“That is true,” Roen acknowledged with a shrug. They both chuckled. He pursed his lips at Jill and she patted his butt. Rin rolled her eyes.
A little while later, Roen went upstairs into Cameron’s room. The lights were on and his son was reading The Phenomenology of the Spirit.
“That’s some dry bedtime reading,” he said.
Cameron put the book aside. “Just passing the time until you get here.” He lay down on the bed. “Okay, I’m going to sleep now.”
“I’ll come back in a few,” Roen said.
“No need. Like you and Tao always say, a good agent knows when to sleep.” And just like that, he closed his eyes and was out.
Roen waited for about a minute until he was sure Cameron was deep asleep. His son had learned from an early age to fall asleep right away. “Tao?”
Cameron sat up and blinked. Right away, Roen could tell by his son’s face that he was no longer in control. Roen knew both his son and his best friend well enough to tell which was which. It was the many small things that changed. There was stiffness to his movements, and his face became more solemn. When he looked at Roen, his eyes lingered as if he was staring at something far away.
Tao threw the blanket off him and stood up. “I know what you’re going to say. I had nothing to do with the selection.”
“Really? He decided he was going to read Hegel for the hell of it?”
“Ask Faust. Hegel was Galen’s host after all.”
“Go figure. A stuffy Quasing was in a stuffy German philosopher.”
Together they walked out of the bedroom and headed down the hall toward the second-floor balcony. Roen stopped by the mini wet bar just inside the door and pulled out a bottle of scotch and an empty glass. Together, they went to the deck. It was a daily ritual between them, one they had seldom broken over the last decade. Roen poured himself a half glass of the peaty scotch and inhaled the scent of smoke and wood. He held it out for Tao to smell and then took a sip.
“You should just let me drink it,” said Tao. “I miss the complexity of a good scotch.”
“Sorry, Tao. Cam isn’t allowed to drink until he’s thirty. Maybe forty.”
“You know, many of my hosts drank young, even as children.”
Roen took another sip. “And look how they turned out.”
“Do you want to compare?”
“Not really.” Roen changed gears. “How’s his training coming along?”
“Exponential as always. He stabbed you in the leg today, did he not?”
Roen lifted his glass up toward the sky as a toast. “I knew my son would one day surpass me. I just didn’t realize he’d do it before he could drive.”
“What can I say? I am good at what I do. He is ready to join the network as an operative. He has been for a while. You know that, right?”
“Over my dead body, Tao. I mean that, like, literally – my dead body.”
“You can only hold him back for so long. Remember, he is a host and technically outranks you.”
“And I can ground him until he turns thirty, so I guess we’re at an impasse.”
“We shall see. Do you have Sachin’s intelligence report?”
Roen pulled out his tablet and handed it to him. “The good professor gave the data fob to Rin the day he died. I filtered out the info on Quasiform and the Council Power Struggle before sending the rest off to the Keeper.”
Tao read through the reports, graphs, and summaries in only a few minutes, faster than Roen could ever go through them any more. When he finished, he flipped through a few more screens, then looked up. “What about Vinnick’s faction? How bad a shape is it in?”
“Vladimir says he doesn’t think they can last the year. The old man’s just old. Last he heard, Enzo was taking a contingent up to Moscow. He thinks Vinnick might be throwing in the towel. That or laying a trap for Enzo.”
“Shit,” Tao muttered as he finished reading the data. He put the tablet on the small table between their chairs.
Roen nudged Tao on the side of the head. “Hey, watch your language. Don’t forget whose body you inhabit.”
“I am the one saying it. Do not take it out on him.”
“Well, I’d appreciate a clean mouth from my son. What’s the shit about anyway?”
“According to this report, the power struggle has just about run its course.”
“So what? Vinnick was almost as big a threat as Devin during his prime. Good riddance.”
“Good riddance, yes,” Tao said, “but he has distracted Enzo for the past decade. With Vinnick out of the way, Enzo can refocus on completing Quasiform and destroying the world. Their little civil war bought this planet a few years. Now, you know that psycho is going to try to sprint to the finish.”
The two of them went over the rest of the daily reports on Jill’s operations. By the time they were through, it was way past midnight.
“We’d better wrap it up,” Tao said. “Cameron is going to be exhausted in the morning. I promised to take him to the forest to teach him tracking before he free-runs with Jill. He wants to be able to sneak up on deer.”
“It’s your fault for keeping him up way past his bedtime.”
“Roen, fifteen year-old teenagers should not have bedtimes.”
Roen, who was putting the stacks of documents away, made a face. “Yeah, about that. I think that’s something we should probably pow-wow about. His mother and I think you’re pushing him a little too hard.”
“Funny. I thought I was going a little easy on him.”
Roen got serious. “Tao, you’re pushing him harder than you ever pushed me, and he’s just a kid.”
Cameron’s face looked equally serious as he stood up and towered over the sitting Roen. “That is because he has more potential than you will ever have. Do not take that the wrong way.”
“My teenager has already outstripped my abilities. How should I take it?”
“He is from your loins. Must be getting that potential from his mother’s side.”
Roen held back the urge to shake Tao. “I mean it. Let him have a childhood.”
“No, you listen, Roen,” Tao said, hands on Cameron’s hips. “You of all people should understand. If the Genjix win and succeed in Quasiform, humanity dies this generation. Cameron will be lucky to live to forty. If the human governments succeed, he’ll be hunted for the rest of his life. Either case spells certain death for your son. Your family has been amazingly fortunate the past few years in lying low while all our friends and comrades have fallen. These few precious years are the only ones where we can train him in peace, because otherwise he will train by fire.” Tao reached out, grabbed a fistful of Roen’s shirt and tugged. Jill was right; his son was getting strong. “I almost lost you because you were not good enough. I will not lose Cameron.”
Roen scowled. The encounter with Jacob was a sore point for him. It had taken him years for the nightmares of that night to end. Now, he was conflicted between revenge on that psychopath and fear of crossing his path again. “Just… try,” he said finally. He headed back into the house, but paused to look back at Tao. “By the way, I wasn’t not good enough. I had already gone through a lot and wasn’t one hundred percent.”
Tao shook his head. “I can spot talent and skill, Roen. He will beat you nine out of ten fights. You will win the tenth because he caught food poisoning, and even then, you will barely win. Jacob is that good.”
7 Status Call
When the full scope of our actions came to light, humanity’s fury knew no bounds. At the time, we felt that if our existence was going to be revealed, we might as well come clean and tell them everything. Perhaps that was a mistake.
When the truth got out, the Quasing were painted as manipulators and conspirators who had a global agenda against all humans. The Prophus and Genjix factions were treated as one evil. I cannot blame them for believing that. After all, we have preached a more peaceful solution with the humans, but have the Prophus’s action shown that to be true?