Evolution

by R S Penney

  This time, Larani made no effort to hide her smile or the laughter that followed it. Instead, she spun around and practically beamed at him. “You owe me nothing except the chance to learn from you and to share my knowledge in turn. It's your job to be a pain in the ass, Jack Hunter; don't stop on my account.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We need each other,” she went on. “And I mean that both in the sense of our two planets needing each other and in the sense of you and I personally having much to learn from one another. Work with me. Help me restore the Justice Keepers to something we can all be proud of.”

  Jack smiled and bowed his head to her, barely suppressing a snort of laughter. “I appreciate the inspiring speech,” he said with a nod. “But you had me at 'Jack Hunter is hereby promoted to the rank of Special Agent and reassigned to the Denabrian Keeper office as the personal attache of Larani Tal.”

  “Well, good,” she said. “Now come. Let's find out what secrets this place had to share with us.”

  “So what's the deal with you and Jack?”

  Anna stopped in the middle of the tunnel with hands on her hips, head hanging as she let out a deep breath. “It's hard to explain,” she muttered. “And I really don't want to get into it when we're exploring an Overseer base.”

  There was a soft thumping sound as Ben walked past her and paused to examine the tunnel wall. He still wore his heavy armoured suit, and the scanners on his gauntlet allowed him to examine the structure. Of course, he had been doing that from the very moment they split off from the rest of the team.

  Anna winced, shaking her head. “How many scans are you gonna take?” she asked, approaching him. “If you didn't learn anything solid ten minutes ago, I can't comprehend why you think you'd learn anything now.”

  He looked over his shoulder to study her, blue light glinting off the crimson visor. “Testy,” he muttered in tones that made her blood boil. “Whatever's going on with you and Jack, it must be big.”

  “I don't want to-”

  “Did he finally kiss you?”

  Crossing her arms with a heavy sigh, she strode past him and did her very best to ignore the comment. The last thing she needed was some emotional outburst that would only stretch out this conversation-

  “Companion have mercy, he did!” In her mind's eye, Ben was a misty silhouette of bulky limbs, but he practically jumped up and clapped. “I've been wondering how long it would take! You two have been-”

  “I kissed him!” she said, cutting off the man's celebration before it made her want to punch him in the nose. Sweet Mercy, did Ben not grasp the concept of boundaries? She knew he meant well, but this was pushing it. “I kissed Jack. I cheated on my partner, and now I have to have an uncomfortable conversation.”

  She turned to face him.

  Ben just stood there with his arms hanging limp, his gaze fixed on the floor. “I'm sorry,” he mumbled after a moment. “I guess I wasn't thinking. I got so wrapped up in the idea of you two being together.”

  A frown tightened her mouth, but Anna did her best to maintain her composure. She wiped sweat off her brow with one hand. “We're not going to be together,” she whispered. “And I don't want to talk about it.”

  “Okay.”

  “So…What do the scans say?”

  He was tapping at his multi-tool, shaking his head as he studied the readout on the screen. “Not much,” he growled. “It's the same material that makes up every other Overseer installation.”

  “Any sign of where this Nexus is?”

  “You got me.”

  “So, we should just-”

  She cut off when her ears picked up something strange. A rumbling in the distance like the footsteps of an entire platoon of armed soldiers. But they were alone here, weren't they? Who else could be…

  Jack spun around when he heard the harsh crunch, crunch, crunch of boots on the tunnel floor. By the sound of it there were a lot of them. Perhaps a dozen men and maybe more. “Do you hear that?” he asked Larani.

  “I do,” she said. “Let's find cover; we're about to have company.”

  Melissa gasped, covering her mouth with one hand as she backed up and pressed her body to the tunnel wall. “That sounds like a lot of people,” she mumbled. “But who else knows we're hear?”

  “Slade,” Jena growled.

  The SlipGate bubbled jerked to a halt, revealing an open space with glowing blue walls that seemed distorted to his eyes. He could already see the blurry images of his men breaking off into one of the three tunnels that led away from this chamber.

  The bubble popped.

  Grecken Slade stood on the squishy floor in unrelieved black – pants and a simple t-shirt. His long, dark hair hung loose, and his face was as smooth as the finest silk. “Go,” he muttered, stepping forward. “Secure the area.”

  The last of his armoured soldiers – amateurs who couldn't wait to get their hands on assault rifles, but what else was a man to do – turned their backs and rushed off down the middle corridor, leaving him alone in the SlipGate chamber.

  He smiled to himself, shook his head and laughed. “Not long now, Jena,” he said. “Not long before I have your ruined carcass to hang on my wall.”

  Chapter 26

  Ben and Anna found a large, dome-like chamber just a short ways up the tunnel. It was big enough to hold maybe a hundred people, but there was only one entrance, which meant they could force their enemies into a bottleneck. That was really their only chance of survival.

  As she took a moment to catch her breath, Anna was surprised to feel nothing more than irritation. Of course Slade would find some way to meddle; the man always found a way to meddle. Things always went wrong whenever he got involved. But she was quite surprised by her lack of fear. Perhaps she had done this one too many times.

