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  Mitsuru could read them, but she wasn’t great at it. She’d gotten used to the Etheric network, and its gleaming, immaculate simulations. But even in this antiquated format, she could recognize the overly precise cuts and joins of manufactured probability.

  “What does this mean?”

  “It’s weird to see you so emotional, Mitsuru,” Rebecca remarked. “Something about this incident bother you?”

  Mitsuru shook her head, alarmed at the obviousness of her lack of composure.

  “They must’ve hacked it, Mitzi. Someone sorted through the probabilities, and then eliminated undesirable outcomes, one by one, channeling reality down to one specific set of extremely probable circumstances,” Alistair explained patiently.

  “So we can assume that every aspect of the scenario – Mitsuru, the Weir, the kid, North’s arrival, the whole deal – all intentional. It must have taken a lot of effort,” Rebecca mused, leaning over the chart, “but the manipulation is pretty obvious, once you take a hard look at it. This couldn’t have been arranged too far in advance, or it wouldn’t be quite so crude.”

  “Or they didn’t know how to do it very well,” Mitsuru pointed out, “maybe they did the best job they could, and it just wasn’t that great.”

  “It’s possible,” Alistair allowed, eyeing Mitsuru. “You have a hunch or something Mitsuru?”

  “Nothing that solid,” she replied, shrugging. “Nothing specific. But, it is the other option. You’ve to admit it doesn’t look very professional.”

  Alistair looked at the probability chart again and scratched his head.

  “Whatever the case,” Rebecca said, crushing out her cigarette in the ash tray, “I still think that the North Cartel is an excellent candidate for ‘they’. Have you had a chance to talk with Mister North yet?”

  “No,” said Alistair, shaking his head, “I don’t think I’ll get to any time soon, either. Gaul’s taken an interest, and he takes precedence. I think he’ll make a formal Inquiry. Maybe even call for an Audit.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Gaul thinks that this whole thing was a trap,” he said, his eyes on the desk in front of him, “to draw out Mitsuru, to get her to violate the Agreement somehow, and thereby embarrass the Auditors.”

  Mitsuru could only look at the floor, her cheeks burning.

  “Don’t get so down, Mitzi,” Alistair said encouragingly. “If they chose you as a weak link to expose us, then they chose poorly. Unless I’m missing something important, we come out of this looking pretty good.”

  “He’s right, Mitsuru,” Rebecca said slowly. “So Audits looks good, and whoever put this together, assuming we’ve read this whole thing right, comes off pretty badly. For something that must have taken tremendous effort to orchestrate, it sure didn’t pay.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got to admit, I’m skeptical that’s the case.” Alistair leaned back in his chair, and put his sneakers up on one corner of the desk. “I think Gaul’s got it wrong. I think we have to assume that whatever happened, it all happened because the responsible party wanted it that way. I’m not seeing this whole thing as an operation gone wrong.”

  Rebecca looked at him doubtfully, but didn’t say anything.

  “Until I hear otherwise, I’m assuming that the same person was responsible for the whole thing. Mitsuru being ordered there, the Weir, the probability tampering, the kid deciding to take a walk in the park.” Alistair smiled thinly. “At this point, I’d be tempted to lay the JFK assassination at their doorstep, too.”

  “You don’t know that,” Rebecca objected, “this whole thing could have been the result of competing factions, pursuing different agendas…”

  “I don’t think that’s the case,” Alistair said, frowning and studying the chart. “I don’t see any sign of struggle or opposition, the manipulation looks blunt to me. The structure is haphazard, but it’s congruous – I think this is the work of a single party. Even if it is clumsy work.”

  “Of the major cartels, who has the resources for this kind of probability manipulation?”

  “The Black Sun,” Alistair said definitively, “Meier-Stoldt. Thule. North. Lao Xhin. I can’t think of anyone else, but there might be one or two others.”

  “Which one of them,” Rebecca asked, plowing onward while glaring at Alistair, “is it that you think is this clumsy? Which cartel has this kind of power, but uses it with all the grace of an untrained child?”

