glare. “After she went wrong, I blamed myself. I figured that if I had been there from the very start, paying attention, that I could have made a difference. I guess that’s why Alex Warner is such a big deal to me — he’s so much like her. I want it to turn out differently for him. If I can get him to trust me again — if I can get all of these kids to trust me — then maybe I can do it. I have to try, Gaul, and I can’t be your Auditor and their friend at the same time. For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry to put you in this position.”
“its fine,” he lied, knowing that she wouldn’t believe him for a second. “You may even be right. Everything may end up depending on this class. We may not have the opportunity to train another, if we can’t succeed with this batch. Speaking of which — any thoughts on the untimely passing’s of Steve Taylor and Charles Brant?”
“None in particular,” Rebecca said unconvincingly. “I suppose they must have been killed in the attack.”
“I thought the same thing at first,” Gaul continued, studying Rebecca minutely. “Then I received the autopsy results. Despite what I had assumed, it seems that the bodies had been there, out in the old PE offices, for at least a day before the attack. Does that strike you as odd?”
“Odd,” Rebecca nodded, agreeing.
“Here’s something even stranger — they were poisoned, both of them, with a toxin that our labs haven’t seen before and can’t identify. Something very quick acting. Something that, judging from the concentrations in the bodies, they touched with their hands shortly before they were overcome. However, as I’m sure you are aware, nothing of the sort was found in the building. There were, however, signs of struggle.”
Rebecca nodded, frowning.
“Observations?”
“It’s a mystery,” Rebecca said, shrugging. “It must have happened during the attack. Didn’t one of Chris Feld’s people have weird necrotic powers? They must have been hit with something that accelerated decomposition.”
“I suppose so,” Gaul agreed slowly. “On an unrelated subject, I understand that Eerie had an accident of some sort, and was admitted to the infirmary briefly? I hope she didn’t come to some sort of harm?”
He made sure that Rebecca understood what he meant by the seriousness of his expression.
“Nothing bad happened,” Rebecca said, patting his arm soothingly. “She was mainly just scared. She fell down and bruised her tailbone. Must have hit something on the way down, because she bruised her arm, too. You know,” Rebecca said casually, looking away, “Changeling physiology is a fascinating thing. For example, do you know what would happen if you scared a Changeling really badly? If she thought she was in dire peril?”
“No,” Gaul said, his mouth suddenly dry. “What?”
“Well, it seems that the Changeling would start secreting a poison. A contact neurotoxin, rapidly fatal to humans. I don’t think it would even require prolonged contact to be lethal — grabbing an arm, for example, would probably be enough, if she were extremely agitated. The Changeling wouldn’t even be conscious of doing it. It’s an involuntary response, a biological self-defense mechanism.”
“I see. Something to keep in mind when dealing with our own Changeling, then. Speaking of which, would you be interested in hearing a story about her from when you were indisposed?”
Rebecca looked abashed, just for a moment, and he relished it, while she made herself busy lighting another of her infernal cigarettes. When she was finished, she perched on top of one of the old headstones, while Gaul leaned his back against the cold, pitted stone of the mausoleum behind him.
“What did she do?” Rebecca asked, avoiding any preamble. Gaul decided to indulge her.
“She repurposed a whole section of the Etheric Network, and used it to reactivate Mitsuru’s Black Protocol,” Gaul said dryly. “I’m not sure what she did, after that, but I have reviewed the probability mapping for the event from that point on, and I see evidence of massive probability tampering. The manipulation is very similar to a few previous incidents we’ve had.”
Rebecca blew smoke up at the sun, one hand shielding her eyes.
“I’m not sure how long she’s been able to do stuff like that,” Rebecca said reluctantly. “But there were some oddities last summer, when Eerie worked at Processing. She made some unauthorized changes to the network. They weren’t mad, because most of them seemed to make the damn thing work better; they just couldn’t understand what she had done or how she had done it. Because the Etheric Network wasn’t supposed to be capable of the kind of stuff she was doing with it. I’ve suspected her, since then.”
That wasn’t all of it, Gaul could tell. However, he was too tired, and neither of them was in the mood for an argument, so he tabled it for later discussion.
“And the other personality?” Gaul asked, genuinely curious. “I thought I knew her pretty well, after all this time, but…”
Rebecca laughed unhappily.
“You saw that, huh? That’s unusual. She hides herself pretty well. I think she’s always been there, but I’m not entirely sure how aware of her Eerie actually is. I’ve never been able to get Eerie to answer direct questions about her, and the secondary personality itself is… evasive. Difficult to talk to directly, when she chooses to reveal herself,” Rebecca said thoughtfully.
“I notice you call it ‘she’,” Gaul pointed out. “As opposed to ‘it’.”
“Well, she’s got tits,” Rebecca said, shrugging.
“Right,” Gaul said crisply. “Do you think we should try and lock her out of the network?”
“Do you think that we could?” Rebecca said, studying the filter on her cigarette. “She seems to know it better than you do, and you’re attached to the damn thing.”
Gaul pushed his glasses back up, thinking about it.
“You are probably right,” Gaul said, nodding wearily. “What about our other problem child? Alexander Warner?”
“Alex is pretty dense,” Rebecca said, grinning. “But I think it’s safe to say that he’s starting to get an idea of how powerful his protocol really is, and how to use it. Once he gets the hang of micro-scale operation, he’s going to be exactly as deadly as you hoped. Katya is a good teacher.”
“What about his stability?” Gaul asked, his brow furrowed with concern. “The events with Emily Muir must have been… difficult for him. And he and Eerie seem somewhat, well, at odds at the moment. And I know that you were worried that hiding your Auditor status would damage your relationship with him.”
“It did,” Rebecca acknowledged sadly. “That will take some mending, but he’s basically a big softie, so I wouldn’t worry too much about me and him. He will get over Emily. Honestly, I think he was in the process of getting over her before any of this happened. As for Eerie and him… well, don’t get to worked up about it. She may be mad at him right now, but I don’t think it will last. I think she’ll make him apologize a few more times, but that girl fixates, so I doubt she’s lost interest in him already. They’ll be fine. Who knows? Maybe they could even learn to take care of each other.”
Gaul shook his head.
“I don’t understand at all…”
Rebecca pitched her cigarette butt, and grabbed a hold of his arm again, steering him back toward the Academy, back where he needed to be, the way she always had.
“Yeah,” she said warmly, patting him on the arm. “You never did.”
30
Anastasia had just sat down to a steaming cup of white tea and a daunting stack of paperwork when there was a soft knock, followed by the heavy wooden door to her office opening slowly. That was odd, because Renton had been stationed in the anteroom, with instructions to send away all comers, and not to enter the room himself. Anastasia watched the door open and got ready to scold Renton.
“Oh my,” Anastasia said in an amused voice, “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Eerie observed timidly, peering around the door. “Um. We need to talk. Please.”
“Very well,” Anastasia said generously, gesturing to indicate one of the ornately carved and completely uncomfortable chairs that fronted her massive desk. She’d had the legs sawn off the desk to shorten it, though that had been desecrating a family heirloom, and she was sitting in an elevated chair, so that her toes just reached the
