The Book of Rai: SoH Ch. 01

"I need to get out of the business."

"We won."

"Yeah... To think. Blades. And we won."

Carter watched as the wall mounted camera adjusted. 'Those are supposed to be stationary.' it twisted towards him seductively, almost. He allowed himself a grin, smirking at first then knowingly, enemies closer than friends, or so they say.





That smile had made women of all ages in the Village melt. Somber but hopeful, pressed, but determined. Intuition, knowing that we were watching... she couldn't stop the smile from spreading on herself. It didn't hurt that the Mizarat he'd killed was a blood traitor and a rogue. It gave him a fan group in both houses. Political brilliance. His eyes had focus, depth... she wanted a closer look more than her next breath, a reality to know instead of an image to chase. She'd never been the kind of girl to fall for a trend, but there was something in those eyes... She let a hand fall slowly over her ivory waist, trailing over her taught stomach inching south with the slowest of motions. Like electric charges she could feel each hair she brushed, by wind, by touch. A quick scan of the deck let her know she was alone, the crew and the "crew" making last minutes preps for the port authority. More relaxed, she began to draw circles on her stomach, spiraling downward over her porcelain snow skin. Her bikini bottoms clung to her sex, the moisture drawing the cloth and putting but the slightest of pressures on her lips. The breath of the wind caught her hardening nipples as the breath of lovers, lost. They stiffened under unexpected care as they had under the few who had come before. Former suitors, lovers, men. She could picture them, few but none too distinct, tall, dark... handsome. Her peach toned areolas, almost visible through the white top that seemed to strangle her C cup mounds, caught her eyes as she drifted down her frame. She circled her slit, brushing where her lips met her legs, just circling over the white silky material. She cast in her mind a vaguery, a syndicate for them. He was their representative, and he would have to do. His touch was flush with hers, was hers. She was dripping wet, more from her own ministrations then from her poor fantasy, but wet all the same. The boat rocked well, even for its size. She knew it would help.

She slipped one finger below the material, over what remained of her abdomen. Separating her lips already slick with her moisture the intruder breached slow, just the nail, just the knuckle, and halfway to the next, her body needed more. She sighed as the base of her finger touched her entrance. She began slow steady strokes, even with her breathing. Her thumb levered on her clit as she switched between circling her pearl and penetrating herself in time with the waves. Her excitement built, her breath with it and her strokes with her breath. The heat of her body doubled quickly. She closed her eyes, breathing ragged. She moved her other hand to swirl more firmly around the button, the nub of flesh that gave her so much pleasure. She gyrated her hips, squirming under her own attention. Her back arched off the cushion, the ocean breeze wrapping her legs and stinging her sex. It drove her on. Her fingers flew as she leaped ever closer to the summit, tingles, chills, lightning and fire, she was alive in herself. She felt the edge of her abyss and backed off, and closed, backed off and closed searching for something to send her over, a memory of a lover, a touch once felt, her eyes fluttering around the deck and back into her head she discarded them more quickly than they came to mind and then there he was, cheeky smile peering into her from the file left open on the deck. She felt the strings holding her together snap, she rocketed high, her muscles clenching iron around her fingers, pulsing through her frame, twisting and vibrating on the plastic strips. Her vision went dim as her capsule of sentience floated back to earth. Parachutes, warmth, and a smile.





"Monsieur, your change."

The baguette was warm, like pleated silk and captured cloud. He leaned right to the sandstone pillar, cool in the shade and content in tearing off pieces of breakfast. The girl behind the counter called to the back in a loud but eloquent French that she was taking a break.

"Imbécile." She huffed as she thrust into the street. Carter caught her eyes and raised an eyebrow in question. "Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't... Not you." Her tousled black hair was shoulder length, mousy but contained. Olive skinned clashed with the silk white of her top, cut clear from pastel shorts and a baker's apron. Flour had patched itself to her legs, shaped like thin pistons, her shorts, covering a well-toned ass, her apron, hung low to accentuate the ruffled fabric and the cleavage beneath it. A sprinkle of flour dusted her nose. He tucked the memory away for later. Probably a runner, she'd know the roads. Maybe she could show me around?

"Good to know. I'm Carter, you?"

"Josephine. You got a smoke?"

