Unity and Destiny Pt. 07

She was more concerned about whoever was hiding the farm, merely fifty miles southeast along the Rio Grande, just a mile from the American border. The way they were using their skill was less subtle than Castillo. However, they were hiding a much larger area than Esther could imagine attempting. An entire small building, converted into a few high-roofed spaces. Until sensing the Mexican's even larger deception, she hadn't known doing something like this was possible. But it was all the effort of a single Changed. She wouldn't know much more until she had some rest and time to meditate properly.

There was something in the conversation of the others she needed to deal with.

"No," she said, startling Kat into silence. "Selena, Mark, and Nicola have to stay with me. Javier could go in your car if he wants."

The others understood quickly what she was saying, and all the cheer of the reunion evaporated. She should have found another way to say it, or waited a little.

Javier came over and looked into her eyes a while.

"Is it that bad?" he asked softly.

"I don't know," she said. "Probably not. But I can't take any chances."

He nodded approvingly and gave her a wonderful, long kiss. A few people were looking, some with envy, and why not? Javier was by far the most handsome man in the car rental lounge.

"You should go ahead," she said. "Easier to catch them up fast that way. We'll see you at the hotel."

She felt a pang when he left with the other two. But it was the best protection she could give him. Three non-Changed, with false identification, on a short drive. It was the rest of them who were in danger.

She breathed a sigh of relief when they got to the hotel. They had dinner in the overpriced restaurant adjoining the lobby, and then gathered again in the suite. Esther took the first shower without asking. She'd be the one out of commission shortly.

"All right," she said afterwards, looking around at her friends. Weary, trusting faces. "Aside from what you already know, all that I've sensed is that one of the Changed is extremely strong when it comes to deceptions. Like Castillo, but disguising an entire building."

She described what little more she knew of the farm. "Now I'm going into otherspace. I was gone four hours last time. I don't think it's safe for me to do more than that. Bring me back if it's that long, or if you have some other reason to worry. And I'm afraid Selena, Mark, and Nicola will have to stay close for the duration. The closer the better. It will make it much easier for me to conceal you while I'm otherwise occupied."

She walked into the bedroom, lying in the center of the king bed. And to her surprise, Nicola took off her shoes and lay right next to her.

"Easy as possible, right?" she said.

Mark nodded, and lay on the other side. Selena sat at her feet and closed her eyes, beginning a meditation, and immediately Esther felt her load lessen as Selena worked to conceal herself.

The other two began their own meditations, and there was no more reason to delay. She took a deep breath and looked in that direction she could never describe, because otherspace contained everything there was. And, she suspected, everything that might be. In every possible universe.

* * *

While Kat took her shower, Grace and Javier stared at the odd tableau.

"Do you ever get used to it?" she asked.

"No, not really," Javier said. "This right now is new, I guess. Sometimes I lie with her like that for an evening, and I try to imagine what she sees. But the best language she has for otherspace is mathematics I'm never likely to understand. In most of what she does, I think the other three are just as baffled as we are."

"What a lonely thing it must be," Grace said. "I guess that's why she seems so otherworldly sometimes."

Javier nodded. In truth, it scared him when Esther got like this. As though she were floating away, in a direction he could never follow.

"Javier," Grace said softly. "I'm terrified. How do you cope with this? What do you think the chances are that she's going to wake up and tell us that we're not the right people to handle this? That it's too hard, or too risky, or we need someone else's skills?"

"Close to zero," he admitted. "I'm scared too. And if we don't go along or convince her otherwise, she might walk in there herself and get killed. Or else kick the shit out of all of them on her own. Sometimes I think that's the scariest scenario of all. Aside from getting herself hurt, obviously."

Grace looked at him in surprise. But then she nodded. "Because maybe she'd kill someone, and never forgive herself."

"Or else she'd realize how much more she might be capable of. And the responsibility she'd feel as a result."

"We have to come up with something," Grace said. "Some alternative. Like we did in Oregon. I don't know, a distraction or something."

Kat joined them, and they talked and talked. But as the hours passed, they couldn't come up with anything very promising. And eventually Esther's time limit approached. Javier moved to touch her, but she opened her eyes groggily before he got there.

