Inside her helmet, Terese’s eyebrows rose. This was an unusually fast subjugation. The lookout made the gesture they’d been waiting for. Two fists above his shoulders.
Inert.
Terese released the vibration pulser.
Lightly buried, the four vibration projectors had been placed in a wide, square formation. The projectors would incapacitate any infected within that square, from first itches up to full cadverism.
“Converge!” she shouted.
Terese was the last one out of the sagging window, her complement keeping their shockpole tips to the ground as they ran ahead, jumping shattered glass shards and brittle yellow fragments of broken wall. Hard, loud slaps echoed off the ground as they ran.
Four bodies writhed at the tower’s base. The complement took up places around each of the infected, moving with tight, practiced steps. The Apprentices shackled the infecteds’ limbs with box-like negators, which would cancel any chaos energies the infected might create to help them escape.
The clearing was abandoned: No Sumadans nor refugee Cenephans to admire her handiwork. For her long mission to finish so quickly was a disappointment, and such a perfect capture deserved witnesses. But there were only the crumbling buildings, defeated and forgotten for centuries. The insects grew louder.
“Head!” shouted her deputy, Missionary Teeber. “Four contained. Capture complete.”
Twenty Seekers, their shockpoles sheathed, watched Terese face the captives. The part of her role no one talked of, happened now. Head Seeker Terese Saarg would determine whether these infected should die by her hand.
She approached the men she’d sought for almost a year, now finally contained and laid in a row.
Their hair was long, and they’d grown ragged beards, so they were yet to suffer the hair loss brought on by chaos infection. That was why the lookout had had trouble identifying them. Very unusual, given the amount of time they’d been exposed. Their Armer-styled dark trousers and white, long-sleeved shirts had faded to gray, showing dirty skin beneath fabric worn away at the knees and elbows. It was a safe bet they’d taken these clothes from the Immersion Chamber after they’d awoken.
An infected captive, blond and heavily muscled, sat upright with a grunt and looked her in the eye. Terese stifled a gasp. Too quick a recovery, quicker than she’d seen before. His eyes were light blue and… completely lucid. She kept her hands from the shockpole at her waist and cleared her throat loudly, ready to ask if he could identify himself and his companions.
“What took you so long?” he asked in the accent of Polis Armer. His size and blond hair meant this could be only one person: Zalaran Morgenheth. He’d been investigated for the deaths of his lover and his own father, but he’d never been seriously questioned, given the lack of evidence.
“We never guessed you’d flee Armer immediately,” Terese said. “That took months to discover. But the tent you buried outside Polis Narmarikesh was all we needed. Tracking you to Sumad was easy when we followed your trail to the ship and checked the passenger registers.”
No, she confessed, pressing her lips together. It was easier. Your destination was obvious, given the runes on the wall. And the paperwork you took from the toppled cabinet.
Morgenheth hadn’t yet blinked. “Head? You look familiar.” His eyes turned to slits. “You were there. The night we were put in the Immersion Pods.”
He knew the official term? Impossible! They’d had a memory wipe before being immersed. And, she hadn’t removed her helmet, so how in all the Gods’ forgotten names had he recognized her? She resisted the urge to check behind her.
The man chuckled. “You’re either about to recite the Solemn Vow or ask us about the massacre. Which is it?”
She wanted to know about the massacre so badly it hurt. There was nothing she wanted more than to beat the details out of them, their civil rights be damned.
But junior Seekers were watching.
“Domnic Dantet, Repaan Lethrien, Zalaran Morgenheth, and Cestin Rortiin.” She began the ritual phrase known as the Solemn Vow. “You are summoned to the House of Rest at Sumad Reach Chapterhouse for testing and purification. I am Terese Saarg, Head Seeker of Armer Stone Chapterhouse, and I will be your escort. What say you?”
At their names, the other three infected sat up.
“No, Saarg. We’re not coming to your place for a sleepover,” said a man with dark hair and a straight beard. That would be Cestin Rortiin, whose clan had been broken by his espionage. “Now you’re finally here, we’ve got questions about the Immersion Chamber.”
Inside her helmet, her mouth dropped open.
Terese had seen many reactions to the Solemn Vow. Some pretended not to hear or were, indeed, incapable of responding coherently. Others burst into tears, despairing and wailing. Many threatened the Seekers with death, spitting and cursing and kicking with all the strength and movement left in them. She’d seen it all.
Never, had any so nonchalantly shrugged off their deaths.
A slender and birdlike boy cleared his throat. Domnic Dantet, whose family had gone simultaneously insane and been committed to an asylum. He’d likely dosed them with some psychotropic. But like Morgenheth, there’d been no evidence of foul play. “How did you find us?” he asked.
She had no reason not to answer truthfully. “Your nights screaming from that tower worried some local homeless,” she said. “One of them mentioned it to a Seeker patrol. It isn’t something infected normally do.”
“Dammit,” said Repaan Lethrien, last of the four renegades.
He looked so normal, so… friendly. It was hard to believe he’d killed his entire family at the age of eight.
The renegades were clearly in possession of their minds. They had to be Darkness worshippers then, if the killer had saved them, but they remained uninfected. And there was a test for Darkness worshippers.
She stepped forward. “You will be transported for testing at—”
“No, Saarg,” said Rortiin, the one with the straight beard. “We won’t go to Sumad bloody Reach with you. We’ll find somewhere here in the Refugee Territories to talk. Just the five of us.” He wasn’t smiling.
Gods, the man believed what he said.
