The Far Shores (The Central Series) (33 page)

The more Dr. Graaf
spoke, the more Alex was inclined to agree with Katya’s cult theory. No one
could possibly be as amiably naïve as he claimed to be – even Alex, in his
short time in Central, knew that the conflict between the cartels was an
interwoven thread that ran through every action and thought. Alex also thought
he should mention this place to Vivik, if he ever saw him again, and if they
were actually still friends when he did. He thought that these people might be
right up Vivik’s alley.

“We have undertaken a
number of joint ventures with the Academy. This includes our most famous
contribution to Central – the power generation facility we recently completed –
as well as little-known and still-in-progress advancements, including flexible
compounds for the construction of personal armor, nanite dermal patches
designed to supplement our natural healing abilities, and communication systems
that employ both telepathy and radio transmission to thwart scrambling and
interference. We have even proposed a transportation initiative, which promises
to revolutionize travel and logistics for all of Central. We are eager to
collaborate with the students and faculty of the Academy alike. What I would
like to share with you today are the fruits of one of those ventures, one with
potential applications in the field. So, if you would follow me...”

Dr. Graaf led them
through the door he had entered from, down the hallway, and out into the grey
light of the campus. Alex felt a little better about the place – at the very
least, he understood why everything looked so new.

“Mind if I ask you a
question, Doctor?” Katya passed up Alex to keep pace with Dr. Graaf, who seemed
surprised, but pleasantly so.

“By all means.”

“I’ve been wondering why
the Far Shores was so big, since we got here. Half these buildings must be
empty, judging from the number of people who work here – maybe more. Does that
have something to do with your ‘joint ventures’ with the Academy?”

Alex wondered why Katya
was so concerned with the Far Shores. He suspected that it might have something
to do with her position in the Black Sun, a role that she had repudiated in
name only. Katya wasn’t really the curious type, so Alex couldn’t help but
suspect that the curiosity was actually Anastasia’s.

“Indeed,” Dr. Graaf
affirmed, putting one plump hand on Katya’s shoulder and gesturing at the
campus around them with the other. “Much of what you see is indeed vacant, and
at the north end of the campus, construction is currently underway. The
Director has conceived of the Far Shores as a potential evacuation site should
Central ever be attacked again. It is far easier to secure, and much better
defended since the reconstruction. In the event of another incursion into Central,
as much of the civilian population as possible would be shifted to the Far
Shores and housed here temporarily, until the city could be secured.”

Katya nodded as if she
wasn’t surprised by the answer, reinforcing Alex’s idea that the question was
asked to confirm something Anastasia already suspected. The empty buildings and
unused furniture felt a bit less sinister, now. When he remembered the
wholesale slaughter the Anathema had visited on the residential areas of
Central, and the bodies scattered on the road to the Academy, he had to concede
that it wasn’t a bad idea. At the same time, the significance of the plan
wasn’t lost on him – the Director was preparing for another attack on Central.
That would have been ominous under any circumstances, but when the planner was
a precognitive, it was downright chilling.

The walk wasn’t long.
Dr. Graaf led them to the adjoining building, where a technician with
protective eyewear and a long white coat held a security door open for them.
They were led through another anonymous hallway to a small lecture hall, about
thirty seats arrayed in progressively elevated rows around a central
presentation dais, backed by a curtain. A few of the seats were already
occupied – Michael Lacroix sat in the first row, wearing sunglasses, with a big
grin on his face. Mitsuru Aoki sat further back, with an indifferent
expression, beside Chike Okoro, the Nigerian apport technician whom Alex had
barely spoken with. Alice Gallow held a heated conversation on her cell in the
back of the room, and Alex extended automatic mental sympathy to the poor soul
on the other end of the call.

Alex went to shake
Michael’s hand, but the big man stood and gave him a hug instead, which
embarrassed and secretly pleased Alex.

“It’s been a while,
Alex,” Michael said, sitting back down and inviting Alex to join him. “How have
things been?”

“Weird,” Alex answered,
without hesitation. “How about you? I haven’t seen you around the Academy at
all.”

“I haven’t been around,”
Michael agreed. “I resigned my teaching position.”

“What? Really? I had no
idea. Why?”

Alex was both curious
and disappointed. Michael was his favorite teacher – actually, he was probably
the most popular teacher on staff. Alex would miss his brutal conditioning
sessions despite himself, and any number of girls (and a few guys as well,
probably) at the Academy must have been heartbroken.

“I joined the Auditors,”
Michael said with a grin. “Couldn’t let you handle everything on your own.”

Alex’s jaw dropped.

“Wow,” he said, trying
to process the information and failing. “That’s, uh. That’s great! I think. Why
would you...”

“Long story,” Michael
said, patting him on the shoulder. “We’ll talk about it later, okay?”

“Sure,” Alex said,
nodding and confused. “Yeah.”

With nothing else he
could think of to say, Alex instead turned around in his seat and gave Mitsuru
a friendly half-wave.

“Hi, Miss Aoki.”

She nodded curtly.

“Alex. I trust you are
well.”

She phrased it like a
statement, but he had to assume it was meant as a question, and nodded his
affirmation.

“Fine, yes. Um...”

Katya kicked the back of
his chair.

“Shut up already. I
wanna hear this.”

Pausing to glare at
Katya, Alex turned back to the stage as the presentation slowly got underway.

At Dr. Graaf’s urging,
Haley followed him on to the dais, while a number of white-coated aides bustled
through the curtain and back again, providing Dr. Graaf and Haley with folding
chairs, fiddling with a number of blinking black boxes arrayed on a rolling
metal rack. There was brief and puzzling outburst of barking from behind the
curtain, and Alex glanced at Michael, but if he knew anything, then he wasn’t
giving it away. Eventually the technicians were apparently satisfied with the
state of the equipment on stage, and Dr. Graaf took the podium, while Haley
remained in her chair, staring at her sandals, struck dumb with stage fright.

