But she’s still silver.
Not for long.
Color suffuses her like dye floating along the surface of water. Her coat turns stark white, her pants nondescript brown. Her fingernails are pink, painted at some point but chipped where her work has damaged them. It’s a detail so minute yet so real. Her skin flushes pink, slightly tanned but pale enough that it’s clear she works indoors. Her lips match her fingernails, and her eyes are startlingly blue, like ice chipped from a glacier. Her curls are dark brown and disheveled, styled at some point in the last few days before being ruined by raking fingers and tucked pens.
It’s incredible. The detail is exquisite, and I know without asking that this is a form she’s crafted over a long time. Unless… “Astra. This is… You?”
She nods, then shakes her head. “Yes. And no. Someone else wore this form, before. She… She created me. And then she died.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mika says. “Who was she?”
“Dr. Elise DeValle. Second chair on the team that created me. The one most responsible for my emotions. My humanity.”
She’s beautiful, adorable with a little sparkle in her eyes that hints at mischief. I move closer to her, raise a hand to touch her cheek. It’s bold, the kind of thing I never would have done before coming to the Citadel.
She doesn’t pull away, and I lay my palm against her flesh. She’s warm, soft. So human that if I hadn’t just seen her shift from liquid metal to lab nerd, I would think she was as human as I was.
She leans into my touch, closing her eyes.
“Incredible. And you chose this form to honor her?”
“In a way. And in a way, I am her.” Astra shrugs. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Sam,” Syl breaks in, and I realize she’s been pacing the room, trailing her claws against the wall. Testing. “One minute.”
Shit. I was so absorbed in Astra’s transformation, I didn’t realize.
Astra’s mouth quirks. “Somehow, I don’t think you called me here to inquire about my appearance.”
“No, no…” I shake my head. Less than a minute until some new fresh hell. Gotta get my head in the game. “No. I called you here to thank you.”
Mika steps forward, wraps Astra in a tight hug. “Yes. I don’t know what the hell happened back there, but something tells me it wasn’t supposed to go down like that.”
The AI stands stiffly before melting, figuratively this time. She embraces Mika and takes a long breath. “No. That was… Unexpected. But the Shepherd broke the rules, and so I chose to intervene.”
“Based on what you’ve said, I have a feeling there are more Aspirants that could have replaced us. So, thank you. You didn’t have to help us.”
Astra steps back, glancing between us. “Yes. No. I don’t… I need to go.”
I want to tell her to wait, ask why she suddenly looks panic stricken. A panic mirrored by a tightening in my chest. If something has freaked her out that badly… What did we say?
…more Aspirants after us…
Huh. Shit.
I stop myself from reaching for Astra as she melts away. There’s no time, anyway. Twenty seconds.
Mika, Syl, and I step to the plate, rest our palms against it. It starts to dissolve immediately. “Did you see anything on the walls? Any runes?”
“No,” Mika says, rolling her repaired arm. “Looks like we’re on our own from here on out.”
“That’s okay,” I say, resting a hand to both of their backs as the door dissolves. “We have each other. Remember. Stick together. Watch each other’s backs. Communicate. ”
Syl’s grip is tight on my shoulder. She gives me an affirmative squeeze before stepping forward, then hesitating. “I will take point.”
“Good idea,” I say. “We’ll be right behind you.”
She disappears through the portal.
I take Mika’s hand and follow.
16
Chamber 5
Aspirant #2239
Room Timer: 01:30:00
“Ah, shit.”
Mika’s words punctuate the hard impact of my boots against stone. I land, bringing my gun up and turning thoughtlessly, reflexes honed by battle and upgrades. What did she see? I search for enemies, waves of slavering demons or four-armed lizard men or… Something.
I only have moments to observe our surroundings; a city, old, almost European. Buildings tower over us like sentinels, creating shadows barely chased by guttering torches and blood red light from the sky above. But I’m not worried about where we are as much as I am what the hell’s about to attack us.