"Nah, but I've got a light."

"Fair enough." She gingerly extracted a beat up pack of Marlboro's from her cheek pocket. He took a peak at the pockets and shape beneath them, admiring the movement of her accidental sway before he dropped his hands, pressing his sides. He tossed her a plastic Bic, glad he'd bought the afterthought.

"Sooo, American?" She eyed him up and down, a smile curling behind the smoke.

"What gave it away? The accent, or the rugged good looks?"

"Hah, a bit of both. Marseille, she is beautiful, but we don't get tourists this time of year. Too hot."

Carter paused, considering the bait. "I'm here on business. You? Local or...?"

"Something like that. My parents... I'm Catalan. You understand?"

"Yes. Proud in heritage, unique, fire, something like that."

Her grinned waxed sarcastic in the morning shade. "Oh? You know so much. Please tell me more."

"I'd prefer to listen. You're right though, I'm new in town. Looking for a bit of a tour actually. Do you... get off work?"

"No, I live here, sleep in the oven. A neuf heures, ici. I'll give you that tour." The smokescreen couldn't hide her eyes, darting as they did from his legs to his chest, his arms, and his shoulders. He joked about it, but he was good looking. Well-dressed to. Worth her time. "I've got to get back." She dropped the stick with disdain, knowing she should quit. It died quietly, under her heel. "Carter," She said, his eyes flashing from the harbor to hers, "Don't be late." She twisted in the shadow, crossing the doorframe and returning to soot and flower.





Carter tossed what remained of his bread, and headed to the dock.







"Monsieur, the records you speak of do not exist. I would give them to you, but I do not have them."

"You don't know what's going into and out of your port?"

"Only what is supposed to come in, customs checks the ships and we make a list at the end of the day. There are many ports here. It is Marseille."

"Fine. I will need the port authority on standby. Call customs and tell them to have eyes up."

"May I ask why?"





"Because I said so." His titanic frame, steel against the clinging t-shirt, midnight on his ebon skin turned and broached the door. He flicked the metal disk out of his pocket, flipping it like a coin in the air. The cuts, grooves, indents in the disk caught the wind and with a note clenched in teeth, it hit a harmonic. The disk magnetized off the iron in his blood, hovering an inch above his flattened hand. He spoke clearly, once. "Carter T. Craig."





It vibrated thrice in his hand before growing lava hot. The message was clear, beyond tactical support the port authority of Marseille was a liability. The only information they had would be garnered from previously gathered intelligence or seen firsthand, with their own eyes. Luckily, approval had just been given. The dive team was ready, re-breathers equipped, they'd be an hour under before the bubbles were detected. He scanned the shore for Craig, ensuring he was in place.

"Go." The fishing boat pushed smoothly off the white stone beach cliff side, the pusher jumping gracefully in, despite his wetsuit. "Six minutes to dive. 15 on approach. 15 to scan. 15 back. We find nothing, we find nothing." He would never see the material, no matter what it was. The scans would go to command, they'd be interpreted, autopsied, and sent back to him sewed up for closed casket use in his next op.

"No sound under there. Visibility is silty for the Med, but otherwise crystal. They'll be expecting us, but the port authority won't be. Don't hide from them, the port will believe you're with the vessel and will tie them up with questions about divers in the water. They can't very well shoot you out of the water under custom's nose. Watch the propeller, watch your blood/nitrogen." He tucked his hair, windswept and sandy blonde under his mask. Too warm for a hood down there, or so he'd learned on his first day. He'd been down for every cargo ship over the past three days, running the dive tables like a crack addict, trying to figure out just which dose would kill him. Raichel would be waiting for him at the hotel. Fluffy white robe lining voluptuous curves, a full ass and perky upturned breasts capped in dark nipples. He'd role one in his mouth before the day was out, have her taste the salt on his body. Carter had told him once,





"Focus on the sunshine, rather than the shade." Raichel, was his sunshine. Light, in the darkness.







