“Maybe.” She hesitated. Did she tell him the truth? “I won’t lie to you. You could end up a psychotic wreck. Maybe some zombie-like mindless weapon. On the positive side, you couldn’t have crawled out of that canyon with a leg full of gotcha vine spines if you didn’t have one hell of a lot of guts and courage hidden away in there. The kind that might see you through this fight.”
“And what if I don’t?”
She locked gazes with him. “We’re being honest, right? So, here’s how it lays out: I like you. Maybe, if things work out, and we both come out the other end, I might even come to love you. But I know what’s inside you, growing, learning. So, you have to understand: If Demon wins, and I see you lose yourself, if you become a threat to Port Authority or anyone here, to Kylee or the Briggses, I’ll shoot you in the back of the head.”
“You mean that, don’t you?”
“Sure, I’ll have some hard days afterward, struggle with my regrets and a little guilt. Given some of the things I’ve done, I’ll find a way to cope. All I have to do, though, is look into the eyes of the people I’ve saved, and tell myself, ‘They’re alive because of me.’ When I stand over your grave, I’ll tell you, ‘Hey, sorry it worked out this way, but I did you a favor. You’re better off dead than made into a monster.’”
21
The wind ruffled Michaela Hailwood’s short hair, caressed her cheeks and eyelashes as she stood, eyes closed, and inhaled the ocean scent. So different from Earth, yet familiar, she tried to assess what the pungency reminded her of. Could only think of damp clothes freshly removed from a washing machine. But that wasn’t quite right either. Maybe if you’d added cloves to the detergent? Or perhaps a hint of fresh-squeezed lime?
The first time she’d smelled the Donovanian sea, it had been with anticipation and excitement. This time, it was with a clear understanding that everything they’d endured to get here might have been a price too high to pay. Shin was dead. The effect was like having the strong pillar that supported her broken, smashed, and fallen.
Shin. His reassuring smile shone back from her memory. His calm reassurance always propping her up when her resolution began to waver. “Easy, Michaela. We’ll make it through this.”
“No, old friend, we won’t,” she told him.
I feel so alone.
She opened her eyes to stare out at the turquoise waters, the endless swells as they marched toward the Pod. Just at the horizon, something big thrashed, sending a spray of white water high into the air. Even across the distance, Michaela could see some of the torpedoes shooting out like missiles to arch through the air and arrow back into the waves. Whatever was hunting them was big to spray that much water. Really big.
Her stomach tightened, and she placed a hand to her gut, wishing she could just close her eyes and will this terrible place away. She could order the Pod shut down. Evacuate to the mainland, retreat to Corporate Mine. Farming, cleaning, hauling rock out of a hole in the ground, it couldn’t be that bad. Especially compared to what had happened to Shin.
Michaela had forced herself to watch the recording, to see her cherished friend so brutally maimed and hauled off to the water. This didn’t happen to people. Not in the twenty-second century. Not to a kind and compassionate man like Shin who had dedicated himself to science.
She heard the hatch cycle behind her, shot a glance over her shoulder. Did her best to hide her disquiet. “Yes, Board Supervisor? Can I help you?”
Kalico Aguila stepped up beside her, thumbs in her belt as she fixed her attention on the water. As the woman’s shining black hair caught the breeze, it reflected shimmers of blue in Capella’s light. Kalico’s laser gaze fixed on the far horizon, her pinched expression pulling the scars on her face tight.
Bracing her feet, Aguila finally answered, “I don’t know. Can you help me?”
“I beg your pardon. I mean . . . help you with what?”
“For the moment, my biggest concern is this research station. You saw them at breakfast this morning. Your people are demoralized. Panicked. On the verge of falling apart. They keep looking to you for leadership, and all you can do is wallow in your own grief and despair.”
