“Utu” – Scene Three (18April09)

*3*

The two bouncers looked a little more intimidating up close but that was only because of their overbearing body language and not through some feat of sudden muscle growth.

The bouncer on the right had a shaved rounded head and Tae wondered absently if he’d done this to appear fiercer in his job.  Re-gripping the small automatic rifle in his hands the bald bouncer glared at them.
“What’s your business here?”  His body language dripped aggression and menace but underneath it Tae could sense that at this stage of his double shift the man was just simply at the end of his energy stores and didn’t actually care.

Tae looked up at the man calmly and unintimidated as if this sort of confrontation was normal for him.  “We have a booking with Tandi.”
The bouncer looked at the other standing next to him.  “Does Tandi have a booking?”
“Yes.”  Grunted the second bouncer who was no less intimidating physically, but his face and eyes revealed his own disinterest in the newcomers.  Slowly, they both stepped back from the doorway to allow he and Father Owen to pass.

It was much dimmer inside than out but as he looked around the simply decorated room he was pleasantly surprised.  The bar had neither a crowded feeling nor overly spacious one, it was well designed and had it not been an obvious haunt for the Spades and their associates Tae could see himself many years ago unwinding there after a long day at the police station.

Much of the room was decorated with nice light wood.  The furniture, skirting boards and the bar on the right was entirely made of wood.  Even the door frames were made of that same nice light wood; one led off to public toilets near the bar and the other ahead of them on the opposite wall led out to the back rooms .  It must have been “requisitioned” from its original owners, there’s no way gangsters would have this kind of subtle taste in decor.

Near the entrance Tandi; the hostess, sat at a table.  She looked up at them with tense grey-blue eyes as they walked towards her.  Behind the bar the barman looked up for a moment and eyed the two of them suspiciously, but upon seeing that their business was with Tandi he looked back down again to continue his cleaning.  He didn’t like what Tandi did but he understood why and respected her reasons.

“Are you Tandi?  I am…”
She interrupted him.  “Arhala booking?”
He immediately sensed that she was lying and that this was a test to ensure they were the right people.  Tae played into it and frowned at her with a shake of his head.
“No, Tren and Naan.  Has there been some kind of mistake with the time?”
Her pretty round face softened into a broad smile.  “No.  No mistake.”

Standing up gracefully from the table she moved as if to walk towards the far door, then she turned her head back and looked at them over her shoulder seductively.  Her grey-blue eyes deliberately played with them.
“If you’ll just follow me, boys, there are private rooms upstairs.”
A soft shimmering pink dress hugged her pleasantly curvy figure and her long blond hair hung in nearly perfect ringlets down her back.  If he hadn’t been able to sense her dread and fear he would have thought from her body language alone that she reveled in her job as a “hostess”.

They followed her across the room, out of the bar and through into a grubby hall that led to the base of some open stone stairs.  There were doors leading left and right to various rooms.  On his left he sensed the violence of the man being beaten nearly to death, the money counters on his right and near the stairs another door lead off to noisy kitchen sounds.  A handful of other doors led to spaces that felt empty of people.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and as he turned to go up he glanced past the stairs through into the kitchen.  A grubby cook opened a door on the other side of some metal benches and stepped into bright sunlight; it was a back door.
Tae frowned a little.  That back door would be a much easier escape than going out through the bar.

Focusing on the stairs again, he kept a Telepathic sense of where the gangsters were, while following Tandi’s fantastic figure up the metal and stone stairs to the second floor.

At the top of the stairs a dark grubby area opened out in one direction to a long passageway with many doors.  He reached out psychically to sense out the second level as best he could, but the Emotive clutter was still fairly harsh.  He did however at least locate their targets.  Father Owen had been silent the whole time but as Tae glanced back at the priest to see where he was he was pleasantly surprised to see that he’d positioned himself strategically near the stairs, which freed Tae up to focus on the woman.

Tandi walked slowly down the passageway unaware of the change in their body language.  He swiftly stepped up behind her, took out his gun from under his shirt touching the barrel of it to the side of her garment and clicked the safety off.  She heard the noise and turned around, immediately stiffening in fear.
“We’re here for someone else, if you do as I say you won’t be harmed.  Do you understand?”
The woman nodded slowly.  He gently took her by the elbow and led her up the passageway to a door.

“Open this door.”
The woman shook her head.  “I don’t have the key.”  But Tae sensed that she did actually have the key.  Even in her fear she was always thinking; she didn’t want to be killed by these strange men but if she used her key to unlock that door she could loose her job or worse the Boss could kill her.  Her children wouldn’t eat without…
“Tandi.”  He interrupted her thoughts, his voice deliberately menacing.  “I know you have the key.  Unlock the door.  Now.”

A flare of additional fear filled the air around her and she nodded tensely as she flicked through the key ring in her hands.  Tae looked down the passage at Father Owen, signaling with a flick of his head for him to come down to them.  Tandi woman nervously turned the key in the lock and opened the door.

A flare of fear pulsed out through the doorway as they stepped in.  Two adults sat on a grungy faded-orange carpet staring up at them in terror.  He saw the girl standing with her two frightened brothers in the corner on his right, her eyes flickered from fear to recognition but she didn’t move.

Tae took the key ring from Tandi’s hands and pulled her by the elbow further into the room as he looked at the adults on the floor.  “Relax, we’re here to help you.”

The two adults didn’t seem to believe him, until Father Owen stepped into the room behind him.  The room changed its empathic atmosphere instantly from terrified fear to utter joy.
“Uncle Owen!”  The three young children ran to Father Owen and hugged his legs.
The priest smiled and returned their hug with one arm while discretely hiding his weapon behind him.

Amongst the joyous celebration Tae turned and closed the door behind them.  There wasn’t much time.  He would need to deal with Tandy then, they needed to collect what possessions they had and get the heck out of there.

The two adults stood and embraced Father Owen with a flare of relief and pained stress.  He gave the three adults a minute and turned to face Tandi.  She was very scared; he found this situation and the need to frighten her distasteful but it had to be done.

He held her arms with both hands and looked into her eyes.  She didn’t know what he was doing but touch was the fastest way for him to get into the deeper levels of her mind; he was looking for the part of her subconscious that turned sleep on and off.  He hadn’t had much time recently to practice it but he was fairly certain he could still do it.  The place in the mind responsible for sleep felt oddly like a rounded green bulb in amongst parallel lines and threads that were mental connections.  He didn’t know enough about the physiological side of the process so he had no idea if this was a fair representation of the brain or just simply a method for his conscious mind to put some sense of order into an otherwise chaotic system.

Finally, as Tandi was starting to feel uncomfortable and not knowing why, he found it in amongst the pink and red lines of instinctual reaction behaviors.  The moment he activated it (by sort of pulling it down), Tandi’s body dropped like a rag doll.  He caught her and carefully lowered her to the faded carpet, laying her on her side in a first-aid Recovery Position.

Taelin looked up at the priest as he stood.  “We need to get going soon.”  Father Owen nodded and let go of his two friends.  The two adults turned to look tensely at Taelin.
“Who are you?  What did you just do to that woman?”  The father didn’t know Tae and was a little afraid of him.
“We don’t have time for explanations.”  He looked at both parents one at a time and continued.  “I have a spare weapon, do either of you know how to use one?”