Syl turns with me, watching and waiting. But there’s nothing.
It’s silent.
“Mika?” I ask, trying to figure out what’s got her spooked.
“It’s… It’s nothing,” she says, eyes wide.
I turn, put a hand to her shoulder. “Mika.”
She grips Inferno with both hands like it’s the only thing holding her up. But her lips thin and she firms. “Nothing. I thought… Well, it’s not worth mentioning. Not until we know.”
“Any intelligence you may have on this place could be invaluable,” Syl says, still prowling around us, eyes everywhere.
“Just…” Mika hesitates. “Just be ready for anything.”
“Helpful,” I tease.
She doesn’t laugh.
I don’t press her. I trust her, and if something’s about to come bellowing from a back alley and rip us to pieces, I know she’ll tell us before it happens.
Now that the immediate terror has passed, I take a longer look at our surroundings.
The city is massive, and I’m sure it never existed anywhere on Earth. The architecture is familiar, like a twisted version of Victorian London. Buildings crammed together loom high above us, built of dark soot covered stone. They’re at least ten stories tall, with dark windows and doors that watch us like sunken eye sockets. There are statues everywhere, figures in long robes with hands upraised, beseeching… Someone. Wind wafts lazily down the street and between the buildings, carrying the stench of rot and soot; an oily scent that feels like it coats my tongue. It’s utterly silent, aside from our low breathing.
In the distance, the city continues as far as I can see down an impossibly long boulevard. The layout baffles my mind. Bridges extend for hundreds of feet from building to building, huge affairs of stone that defy gravity and physics. Church steeples spear upwards, almost jagged like blades, stark and black against a sky filthy with dark clouds. And the moon…
“Is that normal on your world?” Syl whispers.
It’s massive and crimson, hanging in the sky like a bleeding star.
“No,” Mika says, hand so tight on my arm that it hurts.
Everything feels… Dirty. Corrupt. All I know is that I want to get the hell out of here. Like now.
“Nothing for it,” I say, taking the lead. “Stay with me. Eyes up.” Taking the lead after my conversation with Syl feels strangely natural, even if she seems more suited in some ways. But they both defer to me, seem good with following my lead. I’m not sure I know what the hell I’m doing, but we’re alive. Still, it’s hard not to feel cheesy, like someone pretending to be some badass soldier when I say shit like eyes up .
There’s a divider down the center of the boulevard that’s punctuated in the distance by a shattered fountain. Trees, desiccated and leafless, reach upward like skeletal fingers down the divider as far as I can see. The street slopes, slightly but steadily. I turn, trying to decide where our goal is, but neither direction screams this is the way to go! They’re both equally dismal, oppressive, and creepy. The only noticeable difference is that, far in the distance along the downward slope, a cathedral the size of a small town hunches like some mammoth beast.
Directly below the moon.
“I’m thinking that way.”
Syl nods. “Agreed.”
Mika is silent.
I start forward, flicking my rifle to shotgun mode. The street is wi
de and long, but the sight lines are clear enough that I’m not worried about being attacked from in front or behind before we see it coming. Whatever it may be.
No, more worrying are the dark alleyways, shadowed paths that I can’t see the ends of. Or the doorways set into the buildings like iron teeth, bracketed by windows of smoky glass. There’s no lights or activity inside the dwellings.
I venture close to one, peer through. There are no movements or signs of life. “Where are all the people?”
Syl sniffs, nostrils flaring. “Dead, perhaps,” she says.
I shudder.
We continue, me at the fore and Syl behind, Mika between holding inferno aloft like a beacon. Its light chases back shadow as we move toward the cathedral in a kind of cautious jog. My display already reads 01:25:37 , which feels like an eternity in this dead place. But Syl’s planet proved that a few hours can go by in a blink when the shit hits the fan.
Still, I don’t rush. There’s an itch at the back of my neck I can’t ignore, like we’re missing something. I can’t fight the feeling that the second we relax for even a moment, things will go sideways.