"Already?" she mumbled, and he nodded.

Selena, Mark, and Nicola looked exhausted as well. Esther grimaced as she ate. "It's hard to keep everyone hidden now. It was a good thing you stopped me, Javier. I hope I got what we needed."

Twenty minutes later they gathered around the bed to hear the news.

"It is an older woman who hides the facility," said Esther. "She doesn't seem physically dangerous, and she is not so sensitive that we're at great risk from this distance. But we can't discount what she might be able to do when we get close. She will be capable of confusing Changed and non-Changed alike, the way Castillo did. And she is much stronger than him in that respect. The other Changed guard seems physically dangerous, though I hope not so much as Castillo. Mark would be a much better judge of that, if we were close enough. He is armed, as are the three other guards. There are more people in a separate house nearby, who I believe may be off-duty guards. They are not being hidden as well as the main building. There is also a reasonable amount of computer equipment in the main building, which I can describe if it would be helpful."

Javier nodded. It sounded bad, but maybe not as bad as he'd been fearing. "How many prisoners are there?"

"Fifteen," she said. "And two are children, perhaps four and ten years old."

Everyone's faces fell. That was a lot to rescue. But the children just raised the stakes.

"Are the specialists there?" Selena asked. "Meirscheim, and the others? Or is this just hostages? Or something totally different?"

"Just the hostages, I believe," said Esther. "There is no one matching Meirscheim, but one of them is named Sue, the same as his wife. And I think one of them is the wife of the refinery engineer. They all seem to speak English or Spanish, and they seem more subdued than terrified. I suspect they've been here a long time. Several of them are Mexican, I think. It matches Castillo's travels. Only in the Americas."

"What are our options, then?" asked Selena.

"We have to rescue those people," said Esther. "They're in terrible danger. Whoever's holding them wouldn't allow them to leave unharmed, would they?"

"No," Javier said. "I'm sure they know too much. Even if they know nothing about their captors, or even the events of Black Christmas, the existence of this place is a huge clue about the conspiracy. And we shouldn't dance around it: it must be the Mexican. I can't see how this could be happening under his nose except on his orders. Even the way Castillo and this other Changed person hide, as though the Mexican trained them."

Selena sighed. "We can't rush into anything," she said. "We have to be sure we've examined our options. These people have presumably been kept for months already. Let's first talk again about those who might help us."

"This is more of a pure rescue operation than we thought," said Kat. "If none of them is useful to the Mexican except as leverage, maybe the military or whatever isn't such a bad idea. They wouldn't want the hostages to die."

"I'm not so sure this changes the calculation for the military," said Selena. "If hostages die, the leverage goes away as well. But it's true they wouldn't just drop a bomb on the place. They'd want information."

Esther frowned. "Are they really so cynical about these things?"

Selena shrugged. "Not all of them, of course. But it's a particular type of people who might plan a silent operation in another country. Hard people. I've met a few like them, the military equivalents of Jackson, from the CIA or whatever. Not necessarily heartless, but certainly not like you. The ones who tried to take Mark might have preferred it if no one died, but consider the weaponry they had."

Esther sighed. "All right, then. What about the Chosen we just left? I think we can trust them, if we can convince them."

Nicola shook her head. "Did you see the way Henry looked at us when we left? He's suspicious. He worked with Lukas, and he isn't stupid. Mark obviously hadn't progressed to where he wanted to be, and yet we all left, taking him with us."

"We said we'd be back soon," Esther said. "The elders said we were still welcome, on the same terms."

"I'm sorry, Esther," said Selena. "Diana was even more suspicious, though she didn't show it. I've started to worry she may have caught a bit of our conversation that night. We may have been reckless."

"Or else she's like Henry," said Javier. "It was pretty obvious we were still involved in our own affairs. If we told them enough to convince them to help us, it would solve that suspicion."

"Or it might turn them resolutely against us," said Nicola. "It's a huge risk. They know a lot about us at this point, especially Diana, and we'd have to tell them far more to get their cooperation. Esther, are you positive you can predict how Diana would react to our true agenda?"

"No, I suppose not," Esther said unhappily.