The binoculars stuck to his eyes as he traced the ship deck, the neoprene sucking at his skin. Carter was running out of ships. He'd been told this was one to watch, for the fact of its nondescript nature. It was carrying weapons, bought and paid for by the French Government. Every crew member triple checked, so at minimum there would be a few Vanguard on it, maybe stowed away in the hull. The deck showed a lone beach chair, the kind of empty that seemed to say it had never been filled. Customs pulled up in a powerboat to examine the cargo, tap crates, take bribes and move on with their day. There was one who didn't look right. Where the others were windswept and swarthy, he was pale and hulking. Bald, skin taught over a wide frame and pulsating veins, his vascularity was exceeded only by how out of place he looked on a sun beat deck on the Mediterranean. Carter noted it for later, could be a welcoming party. They stepped out and below deck, staying for what seemed far longer than the standard search. He began to turn, sliding his binoculars to his side before... "Hold on, where's the big one?" The pale horseman was gone from the group, so obvious an omission he nearly missed it. Observe and report. He noted the absence as the ship passed where he stood on the pier, no longer needing aid to closely scope the deck. When it passed, he missed the woman in white, as she stepped out and onto the deck. She marked the back of his head with a silent target, remembering her pursuer.

'Wrong, guy, wrong boat.' He thought, turning away and back to shore. Following the line of the ports and the white stone waterfront, his eyes took him first to the dive team, still scanning, then back to the sandstone cityscape. Too bad he'd have to stay a little longer. He smiled into the thought. 'What kind of steamer, wooden deck, carries weapons?' He knew. He knew exactly which kind. But then, the port authority were undisturbed, the dive team was backing off and there were no reports otherwise. Not that he'd expected there to be any. Six days in a city of sunshine. Beautiful women. Good Coffee. He decided to give the boat another look and caught just the top of raven hair as it sank below deck. He pulled his whistler into his hand, making sure that onlookers were otherwise occupied, he flipped it in the air and whistled a harmonic, speaking slowly, once, "Anton D. Marcus." Forming a cleft between his palms, he held it like he was trying to light a smoke, biting on his words and darting his eyes to dissuade onlookers.

"You rang?"

"Did you see the leach on legs? Big sucker."

"Couldn't be more than 6'3" but yeah. I could see those veins from up here. Think it's one of their conditions?"

"Don't know. Honestly I'd be surprised if he wasn't with them. The whole, 'not coming back up' is pretty ominous. Did you catch anyone else of note?"

"There was a chick in a sundress, but she didn't stick around. Poked her head out, then went back down."

"I missed her."

"Funny, she didn't miss you. One thing she did look at during her dockside catwalk."

"Did they give you the target description?"

"No, only that I'm to lead block for you. And of course, some specifics on how I could do it."

"Is there anything I can do to prevent you from spending all night pouring over cargo manifests?"

"Unlikely."

"How's Donovan holding up? He should be out of the water in a few. Can you contact him and get the scans?"

"They're already on order, besides, we'll see him tomorrow."

"We will?"

"3 a.m., you know where." A bar in the old city. 3 to 5 were the dead hours. Least populated time of day, any tails would be obvious, even in the city.

"Right, I meant before that."

"You forgot, didn't you?"

"I misplaced the memory."

"Don't be late." Carter came to a pause at Marcus's last words, remembering their origins. He put two book ends in his mind, from his tour to his meeting, considering the time frame. 6 hours. Plenty.

"Hey, Marcus. Any Idea how to turn these things off? Mine usually just cuts power and burns me."

"You idiot, that's caused by a break in the inter-"





Carter's Whistler dropped the inch to his hand, scalding at the touch. He winced, then gritted his teeth into a pained smile. He was starting to suspect it wasn't a burn. It never did cause any tissue damage, for all the feel of searing flesh. It was 10 a.m. Taking stock of his surrounding and time differential, he decided to get to work. Jogging on the cobblestone streets, he dodged by the café before stealing into his apartment. The assassin group on the opposite roof were chatting animatedly, pointing at some kind of screen. One wolf-whistled, the ranger, correction, the captain, hit him. He snatched a rifle from where it lay against the wall and motioned with his fingers to Carter. Carter paid them no mind. He was outmanned, but they'd let him live this long. They were scouts. Observe and report. His apartment's lock was solid, clicking into place with the prongs of the key. Each item, everything he could see was exactly as he left it. Except of course, the carpet.