  “None,” Alistair admitted. “I don’t get it either, Becca, but it’s the only conclusion that makes any sense to me…”

  Rebecca pulled another cigarette from the pack on the desk, and lit up, apparently oblivious to Alistair’s disapproval. She drew on it with obvious satisfaction, and then blew smoke at the ceiling.

  “Maybe we’re coming at this from the wrong direction.” Rebecca said, turning to face them again, suddenly animated. “Why do you think it was that they wanted Mitsuru? What’s so special about her?”

  Mitsuru’s throat tightened, as if she’d done something to be ashamed of. It took an effort to make certain her response didn’t sound defensive.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  Alistair looked legitimately confused.

  “Well, look at the whole setup,” Rebecca said, leaning over the chart to point with her cigarette. “I see two clear points of intention – make sure the kid needs a rescue, and make sure you’re the one who does the rescuing. I heard about the catalyst thing.”

  Mitsuru looked at the bandages on her hand speculatively.

  “It was weird,” she said softly, “I’ve never felt anything like it. I don’t even know where I got the idea do to all those things, much less how I knew I could do them.”

  “Remind me to try it sometime,” Rebecca said dryly. “Anyway, we know why the kid is important, or at least we’ve got an idea why he’d be important to someone. But why was it so important that you be the one to save him, Mitsuru?”

  “Maybe his power as catalyst is limited,” Alistair speculated. “Maybe it had to be someone like Mitsuru…”

  “What?” Rebecca crowed. “You mean their plot hinged on the presence of a dangerously unbalanced lunatic, with designs on the Audits department?”

  Alistair grimaced at the sound, as the door slammed shut behind the fleeing Mitsuru.

  “You’re too hard on her, you know,” he said grumpily.

  “And you’re too easy on her – at worst, I’m hurting her feelings. What do you think you’re risking, codling Mitsuru like that?” Rebecca slapped her hand against the table angrily. “Look, I love the girl, I always have, and I died a little when they put her away, you know? But, they were right to do it. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

  Alistair nodded slowly, as if he were half-asleep.

  “She’s dangerous, Alistair, dangerous to everyone around her. Whatever they did to her while she was gone, it didn’t help. I caught her a few minutes ago, trying to operate her Black Protocol. It was pretty gruesome. She can’t control it, she never could – you cannot put much faith in her good nature, Alistair.”

  Rebecca leaned close to him, deadly serious. The mood was so rare on her that he had to look away.

  “What would you have me do?”

  “I support you in this rehabilitation project, Alistair, wholeheartedly. Mitsuru is my friend, whether she deserves the chances she’s getting or not. But, I have to know that you are going to make her do this. You let her fail once before, Alistair,” Rebecca said bluntly, hopping down from the desk. “I haven’t forgotten that.”

  “Neither have I,” Alistair said, his face ashen.

  “She was my best friend, Alistair. You guys were just fucking. It isn’t the same thing, so don’t act like you understand. You were her mentor, and none of this ever should’ve happened, because you should’ve put an end to it before it ever had a chance to become an issue.”

  Alistair gave her only the barest of nods, his expression grim.

  Rebecca opened his off
ice door, and then hesitated there, silhouetted against the light streaming in from the window in the next room.

  “I should have killed you then, but you were too bright to lose.” Rebecca’s voice was soft, but deadly serious. “You promised me that you would fix this, and I’m holding you to that, Alistair. You fuck this up for Mitsuru and this time whatever happens to her, I’m gonna make damn sure happens to you, too. You should remember that.”

  She closed the door quietly behind her without looking back.

  Nine

  Alex tried to discreetly wipe the palms of his hands on the sides of his jeans. He was more than nervous – he felt like an animal on display at the zoo. He was sitting on an overstuffed leather couch on one side of the crowded office, and arrayed in a rough semi-circle facing him were Michael, an attractive woman wearing an Angel’s t-shirt named Rebecca, and two men he hadn’t met before, a pleasant-looking blond man named Alistair, and an older guy named Gaul, who had Mitsuru’s strange red eyes and an even icier demeanor. It was cold in the room, since Alistair and Gaul had insisted that Rebecca open a window if she was going to smoke. All of them seemed to have nothing better to do than stare at him while Rebecca ‘prepared’.

