Part 4 (1/2)
He saw how her nerves were still a mess, synapses unable to talk correctly to each other, electrical impulses dying before they bridged the distance between nerves. He let his power bleed into her body. The connection was there, her body knew it, she just couldn't find it on her own.
Microtelekinesis coursed through her instantly. The shock of the shutdown and reboot lasted for half a millisecond, if that. The results were all that mattered. Threnody's power snapped together inside her body, her baseline stabilizing. Electricity ripped through her limbs and out of her skin, surging through the control terminal with a blinding burst, the same way it had surged through Jin Li in Buffalo.
Jason and Lucas withdrew their power. Quinton was the only one holding Threnody up as she shuddered through the aftereffects.
The doors jerked in their casing, unlocking. Lucas telekinetically pulled them apart, breaking through decades of built-up ice and debris. Cold, stale air filtered out of a place no one had walked into since the government's SkyFarms Inc. agricultural towers first went online in the last major cities.
Lucas strode into the ancient seed bank and didn't look back.
FOUR.
AUGUST 2379.
THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS.
The ache in Ciari Treiva's gut had nothing to do with nerves or emotion.
It was a physical reminder, one the Cla.s.s III empath hadn't fixed before leaving Toronto. It grounded her in a way she knew nothing else could. As the officer in charge (OIC) of the Strykers Syndicate, it was imperative that Ciari maintain her health. Like every other Stryker, she didn't own her body-the government did. And what better way to prove that owners.h.i.+p than to appoint a psion as the liaison between the government and the Strykers Syndicate?
”This is not going well,” Keiko Nis.h.i.+moto said. The Cla.s.s II telekinetic and chief operating officer (COO) for the Strykers Syndicate kept a sharp eye on the set of quads stationed in the hallway with them. ”We've been waiting for hours.”
”The morning session for citizens comes before our punishment,” Ciari said quietly. ”Erik likes having an audience.”
Keiko ducked her head, hiding her grimace from the security cameras embedded in the walls. She had teleported Ciari to The Hague as ordered. They'd been told to wait outside the courtroom doors in the Peace Palace, which held the International Court of Justice, called the World Court by most people on the planet.
To be kept waiting after the rush to arrive wasn't a surprise, simply annoying. They had no right to argue about anything, not when the neurotrackers implanted in their brains could kill them so easily. Every Stryker who didn't die in the field or from overuse of his or her power died with the flip of a switch, victim of a government termination order. Perhaps the wait was psychological on the part of the World Court, but the two Strykers accepted it as part of the job. The government's dogs, as they were so often called, could do nothing but obey.
They weren't the only ones going about their business in the hallway. Aides, lobbyists, and politicians walked the halls, most of them hurrying past the two women without a second glance. Most humans, registered and unregistered, didn't trust psions. Too many people had died at the hands of rogue psions since the Border Wars ended for trust to ever be more than political lip service.
Despite their disease and danger, psions were useful, lucrative, and rare enough in the world's surviving gene pool that the government kept them around for business and security reasons. Contracts brokered with the Strykers Syndicate pulled in a lot of money, and the government wasn't willing to give up a ready source of income.
The World Court beat obedience into their dogs. The failure of government indoctrination and the escape of formerly subordinate Strykers were the reasons why Ciari was here.
The door to the courtroom finally opened an hour later and a legal clerk stepped into the hallway. ”The World Court will hear your case.”
He didn't look at them. Out of fear or disrespect, Ciari didn't know. Probably both. The Peace Palace was owned and operated by humans, by the only government that had survived the Border Wars. Psion power, unless explicitly permitted by the World Court, was illegal here. Bioware nets spanned the brains of all the politicians and registered humans who could afford the technology, constantly monitoring for outside manipulation. Any deviation from the baseline resulted in psion deaths. When it came down to it, though, the World Court didn't need an excuse to kill their dogs.
Ciari and Keiko stood, tugged their uniforms straight, and walked into the public courtroom. The grand, rectangular place had old wood paneling and stained-gla.s.s windows that had survived the relentless bombings. Ancient, beautiful crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling. The rows of seats between the door and the long bench set high on a raised dais beneath the windows were full. So was the balcony that extended halfway into the room.
