“The master of this place, an AI named Astra. Have you met her?”
“No.” Syl grits her teeth. “I would very much like to.”
“Right.” I glance to my wrist plate. 00:11:27 I could fill her in, tell her everything we’ve done so far, experienced. But if she hasn’t met Astra… maybe we’re not supposed to share anything yet. Which feels strange to say, considering we’re about to fight beside Syl.
I’ll tell her after the trial. If Astra doesn’t, I will. This trial will be the test of Syl’s talk about honor and clan.
Revenge. What did she mean?
“Don’t you need a weapon? Clothes?” I say a little too abruptly when Syl and Mika glance at me.
Syl bares her fangs, fangs I’d somehow missed. Sharp little teeth that make her grin so wicked I have to fight the urge to take a step back. “Sam,” she says, holding up one hand. Her fingernails extend, one inch, two, three; terrifying daggers that I’ve seen shred metal once already. “I am a weapon.”
I nod. “Handy.” No disarming her if she turns out to be an enemy.
“As for clothes, my species has no use for them. And armor?” Her face scrunches in concentration and instantly her scales darken, flushing until they’re so black they look like onyx. Even the skin on her face and in the palms of her hands darken. The individual scales draw together until she wears an unbroken carapace.
Her tongue cracks out like a whip and wraps around the handle of Mika’s little dagger. She draws it and brings it toward her belly with a stab so sudden and violent I try to stop her. I’m far too slow. Doesn’t matter. The blade clangs against her scales, turned aside in a shower of sparks.
Syl hands the dagger back and her scales return to normal. She grins at our gape-mouthed stares. “I need no armor.”
“Yes,” Mika chokes, as surprised as me. “We can see that.”
“I guess we’re ready, then. No time like the present.” I raise my hand and slap it to the plate.
They follow my lead. The door disappears.
Syl doesn’t wait for us. She pushes through, flowing low to the ground like water.
Mika puts a hand up to stop me. “You okay?”
“I don’t know. Got kind of used to it being us versus the world.” I feel like a jackass saying that out loud.
She pecks me on the cheek. “I know what you mean. But we’re still together. Still looking out for each other. And we’re stronger.”
“Right. And how could we fail? Extendable claws? Super strength?” I laugh, indicating the glowing portal. “If we were going to get a third member, we couldn’t ask for better.”
“Don’t forget about that tongue. ”
I pause. “I can’t tell if you sound disgusted… or intrigued.”
Mika shrugs. “Bit of both.”
“Filing that away for later. Anyway, buck up. Got fucking Wolverine with us.”
“Sabretooth,” Mika corrects with a little grin.
I laugh. “Nerd.”
She turns me, hands to my shirt, until my back is to the portal. Then she kisses me, a quick brush of the lips laden with promise, before shoving me through and into the next trial.
13
Chamber 4
Aspirant #2239
Room Timer: 02:00:00
Heat.
Stifling, oppressive, and wet.
It hits me like a slap the second I stumble through. I notice it before anything else and it becomes clear in a glance why it feels this way.
We’re in a jungle. Alien, definitely. The trees and foliage are bizarre, not of the Earth. But a jungle is pretty unmistakable, and this definitely fits the bill. “Blah,” I grunt, instantly covered in a sheen of humidity.
Mika lands next to me, stumbling slightly at the surprise of it. She uses Inferno to prop herself before huffing a disgusted breath. “Oh God. Humidity. I hate humidity.”
I pull at my white shirt, wishing I’d picked lighter “armor”. Suddenly, Han Solo cosplay seems like a bad idea. “Cold where you’re from?”
“Gets chilly on the bay when the wind picks up.” Her tugs at the straps of her little tank top are ridiculously distracting as she takes in the odd trees, the foreign plants. “Right now? I’d give just about anything to be back.”
“I don’t blame you.” Something occurs to me in a panic. “Hey, where’s Syl?”
“Right behind you.” I’m ashamed to admit that I leap at least a foot in surprise before turning. I feel a little better at how Mika startles, spinning and hefting Inferno, whose tip now glows again.
