by Nina D'Aleo
Lecivion narrowed his eyes at her. “You took nothing from your father,” he said. “You’re her all over again.” He lifted something from near her head and held it in his hands. Solace – Oren Harvey’s blade. He must have found it in her weapon belt, which was now nowhere to be seen. He turned the Solace over, examining the markings on the hilt, then pushed it into his belt.
“Is this punishment for what Oren did?” Silho said. “Because she’s dead now … this is not hurting her.”
Lecivion snorted smoke and shook his head. “No and no. No more talking now, I’m tiring of your voice.”
“My feelings exactly,” Silho returned. She blinked to light-form vision and looked back to the other captive women. Through her chained, outstretched hand she drew in a blast of energy from their body-lights. Not enough to hurt any of them, but enough to break out of her binds and jump off the bench. She snatched a sharpened tool off a side-table and threw it at Lecivion. It stabbed into his shoulder and he shouted, bringing Silho crashing to the ground with one gesture. Rough hands grabbed her and dumped her back on the bench.
“Well, then,” Lecivion said extracting the metal shaft from his shoulder as his soldiers tied her back down. “I didn’t think you could draw from this far away – not many could. I thought too little of you, but now I know.” He spoke the last words as a threat. “There’s no need for you to be mind-living in this – in fact, it’s undoubtedly better for you not to be …”
While his people re-inserted the tubes and machines, Lecivion locked her neck into a device so that she couldn’t turn again to look at the other women. Footsteps sounded and another group of soldiers moved up the steps of the platform to stop behind Lecivion.
“What?” he demanded without turning to face them.
“Her people are still on the move. Some followed us to Praterius, others have found Quartermaine’s tracks.”
“So finish them,” Lecivion said. “Surely you don’t need me to tell you how, Imperator Hycinion?”
“No, sire,” the other Omarian said. “But I questioned whether I should withdraw more troops from the cause – under the current circumstances.”
“What circumstances?” Lecivion’s voice was deadly calm.
The soldier said, picking his words with extreme caution, “The worsening situation. It appears the disease of the Indemeus X is spreading, sire. There have been sightings of strangers walking the scorchlands – the half-living with dead masks covering their faces. News from the south says these demons are turning people, whispering to their minds and sending them mad with violence.”
“And what of it?” Lecivion demanded. “Let these demons walk. Let them turn the commoners. I told you – as I told everyone – we will have the other female in plenty of time. The Indemeus will not take our world.” There was an edge of manic fanaticism in his voice that allowed for no other opinions.
“Yes, sire,” the soldier wisely agreed.
“Send two outfits – one to Aquais, one to Praterius – eliminate anyone looking for Silho Brabel. As I specified, no traces,” Lecivion ordered.
“As you will, sire.” The soldiers moved away and Lecivion turned his attention back on Silho.
“You won’t be able to stop him,” she said. “My commander – he’ll track me.”
“I stabbed him with my kien and injected enough poison to kill ten of his kind, so he’s most certainly dead by now. But how interesting. You refer to your lover as your commander. Perhaps you’re not so much like your mother after all. I did wonder, while watching you all these year-cycles, how you would end up …”
“What do you mean – watching me all these year-cycles?” Silho said, refusing to hear that Copernicus was dead.
“Did you think we didn’t know you existed? Your father did his best to conceal you, but his best was pathetic. In all this I pity him the most. Oren Harvey broke him to pieces … He honestly thought she loved him.” He shook his head.
“So if you knew I was there, why didn’t you kill me – why were you just watching?” Silho demanded.
“You were the first. I really didn’t know what to expect from you. Many times along the way I thought you were finished, but you kept going – even against the Skreaf. I must say, I gave you no chance of surviving – you shocked me.”
“You’re Skreaf hunters – you could have wiped them out, but you stood back and watched as they almost destroyed Aquais?” Silho said, another wave of fury rising inside her.
