Authors: Bradley Ernst
She was enchanting. Bewitching.
He
laughed easily with her, surprised at
himself
.
An unlikely forest
dweller—maybe a woodsprite.
She
belonged in Ibiza or Milan—on magazine covers.
Vai
went outside for wood. Bonn stood, rubbing the muscles in his legs.
He’d atrophied.
How long was he down?
Shivering,
he opened the door of the woodstove to stir the coals. The door
creaked
open,
thunked
closed again, and as soon as he’d turned around, Vai was
dressed in a white blouse and tight jeans. She sat to zip riding boots to each
knee, perched on the edge of the rumpled featherbed.
“You’re
leaving?”
“WE
are,” she corrected. “Your little device started blinking.”
She
held up the bronze-colored tube the Germans had made: the alert mechanism.
Sure enough, the green LED flashed.
He
shook his head.
“It must be a
mistake—”
What the hell would make them activate
it?
“You
don’t know these guys … they are not the types who need help.” Bonn pictured their
faces, inner eyelids slammed shut.
“I
know them enough,” she countered, pulling open a thin door. “And everybody
needs help. I know that much. Get dressed.”
He
didn’t argue. Pulling on his clothes, he shivered more, wanting to stay near
the heat of the stove. “If they really do need me,” he said, struggling with
his boots, “the world must be coming apart at the seams.”
She’d
pulled on a sleek black jacket tied at the waist. “Something bad…” she folded the
curved knife and slid it into her pocket, thoughtful, her lower jaw stuck out
“…I can feel it.”
This was a world he didn’t know.
Bonn
rubbed at his eyes, wondering how to ask what she meant without sounding
doubtful.
She’d known so much about him
.
“What,
from the tea leaves?”
Whoops.
Vai
smiled, narrowing her eyes. She smoothed something from a tin onto her lips
then opened a drawer, pulling out a key.
“Tealeaves
are bullshit. I dreamed it. It hasn’t happened yet.”
“What
did you dream?”
“The
sky was falling.” She piled her hair up on top of her head and somehow, it
stayed. Bonn’s heart sped.
Hands and feet frozen.
“Your
friends made it happen,” she added. Bonn thought of the Germans, the building
in
Manhattan,
then shook harder still.
Henna.
T
he air outside was
crisp and humid.
As
they walked the curved gravel road, something glinted in the moonlight around a
bend. A low, black machine parked in a clearing between trees. Vai swung open
the passenger’s door. “Get in.”
’71 Plymouth.
The Hemi Barracuda.
Bonn
blinked at his lover then at the car.
Vai
threw him a sideways glance. “Don’t think you’re driving, muscle head…” pushing
him in “…you don’t even know where we are.” He sat, admiring the interior with
his mouth open.
Not stock
.
Three-point seat belts.
Roll cage.
Vai
swung her boots in and yanked her door shut with a solid, oiled
thunk
. Strapped in like a jet fighter,
she turned the key. The engine roared. Incredulous, Bonn felt prepared for a
rocket launch and despite the ominous, blinking beacon in his
fist,
he felt a grin spread across his face.
He was staring at her again.
“No
rust, strongman. Sorry to disappoint you. I know you like it.” She put the car
in drive, and the forest churned into a blur.
“I
had to go Plymouth,” Vai said, her smile now crooked. “In case you didn’t like
my baking.”
H
enna had never seen
them move so fast. The shrewd Germans reminded the toxicologist and naturalist,
polymath—slayer of the hate group
The
Runes
—of a basilisk: a lizard so
fast it could run on water.
“What
does that mean?” she asked. “Why did you hang up?” Ryker had disconnected
Alvar.
Her grandfather.
The
thin, dark-haired man turned his back to her, facing his brother, so she
circled him.
“Who
was that at Alvar’s house … do you know?” She looked from him to Rickard and
back. Rickard made the throat sounds that drove her nuts. Ryker
clucked
back.
They seemed to have their own language.
Henna
looked down the rows of enclosures for animals in the lab, thinking of her creatures
inside. Usually the Germans didn’t use their strange communication habits when
others were around, but now they rolled it out, even in front of Stephan … who
had sworn he’d never heard it. Henna glanced at the man she loved. Stephan’s
face looked as bewildered as she felt. Now he would believe her.
The crazy show continued.
Obviously,
it was about her, not Alvar or Akka. It was about the search for her in the UK.
Who was she fooling? Money rules.
She’d
killed a rich man, and though the leader of the hate group needed to die, not
everyone agreed. They wouldn’t stop until they found her. Stephan, solid as
always, reached for her, and she backed into his embrace. For a moment, she
just—tried to—relax.
Her favorite place to
hide
.
No one could hurt her there.
“Tell
me.”
