Evolution

Prologue-2

“This is insane,” the man said.

Closing her eyes, Keli took a deep, calming breath. “Insane,” she said, nodding to the man. “Then perhaps you've been on this planet too long. They say that anyone who stays here goes insane.”

He crossed his arms and stood as still as a statue, hissing at her through his teeth. “Then why are you here?” he growled. “What crime is so great that an Honoured One must flee to this wretched hole?”

“I came to see if the legends are true.”

The man spun around, throwing his hands up as he walked away from her. “Oh, is that all?” he asked, pacing to the other side of the room. “You want to see if the legends are true. You can just suck-”

Keli focused.

The man dropped to his knees, clutching his skull in both hands. A painful squeal escaped his lips. “Stop!” he begged. “Stop! You want to see? I'll show you whatever you want to see, just stop!”

A smile blossomed on Keli's face, and she bowed her head to the man. “Excellent,” she said, striding forward. “Now, tell me everything you've learned from the moment you set foot on this world.”

Denabrian winters were generally mild. Leyria's capitol hugged the western coast of the Iyrian continent, and the stream of warm ocean currents coming up from the tropics generally prevented the weather from dropping below freezing on all but a few days of the year. There was, however, quite a lot of rain.

A deluge pattered against Ben's living room window, thin droplets sliding over the pane and blocking his view of the green front lawn. The line of pine trees at the far end of his property swayed in the wind.

He scanned through the reports Larani Tal had given him, looking for some kind of pattern. It was difficult; there were only three known traitors – Slade, Breslan and Calissa – but he searched for some kind of pattern. Some place where they had all served. Some mutual contact they all shared.

There had to be a connection; conspiracies like this one didn't just unfold ex-nihlo. However, it was extremely difficult to find the common thread. Cal Breslan's record had been shady until about five years ago, when he joined the Denabrian office of the Justice Keepers at Slade's instigation. The man had a list of teachers and former supervisors – most of whom were conveniently dead – and his record claimed that he had received his symbiont on Belos with few witnesses.

Calissa on the other hand…

Her induction ceremony was quite well-documented. Most Keepers received their Nassai after completing their first year of training. It was usually a big affair with lots of pomp and circumstance. He'd seen the video of Calissa kneeling in front of three senior directors who held out a containment unit with a symbiont inside. He still remembered the woman's ecstatic expression as her skin began to glow. That had been ten years ago.

In theory, a Nassai would never allow its host to misuse its power. But Calissa had gotten up to all sorts of mayhem with a casual disregard for human life. So… Had Calissa been rotten from the beginning? Or did something turn her? The symbiont was supposed to have vetted her to see if she would use the power responsibly. Was the Nassai corrupt from the very start? Or…Or…could it be possible that Calissa had somehow switched symbionts, trading in a healthy Nassai for one of these twisted creatures Slade employed?

Knock knock.

“It's open.”

The front door swung open to reveal Larani Tal on his porch, taking shelter under an umbrella. Dressed in green pants and a black coat that dropped to mid-thigh, she was quite fetching with her dark hair pulled back in a bun. “Ben,” she said, stepping through the door. “I see you're reviewing the material I sent you.”

Closing his eyes, Ben pressed the back of his head into the seat cushion. “Well, it's not like I have much else to do,” he muttered, setting the tablet down in his lap. “Thanks for coming by.”

Larani bowed her head, heaving out a deep breath. “Of course,” she said, shutting the door behind her. “Though I would point out that it would be much more efficient to conduct this conversation by teleconference.”

Stretching fists above his head, Ben felt his mouth drop open in a yawn. “You never did learn anything about conspiracies, did you?” he murmured. “You generally don't want to risk someone eavesdropping on your call.

He got up, slipping hands into his pockets, and paced over to the window. The rain just kept splashing against the glass. “Did you speak to the parole officer?” he asked. “Is there any chance they'll let me talk to Darrel?”

He rounded on her.

Larani stood just inside the front door with hands folded over her stomach, refusing to look up at him. “I'm sorry, Ben,” she said softly. “They aren't willing to allow you any off-world contact until you complete your recovery process.”

“Worth a shot.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be; you did your best,” he said, marching across the room. “I actually wanted to talk to you about Nassai.”

A yawn stretched Larani's mouth into a gaping hole before she stifled it with her fist. “Goodness,” she murmured. “It really is contagious. What would you like to know about Nassai?”

Ben crossed his arms, frowning down at himself. “Anything you can tell me,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Specifically, I'd like to know whether or not they can tell each other apart.”

Larani turned her head to stare at the wall, blinking as she considered the question. “I'm not sure,” she replied. “My symbiont can sense the presence of another Nassai, but I have to get within a few feet of the host.”

“What about distinguishing one Nassai from another?”

Larani winced, shaking her head in frustration. “It doesn't work like that,” she said, leaning against the door with her arms folded. “Nassai are fragments of a larger collective consciousness. They aren't individuals.”