The light haired woman who he assumed was the mother, turned away without replying and instead started to gather the three children around her.
The man shrugged.  “I used to hunt game before we were married, but…”
“It’ll be better than nothing.  Hopefully you won’t need to fire it.”  Tae reached into his jacket pocket and handed the spare revolver to the man.  He gave him a quick lesson on the difference between firing a handgun instead of a rifle, how to reload and then he unclipped the safety for him.

“Are we ready?  Father Owen and I will go first, when we’ve cleared the hallway bring out the children.  Jodan, was it?”  He looked directly at the father, who nodded.  “You bring up the rear.”

 

“Utu” – Scene Two (11April09)

*2*

Tae stood in the blackness of the Priest Hole for what seemed like ages.  The space felt tiny; he only needed to shift his footing before he felt one of the walls brush a shoulder or his back.  He was almost glad that it was utterly black because if he could have seen anything he probably would have struggled with claustrophobia.

Father Owen had suggested he used Psi shielding to keep the Agent from sensing him.  Unfortunately, he knew only the very basics about practical Psi shielding, he did however have some understanding of the theory: that the focal point of shielding is control.  It was about controlling and blocking all thoughts away from a listening telepathic ear and silencing ones emotions so that an enemy Psi is not aware of any empathic or telepathic presence.

As he stood in the darkness he focused on being utterly calm so that his thoughts and emotions were as still and hidden as possible.  He didn’t know how effective this method was but he didn’t want to concentrate on the possibility of failure because that would make him afraid and it might get the attention of this Agent in the Cathedral if he was an Empath.

There was a muffled thunk sound slightly to his left and then the wall in front of him opened, letting in a sharp flare of light.  Flinching he lifted one hand to shade his face.  A figure stood in the open doorway but the light behind them obscured their face in shadow.  For a moment he was afraid; could the figure be the Agent come to kill him?
Then, Father Owen’s calm voice pushed back all of the fear and tension.  “He’s gone.”

Tae gladly stepped out of the black of the Priest Hole and into the light of the hallway.  Father Owen turned and locked the false wall back into place.

It was oddly bright in the hallway and it took a few moments of blinking before the dots lifted from his vision.  “So what do we do now?”
The priest turned around to look at him with that seemingly endless calm of his.
“Do you still want to help?”
Tae nodded.  “Yes, of course.  What is it you need a hand with?”

Father Owen signaled with one hand for Tae to follow and they walked back out to the main hallway.  Pushing through double doors they entered into the area where the conference rooms were.  Light from the modern overhead bulbs and shades reflected off the white walls giving the illusion of sunlight.  They walked through to the opposite end of the area to another door.  Stepping out through the door they found themselves at the curved end of a “U” shaped stone hallway.  The priest turned quickly to the left and entered a room through a nearby open door.  Tae followed.

There was very little furniture in the large square room, simply a desk and chair in the center and in one corner a floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled with old faded books.  On the wall opposite the door large stained glass windows let in shafts of sunlight that spread blue and yellow holy symbols lazily around the room.

Father Owen closed the door behind them and looked firmly at Tae with his vivid blue eyes.  “I need you to keep quiet about this favor, Taelin.”
Taelin nodded slowly.  “Of course.”

The priest turned away from Tae towards the middle of the room and the large desk.  Shedding his long outer robed shirt he placed it carefully over the back of the big leather chair; underneath the robed shirt he wore a simple black t-shirt.  Blue eyes looked up at Tae and he saw a touch of the power he’d seen five days ago when they’d come into conflict.

“Father Andrew’s daughter, and her husband and children have been taken by an associate of the Spades.”
“So you want me to go in and get them out then?”

“Have you got a weapon?”
Tae nodded.  “Yes, of course.”

Pulling open the top draw of the desk the priest reached in and took out a square black handgun.  A little surprised that a priest would have a gun in his desk, Tae looked from the gun to the priest and back to the gun again.  Father Owen smiled slightly at his reaction.
“Uh, Father, Isn’t there some pretty specific rules about killing in the Holy Book?”

As Father Owen spoke he cleared and loaded the gun in his hands with a familiarity that Taelin found mildly disconcerting.  “If you’re really interested in doctrinal law, there is mention in the Holy Book and its apocryphal writings of Righteous killing in the defense of the helpless.  But you probably aren’t interested in doctrine.  Now, let’s go.”

—-

They stood half hidden by a playground jungle gym, in a small park.  Across the road was an old grungy pub, all of its windows were barred and like the other buildings around it it was in a sorry state of disrepair.  Two broad shouldered bouncers stood either side of an open door giving off the distinct impression of being armed and ready for anything.

Tae felt nervous; not really for himself but for the priest who stood next to him.  He didn’t want to go into this sort of situation with an inexperienced person but wasn’t sure how to politely find out if this priest knew what he was doing.
He took a breath and decided to just be blunt.  “Do you know how to use that gun you have?”  He’d meant to say it in a concerned way, but his tone came out a touch condescending.
One side of the priest’s mouth lifted slightly and Tae sensed that he was amused.  “Yes, Taelin, I know how to fire the weapon.  I’m sure if I follow your lead it will be fine.”  The man sounded confident and unafraid, Tae hoped quietly that he was right.  “Do we go in now?”

Tae shook his head.  “No, not yet.  First I need to check out where everyone is and possible threats, can you keep an eye out for me?”
Tae saw the priest nod his head and closed his eyes to reach out telepathically towards the building.

The two bouncers outside the pub were indeed armed but they weren’t as attentive as they appeared to be.  One was mentally going through his plans for a romantic evening with his girlfriend, and the other just wanted to go home to bed because he’d been up all night on a double shift.  Inside the barman was wiping down the bar and cleaning the taps in preparation for the next evening.  He was contemplating that perhaps his utter boredom with this job might be a sign for him to change careers again.

Past the bar in another room on the right he sensed two people counting money and recording the profits of the previous night.  To the left in some kind of interrogation room two men held down a third while the boss was beating out of him why he chose to steal drugs from his place of employment.  A hostess walked out of a busy kitchen from the back into the bar to await a couple of expected clients who were due to arrive soon for “private” services with her upstairs, she needed a moment of quiet in the bar to prepare herself for the encounter.  Tae hovered for a few breaths on the surface of her thoughts until he’d gathered the names of these clients.  The nearby kitchen was filled with busy focused minds, there was no sense of anyone who was armed or hostile in the kitchen so he didn’t stay there long.  There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the ground floor so he reached up into the second floor.

There were so many minds in distress on the second floor it was a veritable haze of pain, fear and chattering crowded thoughts.  There were just too many voices for him to discern individual people let alone find those they were looking for.  He opened his eyes and looked sideways at the priest.  “What are the names of the people we’re looking for?”
Father Owen watched the street as he spoke.  “The parents are Rhesa and Jodan; the children are Krian, Peron and Teira.”

Closing his eyes again he reached into the haze of stressed and fearful minds, calling out each name one at a time.  No sense of reply came until the last name.  “…Teira…”

A child’s voice called back to him in fear.  “Help us!  If you can hear me… help us!”
“Is your mother and father called Rhesa and Jodan?”
The little girl’s mental voice was surprisingly strong.  “Yes, will you help us?”
“That’s what we’re here for, Teira.  Can you tell me if there are any guards around you?”
“No, they are downstairs fighting.”
“Ok, we’re coming.  Hold on.”

