37. RIEKA
37
RIEKA
T hree days after agreeing to let me come on the raid, we jumped from The Abattoir doors somewhere along the Mesali Gulf exactly four hours before midnight, the scent of the ocean spicing the air.
We were met by Filora and her Runners, but unlike our last encounter, she had nearly five times as many Runners with her. Amongst them, were Runners wearing what looked like Kensillan Army uniforms.
Years ago when rumours from the south spread through Deos that Kensillan forces were trying to invade, propaganda posters started to make their rounds. Smuggled across the border by Kensillan spies in an effort to recruit citizens to The Republic. Not that they had many sympathetic ears in the Ecclesiarchy. Every piece of propaganda was turned in by a citizen within a day to prove their devotion. Those posters were the only reason I knew the uniforms were Kensillan.
There were at least a dozen Runners dressed in those dark forest green uniforms. The men wore long sleeve button-down jackets fastened with a brown belt and matching green trousers tucked inside calf-high brown boots, hair combed back with something that smelled like beeswax. The women wore nearly identical uniforms, but instead of trousers they had floor-length pleated skirts, and their hair was tied back in sleek buns at the base of their necks, making their features look quite severe.
A stone dropped in the reservoir that had become my stomach. The raid was on a military compound.
I contemplated seeking Rhydian out, but he’d already told me that he was leading this mission, that this was his brainchild and my job was to stick with my assignment. If there was something he needed to know, confirm it with my lieutenant and they would tell me if I should pass it on to anyone. I’d spent the last three days, with invitation of course, learning to detect their minds on the train in case I had to use my blessing to send a message. But Rhydian was adamant that I wouldn’t need to, not if everyone stuck to their assignments.
I kept quiet.
We walked no more than thirty minutes east of the tracks, I picked up the scent of the compound within half that time. At least a hundred humans, three times that number of Blessed surrounded by the scent of electricity and steel. The Kensillans didn’t believe Void traps were necessary here I’d been told. Once we reached the outer perimeter, we split into smaller groups to head to our ingress points. Sal and I were joined by three other Runners, and not a single one I recognised courtesy of Lex and Lera altering all our faces for the mission.
Then the largest one gave me an order to follow. I recognised his voice.
Wade.
I took a single calming breath, recited the recipe for making buttermilk and I followed.
We came to a stop by one of the posts that supported the security fence surrounding the compound. The male Runner that had accompanied us approached the post. I could smell the power running through the fence but saw nothing but spiderwebs in the area before us. He lifted his hands outward as if to place his hands on a wall, the blue energy of a Spark igniting between his fingertips.
He looked over his shoulder at Wade who nodded for him to begin. The Spark bent low, his hand meeting the base of the metal post. The entire space of the area before him pulsed, and what I thought was a spiderweb was instead thin threads of metal wires that crosshatched between this post and the next. The Spark then slid his hand across the bottom and then straight up.
The blue pulses that ran through the wires began to re-route themselves away from the Sparks hand, as though he’d placed it in the flow of water and created a kind of doorway in the pattern. When he stepped away I could see the electric pulses were now moving around the area where he had just stood, arching and pulsing around what looked like a dead space in the fence.
The female Runner with us approached. She held out her hand which began to glow from within. She was a Bright. As the luminos she emitted grew brighter, I was forced to shield my eyes. When I opened them again a Shard was in her grasp.
Brights in Deos were always designated the Citadel as their Civic Service location. I’d pass them every seventh day on my way to prayer, long luminos shards in their hands as they stood on guard duty. I knew what those weapons were capable of. So when the Bright approached the dead area of the fence, it wasn’t hard to fathom what she was about to do. The Shard in her hand burned right through the metal threads.
Sal remained at my side her hand on my arm as Wade stood and walked through the newly created doorway. Using my senses, I listened as he walked a few meters into the compound.
In Kensillan he said something like, “You, boy, come here.” I heard a second set of feet, followed by the sound of a breathy gasp. A moment later Wade was carrying someone over his shoulder back through the hole in the fence.
