Eva had a feeling there would be Watchers dogging her every step, and she wasn’t wrong. They weren’t especially subtle, so she assumed there were more of them she couldn’t see loitering elsewhere, or monitoring the surveillance devices stationed regularly throughout the streets.
She thought of all the apparently sleeping people in Damaal’s office and her skin flashed hot and cold.
Speaking of cold, the weather was almost absurdly pleasant to her human perceptions. Not too warm, not too chill, a light breeze drifting in from the nearby ocean that brought with it smells both salty and oddly sweet. The local star slowly sank into the water, turning the sky a brilliant shade of teal darkening to velvety blue, and leaving a coppery orange shimmer on the tip of every wave like tongues of flame. The surface was occasionally breached, whether by wildlife or tourists she couldn’t tell from so far away, and keening songs echoed softly over the broad swath of sand separating nature from civilization.
Other tourists were enjoying the scenery as well, meandering from place to place with no apparent destination in mind, some of them with Pod Pals of their own. She and Vakar mimicked them, walking slowly, leisurely, as if they had nowhere to be, which wasn’t entirely untrue. But they were also both surveying their surroundings, assessing threat levels, all the little habits picked up from years of training and being thrown into the deep end of space to see if they could swim. He’d just been an engineer when she met him, and she’d been the captain of a small ship whose business was composed entirely of side hustles, but they both had secrets in their pasts that lurked below the surface like whatever was out there in the ocean.
His secrets, at least, were nobler. A Wraith was basically a glorified cop, but unlike the petty stungun-wielding assholes Eva was used to dealing with, Vakar had been using his skills and resources to harass The Fridge. He was a tool of the quennian government, yes, but over and over again he had proven that his ethics and loyalties were more complex than any simple tool. While he had been on her crew, he had followed orders as long as she never gave bad ones, and heaven knew she had tried to honor that. Now, he mostly did the same, but with a different set of bosses.
Eva, for all her rebelliousness, for all her sarcasm and aversion to authority, had followed plenty of bad orders before she left her dad’s business behind. She’d always been good at justifying them to herself, at rationalizing, at ignoring the parts that now made her want to scream at her past self. She’d wanted to please people, to impress people: her father, Tito, her crewmates, even whomever she happened to be punching or shooting or screwing, as if life were one of Min’s games and she was trying to level up, look cool, feel powerful.
Okay, she still wanted those things, but at least now she wasn’t an asshole about them.
((Find anything?)) Eva asked, giving Mala a brief neck scratch. She assumed Vakar was passively scanning local networks or the q-net for information even as he observed their surroundings.
He smelled briefly of grass, maybe bashful at being called out? She wasn’t sure why; it didn’t bother her.
((Local graynet,)) he pinged back.
((Anything interesting?))
((Possibly,)) he replied. He reached for her hand and she let him take it, guiding her toward one of the side streets that branched off the main pedestrian corridor. They still moved slowly, casually, but Vakar was now following some internal map she couldn’t see. He doubled back a few times, had them pause to examine some building or other. Finally, he pulled her into an embrace behind a random tree—ignoring Mala’s chirp of protest—holding her quietly as if they were sharing a tender moment, smelling of licorice underneath the stronger aromas of anticipation. She half expected Watchers to pop up at any time to stop them, ask them what they were doing, but no one did.
“The density of surveillance equipment has diminished in this area,” Vakar said. “I have created multiple feedback loops that should give us some time to move freely.”
Eva kissed his face, relishing the moment even if it was meant as a distraction. “So what did you find?”
“The graynet credentials have shifted more than once, leading me to believe that access is obtained through direct interaction.”
“How do you interact directly with quantum?”
“I mean that login capabilities are conveyed between individuals, in order to limit the ability of the authorities to locate and infiltrate them.”
“Ah, gotcha.” She grinned up at him. “So where are we headed?”
He touched his forehead to hers. “An event where locals will congregate, if I have understood the translations correctly.”
Mala yawned and dug her claws into Eva’s clavicle, making Eva hiss in surprise and pain.
“Knock it off,” Eva said, “or I’m leaving you here.”
The claws retracted slightly, and Mala exuded calm that made Eva roll her eyes.
Vakar led them toward the outskirts of the city, among small prefab buildings and smaller trees in which hammocks had been strung up. Lights hung in front of open doorways, the people inside clearly visible through the translucent walls, moving about their evening routines or resting or appearing to rest while engaging in stationary activities. But many buildings were empty, their interiors dark aside from the last sliver of a glow from the swiftly vanishing local star, their occupants perhaps not yet arrived from wherever they spent the daylight portion of their cycles, or off to do whatever they did at night.
As it turned out, that was precisely where Vakar was taking them. At the end of a path whose surface suggested it was newly laid down, they reached a construction site, where preparations were under way for what would likely be another enormous skyscraper-tree. Eva wasn’t a building engineer, but given the depth and width of the pit being dug, whatever was going in would be huge, and various fabrication devices were neatly lined up next to barrels of the raw materials used to print out girders and trusses and whatnot. Some parts had already been put together and were stacked nearby, waiting for their turn to be assembled into whatever they were meant to be.
And the whole place was teeming with xana. Many of them carried lights, artificial ones or their glowing creature-globes, gently illuminating the otherwise entirely dark site. A few seemed to be in charge, directing others on where to go, gradually forming small groups of a dozen or so spread out around the pit. Some had Attuned lingering near them, and some carried children in pouches attached to the fronts of their harnesses, or hugged them from behind, presumably to keep them from wandering off as children did. They were nearly silent, though murmurs passed between the groups and occasionally louder instructions were conveyed from one leader to another for some unknown purpose.
Their psychic emanations were thick with anticipation, excitement, and some nervousness. They were waiting for something, that much was obvious. But what?
“The surveillance equipment monitoring this site has been circumvented,” Vakar murmured in her ear. “It is broadcasting a false impression that the area is deserted.”
“Is that so?” Eva’s eyes narrowed. “What is this supposed to be, anyway?”
“I am not certain. The information on the graynet called it a Hatching, but also a Storm. I believe the translation is not precise.”
While Vakar had led them closer slowly and cautiously, he had not taken pains to hide their presence. The xana noticed them but for a while no one bothered them, until finally someone approached, emanating politeness with a hostile edge.