The Rogue Wolf Read online

  “…I’m sorry,” Carmen said.

  “Everyone is sorry. You I actually believe.”

  Carmen said nothing to that. She gave Kali a hesitant glance and noticed her features beginning to soften.

  “Edge, these are old wounds,” Kali continued with her usual comforting tone. “Forgive my forcefulness, but I wouldn’t burden you if I didn’t think it was important for you to know. The galaxy doesn’t look kindly on Clairvoyants. It probably never will. You’re only just starting to understand that.”

  “I know,” Carmen said simply.

  “Good. We need to always stick together. There isn’t much we have left after that,” Kali said. “So, enough about me. I told the administration to wait till you got back before clearing Phaethon’s room. If there are any personal effects you want, now would be the time to take them.”

  Carmen sat back in her chair and took a moment to think. “Shouldn’t that go to his family?” she asked.

  “You are his family,” Kali shot back. “At least, the closest to it any of us can have.”

  Then she stood and gave Carmen, who was still sitting, a hug. Carmen was quick to realize that usually she was the one to hug Kali and not the other way around. Her former handler let her go and smiled down at her.

  “Remember that,” she said softly. She then turned and left.

  Carmen watched her leave till she caught sight of the chessboard out of the corner of her eye. She bent down and picked up one of the pieces she’d knocked over. It was the king and the color Phaethon usually played.

  “Checkmate,” she said softly to herself, noting the irony.

  She placed the piece back on the board on its side, the position it had always assumed after a match. Then she studied it for a moment. If there was anything she’d like to keep from Phaethon, it would be the chess set. It was the most fitting symbol of her total failure as a handler. Perhaps she’d also chip off a piece of Michael’s headstone, somehow find a tuft of Mikayla’s fur, and start a collection. But it wasn’t Phaethon’s or even her chess set. It belonged to the facility, and she couldn’t just take it without asking someone first.

  Maybe there’s something in his room, Carmen thought as she began walking. She had no doubt whatsoever that she’d never forget Phaethon, no matter how many of his trinkets she did or didn’t have. This trek was prompted more by Kali’s suggestion than anything.

  Carmen had been to his room numerous times to collect him. She had never really been inside his room before, though. It was an unspoken taboo for a handler to do so. The assets were allowed to maintain that modicum of personal space. Someone somewhere had probably realized they’d all go insane if they didn’t have at least that. Now that she thought about it, Janus and even Kali had never really entered her room. If they had, they’d certainly never gone looking around in it.

  She stopped outside the door to Phaethon’s dorm, keenly aware that she only knew her charge on the barest, almost completely impersonal level. Either he resisted her attempts to bridge the gap, or she was just too incompetent to be able to. It was hard to know whether this would be her final jump across that chasm or a violation of what little progress she had made. Carmen had half a mind to let the janitor see to the clearing of her charge’s room, but she thought, I may as well be a complete failure, and took a deep breath before she entered.

  The lights came on automatically. The dorms, like almost everything at the facility as she had long since learned, were standardized. She didn’t know what, exactly, she could take that had anything to do with his person.

  She walked toward his work desk. I had that same notebook, she thought as she thumbed it open. Algebra… She’d hated algebra. By reflex, her hand went to her cheek. She remembered, dimly, when she had been hit after worrying to the point of distraction over an algebra test. She couldn’t even remember how well she’d done on it.

  Carmen looked through some of his things, but nothing really stood out for her. What would she do with his comb? She thought of her own room, both when she was here and at her apartment. The only thing she ever really had was the essentials. She stopped in front of his mirror at that moment.

  “Why in the world do I always have a ponytail?” she muttered to her reflection.

  She pulled the tie and let her hair fall, if just for now. Then she explored the room a little more, choosing to ignore the bathroom. There was, however, nothing of consequence to be found. It didn’t help that her thoughts wandered as she looked, but there was no point in trying to stop them. Eventually, she sat on his bed and let her mind roam.

  Carmen had only been out of the facility for a couple of years. Her rousing success during that time was definitely worthy of awe. With a sigh, she lay down and stared at the ceiling. She couldn’t compose her thoughts, though. What is that? she suddenly wondered. Something hard was under the pillow. She pulled it out to find it was another notebook. After opening it curiously, she read the first page.

  I don’t know where I am. What did I do wrong? The man shot me!

  Her eyes grew wide as she slowly understood the words. Phaethon journaled? she thought in disbelief. She rapidly flipped through more pages, and sure enough they had writing on them too. The realization was so strange that Carmen wondered if the next duck she saw would meow at her. There were no dates on any of the entries, though, on further consideration, she had never really known what day it was when she lived here either. Time had just seemed to pass.

  The man’s name is Adamantine, Carmen read. It took her a while to figure out what he was trying to spell. Phaethon had to have been six or seven when he wrote it. He wants me to hurt people and do bad things. He said I’m special.

  I woke up in the hospital today. I don’t know how I got there. Adamantine wanted me to fight some other man. It hurt.

  Carmen skipped ahead a few pages. The entries brought back too many memories that she thought she’d buried long ago. The next entry brought a smile, though.

  Grammar. I hate grammar. I’d rather just learn algebra.