Taelin opened his eyes and looked across the road up at the barred windows of second floor of the building.  “They’re upstairs in a room near the back.  There’s a barman and hostess in the bar, two counting money on the right hand side in a room, two goons and a man in charge on the left in another room but they’re busy beating up someone.”

“So, what’s the plan?”
Tae continued to stare at the building.  “If you don’t mind pretending to be a client of the hostess, I think we might be able to get in without too much conflict.”
There was a touch of amused mischief in the priest’s voice.  “I think I can manage that.  Do we have an exit strategy?”
“That we may just have to improvise.”

 

“Utu” – Scene One (4April09)

*1*

17 Milana 3003

(Five days later)

Tae stood in the main room of the Cathedral facing the raised altar with his arms crossed defensively over his chest.  He didn’t want to be there but he’d been ordered to “make peace” with Father Owen after the previous week’s fiasco.

He’d been treated by the other Rebels as if what had happened was his fault; as if he’d been in the wrong.  Which he thought was ridiculous when it had been Father Owen who protected the assassin; an assassin who had killed nearly seventy Rebels in the last three months.  But unfortunately the orders to make peace with Father Owen had come directly from Hawk and as a Rebel he still had to do what he was told.

The Cathedral around him was peaceful and very beautiful.  Late morning light shone down through the stained glass windows cutting beautiful colored lines in the dust-filled air and painting much of the huge room with deep blues and yellows.  Even someone like himself (who was basically an atheist) could at least appreciate the physical beauty of the oldest Cathedral in Arana.

“Follow me, Taelin.”  Tae hadn’t heard Father Owen approach him.  He wasn’t surprised by the sudden appearance, what did surprise him was the calm friendliness in Father Owen’s blue eyes.  Tae frowned but followed the priest out of the main Cathedral through a side door and into a wide hallway leading off to the right.

Father Owen was silent as they walked down the fairly long hallway and Tae felt very confused.  It was as if the previous week hadn’t happened.  He couldn’t sense a trace of anger or hostility from the priest just that familiar odd blue calm.

At the end of the hallway; where the nearly black volcanic rock walls gave way to modern extensions of white painted plasterboard, there was a back door that he knew served as an entrance for the late night homeless shelter.  To one side of the door a number of various-sized boxes were stacked up high.  Father Owen walked up to this stack of boxes, took a medium-sized box off of the top and handed it to him.  Then, grabbing a smaller box off the top he turned towards an adjacent door.  “This way.”

Tae was still confused but he followed the priest through into a stairwell and up the stairs.

“Tae, have you heard of the word Utu?”  Father Owen’s voice was still calm and friendly as they walked up.
Taelin frowned and looked at his back.  “No, what is it?”
“It is a word in one of the ancient languages.  Many scholars translate it as meaning ‘vengeance’.”
Tae wondered for a moment if he should be worried but Father Owen took a breath and continued.  “Although, vengeance certainly is a part of the concept, in its entirety the word holds a much less ominous meaning to it.”

As they reached the top of the stairs Father Owen opened a door on their right for Tae to walk through into the next level.

There was a long stone hallway through the door, faded mats covered the floors and a window at the end let in some sunlight.  It looked very similar to the hallway they’d used to visit Nala, so he assumed that this was some kind of dormitory level.  Father Owen let the door close behind them and walked down the hall towards the sunlight.

Looking back at him for a moment Father Owen continued speaking.  “Utu more accurately means reciprocation or perhaps in this situation it means the cost of certain actions.”

Turning into another hallway Father Owen leant over and placed the smaller box on the floor in front of a door.

“The idea of utu is that every action positive or negative requires a response.”  He stood up, facing Taelin with that deep blue calm mirrored in his vivid blue eyes.  “If you give a starving man food, he feels obliged to respond by giving something back.  If you hurt a person, that person will likely want to react to that hurt.  So you must always be careful of your actions and words, and be wary of the potential costs of those actions.”

Father Owen leant towards him and opened the top of the box Tae carried.  He pulled out several smaller boxes and then started walking up the hall leaving a smaller box in each doorway as they passed.  Tae followed quietly, listening and still wondering what was going on.

“The Cathedral and the monastery above it are run on the basic concept of utu.  The homeless are given food and shelter at night, but they are expected to give what they can to help the Cathedral, usually this involves working here in the day time.  The street kids study trades and other college level courses in our Education Project so that they can change their lives.  In response, they give back in any way they can in work, food, supplies or later with donations to the Cathedral.  This is all utu; it is the process of reciprocation.”

By the time they got to the end of the hall Tae’s box was empty.  Father Owen lifted it from his hands and taking a small knife from a pocket in his black robes cut the tape and collapsed the box with practiced ease.  As he continued speaking his voice cooled a little and Tae sensed an underlying spark of anger.

“By coming here after the assassin last week you risked everyone who lives, works and studies in the Cathedral.  Had the Agency caught you here the Church and monastery would have been closed down permanently.  Father Andrew as the Head of this Church would have been charged with Treason and I probably would have been as well.  You know the penalty for Treason in Arana, yet, you still chose to risk the lives of nearly three hundred people over your own need for revenge.”  Father Owen’s voice and face were still quiet and calm but there was an undeniably angry undertone.

Tae frowned at the priest as they stood at the end of the dormitory hallway.  In that moment he realized for the first time how much risk was really involved for the Church and for Father Owen.  He hadn’t ever really thought about the risks others took in helping the Rebels he had just simply expected the help from them.  Suddenly he felt almost childish.  He had risked all those people and Father Owen’s life.  Why hadn’t he realized it before now?  He stood there with a stupid look on his face.
“I… I didn’t realize.  I’m sorry…”

The priest nodded his head and turned away towards the nearby fire door.  As Tae followed him through the door and into the stone spiral stairway he thought about what Father Owen had been saying about utu and reciprocation.  The more he thought about it the more he felt as if he owed Father Owen and the Church something for so blatantly putting their lives at risk.

They walked silently down the wide stairwell and back into to the ground floor again.  He recognized the more modern hallway they walked into: he knew on the left a door lead to the conference rooms where they’d been training some weeks back, straight ahead led to double doors that led back out to the main public area of the Cathedral, and a door to the right lead to the huge dining hall.

Halfway down the hall he stopped walking and looked at the priest’s back with a deep frown on his face.  “So… with this utu thing… how can I make up for what happened last week?”
Father Owen turned and smiled.  Tae sensed a flare of relief, as if the priest had been hoping for this reaction in him.

“I have a problem that could use your unique skills, if you’d like to help.”  A thoughtful look crossed the man’s square face.  “One that needs some discretion…”

A young boy in miniature priest robes pushed loudly through the doors behind them from the main Cathedral.  His little face was fearful.

“Father Owen… Father Owen!”
“Brem, what’s wrong?”
“Father Andrew sent me.  There’s an Agent here.  He’s looking for someone.”

The boy seemed too young to be aware of things like Rebels and Agents but he looked up at Tae for a moment in absolute terror.  The boy knew that Tae was a Rebel and what it would mean to them if he was caught.
Tae stepped towards them.  “I’ll leave.  Where’s the back door?”
“There isn’t time.  Brem, go back to Father Andrew and tell him I’ve sorted it.”  The boy ran off back towards the doors to the main Cathedral.

“Quickly, follow me, Taelin!”