“Syl, do you see anything?”
“No,” she says, voice pinched. “I do not understand the purpose of this place.”
“Yeah, this feels wrong.” My eyes ache with the strain of trying to detect any movement or anything off. “It feels like… I don’t know how to describe it. Like…”
“Like someone holding their breath before a war cry,” Mika finishes.
“Uh. Yeah, actually exactly like that.” The air is pregnant with tension, with violence done sometime in the past. Like anger ready to erupt again at any moment. I don’t know how I know this. There’s still nothing telling me that anyone lives here anymore. No people, no activity. There aren’t even birds or rats. “Maybe we should try the other–”
“What is that?” Syl’s words, low and cautious, stop me in my tracks.
“Oh no.” Mika stops so suddenly Syl almost collides with her.
A bit ahead, obscured until now by the dead trees, is a mound of… Something. It hunches like a low hill in the middle of a square that’s split by multiple smaller roads. It almost completely covers another fountain I only recognize by a low, circular bench that’s shattered in places by what must have been terrible impacts.
My gaze doesn’t linger on the pile, though. What’s above it steals my breath with acrid fear. Jutting from the mound is a complex crucifix of dark metal, its black arms extending like a bird's wings. Impaled on it is something out of a nightmare.
A skeletal beast, half flesh and half bone, strains against iron spikes driven through its body in at least a dozen places. It’s huge, easily fifteen feet tall, and its legs disappear into the pile below it. Its hands end in claws like swords, and its head is a giant skull vaguely resembling a goat, if goats had teeth like daggers and antlers the size of a goddamned man. It hangs motionless, though it’s not loose. There’s something like tension in its posture, and I can’t tell if its dead.
But that’s not even the best part.
Its head is on fire.
Bone and flesh burn with emerald flame that wreathes it and shoots so far into the sky that I can’t believe we didn’t see it before got this close. I can feel its heat at twenty feet away, and I don’t understand how there’s any meat left on its skull.
“Well, that’s fucking terrifying,” I say. My rifle is trained on it. I don’t remember aiming.
Mika still sounds freaked, but it’s not like before, during the first trials. “We need to move on. Maybe go the other way.” Her voice is controlled, measured, even if she’s deeply unsettled.
“What is it?” Syl asks.
“I don’t know. This is the same, but… Different, than what I was thinking. Just…” She takes a shuddering breath. “If this is based on the game I think it is… Just be ready.”
“Game? Like, a video game?” Huh. That explains a lot. “Tough one?”
“Definitely.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
We move past the pile and its flaming lord, treading as lightly as we can. Syl ranges, but only a little, casting frequent glances back at us. It means a lot that she took my words seriously; I’d half expected her to hare off the second things got weird, again. I’m no soldier, and she is, and the fact that she’s deferring to me is definitely a confidence boost.
It also makes me nervous as hell.
Our path takes us closer to the heap of dead than I’d like, and at this range, the heat from the beast is almost unbearable. I shield my face as we carefully pick our way past it. Its bone is bleached white where bits of flesh don’t hang loosely from little pits and ruts in its otherwise smooth surface. It’s terrifyingly enormous; just the skull is as big as my entire body.
“I really hope it’s dead,” Mika whispers.
“Amen to that,” I agree fervently, somehow sure that it’s not.
We can’t be that lucky.
I can barely breathe as we creep forward. Every second that passes I expect the beast to leap at us, erupting forward in a tidal wave of flame and teeth. My heart beats like a jackhammer, and Mika’s hand is so tight in mine I’m afraid she’ll break my fingers. Even Syl stays close, and her usual warrior’s prowl is muted as she stays low to the ground. She’s tense, ready to spring, defend.
All in all, it’s fifteen of the longest seconds of my life as we wait for the inevitable.
But nothing happens.
We reach the other end of the square with no incident. No fight for our life, no battle against nightmare creatures.