  “I guess everyone really is different,” Carmen muttered to herself as she read the next entry.

  I’m good at this, the violence. It’s all starting to make sense now. I’m just an animal. This room is my cage. That’s why everyone was always afraid of me. That’s why Adamantine is called a handler. A part of me, I think, even enjoys this. But why do I still cry every night?

  “Why indeed,” Carmen said.

  I’m going to kill Adamantine or bash my skull open against the wall. Nothing I ever do is good enough for him. He wants me to kill, so I kill. Then he says “Clairvoyants are monsters, not savages. We kill because there are those foolish enough to get in our way. We don’t seek destruction.” That’s complete bullshit. I didn’t kidnap myself.

  Carmen turned the page.

  I killed Adamantine. He took me to some bluff or whatever and told me to jump off. I flew to some town a little ways away. I was so scared that I had to fly back here. Why didn’t Adamantine tell me all this was out there? I don’t want to go back to the world. I thought it was a dream. I was happy down in my hole.

  I don’t like the new handler they assigned me. I may kill her too. She talks a lot but says nothing. I’m a monster, a Clairvoyant. Just leave me in my hole. I don’t want to come out. I don’t deserve to. I don’t want to graduate, either. I should have crashed against the rocks for my first flight. All I can do well is kill. At least here I’m just killing other monsters like me.

  I killed her. They haven’t given me a new handler yet. They just keep me locked in my room all day. I don’t think they know what to do with me. I’ve been alone for a long time. It’s hard to know what day it is. I may bash my head against the wall again. Everything makes me so angry. I don’t know if something is wrong with me or if this is how I’m supposed to be. I don’t sleep well and keep waking up. My graduation date is only a couple years away. I’m so scared.

  Carmen’s lips pressed together in a bemused sneer wh
en she read the next entry.

  I have a new handler. Her name is Edge. I’m definitely going to kill this one.

  I wish she’d leave me alone like everyone else does. I can’t scare her away. She just looks at me and waits. She’s really strong. I don’t know if she can read me, but it’s like she’s looking right through me when she does that. I want to strangle her, but I can’t.

  Fuck, she has no idea what she’s doing. Why did they assign me to her? She doesn’t shut up about her old handler. She’s making me play chess. For shit’s sake, CHESS!

  “Yeah, I know it was bad,” Carmen said under her breath. But she fell silent at what she read next.

  She still has no idea what she’s doing, but she’s different somehow. I don’t know. It seems like she’s actually trying…like she actually cares about me. She at least listens to me. Must be my imagination. I’m a piece of shit.

  Edge had to go off planet for some reason. She wouldn’t tell me why. I think I miss her. I hope she isn’t trying to run away from me. She said she’d be back, but everyone here lies. I’m such a piece of shit. She tries so hard, but I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know any other way to be. Why hasn’t she given up on me? Maybe if I get good at chess while she’s gone, she’ll know that I’m trying too. But it’s such a stupid game.

  That was the last entry. Carmen stared at it without reading for a long while. Her thoughts were too muddled to think clearly. She placed the notebook on her lap and stared at the ceiling, letting the fragments of ideas play through her mind. None of them coalesced into any sort of conclusion, but eventually she felt prompted to leave the room, notebook in hand. The lights shut off behind her, but she didn’t notice.

  Her journey through the facility was swift and direct. She only paused briefly when she saw Gungnir talking to a detective. He glanced at her. She opened her mouth to speak but closed it just as quickly, sure that she was absolutely crazy. The ideas circling through the maze that was her mind in its present state were too ludicrous to give voice to. He paid her no attention.

  She noted that the bizarre uncomfortable feeling returned when she was outside again. It was stronger than before and felt strangely anxious. It was close company on her bus trip home. No one sat near her, as usual, but someone complained about running into something. She wasn’t paying any attention, though.

  I can’t do it, Carmen thought as she stepped off the bus, though it was more of a plea to herself. The uncomfortable feeling plaguing her almost all day promptly vanished for no discernible reason. That, however, did nothing to change her mood. I can’t, she thought over and over. Maybe she’d just sleep on it and everything wouldn’t feel so…immediate? She didn’t know why, but for some reason she doubted that would be the case.

  When she approached her apartment building, she sighed. She’d had enough of people for the day—enough of people staring at her, enough of people terrified of her, and enough of trying to block out their thoughts. Just the idea of bumping into Anthony or anyone else in the lobby made her groan. She gave Phaethon’s notebook a squeeze, happy that the same abilities that were the source of most of her troubles allowed her, on occasion, to also circumvent those troubles. She eyed the window to her apartment and flew to it. A thought opened the window, which she kept unlocked for such instances, and she stepped inside.

  The empty nothingness that was her apartment greeted her. It had been her normal since Michael got sick, but for the first time it gave her pause. More than that, it actually made her shudder. She sat on the windowsill, scarcely able to even look at it, as a sickening feeling took hold. She looked away sharply, held the notebook tight to her chest, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. A million thoughts bounced around her skull, and she ignored them as she usually did.

