Grand Cross

by Merethe Walther

  This wasn’t some kind of messed up retribution or mental break; he’d been under orachal compulsion. How long he’d been under and how he ingested it, she couldn’t tell. But his eyes were blank and the coldness there said he wasn’t interested in negotiations.

  “Do you know, in the American Old West, thieves used to rob trains with dynamite?” asked Eladia. “They’d set a charge, wait for the train to go, and then boom! take their winnings and be gone before anyone was any the wiser.” She carefully wiped at her bloodshot eye. “I’d like you to meet my take from this robbery.”

  “You bitch,” Aralyn said, fingers flexing into fists.

  “Oh I am that,” Eladia replied, looking over pleased with herself. “But I’m also ambitious; it’s a personal favorite of my own traits, actually. Did you know… regular orachal absorption is a relatively slow process? It takes a while for it to build up in the blood enough to make someone responsive to suggestion. But this”―she held up one of the familiar vials of orachal that they’d found on her ship and on Eris station―“takes all the guesswork out of the process.” She pulled a strange-looking pump from her belt, pressed the vial into it, and sprayed the orachal directly into Caden’s face.

  “But, how…” Aralyn’s knees went weak and she couldn’t formulate the rest of the sentence. Aerosol. She’s made it an aerosol. A spray version of orachal? The possibilities were absolutely terrifying.

  She covered her mouth and nose with her hand. Hesitantly, Apollo did the same.

  The memory of Redux popped into her mind. Caden, getting spritzed by a woman wearing a shark mask. Aralyn could still see the Nom nom! neons flashing along the shark’s jaws. Her dawning recognition must have shown on her face, because Eladia gave a harsh bark of laughter and threw her head back.

  “If you’re thinking Redux, then ding-ding-ding! But you’re only partially right,” Eladia said. “Do you know how hard it was to sneak onto my own ship during the auction? Luckily for me you and your lackies are literally the worst at everything, so the distraction you created was just enough for me to slip another dose to your little puppy here along with some instructions, of course.”

  “Caden,” Aralyn said, fear absorbing the anger and pain. “Wake the hell up!”

  When she’d woken up from her freak out on the ship, Caden had been different… he’d been far more withdrawn. She’d thought he was simply too lost in his own fury, but she hadn’t been paying attention because she’d been so wrapped up in hers. And now, Caden was in the same position Kragg had occupied, and Kragg was dead.

  “Caden, please,” Aralyn whispered. “Please show me you’re still in there.”

  “I’m afraid he can’t really hear you right now. This new strain is really something, isn’t it? I’d explain how it works but, y’know, trade secrets and all,” Eladia said with a smile. “Caden, wait until I’m gone, then shoot the boy and that slimy bastard”―she pointed to Apollo where he sat on the floor, looking horrified―“then her. If she moves or makes any attempt to rescue either of them, shoot her first. When you’re done, put your mask on and come join me outside.”

  She waggled her fingers at Aralyn and then walked over to Dror, grabbing the oxygen mask from around his neck. After she put it on, she headed deeper into the greenhouse, disappearing behind the foliage to what Aralyn could only assume was a door that led out of safe house Eurydice and back into Aliena. Caden swung the gun toward Dror, on the floor just to her right the moment Eladia had walked away.

  “Caden,” Aralyn begged. “Don’t do this.”

  He casually raised the gun and cocked the hammer. Aralyn scanned his arms for any sign of hesitation, any movement other than the order Eladia had given, but she could find none. There was nothing left of the real Caden in his eyes. He couldn’t hear her. He couldn’t see her. As he pressed his finger to the trigger, she could finally take it no more. If she let him kill Dror, she could never live with herself. And if he ever found out what he’d done, he’d never be able to, either.

  Aralyn ran forward and leapt between Caden and the boy, arms outstretched toward him, hoping to scoop him up into her embrace. Caden re-aimed the shotgun and without hesitation, pulled the trigger. His upper body jerked with the recoil, and he gave a surprised grunt but didn’t otherwise say a word.

