Authors: Adrian Howell
“This one’s just in and out,” Raider assured me as Alia quickly pulled her little pony out of her duffle bag. “Only one guy hurt. No drama, I promise. We’ll be back for dinner.”
“Go,” I said to Alia. “Be safe, don’t slip on the snow.”
True to Raider’s word, my sister returned safely from Octavus this time, as she did from three more blood runs during the first half of February. These were to other, comparatively safe locations, and though I still kept a watchful eye through the cameras, I was no longer changing color in my seat.
When Catherine Divine’s fifteenth birthday arrived in mid-February, aside from briefly wondering how old she would have to be before Randal trusted her to openly rule her empire, I really wanted to let the day pass unmarked. I had decided that since Catherine was no longer my sister, I would no more celebrate her birthday than I would Randal’s. Apart from my mission to end it, Queen Divine’s life was none of my business.
But Catherine Divine’s fifteenth turned into a day that I would never forget.
That afternoon, Raider came into the surveillance room to fetch Alia, quietly announcing that they had been called out to Lumina Octavus again. I was a little apprehensive about the location, but after all, this would be my sister’s third trip to Octavus and her sixth blood run of the year. I sent her off with a confident smile.
It was a particularly cold winter and there was still a fair amount of snow on the ground. From the comparative comfort of the surveillance room, I watched Raider take his “daughter” out, across the street and into the park. Both wore heavy winter jackets and warm knit caps. Holding her little pony in one hand, Alia skipped along the asphalt path much like Marion would.
Soon I lost sight of Raider and Alia among the snow-covered trees. With a few keystrokes, I switched my main monitor to a camera that would show the pair coming out of the park on the other side.
When they did, Alia had lost the skip. She and Raider were still walking at a normal pace and my camera view was too distant to make out my sister’s expression, but something about her movements made me uncomfortable. I rapidly flipped through the nearby cameras to check for Angel activity, but found nothing.
Terry, sitting next to me, noticed my tension. “What is it, Richard?”
“I’m not sure,” I said uneasily. “Maybe it’s nothing.”
Terry laughed. “Still a watchdog!”
I figured she was probably right. I was just nervous because it was another Octavus run.
I continued to closely monitor Raider and Alia’s progress to Lumina Octavus and then, breathing a sigh of relief when they re-emerged from the lobby, I watched them return by the same road.
But when I saw them up close through Nonus’s lobby security camera, it was clear to me that Alia really was troubled by something. I noticed something else about her too: she wasn’t holding her pony.
I met my sister at the bottom of the ladder under Raider’s trapdoor. Because he had to move his bed back into place, Raider didn’t follow Alia down into Twenty Point Five. Alia had changed out of her Marion disguise and back into her regular clothes, and I pretended not to notice the missing pony doll as she silently wrapped her arms around me and started to cry into my shoulder.
The trapdoor guard was looking curiously at us, so I said to him, “It’s alright. She gets like this sometimes.”
But it wasn’t alright. Something was deathly wrong. Alia still said nothing, so I took her hand and slowly led her back to the surveillance room.
“Alyssa!” Terry quietly exclaimed when we arrived. “Are you okay?”
Alia nodded dully.
“What happened?” asked Terry.
“I lost my unicorn,” Alia whispered hoarsely. “I left it at Octavus.”
“That’s it?!” Terry looked incredulous. “You’re all teary-eyed over a stuffed animal?”
“Listen,” I said to Terry, “can you cover for me for a while? I want to take her back to our quarters.”
“Sure,” said Terry. Glancing over at my monitors, she asked, “Hey, isn’t that Raider?”
Through the main monitor of my station, which was still set to the Nonus lobby, I saw Raider leading the real Marion outside. It seemed a little strange since the lobby security had just seen him return here with Marion, but no doubt Raider had some good excuse. Right now, I was much more concerned for my sister.
“I’ll be back later, Tiffy,” I said, leading Alia out of the surveillance room.
Our tiny little room was empty. It was a little past 6pm, and James and Ed Regis had already woken and presumably gone to the mess hall for their breakfast. I sat across from Alia on our sleeping bags and asked quietly, “So how did you lose your little pet?”
