Distant Memory: She remembered everything (Solum Series Book 3)

by Colleen S. Myers

  Shit. That is why he let me go in the labs earlier. There was always the chance I would kill my grandfather for him, but since I failed, I was of no use to him. I exchanged a glance with Marin. His eyes were anguished as if he already knew what I was about to suggest.

  “Last time we fought, you faced me one on one.” I reached to my right and squeezed Finn’s shoulder then paced next to Marin. “Scared?”

  “Elizabeth, no!” Marin said.

  I took Marin’s hands and faced him, keeping Xade in my peripheral vision. “It is what I need to do. I have to.”

  “Me.” Marin tried to pull his hands from my grasp. “Me. I will fight him.” He turned to Xade. “I will fight you in her place.”

  Xade laughed again. This time the clones sounded off with him. “I am not that stupid. You are Fost and trained for years to fight. Beta, though, I can defeat her. But I am not without mercy. If I fight her and win, Finn goes with me without a fight. I can use him to negotiate with Texxak, perhaps with this one.” He pointed at Selmay. “And I will let the rest of the rabble that hides out survive. I will not hunt the Fost anymore.”

  Lies.

  Marin’s words echoed my thoughts. “Lies.” His hands clenched and all three of us formed a small group in the middle of the clearing with clones all around us.

  Finn’s jaw clenched. “You will not take me.” He gave me a significant look. He would kill himself before letting Xade take him. Like me. Like Marin. They would die at my side. I really had only one choice since I walked off that ship.

  “I will fight you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Everything happened quickly after that. Both Marin and Finn rushed Xade. Xade whistled and the men were buried beneath a pile of clones. I saw them fighting. One of the clones got Marin with a syringe, and Finn was still too injured to fight well. Roger was nowhere to be seen. The clones made a circle for Xade and me to fight.

  “Remember now, no magic, little girl,” Xade said with a smile.

  I nodded.

  Xade danced to the left. He appeared to have learned something since the last time we fought. The day I first fell and arrived on Solum.

  I gripped the dagger in my hand. He held out his hands with a flourish, beckoning me to fight.

  Oh, I'd bring it.

  I swung my blade to the left, cutting through the air. He dodged and threw out his own knife in a strike to my thighs, quicker than I remembered him being. The edge caught the corner of my shirt and scraped my groin. I put a hand to the wound and staggered back. With a grunt, I lifted my hand to see only a small streak of blood. He hadn't hit the femoral, thank God.

  Xade laughed at my expression. “Oh, I will not kill you that quickly, little Elizabeth. After all, you are my favorite. I could have, you know, killed you many times prior to this. I did study your people for a very long time.”

  Screaming, I ran at him, blade out. He gripped my hand. We stood toe to toe, and this close I could see his eyes. Those white freaking eyes. The ones I remembered so well in my nightmares.

  White eyes staring at me through amber glass. E’mani eyes.

  But this was different. This time there was no joy in the depths. No excitement at the possibility of what he might find, of the agony he might cause.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I cannot win against Texxak. Neither can you. I am saving you from that fight.”

  His blunt answer stunned me, so much so, I never saw the hit coming. One solid punch to the face.

  Jesus, that hurt. My ears rang and I staggered back.

  Xade spun to my left. His blade dug deep into my side.

  I heard someone scream nearby. I’d expected pain, but felt nothing yet. Xade appeared to have learned a lot since our last fight, or he toyed with me. I staggered to the side and spit at him.

  “Oh, Elizabeth. You did not think it would be that easy, did you?”

  “My name is Beta!” I swung at him, but he danced out of the way.

  “That is not your name. Your mother used to call you Elizabeth when you were young, but your father is the one who called you Beta.”

  “Don’t talk about my mother.” Was that true though? I didn’t remember that. So many things about my past were not how I remembered them.

  “You always were daddy’s girl.”

  Like hell.

  I screamed and ran at him. Dodging to the left at the last moment, I came up under him. My knife slid against his leg, and I slipped onto my side.

  Gah. Bad idea.

  My flank started to throb, and I could feel liquid streaming down my leg as I staggered up. My blade had blood on it, but Xade looked no worse the wear.

  When I glanced around, I saw Marin watching the fight. He appeared dazed, held on all sides and swaying. Finn fought at least a dozen clones, blood streaming down his face.