  Liquid fire bored into Aralyn’s back and dragged a scream out of her throat, clawing its way out on sheer animal impulse. Casually, like he was pointing at a rock or a tree, Caden turned the gun toward Apollo, aimed, and then pressed the trigger, but only a soft click came out.

  Aralyn hadn’t had a chance to reload the gun. And Caden, under the compulsion, couldn’t tell the difference. Once he “shot” Apollo, he turned to Dror, fired the empty shotgun, and dropped it to the ground. He pulled his mask to his face and walked out without so much as a single misstep in his purposeful gait.

  Kragg’s form took up the space to Aralyn’s left, and Dror took the space to her right. From behind her Apollo whispered her name, but her body was cold; she was so tired. She wept as she stared at Kragg, and looked over him to Riordan. He was screaming into his tablet as Kita’s head slumped down and rested against her blood-covered chest. Her shoulder looked like ground beef with chunks of bone in it, the arm hanging by sinew and strings of flesh.

  Judging by the pain flooding her own body, Aralyn wondered how bad her back and side was, but was too afraid to try and look. Instead, she laid her cheek against the cool tile and prayed the world would stop spinning.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she muttered, but her mouth was filled with blood.

  Chapter Twelve

  When Aralyn woke up, the room she was in was empty; devoid of every possible comfort or decoration, and so dim that she could barely see the walls around her. The room seemed at once to be twenty times larger than her and also barely bigger than a coffin. Consciousness came slowly, as though she was adrift on a lazy river somewhere in her own mind. She could recall the fight with Eladia. Kita bleeding out. Dror unconscious. Caden gone.

  Kragg dead.

  The memories washed through her. She continued to float in the strange room, half-aware, trying to understand why she couldn’t feel much of anything. Her top half was too warm and everything from the waist down was too cold.

  “I was… shot… right?” she asked the empty void around her. She could appreciate why the IA had stopped manufacturing guns like those. The pain had been barbaric; so bad that she’d wanted to curl up and die right then and there.

  She’d been shot… Once? Twice? Things began to blur.

  Distant beeps echoed on the edge of her awareness, slow and unimportant. Floating in this strange place was the only thing that brought her any peace. Well, she argued with herself, not so much peace as nothingness, which was probably as close to peace as someone like her could ever truly hope to get. She wasn’t sure how she could tell, but she felt like someone else was in the room with her. No, she realized. Not in the room. She was in the room. They were outside of it, observing her.

  “Am I dead?” she asked.

  “Not quite dead, not quite alive,” called a familiar voice. “You can’t stay here though, kiddo.”

  Aralyn tried to turn her head, but it felt as though it was mired in molasses. She gave up, leaving her body to drift where it would. “Why not?”

  “Because,” said Kragg, stepping in front of her, materializing like a ghost from the mist, “this place is for people who ain’t got shit left to do.”

  “Where am I? I can’t see anything except you.”

  Kragg chuckled. “That’s ‘cuz you don’t belong here. Not just yet. Here.”

  The room shifted and changed. It went from being a black emptiness to Kragg’s living room, complete with the smell of roses from his garden, the gentle hiss of the kettle as it began to screech its readiness for tea in the kitchen.

  Kragg was sitting in one of his big chairs, reading a book on his lap with deft fingers. Physical braille books had been h
ard to gather, since many copies simply hadn’t been made in decades, but Kragg had managed to find some anyway. He said he’d always preferred the feel of the book in his hands to the electronic voice in his ear dictating the words to him. The change of scene brought a strange twinge of emotion to Aralyn’s chest, but as quickly as it came, Kragg waved his hands and it disappeared again.

  “None of that,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t mourn me; not yet.”

  “What if I want to be done?” Aralyn asked, her brain involuntarily flashing images of her hands, covered in his blood. “All I’ve done is fuck everything up. You’re dead. Maybe Kita, maybe Caden, Dror, Rio, Apollo―”

  Kragg smiled, and the sound of the whistle in the background grew louder. “You’re no quitter. Never have been. You’ll find a way to make it right. I know it.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Aralyn whispered. She wanted to bound out of the chair and hug Kragg. Hold him until he promised her that he wasn’t really dead. But something kept her mired. She was in the dream, but not a part of it.

  “Sorry for what?” Kragg asked, running his hands down the page.

