Chapter 34 Dave
DAVE
Forty-three minutes.
That was how long the second cigar took. The collective counted every one of them from the shadows of Losham's dining room, watching through the glass doors as the orange ember pulsed and faded and pulsed again in the garden darkness.
Rami finished his drink first. He sat with Losham for another ten minutes after that, the two of them speaking in low voices about the council of brothers and the allocation of responsibilities.
It was an administrative conversation, the kind that could have happened over a conference table in daylight, but Losham seemed to prefer conducting his real thinking out here, in the dark, with the one person he trusted.
The collective filed the observation. Trust was a subject of great interest to them.
At zero zero fifty-one, Rami stood, collected the glasses and the bottle on the tray, and said good night.
He entered the kitchen through a glass door straight from the patio, and as his footsteps sounded on the marble floor, the Eight stood motionless and silent in the dining room, waiting for him to be done with the glasses.
A moment later the footsteps resumed, fading as Rami continued down the hallway toward the staff quarters at the rear of the ground floor.
A door opened and closed.
Losham remained in the lounge chair, his cigar two-thirds gone.
He was smoking it with an unhurried pace, seemingly in no rush to end the only pleasant part of his day.
His thoughts, which the collective monitored at a depth shallow enough to avoid detection, were meandering.
The council. Kolhood's ambitions. The basement. The clan. His father's betrayal.
The thoughts were slowing, though, becoming sluggish. The whiskey, the cigars, and the warm night air were doing their work, and the mental chatter was losing its sharp edges, becoming circular and repetitive rather than focused.
Now.
The hive mind applied the suggestion, threading it through Losham's consciousness with the delicacy of a surgeon inserting a needle.
Not a command. Not even a nudge. Just a gentle amplification of what was already there.
He was tired. The day was long. The chair was comfortable, but the bed was better.
The cigar was nearly done. When it was finished, he would go to bed and sleep.
Losham drew on the cigar one last time and stubbed it out.
He stood, stretched, and walked inside through the living room doors. The collective retreated further into the dining room shadows as he passed through the kitchen, pausing to rinse his hands at the sink and pour himself a glass of water.
They tracked him by sound as he climbed the stairs, his footsteps on the landing, the bathroom door opening, the sound of running water.
The electric hum of a toothbrush. More water.
The bathroom door again. Then the bedroom door, which he left open, a detail the collective noted because it meant he felt safe in his own home, which was ironic given that eight enhanced soldiers were standing in the shadows of his dining room.
He hadn't felt their presence because they were familiar to him and didn't activate his body's innate immortal detection. That only worked with unfamiliar immortal males, which in this case was lucky.
They waited, monitoring his meandering mind until it quieted enough to enter sleep.
Nine minutes.
Almost there.
They reinforced the suggestion of deep sleep.
The night is safe. Nothing will disturb you until morning.
The words were not exactly words but impulses delivered at a frequency below conscious awareness, layered into the natural rhythm of Losham's descent into sleep.
At eleven minutes, Losham crossed the threshold.
Number One moved, while the others stayed behind. There was no need for them to be in Losham's room when he took the phone. They could monitor Losham's sleep from where they stood.
Ascending the staircase silently, Number One placed each footstep on the outer edge of the treads where the wood was least likely to flex or creak.
The hive mind wondered about the choice of a wooden staircase in a house with granite flooring. Had Losham preferred it because it could warn him of would-be assassins?
The bedroom door was open, and moonlight from the balcony glass doors illuminated the room in pale silver. Losham was a dark shape on the massive bed, lying on his back, his chest rising and falling with the regularity of deep sleep.
The phone was on the nightstand, connected to the charging cable.
Number One crossed the room in four strides, lifted the phone from the nightstand, and disconnected the cable, generating no sound louder than a whisper.
Curiosity winning over caution, he entered the unlock code the collective had learned from Losham's mind a long time ago, and when the device responded, he checked the screen for recent calls. There was one that had come in at midnight, the name 'Lokan' displayed beside it.
The number was there.
Number One slipped the phone into the pocket of his fatigues and turned back to the door.
Losham didn't stir.
The reinforced sleep suggestion would hold for hours, more than enough time for the operation to be completed and the phone returned.
Number One descended the stairs and rejoined the others in the dining room.
They exited through the front door. The two entrance guards were standing at their posts looking alert, while their thoughts were scrambled and their memories modified. They didn't acknowledge the eight soldiers who filed past them, because they had been thralled not to see them.
The other guards were equally oblivious.