“You say that like Aquais means something,” he mocked her. “It’s nothing but another speck among a billion others.”
“You’re deranged,” Silho spat.
Lecivion held out his hand and one of his soldiers gave him a syringe full of yellow serum.
“Time to go, Silho Brabel. Go into the beyond knowing that you’ve served a purpose.”
He advanced on her and Silho held her position, every muscle tensed and waiting. She had to get the timing exactly right. As he leaned in, pushing the needle into her forehead, she whispered almost inaudibly, “Of all the things you’ve said to me here, one thing stands out the most.”
“Really,” Lecivion said, his breath hot on her face. “Do tell.”
“You said you thought too little of me … and you were right.”
In a rush of unexpended power that she’d drawn from the other trapped women, Silho broke up again out of the binds and neck lock. She ripped the needle out of her forehead and stabbed it into Lecivion. He screamed and threw a blast of fire at her before she could depress the plunger. She felt her skin scorch, but didn’t pause her attack. She grabbed up a metal tray and lunged off the bench, smashing him across the face. He stumbled and fell backward off the elevated platform. The other Omarians threw fireballs at her, and tried to trap her in their light-form. She was outnumbered, and her surprise advantage was blown – her only option was to flee. When she’d first broken out of the binds, she’d spotted a doorway to her left. Smacking at the flames still burning her hair, she vaulted over the railing of the platform and hit the ground running, with Lecivion’s voice shouting behind her, “Get her – alive!”
Chapter 20
Eli
Aquais
Scorpia (Duskmaveth-Aendor)
Eli’s expectations of Duskmaveth-Aendor had centered around one word – spooky. He’d envisioned decrepit buildings, gothic gloom, dust and webs and haunted shadows. So when he and Ismail stepped into a suburb of ultra-modern structures, blinding lights and cleanliness almost to the point of sterility, his jaw dropped a little. Being dissipaters, spectral-breeds didn’t need stairs or doors or windows, so all the buildings were architecturally mind-bending, glowing alien structures, alarming and ethereal, twisting high into the black ceiling of the subterranean level. It definitely didn’t feel like a lower-level suburb. It felt as if they were discovering a new and advanced civilization, except for one thing: there was not a soul in sight. The streets were completely empty, eerily so, and the silence was deafening. Eli stood in the middle of a white road and looked around, feeling like the last person left after some kind of apocalyptic happening – or at least the second-last. Ismail stood beside him, Ev’r’s bag on his back. On the way there, to stop himself talking about Ev’r and provoking Ismail into emotional breakdown, Eli had babbled through ten year-cycles’ worth of political history, including the Skreaf uprising, intermixed with his personal life story, all of which Ismail had already siphoned from his thoughts but had sat through again without comment or complaint, his expression barely changing the entire time. Eli glanced at the scullion; with his fatigues and weapon belt, a spare which Eli had stored in the transflyer, he looked every bit the elite soldier he had once been. Really, the scullion cut an impressive figure, so much so it was easy to forget, even so soon, that he was the same person they’d dragged out of the pit. He was making a fast physical recovery, his skin nowhere near as pale and his body bulking up fast. Eli could see why Ev’r had been drawn to him – he felt a slight platonic
man-crush himself – maybe because Ismail’s brooding and silently furious presence reminded him a bit of the commander. At that thought, a spike of grief made Eli flinch. They had to keep moving. His front-core signal had dissolved into interference as soon as they had entered the level, the surges of Cos magics proving too much for the experimental system. Fortunately, his external system was still up and running. He checked their navigation against the touch map, which was leading them to where that concentration of Quartermaine’s fingerprints was located.
“It looks like it’s at the end of this street,” Eli said.
Ismail didn’t respond. He just waited until Eli set off, then followed, scanning his electrifier left and right, checking their surrounds in a methodical way. It made Eli wonder about the extent of his skills. “Does your telepathy work from a distance or just close up?” he asked.
Again the scullion said nothing, his dark wolf eyes roving around them.