“I left it at Octavus,”
repeated Alia, her eyes still red with tears.
“But you wouldn’t have done that if you weren’t really bothered by something else,” I said. “Tell me. Something happened in the park on your way out there, didn’t it?”
Alia stared down at her knees for a moment, and then nodded.
“What happened?” I asked.
More tears welling in her eyes, Alia stammered into my head,
“I… I can’t, Addy…”
“What happened?!” I pressed. “Tell me!”
“It was an accident,”
whispered Alia.
“I didn’t mean to…”
“What did you do?” I asked slowly, but then I understood. “You met Patrick, didn’t you?”
Alia started to sob.
“I saw him on the path. I wasn’t trying to talk to him, Addy. It – it just popped out.”
I grabbed her shoulders. “What did you say to him?!”
“I called his name.”
“In his head?”
Alia nodded miserably.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Then what happened?”
“He looked at me. He looked at my eyes. He knew it was me. He smiled, and then he waved. Then he ran off. He didn’t even say anything.”
“Still, Raider must have noticed.”
“He didn’t know Patrick, Addy. I told him that Patrick was the brother of one of Marion’s friends.”
“You have to tell him, Alia!” I said, forgetting to call her Alyssa. “Raider will probably find out soon enough anyway. We need to tell Proton about this as soon as possible.”
Shaking her head, Alia cried into my head,
“You can’t, Addy! They’ll do something horrible to him. They might even kill him!”
“I’m worried about Patrick too,” I said, “but I’m more worried about what he might do to us.”
“No, Addy, Patrick won’t tell. I know he won’t! He’s not converted!”
“But his mother is,” I pointed out.
“So is Marion’s!”
“This is dangerous, Alia!”
“Please, Addy!”
Alia begged hysterically, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Please don’t say anything to Proton! They’ll kill Patrick! They’ll kill him! I know it!”
I roughly grabbed her by the front of her shirt and shouted, “The only reason the Guardians let you out of this building is to serve their cause! Don’t you dare forget which side you’re on!”
Alia stopped crying. She looked at me like I had slapped her.
Suddenly the curtain opened and Terry stepped inside, saying, “Hey, Richard, your voice is carrying.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t carrying all the way to the surveillance room!” I snapped. “What are you doing here?”
“I got curious,” said Terry. “What’s going on?”
I explained in a whisper.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” breathed Terry. “We have to alert the intelligence crew before this gets out of hand.”
But just then we heard a call echo through the floor: “Alert status. S&D on Nonus.”
I looked at Terry grimly. “I think it just did.”
Terry glared at Alia. “This better not be your boyfriend’s doing!”
Alia opened and closed her mouth a few times, but no words came out. Not even telepathically.
Chapter 12: Deus Ex Machina
It wasn’t the first S&D in Nonus since our arrival. In fact, we had watched three of these from the surveillance room already. Thanks to our counter-intelligence team, each time the Seraphim came, they searched floors that were either much higher or lower than Twenty Point Five. And only one of their raids had caught us by surprise. We had known about the other two well before they happened.
But this was different. A flash raid right after Alia had been identified by a child of an Angel family. Though I was still desperately clinging to the hope that it was a coincidence, I wasn’t about to keep Alia’s secret.
“Proton and Jacob,” I called out, “please report to the surveillance room.” The request was picked up by several others and passed on.
“Let’s go,” said Terry. “Edmund and Jack will probably head there too.”
Terry was right. We found Ed Regis and James in the surveillance room, and Mark arrived moments later, followed by several Knights.
“Where’s Proton?” I asked Mark.
“He’s out,” said Mark. “I’m in command. We’re on an S&D alert, Richard, so this had better be an emergency.”
I poked Alia in the back. “You tell him or I will.”
Alia spoke to Mark telepathically, staring down at her feet ashen-faced. Meanwhile, through the monitors, I counted eleven dark-suited Seraphim gather in the Nonus lobby.
“It’s alright, Alyssa,” said Mark, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Let’s just watch and see what happens.”
“What’s going on?” asked James, who, like everyone else in the surveillance room, hadn’t heard Alia’s telepathic confession to Mark.
