Chapter 384: No Appointment

The woman keeps coming up the alley without taking her hand out of her jacket.

I don’t move.

Neither does Rhayne.

Void Monarch keeps our bodies dissolved against the background while our fingers stay laced together. The effect doesn’t make the world transparent to me. It only makes my own body almost disappear from my peripheral sense of myself. When I breathe deeply or shift my weight even slightly, the light around me deforms for a fraction of a second before going back.

The woman is close enough now that I can hear her breathing.

She stops again.

Whatever ability she’s using to follow us still says we’re here. Her eyes, though, find nothing.

Her hand closes around something under the jacket.

I wait for one more step.

She takes it.

One more.

Now.

I come out of the ambush without letting go of Rhayne.

The transition happens fast, but not instantly. First the light loses alignment, then my face, shoulders, and arm go back to occupying the space in front of her. The woman reacts in the same instant, except her own brain needs a fraction of a second to accept that an empty alley just produced a person less than a yard away.

Her shoulder turns.

Her hand starts drawing the weapon.

I’m already closer.

My free hand comes up and touches her forehead.

"Memory of Lightwaves."

’This keeps us both in a trance for a few seconds. Rhayne will know what to do.’

The world loses the street.

It loses the lights.

It loses Rhayne.

For an instant, all that exists is a woman I knew in another life without ever really knowing her.

The counter disappears from my attention before I can track the forty minutes being torn out of it.

Rahul Sharma is sitting behind a desk I don’t recognize.

Older.

His hair has changed a little. So has his face. There’s still the same posture of a man used to turning any room into temporary property.

The woman in front of him is the same one from the alley.

She receives a small case.

Inside it, a Reentry Pearl.

The image shifts before I hear the rest of the conversation.

She crosses a terrestrial station in a light coat with a folder held against her body. In another fragment, she photographs a woman leaving an administrative building. Then she’s inside a car, transmitting documents to someone while two men argue about something in the front seat.

Another memory.

A hospital corridor.

She waits until a family leaves before going into a records room.

Another.

A hotel.

She sets a key card on Rahul’s table and reports something the fragment doesn’t preserve.

More images go past.

Airports.

Clinics.

Civil terminals.

Government buildings.

The same woman returning to Earth over and over, almost always with a Pearl available for whenever she needed to go back. In the first timeline, that wasn’t a luxury.

It was a function.

Rahul kept a small number of people with enough freedom to cross between the two worlds whenever he needed something carried out on the surface. People who could find other people, gather information, track political movements, and solve problems that a man too high-ranked to vanish for weeks couldn’t handle personally.

She was one of those people.

An agent.

Valuable enough to receive resources most Divers would save for their own families.

The memories don’t show a saint. She breaks into archives, buys off employees, follows people who clearly don’t want to be followed, and works for a man who built most of his power through favors and debts.

I also don’t see any pleasure in hurting anyone.

In one fragment, she waits for two civilians to leave an area before continuing an operation that could have put them in the middle of it. In another, she breaks off a pursuit to help a wounded subordinate get out before the police arrive.

Professional.

Pragmatic.

Dangerous.

But not an assassin sent to put two teenagers in an alley.

The last image arrives almost without a transition.

She holds a small glass tube against a dried bloodstain and closes her eyes.

Something pulls at her.

Not visually.

I feel it along with her.

A physical pressure, almost as if her own body had been tied to an invisible thread pointing toward another person.

She follows it.

"Den."

Rhayne’s voice pulls me back.

The alley returns along with the weight of my body.

The woman is on the ground.

It takes me a second to understand how she got there.

Rhayne is behind her, one arm locked and her neck controlled against Rhayne’s body. The weapon is no longer in the agent’s hand.

It’s pointed at her.

"Den!"

Rhayne speaks again, still breathing fast from the effort.

"This isn’t a firearm."

I look.

The barrel is narrow. The short magazine holds cylindrical capsules.

"Darts."

"It looks like a tranquilizer."

The woman tries to move her shoulder and Rhayne tightens the hold enough to stop her.

"Because I’m not trying to kill you," she says through her teeth.

The voice is irritated, but controlled.

I come closer.

"I ask the questions now."

"Your friend is going to dislocate my arm."

Rhayne doesn’t loosen.

"Then stop trying to pull it out of here."

The woman goes still.

I watch her for a few seconds. The face is the same, and so is the voice.