  “Sorry you died,” she choked out. “That I failed you, that―”

  “Bah,” said Kragg affectionately, the whistle in the background now a piercing noise he had to shout over.

  The gentle look on his face saddened, and he let out a sigh, scootching forward in his chair. “Ain’t nothing to be sorry for.” He reached over and touched her hand and Aralyn felt herself spiral away from him into the din of the shrill whistle, and then, gratefully, into silence.

  “Ari,” called a distant voice. “Ari, can you open your eyes please?”

  Kita. That’s Kita. At first, the tentative fear that she was dead made Aralyn’s chest feel as though it would burst from the pain, but the sensation of her body returned slowly. She came to an awareness of Kita holding her hand, and the soft beeps of an EEG machine filled the silence. The more she fit her mental self back into her body, the more the absence of pain brought her even more concern. Aralyn squirmed, trying to bring herself back to awareness, but try as she might, her eyes remained stubbornly closed, like someone had glued them shut.

  With a whimper she moved her free hand and Kita tightened her grip on her left one, which was feeling strangely bare now that she realized it was devoid of the wrist module she normally wore.

  Deep, soul-crushing images filled her head and Aralyn’s soft whimpers, like a small child’s, filled the room. The smell of pungent chemicals layered beneath citrus and lavender scents overwhelmed her nose.

  “It’s okay,” Kita whispered. “It’s going to be all right.”

  Consciousness came and went for a while, but Aralyn couldn’t tell if it was minutes or hours.

  “Ms. Solari,” said a man’s voice Aralyn didn’t recognize. “You’re probably feeling a bit sluggish from the anesthesia. It’s a perfectly normal response, but I’m going to need you to try and open your eyes for me now, okay?”

  Aralyn struggled to drag herself from the darkness, a million questions beginning to fill her brain. Still, one thought rose above the others with a kindling of terror that was enough to redouble her efforts. Did he say anesthesia?

  She forced her lids open, the room blurring as she demanded that her eyes respond, almost by sheer willpower, to do as she told them. Kita’s concerned face hovered over her left side, and a kind-looking older gentleman with sharp, icy blue eyes stood to her right, his arms clasped behind his back in a relaxed demeanor. Although he was wearing a lab coat and had the air of a doctor, the room that Aralyn found herself in was no hospital room. It looked more like a lab or a machinist’s room. Tools of varying shapes and sizes hung along racks on the wall behind the doctor―some of which looked alarmingly like a mechanic’s tools―and several cabinets with clear plastic doors sat against the wall behind Kita, filled with metal and plastic parts and bottles and tubes of different shapes. There was a large assistant ‘bot in the corner behind her near a sink that held the watered-down pink of blood along its edges.

  Aralyn nearly bolted off of the bed, but Kita pressed her shoulder down, and weak as a kitten, Aralyn could not fight against her.

  “Just relax,” Kita said.

  “Where the hell are we?” Aralyn demanded, panic flooding her senses and overriding the sluggishness of the drugs. “Are you okay? I thought you were dead! Dror, is he okay, is Rio―” She tried to sit up again, but Kita forced her back down.

  “You’re gonna hurt yourself if you try and get up,” Kita said. “To answer your questions, Dror is okay. He had a minor concussion and a headache, but he’s all right. Rio is… I don’t know. I think in the waiting room? I haven’t seen him yet. Apollo ran off after Eladia once you… y’know…”

  “And Caden?” Aralyn rasped. “Is he…”

  “Gone. I don’t know where.”

  Aralyn looked away, fighting tears. “How are you?” she asked instead.

  “Well,” said Kita, “I’m alive. But”―she turned more to face Aralyn, revealing only a bandaged stump where her left arm had once been―“maybe only like, eighty-five percent intact.”

  Aralyn’s stomach curled in on itself so hard that she thought she was going to puke. She fought down the nausea, but the tears came unchecked.

  “Kita,” she whispered, crying so hard that she almost couldn’t get her voice past the tears, “I’m so sorry. I… I didn’t know. This is my fault―”

  Sobs overtook her and Kita held her with her remaining arm, letting her cry it out, which only added to the guilt that Aralyn already felt. She forced herself to stifle the tears.

