Educate and inform the whole mass of the people . . . They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty against facetaker manipulations or hekha abominations. Greater powers may be terrifying, but only through knowledge may they be overcome.

  ~Thomas Jefferson

  Gregorios led the others off the ferry, scanning for threats. He saw none. The hekha hadn’t managed to call any support in this area. He’d suspected they wouldn’t, but appreciated getting something right today.

  They escaped the ferry terminal without issue, caught a cab to a car rental agency, and headed west out of the city with Tomas at the wheel of a rented SUV. Sarah sat in the passenger seat and Gregorios reclined in the back, a fresh bandage on his broken arm.

  Although he had blocked sensory input from the damaged limb, the flesh had suffered significant trauma. It hampered his ability to function. The temporary body had served well since he picked it up, but he’d only pushed the Body rank into the D’s.

  He hadn’t expected to keep it long enough to warrant the investment of energy required to evolve it all the way up to his normal rank. Now he was paying for that short-sighted decision. It would never have become a great battle suit, but if he’d pushed it to even B rank, that Occan never would have kept up or broken his arm.

  So now he needed a change. With the threat of hekha operatives, he needed optimal performance. If only they had time to detour and claim his favorite battle suit.

  Tomas’s girlfriend slumped in the front seat, looking exhausted. She had performed well for an untrained civilian. Eirene had told him a little about her. The girl showed promise, but she had jumped into dangerous waters.

  He’d drop her off at the next exit if he thought it would improve her chances of escaping the brewing conflict, but she was already a target. He needed to understand how she fit into the picture.

  So many questions. So few answers.

  Above all else, he needed to track Eirene down. She had survived her long dispossession remarkably well, but he shuddered to think of the trauma she’d suffer if returned to another lead-lined box.

  Tereza’s involvement with the hekha had caught him by surprise. The fledgling facetaker was but a pawn, but of who? She claimed good standing with the council, but also consorted with hekha. Such a conflict of interest should not be possible.

  Was she still working for Mai Luan? More important, what did the council know?

  Questions multiplied in his mind as the miles slipped by and Tomas took a complex, zig-zag route toward their destination. It increased the distance many times, but gave him ample opportunity to scan for pursuit.

  Eventually Tomas glanced in the rear-view mirror and made eye contact. “If Tereza really is on council-sanctioned business, they’ll track your credit cards.”

  “All the traceable ones,” Gregorios agreed. “The one I used for the car is new, something Eirene worked up just the other day.”

  “What is this council you keep talking about?” Sarah asked.

  Gregorios hesitated. The more he revealed, the less chance she could ever walk away.

  Tomas glanced in the mirror again. “She should know.”

  “The situation is complicated enough. Do you really want her drawn in that deep?”

  “I’ll make that choice,” Sarah said with brave stupidity. “I owe Eirene, and Tomas owes me a vacation.”

  Gregorios sighed. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Tomas has told you a little about facetakers?”

  “I've seen face transfers, the real ones without the machines,” Sarah said. “I saw Mai Luan and Tereza pull people’s faces off, and I’ve experienced it firsthand.”

  “That’s a good start.”

  “Eirene is a facetaker too,” Sarah added, as if wanting him to argue the point.

  “As am I.”

  Sarah turned to Tomas. “You’re not, though.”

  “No. We work together.” Tomas glanced over at her long enough for Gregorios to worry about the vehicle starting to drift.

  “What kind of work do you do?” she asked.

  Good question, Gregorios thought. The girl was sharp.

  “Specialized security.”

  “So, you’re a mercenary or something?”

  “Not exactly.”

  They drove in silence for a while as Tomas completed his circuitous route and took the Crescent City connection bridge eastbound. He eventually pulled off the highway near the airport.

  "So tell me about facetakers," Sarah prompted finally.

  “There are other facetakers in the world," Gregorios explained. "Most of us have come together into a loose organization.”

  “Ruled by this council?”

  “Essentially. They're known as the Suntara Group.”

  "Why?"

  "It's a long story."

  "Everything's a long story with you guys."

  She had no idea.

  “This Suntara Group doesn't like you right now, do they?” Sarah asked.

  “Correct.”

  Tomas added, “Worse, they’re apparently working with hekha for the first time.”

  That worried Gregorios the most. The evidence pointed in that direction, but he couldn’t imagine what might have driven the council to make such a crazy change in policy. Destruction of all hekha was a millennia-old rule for a reason.

  Occasionally hekha could prove useful, but each time one was turned, the decision to try was a calculated risk. The choice to power enhancements through the destruction of other souls was a cancer in the hearts of the hekha, corrupting them and turning the vast majority of them into enemies of society. They posed a threat to the world order, an order the facetakers had spent centuries helping to establish.