  Anna stood with her shoulder pressed to the wall next to the entrance, clutching her pistol in both hands. “They're getting close,” she said, looking up at Ben. “Now would be a good time to pull out whatever tricks you have.”

  He was up against the wall on the other side of the entryway, clutching his own gun and watching her through that red visor. “By the sound of it, there's at least half a dozen of them,” he said. “We're gonna have a hard time.”

  She peered through the doorway.

  A narrow corridor, roughly ten feet long intersected with the main tunnel they had been using. Anyone who came through here would have to do so two-by-two. So, if they could just keep Slade's goons bottled-up here, they'd be okay.

  One man appeared in the intersection, carrying an assault rifle in his hands. He was tall, broad-shouldered and dressed in the same gear she had seen these guys carry in New York. “Over here!” he said, glancing in their direction.

  He turned toward them.

  Anna fired.

  A stun-round hit the man's exposed neck, causing him to stumble backward with flailing limbs. But he managed to hold on to his weapon…And he didn't fall down. He just stood in the intersection, lifting his rifle.

  Anna ducked around the corner just before a stream of bullets came through the entryway, sped across the room and hit the back wall. An ear-splitting shriek pierced the air. This place was alive, and it didn't like anyone shooting the walls.

  Lifting her pistol up in front of her face, Anna shut her eyes tight. “High impact!” she growled. The LEDs on the barrel changed from blue to red.

  She aimed around the corner and fired.

  The man was halfway up the narrow corridor when a bullet ripped through his vest with a spray of blood. He dropped to his knees only to reveal two more men right behind him, both coming quick.

  Ben unclipped something from his belt – a sphere about the size of a golf ball – and tossed it into the corridor. There was a brilliant flash of light that spilled out into the open chamber. Anyone in that narrow tunnel would have been blinded.

  Anna looked around the corner.

  Two men were standing side by side, both with hands raised up
to shield their eyes. Their rifles were sitting discarded on the floor. She wasted no time, aiming for one man's chest and then the other.

  A bullet took the one on the right, causing him to stumble backward and spill blood onto the floor. The other one fell down just as quickly only to be replaced with two more armoured men who trampled over their fallen comrades in a mad dash.

  Ben stepped in front of the opening, raising a forearm up to shield himself. A wall of flickering electrostatic energy appeared before him, intercepting several bullet. He sent it speeding toward their enemies.

  The force-field was like a train rushing through a tunnel, sweeping aside anything in its path. Bodies were thrown backwards into the intersection. Soldiers dropped to the ground, losing their weapons.

  “We can't keep this up forever,” Ben said.

  “Hopefully we won't have to.”

  Those footsteps were getting closer.

  Jena watched as her boyfriend took two steps forward and stood in the middle of the glowing tunnel with his back to her. He thrust one hand out, pointing the bloody N'Jal at anyone who emerged from the open chamber they had just left behind.

  Melissa had her back pressed to the wall, a pistol held in one shaky hand. Her eyes were shut tight, and it was clear that she was muttering a prayer for her safety. Bringing her along had been a bad idea.

  Clenching her teeth, Jena let her head hang. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “No time for self-recrimination,” she muttered. “Melissa, snap out of it. You've been training for months. You can handle this.”

  The girl was jolted out of her reverie.

  “You can do this,” Jena said.

  At that, Melissa stepped into the middle of the corridor to stand with the pistol held in both hands, a look of determination on her face. “Thank you,” she said. “But you have to do something for me. Our first priority is securing the Key. Don't try to protect me if it means putting the mission in danger.”

  “You're gonna be one damn fine Keeper.”

  Harry still had his back turned, his arm stretched out like a man who thought he could hold back a tidal wave by sheer force of will. “I will only be able to hold a force-field for several minutes.”

  Jena closed her eyes, breathing deeply. “That's several more minutes that we would have without you.” She set her pistol for high-impact rounds and watched the LEDs turn red. “A standard force-field generator would only give us a few seconds of protection in any event.”

  Up ahead, two men in black tactical gear emerged from the large chamber and ran into the tunnel. They took about three steps before freezing in place and lifting their rifles for a kill shot.

  A rippling curtain of energy appeared in front of Harry, stretching until it was not quite big enough to block the entire tunnel. There were narrow gaps on either side that a stray bullet could get through.

  Slugs hit that shimmering wall and bounced off. Thankfully, these guys had to rely on Earth weapons. No chance of EMP rounds that could phase through that force-field. Still, it didn't leave her with much opportunity to counterattack.

  As she crept closer, Jena took a quick peek around Harry's body. Through the force-field, she could see the blurry images of men coming closer, firing three-round burst after three-round burst.

  “Harry,” she said. “Knock them out.”

  The force-field went barreling up the corridor at blinding speed, slamming into the first pair of men and knocking them backward into their companions. The entire column of soldiers fell like dominoes.

  Jena took aim.

  The first shot pierced through a man's visor and sent blood spraying out the back of his helmet. Seconds later, the guy next to him tried to get to his feet. That one went down from a shot to the chest.

  The next pair of men lifted their weapons.