They jogged through some double doors on the right and into another long stone hallway that led towards the dining room.  Father Owen stopped suddenly and faced the black volcanic rock wall.  A line of smooth white stone squares about the width of a hand cut the rough black rock in a line from floor to ceiling at different points along the hallway.  Father Owen lifted a hand and pressed one white stone at eye level.  There was a resounding clunk sound and a narrow section of wall opened out like a door.

Tae stared at the dark space behind the false wall in surprise.  “What’s that?”
“Priest hole, get in, I’ll come and get you when it’s safe again.  If you can employ Psi shielding, do so.  The walls are made of Psi suppressant minerals but if he’s a particularly sensitive Psi he may still sense you through the wall.”

Tae found himself shoved into the small black space with a firm push to the middle of his back.  He turned and the wall sealed him into pitch blackness.

 

“Madness” – Scene Five (28March09)

*5*

Cheetah woke to a great deal of pain from the gunshot wound.  She was far less able to ignore it now that her cold assassin’s mindset had faded with her adrenaline.

She put a hand to the pain and let out a groan as a flare of agony pulsed through her abdomen.  The bullet would need to be removed, which meant she would have to source some form of medical help immediately.

“Your people will be here soon.”

The voice came from next to her and she turned her head slowly to look at the speaker.  It was the priest; the priest with blue eyes who wasn’t afraid of her.

“Father Owen?”  Her voice sounded incredibly tired.
“Yes.  The doctor who normally volunteers at our shelter is unavailable.  So, I figured it would be better to call your people and ruin any cover you had rather than let you die here.  I hope that’s ok?”  There was a trace of amused sarcasm in his eyes and she laughed a little.  “Of course.”

There was a comfortable silence for a few minutes and they watched each other calmly.  She was expecting him to speak or ask her a question but he seemed comfortable in the silence.

“Aren’t you going to ask my name, Father?”
A smile lightened his square face.  “A name is not required for the Church to help you, especially considering your current profession.”

Nodding slightly she closed her eyes in an attempt to block out her thoughts.  She didn’t want to be reminded of her current profession.  What she’d done wasn’t something she wanted to remember.  There were now thirty-two people dead by her hand that day.  Blinking tears away she covered her face with one hand.

“I hate my profession.”  Her voice was quiet and broken up.  A wave of despair added more pain to the overall agony of the gunshot wound.  But she forced herself to take control of her emotions.  She had to dry her eyes and keep them dry.

With the tears quickly suppressed, she lifted her hand from her face and offered it to him in a traditional formal greeting.  “I am Jaola, and I think you just saved my life.”
“That’s quite likely, Jaola.”  He took her hand with a slight smile.

In his public mind she sensed thoughts about a conflict with someone; one that ended with hostility.  Then a vivid flash of Taelin Kaan’s angry face practically jumped out of Father Owen’s public mind.
She frowned.  “Did Taelin come here after me?”
He nodded slowly.  “Don’t worry though, you’re safe here.  The Rebel’s know this is neutral territory.  And now Taelin does too.”

There was that fearless confidence in his face again and she frowned.  This priest was so strange to her.  When she’d first met him, he seemed so incredibly normal but she realized he was more than that.  He wasn’t afraid of her.  He didn’t seem afraid of the Agency or the Rebels.  How was it possible for even a priest not to be afraid in life?

She looked sideways at him.  “Why did you help me?”
“The Founder led you to the Church and me for a reason.  It is not my job to question why only to listen.  Besides, you have to have at least one ally in your situation don’t you?”
She smiled a little.  “I suppose so.”

Standing up from his chair and turning away towards the door, his voice was quiet but oddly dark.  “I’ll go downstairs and see if your people have turned up, yet.  I won’t be long.”

———————————————————————

Taelin lay back on a converted table in one of the small medical rooms of Nama and Kala’s base.

Nala had ordered him to stay there and hold an ice pack to the pain until she came back from checking up on Asha.  He felt nauseous from the pain and exhaustion of the day, and most of his head ached something terrible.  He was feeling too ill to be angry any more.  Instead, apathy was sitting nice and firmly in his heart, and if he was honest with himself he was feeling emotional enough to actually have a good cry alone in the room.

But Nala would come back soon and he’d be embarrassed if she caught him crying.  He knew it was stupid to be embarrassed because tears were a very normal physiological reaction to injury and shock, and everyone knew this.  But he still didn’t want to risk her seeing him vulnerable and exhausted no matter how illogical that feeling was.

The room wasn’t very big.  The long wooden table that had been converted into an exam bed sat in the middle of the room.  To one side a shorter table stood up against the wall with many pieces of medical equipment on top of it.  There was a chair nearby and a bright lamp mounted to the bigger table on an adjustable arm.  There was just enough room for someone to walk completely around the table unhindered and that was the total size of the room.

To his left the door opened and in stepped Nala.  She was smiling and looked into his eyes with a slight blush to her cheeks.  Smiling in return, he pretended not to see the blush.

“How is Asha?”
“She’s in a lot of pain but she’s going to be ok.  Cheetah missed everything important by millimeters.  How’s your face feeling?”
He gave her a mockingly unimpressed look over the ice pack and rolled his eyes.
“It hurts.”
“Well, at least your nose will heal straight; I’ve seen some people with permanently crooked noses before.  It’s not pretty.”  There was a look of mischief in her eyes and he smiled.

Approaching him, she gently lifted the ice pack off his face.  “Let me take some of the pain away for you.”

Putting the ice pack on the table next to him she lifted her hands up to his face.  One warm palm rested gently along his forehead and the other hand rested on one cheek with her thumb carefully under his nose.  There was a sense of warmth and a pulse of white electricity from her hands.  The sensation melted much of the sharp pain away from his face.

The healing energy made him feel calm and peaceful.  He closed his eyes and floated somewhere between sleep and awake.  The pain in his face slowly melted away into a dull warm thud.

In his hovering half-asleep state, he didn’t really feel it when her hands lifted off his face or when she pulled a blanket over him.  He hovered there half-conscious for a little while and then slipped sideways into a deep healing sleep.

 

“Madness” – Scene Four (21March09)

*4*

It couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds that he’d been unconscious.  He came to very quickly and found himself lying on his back with his arms and legs flailed around him from his fall.

With a groan he lifted one hand up to his face to touch the bridge of his nose.  It was very definitely broken.  The pain in his nose and face was immense and worse than many of the other breaks he’d had in the past.  He rolled onto his side and got to his feet.  Blood was spilling from his nose and down his face.  A few meters away from him lay his gun on the concrete and he carefully bent over and picked it up.

Warily looking around him he searched for any sign of the direction she’d gone.
“Tae, where are you?” Nama’s mental voice sounded tense and worried.
“Me?  Where are YOU?” He didn’t mean to snap back at Nama but the pain in his face made him very angry.
“We’re North of the building, there’s just a car parking lot here, where are you?”

“I’m North…” He glanced up at the sun and swore.  “Ah, for Founder’s sakes!  South, I’m South.  I had her for a short while, but she got away…”

Looking a few meters ahead of him up the alley his eyes picked up a blot of bright red blood on the concrete and further ahead he could see some more blood splatters.
“She’s left a trail of blood to follow, I’m going after her.  Are you coming?”
“We’re coming.”

Walking towards the trail she’d left, he searched his pockets for something to put to his nose.  In a back pocket he found an old rag, which he un-scrunched and folded in half to apply carefully under his nose to mop up the blood.  He was going to be in a great deal of pain for a long while but it could have been worse.
Now, he thought angrily, let’s find her.