"I think that's a no on the Chosen," said Nicola. "And I still vote against Lukas, the same as I've said before. This is effectively a direct move against the Mexican. That doesn't strike me as Lukas's kind of fight, unless he was fully convinced the Mexican was endangering all the Changed, or enslaving them like Franklin."

"Suppose he was convinced?" Javier asked. "Could Lukas already be fighting the Mexican in his own way?"

"He would've reached out to us," Nicola said, unhappily. "He knows us better than we know him. He knows we'd help in a fight like that. Probably he already has an idea of the game we're playing, so the fact he hasn't contacted us tells us something all on its own. He hasn't hindered us, and he helped out with Mark. But I think he's at best neutral from our point of view."

"That leaves only Jackson," Javier said. "Kat and Grace and I talked about this. Those hostages have to be protected after they're rescued. We don't truly have the resources to do that. And with so many to rescue we need her that much more. The question is, how could we do that safely? We don't have to be working side-by-side to cooperate. Maybe we can split this up into parts."

Kat picked it up there. "What if we just neutralized the Changed people? Or all the guards, even. Could Esther do that on her own, from a safe distance, for long enough to let Jackson's people deal with them? Ideally, without ever being near Jackson's forces. Then we'd only need to protect Esther, and get ourselves away from there once everyone's rescued."

Selena obviously liked this idea. "That's good, Kat. Esther, are you capable of immobilizing all the guards at once? Or at least both Changed guards, so Jackson can take care of the others?"

Esther frowned. "I think I could," she said. "At least, both of the Changed, for a while. But there's a problem we haven't talked about. Perhaps it's more obvious to me. I've been hoping the Mexican doesn't have my perceptive abilities. I think that's fair to assume, because even Tanaka was shocked by my sensitivity. But the Mexican resisted Tanaka's sending well enough to find him immediately, and counterattack in a way I'm not capable of, at a much larger distance than we are now from him. When the Changed woman stops hiding that place, I'm certain the Mexican will notice. And then he'll turn all of his perception towards us, and anyone else who is helping us. Whatever we plan, we have to account for that danger. We have to escape very quickly, and get away from his notice somehow."

Javier felt his stomach drop. Nicola had already pointed out this was a direct attack against the Mexican. He hadn't truly been thinking about what that meant.

"Shit," Nicola said. "Shit."

"It's worse than that," Selena said slowly. "What happens afterwards? The Mexican will be much more desperate. This is a pivotal move. We have to have a plan for afterwards as well. Something that doesn't backfire on all the Changed. The whole point of what we're doing is to get everyone looking at the worst perpetrator, and I think we're pretty sure now it's the Mexican. But then he needs to be taken down quickly. That's not something we're willing to take on ourselves, is it? In his own fortress? That means real, solid evidence pointing at him, so he loses his support network. Especially among the Changed. So others like Lukas realize their best option is to align against him. Let all the blame fall on the Mexican."

"If we do this, we have to raid the computers as well," said Javier. "Just like with Castillo's credit card. We have to comb through the evidence ourselves, and not just leave it for Jackson. God knows what her agenda truly is, anyway. The Mexican has to be exposed. Even with his power he couldn't survive the whole world seeing what he did."

"I don't want him killed," Esther said. "I don't want this to turn into a big war against him and all the Changed around him. And the others. He must have Meirscheim close to him, and the other kidnapped people."

Javier frowned. That seemed practically impossible to avoid.

"If he's pressured enough, he might be forced to hide," said Javier. "But you could still find him, right? The government would want him alive, to be sure they'd got all the conspiracy members."

"I suppose," Esther said dubiously.

Javier didn't miss the look Selena gave him. But he believed what he said, didn't he? He hoped it was true, anyway. Just because he could think of a lot of ways this could go terribly wrong, that didn't mean it couldn't work out that way. And they couldn't just wait for the Mexican to do whatever he intended. He still had hostages alive, which meant he still expected to use the experts for something. The Black Christmas attacks seemed like small stakes. There was something larger he'd been trying to start, and Javier didn't think it was as simple as nuclear annihilation.

