by Kate MacLeod
“Right,” Daisy said and raised her weapon.
Shi Jian put up a hand. “You’re not going to shoot me.”
Daisy fired a shot. Shi Jian, who had seemed to be so casually leaning against the workstation, was suddenly backflipping over the panel to land on her feet on the other side. Daisy’s shot hit the screen on what she had said was the communications station, sending sparks everywhere.
Shi Jian laughed. “Nice try.”
“Try, try again,” Daisy said and fired another shot.
Shi Jian danced out of the way, and the bolt struck the wall where she had been.
Scout raised her own gun. When Daisy took her next shot, Scout would try to head off Shi Jian’s dodge.
Not that she thought she’d have more luck, not with her lack of actual shooting skill, but they might get lucky.
“You can’t hit me,” Shi Jian said. “It would be better not to try. We are on the bridge, you know.”
“The systems have backups,” Daisy said.
“Of course they do, but not all in the same room,” Shi Jian said. “So tell me, how fast can you run?”
“If you’re going to destroy us, then just do it already,” Daisy growled.
Scout really wished she hadn’t said that.
But Shi Jian looked positively delighted. She made a sweeping gesture with her arms, directing their attention to one of the workstations.
As if that gesture had been some sort of command, the screen in the station flickered to life. Scout and Daisy glanced at each other. Then, as Shi Jian took several steps back, they stepped up closer to see what was appearing on the screen.
Whatever camera the screen was broadcasting from was moving through a dark room, large but cluttered with great mounds of junk under tarps coated with dust. The camera tipped down, and a hand appeared, dragging its fingers through the dust on one of the mounds, then another.
The screen was showing them something through someone else’s eyes, and Scout was afraid she knew who.
The motion stopped, and the person pivoted to look back the way they had come, occasionally looking down at a gun they were spinning over and over around one finger, a lazy gesture with a very deadly object.
Scout took a step back and then another. She looked around until she found Shadow and Gert both tucked together under one of the other workstations, sniffing at the fried wire smell that permeated the bridge from the still-smoldering communications station and looking up at Scout with big trusting eyes.
Gert’s ears perked up, and she tipped her head as if trying to suss out what Scout was thinking.
Scout turned back to Shi Jian, who was watching her with a mad gleam in her eyes. She knew exactly what Scout was about to say, but she was going to make Scout say the words anyway.
“Stop it,” Scout said. “Please.”
Shi Jian pulled a face meant to be read as sad and shook her head.
“Daisy, please don’t look,” Scout said, putting a hand on Daisy’s arm. “Please. I can explain, but not like this. Please, trust me?”
Daisy looked over at Scout, those all-too-familiar eyes very carefully blank. Whatever she was thinking, she wasn’t going to let Scout see a bit of it.
Then she looked back at the screen. Just in time for Scout’s grand entrance, slingshot in hand and already firing towards the person whose eyes had recorded everything.
Clementine.
26
Daisy’s cold eyes stared fixedly at the screen showing her the last moments of her sister’s life. Scout wasn’t even sure if she knew what she was seeing. Her expression never changed, but she never looked away.
What was she thinking? Why didn’t she look at Scout even once?
Scout backed away, step by step, until she stood between the nook her dogs were hiding in and the rest of the room.
Gert looked up as she heard herself growling fiercely on the playback. Scout flinched at Clementine’s shriek of rage and pain, then turned her face away as the version of her from the past begged Clementine not to shoot her dog.
“Please, Clementine. It’s just a dog.”
Scout looked to Daisy one last time. If there were any lingering doubt, Scout saying her sister’s name would surely have killed it.
Then the Scout from the past rushed at the screen, and there was a confusing moment, a scuffle that ended in a cry of pain.
Then the screen went black.
“Daisy,” Scout said softly. She saw Daisy’s shoulders flinch, but she didn’t turn, just kept staring at the now-blank screen. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Shi Jian repeated. “Why be sorry? It was her or you. We all know that.”
