Vaelen,” she whispered. “He was a good man.”
“He was a Chosen,” the woman in the back hissed.