  Just like that, another force-field blocked off the corridor, distorting their images until they seemed to be nothing but blurred smears of blackness. More bullets struck the rippling wall of electrostatic energy. It was clear their plan was to just keep hammering until Harry was to exhausted to maintain the force-field. And it was working.

  Tilting his head back, Harry growled as tears streamed over his face. “I can't hold it forever,” he choked out, gasping for breath. “Jena, we're going to have to come up with something else.”

  “I'm open to suggestions.”

  “Can you cover me?”

  “Yes.”

  She stepped up beside him, close enough that she could touch the force-field with her hands, and the instant that it vanished, she threw up a Bending in its place. The visual shift was subtle; instead of a rippling barrier that made their enemies look like blurry men on the other side of a waterfall, everything became streaks of colour that blended together so that individual shapes were hard to perceive.

  Bullets hit the patch of warped space-time, curved off to her right and then drilled themselves into the wall. A high-pitched shriek filled the air. As if she needed yet another reminder that she was inside a living being. “Whatever you're going to do,” Jena hissed through gritted teeth. “Do it!”

  Harry spun to his right, bracing both hands against the tunnel wall, pressing hard with the hand that carried the N'Jal. The eerie blue glow flared to a brilliant white, and then something happened on the other side of her Bending.

  The black streaks that almost represented men in tactical gear were replaced with blue light similar to that which came from the walls. It took her a moment to realize that bullets were no longer striking her Bending.

  She let it drop.

  Instead of a tunnel, she found herself face-to-face with a dead end, a glowing wall of veiny skin that seemed to pulse. There were men on the other side. She could hear the sounds of footsteps and muffled voices.

  Jena doubled over with hands on her knees, head hanging as she tried to catch her breath. “Can they shoot through that?” she asked, surprised at the roughness in her own voice. “It doesn't look very thick.”

  Harry had his eyes closed, his head resting against the tunnel wall. “Overseer tech is resilient,” he said. “It will heal quickly, but if they hammer away at it for a minute or two, their bullets will start to come through.”

  “Then let's move.”

  Despite the tingle in her skin and the fatigue that came from using her powers for more than a few seconds, she turned and ran through the tunnel. Melissa and Harry fell in on either side of her, both gasping.

  It wasn't long before she heard an ear-splitting shriek of pain as the creature they now inhabited reacted to the soldiers' attempts to pierce the wall with their guns. Anyone who thought organic technology was a good idea was insane!

  Harry spun again, pressing his hand to the wall again. There was a soft, slurping noise as the N'Jal bonded with the creature's nervous system. “What are you doing?” she asked with more than a trace of irritation.

  She spun around in time to see another wall forming behind them, skin growing out of the floor and ceiling until it blended together to make a seamless vertical surface that glowed and hummed. “Companion have mercy…”

  “Overseers sculpt flesh to serve their will,” Harry muttered.

  You are flesh, that dreadful voice echoed in Jena's head. You will serve our will. It left her feeling helpless and sick to her stomach. What had they done to her boyfriend? Was he beginning to think like these aliens?

  “Come on,” Harry said. “I know where the Nexus is.”

  A man in black tactical gear came around the corner, barreling through the tunnel at full speed. Two others joined him half a moment later, flanking him on either side. They made it about five steps, then jerked to a halt.

  All three raised their weapons.

  Larani flinched.

  Jack leaped in front of her with both hands out, the air before him blurring into a streak of colour. Bullets hit the pulsating barrier, curved off to either side and drove themselves into the tunnel walls, eliciting a scream.

  Jack
slowly backed up until he was side by side with her. The very instant that he let his Bending drop, Larani put up another one in its place, deflecting incoming fire into the tunnel walls.

  Jack kept retreating.

  Clenching her teeth, Larani winced and let her head hang. “We can't keep this up very much longer,” she said, moving backward. “We're going to have to find some place to mount a counterattack.”

  In her mind's eye, she saw an intersection of two tunnels just a few paces behind her. Jack already sensed her intentions; his misty silhouette fled around the corner and pressed its back to the wall.

  Larani joined him, releasing her Bending.

  She pressed her backside to the tunnel wall, then hunched forward with a hand on her chest, panting as she snatched air into her lungs. “They're going to keep coming,” she wheezed. “They'll follow us around this corner, and we'll be back where we started.”

  Bullets zipped through the intersection.

  Jack shut his eyes, trembling as he sucked in a breath. “You're right,” he said with a nod. “If we stay here, they'll just overwhelm us with superior firepower. We need to find a better place to make our stand.”

  This second tunnel was much shorter and led to a circular doorway that appeared to look into some larger chamber. Larani could see nothing of value inside – just glowing blue walls – but, if they could get to cover…

  She grabbed Jack by the upper arm and pulled him toward the opening. “This will have to do!” Larani shouted. “Maybe we can force them into a bottleneck and take them out one by one.”

  This new locale was about twice the size of her living room with a dome-shaped ceiling and a lumpy floor. Of course, there was no sign of what the room's purpose might be; she suspected that the Overseers reconfigured each location to fit their specific needs at any given time.

  Larani closed her eyes, sweat beading on her forehead. She wiped it away with one hand. “We take positions on opposite sides of the door,” she said. “We have to keep them bottled up in the tunnel, so that-”