Much to his annoyance, it took some time to follow the blood trail.  It led through a few blocks of back roads and alleys, and at points seeming to disappear only to start again a decent distance away.  When he finally came out into a main road he was surprised to see where he’d been led: the blood trail led right up to Cathedral Square and the main entrance.

The anger inside him had deepened to become almost cold.  He wasn’t quite conscious of it, he only knew that he had to find her and get her, and damn anyone who got in the way.

He stepped over the blood trail through the front door and into the main Cathedral.  There was no one in the main room except for a single priest kneeling at the altar with his back to Tae.

The blood trail dripped down the long middle isle weaving left and right towards the front of the room.  He was about halfway towards the altar when to his left a small door in the far corner opened and Father Owen strode into sight.

“Taelin, get out of here, now.”  Father Owen’s angry voice echoed off the high stone ceiling.
Tae shook his head and walked towards the man.  “Give me Cheetah and I’ll leave.”

The priest strode along the front of the pews and towards Tae up the center of the room.  The priest’s long black robes hugged his square form and somehow, oddly, made him seem a little menacing.
“How dare you come here and demand anything from this Church.  Leave.  Leave now.”  Father Owen’s blue eyes were the color of ice.
Tae glared angrily back at the man and he spoke through clenched teeth.  “Don’t make me go through you to get her, Father.”

Father Owen leveled a commanding glare at Taelin.  If he hadn’t been so mad, Tae would have probably flinched.  “This is your final warning.  Leave.  Now.”
“Or what?”  Tae laughed slightly and lifted his weapon a little.

He intended to push past the man not actually shoot him, but Father Owen reacted by stepping towards and disarming him.  The priest moved so quickly that Tae did not have any time to react.  Suddenly, he found himself on the stone floor looking up at the priest over the barrel of his own weapon.
Ice blue eyes glared down at him coldly.  “I said leave.  Now.”

The surprise of being on the floor so quickly shocked Tae out of his rage and he looked up at Father Owen over the barrel.  For the first time he noticed the rage permeating the air around Father Owen and then he noticed the steady gun hand.  To be so enraged but completely in control was somehow terrifying to Tae and the realization brought with it sharp flare of genuine fear.  His mouth opened slightly and he froze.

Somewhere in the direction of his feet the double doors that were the public entrance to the Cathedral opened.  Near to his face, Tae’s weapon clicked loudly as Father Owen switched the safety on.

“Get him out of here, Nama.  I will get what she stole, but I don’t want to see any Rebel here until the morning.  Do you understand me?”  His voice was cold and harsh, and very angry.  In that moment the man near him was not a priest and certainly not the Father Owen that he had begun to know.  Instead he was something commanding, something powerful and strong, and something formidable that he should never have tried to go up against.

“Yes, sir.”  There was a very real fear in Nama’s voice.

The man threw the weapon for Nama to catch and strode back down the wide middle aisle towards the side door again.  Tae got up by himself as Nama bridged the gap between them.  Behind him the side door slammed closed.

“You dodged more than one bullet today, Tae.  Are you mad?  What were you thinking coming in here?”  Nama shook his head dismissively and handed him back his gun.  They turned towards the exit and Tae followed him quietly out of the Cathedral.

 

“Madness” – Scene Three (14March09)

*3*

How Cheetah had gotten into the building was the subject of much debate.  But what she left in her wake was something no one could miss even if they wanted to.  She’d killed everyone inside the building; a little over thirty adults, in what looked like a matter of minutes.  It also seemed that at least half of them had been killed without a weapon.  A teenage girl killing fully grown adults with her bare hands, Tae shivered slightly at the thought of it.

Taelin sat on a battered couch in the large central room.  The “Resource” was on a small coffee table in front of him in a lockable metal briefcase and behind him stood the open vault door.  Much of the rest of the room was complete chaos from a combination their own brief gun battle with Cheetah and the deaths of those people who’d been in the room when she arrived.  Thankfully however, they’d moved most of the bodies into another room where they would stay for a short while until it was possible to move them and bury them somewhere safe.

He guarded the Resource, while the rest of Nama’s recon team secured the building.  Amana’s Team was still outside watching for trouble even though everyone was fully aware that Cheetah must have another route that bypassed them somehow.

The plan was to secure the building first and then move the laptop somewhere safe; once of course they had decided where was the safest place.  In front of him on the coffee table the briefcase the Resource was in was metal; it was large and bulky with a combination key lock.  He stared at it apathetically.  It really was ridiculous: thirty people dead for a stupid computer.

“You look glum, brother.  Cheer up.”
At the voice Tae looked up to discover Asha standing in the doorway in front of him.  He stood quickly with a laugh.  “When did you get back?”  Stepping around the coffee table he gave his sister a big hug.
“Just now.”  She laughed and wrapped her arms around him.

When they parted from their hug she was smiling sympathetically.  “I hear there’s been some trouble?”
He shrugged.  “If you call an entire Cell of thirty people killed while a recon group was outside the building “trouble”, I guess so.”

There was a noise of movement behind him and as he turned to see what it was a silenced gunshot reverberated around the room.  Tae pulled out his weapon.  Cheetah stood in the other doorway with her own gun aimed up at him and the Resource firmly in her grip.

His utter surprise stopped any immediate reaction in him for about half a second.  Green eyes stared calmly over the extended barrel of the weapon and silencer.  Her voice was quiet.  “I only want the computer.  See to your sister and no one else has to die today.”

Asha! With his guard suddenly dropped he instinctively looked down at his sister.  In that moment the dark haired green eyed assassin swiftly left the room.

Asha lay on her back on the floor with a look of deep pain in her face.  She was alive, at least she was alive!  Blood spilled slowly from one shoulder.  She put a hand to the wound and stared up at him.
“Go, Tae.”  She gasped.  “Go get her!  I’ll be ok.”

He knew if he waited even a second longer he’d loose Cheetah and if Asha said she was ok she of all people would know.  He turned quickly and ran out of the room in pursuit of the assassin.  As he ran he reached mentally out to Nama; who seemed to be downstairs.  “Nama!  She came back.  She took the computer.  I’m going after her but she injured Asha.”
“Back up is on the way.  How bad is Asha?”
“Right shoulder, below clavicle, not a bleeder, she says she’s ok.”
“We’re coming.”

The hallway he ran down was narrow with many tiny broken down rooms off to the side of it.  It looked like this section must have once been a group of private office cubicles partitioned by glass sheets that were long gone now.

At the end of the hallway, on his right was a blank wall with a closed window set into it, and to the left a narrow stairwell cut down into the floor.  Without pausing at all he ran down, taking two steps at a time in his rush to locate the assassin.

The dusty stairwell curved around on itself dizzyingly.  On the second floor there a single locked door to enter that level and after checking the handle he continued to run downwards.  For a moment he thought he heard the sounds of footsteps on the concrete stairs below him.

In the last section of stairs down to the ground floor his view opened up to a long narrow passageway.  Dusty lime linoleum covered the floor and faded patterned wallpaper fell from the walls in little moldy strips.  As he neared the last steps the end of the passage revealed a half open door with light from outside coming in through the gap.  A silhouette stood momentarily in the doorway.  Instinct took over and he lifted his gun, firing at the figure.  He ran down towards the door firing his weapon, as he got to it the door at the end of the hallway closed.