“She was going to shoot Gert,” Scout said.
“And after she shot Gert, she was going to kill you far more slowly,” Shi Jian said. “Granted that didn’t appear in my little video, but I think we all know it’s true.”
Scout wished Shi Jian would just stop talking.
She wished Daisy would start.
“I wanted to tell you—” Scout began.
“No you didn’t,” Shi Jian interrupted. “You absolutely did not. You wanted to go the rest of your lives never speaking a word of it.”
Scout felt her cheeks burning. Because when Shi Jian said it, Scout was afraid it was actually true.
“See, I know you both so well,” Shi Jian went on. “I know what you’re thinking. I know what you’re feeling. Like Daisy here. My star pupil. She knows it was supposed to be her down on that planet infiltrating the governor’s mansion. Not Clementine.”
Scout looked at Daisy, who had shifted from staring at the screen to staring at the floor, but her right hand was clutching her pistol so tightly it was starting to tremble.
If Shi Jian kept talking, would she shoot at her again?
Scout still had her own weapon in her hand. Maybe this wasn’t over yet.
“Nothing in Clementine’s short, tragic life was supposed to happen to her. But it did. I don’t think any of the three of us believes in something as banal as fate, do we?”
Daisy’s eyes darted up to Shi Jian, but only for a fraction of a second.
“A million, million causes having a million, million effects. No one can untangle those threads, and even if some are thicker than others, there’s never really one core reason for anything. Daisy knows this.”
Daisy didn’t respond. Shi Jian slipped out from around the workstation, gliding across the room to stand before Daisy with the graceful nonchalance of a cat.
“Your parents are taken from you, your sister is separated from you in that terrible orphanage, all because of a war that should never have happened in the first place. Employees of a corporation declaring war on a different department? Insanity!”
Daisy made another darting glance up to Shi Jian, who was once more leaning a hip on a workstation and looking down at Daisy with her arms crossed.
“There is no one person who can take the blame for that sequence of events. And if you can’t blame anyone in particular, blame everyone. That’s always been my motto. We’re all in this closed system together; we all share the causes and effects. Everyone is to blame. Am I right?”
This time when Daisy looked up at her, she didn’t look back down. Her blue-gray eyes stayed on Shi Jian’s with a mute intensity.
“Blame everyone,” Shi Jian said again. “But maybe start with her.” She raised a hand to stab a finger at Scout. “She’s the one who took a blade and wedged it in the one place—the one place!—she knew your sister would never recover from. The one place she was sure would kill her. She did it deliberately. Her intent was very, very clear.”
Daisy said nothing, but the muscle in her jaw tightened.
Shi Jian seemed to be waiting for something, but Daisy still didn’t move. In the end, she stopped pointing at Scout and gave a little shrug before refolding her arms.
“Maybe the dog then,” Shi Jian said. “The big black monstrosity that tore the flesh from Clementine’s arm. Her a
ugmented flesh, the one that gave her heightened reflexes. Enhanced strength.
“A greatly intensified sense of touch.”
Daisy winced.
“Yes, you know what I mean,” Shi Jian purred. “We feel everything, you and I. Everyone else just thinks we’re invulnerable, able to recover from almost any injury. They don’t know about the pain. We feel it so much more than they do. I’m sure you remember waking up from all the surgeries in unending agony. You might have thought it was just because you were a kid, why it felt like the worst pain imaginable. Maybe you thought, well, it’s just because I’ve never been hurt like this before.”
“But I was an adult when I got my augments. I can heal from nearly any wound, and I have. Over and over again. It never stops hurting. All of our jacked-up nerve endings turn on us when we’re in pain.
“Your sister’s last moments were nothing but agony. I daresay, even as furiously, fabulously stubborn as your sister was, in the end, she welcomed death. Just to end the pain that she caused her.”
Shi Jian was jabbing her finger again. Daisy’s eyes followed the path it was indicating, then moved back to Shi Jian.
