Chapter 3
THE FLIGHT TAKES A TOUCH over two hours. No Atti to complain to. Just enough time to be annoyed, then mildly concerned, then annoyed again.
The world remains mostly dark out the window.
Overcast tonight, no stars. There’s the occasional pulsing blue streak below from automated transports navigating the solar roads.
The warmer illumination of an estate now and then, too, though most in this part of the country can afford SatScreen and are all but invisible from up here.
We’re headed just north of east, never deviating.
At one point, distant clouds reflect the burning yellows of what must be Themis’s boundaries.
The megacity is probably a hundred klicks away. We won’t show up on their sensors.
Aside from keeping track of our position, I ignore most of it and focus on my somewhat unwelcome situation.
Absurdly paranoid though all this is, part of me understands.
The Keres are engaged to kill people far more often than protect them.
And this is only a two-week contract. If I was a lifer—I have to assume the client is one, now; no one else on the planet would have the funds to pull something like this off—I wouldn’t want them knowing anything more than necessary about me, either.
On the other hand, none of this is expected. And unexpected in my line of work is… rarely great.
I glower out into the darkness as the volo starts to descend.
It doesn’t help that I was already uneasy about my assignment here.
It’s been a minute since I worked protection, and the last time did not end well.
The Keres know this. They know my skills are far better suited to offence rather than defence.
So why now? Why this job? It was allocated before they could have known about my leg.
The injury meant I didn’t protest as much as I would have otherwise, but the more I ruminate, the more I think they would have sent me here regardless.
That has to mean something. The people I work for are consistent. Not “generally consistent.” Atomic clock consistent. They do nothing out of the ordinary without reason.
But I’ve been thinking about it for this whole journey, and I’m no closer to figuring out what that reason might be.
I peer down as we break SatScreen and our destination bleeds into view.
The pad below pulses green as we approach, somewhat surprisingly one of the few illuminated areas.
The house alongside it is single-storey and made to blend into its surrounds, a sloping roof-to-ground design that’s entirely covered with grass.
Wood accents its edges, matching the forest that crowds around.
In the daytime, without the soft white light currently highlighting its boundaries, I’m not sure I would have spotted it at all.
My already considerable displeasure deepens.
Another oddity. Not the house—it’s less ostentatious than what I’ve come to expect, maybe, but any structure surviving outside Lat-60’s calmer climes shouts “wealth” just by its nature.
Nothing too strange there. The rest of the grounds, on the other hand…
hard to tell for sure in the dark, but I’m pretty sure they’re mostly forest. Thick forest. Kilometres and kilometres of unlit, luscious green cover.
Not exactly harmonious with what I’ve seen of this client thus far.
Damn, I hate protection.
The volo settles to a stop, and I catch movement at the house entrance. A single figure hurries toward me, silhouetted against the light seeping from inside. “Bonsoir!”
“Bonsoir,” I echo politely as I disembark, cognitive revs active as the woman greeting me meets the glow of the volopad. She’s old. Not older-than-me old. Cretaceous period old. There are lines in her face that were surely there before I was born. “I’m Azure.”
“Of course you are, dear.” She smiles at me in an affectionate, grandmotherly sort of way. “You can call me Jasa.” The ends of Old Woman’s wispy white hair are tinted green by the light. Like a poorly thought out Halloween decoration.
Before I can respond, my cognitive revs prickle.
I go still. Ignore Old Woman as she chatters away blithely at me as if I’m some long-lost relative, rather than a Keres-trained assassin here to ensure her employer’s life.
My cogs can be strange things, sometimes; unlike my somatics, the genetic revisions that alter how my mind perceives things aren’t entirely quantifiable.
Yes, they’re partly mental improvements—better acuity, sharper reflexes, the ability to ignore pain if needed.
All the good stuff. But there’s more to them, too.
When they’re activated, I become…aware, in ways I couldn’t possibly be, otherwise. Not quite prescient, but damned close.
They’re more of an art, compared to the fairly straightforward science of my somatic revs, but I’ve learned to read them pretty well over the years. And right now they are telling me to get the hell out of the open.
“We should head inside.” I’m brusque as I cut off whatever Old Woman is saying, scanning the barely lit tree line as I do so. There is an offensive amount of cover out here.
“Oh. Yes. Of course, dear.” She smiles absent-mindedly.
Movement in the trees. No chance I’d distinguish it from the swaying foliage without my revs, but it’s definitely there. Something large. Coming fast. I activate my somatic revs too, even as my body protests against them being on all at once.
“Get behind me.” I snap the instruction and position myself between Old Woman and the motion, drawing my Ceramic.
Bushes shake, branches crack, and it emerges from the shrubs and darkness.
A lion. A concerningly giant lion. Glossy mane, unreasonably big teeth as it snarls at me, the whole deal.
No obvious biomods, but I’m six feet tall, and its intelligent amber eyes are the same height as mine.
Plus, you know… it’s a lion. Not exactly any of those in the wild around here. It has to be a bio.
“Down, Richard. This one’s not dinner,” Old Woman tuts. She pushes past me and points sternly to the ground as the behemoth of muscle and golden hair continues to watch me with a curled-back upper lip. “Down.”
The creature switches its gaze from me to her, and the tension leaks from its stance. Its snarl turns into a long, lazy yawn and it lies on its stomach, resting its frankly enormous head on its equally enormous paws. It looks up at Old Woman expectantly.
“You have got to be kidding me.” I’m still holding the Ceramic out in front of myself.
Old Woman shuffles over to the giant cat, who immediately yawns again and rolls onto its back, its tail whipping a tree behind it with a crashing of leaves as she scratches its belly and murmurs lovingly.
“It’s been programmed to recognise your voice? ”
“Taught.” Old Woman sounds as if she’s correcting me, though I don’t see why. She straightens and the beast continues to squirm for a second, and then returns to its feet with a manic, twisting flip that almost decapitates her, and does decapitate a small tree. Shadowy leaves erupt in a cloud.
“You must be trusted to have…” I trail off. Certain, even as it makes no sense. The woman’s a coughing fit away from death as it is. “You’re the client, aren’t you.”
Old Woman considers me. “You weren’t sure?”
I’m not always tactful, but I know enough not to explain my reasoning here. “No.”
“Interesting.” I do not enjoy the way she says it. As if I’ve revealed something secret to her, something very important. “Richard—hunt.”
The creature eyes me standing there with Ceramic still in hand. Snorts with what I could only describe as derision, then bounds with a thundering of snapping branches—and probably trunks, honestly—back into the darkness.
“Come inside, dear. Let’s get you a meal,” Old Woman says as if this is all entirely normal, pottering off toward the house again.
I sheathe my Ceramic. Turn off my somatic revs. Sigh. And follow.