Chapter 27 Losham
LOSHAM
Losham stood in Navuh's office, staring at the empty chair behind the massive desk. The chair where the most powerful immortal in the world should have been sitting.
But Navuh was gone. Vanished. Most likely dead at the bottom of the ocean because there was simply no other explanation for his and his harem's disappearance.
The bottom line was that he wasn't coming back.
And Losham had a choice to make.
"Have you decided?" Dave asked, or rather, the primary voice among the eight that spoke for the collective. "The longer we wait, the more questions will be asked. We don't want questions."
"No, we do not." Losham turned to face the enhanced soldiers. Eight men stood before him, but their minds worked as one.
Despite their combined neural network, the eight still relied on him to make all the strategic decisions.
Perhaps it was because they didn't trust their hive mind to come up with the right answers, or perhaps because they knew that their combined experience didn't match his.
He'd been doing this for many centuries, while most of the immortals who had been turned into something else were young.
Doctor Zhao had chosen young males because their minds were more malleable and pliable, which was probably why they had been able to develop their unique method of thralling that incorporated an element of compulsion.
It was an entirely new way of manipulating minds and strong enough to affect other immortals, which until now, only Navuh, his father, and his grandfather had been able to do.
The two gods were dead, though, and now Navuh was probably dead as well. Losham, regrettably, had not inherited the trait from his father.
"We hide the fact that Lord Navuh is gone," he said.
"That would allow for the smoothest transition of power because no one will know who really sits in this chair.
" He waved a hand at the throne-like seat that used to be Navuh's.
"We tell everyone that Lord Navuh has decided to work from the harem for security reasons.
Everyone knows that he's paranoid. They will just assume that his paranoia has gotten worse. "
Dave's eight faces showed identical expressions of consideration. It was unsettling to see them move in perfect synchronization, as if choreographed.
"That could work," the primary voice said. "The harem is isolated. No immortals are allowed in there other than Lord Navuh and the ladies, and no surveillance feed goes from there to the main security office or anywhere else that we know of. And now he and the ladies are gone."
"Exactly." Losham moved to the window, looking out over the construction sites that dotted the island.
Cranes still moved. Workers still labored.
The island continued operating as if nothing had changed.
"We just need to maintain the illusion. Make people believe Navuh is still in control.
You will need to do your thralling mixed with compulsion thing to convince everyone of that. "
"That will be no problem," Dave said. "We haven't encountered a mind we couldn't manipulate yet. The power of eight minds combined is as strong as Navuh's compulsion."
It wasn't.
The eight couldn't control the entire island like Navuh had.
They were limited by distance and the number of immortals they could manipulate at once.
Losham had tested their ability, and it wasn't on par with Navuh's yet.
They were still evolving, though. Navuh hadn't started as the incredibly powerful compeller he had become either.
His power had grown with age and use, adjusting to the increasing numbers of immortal warriors that he needed to control.
"Let's start with Hakum and the household staff," Losham said.
"If they parrot the story that he has simply relocated to the harem, everyone else will follow.
Make them forget about breaking down the door to get into his office.
The story will be that I was given a key and instructed to run things for him from here.
Have Hakum remember that Lord Navuh has given him instructions that, from now on, everything has to come through me.
The lord doesn't want to be bothered with the day-to-day operations and wants time to meditate on his expansion plans. "
The eight bodies of Dave nodded in approval.
"Do you need Hakum and the others in here or can you do this remotely?" Losham asked.
"We do not need them to be present. We will manipulate Hakum’s mind and the minds of everyone else who was here and witnessed the door breaking. Would you like us to include your assistant in the mind sweep?"
Losham shook his head. "I trust Rami with my life."
"As you wish," came the synchronized answer.
The door to Navuh's office had been repaired and looked as good as new, and no one could go to the harem to verify that Lord Navuh was or wasn't there without actually getting permission from Lord Navuh himself, which they naturally would not get.