“The girl, or the dog?” she asked.
Shi Jian hesitated, and something almost like confusion made her smile waver for just a moment. Clearly, this wasn’t a question she had been expecting.
But she decided how to respond quickly enough. “Both. If you can’t blame one, blame all, remember? Come on,” she said, pushing away from the workstation and slapping her hands together. “Help me throw them out an airlock.”
Daisy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“I know it won’t mean we’re friends,” Shi Jian said. “It’s just a job that needs to be done, so why not do it together? You need your revenge, and I need rid of this meddlesome girl. And I’ve never liked dogs.”
Daisy’s tight grip on her pistol loosened. Then she lifted her hand, spinning the gun around her finger several times before tucking it back in her holster.
Shi Jian grinned even more widely than before. “You taught Clementine that,” she guessed.
Daisy just shrugged. “Is there a closer airlock than the one we busted into?”
“Of course,” Shi Jian said. “That little pirate, thinking she was so clever busting you in through what’s basically the trash chute. I did notice that, by the way. But no matter. There’s an airlock just through there, by the escape pods for the bridge crew. And don’t ask if we can just jettison them out in a pod to slowly die alone in the void. As lovely as that sounds, under the current circumstances, I really want to be sure she’s gone. Shall we?”
Daisy turned and walked to Scout, deliberately not looking at her.
“Daisy, no,” Scout said, moving between the girl and her dogs. “Don’t do this.”
Daisy didn’t answer, just put one hand on Scout’s shoulder and shoved her aside.
Scout went flying across the bridge, landing in a heap on the floor. And she doubted Daisy had used even a fraction of her augmented strength.
And Daisy was as weak as a newborn calf compared to Shi Jian. Scout was grossly outmatched.
Daisy stooped and held out her hand to Gert, who smelled it, then licked it. Her tail thumped happily on the floor. Daisy scratched at her ear, then reached for her collar.
“Run, dogs!” Scout screamed as she scrambled to get back to her feet. That feeling of movement that didn’t sync with what was actually happening was making it hard to get up. “Run!”
Shadow tried to dart around Daisy, but Shi Jian was right behind her and scooped him up.
Gert’s tail stopped wagging. Shadow yelped as he tried to twist out of Shi Jian’s arms and Gert growled a low warning growl.
Daisy lunged forward and snatched a hold of Gert’s collar, hauling her out to where she could pick her up.
“No!” Scout cried, running after them. She tried to pull on Daisy’s arm, but it was immovable. Gert whined pitifully.
Shadow yelped in pain and Scout ran at Shi Jian. She didn’t even think about it, just jumped on the woman’s back and pressed the barrel of her gun to Shi Jian’s temple.
She pulled the trigger, but not before Shi Jian directed a single elbow back sharply, sending Scout back down to the floor wheezing in pain. Shadow remained pinned tightly in Shi Jian’s other arm.
Scout couldn’t draw a breath, and her vision was flooding around the edges with an alarming dark red color. The world was spinning and tipping back and forth, even looping over on itself, and she could taste bile at the back of her throat.
She was vaguely aware of Daisy’s feet moving past her, of the door hissing open and then closed again.
Scout pushed herself back onto her feet and stumbled after, keeping her eyes closed until she stopped moving. That helped her walk without falling, but when she opened them to see where she was, the world was still twisting around. She caught glimpses of things and tried to assemble them into a picture inside her head. A small, narrow hallway dotted with round hatches. The escape pods, Scout assumed.
At the far end of the hallway, an airlock. Scout took a deep breath, then looked again. The inner door was already standing open. Shi Jian tossed Shadow inside, and he managed to land on his feet but retreated to what he thought was the safety of the far wall, barking and snarling and generally warning Shi Jian to stay back.
Not knowing Shi Jian was no longer the real danger.
“Please, Daisy! Don’t!” Scout cried.
