Chapter 19
YAAF
The operation began the same way it had two nights ago. Four pairs, staggered routes, converging three blocks from the security command center at twenty-three hundred hours.
The difference was that this time, Yaaf's mind kept drifting.
Sullha relaxing around him, her old self shining through. The way her face had transformed when she'd talked about Tomek.
We are on vacation.
Focus, Number Three thought. You're leaking.
Leaking was the collective's term for when one mind's preoccupations bled into the shared consciousness and distracted the others.
It didn't happen often, because the hive mind was efficient at compartmentalizing individual thoughts, but Yaaf's thoughts about Sullha had a frequency and intensity that couldn't be contained in a designated compartment.
You need to put thoughts of her away tonight, Number Four advised.
Yaaf forced the images into a mental compartment and imagined locking it. It would hold for now, but it would open again the moment his attention wavered.
The security command center operation was handled the same way it had been done two nights ago. The same operator was instructed to log another maintenance cycle for Losham's residential feeds because problems were still being reported with them, and the same supervisor confirmed the authorization.
It was all done in under four minutes.
They exited the building, released the entrance guards from their wall-facing thrall, and regrouped behind the same garden wall two houses down from Losham's property.
The sky was overcast, which worked in their favor.
The moon was hidden, and the darkness was dense enough that even enhanced eyes had to work harder to resolve shapes at a distance.
The smell of salt and vegetation was heavier tonight, the humidity oppressive even after sundown.
Summer was fast approaching, and soon, every day would be like that.
Could they escape the island before it got bad?
The guard positions around Losham's house hadn't changed. Two at the front door, two concealed in the eastern hedges, one on the roof, and one behind the neighbor's garden wall. The perimeter patrol maintained its formation of three soldiers performing fifteen-minute circuits.
Routine was good for infiltration.
The patrol rounded the corner, and the gap opened.
Number One and Number Three moved first, crossing the street low and fast toward the eastern wall. The thrall hit the two concealed guards simultaneously, the same suggestion as before.
Nothing unusual.
Continue your watch.
The night is quiet.
Number Five and Number Seven took the western approach, the rooftop sentinel, and the neighbor's wall guard. All were neutralized within seconds.
Twelve seconds from street to front entrance matched the previous operation's timing.
The two guards at the front door received their instructions.
Stand down. Authorized visit. You will not remember.
A thought bubbled to the surface of one of the guards' minds, and the collective scooped it up.
The alarm was armed, and the code had been changed.
The guard on the right had seen Losham and his assistant put in a new code. The memory was fresh in his mind, sitting right on the surface because it had been the most noteworthy event of an otherwise tedious shift.
The Eight couldn't enter the way they had the other night.
They didn't know the new code.
Losham must have suspected that his home had been breached. Otherwise, why change the code?
Why activate the alarm before retiring for the night?
He usually took the clan's call in the backyard, sitting outside afterward with his cigar, but he seemed to have deviated from that routine tonight, which created a big obstacle in their plan to retrieve the phone.
They had to retrieve the new code from Losham's mind, but sifting through his memories while he was awake was not an option.
He was sharp enough to realize that someone was in his head, which was why Dave never skimmed more than surface thoughts.
Luckily, they had been able to collect the previous code while Losham was still in the process of memorizing it and wondering whether the sequence of numbers was complicated enough.
Doing that while he was asleep would be even more difficult because the thoughts would be scattered, and steering them toward something as specific as a string of numbers was next to impossible.
Still, they had to get inside somehow. They were supposed to call K at the same time they had called the other night.
The assistant, Number Five, thought. Rami most likely knows the code. Losham trusts him with everything.
More importantly, Rami's mind was not as formidable as Losham's, and they would have a much easier time getting inside of it and leaving with the code without Rami noticing anything was amiss.
The young assistant had no mental calluses built up over centuries of exposure to powerful compulsion, and he had never been exposed to thralling. He wouldn't even know what it felt like.
Number One led the others around the perimeter of the property, staying close to the walls and the hedgerows. Rami's room was on the first floor, facing the street, which was convenient.
They positioned themselves beside his window, four on one side, four on the other, close enough that the collective operated at full coherence.
The window was closed and the curtains drawn, but curtains and glass did not block mind waves. They degraded the signal, but not by much.
Number One peeked through a gap in the curtains and saw Rami sitting at his writing desk, hunched over something and scribbling notes on whatever he was working on.
His back was to the window, so Number One couldn't see what he was doing, but given the way he moved, he was writing something by hand.
He skimmed the surface of Rami's thoughts, expecting the usual background noise of a mind engaged in a mundane task, perhaps a to-do list or a summary of the day's activities, but what he found made the collective pause.
Rami wasn't writing. He was sketching Losham's portrait because he was in love with his boss.
The feelings were so strong that Dave couldn't understand how all eight of them had missed them during the many times they had been in the presence of Losham and Rami.
The assistant must be very good at masking his feelings.
But now Rami was alone, his guard walls down, and he was drawing Losham with profound longing and an ache in his heart, knowing that his love would never be requited. His thoughts were consumed by Losham and his admiration, or rather adoration, of the male.
Dave filed the information and assessed its implications.
Losham was exclusively attracted to females, and Rami knew this, and the knowledge had shaped his love into something that expressed itself as loyalty, service, and the painful discipline of hiding what he felt and what he wanted.
Mortdh's teachings condemned such desires, and the penalty for acting on them was death. Rami's secret was existential. If exposed, even the fact of the desire, without any physical act, might put him at severe risk.
The information was leverage.
The collective noted this without emotion, the way it noted all potentially useful data. In the event that Rami ever needed to be controlled or silenced, the threat of exposure would be effective even though Dave would have a hard time proving it without Rami ever acting on his desires.