Losham wondered if Navuh's phone was somewhere in the harem. He needed to get to it before any of his brothers decided to search for their father that way. There was no signal, so it was more likely that the phone had gone into the water along with its owner, but he had to check to make sure.
In either case, explaining the device's demise would not be a problem. It wouldn't be the first phone that Navuh had destroyed in a fit of rage.
The maintenance crew that had repaired the door had been thralled to remember that they had been called to fix damage the lord had caused in one of his angry outbursts, so the story would match.
Dave's eight pairs of eyes returned to Losham. "It is done. What's next?"
"Next is the harem," Losham said.
That was the trickier part. The harem was Navuh's private domain, and it could be accessed through a secret tunnel that connected to his bedroom. Dave had cracked all the security codes on Navuh's desktop, and once Losham got in, it was easy to find what he needed.
Navuh was methodical and kept things in clearly labeled folders.
The private security file contained all the instructions for accessing the secret tunnel, including the codes and sequences that needed to be performed on the other side to prevent the alarm from going off.
There was even information about a secret cove with a four-person submarine that Navuh kept for the ultimate emergency.
That was all highly classified, and yet it hadn’t required much effort to get in, but a couple of files needed additional passcodes to open, and Dave hadn’t been able to crack them. What could possibly be in them that was more important to hide than a secret escape submarine?
There were still dozens of files Losham hadn't even opened yet, but there was no rush. He could get to them after he secured his position and prevented anyone from finding out that Navuh was gone. By then, Dave might crack the code on the two that were inaccessible.
Right now, they needed to get to the harem and find out what had happened to his father and his ladies.
Losham assumed that his father kept a vehicle in the tunnel in order to travel between the harem and his office.
He surely hadn’t been walking back and forth every day.
But if Losham’s hypothesis about what had transpired in the harem was true, then that vehicle was still parked at the other end of the tunnel.
His assumption was confirmed when he and Dave entered the tunnel and the vehicle was not there.
Navuh had gone to the harem the night before, but he hadn’t returned.
Since Navuh had been paranoid about his private spaces, allowing no one into the harem except the ladies and the human staff who served them, there could be no other explanation for the missing vehicle.
With Dave's bodies positioned around him, they began walking through the tunnel. The passage was long and sloped downward, illuminated by light fixtures embedded in the walls that were motion-activated and sprang to life as they passed them.
Losham was tempted to explore the cove with the submarine, but it could wait for another day.
Unless Navuh had used it to escape the island?
That thought sent a jolt of fear through him. There had been no reason for Navuh to do that, not unless he had lost his mind, killed the ladies, but instead of jumping to his death after them, decided to leave the island.
They reached the fork in the tunnel after walking for nearly two hours, and Losham decided to go down the narrow offshoot and investigate.
"I just want to check that the lord didn't leave the island in the submarine he kept for emergencies," Losham explained even though Dave hadn’t asked where they were going and why.
Come to think of it, Losham now understood why the island had nothing as advanced as submarine detection technology. Navuh hadn't wanted it so he could escape if needed, and no one would be able to follow him.
Finding the sub where it was supposed to be was a relief, and Losham looked inside just to be sure that no one was hiding there. It didn't take him long to realize that the lock was biometric, and if he wanted to use the submarine, he would need to find his father's fingerprints to enter it.
Hopefully, the door to the harem didn't have a biometric lock, or he would have to go back and scour Navuh's private quarters for prints he could lift right now.
He hoped the mansion's cleaning staff wasn't overly thorough and there were still usable prints to be found.
"No bodies here," he said only half-jokingly, but Dave didn't even smile.
Tough crowd. If the eight could be called a crowd.
They returned to the main tunnel and continued on their way. The jeep was parked where the tunnel terminated at a roundabout that was designed so the vehicle wouldn't need to drive in reverse on the way back. The tunnel was too narrow for it to turn around anywhere else.
The single door took out the guesswork of finding the way in.