The Spark pulled out some technical device from his jacket and pointed it at the collar on the unconscious man’s neck, after which they ran over to me. He directed his device to a small bean-sized disk in his hand and then placed it on the inside of my collar beside the other one already there, the one that duped my location.
“This will fool all their tech, convince them you wear his collar.”
“But I’m a woman?”
The Spark shook his head. “Won’t matter. All they see are Thralls. In your case, a military serf. Now put on his uniform.”
I did as I was told, stripping off the young man’s puke-coloured clothing, which was halfway between what I’d worn in Old King’s Town and what Wade wore.
Wade and Sal were already standing by the hole when I finished lacing up the Thrall’s slightly too-large boots. In his hands was a set of shackles, an item used on Devos by Humans to make their Blessings inert. In Deos we called them Inhibiters and used them on the Disavowed when they were marched to the coast for banishment.
Wade took a deep breath before locking them around Sal’s wrists. Judging by the way she didn’t recoil at their touch, I’d would bet that they too were inert.
They leaned in close to one another, foreheads touching in an intimate display.
“I forbid you from dying,” Wade said softly as Sal caressed his face, her fingers carefully tracing his features as if she could feel his real face beneath.
“And I, you,” she said as he took her fingers in his hand and brought them to his lips.
As he kissed them, I quickly turned away, annoyed at myself for being so curious about someone I hated.
I hadn’t been thrilled when I found out Wade was to accompany me on the mission, even with his banished status. I’d wanted to complain, but the mission now included Sal, and since he had seniority, I was stuck with him.
I replicated the hair style I'd seen on the female runners masquerading as officers, securing it in a low bun and waited for Sal to take up her position beside me. I grasped her arm, not only to be her guide but because I too was now masquerading—as her Serf escort, and we followed Wade through the fence and into the compound.
Amida had been sent here days ago to determine our best path, and unfortunately, the safest path through the camp to the facility was from the western wall and directly through one of their courtyards. So the other part of my job on this assignment other than aiding Sal, was to help Wade navigate to our destination. As much as I wished I wasn’t in the man’s head, I reached out with my senses and alerted him to anyone on our path to the medical facility.
“Stop ,” I told him when two soldiers walked ahead of a corner we needed to turn. I limited our conversation to as short of syllables as possible. When we had finally crossed into the small courtyard, I warned both of them that a group of soldiers was going to walk past us. Sal and I instantly lowered our gazes to the floor as the soldiers approached.
They all saluted Wade as they passed. Not a single flare of suspicion from any of them, which meant Rhydian’s plan had worked. Every Runner who wore a high-ranking officer’s uniform would also wear the face of that officer, or as close to it. Disturbing but effective.
Wade came to a stop outside the doors of a stone building, the guards on duty coming to attention. He said something in Kensillan I didn’t entirely understand, his words faster than I was used to, but the guards moved aside and opened the doors for our entry. We crossed straight into a room that looked remarkably similar to MedCom . A woman perhaps in her thirties with mousy blond hair sat at a desk at the back of the space looking at an image that hovered over her desk, projected from a miniature techboard inlaid in the wood. She waved a hand at the board sweeping away the image when she noticed us approach. She took one look at Wade and stood, the small cylinder that hung from the belt around her waist swinging like a pendulum.
Wade spoke before she did, his words once again too fast for me. Dressed in a long green coat, but no uniform, the woman looked at us with a discerning eye. “Very well,” she replied much slower. “You’re the translator Thrall?” she added, addressing me flatly.
“I am, mistress,” I responded using the words Eleen had instructed me too. If not of Naven stature, sir and mistress were the terms to be used on any military personnel not wearing rank insignia. She was neither.
She said something to Wade again and he turned and took a seat by the wall. “This way,” the mistress said in a rather bored tone as she headed for the doors to the left of her desk. I adjusted my grip on Sal’s arm as Wade’s inner voice called out.
