“I could stand to eat, too,” I said, looking at the empty village ahead. “Is that strange? That I could see a spectacle like that,” I waved my hand at the church in the distance, “and still be hungry afterward?”
Karthik gave me a light shrug as he sat down beside me. “I suppose it just means you’ve seen enough death that it doesn’t bother you like it used to.”
“It should,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Those people were innocent. There were children in there.” A shudder ran through me.
“Our enemy is a merciless one,” he said, and drank from his own bottle of water. “They don’t spare a thought to who they might kill in their mad quest to wipe us all out.”
“So you’re a meta too, huh?” I gave him the sidelong look. “What’s your power?”
“Rather mundane, actually,” he said with a smile. “I’m very low level for my specialty, but I match up well on physical strength and dexterity, so I’ve managed to prove myself useful.”
I eyed him carefully. “And your power is …”
He shrugged. “I’m a Rakshasa.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I admitted.
“No one ever does,” he said with a smile. “There are very few of us left. I can, uh … well. Perhaps I’ll show you at some point, when there’s an actual need for what I do.”
“Sure,” I said with an almost dismissive nod. “This isn’t the first of these sites you’ve been to?”
“Not at all,” he admitted. “I’ve been to the ones in Greece and Turkey, and more recently Germany and France. It’s getting bad out there. Almost all the metas in Europe live in cloisters. It’s making it all the easier to wipe us out.”
“What’s Omega doing to stop it?” I asked, genuinely wondering.
“Everything we can,” Karthik said, clenching his fist at his side. “The problem is that while we’ve always wielded considerable power, it’s not total power by any means.”
“You mean you don’t normally go dropping into these cloisters and tell people how to run things?” I wore a faint smile as I asked.
Karthik smiled back. “We really don’t. These are independent cloisters. Omega recruits from them, trying to find young and disaffected metas looking for something outside their quiet village life but as a rule, we focus our efforts on things that matter to us—exerting power in the places it most benefits us.”
“So you don’t spend all your time hunting down metas like me?” I let my bare palms rest on the edge of the chopper floor, felt the cool metal against them along with the pressure of the edge.
“Very little of it,” Karthik said. “The thing you have to understand is that in the ‘old world,’ as it were—not the Americas—cloisters are everything. They’re tightly knit communities, they police themselves, they mostly retain their own offspring and keep them in the same villages. You don’t see as many of these wildfire metas here as you do in America. You know, the ones who don’t know what they are, that manifest and then suddenly get crazed with power and go on a crime spree?”
I felt my lips curl. “Met a few of those, yeah.”
Karthik shrugged. “They happen here sometimes too, usually from a meta father impregnating a human woman and not sticking around. The child has no idea what to expect when they come into their own abilities. We deal with those occasionally, on contract and under the table for the EU, but generally we’re focused on our own activities. Growing our influence, our power.” He didn’t blush but looked almost ashamed for a moment. “Our wealth.”
“So you’re telling me that Omega is just a moneymaking organization?” If I had baked any more skepticism into that question, it would have exploded over everything.
“Not only but primarily,” Karthik said. “It’s why I joined. They promise wealth, and they’ve consistently delivered. It’s how they recruit disaffected kids out of villages. You do your term of service, and a portion of your pay goes into Omega’s investment portfolio. By the time you retire, you’re bloody wealthy.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “How exactly does Omega make that money?”
Karthik laughed under his breath. “By using our powers to gain unfair advantages in the world of commerce, of course.”
I rolled my eyes. “Specifically?”
“Oh, think about it. You place a telepath in a position to be around very powerful men and women, and then make investments in companies based on the information they bring back to you.” His smile crinkled lines around his eyes. “I know it sounds nefarious, and it’s certainly illegal in some jurisdictions, but it’s hardly the most odious scheme going.”