“Dude. Not cool.” She lowers her staff, wipes away sweat.
“I do not know what that means,” Syl says, slinking from behind a dense bush. “But it doesn’t matter. This is very bad, and we must go. Right now.”
Mika and I straighten, forgetting the heat and our banter. “Why? Where are we?”
Syl turns slowly, hands stretched low, palms flat, like she’s feeling the air. Her tongue flicks out, once, draws back. “Yes. We have to go.”
“Syl.” Mika touches her arm, shakes her. “Where the hell are we? ”
Syl almost startles herself, turns to look at Mika’s hand. For a moment I think she’s made a mistake touching the alien girl, but then Syl shudders and straightens. “This is my world. My home.”
I glance upward, try to figure out what’s got her so spooked. The jungle around us is like nothing I’ve ever seen in life or on the internet; the trees tower above us, taller than oaks back on Earth. They’re completely leafless until their tops where huge bright orange fronds blot all but little streamers of sunlight. Their trunks seem to move, but I’m not close enough to any of them to make out details. There are plants everywhere, reaching skyward for scant bits of light, and the soil is a deep amber where red moss doesn’t cover it.
Other than that, nothing. “Syl, talk to us. What are we looking for?”
I don’t know her very well, how even how to read alien expressions, but she seems thoroughly freaked. “This is the Lyshalin.”
Mika growls her frustration. “Great. Could you possibly be more vague?”
Syl furrows her brow, turning to her. “Yes, I could. But what purpose would that serve?”
Mika throws her hands up and stalks a few steps away.
“Syl,” I say, taking her by the shoulders and turning her toward me. She shrugs her shoulders, almost leaning into my touch, and for a moment I wonder how sensitive her scaling is. “We know nothing about this place, and if we’re in danger…”
“Yes, apologies.” Syl’s voice is quiet, completely at odds with the scary as fuck alien that gripped my throat less than half an hour ago. “I have never been to the home world. I was born in space. But I know of it, have studied it.”
“And?”
“And there is a reason my people never settled here, never conquered this place. The things that live here… They are dangerous, mindless. Angry. Driven mad by– DO NOT TOUCH THE TREES!”
I spin as Syl breaks from my grip and dashes toward Mika. She’s maybe fifteen feet away, one hand upraised and frozen in shock only inches from one towering trunk.
I follow as Syl takes Mika’s shaking hand in both of hers and lowers it. “Do not touch them.” She considers a moment. “And now, we must go. I should not have shouted. It will draw their attention.”
I spin, scanning the dark reaches of the jungle. “They?”
“The mindless ones. The scaag. If they find us…” Syl flexes her fingers, extending long claws. “We will have to fight. Best if we slip from this place unnoticed.”
“Wait, why can’t we touch the trees?” Mika asks. Her gaze is still fixed on the bark before her, eyes wide. I can see why. Up close, it’s surface writhes, as if the bark is alive, flowing, entirely covered in a little ocean of sap that never settles or stops moving.
Syl considers her a moment, then turns her eyes downward. She takes a few steps back, searching for something a moment before snapping her hand out like a whip. She spl
ays her fingers, displaying her prize: some sort of insect speared on one long claw. It looks like a millipede crossed with an armored beetle, and it squirms and thrashes as she holds it aloft. “Watch.”
She presses the bug to the tree. The effect is instantaneous. It spasms, once, as the sap flows around it, and before it’s fully immersed it goes completely limp.
Mika takes an involuntary step back. “Dead?”
“No. Though it will be, eventually,” Syl says, brushing bits of sap from her claw onto the underbrush. “It is a powerful paralytic. It takes you, holds you in place.”
“Why?”
“To digest you.” Syl says like it should be obvious, like fucking carnivorous trees are the most normal thing in the world.
“Right,” Mika says. “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Are all the trees deadly?” I ask. Because that would be just wonderful .
“No.” Syl indicates a few further on. They’re thicker than the poisoned one Syl just used as an insect executioner, and their bark is darker.
“At least it’s easy to tell the difference.” I raise a finger. “And up there? The scaag? What are they ?”
