Chapter Six
When they hit the bed Tor pushed Denno through the wall behind them, coming out on the other side with only a little struggle, when the good looking Ancient panicked a bit. Apparently just going through the wall hadn't seemed like the obvious plan? A guard room with screens that showed the inside of the room, where Tor and Denno were making out on the man’s bed. There was a guard wearing a gray one-piece watching the screen, chuckling as he did, but he didn't look down to see the two men under his desk.
Denno was wide eyed but stayed silent and crawled to the far end of the set up, leading to a corner, going left would take them back into the room they'd come from, so Tor was opting for straight, but Denno placed a slow and gentle hand on his back and shook his head when Tor turned around, pointing at the wall to the right. Tor nodded that he got the idea, his way wasn't going to work and the guy that knew where things were suggested going another direction entirely. But could they get there without the guard seeing them?
In the end all they could do was wait for a chance. The scene would last forty minutes, then the fake images of them would sit up and put their clothing back on and move to the table to talk. No sound would come out then though. There would be grunts and murmurs before then, hopefully when appropriate. Tor didn't really know. It wasn't like this was anything he'd done before. The whole scene was just made up after all.
The guard moved forward to watch the screen suddenly and Denno pushed Tor into action. Getting through the wall into a stairwell behind the stone material, smooth and bland, was no harder than a tree and took less time over all, since it was only about a foot thick. From there Denno led, running quickly, faster than Tor could go, but not so much so that he got lost. Finally, after climbing not five, but six flights of stairs, Denno pointed at another wall and grimaced. There would be a fall, Tor knew. When they left the building Denno rolled out of the fall, only about ten feet up, but Tor didn't have that skill, so landed with his legs nearly straight, the force of the whole thing going into the ground with a small pop. The other man looked worried for a bit, but Tor waved him on. Shields were nifty that way, taking the force of falls for you.
In the open Denno was faster than Tor by far. After about a minute of panting and struggling to keep up, being left far behind, Denno stopped, freezing by a fence made of metal, gray and oppressive. Inside hundreds, maybe thousands, of gray suited military men worked and trained. It took a minute for Tor to get what he was looking at. Inside the fence wasn't a military base, it was an assassin training facility. This was clear, because all the men inside were a single individual. All with eyes that had whites, but the rest was a pure black, eerie and off putting.
Larval.
Clones designed to ruthlessly take out any target, anywhere in the world.
Tor got ready to panic, but held himself still for the moment, taking in the scene, trying to count how many there were and how big the facility was. Huge. When he got to three hundred men, Denno started running again, this time towards the sea. On the beach he stopped and looked at Tor meaningfully.
“I don't know the plan…”
Of course not. Now they had to swim. Three miles out into the ocean and hope that Burks hadn't gone into town for a snack. Tor said this with a grin, as if he were joking and moved to the water, swimming as best he could
Denno might have been faster than he was, but after a few minutes the work was obviously getting hard for him to keep up. This wasn't a sprint after all. At fifteen minutes the man started to struggle, so Tor had to slow down and let him keep up. It took nearly two hours to get far enough out, and it was the place where he'd planned to wait, he guessed. It was really hard to tell. Looking down into the water Tor couldn't see anything, so they floated and treaded in place for a while.
He could make a craft for them, true. Tor could do it at any time, having one around his neck even, but that might show up to the Austran science and he didn't want to force them into action just yet.
It was a dilemma though, because they couldn't tread water forever.
“Hello.” A voice came from behind them, about twenty feet off. “Would you two like a ride?”
The craft looked different than Tor would have made it, like a perfect tear drop, a small hatch coming out one side, with Burks standing there dressed in a strange skin tight outfit of black that was vaguely shiny. It had a bright green stripe about four inches wide down the sides. It looked good on him, but strange. No one in Austra, Afrak or Noram dressed like it at all. Tor couldn't even identify what the material was supposed to be. Since he'd been the one that added all the field templates on the clothing amulet Burks wore, that meant the man, or someone else, had altered a field he'd made. It was possible to do, but showed a lot more building skill than he'd suspected before from the man.
Swimming towards the craft Tor wanted to shake his head. He was a moron sometimes, a big one too. Burks wasn't that good at building? Not only was he basically the same person as Tor, who did OK at it, but the man had invented the kind of magic they used. All the techniques, all the tricks and templates, were based on what he originally discovered. Of course he could tap into a field Tor had made. Now that the idea occurred to him, it wouldn't even be hard to do himself. Just match the work, like copying and rebuild it with the additional or altered information. He'd even done a little of that with his own work. It was nearly what he did to make shield improvements.
The first thing Tor did was touch Burks arm as he steadied himself on the craft then moved forward stepping inside to let Denno on.
“Burks, can I get a copy of the field for that material? It seems waterproof but flexible.” That was a rare combination. As he nodded, smiling, Tor remembered the important bit and blushed.
“Oh… Also, giant Larval army back there. I couldn't get their ages or exact numbers, but I left off at about three hundred and fifty and that was only about half of what was visible. The complex could hold more than that I think.”
Burks sighed.
“Of course. It had to be something didn't it? So, Den, what have you to say for yourself?”
Denno even looked good wet, which made Tor feel a little jealous. He probably looked like a drowned rat, this guy looked ready to seduce the upper crust of royal society. Tor moved past him and closed the hatch, a complex thing that melded into the body smoothly once it shut. Functionally the door was one with the solid and smooth side.
Cool.
Tor decided to take them down and get underway while the other two talked, or fought. Whatever was going to happen. He held them at about ten foot deep then hopped up to check the air flow in and out. It was a strong and healthy breeze on his hand coming in and the out port tried to grab him with suction. It was a little embarrassing, but he got his hand back before anyone laughed at him. Not that either of the others was paying attention to his antics, being a little busy.
They'd both collapsed into the passenger chairs in the back, large and comfortable things in a sturdy looking blue material, attached to the floor in a space bigger than his school dorm room. The men stared at each other silently, neither moving or even breathing hard. Shrugging Tor headed due west, it was both away and not particularly going towards Noram, which would be where he'd search first, if looking for a fleeing Tor. Almost everyone would try to run straight home, so he didn't.
If anyone was following yet they were good, he decided, or using techniques and tricks he just didn't know. Either way amounted to the same thing, a dead him if they weren't careful.
When Brown spoke his voice was mellow, relaxed and almost sounded like he was planning on trying to trick them into something. Believing him or what not. It wasn't a voice that Tor would trust, as much as he wanted to in the moment. It didn't sound phony, but it was clearly designed to manipulate. Incredibly sincere. Too much so.
“I have no clue what he's been up too Burks. He's held me prisoner for years, a decade I think. It's not any plan of mine. I admit that I was lax in my duty. Glost should have never gained power, but you know how I loathe killing and nothing else would have been half as effective.” It was a persuasive argument, but Tor snorted loudly, causing both men to look at him.
“You didn't want to kill him, which I get, killing is… hard. But you did nothing because you didn't want to kill him? Half as effective is better than not being effective at all, isn't it?” Tor made his voice stay relaxed and conversational, but felt like shouting at the man for having not done his job. It wouldn't help in the long run, so he
