nanite injections. And, if that is the case, we have no idea what it might have done to him.”
“But who would have introduced nanites into Alex’s system?” Rebecca asked, rubbing her temples. “And where did they get nanotechnology in the first place?”
Everyone turned to Gaul expectantly.
“Don’t ask me,” he grumbled. “You all know we have a monopoly on nanites. If Alex Warner arrived here already activated, then I’m as far in the dark as the rest of you as to how that could happen.”
“It does seem unlikely…”
“It is more than unlikely. It is impossible, unless someone in this room is aware of a source of nanites that is a mystery to me,” Gaul said defensively. “This is nothing but speculation, and we have enough problems as it is. We can worry about it another day.”
“I’m not sure we know anything for sure about what happened today,” Alistair said, shrugging. “We don’t have enough information to do any kind of analysis.”
“I’m certain that Alex would have died today if Katya hadn’t been skulking around. That’s the other pattern I’ve noticed,” Rebecca said moodily, gesturing at the probability matrix in front of Alistair with her cigarette. “Anastasia bailed him out again. She has been the one putting people at the right place and the right time lately.”
“You think she has something to do with this?” Alistair asked, munching on a cold pakora while he studied the matrix. “You think this is a Black Sun operation? Could be.”
“I suspect that little monster of being involved in everything that happens around here,” Rebecca snapped. “You can’t underestimate her.”
“Nonetheless,” Gaul said forcefully. “We have been lured into a trap twice now. The first time netted Alice for unknown purposes, the second time nearly managing to assassinate all of the Auditors in the field. Two carefully planned and orchestrated traps, but neither achieved a clear goal. Then we have four attacks on Alex in the last six months; on the night we found him, once in San Francisco, and twice at The Academy. All of these operations involved significant expenditures of time and resources, and most of them entailed absorbing casualties as well. There must be a pattern in this somewhere.”
“Or multiple patterns,” Rebecca pointed out. “I think the first incident is different, at least.”
“Go on,” Gaul said gruffly.
“The manipulation on that first attack in the park more primitive, but the intent of the attack seems different too. They didn’t fuck around that time — those Weir really were trying to kill Alex, and without Mitsuru’s intervention, they would have been successful.”
“You think they weren’t trying to kill him in San Francisco?” Alistair asked doubtfully.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Rebecca said, shrugging. “They had the chance, but they seemed more interested in hurting him and asking him questions. Why in the hell would they interrogate Alex? That kid spends his free time staring at a wall. He’s been here half a year. What did they think he would know?”
“He said they were looking for Eerie,” Gaul said woodenly, lost in the consultation of the vast, cold uniformity of the Etheric archives.
“I don’t understand that either. Why would they care about finding her? The Weir were after Alex. Moreover, they found him fast, faster than we could get there. That doesn’t work unless they were waiting damn close to where he showed up. So you find your target, which is a high enough priority to have an entire pack of Weir just sitting around California, waiting for him to come back, and you capture him without incident, in private.” Rebecca stared around the room challengingly. “Which one of you would then begin a field interrogation because you lost an inconsequential companion who wasn’t on the target list? Would you risk killing your primary or discovery for that?”
“They are Weir,” Alistair countered, shaking his head. “What do you expect? They are always unnecessarily cruel. You ever see the aftermath of a Weir attack? Sometimes they even do shit to the corpses…”
“Of course I have,” Rebecca snapped, glaring at him fiercely enough that Alistair quailed a bit, and held up his hands to mollify her. “But that still doesn’t wash for me, not here. They had succeeded in their mission already, and they had to know that we’d be coming, that someone would be coming. If they wanted to be thorough, they could have left a team behind to find Eerie. All they had to do was take Alex down one of their holes and then they could have done whatever they wanted to him, and we never would have found him again.”
“Not necessarily,” Alistair objected. “You found Alice Gallow.”
“Right, and why?” Rebecca demanded. “We don’t even know exactly how that happened. She was hunting Witches and ends up imprisoned by rogue Operators? We are missing something, there. Then they throw her in some kind of clandestine interrogation center the Terrie Cartel runs, and keep her on ice till I showed up to collect her? That is all wrong.”
“I thought you said they…” Gaul said, frowning.
“That was the guards,” Rebecca said hurriedly, frowning. “They were doing that for fun. It wasn’t official policy.”
“That’s a fascinating list of questions.” Vladimir snapped. “Are you going somewhere with all of this?”
“Yeah,” Rebecca said sourly. “I’m not sure that we are fighting who we think we are fighting. I know they use Weir, and there are some Witches involved, but this isn’t their normal M.O. We can’t fight them effectively because we don’t know who our enemy is.”
“Then let’s put it to the test,” Gaul said firmly. “We’ve been in defensive mode, reacting to their moves for too long anyway. Instead of responding, let’s try out some moves of our own, and see how they deal with that. Rebecca, I want you to go light a fire under the Committee-at-Large, get them to authorize new Auditors. When you are done with that, go put Alice Gallow back together enough so that she can get out there again. I want a full complement of Auditors, as soon as I can have them. I’ll talk to Michael about accelerating field training for all of our current candidates.”
“Alice might take some work,” Rebecca said hesitantly. “And I still need to deal with Alex and Eerie…”
“So you will be busy,” Gaul snapped. “Borrow people from Operations, if you need them.”
“Aren’t I supposed to be in charge of this stuff?” Alistair asked, and then caught Gaul’s stony expression. “Never mind, never mind — what is it you want me to do?”
“Set up a hit team,” Gaul said, lifting one of the files on his desk and handing it to his Chief Auditor. “Whoever you want to use, except Rebecca. This is the largest coven that we are currently aware of. We’ve been letting it continue for surveillance purposes, but no more. I want a full Audit, an accounting, and prisoners.”
“Right,” Alistair said, glancing at the file’s contents.
“So get to it, then,” Gaul said, urging them out of his office. Rebecca grumbled and protested, but Alistair was already so absorbed in the details of the file that he barely looked up as he left the room. Vladimir stayed silent until they were gone.
“You are worried about the barrier,” Vladimir observed.
“I am worried about the barrier,” Gaul agreed. “Vlad, if Central isn’t safe, if the Academy isn’t safe, then we have nowhere to retreat to, and we’ll lose a critical psychological advantage. My people feel safe here. They need to feel safe here. So I need to know…”
“Yes?” Vladimir prompted.
“I need to know whether our enemies are finding ways around it, or whether it is getting weaker over time,” Gaul said slowly, wishing that he didn’t have to say a word of it, didn’t have to ask the question in the first place, not to the only person that he honestly considered something of a friend. “I read the doctor’s reports, Vlad. You’re getting worse. I need to know how much longer you can keep protecting us.”
“What do the doctors know?” he said contemptuously. “Didn’t they say I’d be gone last spring? I’m fine, Gaul. I wish I could tell you that it was just me losing a beat, a step or two in my ‘old age’. They are clever bastards, that’s all. I’ll revise the barrier; try to close some of these loopholes. I never anticipated the dead attacking us, you know.”
“Vlad…” Gaul insisted, feeling bad.
“Don’t worry so much, Gaul,” Vladimir said comfortingly. “I’ll keep all of you safe until I’m dead, I promise. It's about all I can do these days. And I’ll try and give you two week’s notice before I kick, so you can put out an ad for a new barrier.”
Gaul smiled, but he didn’t feel like smiling. The cancer that was slowly eating away at Vladimir’s mind was a constant weight on Gaul’s shoulders; it nagged at him every time he saw him, weaker and sicker than the last. Gaul