  Whatever Rebecca’s preparations were, from where Alex sat, it looked quite a bit as if she’d gone to sleep, half-smiling, her head cocked to one side, as if she were about to say something.

  “Alex, right?” Alistair said his name oddly, as if it were in doubt. “He doesn’t look like much.”

  “Hey!” Alex objected, confused. “I’m right here, you know.”

  “Alistair,” Rebecca said warningly, eyes still closed.

  “Well, he doesn’t, anyone can see that,” Alistair said sullenly, folding his arms across his chest and ignoring Alex’s defiant glare.

  “Don’t be a brat,” Rebecca scolded, then opened her eyes and smiled at Alex. “Just ignore him, hon, okay?”

  Alex managed a nod. He was now feeling pretty resentful, on top of everything else. Who in the hell was this Alistair guy anyway? And why did he look so disappointed in him? He hadn’t even had the chance to do anything yet!

  “We should start soon,” Gaul said. “I don’t want this to become public knowledge, and the longer all of us spend in the same room, the greater the likelihood that someone will notice.”

  “Alex, stick with us for a minute longer,” Michael said, nodding at him. “Gaul, you know that these things can’t be rushed.”

  “It’s cool,” Rebecca said, kicking her sandals off. “I’m ready anyway. Alex, I bet you don’t mind if we skip the introductions, right? We already know each other.”

  “Yeah, but, why is that? Why do I feel like I know you?”

  “Empathy, Alex,” Rebecca said, walking across the office to sit down next to him on the couch. “I’m an empath. My name is Rebecca.”

  Alex flinched and shifted away from her a bit. The crushed leather cushions seemed equally uncomfortable no matter what part of the couch he sat on.

  “Are you making me trust you right now, or something?”

  Rebecca chuckled good-naturedly.

  “I don’t think you would have flinched away from me if I was making you trust me, Alex,” she said, amused. “It’s actually the other way around. As an empath, I inadvertently make my own emotional state public knowledge. So you feel like you know me,” she said, shrugging, “because on an unconscious level, you already do. Your reptile brain already knows everything it needs to know about me. You trust me because I am trustworthy, Alex. You like me because I am extremely likable.”

  Alistair snorted.

  “Keep ignoring him,” Rebecca told Alex, patting him on the knee. “I’ve already told you what you need to know about me, Alex, down where it matters. You know that, right?”

  Alex nodded slowly.

  “I do, actually,” he said, with a touch of uncertainty.

  Rebecca smiled at him approvingly, pulling her hair back into a quick ponytail and wrapping it in a rubber band. Alex couldn’t quite figure her out – her accent was definitely Southern Californian, and she looked a bit Latino, but there was something about the way she spoke, something a bit exotic about her appearance that he couldn’t place. She was right, though – he found her immediately likable, and utterly without guile in her frankness. Also, she was pretty, but she didn’t make him nervous at all, even when she sat close to him on the couch, like she was right now, even in front of the strangely intense audience that sat directly across the room, staring at them as if they expected to be entertained.

  Actually, Alex thought, that part might be the whole empath thing.

  “Okay, that’s good. I’m sure you have a whole bunch of questions, and I promise I’ll do my best to answer them later. But, if you are okay with it, I’d like to move on to our main business.” Rebecca folded her legs underneath her, Indian-style, so that she faced him on the couch, her bare toes pressing against the leg of his jeans. “Michael has told you that you are special, right?”

  Alistair made another coughing, choking noise, but neither Alex nor Rebecca acknowledged it.

  “I guess so,” Alex said reluctantly. “I’ve got some kind of power, right?”

  “More like potential, right now,” Rebecca said, nodding. “And today, I’d like to activate those abilities, Alex. I’d like to wake up that power of yours, and find out what you can do. And I’d like to help make it possible for you to use it. What do you think about that?”