“Where do you think they all went?” Eli said. “All the spectral-breeds?”
Ismail gave him a dubious look, then he went suddenly for his weapon belt, grabbing the binding band that the military used to stop spectral-breeds from dissipating if they needed to arrest them. Eli blinked: he and Ismail were now standing in the middle of a massive crowd. There were spectral-breeds literally everywhere – in the streets, on the buildings, in the air. Eli gulped. He took a step back and bumped into a Skilsy Wraith. It stared down at him with hostility in its gray eyes. He pulled away, brushing against another, then spun and stumbled, falling straight through the vaporous body of a Phantom. They were all pressing close and no one looked happy to see them.
Eli scrambled to his feet and said, “Hi folks. We don’t mean to disturb.”
When they didn’t respond, he murmured to Ismail, “Maybe put the band away.”
“Disperse!” Ismail shouted out to the crowd, but they just closed in tighter. Eli noticed several Specters among the gathering and gulped again, keeping his arms firmly at his sides.
“It’s not like it was,” he whispered to Ismail. “The military no longer has power in these places …”
“It never really did,” Ismail growled back. He drew his electrifier and armed it. Eli’s skin prickled as Cos magics swelled around them and the ground started to tremble.
“It’s not alright – I mean, it is alright,” Eli called, trying to calm the mounting threat.
His com buzzed and he snatched it up. Diamond’s voice came through, amplified.
“Attention, spectral-breeds, this man is Eli Anklebiter, known to have saved many of your kind during the Skreaf witch invasion.”
Upon hearing these words, the crowd actually stopped and Eli could see thousands of pale faces looking over and through each other at him, the hostility of their eyes starting to fade. He did his best to look heroic, putting his hands awkwardly on his hips, then dropping them immediately, feeling ridiculous. The spectral-breeds said nothing, but gradually the crowd started to thin as they vanished in groups and pairs, until once more Eli and Ismail were alone. It was only then that Eli felt how fast his heart was racing. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and murmured, “Gone …”
“They’re still here,” Ismail murmured, looking around. “Everywhere.”
Eli squinted and caught a glimpse of fast-flowing ethereal shapes all around them.
“Are they thinking about attacking us?” he said, his anxiety lingering.
“I don’t speak any spec-breed languages,” Ismail said. “But I don’t think so. They’re just watching.”
“Diamond, how did you know what was happening?” Eli asked through his external com.
“I’ve hacked your frontal lobe implant. I can see what you see,” she replied.
“Oh,” Eli said, and then “Oh,” once more because he hadn’t realized the system was hackable – and he was the designer. He was starting to see a slightly disconcerting theme emerging.
“But don’t worry, I can’t read your mind because the actual system has crashed. It’s just an optical portal at this stage,” Diamond continued, sounding a lot more coherent than she had up until this point. “By the way – I love you.”
Just out of reflex Eli almost said it straight back, but managed to stifle the words with a cough, then said, “Carry on,” and disconnected the signal.
He and Ismail continued down the street until the navigator brought them to a grate in the road dropping into darkness. Eli stared down with trepidation. If there was one place that childhood horror stories had completely spoiled for him, it was dark storm drains. Ill-ease squeezed his neck.
“Down here – I think,” he said, restraining a bout of terrified laughter.
Ismail’s iron composure didn’t waver at all. He just bent down, wrenched up the grating and started climbing through. Eli followed, inching down the rungs, his hands slippery and the smell of wet rust heavy in his nose.
He kept moving until his feet found solid ground. Ismail was waiting there, his eyes glowing red in the dark. Eli fumbled his night-vision specs and dropped them to the ground. As he ducked down to grab them, he heard a series of clicking sounds echoing in the enclosed space. A red glow flared all around them, and when Eli stood, he saw the light was projecting from Ismail’s eyes. The scullion continued to make the clicking noises and Eli realized what was happening. The echolocation skill from Ismail’s bat blood was coupling with the nocturnal sight capability of his wolf blood and producing a projection of their surroundings. What Eli was seeing wasn’t just a lit-up space, but Ismail’s mental translation of the space, based on the click echoes, projected through his eyes. It was complex and seriously impressive. “That is truly amazing,” Eli spoke his thoughts in a slightly entranced voice. He’d never known another person who could do that.
