The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4) Read online

  The Central Series

  The Academy

  The Anathema

  The Far Shores

  The Outer Dark

  The Church of Sleep (TBA)

  Other Books by the Same Author

  The Night Market

  Unknown Kadath Estates, Volume One:

  Paranoid Magical Thinking

  Unknown Kadath Estates, Volume Two:

  The Mysteries of Holly Diem

  Unknown Kadath Estates, Volume Three:

  The Floating Bridge (TBA)

  For Noah. Gentleman, Scholar, &

  True Friend

  Copyright © 2017 by Zachary Rawlins

  Cover photograph copyright © Christian Lola

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by ROUS Industries.

  Oakland, California

  [email protected]

  978-0-9837501-6-1

  Cover design by Chloe Rawlins

  First Edition

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  Six.

  Seven.

  Eight.

  Nine.

  Ten.

  Eleven

  Twelve.

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  “This is all my fault.”

  Katya looked away briefly, her brow furrowed and her jaw clenched tight. She toyed with the hem of her olive-drab jacket, where she had carefully embedded dozens of sewing needles, and cleared her throat. She crossed her legs, pushed her chair back from the table, and then folded her hands in front of her face. Vivik and Eerie waited in quiet apprehension, while Derrida rolled on to his back, whining softly for attention.

  The club room was sunny and bright, but they were all dressed in layers. The group occupied one corner of the room, sitting at the far end of a table designed to accommodate twenty, surrounded by overflowing backpacks and the detritus of Eerie’s tech setup. The laptop in front of Eerie spilled out reams of monochrome text, and multi-colored LEDs on the face of the wireless router flickered irregularly.

  “We all feel bad,” Vivik suggested. “Doesn’t make it your fault.”

  “Shut up.” Katya’s eyes pinned him into place. “Just…shut the fuck up, okay? You have no idea.”

  Vivik was intimidated into silence, while Eerie watched blankly, mouth slightly ajar. Derrida vocalized loudly, paws twitching above the tan fur of his upturned belly.

  “I don’t mean that as an expression of guilt,” Katya continued, shaking her head. “I mean it literally. I started this whole fucking nightmare – though what I wanted was something else entirely. Guess you know all about that, Eerie.”

  Eerie nodded, the faintest traces of a blush dancing across her cheeks and then disappearing before Vivik could be sure he had seen it.

  “Wait,” Vivik interjected. “Do you know each other’s stories already?”

  Eerie shook her head, while Katya winced.

  “Not exactly,” Katya clarified. “There are points of interconnection. If you stop interrupting, you might learn something.”

  “Sorry,” Vivik said, making a meaningless adjustment to the compression straps that crossed the backpack at his feet. “Shutting up.”

  Katya looked out the window, which offered a view of the upper half of two stately broad-leafed elms, and the blue sky that could be seen from the Academy on nice days, but was invisible to the rest of Central. She put her boots on the table and clutched her knees to her chest.

  “I didn’t have a lot of friends, growing up,” Katya said, her tone kept carefully neutral. “Hazard of the trade, I suppose, particularly when your parents ship you off to your cousin’s family so they can focus on more promising siblings. I had Timor, obviously, and Ana – but you can’t really call Ana a friend. I mean, she’s my fairy fucking godmother, I love her to death, but she has to maintain her reserve. It’s like trying to be friends with God. Love and respect, sure, but I can’t call her up to bitch about school or boys, you know?”

  Vivik did not know. Anastasia Martynova was Katya’s cousin, and the inevitable head of the Black Sun Cartel. Vivik respected Anastasia – even had grudging admiration for her authoritarian-but-effective management skills – but he couldn’t conceive of forming a friendship with someone so Machiavellian.

  “I knew some people, before my parents sent me away,” Katya continued, her gaze fixed on the window. “A few in Kiev and Moscow, and some in the states. Anastasia didn’t move in the same circles, so I lost contact with most of them. I did manage to hang on to one person, though. I suppose you could call her my best friend, though I don’t remember us ever talking about that sort of thing. She was one of dozens of cousins, but super distant. I only saw her at the big family events when I was kid. Once I started moving in Anastasia’s world, though, I started to see her more often – turns out her family was a sort of rival of the Martynova family; one of the Great Families, if you keep track of that sort of thing. They were part of the core of the Black Sun, and in the hierarchy of the cartel, they ranked just below the Martynova family.”

  “Hold on,” Vivik said, forgetting himself. “Are we talking about the Rostov Cartel?”

  Katya remained focused on the window, offering the slightest of nods. Eerie paused in the act of adjusting the knit cap that she had made for Alex, which partially obscured her unruly blue hair, and looked confused.

  “Who is that?” Eerie asked. “Rostov?”

  Vivik realized that he had interrupted again, and glanced at Katya in a panic. She hardly reacted, however, just resting her head on her folded knees and staring forlornly out the window.

  “You tell her, Vivik,” Katya said quietly. “I’m suddenly really tired of talking.”