Syl opens her mouth to answer, but before she can, there’s a strange hooting somewhere in the distance. It comes from far off, sounds like a parrot trying to imitate a car alarm through a microphone.
“Uh. What the fuck was that?” I ask, hefting my rifle.
“That is the scaag. We must go. Now. ”
“Where?” Mika says, breath panicked.
“I… Do not know.” Syl huffs in frustration. “I cannot see the sun. But we cannot linger. Come. Stay close, and I will attempt to protect you.”
“Hey, who's going to protect you?” I say, starting after her as she flows away.
She casts a glance over her shoulder, gives me a toothy grin. “You will.”
Mika jogs at my side. “When the badass alien girl wants you to watch her back, it’s kind of hard not feel awesome.”
“Right?”
Our flight through the jungle is uneventful at first. We follow Syl’s path exactly, avoiding man eating trees and other strange obstacles. I’m not sure of her logic, but some plants and bushes she weaves around, giving them a wide berth, and others she plows right through, giving them little thought. I’m glad she’s with us, because without her we’d be completely screwed. They all look like pretty normal, if alien, plants to me, and I have no idea how she can tell which are dangerous and which aren’t.
I can’t tear my eyes from Syl as she flows ahead of us. She’s beautiful, passing in an out of patches of sunlight, glittering like a dark rainbow. But more than that, it’s that she’s here at all. An hour ago, I laid with Mika, quietly discussing our lives. Now we’re fleeing through a forest, surrounded by man eating trees, led by…
An alien.
An actual fucking alien. The implications of this settle like a fucking truck now that I’ve got time to reflect. Countless people over thousands of years, staring skyward and wondering if we’re alone. The great question, asked over and over.
And here’s the answer. Leading us through a man-eating forest.
“This place is dangerous,” Mika says.
“Well, yeah.” I motion to one of the hulking trees as we duck under a low hanging branch.
“Not that.” She’s staring, watching Syl as intently as I am. “So much bizarre shit has happened, and we’ve been through so much that nothing seems impossible anymore. It’s stealing my sense of wonder.” She chews her lip. “Of skepticism.”
“How do you do that?”
She blinks, turns to me for the first time. “Do what?”
I give her a half grin. “Read my mind.” I hop over a thick root that writhing as vigorously as the tree it’s attached to. “Seriously, though, I was just thinking the same thing. Here’s a fucking alien, and if she’s not something generated by this place…”
“I assure you, I am not,” Syl says, turning so suddenly I almost bowl her over. “And I’d like to note that, to me, you are the aliens.”
Mika’s brow quirks. “She’s got a point.”
Syl puts her hands to her hips, watches us. “Sam, you seem distressed.”
“No, no, not distressed… Just…” I look to Mika, wonder how to put this into words. She shrugs, gives me a look that says you’re on your own.
The eerie calls of the scaag are unending, now, but they’re still distant. We don’t have long, but this feels important. “Look, Syl. Before this… I could entertain that all this was fake. That Mika and I were trapped in something man made. Maybe a space station far in the future. Or a computer program, or… Something.”
“And now?”
“And now that’s out the window,” I say, shaking my head. “The existence of extraterrestrial life may be old hat to your people, but to us… Not so much. And now? Who the hell knows what all this is? Where we are?”
Syl frowns. She doesn’t understand.
Mika steps forward, coming to my rescue. “It’s… A lot to take in. It changes many things, for our people.” She casts me a wry glance. “Shit. It changes everything. ”
“I think I understand,” Syl says, eyes darting to the treetops. “It was the same, once, for my people. Long ago. Our histories detail our first contacts with alien species. Some encounters were peaceful. Others were not.” For some reason, she glances to us when she says this and almost looks… Guilty?
Maybe she feels shitty for almost choking me out.
Or maybe it’s something else.
“Come,” she says, body swaying. “We cannot linger here. There will be much to discuss later, when we are safe.”
She moves off, and Mika and I hesitate before following. Yeah, I think it’s safe to say we’ll have a few questions.