I can’t tell if I’m relieved or pissed by how anticlimactic it is.
Syl hisses low. “This isn’t right.”
“I don’t know.” I peer into dark windows and alleys. “I’m okay with this.”
“No, I mean…” Syl shakes her head. “This feels wrong. It is like… when I died.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s… I do not know how to explain. It feels the same.” She glances back, and though she’s as hard to read as ever, there’s something in her expression. A tightness at the corners of her eyes, more pronounced by how much bigger they are than a human’s. A tension that I don’t think comes from this place.
I don’t know how I know it, but I do. She’s holding something back.
For all her talk about “clan,” and with everything we’ve already been through, she’s still guarded. Doesn’t she trust us?
I don’t know. Like Mika, she’s been thrust into this against her will, paired with me. But unlike Mika, there’s no common culture, or humanity to bind us. I thought I barely knew my human companion, but an alien? What do I know about her planet, her past? Her people’s history, or their everyday life?
Nothing. She’s a mystery, and though her people clearly know something of humanity, she knows exactly jack about me. Who I was before this place or what kind of person I was. She may trust that I have her back in here, but is that enough to share her secrets?
No, I can’t blame her if she hedges. For now. “Syl.”
She’s been watching me, waiting for my question. “Sam.”
“Whatever’s bothering you, you don’t have to tell us now. We’ll have time later. Hopefully,” I add, glancing back at the beast. “Just… whatever it is, if it affects us in here…”
She smiles, grateful. “It doesn’t. And we will talk, Sam. I promise. Just, not here. Not now.”
“We can deal with that,” Mika says. “Let’s move on. Stay alert.”
“Don’t worry. Safe to say that I won’t relax until we’re the hell out of here.” I feel like I already have eye strain between the dark alleys and the bright flaming monsters.
The ancient buildings loom over us as we leave the square and its terrifying inhabitant behind. “Okay. As pants shitting as that was, it wasn’t so bad.” I turn to take a last look at the gigantic skeleton. “Maybe this place is a test of how well we handle s
tress. Maybe there won’t be…” I trail off, squint.
“Uh, Sam?”
The flames around the beast roars so bright that at this distance, it’s hard to make out details. But there’s something…
“Sam!” Mika turns, voice laced with worry. “Sam, what is it?”
“It’s watching us.”
Syl’s words drop like a bead of ice into my chest.
She’s right.
The beast’s head has turned entirely around like some kind of nightmare owl. Its wide, gaping eyes are fixed on us, staring through its halo of flame. Bits of molten slag drip from its gaping mouth, jaws that don’t move yet still feel like they ache to cut through my flesh. A mouth I’m almost certain was not open a minute ago.
It’s about the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. “Yeah. Time to go.”
Mika’s already moving, tugging me along, face white. Syl flows behind us, claws fully extended, backing away from the square. Protective, in the face of… That.
I never doubted her bravery, but I feel bad for doubting her motivations.
“Is it coming?” Mika asks.
“No.” Syl’s voice is close, inches away. “It only watches.”
“Maybe we should cut through an alley,” I say, turning a quick circle. “Get out of its line of sight. Cut over a street, but still move to the cathedral?”
Syl hesitates, looks toward the distant building. “I do not… Perhaps that is wise. You decide.”
I check my display and wipe stinging sweat from my eyes.
01:17:22
That can’t be right. It’s only been eight minutes since I last checked? It seems like it’s been hours. “Okay. I think we have time.” We move down the lane a bit further, searching for a good spot. “There” I point.
The alley is more open than most we’ve passed, which isn’t saying much. It’s wide enough for two of us to walk side by side, and that’s all it has going for it. It gapes like a black maw, lost in shadow after only a few feet, not lit by the street or the blood red moon. But we’ve got Inferno to light the way, and considering how fucking massive this city is, there has to be another boulevard somewhere.
Hopefully one without giant flaming skeleton monsters.
Aspirant: A Sci-Fi Harem Adventure Page 22