It was too much for Aron to handle. Too much pain and confusion. Things out of his control. He couldn’t maintain his focus and he lost his anchoring to the Plane.
Darkness swept over him. He was being pulled through pure blackness and all around him was unseeable emptiness. He had a sensation of falling, flying, and laying flat on the ground as it swirled, all at the same time.
Then his sense of balance flipped and he was laying flat on his back. He was back in his bed in his own bedroom. By just a desk light on his desk, he gained awareness that his eyes were fluttering. He had been booted from the Plane and was awake now. The sensation of barbed hooks stuck through his skin, and their scraping against his bones in his back was faint.
Back at his desk, Aron had now fully recalled his dream and his mission on the Plane. His mind raced and he was making connections. Those icy blue eyes did not belong to Bob Tilson. Tilson’s eyes were brown, and Aron had doubted from the beginning that Tilson was a Reader at all. Aron recalled more clues.
There had been so much detail at that den. The house had precise form, from its windows and doors, even down to its mailbox. This meant there was a lot of regular interaction there by at least one Reader, both in waking life and on the Plane. If the Reader with the icy blue eyes was the only one there, he must be really powerful in order to maintain himself as a nagual, and reform those putrisomn front doors. This was highly unlikely, especially considering the golem that had to be controlled by someone else.
How was it possible for a single Reader to control putrisomn so quickly and efficiently? As far as Aron had ever been taught by Yusef, he understood that putrisomn acted like organic matter in its raw form. It was not sentient; it possessed no desires or intelligence, or even the capability to do so. Of course, a Reader with advanced weaving training on the Plane would be able to manipulate a significant amount of putrisomn in such a way. But that would require most of their attention.
There had to be another Reader controlling that putrisomn; that Reader was also powerful enough to not need to be present within eyesight to see all of those pieces and rebond them back together. These Readers who ambushed Aron were terrifyingly serious since they were clearly protecting Tilson and whatever work they had been hiding there, far away from Tilson’s hometown of Meridian, Idaho, and Washington, D.C.
A thought struck Aron; he had been tracking Tilson’s business partners, campaign donors, Congressional staff, close friends, and associates, but none of them had proved worthwhile to follow for a trail that would point to some kind of connection to the Plane. Yet, those eyes… he had seen them before. He just couldn’t remember where.
Although Tilson had been physically sleeping in Washington, D.C., Aron was not able to locate his den. Aron doubted that Tilson’s privileged life put him on the path of being a Reader. He must have had help navigating the Plane and anchoring his haze to this secluded spot in what would be Colorado in the waking world. Having another Reader like Icy Blue Eyes around to keep snooping Readers away and out of his haze was a security measure of some sort, especially since he wasn’t able to find him on any official security or staff lists for Tilson. But who would be trying to protect Tilson wasn’t making sense yet. What was Tilson hiding, or rather, who was hiding Tilson?
He thought about the golem that had stuck him and pinned him to the ground. It was a pretty creepy construction, Aron reflected. It reminded him of something he’d seen or learned about before. Something from history, he thought. The mechanical style didn’t strike him so much as the design of its arms, and its face. Those creepy eyes. Then there were those weird etchings. Where have I seen those symbols before? He thought as he leaned over his desk on his elbow, then rested his face into his hand.
He picked up a pencil and did his best to redraw what he had seen for one set of symbols in particular. There was a wide-bladed scimitar curved down and to the left. Then a scythe stacked diagonally across the scimitar to form a flat “x”: the blade end was pointing upward left, and it was tilted so the scythe’s blade angled upward to the right. At the top of those weapons was a spear laid across horizontally, its tip pointed left. And finally, there was what looked like a machine gun laid over the top of the other weapons, pointing to the right. It looked like it should have been an M60, but the top handle angled differently.
Aron looked back at the scimitar he'd drawn and wondered if the design was West Asian or East Asian. He recalled what he had seen and decided it must have been a dao, a Chinese-style sword. But why Chinese? Are these other weapons Chinese?
Then it hit him. These weren’t symbols. It was one symbol, a Chinese character: “Security.” He drew it: 安.
He put it all together as he finished his last strokes of the character: who the other readers were, why they were there with Tilson, and what they were planning. Aron recognized that security character because it was part of the name and logo of a Chinese private security firm that operated outside of China, usually helping with mining or acquiring raw materials in other countries. He was familiar with this firm because he had researched Bob Tilson’s -- and other politicians’ -- investments both domestic and foreign, and this company was one that more than a few politicians in Tilson’s circle had commonly invested in.
Furiously, Aron began tossing papers and manila folders aside across his desk, but when he found a particular folder he held it for a second, staring at its blank front, then opened it and stared even harder at a photo that was inside. Across the top he had written with red marker “Chu Tien, Codename: Xuannu.” A young Chinese woman was cradling a CS/LR17 assault rifle in a zoomed-in shot of her as she looked somewhere off camera. She wore a tactical vest with magazines and grenades attached. A tactical throat microphone dangled from her neck, and on her vest, he saw it: a patch with the 安 character made with weapons, exactly how he had seen it on the golem. Aron searched the other photos of the security agents and didn’t see a similar patch. Chu Tien had to be the one who made that golem. Was she controlling it and weaving that putrisomn? Aron wondered.