Stephan had recovered. He’d rip
someone’s arms off.
“WHO?”
Henna tried volume. Still, the Germans ignored her. “What do you know?”
Nothing.
Like shouting into the wind.
“Some
super-detective that you guys
know
?” Mouth dry, heart
speeding, her stomach sunk. Henna began to panic.
They never avoided her.
The
Germans always went out of their way—emotionally clumsy puppies bristling
with sharp movements and light-speed wit—to accommodate her. Never before
had they ignored her like this. With warped rumbles and clicks, like whales
speaking Bantu, their conversation sounded like gibberish, yet Henna knew it
wasn’t.
And it was all about her.
“RYKER!”
she roared. His eyes flashed to her, frozen. “WHAT’S GOING ON?”
T
hey had worked out a
plan.
Ryker
turned to face his friend. Henna’s glands sung—her cortisol higher than
he’d ever known. Henna didn’t adequately understand the circumstances.
He did.
Wanting
to reassure her, to purr the sounds she couldn’t hear yet seemed to sense, Ryker
paused. It had fallen to him to explain it. He was better with words, more
relatable to humans. Rickard was more literal.
No time to lose
.
Rickard
had flipped open a laptop. His fingers flew, but deliberately. A message
flashed, which Ryker understood, but the humans wouldn’t.
Icarus deployed.
It
meant that weather balloons now floated from deployment packs in thirteen
countries. At 80,000 feet each multi-stage rocket would blink to life; the
other parts would fall away.
Henna
yowled some more. She began to emit a sour, fearful smell. It was disturbing to
hear her shout, to prolong her distress, and he trilled the purr in his neck,
but stopped—then clicked a warning to Rickard.
The soothing-purr would be a lie. Hurry
and get them aloft.
Rickard
clicked back.
I am going as fast as I can.
Each
balloon carried an 8kg Nano-satellite; once in near-earth orbit, the miniscule
rocket inside each device would sit, latent, only to be deployed in a
worst-case scenario. In seconds, he would enlighten Henna Maxwell, but first,
the balloons, all of them, had to be up.
Each
ODIN (Orbital Destructive Icarus Nano-satellite) would remain functional for
two weeks. After that, they’d become yet more space debris, the larger chunks
of which (decades of space junk) were their targets. By now, their adversary
had surely hijacked the use of dozens of military satellites. Ryker knew what
Osgar could do.
Ryker had written the program.
Osgar
would have commandeered the forty-meter dish backed by a wind farm. Capable of
150 million watts, it would yield the perfect and miserable human—the
Aryan—ample power to hack satellites. Drones would be en-route.
If the hunter had received payment, he
was coming.
Henna
seethed, her fear-cloud choking him.
She wasn’t going to believe him.
Rickard
clicked—all of the balloons were up. Reaching out for her hand, Ryker
felt certain that the talk would go badly.
What does she need?
“I
n roughly eight
minutes, Henna, you will be taken—by a team … men we know—to a
place where you are safe.”
Henna
shook her head.
Disbelief.
She was too logical to just accept it. She would need justifications.
There wasn't the time.
“Safer
than here? This is a fortress!”
“Yes,”
he nodded. “Safer than here. You would be safer falling from a helicopter into
a stack of burning tires than you are here.”
Her
hand went limp
in his own
. Then she dropped it
entirely, reaching for Stephan. Stephan wore a bewildered look.
Smart too, but
slow-smart
.
Henna was lightning smart.
“Who
is after Henna?” Stephan asked, two heads higher than himself. “Just tell us.
We can handle it.”
No you can’t.
Rickard
held up a finger as he dialed a satellite phone.
Here we go.
A
too-smooth voice filled the concrete room from the speaker her grandfather’s voice
had just graced.
“Hello,
Brother.” Ryker’s inner eyelids snapped shut instinctively, and he stifled a
hiss.
Cut to the chase.
“Are
you in Ruka, Finland?”
“Curious
that you would ask … I am. Are you in Manhattan?” Ryker exchanged a look with
his brother, who clenched his jaws, gave a slight shake of his head, and began
to tap furiously at a keyboard.
“No
need to answer. I know you are. The building looks solid.”
The drones were here.
Henna
squinted with her jaw hung wide, straining to understand. Her fear was
gone—now
apoplectic,
her eyes met Ryker’s, her
look murderous.
“Have
you received payment?” Ryker asked, eyes on his twin.
“In
full. Blackshaw. Ring a bell, Henna? I’m guessing you are on speaker.”
Rickard
slumped, holding his fingers to his temples.
Henna’s
knees buckled. Stephan caught her. Ryker pushed a chair behind her and helped
her to sit. She pressed her hands to her mouth, face white with unmistakable
terror. Her glands went wild, but to her credit, she stayed still.