Ismail didn’t respond. He just moved to a doorway in one of the walls and stepped through, clearing their path right and left with his electrifier. He gestured to Eli, who gripped his own weapon and followed.
Using the navigator as reference, they descended deep into the underbelly of Duskmaveth, closing in on the place of massed fingerprints. When they had almost reached it, a flash of reflection up ahead made Ismail pause. The red glow of his projection swept across the face of a Midnight Man.
“Luther!” Eli whispered and started to step forward, but Ismail’s hand clasped firmly onto his shoulder. On second look, Eli realized it wasn’t Luther, but an actual full-blood Midnight Man, and he was not alone. There was a cluster of four or five standing there, sleeping together until mid-dark, when they would wake to feed on the near dead. Eli checked his chronograph – a half hour to mid-dark, which meant they had half an hour to get the information and get out. It didn’t sound like enough.
They crept past the sleeping Midnight Men, the navigation finally bringing them to a fortified door. It had a complicated custom-made locking system, designed to keep out intruders of every race, including dissipating spectral-breeds. Eli knew that people didn’t use this level of security unless they had something serious to hide. With a heavy sense of dread, he kneeled down and injected a syringe full of a nanobug virus from his belt into the system. It spread out, distracting and redirecting the inbuilt security, covering Eli as he hacked in and took control. He found the unlocking codes and triggered them. The door shuddered as the locks shunted open.
Eli stepped back and Ismail kicked open the door, rushing in first. Blue lights flickered on and Eli heard Ismail call, “Clear.” Keeping his electrifier up, Eli stepped around the doorpost and peered around at a large empty space. The concrete floor was stained with rust where equipment and benches had sat for a long time before being cleared out. Only a smell lingered, a sterile stink that turned Eli’s stomach. He glanced at Ismail, but the scullion seemed unmoved. He strode to the center of the room and stopped there to stand watch, well and truly in military mode. Eli wondered for a moment how much insight Ismail had into his behavior while he was in this changed state of mind, if he remembered why he
was doing what he was doing, or if everything was blanked out except the mission objective – which in this case was finding the tracker team. Ismail’s face gave nothing away and again Eli was reminded of the commander. It gave Eli some insight into why Ev’r had gotten involved with Copernicus, albeit briefly, when they were much younger.
Eli walked further in, looking around for clues as to who this Ezra Quartermaine was and what he’d been doing there. He spotted a tech-port in one wall where a computer system had been plugged in and felt a surge of excitement. He ran to it and hooked up his own system, setting up an extractor to harvest the code remaining in the socket. Most people thought once they’d unplugged their computer and removed it all traces of their work would be gone, but in reality a huge amount of data was permanently stored in the tech-port and could be accessed with the right programs.
As the data started to flow into his system, Eli saw it wasn’t going to be as easy as extract-and-read – everything was double-, even triple-coded, and embedded with several destroyer viruses designed to self-destruct the information if anyone unauthorized tried to open it. This was going to be tricky and delicate. He reached out to begin the unlocking process, but his com buzzed at his hip, startling him. “Yes?” he answered.
“Don’t enter that code!” Diamond said and Eli froze. “You can’t cold-hack the viruses or you’ll whiteout your whole system. They’re advanced cybernetic necrons disguised as simple destroyers. You have to impregnate them with back-up fillers first so when they blow, everything is duplicated.”
“Right,” Eli said, again feeling stunned by her depth of knowledge and ashamed he’d written her off so quickly. “Has anyone ever told you you’re brilliant? Because you’re brilliant.”