Chapter 30 Dave
DAVE
The women scattered again.
Not as quickly as the first time, because the collective had anticipated their fear and sent only two of the Eight ahead, while the other six waited at the gate.
Number One and Number Four walked slowly, their hands visible and empty, their posture deliberately unthreatening, which was difficult to achieve for enhanced soldiers built and trained for killing, but not impossible.
With enough effort and deliberation, there was little that the hive mind was incapable of.
Their unthreatening demeanor didn't help much, though.
The older woman who had served as intermediary during their first visit emerged from the same dormitory building, her jaw set, her gray-streaked hair pulled back tight.
She positioned herself between the two soldiers and the cluster of women retreating toward the nearest building, and her eyes held the same wary defiance as before.
"You again," she said.
"Yes," Number One said. "We mean no harm. We're only here to check on the welfare of the residents."
The lie came easily. The collective had debated the ethics of deception during the ride from the last military post they had visited, and the consensus had been pragmatic rather than moral.
They couldn't tell the woman the truth. Not yet.
Not until the plan was much further along. So they lied because it was necessary.
"The welfare of the residents is unchanged," the woman said. "We breathe. We eat. We do what we're told. Is there anything else you'd like to inspect?"
Number Four stepped forward. "I'm looking for a woman named Asira. She would be about twenty."
The intermediary's expression didn't change. "I told you last time. I don't know names."
She was lying too, and the collective could feel it in her surface thoughts. It was a deliberate wall of refusal, practiced and solid. She knew exactly who Asira was and where to find her, and she would sooner chew off her own tongue than reveal that information to a couple of armed males.
Number Four understood. He respected her for it. But the ache beneath his ribs, which was his ache even though it resonated through all eight bodies, made respecting her difficult when all he wanted was to see his sister's face and know she was okay, or as okay as any of the women here could be.
Number Eight wanted to find Vinnah. His mother. The woman whose voice had been the last gentle thing in his life before the training camp had stripped everything gentle away.
But they couldn't push. Not today. The intermediary was their only bridge to the women inside, and burning that bridge for the sake of immediate gratification would be unwise.
"We understand," Number One said. "We'll come back another time."
The intermediary said nothing. She stood her ground until they turned and walked back toward the gate, and the collective felt her eyes on their backs the entire way, watchful and unforgiving.
At the gate, they joined the other six and got into the Humvee. The guards had been thralled to remember nothing of the visit, but the women inside would remember. The intermediary would remember, and so would anyone who had seen them from behind the dormitory windows.
That was a risk, but it was a small one, given that the women had no communication with the outside and no one to report to.
Even the humans who were normally brought in for breeding purposes were absent now while the island renovations were still going on.
The building that was used for that purpose was inside the enclosure, which hadn't been damaged in the rebellion, but visitors were housed in the hotel, where construction work was still going on.
"Until the clan agrees to help, we can't come back again," Number Four said, voicing what the collective had already concluded.
Yes, they all thought, that would be prudent, but we didn't get to see the ones we came for.
"I would like to see Sullha again," Number One said aloud. "Perhaps next time I will deliver the news of liberation to her in person."
The collective had noted that he'd said I, not we.
Interesting. Apparently, their hive mind could, on rare occasions, separate into its individual components.
Was that the effect females had on the collective consciousness?
It shouldn't have surprised them. After all, the part responsible for the draw males and females felt toward each other was primitive, hormonal, instinctual, while the hive mind united over higher reasoning functions.
Perhaps that was the reason for their first and second visit to the enclosure, neither of which had been necessary, and the second one was particularly careless.
They shouldn't have visited on the day they were planning the phone call to the clan.
The unauthorized visit was one more thread that could unravel the whole if pulled at the wrong moment.
If the clan agreed to help, though, visits would be necessary, and not just so Number One could see Sullha again, Number Four his sister, and Number Eight his mother.
Two thousand women and children couldn't be evacuated without preparation.
The women needed to know what was coming.
They needed to organize and be prepared for mobilization on short notice.
Thralling the guards would be the easy part.
Humans were much simpler to thrall than immortals, their minds offering almost no resistance, and the suggestions held longer.
The real challenge would be maintaining secrecy among the women themselves.
He had no doubt that there were snitches among them, and they needed to be identified and kept in the dark about the operation.
That was why they needed to communicate first with people they trusted. Sullha, Vinnah, Asira.
Could they be trusted, though?
What did they know about these women?
"I know Sullha," Number One said. "She could never be a snitch. It's not in her nature. She's a rebel at heart."
"My mother is too timid to be one," Number Eight said. "She would never take the risk."
I don't know what kind of woman my sister grew up to be, Number Four shared with the collective.
We will ask Sullha and Vinnah, the others shared. Sullha seems like she could lead. The collective agreed on that.
The women needed leadership. Someone inside the enclosure who could organize and be smart about it, not attracting attention. Sullha was smart and could keep secrets, but the question was whether she could command compliance from the others through trust rather than fear.
They shifted their thoughts to the intermediary, the older woman who had confronted them initially.
The woman had guts. She stood between them and the women she protected.
If they managed to earn her trust, she could be the one, but given how their interactions had gone so far, that was going to take some work.
Sullha might be a better choice.
Perhaps the two women could work together?
They arrived at the lab with two minutes to spare before their two o'clock scheduled injection appointment.
Petrov opened the door for them without them having to press the buzzer, and as they stepped inside, he greeted them with a bright smile they had never gotten from him before.
Apparently, conspiring together made them friends.
"You're on time today," he said as if that was a rare occurrence.
"We were late twice," Number One said. "And there was a good reason for each delay. Otherwise, we were always on time."
"No need to explain or apologize. Just try to be punctual. Dimitri gets nervous when you're late, and when Dimitri gets nervous, he runs his hands through his hair until he looks like he stuck his finger in an electrical socket."
Dimitri was at one of the lab tables, loading his tray with the prepared syringes.
His face mask was in place, and he seemed a little less nervous than he had been the day before, a little more relaxed.
Regrettably, they couldn't peek into his mind and see what had brought that about.
Logic dictated that he should be more stressed today than he had been yesterday.
He and Petrov were supposed to be preparing what they wanted to say to whoever answered the phone on the clan's side, and that couldn't have been easy.
Dimitri was inaccessible, but Mattie was an open book, and a quick peek was all the collective needed to understand what had calmed Dimitri.
The effects of physical intimacy on stress hormones and overall well-being was profound, and it was very different from the sex they had experienced in the brothel before they had volunteered for the enhancement and ascended.
Still, they remembered those experiences well, and that hadn't been true intimacy.
That had been the satiation of hunger, and it had provided some release from stress, but nothing like what Mattie and Dimitri felt.
When love, trust, and mutual respect were part of the equation, the sexual act was elevated to a true joining of bodies, hearts, and minds.
That, the Eight had never experienced, couldn't experience, and that was why they wanted the merge.
"Good afternoon, Mattie," Number One said as the Eight took their seats.
She waved from her chair by the window. "How was your day?"
"Productive," Number One said.
She chuckled. "That's what you always say."
"What would you like us to say? Do you want a full report of our activities throughout the day?"
She rolled her eyes, which meant she was exasperated with them, and waved her hand again. "Forget it. You won't understand even if I try to explain."
"Our collective is very intelligent," Number One said. "We can understand anything you will explain."
She shook her head. "It takes years to develop the skills needed for small talk, and some people never get it. I think the eight of you are a lost cause, not because you are unintelligent but because you are too intelligent. You analyze everything like a computer. You even talk like one."