“Not at first,” Ben countered. “But they become more individualistic over time as their personalities are shaped by blending with a Keeper. Everything you experience has an effect on the symbiont you carry. That's why Jack's Summer is a little different from Anna's Seth.”

A frown appeared on Larani's face before she smothered it. None of the orthodox Keepers much liked the idea of Jack naming his Nassai, and the fact that Anna had done so as well only made them worry that the trend might catch on. That was how Keepers viewed things. One Nassai was indistinguishable from another. “Why are you asking?” Larani murmured after a moment.

Ben turned his back on her, and marched across the living room with his arms crossed. He paused with the window on his left, and for one brief moment, he could feel the chill coming through the glass. “I have a theory,” he explained. “I've gone over the footage of Calissa receiving her symbiont. It strikes me as odd that Slade would be able to somehow ensure that she received one of the corrupted Nassai.”

“Yes, I thought so too.”

Ben squeezed his eyes shut, a tremor passing through him. “Which is why I don't think that's what happened,” he said, spinning around to face Larani. “I think that at some point, Calissa received a new symbiont.”

Larani stood with fists balled at her sides, her eyes glued to the floor. “You believe that she somehow…swapped Nassai?” The woman sighed as she stepped away from the front door. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? Were I to give up my Nassai, I would die in less than five minutes.”

“And if someone had another symbiont ready to go?”

“It's an interesting theory.”

Ben dropped onto the nearest couch with his hands on his knees, staring down into his own lap. “More than a theory,” he murmured. “Think about it; if what Calissa said is true, then Slade has agents everywhere.”

That made Larani stop in her tracks. After nearly two months of working together, Ben had discovered that his new partner did not like thinking about the prospect of moles in her organization. It was a common problem among Keepers: sometimes they bought into their own press. They were so convinced of their own nobility that they refused to see a conspiracy lurking right under their noses. Now, spies on the other hand…A decade of working in intelligence gave you a healthy cynicism. “All right,” Larani said. “Suppose we grant that you're correct. Slade has dozens of agents among the Keepers.”

“It doesn't make sense that every single one of those traitors would have been his from the moment they first bonded a symbiont. Some would have been brought into the fold after serving for several years. And if we can truly be sure that a Nassai would never condone the misuse of their power…” Ben wasn't so sure of that, but he had no intention of arguing the point. Not with a woman as stubborn as Larani. “Then it stands to reason that many of these people received a corrupted symbiont only after they joined Slade's little cabal of evil.”

“So you're saying…”

“I'm saying that Slade has been gathering recruits slowly over the years,” Ben went on. “When he finds a willing convert, they extract the Nassai that he or she carried and replace it with one of these twisted symbionts.”

Clenching her teeth, Larani shook her head in disgust. “That is a disturbing notion,” she said in a voice dripping with contempt. “It means that the Keepers have truly fallen from grace.”

“It's worse than that,” Ben said. “We don't know how long this shadow organization has existed. It's possible that we're coming up against a faction that has existed within the Justice Keepers from their very inception.”

Saying that out loud made him feel cold inside.

Aamani descended the stairs with her arms folded, her shoulders hunched up as if she wanted to shiver. The stairwell was cool, but hardly chilly now that summer was in full bloom. Still, she hated it. She had come to associate this place with fear.

On the bottom level, she opened a door into a huge parking garage with concrete walls and banks of fluorescent lights in the ceilings. Empty parking spaces were marked off with yellow lines, and the air smelled of gasoline.

Aamani strode forward.

“I was beginning to think you'd stood me up,” a cool, crisp voice said from behind. So, he had been waiting just outside the stairwell door. Somehow, the man always found some new way to ambush her. “I tend to take such things personally.”

Aamani winced, trembling as she drew in a hissing breath. “I'm well aware of the terms of our agreement,” she said, spinning around on her heel. “So, you can rest assured that when I have new information, I will share it.”

Grecken Slade stood next to the door in gray pants and a long black coat that fell to mid-thigh, a coat with silver birds on its high collar. The man's face belonged on a statue, with pronounced cheek bones, tilted eyes and smooth skin. “Still, you've been spending an inordinate amount of time with my enemies.”

Clenching her teeth, Aamani let her head hang, then drew in a hissing breath. “That is called infiltration,” she growled, striding forward. “You might have heard of it. It's how people in my line of work gather information.”

Slade lifted his chin to study her with lips pursed, blinking slowly as he considered that. “Very well,” he said, stepping away from the wall. “What exactly have you learned about Jena Morane's plans?”

This was the part she hated most; in her long career, Aamani had faced more than her fair share of tense situations – the worst of which involved two autonomous robots tearing her people to shreds in a parking garage just like this one – but she had always felt as though she were on equal footing with her opponents. Slade made her feel like an eight-year-old girl trying to challenge a three-hundred-pound man. He couldn't read her thoughts; he wouldn't know that the information she was feeding him was precisely what Jena wanted him to see, but that didn't make her feel any safer. Those dark eyes of his cut deeper than most swords.