They filed it away as a last resort.
There was no reason to destroy a male who hadn't wronged them. Before their ascension, they might have parroted Mortdh's teachings and called Rami's desires an abomination, but now that the word was often applied to them, they knew how wrong that was.
Rami was no more of an abomination than they were. Being different didn't mean being bad.
The immediate problem remained, though. Rami's thoughts were consumed by Losham, which made steering him toward the alarm code difficult.
His mind kept returning to the same gravitational center, the way a compass needle returned to north, and every attempt to redirect his attention was pulled back by the force of his preoccupation.
Number One tried a different approach. Instead of trying to redirect Rami's thoughts away from Losham, he worked with the current, nudging the stream rather than damming it.
Losham's security. The thought was planted gently, a pebble dropped into the river of Rami's consciousness. He's worried, which is why he changed the code. He doesn't feel safe. There is so much to worry about. I need to remember the new code.
Rami's pen paused. His thoughts shifted from the emotional turmoil to the practical matter of keeping Losham safe.
Losham was worried about security. He'd changed the alarm code after the call tonight.
He'd chosen not to wait for the call in the backyard but rather to use the library.
He'd entered the code himself and told Rami to memorize it, but not to write it down anywhere.
"The only safe place for it is inside your head," Losham had told him. "And it can be stolen even from there."
The code surfaced like a bubble of soap. Sixteen digits.
The collective captured it and verified that it was recorded by all eight minds. Then each one of them confirmed the numbers.
With the code secured, Number One planted the final suggestion in Rami's mind. I'm so tired. It's time to go to bed.
Rami's sketching stopped. He stared at the page for a moment, then put his pencil down, closed the notebook, placed both in the desk drawer, and used a key to lock it.
When he rose to his feet and entered the en-suite bathroom, Number One led the others to the large windows of the library, which also faced the street.
Its heavy curtains were drawn, but they didn't quite meet in the center, and through the narrow gap, a sliver of light spilled onto the garden path.
Number One used that gap to peek into the room.
Losham was sitting in a leather armchair with a glass of something amber in his hand. His eyes were unfocused, staring at a point somewhere above the bookshelf across from him, and his posture was relaxed, which meant that his call with K and the others had gone well.
Dave had to wait.
After distributing themselves along the side of the house in positions that were concealed from the guards and from the library window, the Eight settled into their usual patient stillness.
The minutes stretched, and Number One's patience wavered. He sent a gentle thrall through the library window, light enough for Losham to interpret it as a natural impulse rather than an external suggestion.
It's late. The drink is nearly finished. It's time to call it a night.
Losham didn't respond immediately. His mind was resilient, protected by a layer of mental shielding that deflected casual influence the way armor deflected a glancing blow. The suggestion had to be subtle enough to pass beneath his threshold of awareness and align with what he was already feeling.
He was tired. He had been running on adrenaline and anxiety for weeks, managing his brothers, maintaining the fiction of Navuh's presence, and enduring the clan's compulsion.
Number One reinforced the thrall. Just rest. Tomorrow comes regardless.
Losham took a last sip from his glass, set it on the side table, and rose to his feet. On his way out, he turned off the lights and closed the library doors behind him.
Dave waited in absolute stillness while Losham climbed the stairs, performed his nighttime routine, and got into bed. The collective tracked the faint sounds from inside the house and Losham's surface thoughts.
It took almost an hour until Losham finally fell asleep, and the Eight walked up to the front door.
The guards were already thralled from earlier, standing at their posts with adjusted memories and blank, dutiful expressions.
Number Three entered the new code into the alarm panel.
The light turned green. The system disarmed with a soft chime that still sounded too loud in the silence.
They slipped inside.
Number One ascended the stairs alone while the other seven waited on the ground floor.
He placed each footstep on the outer edge of the treads so the wood wouldn't creak, and when he got to Losham's door, he stood in front of it and collected the sleeping male's surface thoughts.
They were dissolving into the fragmented patterns of early sleep, and Losham's consciousness was descending, the higher functions shutting down one by one, leaving only the baseline awareness that sleeping immortals maintained.
Number One sent another thrall through the door, deeper this time, pressing Losham further into sleep. Stay still. The night is safe.
Losham's breathing remained slow and regular. No change in rhythm. No spike in awareness. The thrall held.
Number One opened the door. The room was dark, the curtains drawn, the only light a faint green glow from a charging indicator on the nightstand. Losham was a shape under the covers, his breathing deep and even.
The phone was plugged into the charger, the screen dark.
Number One crossed the room in four silent steps, unplugged the phone, and slipped it into his pocket.
Losham didn't stir.
Number One retreated to the door, closed it behind him without making a sound, and descended the stairs to where the others waited.
They left the alarm unarmed when they exited the house.
They would need to get back inside to put back the phone, and the alarm would have to be reactivated after the phone was returned.
The front door closed behind them with a faint click. The guards continued their watch undisturbed. The perimeter patrol was on the far side of the property, sixty-three seconds from their next pass.
The Eight divided into pairs again, staggering their timing and taking different routes that diverged into the residential streets and converged three blocks later on the path leading to the lab.
It was almost two in the morning when they reached the lab. Petrov was waiting by the door and looked profoundly relieved when he saw them.
"Any problems?" the scientist asked after closing the door behind them.
"The alarm code was changed," Number One said. "We had to extract it from the assistant."
"Is that concerning?"
"We are not certain whether it's extra caution because Losham felt something was off or just a coincidence. Losham also armed the alarm and stayed inside for the call instead of taking it out to his backyard."
Petrov grunted. "In my experience, when the boss changes the locks and stays inside, it's not because he's discovered a new appreciation for indoor living."