“She said something similar to your sister there at the end, didn’t she?” Shi Jian said, looking back at Scout as she still fought to draw a breath in. Her diaphragm was spasming arhythmically. She took two more stumbling steps but stopped when her vision started spinning again. “Better watch your back,” Shi Jian said to Daisy. “She must have a knife somewhere in all those pockets.”
Daisy turned to look back at Scout. Gert in her arms was squirming with all her might, but Daisy’s arms were immovable.
“Gert,” Scout said miserably. She couldn’t help her dog, and Gert couldn’t help her either. Not this time.
Daisy hugged Gert a bit tighter, burying her nose in the fur at the back of Gert’s neck just like Scout loved to do.
“Let her go,” Scout said, her voice shaking as much with rage as pain and exhaustion.
“Let her go?” Daisy repeated.
“Let. Her. Go.”
Daisy shrugged. “Okay.”
Scout couldn’t quite understand what was happening. Daisy pivoted away from Scout, taking a step closer to Shi Jian, who was practically cackling in delight.
But those cackles died away as forty pounds of angry hound from hell landed on her, driving her back into the airlock.
Then Daisy stepped back, the end of Shi Jian’s cloak slipping away from something Daisy held in her hand.
A grappler. She had taken it from Shi Jian’s belt.
“Scout, call the dogs!” Daisy commanded.
She didn’t have to tell Scout twice.
27
Scout took a deep breath, ignoring the stabbing pain like a knife between her ribs at the point where Shi Jian’s elbow had struck her, and yelled as fiercely as she could.
“Shadow! Gert! Come!”
Shadow darted past Shi Jian’s flailing arm to get to her, ears flat against the sides of his head. He was deeply upset.
Gert stayed where she was, standing on Shi Jian’s chest, her growl building to an intensity that had every hair on Scout’s body standing on end.
Shi Jian swung an arm and sent Gert flying back down the hall. Scout rushed forward to catch her before she hit the ground. She managed to break the big dog’s fall, although she didn’t think she had so much prevented any injuries as spread them out between the two of them.
Shi Jian leaped to her feet with a snarl but was blasted back into the airlock when Daisy fired the grappler.
That was never going to hold her. Already her talons were tearing at the thick webbing.
But
Daisy didn’t expect it to hold her for longer than a second. That was all she needed to slam her hand down on the button to close the inner door.
She turned to Scout, eyes bright with triumph. But before she could say a word, just as the door was slamming shut, an arm snaked out and those talons wrapped around Daisy’s throat.
“Daisy!” Scout screamed, running to Daisy’s side. Behind Daisy, she saw the door close down on Shi Jian’s arm. The edge dug in, tearing the black fabric of her sleeve, slicing into her flesh.
Then it stopped. And started to open again.
“Obstruction detected,” a voice from nowhere told them.
“No!” Scout yelled, trying to catch the door with her hands and force it to close again.
It was useless. The voice kept repeating over and over, “Obstruction detected,” but the door never stopped. Scout pounded at it with her fists in frustration.
“Scout,” Daisy croaked as Shi Jian’s fingers tightened around her throat. It took a moment for Scout to realize Daisy wasn’t looking at her but at the panel behind her. She spun around and slammed her hand down on the close button, but the door continued to open.
“Man. You. Al.” Daisy’s eyes were starting to bulge, her face turning a very disturbing deep red, but still she fought to get the syllables out.
Then Scout realized what she was trying to tell her. The panel had another smaller button labeled “manual override.”
Scout slapped her hand down on that. The door shuddered, then started to close again. Scout started to turn to help Daisy, but the moment she stopped touching the button, the door started opening again.
Daisy managed a truncated rasping breath, but she wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. Scout put both hands on the button and leaned her whole weight into it. She wasn’t sure if that would help. It didn’t seem to make it close any faster. But neither was it stopping.
Inside the airlock, Shi Jian was still tearing away at the webbing with the talons on the hand that wasn’t around Daisy’s throat. She would be free sooner than the door would be closed.