  It’s not fair if I’m the one crying, she thought miserably. She had to give Kita a chance to talk to her, to yell at her, to cry if she needed to. Instead, Kita watched her with compassion. Although her eyes weren’t exactly dry, she didn’t seem to be as taken aback by the absence of her arm.

  “Ari, it’s not your fault. I messed up. Dror was watching everything on the tablet, and when he saw Eladia at first he panicked, but…” she hesitated. “He saw that you were in trouble and ran in after you. I couldn’t… I didn’t stop him quickly enough.” She hung her head, her face awash with disappointment. “I insisted that he should come. I should have just been smarter about it, maybe gone back into orbit while you and the others handled things. I messed everything up because I wanted to play hero.”

  “You didn’t play hero, Kita,” Aralyn reminded her. “Don’t blame yourself for this; blame me. I should have just made the call to keep you both safe.” She eyed Kita’s shoulder as she spoke but looked away when the guilt grew too great.

  Kita tried to smile and wipe away her tears. “Don’t worry about it,” she said with a chuckle. “I probably wouldn’t have listened anyway. Besides”―she flexed her shoulder―“Dr. T. here is lining me up with a right nice prosthetic. You know, the kind you can control with your brain or something? I’m getting a robot arm! How cool is that? I bet I’ll be able to program it to help with hacking or something.”

  The doctor chuckled. “That’s ill-advised, Ms. Shinkai.”

  Aralyn blinked at her in surprise and glanced nervously at the strange man standing beside her bed. “You’re handling this incredibly well,” she said to Kita.

  “Nah,” said Kita, smiling tentatively. “I’ve had a little while to adjust to the idea, I guess. I got my crying done a couple of days ago.”

  Aralyn winced. “How long have I been out this time?”

  “About that…” Kita began, but then chewed her thumbnail nervously.

  “If I may?” said the doctor, cutting in. Kita acquiesced with a nod and he continued. “You’ve been unconscious for several days, Ms. Solari. The gunshot wound was severe… unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It damaged you in ways that we could not predict.” He shrugged, searching for words. “I had to perform surgery, and because of the depth of your wounds, it went on for nearly eight hours… You’ve been recovering here for almost a
week and a half.”

  “W-what?” Aralyn asked with a sputter. “I’ve been asleep for almost two weeks?”

  “Eleven days, to be exact,” said Kita. “We… we actually weren’t sure you’d wake up again.”

  “I want to get some air, please,” Aralyn said, feeling crowded suddenly by the room and its occupants. Kragg had died, Caden had been taken, and Kita had lost an arm. And it was all her fault. She’d led them into a trap.

  Again.

  “I’m afraid you can’t, Ms. Solari,” said the doctor. “Your injuries were quite severe, as I said. You died on the tram over here, then two more times while I was removing shrapnel from your spine. The truth is… you don’t actually have the ability to walk right now.”

  Aralyn boggled at him as the world seemed to spin around her in a dizzying attempt to swallow her whole. “What?” Silently, she attempted to slide her legs along the bed, get them to do anything, but they didn’t respond. The terror within her continued to grow exponentially, threatening to engulf her.

  “Your spine,” the doctor explained, “was damaged by the metal bullet. It severed your―”

  “I know what you’re going to say,” Aralyn said. “Please don’t tell me that or explain anymore of it.”

  “Ari, it’s all right,” Kita said, trying to calm her down.

  “How is any of this ‘all right?’” Aralyn exploded. “You’ve lost a fucking arm; I lost my legs! None of this is okay, none of it is―”

  “The surgery wasn’t just to remove the shrapnel,” the doctor cut in. “I repaired the damaged bone and nerves, and replaced them with these.” He lifted a blue, yellow, and metal device that looked vaguely vertebrae shaped. “This device will allow you to walk. But we haven’t been able to turn it on yet, because we need a neuromap of your brain in order to pair the device solely with your own cerebral footprint, if you will. Because you have to be awake for that process, you don’t currently have the ability to walk, but it can be restored.”

  “You can do all that but you couldn’t save Kita’s arm?” Aralyn asked.