  Vivik opened his mouth, and then hesitated. When it became clear that Katya was paying them no attention, he turned to Eerie and began unconsciously using the low and friendly tone he favored during tutoring sessions with underclassman at the Academy.

  “The Rostov Cartel was important – second or third in the Black Sun, depending on who you ask. They contended for cartel leadership against Anastasia’s father, decades ago. It was the most bitterly contested selection in the Black Sun’s recent history. In the end, the Rostov Cartel was outmaneuvered and forced to submit to the Martynova family. Naturally, there was a certain amount of resentment...”

  Katya cackled, but said nothing more. Vivik hesitated momentarily, then pushed onward.

  “...which was assumed to guarantee another disputed selection when our generation came of age.” Vivik wondered if his explanation made any sense to the blank-faced Changeling, but her dilated eyes offered no clues. “The older families in the Black Sun generally preferred the Rostov family. A lot of smart people assumed that one of the Rostov children would eventually contend with Josef’s eldest son for leadership of the Black Sun. The
Martynova family considered the Rostov Cartel their most dangerous rival, and there was a shadow conflict between the families for years.”

  Vivik glanced at Katya for confirmation, but her attention was focused on the window, and the blue sky beyond it.

  “Something must have gone wrong.” Vivik watched Katya out of the corner of his eye. “The conflict went hot. There was an assassination attempt on Josef Martynova that resulted in numerous casualties, including his own wife. The Black Sun went into lockdown, and everyone prepared for war. Then the Rostov family disappeared.”

  Eerie had relocated to the floor, where she sat cross-legged, all the better to give Derrida’s belly the attention she felt it deserved. She looked at Vivik, obviously puzzled.

  “Disappeared? That isn’t how I remember…”

  “Just gone,” Vivik said, suffering a bit of the helplessness he felt any time he was asked a question to which he did not know the answer. “One day they were there, poised to start a civil war within the Black Sun, and then the next day the whole cartel was gone.”

  “Not the whole cartel,” Katya corrected, her voice cold and clinical. “There was a survivor.”

  “Survivor of what?” Vivik asked, unable to keep a lid on his curiosity. He would have bet that most of Central would have killed to hear the fate of the Rostov Cartel. “What happened to them?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Katya asked hollowly. “The Martynova family exterminated them. In one night.”

  “How could that happen? The Rostov Cartel was supposed to have been quite powerful in their own right...”

  “I don’t know the specifics. I was a kid when this happened, Vivik. Even if I did know,” Katya said, glancing curtly in Vivik’s direction, “I wouldn’t tell you. It’s not relevant to our purpose, and I’m not here to satisfy your curiosity.”

  “Sorry, I just...”

  “Okay, seriously, shut up.” Katya spun about in her chair so that she faced them. Her tone was harsh, but the expression on her face looked more like embarrassment than anger. “You need to understand that what I’m about to tell you will burden both of you for the rest of your lives. There are all sorts of powers involved, and any one of them would have your families tortured and killed if they thought it might make you talkative.”

  “I don’t have a family,” Eerie said, toying with a tear in the white canvas of her Converse All-Stars. “I guess my mom is probably still around, but I don’t really care that much, and besides...”

  “You shut up, too, Eerie.”

  “Okay.” Eerie turned her attention back to Derrida. “Just saying.”

  “I’m just saying – you don’t want to know what I am about to tell you.” Katya stood and paced across the length of the room nervously. “Don’t blame me when this shit bites you in the ass, okay? It’s haunted me my entire life, and I imagine it’ll get me killed one of these days. Probably you as well.”

  “That’s...grim.”

  “Yeah,” Eerie agreed, kneeling to inspect the code scrolling across the laptop monitor. “Maybe we should start with my story? It’s more cheerful. Nobody gets killed!”

  “Your story intersects with mine,” Katya reminded her. “Your actions had consequences, Eerie. People died, you just didn’t know ‘em personally.”

  “Oh. I see.” Eerie tapped the space bar a few times, scrolling text reflected in the enormous blacks of her eyes. “I’m making a lot of mistakes, aren’t I?”

  “It’s okay,” Katya said, sighing. “Just let me tell it, okay?”

  Derrida uncurled from the floor, shook himself out, and then sniffed the air a few times with the manner of a sommelier inhaling the fumes of a ripened vintage. After a single bark, he hurried over and nudged Eerie’s arm with his large, bony head. Eerie paused and exchanged a long stare with the dog, while Vivik and Katya watched in puzzled amusement. Derrida spun around twice, then dashed beneath the table, emerging next to the club room door. He crouched there and growled, rumbling like an idled engine. Katya turned her attention to the window, pressing herself against the wall to avoid becoming a target while examining the grounds below the building for new arrivals.

  “Make yourself useful, Vivik,” Katya commanded, peering down at the entrance. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, right,” Vivik mumbled, adjusting his turban and blushing with embarrassment. “Let’s have a look, then, shall we?”