“Nama!” Tae pushed open the heavy door and stepped outside looking around him in the afternoon light.  “She’s out, North side of the building.” Three bodies lay near the door to his left beside a grotty dumpster, but in front him a narrow alley revealed a running figure in its depths.  “We have some more casualties near the back door.   I’m following her, North up an alley.”
“We’re right behind you, Tae.”

He ran into the narrow alley.  Lifting his gun and dropping the almost spent clip to the ground he reached into his jacket pocket for another full clip.  The alley was long and cut a thin line between two high brick buildings.  The assassin ran ahead of him.  The full clip slotted comfortably into place and he pulled the loading mechanism back.

He wasn’t nearly as good a shot as she obviously was, but in a narrow alley at the range of maybe thirty meters it shouldn’t be too hard to actually hit her.  He stopped running for a moment and aimed carefully at her back.  He fired two shots in quick succession and ahead of him she seemed to stumble and fall.

He’d bridged the gap between them by the time she was starting to get up again.  He lifted his weapon into her face and she looked up at him over the barrel with those vivid green eyes of hers.  She held her left side with one hand; blood had stained the dark cloth of her shirt and much of her hand.

“Stay where you are.”  He growled.

The coldness lifted from her eyes and quite suddenly she had all the body language of a scared young woman in a lot of pain, even her eyes were filling with tears.
“Please, please let me go.  Or at least kill me.  Don’t let them capture me.”  Her voice sounded genuinely scared and pained but he remembered how she’d been able to trick him before with this fake emotion stuff.
His eyes narrowed and he shook his head slightly.  “You’re not going to manipulate me again, Cheetah.  You’ll do anything to get what you want.”
Some of the coldness returned to her face and she nodded slightly.  “Yes, of course.  I would do anything to live, anything to keep my family alive.  Wouldn’t you?”  Her voice was cold and almost leathery.  “Will you at least allow me to stand?”

She didn’t give him time to answer her; she simply started to stand very carefully and slowly.  He stepped back from her a little in case her plan was to try and take the gun from his grip.

When she was fully standing; bent a little over the wound in her side, she was just slightly to one side of him.  He turned to make sure she remained directly in front, but in the motion of him adjusting his position she moved very quickly, striking out at his gun with the bloody hand and then smacking him full in the face with the palm of her other hand.

He fell back, stunned and seeing stars.  Consciousness fell away from him so quickly that he did not even feel himself hitting the ground.

 

“Madness” – Scene Two (7March09)

*2*

Cheetah stared down at the building, her green eyes and long oval face utterly emotionless.  It was a whole story down onto the Rebel base rooftop and there was a sufficiently wide void between the two buildings.  If she didn’t make the distance she’d fall five stories down the alley below and probably break her neck.

She’d arrived in the peripheral of the target building to discover about thirty people outside guarding all entrances and access ways.  Of course they made an effort to hide this intension but it was fairly obvious to her that they were guarding the place; someone must have tipped them off.

After retreating to higher ground and re-thinking her plans, the only way she could realistically get in to complete the mission was to jump from one building to the next.  It was not the most ideal solution and it was a decent distance for her to jump without risking injury.  The biggest problem; but only one of many with this plan to jump the gap, was that she was quite weighted down by her weapons and a backpack with safe-cracking supplies.

She needed the gear.  But in lieu of the distance she’d need to jump she realized that if she wanted a much better chance at succeeding at all she’d have to go in without the extra weight.  This meant she’d have to acquire tools and weapons inside the building.  This was also a risk but it was better to risk not having the right gear to get to the target, than it was to risk almost certain death by falling.  In addition to this, her supervisor would not be pleased if she cancelled the mission simply because things got a touch complicated.  So it was jump the gap or try the hard way through the front door.

Cheetah took off her backpack and crouched over it on the windy rooftop.  She would have to leave everything with the backpack and stash it somewhere hidden so no passerby would stumble on it.  Shuffling with her dark clothing she took out three back-up weapons and placed each one carefully into the backpack on top of the other gear.  Then she taking it out from the holster in the small ofher back she held the large onyx-handled gun that her father had given her on her 17^th birthday nearly three months ago.

It was an intimidating weapon.  It looked far too big for her small hands but she was strong enough to use it and because the barrel was significantly longer than standard handguns it was even fairly accurate to shoot.  She didn’t want to loose it but she would have to leave it in the bag with the others.  Flicking the safety on she carefully pushed the gun between two layers of protective material at the bottom of the bag.  Then, zipping it up and standing, she stashed the backpack in the lip of a nearby square air vent.

Walking back to the center of the roof she turned to face the long jump.  She took a deep breath and focused her mind and her body on the goal.  Then she started into a swift run.  When she reached the edge she leapt up with her long legs and thrust herself through the air across the gap towards the other roof top.   Landing into an impromptu forward roll she rose again to her feet in one fluid motion and kept running towards the roof entrance doors.

—-

Tae stood in a narrow alley that separated the Rebel building from one of its neighbors.  There had been no noise and no sign of any Agency assassin.  If it weren’t for the underlying ill ease he was feeling he would have suggested that this assassin wasn’t coming after all.  Though, considering the stories he’d heard so far of Hawk’s accuracy he probably shouldn’t have even thought to suggest that this might be a false alarm.

This tension he could feel was getting intolerable, it made him itchy on the inside and distracted.  The strange spiky headache he’d gotten from the meeting had eased somewhat to a dull background ache with the occasional sharp spark of pain.  But the strange headache seemed somehow connected to the tension because as the tension rose so did the sensations of the headache (but thankfully not the actual pain).

“Tae, come to the front I think something’s wrong.” Nama’s voice was cool and tense in his mind.
“What’s wrong?”
“I haven’t heard anything from inside for about ten minutes.”
Reaching the end of the alley he frowned slightly.  “But their report schedule was every fifteen minutes.”
“No Tae, I’m not talking about their report schedule, there’s nothing on their personal frequency, no chatter, no checking in with each other, no teasing, nothing, it went completely silent.  There has been ten minutes of complete silence.”
Tae swallowed tensely as he turned from the alley onto the street at the front of the building.  “Oh… shit.”
“Yes Tae, oh shit.”

Nama stood next to the building entrance waiting for him.  His light face looked tense but he managed a partial smile of acknowledgement then he indicated with his head for them to go up the steps into the building.
“C’mon, we go in the front door for a sweep.  Amana’s team will stay outside; we’ll meet the others from our team on the inside.”

Inside, the building was dim and dark.  Beyond the double doors that served as the building entrance was a long hallway that led to a small empty elevator shaft and a wide stone stairwell.  Everything was dusty and faded.  Tae didn’t know the story of how the Rebels got the building but he assumed it was similar to his old cell building; that it had long been abandoned and probably scheduled for demolition at some point.

As they neared the elevator shaft they both saw that a body lay sprawled on its back at the base of the stairs.  Tae’s heart quickened.

When they reached the body Nama knelt down next to the man; whom Tae didn’t recognize, and checked his pulse.
“Dead.”  Nama’s deep voice was flat and emotionless.  As Nama stood again he picked up the small automatic rifle that lay next to the body and hitched its strap over his shoulder.  With a sigh, Nama touched a finger to his ear and started speaking.  “We have a dead Rebel in the ground floor entrance.  Team three; meet us at the Resource. Team four; continue your sweep.  Team one and two; hold your positions.”