Play it down.
“She
is known to us.” Ryker tried to sound casual, but it wasn’t within his range.
He handed a message he had scrawled to his brother.
Shut everything down. Computers too.
All of it.
He’s in.
“We
can provide an alternate name and payment. Abort the mission. She is—” He
couldn’t help but to purr. Rickard flicked his lids open, joining him, agreeing
with his own protective glottal purr aimed at Henna, who looked increasingly
faint. “Family. She is family.”
A
sigh filled the room. “So the old man lied?” Ryker paced, clacking his teeth,
breathing through the tube beneath his tongue. Henna and Stephan had withdrawn,
like all humans did to a certain extent, under extraordinary stress.
“What
a surprise,”
Osgar continued.
Ryker studied a
monitor. Overhead, drones hovered.
At least four.
“There
is no room for more family,” Osgar announced. “Additionally, I rather dislike
being commanded. How pretentious … it is more polite to ask, don’t you each
agree?” The Aryan didn’t wait for an answer. “And aren’t we family?”
Ryker
clapped his tongue flat. The tube breaths were involuntary, a quirk of his
physical makeup that he would happily shed if he could.
When he breathed through the tube, he
couldn’t speak
.
“We
won’t let you take her.” The tube sprung open beneath his tongue like a coil. A
hiss escaped him before he could stop it.
The
reception on the satellite phone was startlingly clear. They heard the wet
sounds of Osgar’s mouth as he smiled. “Let…” Osgar
breathed
“…is an interesting word, Brother. I like it.” The long sound of a deep (and
human)
breath
filled the room like television static
over the speaker, then stopped.
“Let
us begin.”
Ryker
disconnected the call.
A
n armored Land
Cruiser barreled beneath the door of the parking garage.
On
the monitor Ryker saw the team of contractors—Henna would think of them
as hired mercenaries—extruding from the truck. In minutes Henna and
Stephan would be rushed, an operator on each elbow, from the building. Ryker
was prepared to brief her, but she smelled angry and terrified, and looked
unreceptive.
“Your
brother?” she spat.
“Not
by blood,” he said, shaking his head immediately. “Technically, yes by blood,
but not our genes … well, MOST of them.” Henna turned away. It was his turn to
try to get her attention.
“Look
at me, please.” She didn’t.
She needs what they all need.
“OK,
then at least listen?”
Here it goes.
“You,
Henna, are the second smartest person I have ever met. That man on the
telephone was the first.” He forced his eyes wide,
a trick
humans
used to portray earnestness. “Not more intelligent by just a
little bit, and I don’t say that as a slight, Henna.” Saying her name made her
look at him.
When she looked at him she could hear
him.
“He
was created that way,” he added.
Now she wouldn’t look away.
“It’s
complicated. Shupp will tell you what you need to know.”
“Shupp?”
she spat, glowering at the monitor, back on her feet. “Which one is he?”
Of
the four bearded soldiers in the garage, two peered up at the camera in the
ceiling. “Let me guess. The one with the beard.”
“Right
now, Henna …” Ryker spoke urgently, but Henna shook her head, hyperventilating.
He wasn’t getting through.
“What
I need you to know is that we have a plan.” He finished anyway.
Stephan was listening.
“We
are taking extreme measures to keep you both safe.” Henna heard the elevator
open. Frowning at the monitor, she noticed that none of the bearded brethren in
the garage had budged.
Different men strode from the elevator.
Where the hell had they come from?
“Your
brother, Ryker.” She nodded, frowning, at the screen. “Explain how your brother
is hunting me.”
On
the screen, a woman—or a man dressed like one—sprinted across the
garage and leapt into the back seat of the reinforced Toyota FJ80. The goons in
the garage climbed in next.
Was that supposed to look like her?
The
men strutting into the lab were bigger, with scars Hollywood would consider too
garish to be believed. Hulking torsos, expensive headsets, they looked like the
elite military types that ignored helmets and who would only wear body armor
rarely. Shupp was now obvious. He lacked a strut but wore a watch cap and the
impassive look of a leader. Two others were bald; the last had long dreadlocks
tied back against his spine. They had the tempered looks of men who’d been to
Hell and back.
“The
plan,” Henna huffed. “These guys…” she pointed at Shupp “…are a part of your
plan.” She pointed at the monitor. The Landcruiser squealed out of the door
into the street, the door closing just behind it’s ample back end. “And
that—whatever that is.”
Henna
swallowed against her dry tongue. Ryker studied her.
“Your
brother.” She leaned toward him. “Your THIRD brother?” Shaking her head. “Not
your fellow cricket-munching sunbather, obviously.” She glared at Rickard, who looked
away, then more calmly back at him—her face square to his. “Who are YOU?”