“Welcome, students and
Auditors, to the first of what I hope will be many joint ventures between the
Far Shores and the Audits department. Since the Director opted to activate the
Audits facility on our compound, we have had the privilege of working closely
with some of your number to develop means and technology that might give you an
edge in fighting our common enemy – the Anathema.” Alex had noticed before, but
he caught it this time – when Dr. Graaf mentioned the Anathema there was a
subtle difference in his intonation and body language, normally jovial and
personable, to something tenser. He didn’t know what had happened at the Far
Shores during the Anathema attack, but Alex got a rather strong impression that
Dr. Graaf bore a significant grudge. “The first of these projects to bear fruit
is what we would like to share with you today.”

Alex glanced behind him,
curious to see if the demonstration was just for the students, but Miss Gallow
and Miss Aoki were watching with the same attention as Katya. For some reason,
that was the first time that the whole Audits thing started to seem real to him
– not during the training, or his first mission, but there, in an auditorium.
They were seriously considering him as a candidate for Audits. He was excited
and sweating, wondering what in the hell he had gotten himself into.

“The Far Shores has been
performing research on the nanites and their rather puzzling relationship to
biological organisms for years, with interesting and occasionally revolutionary
results. One of the first discoveries our biological researchers made was
incidental – namely, animals that were injected with nanites had the same rough
ratio of activation versus non-activation as humans, but with a radically
different survival average. In other words, those animals without the potential
to interact with nanites simply passed them inertly in their excretion.” Alex
stifled a giggle, fairly certain that one of the women in the room would kill
him if he laughed. “Only mammals appeared to have any potential to interact
with nanites, as all experiments with insects, fish, and reptiles had no
effect. The vast majority of mammals were similarly unaffected. Of the minority
who demonstrated biocompatibility, follow-up tests revealed fascinating
results. The affected animals showed increased cellular activity and
regeneration. And before you ask – no, we did not create hyper-intelligent
monkeys.”

Dr. Graaf beamed at the
room, but his joke was met with silence. He coughed, then continued just as
brightly.

“After limited testing
with compatible animals, we settled on canines as the most workable option, due
to lifespan, cognitive abilities, and potential field applications. In
conjunction with Vladimir Markov of the Academy, we envisioned the possibility
of nanite-enhanced dogs playing roles in defense activities, explosives
detection, and even surveillance. But, with the cooperation of the Audits
department, and the talents of your own Haley Weathers,” Dr. Graaf said,
gesturing with his hand to take in the furiously blushing hippie girl, “we have
been able to accomplish more than we ever dreamed. Carlos, Vivian, if you
would?”

Two assistants led
leashed dogs onto the stage. Both were roughly medium-sized mutts of varying
colors, and Alex’s best guess was that one was a pit bull–boxer cross of some
kind, along with a rottweiler that appeared to have a significant amount of
German shepherd in it. Their handlers gave firm commands in what Alex thought
was German, and the dogs settled fairly quickly and sat on their hind legs,
looking out at the auditorium with reactions varying from hopeful friendliness
to mild disdain. The pit mix, white in body with a black patch surrounding one
eye and barrel-chested, sidled over next to Haley’s chair, and she immediately
began to scratch him behind his ears.

“As you are doubtless
aware,” Dr. Graaf continued, beaming out at the silent audience, “Haley
Weathers is a rather unique remote viewer.”

Alex was aware. That information,
along with a bunch of other stuff that had yet to prove itself useful, was part
of the two weeks worth of drilling he had received from Miss Aoki regarding the
capabilities of his fellow candidates. Most of it hadn’t been that interesting,
and even the parts that had caught his attention, like the elasticity of
Min-jun’s barrier protocol, or Katya’s affinity for removing very specific
parts of the human anatomy, hadn’t really made any sense until he had seen them
firsthand.

Most remote viewers basically
were capable of surveying a certain spot, with varying restrictions in regard
to range, or the nature of what was perceived. Vivik had described his own
protocol as a form of telepathically augmented sight, which Alex always
imagined as being similar to the video games that Vivik played on his laptop –
strategy games with an overhead floating view, directing a battle as if it were
a game of chess. Most of the advance intel that the Audits department’s remote
viewers provided for the pre-operation briefings bore this out. Haley’s
abilities, however, were quite a bit different.

As an F-Class remote
viewer, Haley should have been the psychic equivalent of a reconnaissance
satellite, capable of scouting a location without ever setting foot on it.
Instead, her protocol was more telepathic in nature – in mundane terms, Haley
could possess another person, relaying sensory information and executing
commands. She had done this repeatedly during the Bohai Strait operation,
introducing the device that sabotaged the Etheric interference generator, as
well relaying information from the point of view of various security personnel.
An added perk was her ability to transfer this information via a telepathic
link. Alex had participated in such linkages during training exercises, and
found the experience disorienting and voyeuristic. It was useful, certainly, as
Haley’s remote viewing could be performed and her perspective altered in real
time, but Alex had never felt that this was nearly as useful as standard remote
viewing, lacking the “God” perspective.

He had initially
suspected that the oddity of her ability was the reason that the Hegemony had
been willing to assign her to Audits – like Katya, her abilities were viewed as
intrinsically less than useful. It had been Katya herself who clarified the
issue, pointing out that a first-person perspective from anyone
inside
of a compound was often much more valuable than a general mapping of the
compound, or a detailed overhead view. Moreover, Haley’s ability to perceive auditory
as well as visual information made her incredibly useful as a spy. Katya had explained
to him that this was probably the reason that the Hegemony nominated her for
Audits – chances were, she relayed everything that happened back to the them.