Thick and white, like lamb's wool pleated into cotton candy, it was next to impossible to see anything once it was dropped into the sea of shag. Except footprints. They were light, but apparent, leading lazily from the door, to the right along the wall and into a small marble kitchen. The cliché of radiation poisoning from milk heavy in polonium wasn't impossible considering its effectiveness, but he didn't believe it was their goal. He slid his running shoes off, one foot at a time, feeling the loss of custom support as he sank into the shag. He followed one footprint at a time, finding them resume at the other end of the marble. Pandering they seemed, twisting to look, this way and that. They stopped by the white leather couched, backed as it was against the kitchen wall. He could see where they had removed the stitching and redone it. If unprofessional in their foot work, they at least knew how to sew. Another set, breaking from the first pair, proceeded to the disconnected flat screen, having cracked and glued the back. Thorough. Behind it, the den area ended, leading up a step into the bed and deck area capped to the right by the bed itself and the left and forward by doors to the deck. Around were a scattering of white leather chairs and midnight black furniture. It tried quite hard to be Art Deco, all geometric. He smiled inwardly at the cream shag between his toes, and how it subtly violated the otherwise pristine order. A foam of chaos, scrambling under the surface. Maybe that was why they never bothered to look down. They had checked the bed, the nightstand. Not the drawers of course. Under them, the sides of them, where they slid into the frame. They'd misaligned the second in their leave. They'd only been once through, the footprints ended at the balcony. He could see it from across the room, almost at the balcony entrance. There, on the thin sheet coverlet, was a circular imprint, palm sized and coin shaped ruffled subtly around the edges. Where his whistler had lain before he grabbed it. If they didn't before, they knew now. He was in there network.

He sighed, stretching his arms out and back, feeling the wave of satisfaction ripple through his muscles. Score one for the whispers. Dropping his hand, he passed along the zipper to his jacket, ignoring it and shelling it off his body, his t-shit caught in the lift. A swimmer's build he thought, noting as he passed the mirror, the halfway settle for a body that needed muscle and the ability to use it for duration. He'd never break through walls like Marcus, never break a man's skull with his fists. Unlike Donovan, he'd never run across countries, ever sprint to catch a moving vehicle. Each had their specialty. Carter just did. Did what he was asked, what he could, steeled himself for the minute and the moment. They liked to say that he never walked, never talked, never breathed. He operated. All motions and thoughts, actions and movements subservient to the goal at hand, the task. For all the ways they looked at it, tried to isolate him as an exceptional specimen of this that or the other thing, he knew they would fail. That is, the them that was his enemy or the them that were his friends. Those that would judge him. He was a person, first and foremost. Anything he did was subservient to that, just being.

Stepping to the bed, he slid a new athletic shirt from a drawer between it and the back of the den's flat screen dropping his shorts and boxers to get at the compression shorts that would mask him. Pitiful he frowned. Wrinkled and unnerved by the heat, his circumcised dick sat at almost two inches, shriveled as it was inside his shorts. The toned thighs that enclosed them might produce a fair effort, but it was only so much dynamite that he could pack into his member. 'Grower not a shower...' he thought, knowing that the two would grow to six, if given the motivation. He stuffed all of it, clean shaven, into the compression shorts, relishing the subtle resistance and muscular alignment they provided. There was a reason he preferred them for field work. Over them came shorts, athletic socks and the running shoes that had last pressed sandstone underfoot. His would be a 10 mile run in an hour. Less, if the wind backed him. A battery of assaults followed, arms, back, chest, and to cap it off, abs. He could feel the eyes of the Vanguard on him with each step, each lift, each flexion. Motivation comes in many forms today, it was fear.





"Do you know when the last reclamation order was signed?" The voice lent itself to courtesy and accent, English to the trained ear but missing the Londoner lilt that so often disguised their truth. The Vanguard truth. The man's pale skin clashed with the wrought-iron chair beneath him, matching quite well the veins of the wire frame with those that pulsated through him. Latticework on latticework. The café was bright in the afternoon, accenting the shade he drew to himself. His companion was more or less as comfortable, matching the city in her white summer dress and darkened shades.

"19th century? The French revolution produced some names of note." She bit her words. She hated these games he played, asking obscure questions with obscure answers, barely relevant but always sweet nectar for his ego.