He shivered, though. Maybe Gupta and Yau had been in some kind of regional feud, and maybe its escalation really was part of the Mexican's plans. Maybe the Mexican was really pushing for the apocalypse, and only Tanaka had stopped him last time. In that case, they had to do everything to stop him as soon as they could.

Or maybe the nuclear exchange had been a mistake from the Mexican's point of view, something caused in part by his rush to execute his own plans. If that were true, rushing to stop him at all costs could be incredibly reckless.

They wouldn't know for sure until they knew more about the Mexican. And he couldn't see a faster way to do that than raiding one of his facilities, if only they could avoid having everything go crazy.

"Could we sneak the prisoners away?" he asked suddenly. "Could we knock out all the guards except the one hiding the place, fool her into thinking nothing was wrong, and have the prisoners well away before any of it was discovered? Could we do it in a way that left the Mexican uncertain about what had happened, or who was responsible?"

* * *

Esther looked at Javier, and she felt a smile growing. He was brilliant. All of them were, really. She'd never have thought of that strategy. The others were nodding, liking this idea as well.

"If we could do that, all we'd need Jackson for would be at the end," Selena said. "Handing off the former prisoners, if we thought we could trust her with them. I can't see why not, really. What reason would they have to do anything but keep them safe?"

"She might lock them up again," said Kat. "Easy to keep them safe that way."

Selena frowned. "We'll have to think about that part, then. So, can we do the first part?"

Everyone looked at Esther, which stood to reason. She was the one who could hide them, who might be able to immobilize guards. Who might possibly keep everything quiet enough through the operation. And she had felt the effort it took the guard to keep up her grand deception, night and day, even while sleeping. Just as with Esther, the woman would have limited resources for other tasks, especially when asleep.

"Yes," she said. "I think it's possible. Difficult, but possible."

"All right, then," said Javier. "Let's figure out how this will work."

"In the morning," said Nicola. "We need sleep, Javier. Or I do, anyway. I'm sure Esther does. Selena was right—we can't rush our planning."

Everyone got up, and Esther went to use the bathroom. When she came out, Nicola was looking at Mark, and for once he was looking back. This was good for Mark, feeling like he was part of the team, that they would need him. But when the pair started to walk towards the other bedroom, Esther stopped them.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I think you'll all have to sleep in here with me. I'm tired, and it would be hard to hide all of us unless you're close."

"Of course," Mark said, joining Nicola and Selena to follow her. And of course Javier came along as well.

"OK, then," said Kat, looking with amusement at the crowd. "I guess we'll take the other bedroom."

In the end Mark and Selena took the floor. Javier spooned behind Esther like usual, and Nicola pressed on the other side. It made Esther think of those late nights in the Shack, before Mark had come out of his coma. The cautious sense-sharing and furtive touching. Nicola between her legs, working her tongue while Esther tried not to think about Javier, tossing in his troubled sleep. And that one afternoon in Esther's bed, when Javier was in San Jose. They'd crammed months worth of sexual frustration into a few hours while Mark and Selena were out. Esther had nearly given in, almost diving inside Nicola's beautiful body to share everything the way they'd both craved and feared.

It'd been a mistake, and they'd stopped the sex after that. Since then it'd been just their sense-sharing practice, carefully controlled on Esther's part.

Nicola was scared tonight, and obviously aroused to be with Esther again, though she was trying not to show it. So Esther put her arm around her friend, hugging her tight. Cocooned between Nicola and Javier, she fell asleep before she even noticed.

* * *

"All right," Esther said. "Close your eyes, and if you think I'm signaling you, raise your hand."

She pulled moderately strongly on Kat, and the other woman wrinkled her nose, then slowly raised her arm. After a pause, she tried Kat again, more weakly, and Kat didn't react.

When she pulled on Grace, the other woman gasped, eyes opening. She'd taken a step towards Esther.

"Well, I guess that's pretty clear," said Nicola with a chuckle. "Looks like you'll be the one to stay behind and listen, unless we can convince Javier to do it."

"Not a chance," he said.

Grace looked both relieved and uncomfortable. "You'll be able to do that from miles away?" she asked.

Esther nodded. "From vastly farther than that, if I need to. I could make it work with Kat, too, but the easier it is, the better, in case I'm tired."