Outer Olympus

Outer Olympus: Chapter 18

Rune knew the feeling of danger with an intimate familiarity that sprung her into motion immediately. The impression of Sasille's mind was a new one, a sensation that she was still adapting to, but in a moment of profound panic the identity was clear. Her new ally was prey, aware of its hunter but not equipped to fight back. Sasille's only answer was flight, but Rune had a broader vocabulary of conflict than that. She told her new friends that Sasille was in trouble, and that she'd handle it, and departed swiftly, despite Geode's fierce complaints. She appreciated their concern, they didn't know what she was truly capable of. She felt the frustration as she left the door, it was unfortunate, but Rune had never been the type to sit back while someone else was in danger, for better and worse.

Sensing emotions wasn't just a social skill, as useful as it was for understanding other people. It hadn't even been taught to her for this purpose; it turned out awareness of the emotions of others was not the same thing as respecting them as people. She walked outside into the bustling street, feeling the familiar din of the mental noise of dozens of people living their own unique lives. Here, among the chaotic mix of emotions, her power wasn't an engine of empathy, but a targeting system. A hunter tended to have a very unique and sharp feel to them, a cocktail of focus and boredom, of razor attention, nervousness, aggression; they stood out in the crowd like stars in the night sky. They circled like vultures around Sasille, whose panic was dying enough that she was a less clear point for Rune to detect. It didn't matter at this point, Rune had found the people tailing her, and that's what she needed to help.

The act of assisting someone who was being surveilled was called counter-surveillance. The counter-surveillance playbook was long and complicated, and anyone actively engaged in a tail as professional as Rune's current targets would know that playbook by memory, have careful countermeasures to make a counter-surveillance team's life miserable, ways to blend in and disguise themselves even when they weren't in line of sight of Sasille, a whirlwind of subterfuge and counter-subterfuge that could play out like a nine layered game of chess. Rune didn't have to play chess; she was here to take a hammer to the board. All the skill of hiding yourself from a conventional operative simply didn't matter when you were dealing with someone who could detect you telepathically, all the ways you would look for a counter-surveillance team wouldn't apply to a girl who was identifying and judging threats with barely a glance. If a group really wanted to have anti-mystic countermeasures, it was possible to- the metal arm hidden beneath another of Viola's baggy sweaters was testament to that. But this was so far beyond the scale of conventional training that a supernatural interruption could tear most carefully laid espionage apart.

Rune's key strategic problem here wasn't detecting her enemies, nor neutralizing them; she had at one point gotten so close behind one of them she could have simply reached out her hand and taken them out with a surge of mystic lightning before they would have a chance to react. The problem with that was that brilliant arcs of crimson lightning coursing through public places drew a lot of attention she couldn't afford. Subtlety wasn't Rune's preferred style, but fighting a guerrilla war often demanded it nonetheless, so she wasn't unfamiliar with the idea. The second problem was that her primary objective was helping Sasille, not eliminating her pursuers; if she made a decisive action and one of them decided to just run in with a knife, Rune would have been worse than useless.

She felt a wave of panic move through her targets. Sasille must have done something herself, because they had lost her. This wasn't that unusual in a tail, losing and regaining a mark was a routine part of the job, but a stressful one. It took about nine seconds for the group to communicate through a simple brevity code that Sasille had descended two levels. Smart. She had gotten to a bit of a rough start with Sasille, she realized, but did like her. Hopefully Sasille would appreciate the help. She stuck with one of the hunters through the stairwell focusing on making sure she could hear their transmissions; brevity codes allowed for quicker communication, but weren't particularly secure. Captain Kestrel had made sure Rune was more than fluent in them. She stayed back, making sure she was using the stairs to break line of sight with the man she was listening in on, when she heard the code that made her finally spring into motion.