  Gaul glanced irritably at his watch, but didn’t dare interrupt. To the best of his knowledge, Rebecca had never lost her temper with anyone at the Academy. But that didn’t keep Gaul, along with the rest of the campus, from treading very lightly when it came to potentially upsetting Rebecca. That was probably a side effect of her empathic abilities, he thought, and not something to actually be worried about. But he didn’t plan to find out by hurrying her.

  Not that it seemed as if it mattered, anyway. Rebecca was talking to Alex in a calm, reasonable voice, her face open and reassuring, and her hand resting casually over his own. Neither of them seemed to be aware of the staring onlookers, crowded into the small office.

  “I’m a bit scared,” Alex said, surprised and a bit embarrassed by his honesty. “But, I want to know whatever there is to know.”

  Rebecca lifted his hand up, and clutched it between her own, smiling beatifically at him.

  “I have your permission, then, right?” She asked the boy, his eyes already drooping. “I promise to take good care of you.”

  “Okay,” Alex said, his speech a bit slurred, his eyes half-closed, “okay.”

  Rebecca smiled and squeezed his hand, then set it neatly down on his thigh. She reached forward and ran one hand across his face, gently closing his eyes.

  “Would you like to lie down, Alex?” Rebecca asked, speaking so softly that Gaul had to lean forward to hear it. She patted her crossed legs cheerfully. “You can use my lap.”

  Alex obediently lay his head down in her lap, facing up toward the ceiling, his legs bent over the arm of the couch and dangling a few inches off the ground. His eyes were closed, and his face had an almost disturbing calm to it, as if he had been washed unnaturally clean of all concerns, an involuntary Buddha. Rebecca bent over him, her eyes shut, one arm draped across his chest, her other hand pressed against his forehead.

  “Okay,” she said, her voice sounding very animated. “Okay, he’s down and I’m in. And, oh my, this is very strange…”

  “Rebecca? Is something wrong? Are you alright?”

  Rebecca nodded shortly, her face flushed and red, her brow wet with sweat.

  “Yeah, I’m okay, but touching this kid, you understand,” she said, breathing heavily. “It’s incandescent, the effect he has. This is a tremendous power. We’re going to need to be very careful about who he comes in contact with, here at the Academy. I can barely manage it.”

  Gaul and Michael both shifted in their seats and leaned forward, while Alistair rolled his eyes.<
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  “What’s his story? What makes Alexander tick?”

  “Guilt.” Rebecca’s reply was prompt, definite. “Barely contained anger. A tremendous sense of unfairness, resentment of the most general kind. Tremendous guilt.”

  “Did he actually kill his family?”

  “She’s an empath, Michael,” Alistair said scornfully. “All she knows is how he feels about it. You want to find out something about that kid, ask me.”

  Gaul pushed his glasses back up on his brow, glancing over at Alistair disapprovingly.

  “That’s enough, Alistair,” Gaul said mildly.

  Alistair gave Gaul a challenging glare, but settled back in his chair.

  “Did he kill them?”

  Michael continued his questions with an almost placid patience.

  “Hard to say,” Rebecca admitted, biting her lower lip. “He certainly thinks so, but I can’t find any specific memory of it. Maybe Alistair’s right. Maybe you need a better telepath.”

  “Personally, I’m not so much concerned as to what he did or didn’t do,” Gaul said mildly, “but rather how he feels about it now. How likely it is that we are going to have a reoccurrence of that sort of behavior?”

  “Well, he only had one family, right?”

  “This is weird, guys. I think I’m going to need Alistair’s help after all,” Rebecca said, her brow furrowed with concern. “Because unless I’m reading this wrong, this kid has been tampered with. Extensively.”

  Alistair stopped pouting and gave Gaul an inquiring look, getting a small nod in response. Alistair closed his eyes, his hands hanging loosely between his legs, as his entire body went slack. There was a long silence, while Michael and Gaul looked from Rebecca to Alistair and then back.

  “She’s right,” Alistair affirmed muddily, his face creased with effort. “This kid’s been manipulated. Tampering doesn’t even begin to describe the extent of it. Every prominent memory has been altered – maybe even manufactured. The manipulation is so widespread, I don’t even know how to make a determination between what’s genuine and what’s been messed with.”