He followed Nama’s broad back up the wide stone stairs.  A deep sense of dread crept into Tae’s heart and he wondered grimly what they’d find when they got up to the third floor.

The building must have once been some kind of office block.  From the stairwell on the second floor Tae caught a glimpse of some lawyer firm’s name blazoned in black across a dusty glass entrance.  Dimly, he wondered how long this building had been abandoned and why that lawyer firm had left without even scratching their name off the glass.

His absent thoughts were interrupted as they came out of the stone stairwell and were on the third floor.  They jogged down a faded dusty hallway towards a large central room where the Resource was stored in a small vault.

They stepped into the large square room through a double doorway.  Tae saw the bodies on the floor, he saw the open vault and then he saw the young assassin known now as Cheetah, bent over a metal briefcase.  She looked up at him for a moment; surprise clear in her vivid green eyes.

Before they even had time to fire their weapons the assassin ducked out of range and behind the cover of the heavy metal vault door.  Tae ran towards the vault door with his gun up, but had to duck behind a kitchen bench for cover as she fired in his direction.  Nama jumped as well and landed in behind him.

Tae took a careful look around the side of the bench in her direction and a bullet flew past near his face and lodged itself in the wall behind him.  He flinched away, turning to stare at the hole in the wall behind him.  This girl is terrifying.

He sensed a flare of fear and sudden fleeing, then he heard the sounds of footsteps running away from them along the bare wood floor.  He stood without looking around and ran towards a doorway after the footsteps.  Tae ran down a long hallway after her firing his gun at her receding form.

A deep rage lifted from inside him and pushed him to run faster.  He had to get her, he had to stop her and he had to kill her.

Ahead of him at the end of the dusty wooden hallway she turned left and out of sight.  By the time he followed after her around the corner she’d jumped out through a wide open window and was disappearing up over a fire escape and in through a window of the neighboring building.

He only stopped firing his weapon when the clip emptied and there were no more bullets.  Nama ran up behind him; his voice ordering people on the radio into the other building after her.  But in his gut Tae knew that she’d gotten away.  With a near growl of frustration he kicked the wall hard with one boot and swore obscenely at the window.

Behind him Nama’s voice changed tone as he laughed and addressed Tae and not the radio.
“Well, at least she didn’t get the Resource.”

 

“Madness” – Scene One (28Feb09)

12 Milana 3003
*1*

The meeting started without much fanfare and if he was honest with himself Tae was actually a little disappointed by the banality of it all.  There were perhaps nine Cells of Rebels in Capitol City and one or two people from each Cell were asked to attend.  Each person connected to Nama, added their code words and submitted to a light scan before being allowed to connect to the others in the mental connection.

Tae found it disorientating to be telepathically connected to so many people; their thoughts and words chattering inside his head in about fifteen different voices. He couldn’t imagine how disorientating it was for Nama, he being the hub and gateway of the meeting and all.

It wasn’t until after everyone had been confirmed and scanned that Hawk arrived.  Upon his arrival, the underlying tense excitement of everyone suddenly flared up to a point where his head pulsed slowly with a tense empathic throb.  He was certainly excited as well.  This was after all the first meeting Hawk had ever called and the historical consequences of attending such a meeting hadn’t been lost on anyone, least of all him.

“Greetings everyone and thank you for attending this meeting; I know how awkward and uncomfortable this situation is for many of you.” Hawk’s mental voice was clear and calm, and throbbed with an odd pulsing static that Tae felt even through the mental filter of Nama.  “I have called this meeting because the Agency is getting smarter in their strategies and attacks.  In the last six months we have lost several key individuals and four entire Cells to Assassin and Searcher attacks.  If we do not change our tactics to match we may face annihilation.”

“But, sir, much of their success is because of this new assassin, not necessarily because of their better tactics.” Amana’s calm reddish mental voice hummed in Taelin’s head; she had been chosen to be the contact for Hilla Norman’s Cell.

“Yes, you are right, Amana, this new assassin has caused a great deal of our problems, however, Cheetah isn’t the only problem.  The Agency has started using specialized Searcher Agents to scout for information about where our bases, certain key individuals and strategic resources are located.  Then, they pass on this information to specialized assassins like Cheetah to do accurate and devastating damage to us.

“There is, unfortunately, also mounting evidence that we may have a mole in our midst.  There have been reports…” Hawk’s deep calm mental voice faltered into silence and Tae felt a wavering shimmer in the static pulse coming from Hawk.

At first others seemed confused in the silence, he felt the confusion flow through the empathic pulse around him.  But, then a wave of intense dark static pushed through the other minds and hit him like a huge breaking tidal wave.  The energy (whatever it was) pushed at his mind so firmly that his body flinched back sharply in response.  All other Psi senses were overshadowed and made dim in his mind under the roaring energy wave.

He focused on riding out the feeling and holding onto the mental link he had with Nama and the meeting.  So focused was he that he didn’t that he’d stopped breathing.

From underneath the overwhelming waves of dark static came mental voices from the meeting.
“… what’s wrong, sir?”
“…One moment…”

The intensity lifted suddenly and Tae was left gasping physically for air.  His grip on the mental link wavered randomly and he tried hard to hold onto it, but felt it slowly releasing from his undisciplined mental grasp.

“This will have to wait….”
“What happened, sir?”
“There is no time.  Nama, Amana I need you to collect together a recon group and get to the Southern Motorway…”

The mental link slipped out of his grip and he fell away from the meeting and the calm clear mental voice of Hawk.  As he regained more awareness of his body and the world outside of his mind Tae groaned in pain.  There was a spiky almost electrical headache that permeated randomly through his scull like one of those gimmicky lightening globes.

He lay on the ground flat on his back, with the couch on which he’d been laying previously right next to him.  Just my luck for something bizarre like this to happen, right when things were getting interesting, damn it.

“Tae, get off the floor, quit playing around.”  Nama’s voice was playful and he felt a gentle kick in the shoulder.
“I’m not playing, Nama.”  He looked up into his friend’s face.
“Well, get up we need you.”

Tae sat up carefully, but much to his relief the weird headache did not worsen with motion.  “What happened?”
“Hawk had a Time Psi episode, c’mon we don’t have time, the assassin could already be there taking the Resource.”

Nama offered a hand up and he stood, then followed Nama’s broad form through the lounge doorway.  They walked absently from the main hallway into the small armory room.  Nama unlocked the nearest locker and passed him a weapon and bullet clips.  Together they loaded their own weapons as they talked.

“So why did I get decked then?  And what’s this Resource?”
“You got decked because you have Time Psi genes.  Hawk is something like a 20/5 Time Psi, you’re, what?  A 1/5?  You’re lucky you’re not in a coma.”

They finished loading and Nama turned to leave the small square room then continued speaking.
“The Resource: well that is a laptop that one of the Rebels found last week when they took out an A3 Searcher Agent.  The laptop has access to the Agency database up to A2 security level.”
Tae was surprised.  “Oh.”
“Yeah and some assassin is about to try and take it.  Come on.”  He sounded impatient.

They followed about ten other members of Nama’s Cell out of the building into the dim afternoon street.
“That wave of… static… was Hawk having a vision?  To that kind of detail?”  He gave Nama a look of disbelief and was answered with a wink and a grin.
“Yep… what did I say?  20/5 Time Psi.”

