Read The Far Shores (The Central Series) for Free Online

before
she considered leaving her desk.
    She invented a sudden
need for information on current events near the covert shipping lanes in the Gulf
of Mexico around eight in the evening that sent the last of her secretaries
scurrying for the archives. When she finally announced her intention to return
home, only Timor and Svetlana remained to hear her say it.
    There were few people
left in the Great Hall to watch them depart, but she was certain that the
proper individuals were still present to bear witness.
    Anastasia waited until
they had made it to the sidewalk, an armored Mercedes purring quietly in the
street beside them, crediting herself with remarkable patience. Then she pushed
Timor gently into the door he was holding open for her.
    “You two take the car,”
she commanded, doing her best to look the childish tyrant she had never been.
“The night is nice. I believe that I will walk.”
    Timor’s eyes widened in
practiced shock. It looked laughable to her, but it would probably fool a
distant observer.
    “But, Ana...surely, you can’t...”
    “I can,” Anastasia
confirmed, urging Svetlana into the car behind him. “I am perfectly safe in
Central without a bodyguard, Timor, don’t you think? After all,” she said,
almost cracking a smile, “we are among friends. And I have much to consider.”
    Svetlana closed the door
before Timor could finish his objections, and the driver drove slowly away, as
he had been ordered. Anastasia looked at the blank sky of Central with
distaste, then opened a black lace parasol and started her walk.
    The villa was only six
blocks distant, well inside the secured Administrative district of Central. She
had walked the distance by herself many times in the past, head bowed,
seemingly lost in thought. She had carefully cultivated a reputation for
frequently – but not always, that would have been suspicious – preferring the
option of a night walk home after a meeting of the Committee-at-Large. Years of
deception, leading up to this night.
    Anastasia felt almost
giddy, holding her shawl and skirts carefully as she walked to avoid tearing
the fragile silk. The sky she saw through the lace of the parasol lacked any
indication of stars or moon.
    The silence was broken
only by the sound of the heels of her handmade Italian shoes clicking against
the sidewalk. After she walked a full block unmolested, Anastasia started to
mutter to herself.
    “Oh, come now. Here I am,
all alone after leading the most controversial vote in Committee history,
walking an empty street, unescorted. Who could be afraid of a young lady all
alone in the dark?”
    The street was
artificially devoid of even the smallest indications of traffic. The silence
took on a palpability that grew dense and claustrophobic as it wrapped around
her. Anastasia allowed herself a small smile, raising her hand politely to her
mouth to conceal it.
    She was no longer alone.
She smelled the burnt-ozone taint of an apport protocol.
    She counted eleven,
heads wrapped in black cloth and features obscured with concealment protocols.
The night air surged and eddied as protocols activated, fire spilling out from
the clenched fists of one, while another formed a spear of what appeared to be
pure light. The wind eddied around telekinetic effects and the distortion of
barrier fields, massive temperature differentials and electromagnetic fluctuation.
Most wore night-vision gear, heads as swollen with arcane devices as the tactical
armaments they held. Anastasia could feel the cold fingers of uninvited
telepathic intrusions, caught in the web of her defenses like repressed
memories of childhood abuse.
    Anastasia carefully
snapped her parasol shut.
    “Oh,” she said
neutrally. “Dear me. What a terrifying and entirely unexpected development.”
    A canvas sack and a pair
of handcuffs landed near her feet.
    “I offer you one chance.”
The voice was maliciously sharpened with empathic suggestions of despair,
hopelessness, violation. “Put