  Carmen opened her eyes to watch the city. The sun was beginning to set and the sky was clear. She took a deep breath again and tried to get comfortable, as difficult as that was when straddling a windowsill with a leg dangling outside and simultaneously trying to ignore her lifeless life inside. But then she experienced another feeling. It wasn’t roused from deep in her core, as most of her nightmares were. This was more immediate, though just as terrible. It screamed at her as she looked back into the apartment.

  No! she thought as the mounting dread took her.

  There was a brief flash, and the apartment rumbled and shook as the glass in all the windows shattered. It was only the beginning. Bright lights weren’t much of a bother for Clairvoyants, but her eyes sealed shut out of pure instinct at the flash of the second, more violent explosion. Carmen screamed as she was overcome, yet the advancing heat was absorbed by the Clairvoyant like an old friend. The concussion wave flowed around her body by trained telekinetic reflex, muffling the sound and the force till they felt like a stiff breeze. If but for that subconscious thought, its kinetic energy could have injured or killed her the same as anyone else.

  The next thing she knew, she was tumbling through the air. She only dimly registered that she had been blown out of the window. The apartment building crumbled next to her as she fell. The strain and snap as its structural members failed seemed to play in slow motion for her heightened perception as the ground rushed to meet her. She landed gracefully enough, twisting in the air like a cat to land on her feet, but there was no respite. She turned, and the cloud of the apartment’s debris crashed on her like a wave. All she could think to do was cover her face with her arms and grit her teeth.

  Brick, glass, and metal were redirected away from the Clairvoyant by some unseen force. Parked aerocars were flattened and then exploded. The entire side of an adjacent building was ripped to the bare frame. And Carmen stood against it all like a rock in rushing rapids. When it was over, there was utter silence.

  She opened her eyes slowly. Her sleeves were in tatters. Her hair was frayed. It took a second for her to notice that the bottom of her pants was on fire, and she snuffed it out telekinetically. It was hard to see. Dust slowly fell to the earth. She looked at where her apartment had once been, using all of her senses, but there was nothing left. Her mouth was dry. She tried to swallow and found it near impossible. Thoughts flooded back on her as her lips contorted in vain attempts to give them voice, till at last she could think of only one thing to say.

  “Ew…” she muttered softly.

  Her fingernails dug into Phaethon’s notebook, which had miraculously stayed with her during the fall. Why did this happen? she wondered over and over. She could hear distant sirens and could sense others approaching the scene, but there was also something else.

  With no thinking on her part, she turned her head in its direction even before it came. The bullet sped toward her at hypersonic speed. She stopped it in midair, and it hung in front of her face. The extraordinarily loud report from the weapon registered an instant later. She stared past the bullet to the rooftop it had come from. She couldn’t see who’d fired it, but she knew she was looking right at him. His anxiety filled the air, thicker than the smoke from the explosion.

  She flew to the rooftop in seconds. A large gun was aimed down at the street, but there was nothing else, other than that odd feeling from before. This time, though, it attached an alarm to Carmen’s nervous system and begged for her attention so completely that her hands shook.

  “Shrewd,” she said softly when she realized what was happening.

  He let out a piercing scream as she telekinetically crushed his arms and legs. It was tempting to do more, but she held herself to that. Another thought ripped the cloaking system clean off him. With his protective shroud gone, the Sentinel appeared at her feet, completely crippled. His pistol lay next to him. She wondered how long he had been stalking her. She guessed she’d been too preoccupied to fully sense him.

  He stared up at her, and she could practically taste his fear. It was well warranted. Carmen glanced down at Phaethon’s notebook and then looked at the Sentinel. His face reflected the quiet truth of the situation. There would be no mercy this time.


  10

  A Pawn Steps Forward

  “Is this phone secure?”

  “Yes,” Gungnir said simply.

  His job contacts always changed, but he was quite aware that his chief employers were certain members or even certain branches of the United Terran Empire. They were too prompt and rigid for anything but government work.

  “Good,” the contact said. There was a pause before he continued. Gungnir didn’t waste his time by asking what his name was. Any answer would probably be an alias anyway. “We have the preliminary autopsy analysis.”

  “And?”

  “They are genetically identical. Every single one of them. Until now, we’ve had vague reports of Clairvoyant clones, but nothing like this. This was almost completely without warning. The fact that whoever organized this was able to strike in force at a colony as secure as New Earth with mass Clairvoyants is…disturbing.”

  Gungnir nodded to himself as he turned to look out the window. “Is this related to the war?” he asked as he surveyed the damage to the facility. Admittedly, it wasn’t much, and not many people had been injured or killed.

  “We believe so, but we don’t know how. Attacking civilians like this, even Clairvoyant civilians, serves no military purpose. There are softer targets in the system that would have yielded greater effect.”

  “There really wasn’t any effect,” Gungnir remarked.

  “Quite true,” his contact agreed. “We have no idea, no answers. That is where you and your team come in. We need you to find out, by any means, what is going on out there, and either report it back to us or destroy it, if required and possible. You’ll have a blank check.”

  “Fine,” Gungnir said simply. “Are there any leads, no matter how small?”

  “Nothing. They could strike Earth or Leevi and we wouldn’t know anything about it till it was all over.”