“It seems as though the Seraphim may have found one of our entrances,” announced Mark. “Raider’s place. We need to get Raider and his child out of there now.”
“They’re already out,” reported Terry. “I think Raider took Marion grocery shopping or something.”
“Good,” said Mark. He turned to one of the Knights who had followed him into the surveillance room and commanded, “Go to the communications room and send a message out to have our tourists intercept Proton and Raider and anyone else scheduled to return here today. Make sure everyone stays clear of Nonus until we’re sure it’s safe.”
As the Knight hurriedly left, Mark turned to us and said, “Don’t worry. Even if they do find the trapdoor, they’ll still have to break through it, and we have plenty of other exits to evacuate from.”
Alia looked up at Mark again, probably speaking telepathically.
“It’s alright, Alyssa,” Mark said gently. “We’ve been ready for this for quite a while now.”
By now, most of the Knights in Twenty Point Five had gathered in the surveillance room. The nearly thirty Guardians here were members of the intelligence team, the camera crew, door guards and off-duty tourists. About half of them were either psionic destroyers or had other powers that could assist in combat. But regardless of psionic powers, everyone was armed with pistols or automatic rifles, including Terry, James, Ed Regis, and even Mark. The only exceptions were Alia and me. I had left my pistol in our sleeping quarters since my first day here. I thought about running back to retrieve it, but then a camera-crew Knight said, “They’re coming up.”
The Knight’s monitor displayed the inside of the elevator carrying the Seraph S&D team.
“They hit the button for the twenty-first,” announced the Knight. Then he muttered, “Looks like they finally got us.”
Others murmured in agreement.
Through the corner of my mouth, I asked Ed Regis, “Have you decided which promise you’re going to keep?”
“Ask me again in five minutes,” replied Ed Regis, checking his automatic rifle.
I looked at him grimly. “We may not be here in five minutes.”
One of the day-shift camera-crew Knights vacated his seat in order to allow Willow, whose pregnancy was approaching its bursting point, to sit down. I wondered how Willow was going to keep up with the evacuation in her heavy condition, but I said nothing.
We didn’t have a hallway camera on the twenty-first, but we did have a hidden camera in Raider’s living room, put there by Raider himself of course. We watched the Seraphim enter Raider’s condo and start poking around.
The Knight that Mark had sent to the communications room returned and reported, “Proton is clear, but I’m afraid Raider may have been arrested.”
“Understood,” said Mark.
“This is my fault,”
Alia said shakily into my head.
“It’s not,” I whispered back. “Hush and stay sharp.”
“Jacob?” said one of the senior Knights. “Which evac plan are we going with?”
“Not sure yet,” replied Mark. “Probably shaft to basement. Get your team to Raider’s gate and hold position. Everyone else stand fast.”
The Knight and six others left the room.
Mark explained, “The Seraphim don’t seem to know that they’ve stumbled across our command center. They think it’s just another small hideout so we still outnumber them. We’ll lure them down here and then fall back into the elevator shaft. The Seraphim control the lobby, but we can drop down to the basement parking lot and, with the help of our phantoms, get out before the Angels know what’s going on.”
We all knew this, of course. The elevator shaft had a service ladder built into the wall, but it was a very long climb down. Once invisible, we would just have to take our chances with the thermographic cameras outside.
An alternative plan involved parachuting everyone out from the twentieth-floor windows. But if we did that, the Seraphim would probably spot us in the air and then we could end up being used for target practice. Phantoms couldn’t help us jump invisibly because the jolt of a parachute snapping open would shake the cloaking field off.
“Jacob,” called Willow, “the S&D team is moving out of Raider’s place. I think they may have missed the trapdoor.”
“That’s hard to believe,” said Mark.
Ed Regis nodded. “Perhaps they do know what they’ve stumbled across.”
As if to confirm this assessment, we were suddenly plunged into darkness as Nonus Twenty Point Five lost all electrical power.
“Stand fast!” commanded Mark.
Several Knights switched on their gun-mounted flashlights while the pyroids produced little balls of flame on their palms, restoring just enough light to make out the many tense faces in the room.