  Vivik closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his temples. The air in front of him shimmered, and then dozens of tiny windows, bright and perfect, sprang into being about him. Vivik sighed and rested part of his weight on the table for a moment, before returning his attention to his Vigil Protocol. Katya abandoned her post to join him.

  “Wow, Vivik!” Katya grinned at him. “You’ve been practicing.”

  “I think some of it is Alex’s catalyst effect,” Vivik reminded her. “I can feel a difference. What about you?”

  Her expression wavered briefly, before solidifying into annoyance.

  “What’s your problem, Vivik? Can you please focus?”

  “Right, of course,” Vivik said sheepishly. “My bad.”

  The Vigil Protocol was the culmination of Vivik’s prodigious mathematical abilities as well as the manifestation of his protocol. From the day of his Activation, Vivik had the ability to open a silent and invisible window on the activities of anyone with whom he was personally acquainted. Vivik truly discovered the utility of the Vigil Protocol, however, when he began an intensive study of data systems, variability, and prioritization.

  Out of a cluster of hundreds of points of view, Vivik focused his attention on a handful.

  Amid an assemblage of prominent members of the Committee-at-Large, Anastasia Martynova listened attentively at her father’s side, seemingly amused by whatever she heard. She wore a black dress, as was her habit, with broad skirts, petticoats, and elaborate crimson needlework decorating the bodice. Part of her exquisitely composed and youthful visage was concealed by a paper fan, which she made a half-hearted attempt to use.

  The window shrank away.

  In a room Vivik did not recognize, Alice Gallow stood on a man’s neck, pressing his face into the stained concrete floor. Another tattooed man gripped the prostrate man’s head, eyes pressed closed. Alice Gallow grinned like this was her proudest moment.

  The view shuffled.

  Mr. Windsor was in his office, a room in the Administration building that Vivik had visited once before. It looked almost exactly as Vivik had last seen it– walls inset with bookshelves, filled and overflowing with leather bound books; an antique desk with heavy carved legs, the desktop covered in paper, Post-It notes, and engraved metal pens, a small laptop perched precariously above all that; a perpetual cloud of tobacco smoke hovering in the corners of the room, produced by the elegantly curved pipe that Mr. Windsor smoked. The teacher appeared lost in thought, his chair reclined and his hands behind his head.

  Katya caught his arm, craning her neck to get a better of view of Mr. Windsor as the window diminished.

  “Hold on,” she urged, squeezing Vivik’s elbow. “That one.”

  “Mr. Windsor?”

  The window swelled in prominence.

  “Yeah.” Katya studied the window with a faraway expression. “Huh.”

  “What?”

  Vivik watched Mr. Windsor smoke and stare at the ceiling of his office, bewildered by what had caught the assassin’s attention. Katya’s expression was distant. Vivik waited for her to explain as long as he could stand to do so, his anxiety rising with Derrida’s steadily increasing growl.

  “Well?”

  Katya hushed him with a gesture.

  “Give me a second.”

  He gave her a minute. She showed no signs of explaining herself.

  “Come on, Katya! What are you seeing that I’m not? All I see is our homeroom teacher smoking a pipe – which is technically against Academy rules, but not the sort of thing we’re concerned with right now.”

 
; Katya shook her head slowly.

  “Is that all?” She squinted at the window, then shrugged. “You’re right. My mistake.”

  “What?”

  “Thought I saw something,” Katya said, punctuating the statement with a second shrug. “I was wrong. Carry on.”

  Vivik stared at her for a moment in exasperated puzzlement before returning to his windows, aware that if Katya did not intend to tell him something, then she simply would not. Mr. Windsor’s window shrunk and drifted to the periphery of the cluster while another came into view.

  Rebecca Levy was striding across the quad in front of the Administration building with a furious expression. The students who were enjoying the sun or eating lunch quickly found somewhere else to be, and something else to occupy their attention, though Vivik couldn’t say whether that was a manifestation of her empathic abilities or a sudden outbreak of good sense. Vivik felt a rush of pity for whomever might be the target of her legendary – albeit rarely seen – temper.

  Then Vivik realized which direction she was heading in, and his stomach wound into a knot.

  “Oh, shit!” Katya groaned next to him. “She looks pissed, doesn’t she?”

  Vivik nodded queasily.

  “And she’s coming here, isn’t she?”

  He nodded again, although Katya had stopped paying attention to him. The tremble in Vivik’s hands was transmitted to the cloud of hovering windows, their precise boundaries shimmering irregularly.

  “What do we do?”

  Katya scrambled for her bag.

  “We run,” Katya said grimly. “We’ve got a couple minutes. Try and get some distance on her. Buy some time for Eerie to...uh, Eerie? How much time do you need to send us to the Outer Dark, anyway?”

  “I guess we could leave anytime,” Eerie said, absorbed in contemplation of a small window near the edge of Vivik’s cloud. “I’m all set.”

  Katya missed a beat.