  Exterminating hekha with active rounon, no matter their rank, was a necessary part of maintaining a stable world. Gregorios had led the team responsible for removing such threats for a long time.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  He’d been labeled a rogue decades earlier so he knew too little of the current inner workings of the council to understand why they would now take the extreme risk to involve hekha in their operations.

  “And wasn’t Mai Luan a coo-something?” Sarah asked.

  “Cui Dashi,” Gregorios said with a grimace. “She’s involved somehow, but the council would never involve itself with such a monster.”

  “So tell them the truth about Tereza’s connection,” she suggested.

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “But they have Eirene.”

  “Perhaps,” Gregorios said as Tomas pulled up to a weed-choked lot not far from the airport.

  It looked like it had stood abandoned for a while, its appearance decrepit even in comparison to other nearby industrial buildings. The lot was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, which did still look in good condition.

  A small parking lot held only a single pick-up facing the simple two-story building that spanned a hundred feet on each side. Rust-sprinkled shutters concealed all the doors and windows. Everything looked exactly as it should.

  Tomas jumped out to unlock the gate, so Gregorios pulled the rental into the parking lot close to the side door. When Tomas led them inside and flipped on the lights, Sarah paused and stared in surprise at the comfortable living room that greeted them.

  Twenty-foot ceilings with soft lighting illuminated the room. The walls were painted in warm colors. Thick carpet covered the floor. Comfortable couches and chairs faced either a cold fireplace or one of the two flat-panel television sets. The air smelled fresh, so the exchangers were still working.

  A chef-worthy kitchen opened off the living room, with granite counter tops and stainless-steel appliances. The cupboards were stocked with enough food to last the three of them for months.

  Sarah trailed him into the room. “What is this place?”

  “Safe house,” Tomas said. “There are dozens scattered around the world.” He turned to Gregorios. “Won’t the council look for us here?”

  “Unlikely. Eirene used to work logistics, and she confirmed this one hadn’t been used for decades before we moved in a few days back. We haven’t seen any sign that anyone’s aware we’re here.”

  This place had been the closest thing to a home for them in far too long. He’d find her and they would start another life together. By all the forgotten gods, anyone blocking him would face his wrath. He rarely let himself get angry, but he could feel his rage stirring. This time, he didn't feel like snuffing it out.

  “She’s a good housekeeper,” Sarah said.

  “A hired service checks in periodically and keeps it stocked and cleaned,” he explained. “But the money’s handled automatically and many of these safe houses get forgotten for a while. We make sure we’re not around when they’re scheduled to clean. They’ve never seen us, and I doubt anyone other than Eirene remembers this one even exists.”

  Tomas showed Sarah around and she chose one of the available suites upstairs.

  “Plenty of hot water?” Sarah asked, moving toward the bathroom.

  “Yes,” Gregorios said. “But that can wait. I have to do something, and you’ll want to see it.”

  “What’s going on?” Sarah asked as he led them down to the medical bay in the basement. The cool air smelled stale, the soft hum of machinery the only sound. Every surface was stainless steel or white cloth.

  “You want to be a part of this,” he said. “So you can help Tomas prep for my transfer.”

  He ignored the treatment and operating rooms and headed for the long cooler, similar to ones used by morgues. He selected the third door and slid it all the way open to reveal the hibernating body, his current home suit.

  The body looked healthy and ready to go. In its mid-thirties, it was toned and fit, stood exactly six feet, with several tattooed enhancement runes in strategic locations to help boost its Body rank all the way to the low A’s. The hair was black, Eirene’s current favorite choice. It wore only boxer shorts.

  Tomas and Sarah transferred the body to a gurney while Gregorios lay down on the empty bed of the cooler tray. He shivered at the touch of the cold metal, which reminded him of his own long dispossession so many centuries ago.

  Tomas moved to stand by his head and signaled he was ready. It was so much easier with competent help.

  Gregorios embraced his nevra core. When transferring the souls of others, or when forced to transfer himself without help, he worked through his hands. With a trusted assistant, all he had to do was sever all ties with the host body and set his soul free.

  He directed his nevron against the soul points that anchored his soulmask to the host body. Located along the jawline, under the nose and behind both eyes, they were intangible to anyone not possessing a nevra core.

  That core was the well from which sprang the soul force of his Spirit. The A-ranked fuel cell, so to speak. The nevron was the energy pouring out of that core, the A-ranked Talent that he manipulated now to perform the soul operation.

  His senses contracted, draining away until he felt nothing but his face. “Do it.”

  Tomas grasped him just under the jaw, and Gregorios focused his nevron again, severing the final connection to his host. Purple flames rippled along the edges of his face as Tomas lifted.