 

“Training” – Scene Four (21Feb09)

8 Milana
(30 days after Nala’s rescue)

*4*

Tolan was much darker than the other Rebels; in fact he didn’t look Aranan at all. Had interbreeding been legal and not a gross sacrilege to the Five Nation Religion of the Founder, Nala would have thought that Tolan was a mixture of the Tolaan people and the Kranan people. He had their dark nearly copper red coloring and black hair. He had the tall, thin body type similar to the Tolaan people, and the nearly black dark brown eyes of the Kranan people. It was quite a beautiful combination. But, she had been told that Tolan was actually Aranan and had various reasons for his appearance; the most striking ones being that he lay in the sun as often as he could to get the coppery tan and that his thinness was due to not having any muscle tone because his disability.

Tolan stood in front of Taelin and Nama. He looked a little anxious.
“Ok, Tae, go again.” Nama’s voice was calm and patient.
In front of her, Tae’s handsome face frowned with concentration.

Nala shuffled in her seat trying to get comfortable in the large meeting room. Her cast lay on the nearby table, but it rested at an odd angle which made her shoulder ache somewhat, however it was less uncomfortable than the sling she’d been given.

Standing to one side of her, but in front of Tae, Tolan continued to look nervous. Quite suddenly, his eyes rolled back into his head and he dropped to the matted floor like a rag doll.

“That’s good you’re getting quicker, Tae.” Nama stood next to Taelin in the middle of the room his back almost completely facing her.

The room around them was oblong, with no windows, a high roof, white modern walls and cheap floor covering. In one corner someone had stacked a bunch of chairs and a fairly large table, at which she sat watching their training. It had been a nice luxury to be able to come and watch the training that day; she’d been going mad with boredom in the sleeping room.

On the opposite wall a plain wooden door opened and quietly let someone into the room. Father Owen smiled in her direction and walked slowly around the three practicing men and towards her.

For some reason she liked Father Owen. He was a calm quiet individual; he wasn’t particularly shy just that he wasn’t loud or boisterous. She could sense that there was a depth to him that no one else saw and yet at the same time he also seemed to live a simple and uncomplicated life.

His face was square and would have looked quite harsh if the edges hadn’t been smoothed and rounded along his cheekbones and chin line. His light brown hair was cut fairly short and seemed to somehow lighten his face and blue eyes.

As he approached her his smile widened and she grinned. “Hello, Father Owen.”
“Hello, Nala, how are you feeling today?” His voice was calm, deep and somehow also gentle.
She indicated an empty chair next to her for him to sit down in.  “Much better, thank you. How are you?”

Father Owen slowly sat down next to her. As he bent she sensed a spark of pain from him and even though there was no obvious body flinch or tensing to support the sense of pain she innately trusted in her healing sense. She frowned slightly.  “I am fine thank you, Nala. How is Taelin’s training going today?”

She chuckled. “He’s gotten the hang of making Tolan sleep, though I wonder if he’s taking far too much glee in it after that entire week of Tolan throwing him around.”
Father Owen laughed slightly and turned to watch the three men.

Nama looked in their direction with a quick smile and eyebrow rise of acknowledgement, then returned his focus back to Tae. “Ok, Tae, lets wake up Tolan again, he’s probably sick of this already.”

On the floor Tolan’s curled up form moaned as he started to wake up. The waking up part of the exercise seemed a lot slower than the going to sleep part and she wondered if she’d get to learn how to do it herself sometime.

“Are you happy to go back to base now, Tolan?”
Tolan stood slowly. “Yeah. Definitely.” And without any more encouragement the dark man turned and left the room swiftly.

“Ok, Tae, now we need to focus on the skills you’re going to need for this meeting on the twelfth.”
“Oh? What are they?”
“Well, you need to learn how to change your Telepathic volume and learn narrow-shaft communication.” Nama turned to face her and smiled slightly. “Can we borrow you for a second, Nala?”

She frowned a little uncertainly, but then shrugged. “Sure, where do you need me?”
“You can stay where you are, just let us know if you hear anything Telepathically.”

“Ok, Taelin, this is a wide-shaft communication. What this means is that everyone who is Telepath Psi and within a certain radius of us will hear what I’m saying. Can you hear me Nala?”
Nala smiled. “Clear as day.”

“Ok, now this is narrow shaft communication…” The sudden mental silence was almost audible to Nala and she waited as Nama obviously continued his lesson. As she watched and waited Tae’s face frowned slightly with concentration and then a few seconds later at the same time the two men looked directly at her.  Tae’s blue eyes stared at her in surprise as if waiting for a reaction from her.

She frowned. “What?”
“You didn’t hear that?” Tae asked with surprise.
She shook her head. “No. What did he say?”
Tae blushed slightly. “Never mind, Nama was just teasing me.”

Next to her, Father Owen cleared his throat as if to speak and the two men paused.
“Do you two need Nala for a while? If she’s willing,” Father Owen looked at her with a gentle smile, “I need her help with something.”

She blinked at him while Nama’s distracted voice responded in the background.  “Of course, Father Owen.”
“Um, Father Owen I can’t do a lot, but I’m happy to help where I can.”

He nodded slightly and carefully stood up. She followed him out of the meeting room through the door and into the area that connected the seven meeting rooms together. He closed the door behind them and turned to look at her with an oddlt tense look in his blue eyes.

“I’d like to ask a favor of you, Nala.” His voice was quiet and gentle. “But I need you to promise me a couple of things, first.”  She frowned and wondered briefly what kind of thing he could be needing her to help with, then he continued.  “I need you to give me your word that you will not speak of this favor to anyone, not even Taelin. And I need you to not ask any questions.”

Her frown deepened but she deliberately turned her uncertainty into a joke. “As long as you’re not asking me to sleep with you or do something to hurt the Rebels, I can probably do it.”
“It’s nothing so earth shattering.” He grinned widely and indicated the door of another meeting room.

When the door was closed he stood there a moment in silence and she looked up at him expectantly. He took a deep breath and flinched.  “Can you heal with one hand, Nala?”

She laughed suddenly as all the tension left her. “Of course! Sit down in that chair and show me.”

There was a touch of mischief in his smile as he sat down and lifted the edge of his robes up. The priest robes he wore were in two sections: loose black pants with a black long-sleeved shirt that draped over the pants with the hemline sitting near his knees. As he lifted the hem of the shirt he revealed a rather decently bloodied bandage that wrapped around the bottom of his ribs.

Reaching with her free hand she gently touched the palm of her hand to his side just below the bleeding. Closing her eyes she felt the throbbing pain of a gunshot wound that had already been stitched up, but was pulsing quite badly with the pain of pulled and ripped stitches. She started to ask him how a priest got shot but remembered that he’d asked for no questions.

“You should be in bed not walking around the Cathedral making this worse.”

She felt her heart open up with a deep compassion for his pain, and as always, her compassion somehow “turned on” the flow of healing energy which pulsed deeply through her body out her hand and into the injury to start lifting out the layers of pain.

His replying voice was quiet and low, almost sad. “Sometimes the duty to the cause takes precedence over the duty to oneself.”

 

Sorry…

This weeks post is going to be a little late, I’ve been very ill this last fortnight and I haven’t been able to do much writing, however, I will get it posted (hopefully) before it is officially saturday for those on EST (which is 6pm NZ time).