“If it had been anyone but Shin—”
“That’s quetzal shit if I ever heard it,” Aguila snapped. “Yeah, you’re one big happy family. I get that. You all lived together as some tight-knit commune for eight years, and you’re all closer than brothers and sisters. So you’re devastated because Shin was killed and eaten by a monster. Shin, of all people. The mean old Supervisor will never understand. Outsider that she is. All those warnings we gave you at orientation weren’t hot air and wasted breath. Fact: People die on Donovan.”
“I know.” Michaela fought sudden tears. “We were warned. It’s not the same as seeing it. Knowing who that kind and caring—”
“Stop it! If you’re looking for justice, fairness, or some scorecard whereby the universe only takes the unworthy, and the good guys always come out on top, I’ve got news for you. You’re on Donovan. Not to mention in the wrong fucking universe.”
Michaela swallowed against the sob that tried to start in her breast, bit her lips. Refused to meet the Supervisor’s hard gaze. “We’ll survive. It’s just the shock of it. It’ll take time for us to find our equilibrium.”
“And how long is that going to take?”
“I don’t know. This is the first time one of us has died. That it had to be Shin—”
“We’re back to the fucking scorecard. Get over it. You’ve put everything on hold. Everyone’s got the day off while you all ‘reevaluate,’ whatever the hell that means. I meant it last night when I said I’d shut this place down.”
Michaela turned, feeling like her chest would explode. “Don’t you get it? I don’t know! I’ve never had to deal with this. People on my team don’t die. Not like Shin did.”
“Welcome to Donovan.”
“I get really tired of hearing that.”
“Then you’d damn well better start understanding what it means. Life isn’t cheap on Donovan, but it’s damned uncertain. If you can’t wake up to that, I’m evacuating this station and redirecting its assets to the mainland. We’ll cannibalize the subs, the UUVs, and other equipment for whatever we can salvage. Hell, given the water-make in the Number One, I can use the diving gear.”
“God, you’re cold.”
“Yes, I am.”
“How do you do it? Just lose all of your humanity? Become like a machine, some Corporate statistical algorithm figuring probabilities of success, predicting which human being is going to die next?”
Aguila’s jaw muscles twitched, the chill in her blue gaze almost glacial as she fixed on Michaela. “When I set foot on Donovan, I wasn’t afraid of anything. I was coming here to kick ass, restore Corporate control, arrest and execute mutineers and pirates, and cut The Corporation’s losses. I was one tough avenging angel come from on high. Lasted me all of a week before this place slapped me right across my arrogant mug and left me terrified down to my bones.”
Aguila thrust a scarred finger into Michaela’s face. “I’ve been where you are now. That’s why you get this one chance, woman. Because I was so terrified, I opted for what I thought was the easy way out. But I still didn’t get it. Took me a full year of Donovan and its people beating the bullshit out of me before I started to come to grips. Enemies became friends, friends turned out to be enemies, but I learned.”
Michaela tried not to wince under that eerie blue stare.
Aguila stepped closer, voice dropping as she said, “I understand that you just had your first real dose of Donovan. I understand that you are all scared. Well, sweetheart, it’s going to get a lot scarier. On top of ‘Welcome to Donovan’ we have another saying. It goes like this: People come to Donovan to leave, to find themselves, or to die. Your last chance to leave was when Ashanti inverted symmetry on her way back to Solar
System. So, let me see . . . Yes, that leaves you with two choices.”
Michaela’s mouth had gone dry. She turned away, walked to the railing, and stared down into the water. “What do you mean by finding myself?”
“Finding out who you really are. What you have inside now that you’re face-to-face with Donovan. Maybe you’re the Scientific Director of Maritime Unit’s research station. Maybe you’re a drill operator in the Number Two mine. Could be that you end up running Corporate Farm. Or you might find yourself scrubbing the cafeteria floor after each shift.”
“I see.” She tried to keep the misery out of her voice as something long and thin shot across the top of the reef and vanished into the depths.