Open session, Ciari thought as she and Keiko walked down the center aisle. This won't end well.
They came to a stop between the tables of opposing parties at the front of the courtroom; both were empty. Arrayed before them along the judicial bench were fifteen seats filled by the most powerful humans on the planet. The occupant of the center seat was the only one who mattered to Ciari.
Erik Gervais, president and justice of the World Court, stared at her. Ciari met his gaze without blinking. The faint narrowing of his brown eyes showed annoyance, but only to her. Erik had built his life around political aspirations that required him to be unreadable for the sake of legal neutrality. But the government was never truly neutral, especially when it came to their dogs. Years of reading the microexpressions of bureaucrats and politicians had saved Ciari's life many times where psion power would have gotten her killed instantly. She wondered if that skill would be enough this time.
”Sirs,” Ciari said, dipping her head in rote respect to the fifteen judges before her. Keiko did the same.
The crowd around them wasn't completely silent. Registered humans, the elite of society, s.h.i.+fted in their seats. The rustling of personal items and the soft buzz of cameras from reporters sitting in the press box filled the air like static.
”Are you prepared to give your report?” Erik said.
”Yes, sir.”
”Then begin your statement. If we like what we hear, we might be persuaded to show leniency.”
Ciari didn't blink at the threat. It meant nothing to her. She lived with a death switch in her brain; words were merely sound.
”A month ago, we lost four Strykers in the Slums of the Angels. They were in pursuit of a rogue psion targeted for retrieval. We believe the target took them. When we carried out your orders to terminate the Strykers, the results from the neurotrackers were inconclusive. The baselines spiked as human on the security grid through bioscanners.” Ciari paused for a moment, letting the information sink in. ”We have no witnesses to the events in the Slums. Human bodies were eventually retrieved from Russia with the missing neurotrackers. When that same target from the Slums appeared in Buffalo, I initiated a full-scale field transfer of Stryker teams to deal with the threat.”
”You've had two years to retrieve or terminate this rogue psion,” Anchali said. The vice president of the World Court was its oldest member and one of its shrewdest. ”Transferring that many Strykers to Buffalo was a mismanagement of resources and a failure on your part.”
Ciari met her gaze as calmly as she had Erik's. ”Other rogue psions were on the ground in Buffalo aside from the target. I felt it prudent to take action against them.”
She was careful to refrain from numbers, from names. The public knew about rogue psions. They didn't know about Warhounds unless one believed in the stories downloaded into pirate streams. Truth could be found in those conspiracy theories, even if most people didn't have all the facts.
”So you initiated a full-scale field transfer, taking Strykers off prior contracts and sending them to Buffalo without authorization?”
”It wouldn't be in anyone's best interest if the target slipped away during such a blatant attack on the government,” Ciari said. ”My orders are to protect. We did.”
”And yet, the target still escaped,” Erik said.
There was no way out of the punishment she could hear in Erik's voice. Ciari could never admit that she knew the ident.i.ty of that seemingly unknown target. All Strykers who held the OIC position and those of the company's highest officer ranks obeyed a hidden law, and it had nothing to do with human legal wrangling. The Silence Law gave and took, but above all, it saved. Some might argue that the cost was too high, but Ciari never had.
Despite everything that was going on, she wouldn't betray her people. Her life wasn't worth theirs. She stayed silent.
Erik leaned forward slightly and rested both hands flat against the old wooden tabletop. ”You are not justifying your case, Ciari. Silence is not an acceptable defense.”
She could have spoken for days straight and it wouldn't have mattered. The judgment had been decided prior to her being summoned before the bench. This was merely a formality and a showcase of control.
”We announced the presence of rogue psions in the city as required by law,” Ciari said. ”It served to explain the large numbers of Strykers on the ground and resulted in the deactivation of the electrical grid. We thought the reduction in power would help us flush out and corner the target.”
Travis Athe raised a single finger. ”It didn't.”
Ciari shook her head. ”No, sir.”
”How could you think that frightening human citizens was a good idea?”