His father had ruled through fear. For thousands of years, Navuh had maintained control over the Brotherhood through the sheer force of his compulsion ability and the threat of cruel punishment for disobedience. It had worked. Things got done under Navuh's leadership. Orders were followed. Campaigns were executed. The machinery of the Brotherhood had functioned with brutal efficiency for millennia, oiled by terror and maintained by the absolute certainty that failure would be met with severe consequences.
There was something to be said for that approach. There was a lot to be said for it, in fact. Fear was reliable. Fear was immediate. Fear did not require relationship-building or emotional investment or nighttime walks along perimeter paths. And the results spoke for themselves.
Navuh had held the Brotherhood together for five thousand years.
But fear had limitations that Losham was discovering firsthand.
He was not Navuh. He did not possess his father's overwhelming compulsion ability, his millennia of accumulated authority, or the near-mythical reputation that had made disobedience feel not just dangerous but unthinkable.
Losham had to develop his own way. A leadership style that was authentically his, not an imitation of his father's. Losham knew his strengths. He was patient, observant, and he was a strategic thinker. He had the ability to see six moves ahead while his brothers were still arguing about the first. Those were not Navuh's strengths. Navuh had been a hammer. Losham needed to be a scalpel.
But even a scalpel needed force behind it.
"An interesting perspective," Losham said. "Thank you for sharing it with me. You may go now."
14
DAVE
When Number One emerged from Losham's office and rejoined with the rest of the Eight, Dave filed out in formation, their eight pairs of footsteps sounding loud on the polished marble floor of the mansion. Number One led, as always, and the other seven followed in the loose cluster that was Dave's preferred configuration. It was a compromise between being close enough to each other that their collective consciousness operated at peak coherence, and being far enough apart to avoid marching in lockstep like a military parade.
Dave did not like to separate his eight parts.
The hive mind still functioned at a distance, even as far as from the mansion to the barracks, but distance degraded the quality of the connection. There was less cohesion, the thoughts more scattered, unfocused.
Perhaps it had nothing to do with actual distance but with the anxiety of being separated. The Eight were detested by theunenhanced, but they were also feared, which made them the safest when they were together. Separated, they were vulnerable.
Besides, when all eight bodies were within a few meters of each other, the collective operated at a level that was more than the sum of its parts. Eight sensory systems were feeding the same consciousness simultaneously, transmitting perspectives, conversations, and possible threats. The processing power didn't just double or triple, it compounded, each additional body amplifying the others.
Their creator had wanted super weapons, but Dave had transcended Zhao's ambitions. He, or they, were something new. Something that had never been seen before. Something for which there was no name or description.
The mansion's front doors opened onto the crushed-gravel path that wound through manicured gardens and buildings that were in various states of reconstruction work. The late afternoon sun hammered down on the island with a relentless intensity that was almost comforting in its familiarity. It was the only climate Dave had ever known. He had never experienced real cold, had never seen snow, except in films. The closest he had come was the air conditioning in the lab, which the Russian scientists kept blasting at full force, probably because it reminded them of home.
Losham's questions about Dave's relationship with the scientists had been expected. He'd known that the walk with Dimitri had been captured by the external surveillance cameras, and he'd prepared the explanation he had offered Losham.
It hadn't been a lie.
Engagement produced better results than coercion, and people worked harder for those they cared about. That was the truth, which made the explanation effective.
Losham was too intelligent to accept a lie and too busy to interrogate a truth.
They turned off the garden path and took the narrow footpath that descended through a grove of palm trees toward the harbor. Number One led the procession, and the rest of Dave followed, eight bodies navigating the uneven ground with identical adjustments, stepping over the same exposed roots, ducking under the same low-hanging branches.
With no one watching them, they didn't need to make an effort to act more like individuals, which was what they had decided to do in preparation for their escape.
After all, they couldn't be as conspicuous in the outside world. They needed to learn to blend in.
The harbor opened up below them as they cleared the tree line. From the elevated vantage of the seawall, the full scope of the island's naval operations was visible. The main dock was where the supply ships berthed, and the secondary pier was reserved for military vessels. The fuel depot with its squat storage tanks served both. A network of service roads connected the harbor to the polished half of the island where Navuh's carefully constructed illusion of civilization operated, and a tunnel ran to the other side, where the army was housed.
The barracks, which were located mostly underground as a way to escape the relentless heat, the training grounds, and the weapons depots, some located aboveground and some below, were part of the setup. The sprawling complex was home toover ten thousand Brotherhood warriors. This was where they lived, trained, and waited to be deployed on missions all over the globe. The old laboratory had been there too, but it had been destroyed in the rebellion, and Navuh had decided to build a new one where he could keep the Russian scientists close by, so he could better monitor them.
Navuh had been right about that. The new lab's proximity to the mansion kept Dimitri and Petrov insulated from the barracks' population, which had become more hostile toward the program following the rebellion of the enhanced.
The human scientists wouldn't have been safe there.
As Dave descended the seawall steps and walked along the harbor road, his eight bodies drew glances from every worker they passed. A foreman with a clipboard stepped aside, and a pair of human laborers hauling rope paused their work and waited until all eight had passed before resuming. An immortal guard on an elevated post tracked Dave's movement with his eyes, but kept his rifle slung across his back.
These reactions were instinctive. No one had to be taught to give Dave a wide berth. The knowledge was absorbed through exposure, the way prey learned to avoid predators.