“The one constant in all of those scenarios,” Aguila’s relentless voice continued, “is that you will be afraid. This is Donovan after all. Those of us who find ourselves, we live with it. Actually come to value having the shit scared out of us every now then, because it reminds us to be smart, to think, and it keeps us alive.”
“So you still get scared?”
Aguila’s laughter reeked of bitter irony. “Oh, yeah. After watching that scimitar take Shinwua, I would have rather been anywhere but on that seatruck flying back to the Pod. No telling what might reach out of the water to grab us next.” A beat. “But that’s Donovan for you.”
“You could order us back to the mainland.” A sudden flicker of hope tingled in her breast.
“I could. But I won’t.” A beat. “Not yet.” Aguila’s hard blue gaze, unforgiving, bored into her. “That’s your decision, Scientific Director. I’ll back you up, whichever way you choose.”
Michaela closed her eyes, wishing she could be anyplace but here. Wishing that something would reach out of the water as it had with Shin. It would be quick. The crushing of her body as huge jaws sheared through her skin, muscle, and bones. And then it would be over.
There would be no more pain. No more fear of the unknown terrors lurking on this terrible planet.
And she’d never have to face the Supervisor’s cold and measuring blue eyes again.
22
Better off dead than made into a monster. Talina’s words kept repeating in Dek’s head. Nor was it likely that he was going to forget that look in her eyes as she’d said them. She’d been serious as a brain hemorrhage.
He sucked his lips in, staring up at the curving ceiling in Tal’s bedroom. His first night on Donovan had been spent here. In this bed. Alone. Since then, he’d fantasized about being back here. With her. In this room.
Only, in his dreams he wasn’t a convalescent with a swollen-and-aching leg who was infected with hostile TriNA, and she wasn’t thinking of him as potential threat to himself, her people, or friends. Oh, no. In the fantasy she was gazing at him with a very different look in her large dark eyes.
“Not to mention that in the fantasy we are doing very different things in this bed,” he told himself. Then he slapped the mattress with the flat of his hand in emphasis.
Was that why he had asked Flute to exchange blood with him that day out at the Briggs homestead? Had it been some prompting way down deep in his psyche? Maybe after being with her in the forest outside of Tyson Station? Something about Talina Perez had always ensorcelled him; he figured that she was the first woman he’d ever met who was beyond his reach. Something he’d never even considered with Kalico Aguila—who had rightly loathed and despised him.
From the beginning, when it came to Talina, he’d had the feeling that he’d never measure up, be worthy of her respect, let alone consideration. And—for a Taglioni—the entire notion was not only totally foreign, but entirely unthinkable.
“Fool!” The word seemed to pop into Dek’s head from nowhere, and with it came the distinct hint of derision.
“Demon,” he whispered. “Not playing this game. Rocket’s in there, too. And so is Flute and his lineage. My call, piece of shit? You better look to your rear, because they’re on my . . .”
He couldn’t finish as his vision filled with a splendor of color, flashes of laser-bright reds and greens. The room slipped sideways, spinning in fragments that kept resetting, leaving Dek to gulp as his stomach flipped with increasing vertigo.
God, he hated nausea. In the end, he closed his eyes, shifted, and lowered his right foot to the floor.
“Asshole,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “You do this to Talina, too?”
“Stronger.”
The beast was referring to Talina and not him.
“What’s up?” Talina’s voice came from the doorway.
“Demon. The fucker just tripped my sense of equilibrium, made the room spin so bad I want to throw up.”
“He talk to you?”
“Yeah, said you were stronger. The toilet-sucking little creep likes making me feel inferior.”
Dek blinked hard, rubbed his eyes, delighted when he opened them to find that Tal was staring down, her alien-dark gaze fixed on his.
She asked, “Why is he using me against you? In case Demon hasn’t noticed, I’m on your side.”