  Gregorios’s soulmask pulled away from the skull with the wet sucking sound he had grown to hate. Flesh slipped free as his soulmask disengaged from the underlying skeletal structure. As it emerged, Tomas lifted him higher.

  His vision altered until everything looked black and white and strangely angular. His sense of smell vanished, and his hearing expanded tenfold.

  With experienced precision, Tomas carried Gregorios’s soulmask over to the body waiting on the gurney. To Tomas, his soulmask would look like a shimmering face mask trailing rainbow smoke. Tomas positioned it and pressed it onto the new host.

  Sarah stood nearby, one hand raised to her mouth, eyes wide. She’d experienced more soul transfers than any mortal, but she’d been drugged prior to most of the sham operations.

  She’d seen a couple honest soul transfers, but she needed to be here, to witness it again. This was the world she was entering, and mortals usually found it unsettling in the best of times. She couldn’t afford hesitation if she was called upon to help in the future.

  Gregorios’s soulmask connected with the body and dove into it. His nevron sealed the connection and restored the soul points, linking each sense to the host. Since no soul had inhabited the host, it welcomed him without resistance.

  Flesh flowed up over his soulmask as it bonded with the bone structure of the host skull and began to subtly alter it to fit his facial profile. His senses expanded as he fused with the new host, and every molecule of the new body clamored for attention. Despite the countless times he had transferred, he shook under the flood of sensation and his body rattled on the gurney.

  Tomas leaned over him, holding him down until the tremors subsided. Sarah joined him, bracing Gregorios’s legs. The longer the dispossession, the more traumatic the experience. Since he had only been dispossessed for seconds, and had worn this particular body for years, reconnecting came swiftly.

  After seven seconds he drew in a steady breath. “Stable.”

  Tomas helped him up and he donned a set of clothes from a nearby shelf. “It’s good to be home.”

  “So this is your real body?” Sarah asked, glancing from him to the suit he’d left on the cooler tray.

  “It is the primary host for this life.” Gregorios gestured at the one he’d just abandoned. “I took that one from a man who had helped steal the body of a young woman for another to use.”

  “Oh.” Sarah looked satisfied.

  One of the functions the council oversaw was managing host bodies and transfer vehicles. The world could be an ugly place, and there was always a demand for healthy young bodies, but they avoided affecting unwilling mortals as much as possible.

  Occasional rogue facetakers wreaked havoc by aggressively taking souls, and were put down before the public became aware of the existence of their kind. Facetakers possessed great power, but mobs of angry mortals had destroyed more than one careless facetaker through the ages.

  “I think it’s dinner time,” Gregorios said.

  “After I shower,” Sarah said, heading for the door, looking eager to escape the room.

  Tomas helped him clean up. The group who serviced the safe house would see to healing the broken arm of the empty host. It’d be ready for him in a couple of months if he needed it again.

  Empty host bodies fell into a hibernation-like stasis, alive but able to linger for many months with little to no care if properly stored. That state slowed healing, but allowed them to maintain a ready stable of specialized suits.

  “I can’t wait to get back to Rome,” Tomas said as they headed for the stairs.

  “Have you told her?”

  “Not yet.”

  “She needs to know.”

  “I’m planning on it,” Tomas said a little defensively. “Alterego left scars. I’m trying to do it gently.”

  “Don’t wait too long. It’ll only make it worse.” Sarah was proving to be interesting for a mortal, but Tomas was not doing himself any favors by keeping secrets.

  They returned to the kitchen and Gregorios cooked a full meal of steak and au gratin potatoes. He left the hood fan on low until the room filled with the mouth-watering aroma of grilled beef. He closed his eyes and breathed deep.

  This was Eirene’s favorite meal. He’d cooked it for her countless times, using every imaginable form of fire. He could imagine her sitting at the table, calling to him not to burn the steaks, even though it’d been lives since he’d last made that mistake.

  The room seemed far emptier when he opened his eyes.

  Tomas returned from his room, dressed in jeans and a loose t-shirt. Sarah joined them just as Tomas finished setting the table. She had changed into a comfortable pair of shorts and a soft, cotton blouse that looked fantastic.

  Of course, just about anything she wore would look good. Tomas gave her a little kiss on the cheek and Gregorios noted her expression. She didn't look satisfied with that reserved show of affection. Tomas definitely needed to tell her soon.

  She sniffed deep. “That smells amazing.”

  “It’s sort of a specialty,” Gregorios said. “You look lovely, my dear. Now that we’ve all changed, let’s eat.”

  After eating quietly for a few minutes Sarah asked, “What now?”

  “Now I talk with an old enemy.”