The first timeline never gave me a name, but it gave me enough.

"What does Rahul Sharma want with me?"

The change is small.

Her eyes hold mine a beat too long.

"I don’t know what you’re—"

"Save my time, or your arm is going to be the price."

She closes her mouth.

"Especially since my time is literally running out."

That seems to settle it.

The woman takes a breath.

"To talk."

"You need three people following us through Rusthaven to talk?"

"We needed to know where you’d be."

"Excellent start."

"Rahul wants to establish a partnership on Earth before you go back for the rescue mission."

My mood shifts. I frown, and she notices.

"What mission?"

The woman almost smiles.

"Don’t do that."

"Do what?"

"Pretend you don’t know which one. Please."

Rhayne keeps holding the weapon.

I keep my eyes on the woman.

"Give me a reason to believe you only want to talk."

She stays quiet for a few seconds.

When she answers, she picks information she knows will work.

"You live in District 4. In the old building near the corner of 12th Street."

Rhayne goes more rigid behind her.

The woman continues.

"You came back with a Rank B WaterStrand and walked out of the clinic with fifty thousand GNC. If we wanted to hurt you, your family, or her, this conversation would be happening a different way."

The tone isn’t a threat.

It’s a demonstration.

The result is almost worse.

"How do you know about the fifty thousand? Or any of the rest of it?"

"Rahul found out Rae handed you a WaterStrand before your Reentry."

That part I expected. The rest, no.

"So?"

"A WaterStrand of that class doesn’t show up on the terrestrial market every week. Much less several of them inside the same region. We searched recent sales in the districts where Alden Sands lived, worked, or still had registered ties."

She shifts position slightly. Rhayne allows only enough for her to breathe better.

"We found the clinic transaction. Then we found you."

"Sales records are protected."

The woman looks at me as if I’d said something childish.

"Government records are protected until somebody with enough money asks the right person."

That’s true in any era. Maybe especially in this one.

"So you got to the clinic."

"Then to civil registration. Address, family relations, return data. Nothing particularly difficult once you already know who you’re looking for."

That explains more than I’d like.

Rae hands me a WaterStrand in Thirstfall.

I come back.

A WaterStrand of that class appears on the terrestrial market.

Rahul narrows the search to the districts associated with my father.

The rest is money.

’One more reason to hate databases.’

I look at Rhayne.

"You can let go."

She stares at me.

"Are you sure?"

"I’m sure. Keep the weapon."

Rhayne releases the neck first, then the arm, and steps back without lowering the launcher. The woman takes a while to get up. When she manages it, she works her shoulder and looks at Rhayne with a mix of irritation and respect.

"Where did you learn that?"

Rhayne doesn’t answer.

The woman seems to decide it isn’t worth pressing.

I fold my arms.

"You could have just knocked on the door."

She looks at me.

Then at Rhayne.

Then at her own weapon in Rhayne’s hand.

"And you’d have done what? Invited us in?"

"Maybe my mother would have offered coffee."

"Your mother, maybe. The two of you? Spare me."

She lets out a short breath and goes back to working her shoulder.

"You spotted three agents, crossed two buildings, jammed a door, made my team lose you, and then vanished in the middle of an alley. You don’t look like people who’d take it well if someone walked up and said ’Rahul Sharma would like to talk.’"

Partly fair. But I’m not going to give her the satisfaction.

"So what was the plan?"

"Follow you until the next Diving. When your time was almost up, approach."

"When there was no time left to run."

"When there was no time left to turn Rusthaven into an obstacle course."

Rhayne looks at me.

I pretend not to see it.

The woman continues.

"What Rahul wants to discuss is important. He’d rather do it before you go into Thirstfall. It’s safer here."

’Right. The Deepwarden is more dangerous over there than here in this period.’

"He already gave me the opening."

"And you think that was all of it?"

That one interests me, but I don’t show much.

"Maybe."

"Then talk to him."

"When I want to."

The woman loses a little of her patience.

"That wasn’t the instruction."

"That’s his problem."

She breathes in deeply, but keeps herself in check.

Good.

Time to confirm one more thing.

"What’s your ability?"

She stares at me.

"Why?"

"I want to know whether you’ll lie."

The reaction is different this time.

More uncomfortable.

Rhayne keeps the launcher aimed.

The woman ends up accepting it.

"I can track a person from biological material."