The perimeter patrol was on the far side of its circuit. The eight bodies moved through the gap and reached the street without incident.
Phase two was complete. Phase three was the lab.
They walked in pairs again, staggered at ten- and twelve-meter intervals, intending to take a route that curved behind the hotel before turning south toward the lab. It was the longest path but also the most sheltered, with enough buildings and vegetation to provide cover between open stretches.
They were three blocks from the hotel when Number Five, who was walking point with Number Seven, stopped.
Through the eyes of the point, Dave saw multiple figures exiting the hotel's main entrance.
They were only one hundred meters ahead.
Four immortals, all of their faces familiar. Three junior brothers and Kolhood.
He was standing on the hotel steps with his arms crossed, saying something to the junior brothers that made one of them laugh nervously.
The collective ran probabilities in the space of a heartbeat.
Retreat was possible, but would attract more attention than proceeding.
The side street to the left was a dead end.
The service alley to the right looped back to the main road fifty meters ahead of the hotel, which would put them in Kolhood's sightline from a different angle.
Forward was the only viable option.
They needed to regroup into two fours.
Kolhood knew there were eight of them, and if he saw all eight at this hour, he'd want to know what they were doing together. Four was less conspicuous.
Numbers One, Three, Five, and Seven continued forward. Numbers Two, Four, Six, and Eight peeled off to the right and disappeared into the service alley.
The split was uncomfortable, as it always was when they were separated by more than a few meters.
Maintaining full coherence while dividing attention between two groups in different locations and managing a social interaction with a hostile party was cognitively strenuous.
It was analogous to trying to write two different sentences with two different hands simultaneously.
They were fifty meters from the hotel entrance when Kolhood noticed them.
His head turned, and his eyes narrowed. The collective read his surface thoughts and found suspicion but not alarm. Kolhood regarded everything with suspicion on principle.
"The Eight are four tonight," Kolhood said as the four approached. His voice carried only a trace of derision. "It's late for a stroll."
"We don't require much sleep," Number One said. "Walking helps us quiet down."
Kolhood's eyes moved across the four of them. "Where are the other four?"
The question only sounded casual. It was a probe, designed to test reactions and gather information without revealing intent.
"At the hotel," Number One said. "We don't do everything together."
It was a plausible answer because it was partially true. The collective sometimes divided for basic mundane activities like bathroom visits, and that had been observed on multiple occasions. Provided that the delivery was convincing, Kolhood had no reason to doubt it.
Kolhood studied Number One's face for a moment longer than was comfortable.
His thoughts were guarded, structured in a way that suggested he was accustomed to being read and had developed defenses accordingly.
The collective could have pressed deeper, could have pushed past the surface layers to find out what Kolhood was really thinking, but doing so risked detection.
Kolhood was old and powerful, and his mind was not as easily navigated as a junior warrior's.
"My men reported that you were at the training grounds today," Kolhood said.
"Part of our regular rounds. Lord Losham requires us to maintain a presence across the island's installations and report items of concern."
"Like what?"
"Disrepair, lack of supplies, soldiers who are not maintaining the Brotherhood's standards of appearance."
"The soldiers are my responsibility, not Losham's, and I maintain high discipline. None of them would dare to neglect the Brotherhood's standards."
Number One nodded, and the other three refrained from doing so. They had to maintain the appearance of being individuals. Aside from Losham and the people at the lab, no one knew that they operated as one mind.
As far as everyone else on the island was concerned, they were just the last eight enhanced soldiers.
"That's precisely what we reported. We didn't find any items of concern."
Kolhood uncrossed his arms. "Losham requires many things. Some of them make sense. Some of them don't."
"We are just following orders," Number One said. "We observe and report, and Lord Losham does what he wants with the information."
One of the junior brothers shifted uncomfortably. He clearly wanted no part of this conversation and was looking for an exit.
Kolhood turned back to the junior brothers and said something dismissive that the collective didn't bother to process. The four bodies continued past the hotel entrance at their usual walking pace, making an effort to appear unhurried and unsynchronized.
They rounded the corner and the hotel fell out of sight behind them.
The collective exhaled across all eight bodies.
That was uncomfortable.
The other four rejoined them two blocks south, and the cognitive load eased, the connection smoothed, and the collective breathed as one.
They approached the lab from the south, using the gap between buildings that provided the most concealment from the street. The guards watching the lab had been thralled hours ago, their perceptions edited to register nothing unusual.
The collective confirmed the thrall's integrity as they approached. All four guards were at their posts, alert and attentive, seeing exactly what they had been told to see, which was nothing of interest.