Part 20 (1/2)
”What about you?” Quinton asked the scavenger. ”You've been with us since Buffalo. Aren't you coming?”
”Been with Lucas longer than that and I ain't always with him when he goes running off,” Matron said.
”You make it seem like I'm the reckless one,” Lucas said as he tossed an apple from one hand to the other.
Matron shrugged, rubbing at one shoulder where the metal cybernetics of her arm attached to flesh and bone. The cold made the connecting points ache. ”You've always been reckless with everyone else's life.”
Lucas only smiled at her. Matron bared her metal teeth in a responding grin. It wasn't the first time that Matron wondered about the faith she was putting in him that wasn't going to her G.o.d, but she wasn't going to stop now. ”I pray to G.o.d you're doing the right thing here, Lucas.”
”Your G.o.d isn't why I'm doing this. Remember what I told you when I pulled you from the swamps of Chicago?”
Matron snorted. ”You think I forgot that? You promised me a garden if I did your dirty work.”
Lucas tossed her the apple. Matron caught it easily in one hand. ”Keep sorting the seeds.”
”I know how to do my job,” Matron said, dark eyes wide and opaque, face full of a belief that wasn't for Lucas, but for what he had the chance to make. ”Don't forget about us down here.”
”Never,” Lucas promised. He almost sounded as if he meant it.
Lucas wrapped his telekinesis tightly around his sisters and the other three. He kept the visual in his mind of a white room as he teleported them all across the world in a single 'port. Their feet hit the platform in the arrival room with a heavy sound. This time it was guarded, but Lucas wasn't concerned about that. Beside him, Samantha let out a soft gasp as she recognized a familiar presence that had been missing from her mind since Buffalo.
Lucas slammed his telepathy up through half a dozen levels filled with psions and humans alike, leaving a burning path of pain on the mental grid in his wake. He slid into a cracked mind that was no longer familiar and looked through Ciari's eyes.
TWENTY-SEVEN.
SEPTEMBER 2379.
TORONTO, CANADA.
Gideon stared out the window of the suite, squinting through the polluted haze that lingered over everything. He was in a private level that the Serca Syndicate owned in one of Toronto's city towers. It came with a perfect view of the city tower that housed the Strykers Syndicate, its top floors a government-owned prison on the outskirts of the main cl.u.s.ter. Beyond it, Lake Ontario was a dark swath of water against the landscape.
Toronto was nothing like Buffalo. The slums surrounding the city towers were mostly aboveground and sprawled over land that hadn't suffered as badly as other cities during the Border Wars. Buffalo existed mostly belowground, in sealed bunkers and tunnels. That city's towers were far fewer than the count here, limited in numbers because of the deadzone that took up most of New York State.
Gideon was glad for the differences. It made being in this part of the world bearable.
”Have you matched the psi signature yet?” he said. He could see the reflection in the plasgla.s.s of the three telepaths who were seated at the conference table, surrounded by datapads.
”No,” Warrick said, rubbing at his temple. ”We have nothing in our database on who that psion might be.”
”There's no match with our target's records or the psi signature from Buffalo either,” Mercedes said. ”I'm still willing to say it's Jason Garret. It certainly wasn't Lucas, and the way it registered off the scale? Lucas is strong, but this power tops his strength in a very specific way.”
One of the Warhound teams on surveillance duty in Toronto had tagged a strong, abnormal psi signature two days earlier on the mental grid. It originated from the Strykers Syndicate, and Gideon refused to believe it could be anyone else.
”I'm not hearing any answers,” Gideon said.
”Because there aren't any, sir,” Warrick said. ”Not with the information we have. The Strykers would have more than we do, especially since that psion was in their Syndicate.”
They should have initiated their visit yesterday, but Nathan had informed Gideon about the breach in the seed bank before they left for the Strykers Syndicate, which had delayed the visit by twenty-four hours. Gideon adjusted the tie knotted around his throat. He was wearing a suit for this endeavor. He would have preferred a field uniform.
”Feels like Kristen is in this city,” James said.
Gideon turned to give the telepath a sharp look. ”I doubt Lucas would make it that easy to find him again.”
”It's not your sister, sir. It's her dysfunction that feels similar on the mental grid. Insanity has a particular spike to it.”
”Strykers rarely keep dysfunctional psions. The government usually orders their termination at a young age. Most likely it's someone injured from the fight in Buffalo.” Gideon walked over to the chair where his suit jacket was hanging and put it on. ”Let's go.”
They were doing this the human way, restricted from using Gideon's ability to teleport. He knew what the Strykers Syndicate looked like; specifically, their arrival rooms for psions, but Nathan wasn't quite at the point where he could risk their family's secret coming out.
They left the suite of rooms for a shuttle that was locked into one of the landing docks that stuck out like spokes down the side of the city tower, just one of many used by the registered elite. The walk there took them down to a public level, past brightly lit department stores and restaurants, the hologrids that lined every wall showing news streams and not the usual adverts. Residential routes cut away from the public s.p.a.ce, leading off to the lifts that would carry people to their homes.
The atmosphere was muted and tense. People walked by with their heads down, looking at no one as they went about their business. The group made it to their a.s.signed shuttle walkway and entered the short, enclosed tube that extended to the shuttle's hatch. Minutes after they strapped in, the pilot disengaged the anchor locks once given the all clear.
The flight to the other city tower and the Strykers Syndicate was short. Gideon had the pilot dock the shuttle on a lower level and the four disembarked, heading for a lift that would take them right to the top. A security system had already scanned their eyes and faces for ident.i.ties, so when the lift came to a stop and the doors opened onto a sleek lobby, Gideon was greeted by a familiar woman.
”Keiko,” he said, stepping out of the lift and into the Strykers Syndicate.
”Sir,” she said evenly. ”This is unexpected.”
”We have business to discuss.”
Despite being surrounded by psions and humans, only four people in this Syndicate knew the truth about the Sercas. Keiko wasn't about to break the Silence Law. She didn't argue Gideon's order and simply led him to a lift farther inside that had access to the rest of the Strykers Syndicate's levels.
Keiko took him to the administrative level. She took him to Ciari.
Gideon was surprised to see the other woman conscious. Considering the trauma that Erik had inflicted on her at The Hague, Gideon expected her to be well on her way to dying. Instead, Ciari looked decently recovered. She had Aidan and Jael with her, and while those two acknowledged his arrival, Ciari continued watching a news stream.
The World Court was standing before the cameras again, on trial themselves before public opinion in the face of irrefutable evidence that they still categorically denied.
”This should be interesting,” Jael said. It was anyone's guess if she meant the current company or the current news as Gideon crossed Ciari's office to take a seat before her desk.
”I've never cared for your interests,” Keiko said.
On the vidscreen, Erik was arguing his case, backed by the other fourteen judges that made up the World Court. Between the judges and the reporters was a line of quads with pulse-rifles, which said more about the situation than anything else.
”We who have held the t.i.tle of judge on the World Court, all of the previous men and women who have presided here over the past two hundred and fifty years, have only had the world's best interests at heart,” Erik said, his voice filling the office. ”The Border Wars nearly destroyed Earth, making it impossible to live in all but the most desperate of places. Even now, we are a desperate people, but we have not lost the greatest part of our humanity. We have not lost our capacity to hope for a better life, for a better world.