The presence of Chu Tien’s golem meant that this Chinese security firm, which Aron knew was protecting some secretive mining exploit in Africa, was collaborating with Icy Blue Eyes. The owner of the firm was also the owner of the mining company, who also owned the world’s largest manufacturer and distributor of smartphones: the world’s second-richest woman, Xi Wang Mu. Aron double-checked his notes. He was willing to bet that with more research and investigating, he would probably find that Tilson had additional investments of some kind in Xi Wang Mu’s various companies. Chu Tien’s golem -- whose six arms and four eyes most certainly had to be designed after Chiyou, the Chinese god of war -- and Icy Blue Eyes teaming up on the Plane to protect Tilson would confirm that Tilson was collaborating with Xi Wang Mu, a Chinese national who had zero interest in supporting America unless she profited from it.
He knows that she’s mining for something in Africa. But he’s not bringing it to the attention of the American people. He’d rather profit off whatever gain Xi Wang Mu will get. And instead of telling us, he’s distracting us with this immigration nonsense, Aron processed in his head. Distracting us. He’s pitting Americans against Americans so he can profit -- so a Chinese businesswoman can profit. Was the pill even his idea? Aron’s eyes got wide. Whose technology is it going to be that produces these pills? He’s going to make even more money from this! And Xi Wang Mu will of course be creating the technology that tracks these people in our own country, thus giving her access to American databases...
Aron shot up from his desk with the realization of what was unfolding before the American public, and he knew he had to immediately call a meeting with Yusef. He saw Xi Wang Mu and Tilson’s plan right before his eyes, and it was as impressive as it was terrifying.
He clumsily gathered some of his notes, a change of clothing, and his vibrobaton, and stuffed them into a backpack. He left his apartment in a rush, barely bothering to lock it behind him. He rushed down the stairs toward the front door of the anteroom but hesitated when he glimpsed a person’s darkened silhouette through the frosted glass, as a street lamp outside cast light against the figure.
The silhouette froze on the other side of the door. Aron’s gut twisted and he turned back up the stairs. Then, wood and glass crashed behind him as he ran up the stairs, looking over his shoulder to see someone running through the doorway and brandishing a knife. Aron sprinted to his apartment door, unlocked it with his key, entered, slammed the door, and deadbolted it. Without missing a beat, Aron ran to his window, slid it open with a toss, and reached up for the window sill outside his apartment, two floors up from the ground.
As his bedroom door banged, he grabbed at an edge on the outside of the building and pulled himself up while reaching for another chunk of building, a balcony, and kept going until he climbed past the third floor and reached the roof with his hands. When Aron looked back down the building and into the night, he saw someone staring back up at him from his apartment window then quickly vanish back inside.
Grunting, Aron pulled himself over the ledge and onto the roof. To make his escape, he set his eyes on an apartment building rooftop next door. Aron needed a running start to clear the jump so he hurried toward the opposite sode of his roof. He began his sprint but stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of a person’s silhouette standing in the way of his jump.
The silhouette flicked its arm outward and a long, slender stick popped out into the night. The familiar, rapid chk-chk-chk-chk and high-pitched hum of an electrical charge indicated what Aron suspected and feared: a vibrobaton. It was the sure sign of a Reader who lived a treacherous life of committing dangerous acts while trying to leave minimal evidence of themselves in their wake.
Aron reached for his backpack, and he felt his vibrobaton hilt sticking out of a pocket. He flicked his wrist. Chk-chk-chk-chk. Then he reached over with his free hand and thumbed the switch at the hilt. The hard, flinching split-buzz of electric energy and then what sounded like a low-volume but high-pitched ambulance siren was reassuring. The silhouette and Aron both raised their charged batons toward each other.
Aron waited for the first move. And waited. Then Aron quickly realized that his opponent was on the defensive. The silhouette was waiting for their backup to arrive. Aron thrust forward without wasting another millisecond. He now needed as many as he could get.
He lunged into the silhouette with his baton raised in his right hand and feinted a diagonal strike to the silhouette’s left shoulder, but instead twisted his own body clockwise and swung his baton around him as he crouched down, aiming for its right knee.
The silhouette quickly pivoted to Aron’s left from the feint and double-kicked the air toward Aron to avoid the incoming sweep. As it landed, it brought down its baton, intending to crush Aron’s head. Aron was still kneeling and threw his weight into his twisting momentum, somersaulting to his right to avoid the blow, then pushed himself back onto his feet from the somersault, his baton on guard.
He charged again. The two continued to dodge, pivot, parry, and riposte each other, each of their strikes crashing and clanging as the electricity from their metal batons crackled and whirred to recharge.
I need to end this, Aron thought to himself. His eyes desperately scanned possible jump zones around the rooftop as he kept his guard up against the mysterious foe just feet in front of him.
Then, there was a quick and heavy metallic chk-chk-chk-chk from behind him.
Too late. He whipped his head around to see the second person swinging at his head.
His senses closed to the unendurable, crushing pain as he was overcome with the convulsing fury of reds, whites, blacks, and yellows raging through his head and against his eyelids. Then, he felt the light gravel of the rooftop on his face. He heard the high pitch of a vibrobaton recharging.
Aron's head tilted a bit and he could see the legs of the second assaulter nearby. Then he saw the first man walk up to him. His icy blue eyes glistened as his face briefly caught some light. He golf swung his baton into Aron’s gut. Aron heard the crack of extreme voltage.
All he saw was darkness.