Exactly.

"How?"

"Blood, hair, saliva, skin. Anything with enough cellular material to establish the link. After that, I feel the target’s direction."

"A marker?"

"No."

She brings a hand to her own chest, trying to explain.

"It feels like physical attraction. The closer I am, the stronger it gets. At a distance, it’s only a rough direction. Up close, I can feel small changes in position even without line of sight."

The same ability.

The same function.

Nothing changed.

"Whose sample was it?"

She looks at Rhayne.

Rhayne understands before I ask.

"Mine?"

"Yes."

Her expression hardens.

"How did you get it?"

"The District 3 clinic."

Rhayne grips the weapon more firmly.

"How?"

"The clothes you were wearing when you came out of the tank were discarded as clinical material. We got access before incineration."

For a few seconds Rhayne doesn’t speak.

It’s a specific kind of violation. It doesn’t hurt physically, but it makes very clear how someone’s life can keep producing traces even after she believes she left.

"So you were tracking her," I say.

"It was easier."

"Because you knew I’d be close."

"Rahul bet on it."

Of course he did.

The woman looks at the weapon in Rhayne’s hands again.

"I’ve answered everything you asked. Now tell her to lower that."

Nobody moves.

She loses a little more of her calm.

"I’m Rank B, Sands. Even on Earth, you don’t want to find out how much of that still works. And my patience has a limit too."

I start walking toward her.

Rhayne follows me with her eyes.

The woman stays where she is, hands visible, but her posture changes slightly. Less cooperative. More prepared.

"I said lower the weapon."

I reach Rhayne and hold out my hand.

She understands.

She hands over the launcher.

The agent relaxes a little.

Only a little.

I move closer.

"I’m running short on patience too."

She frowns.

"Then have some patience with this."

I fire.

The sound is low.

Almost nothing.

The dart enters the side of her neck a few inches from the barrel.

The woman’s eyes go wide.

"You son of a—"

Her hand goes straight to the spot.

One second.

She tries to pull the dart out.

Two.

Her legs start losing strength.

On the third, her eyes roll slightly and her body gives.

I catch part of the weight before her head hits the ground and lay her on her side against the concrete.

Rhayne stays where she is.

Eyes enormous.

"Den."

I check the woman’s breathing.

Steady.

"What?"

"She answered everything."

"She did."

"And you shot her."

"I did."

Rhayne is still trying to find the logic.

I set the launcher down out of the agent’s reach.

"I believe her."

That seems to make the confusion worse.

"You believe her?"

"Rahul probably does want to talk. She didn’t lie about the ability, she didn’t lie about her function, and this approach is exactly the kind of thing someone like him would find reasonable."

"Then why—"

"Because allying with Rahul isn’t in my plans right now."

I stand and look at the unconscious woman.

"He decided he wanted a conversation before my Diving. That doesn’t mean I have to reorganize everything because he picked the hour."

Rhayne is still looking at me.

"And if he retaliates?"

"He’ll be annoyed."

"That didn’t answer it."

"He won’t retaliate in a way that destroys his chance of getting what he wants."

Rahul can be vain, opportunistic, and irritating.

He can also do math.

If he believes a partnership with me is worth putting three agents on the street and spending terrestrial resources on it, he isn’t going to throw the investment away because one of them took an involuntary nap.

Rhayne looks at the mouth of the alley.

"The other two are probably coming."

"Probably."

"She most likely told them she’d found us before coming in here."

I’ve already considered that too.

I check the counter.

For an instant I think I misread it.

Then I check again.

The time spent on Consume, the camouflage, and Memory of Lightwaves charged far more than it seemed to while we were busy trying not to be found.

[03:08:26]

Three hours.

Rhayne checks her own counter.

The difference between us is still small.

She lifts her eyes.

"Den."

"I saw it."

"Then we need to get out of here now."

I take one last look at Rahul’s agent. Her breathing is steady, the dart did exactly what it was designed to do, and if the other two really are close, she won’t be alone for long.

I pick up the bags we left against the wall.

"Let’s go."

Rhayne is already walking when I fall in beside her.

Rahul decided to show up on Earth through three agents, and his unexpected proposal was something I didn’t even have time to hear. What could be so important? But that can wait. There is no shortage of time when we return to Thirstfall.

But here, we have a little over three hours before it pulls us back.

At least the outing started well.