Kalugal shrugged. “I forgot. But I’m not afraid of her tethering me again,” he said out loud even though Jay was trailing only a couple of feet behind them.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because now I know how it feels. Tethering me again would have amounted to an act of war, and I don’t think that is what my cousin has in mind.”
15
Kalugal
Kalugal pulled out the list of potential talents he’d gotten from Roberts and put it on the conference table. “How do you want to handle this?”
Kian reached for the list and scanned it. “Twelve names. Not bad for one week’s worth of collection.”
“Most, if not all, are probably worthless, but we won’t know until we check them out.” Kalugal pulled the list back. “The question is, who do we send to do that, my men or yours?”
“Before we do that, what about the program’s recruiters? They will also investigate these people. Do we wait for them to do that first and move in after them, or do we try to beat them to it?”
Kalugal had given it some thought. “Since this is all new, and we are still testing the waters, I suggest that we observe how they work and gather information. First order of business, your hackers should monitor the potential new recruits’ cellular and email communications. I can send men to plant listening devices in their homes as well. Based on the information we collect, we will decide on how to proceed.”
Kian nodded. “I like your cautious approach. By the way, is Eleanor, aka Marisol, still in the picture?”
Kalugal shook his head. “My men didn’t see her entering the facility since she left for the weekend last Friday, and I confirmed with Roberts that he’d fired her.” He chuckled. “He’s afraid of her.”
“The woman is a piece of work. Do we know what she’s up to?”
Kalugal frowned. “I thought that you were tracking her.”
“If she uses any major airport in the country, our facial recognition software will flag her, and we might assign her a tail if we think it’s worth our trouble. But we couldn’t put anything on her. It would have been detected by the sensors in the facility. Except, she probably doesn’t want Roberts to know what she is doing, and she might take precautions, like wearing specialized eyewear. There are new clear models available that look like prescription glasses.”
Kalugal crossed his arms over his chest. “I wonder what she will do next.”
Kian chuckled. “She might give you some competition. That’s the most profitable way to use her compulsion talent.”
The comment was a little insulting, especially since he was no longer doing that, but Kalugal let it go. “I hope that’s all she will do. Immunes make me uncomfortable.” He smiled. “Except for my wife, of course. Her immunity is actually beneficial to our marriage. I would have hated it if I unintentionally compelled her to do things that she didn’t wish to do.”
Kian arched a brow. “Does that happen to you? I thought that you were in complete control of your talent.”
“I have good control, but not complete. If I get angry or frustrated, my tone occasionally slips into the compulsory range.” He rubbed his chin. “I would love to find out how it works. It must have something to do with sound waves, but I tested mine, and there was nothing special about them.”
“It’s more than that,” Turner said. “Bridget has a theory that compellers are projecting another sort of force field or wave that we can’t detect, and it only hitches a ride on sound waves.”
“Fascinating hypothesis.” Kalugal leaned back, the gears in his head spinning fast in response to Bridget’s idea. “I should have realized that my ability stems from the same place as thralling and shrouding does. It’s just another facet of the same thing, some mysterious brain waves or energy field. Perhaps hitching a ride on sound waves amplifies it, making it more powerful than pure telepathy.”
Turner nodded. “Maybe one day we will discover a method to detect it, and then the paranormal will turn normal. The same way it happened with other inexplicable phenomena when science deciphered them.”
“Speaking of science and sound waves. Lokan came to me with an idea. Personally, I don’t want to get involved, and I don’t think it’s doable, but you might have a different opinion. He thinks that the sound technology that was used against us by the director could be utilized to conquer the island without too many casualties.”
Kian tilted his head. “It’s interesting how the same ideas inspire different responses. I was worried about Navuh discovering the technology and using it against us.”
It hadn’t crossed Kalugal’s mind, but Kian was right. Not only that, given the much smaller size of the village’s population, and that they all lived above ground, it might work better for Navuh than what Lokan had in mind for the island.
“You are right to worry. The island is too big for that sort of an attack, and most of the warriors live underground. But your village is much more vulnerable. I hope that you are working on a defense system.”
“William is on it.”
Kalugal glanced out the window at the treetops swaying gently in the wind. “You have a beautiful place here, but I wonder whether a more secluded location wouldn’t have been better. Perhaps an underground facility.”
“Seclusion has its own challenges. Many of my people work in the city, and the commute is already difficult as it is. Besides, no place on earth is completely safe. Your father’s island is as secluded as it gets, and even though it has taken us a long time, we eventually discovered its location.”
“Because you caught Lokan.”
“In time, we would have figured it out even without Lokan’s help. Technology is progressing rapidly, and Navuh is not keeping up.”
“True. So, what are your thoughts about Lokan’s idea?”
Kian leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “My agenda is different from Lokan’s. He wants to take control of the island, which I don’t think is possible. My agenda is to free the females, human and Dormant, who are trapped there. The noise technology might be enough for what I want to achieve, but not for Lokan’s ambitious goals.”
16
Kian
Not for the first time, Kian was surprised by how freely Kalugal was sharing information with him.
That didn’t mean that the guy had no secrets, though. His cousin only revealed things that he felt it was safe to reveal, which meant that he really had no interest in the island.
The other possibility was that he wanted to check whether Kian would be willing to help Lokan and him take over the place. Even if the brothers managed to disable every warrior on the island with the noise machine, they didn’t have enough men for a mission like that.
Thousands of people lived there, and Kalugal wasn’t a strong enough compeller to take control over everyone at once.
Could Annani do that?
The test she’d successfully conducted included only a couple of hundred immortals, but she’d been able to compel even Kalugal, who was immune to Navuh’s compulsion. It seemed that she was a stronger compeller than Navuh, but the question was whether she could spread her influence over thousands of people, and also how long her compulsion would last.