“You keep her alive she-wolf. Be the fucking T'eiryash. Bespell those bastards into mice if you have to. Protect Salryah.”
I looked back over my shoulder. Wade was sitting rigidly straight in that chair, the perfect military soldier. Only his scent gave away his fear.
I didn’t bother explaining to him that transformation was beyond my capabilities, a power only exhibited by the gods themselves.
Sal and I followed the mistress into a long wide corridor, the walls a stark white metal, making the space feel quite cold and soulless.
“Can you smell anything in here?” Sal whispered, even in her thoughts. I replied at a normal level, a silent message that no matter how loud we spoke with our thoughts we wouldn’t be heard. “It’s too clean. A lot of chemicals, but I can smell traces of plants.”
That didn’t seem to reassure her. She just smelled more nervous.
We passed three sets of doors, including a large pair of double doors before the woman slid what I now knew to be a key card through a device on the wall. A green stripe meant low clearance zones, a yellow stripe meant normal clearance, and the red stripe on hers meant high clearance. We might need that.
The door we followed her through was to a small examination room. A desk sat in the corner, filing cabinet beside it, a sink beside that and in the centre of the room was a medical cot. In that moment I thought Sal was lucky not to see it. Worn leather straps hung from the sides of the cots’ frame.
The mistress swept her hand over the desk’s surface, causing another set of floating images to emerge—a row of letters. She began typing something, then withdrew the miniature tech board from the desk. She didn’t even glance at me as she ordered me in Kensillan to instruct Sal to sit on the cot. Sal did as she was told. I was lucky this woman spoke slower than Wade, or else Sal would have had to translate for me. The idea of a three-way translation was not ideal but it was the only way this was going to work if I couldn’t keep up with the Kensillan.
From her desk, without looking me in the eye, the mistress asked me questions. Where was the Devo found, what is her estimated age, what is her threat level, and what is her Affliction, a word I’d been warned was Kensillan for blessings. I fed the mistress the story and the lie. Sal was assumed to be a Brute but we were unaware of which type.
If we revealed Sal’s Organic status, she would be taken away immediately for processing but if we said she was a Brute, a medic would have to mend her eyes after the examination to make that determination and that would be my opportunity to take her out.
It had worked. The woman suddenly looked up from her notes glancing over at Sal curiously who immediately, began to fidget on the cot under the woman’s gaze. Could she perhaps feel the way in which the woman stared at her, like she was an attraction at a carnival?
The mistress appeared intrigued by Sal’s blindness.
“Well,” she posited. “That is to be expected for the wild ones. No sense to seek out the arms of the Republic when they should.” As she lifted her hands, I took a step back preparing myself to strike knowing I had one chance to stop her getting her hands on me.
She then hesitated. Reaching down to the pin on her coat that claimed her as a medic, she pressed on the centre and spoke into it. Someone responded on the other end.
I repeated her words in my head trying to make sure my own translation was correct. Another medic was coming?
“What now?” I asked Sal when she confirmed I’d heard right.
“We wait.”
The mistress continued her observations of Sal’s face right up until I heard a pair of footsteps outside the door. The first person who entered the room I recognised. He was the Organic from the camp, the one who was forced to save the Rabbit-Blessed Terrestrial from death.
The mistress then stiffened, her scent altering to one of repulsion and what smelled like that of a cowering dog. Not something I often smelled on humans. I only saw the sharp points of the officers’ boots and the thick material of the skirt before they appeared in the doorway. In that moment I was awfully glad not to be wearing my own face.
Even with my eyes cast away, ensuring I never directly looked the officer in the eye, I knew I recognised her courtesy of the scar that stretched across half her face.
“Collector Alvera,” the mistress said, addressing the slaver with respect. “What brings you to medical?”
Her words were just as slow. Calculated even, as though she were putting on a play and intended for not a single word to be misheard or misunderstood. “I overheard your words to Kodee here and thought that it was about time I saw just how far along his training had come. I understand you have an unidentified Brute.”