Behind us, the hooting continues, echoing from high up in the trees. It’s eerie as hell and seems to change in tone and type from moment to moment. First it sounds almost beautiful, like the loons that nest near the lakes in Canada when I’d travel north to fish. A moment later the noises are deep, guttural, almost apelike.
And they’re definitely getting closer.
My throat is parched. Sweat runs down my forehead, stinging my eyes. I wipe it away, trying to keep Syl in my sights as I curse myself for not bringing a drink. The last hour in the respite area was a shitshow, with the Shepherd and Astra and meeting Syl, and I completely forgot everything but clothes and weapons. I was distracted, but that’s not a good excuse; if we want to survive the Citadel I have to be smarter than this.
Mika huffs next to me, and she sounds as bad as I feel. “You okay?”
She gives me a little grin and a thumbs up. “Wonderful. Used to jog in a hundred and ten degree heat all the time.”
I try to wet my tongue with saliva, can’t muster up the energy to quip back at her. How can the air be so fucking wet and my mouth so dry? My limbs are already heavy. “Syl,” I manage. “We can’t keep this up.”
“I know,” she calls back. “I am looking for a defensible area.”
Mika and I almost stumble. “Defensible?” she says, gripping Inferno tighter.
The cacophony is almost on top of us now. It’s still far above, but it’s louder than before, descending like auditory hail. Some hoots come from ahead. “Yes,” Syl yells. “Hurry!”
We stumble after her, rushing as panicked adrenaline lends us extra speed. One of the scaag must be just above us; its angry, high hooting follows us like he’s a spotter for what sounds like dozens more.
Mika’s breath comes faster and faster, and though she’s past panicking after everything we’ve been through, she sounds terrified. I don’t blame her. I am, too.
A dense grouping of the death trees looms ahead of us. There’s no time to go around them, but there’s a gap in the middle wide enough for us to pass through. Syl flows through it like an acrobat, and I pause to let Mika pass next. Her fingers linger on my arm for a moment as she passes, and she dar
ts toward the gap.
And trips.
“Mika!” I shout as she stumbles, falls sideways.
She shouts as her arm impacts one of the trees, then almost instantly shrieks in pain.
I’m with her in an instant, gripping her other arm. Syl is there, too, her too large eyes wide. “We have to get her off!”
I’m too freaked to say something like “No shit, Sherlock,” and instead grab Mika’s other arm as she moans in agony. “Ready,” I say. Syl retracts her claws to grab Mika’s wrist.
Together, we pull, trying to fight our fear and stay controlled. Another seething trunk is just behind us, and if we yank too hard…
At first, there’s resistance as the sap resists us. It’s already moved across Mika’s exposed flesh, seeping across her skin terrifyingly quickly. She shrieks as we pull harder, trying to free her without ripping her arm off. But the sap fights us, is so sticky, and Mika’s entire arm is covered.
“Fuck!” I shout. My mind races. What if we have to cut it off? We’ve barely started this place. My arm pad still reads 01:41:37. Could she survive a wound like that if it takes us another hour and a half to get to the convalescence field?
Above us, the scaag are almost deafening.
Syl saves the day. Her tongue fires out like a lance, snags a loose branch from somewhere behind me. She brings it back, maneuvers it like a pry bar, shoves it down at Mika’s shoulder, between the tree and her flesh. It looks violent, painful, but Mika’s in so much agony that she barely grimaces. Syl’s prehensile tongue shoves the branch further, and then with one mighty heave she bends.
Mika pops free into my arms. I pull her through the gap in the trees, careful to avoid her injured arm, and I almost completely take her weight as she stumbles and finally falls. I get to my knees with her, cast about for something, anything, to get the sap off her. In the end, I pull my shirt over my head as Syl prowls around us, eyes skyward, watching with claws extended almost a foot.
I wipe at the sap as best I can and manage to get most of it. My shirt is absolutely soaked with sweat, and though cleaning someone with my body’s perspiration sounds like the grossest thing I can imagine, I don’t think she minds. When she’s as clean as I can get her, I fold, tuck it in my belt, taking care to keep the sap in its folds.
Aspirant: A Sci-Fi Harem Adventure Page 14