Dek bit his lip, let his eyes slide to the side while he tried to find the right words, but suddenly he was a quetzal, surrounded by aquajade and scrub chabacho. He was in midair, leaping across a brushy meadow . . . and onto the back of an old and scarred quetzal. Dek’s jaws clamped shut, crushing the top of the old quetzal’s neck. He could feel the bones cracking and snapping under the rows of his serrated teeth. The two of them crashed to the ground, Dek’s weight pinning the older animal. The elder’s mouth gaped; the contraction of the lungs could be felt sucking at the constricted windpipes.
“Hey!” Talina’s sharp voice cracked through the image. “Where are you?”
The vision shattered as Talina, hands gripping his shoulders, shook him back to. . . .
Yes, her bedroom. He struggled to clear his sight. Brought her face into focus, just inches from his. His heart was pounding, his mouth—no longer tasting quetzal—felt curiously dry.
He took a deep breath, the smell of her flooding through his senses. He held it, savored, and his body began to respond. Her eyes, so close to his, grew larger, filling his vision. The blood pounding through his veins sent a shiver through his muscles. A flood of bitter peppermint saliva burst onto his tongue.
Talina shook him, hard again. “Hey, back down! That’s not real. Demon’s playing with you. Using your attraction—”
Those lips, so close. He grabbed her by the back of the head, pressing her lips to his. Caught the shock as her eyes widened. His tongue was against her closed teeth, the flood of peppermint overpowering. And then she responded, was kissing him back, her tongue sliding along his. Her body began to melt into his, the hammering pulse . . .
She tore away, the power of it rocking him back in the bed.
“Piece of shit!” she cried, bolting to her feet to stomp around the confines of her room. “You do that to me again”—she knotted a fist, impotently pounding the air—“I’ll scrub you out of my body with a wire brush!”
Dek struggled to catch his breath, to slow his triphammer heart. “Sorry,” he said through a gasp. Glanced down, horrified, and clawed at the sheet to cover his arousal. Not that the thin sheet really disguised anything.
Talina barely paid it any attention, whipping around to point a hard finger. “He’s not using me like that!”
“Victory!” the voice inside Dek’s head crooned.
“Some victory, asshole,” Dek muttered, the overpowering peppermint clogging his nose and throat.
“What did he say?” Talina asked. “Victory? Is that what you heard?”
“Yeah.”
Talina paused, as if listening, and finally said, “We’re at the beginning of the fight. It’s the last thing he’d expect.” She dropped to the side of the bed, her gaze intense. “Two can play at that game. You with me?”
“Huh?” He tried to sort out the confusion in his muddled head.
She leaned forward, hand behind his head, and kissed him. Her lips conformed softly to his, her tongue teasing. Dek worked into her kiss, the flood of peppermint back, seeming to saturate his tongue, expanding into his nose, sinuses, into his very brain. It became the universe.
Identity faded into a pulsing desire. His heart, blood, bones, and nerves charged as he clasped her to him. And through it all, she kept her mouth on his, as if to devour his essence, and merge them into a high-pitched unity.
Just as he could bear no more, as his body verged on an explosion, she violently broke free. Threw herself off the bed and charged to the door. She whirled. He had that image—captured as she met his eyes—of her heated face, the fire in her eyes, her desperate panting for breath.
“If you get out of that bed . . . try to follow me,” she said between gasps, “I will break both of your legs and feed you to a slug!”
And she was gone, pausing only long enough to grab her utility belt off the chair out front. Then the door slammed with a finality.
. . . Leaving him to battle for breath, slow his heart, and try and find some semblance of peace.
“What just happened here?” he demanded of the empty room.
A disembodied voice beside his ear clearly said, “Transformation . . . if you are strong enough.”
23
The children were in the observation dome—a circular room just past the last of the personal quarters on the first level. Separated from the hallway by a weather door, the observation room consisted of a transparent blister that stuck out from the Pod’s rounded end. Varina Tam had led them all here, given Felix his orders in the sternest of tones: “You are in charge, Felix. Make sure that everyone stays here and doesn’t leave this room until someone comes for you.”
She had given him a wink and closed the weather door behind her as she’d left.
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