  No, this wasn’t how it ended.

  I ran at Xade again. He laughed and spun. His foot kicked my hand, numbing it, and I watched helplessly as my knife fell to the ground.

  No.

  The clones moved closer, and one stepped on the blade.

  Xade’s laughter echoed behind me.

  No.

  My eyes closed and I knew he was getting closer.

  The land called to me, and I tried to focus on my power. Selmay would want to die before going back to Xade, anyways. My heart clenched. They all would. As Xade said, only one of us was going to walk away from this.

  The power stirred just as one of the clones kicked me. The side throbbed and the power slipped away.

  No.

  I fell onto my back, facing Xade. As I rolled, I felt something in the bag Roger gave me poking me in the side. I reached into the leather and curled my finger around a rock with some pretty sharp edges, perfect.

  I let my head fall and Xade drifted closer.

  With a shout I lunged up and shoved the rock deep into his carotid.

  Heal that you fucker.

  Xade gasped and backed up, clutching his neck. The rock fell to the ground and I saw it was the rose that Stein had given me. The one he’d made for Marin and myself when we mated. The crystal rose with the red tears made out of quarum., the combination of my jatua and Marin’s. How appropriate.

  Xade eyes, those damn eyes, rose to mine and I was happy to report, they didn’t contain any more laughter.

  I fell onto my butt. Watched him fall.

  “No,” Selmay screamed out and ran toward us, having woken up sometime during the fight. She skidded to a halt next to Xade and held a hand to his wound, staunching the blood. “No. It wasn't supposed to end this way.”

  Xade's voice came out as a gurgle. “How was it supposed to end, my love?” His hand drifted to her cheek as he sagged against her, the front of his shivat soaked in his blood.

  She ran her own hand down his face. “I was supposed to be the one who killed you.”

  Another gurgle and Xade fell to the ground at Selmay's feet.

  She brushed a hand along his head, leaving a streak of red before lifting the rose and stabbing him in the heart. “This is for what you did to us.”

  She stabbed him over and over in a frenzied rush. Blood flew in an arc across the circle of clones who stood nearby, motionless. They stopped fighting as soon as their master fell.

  Tears rolled silently down Selmay’s face as she continued massacring his body.

  His last words. “Sella.”

  I never expected to feel sorrow for his death. Triumph, happiness, relief, not sadness. Watching Selmay hack up his body depressed me. They'd loved each other, and that love had gone so violently wrong and drove them both to despicable acts.

  Finn staggered out of the mass of clones and grabbed his grandmother’s shoulders. “Stop, he is dead.”

  “I have to make sure. They cannot bring him back from this. Never again.”

  She continued to stab and rip the body until it looked less like a man and more like a pile of raw meat. Her grunts echoed in the air alon
g with the thump of the rock hitting bone. Her aim never faltered.

  “Make sure to go for the head. If the brain is damaged badly enough, even the quarum can't fix it,” I said.

  Selmay glared at me with glazed eyes, and then she stuck her knife into his brain and twisted until it was a pile of goo.

  Good.

  Marin yanked me up and into his side, but his eyes weren’t on me, they were on the clones who circled us. The vast mass of clones. We might have killed Xade, but we weren’t out of the woods yet.

  Finn put his back to mine and Marin’s. Selmay hung over Xade’s body, crying.

  “What have you done?” all the clones mouthed in their flat voices, in discordant harmony even now.

  Nobody moved for the longest second; my hand tightened on my weapon. Marin’s magic stirred against mine, a slight wind blowing through the lab. I tried to rally my own magic. The pain limited me, yet I could feel my side healing, and it no longer hurt to breathe.

  A clone started crying, and then another. They fell to the ground in a wave. A gray wave of wheat. I almost giggled and gripped my side. Marin swayed next to me. None of us came out of this well.

  “Huh,” Finn said.

  “Should we do something?” Marin asked.

  Selmay sighed and stood next to us. “The clones are fine. Leave them with me. They won’t fight. No killer instinct there.”

  She walked to the nearest clone and rested her hand on its hair. It turned its face up into her palm. With one stroke, she took its life.

  My lungs seized.

  Holy Shit.

  Marin breathed out.

  Finn grabbed her arm as it raised again. “What are you doing?”

  Selmay smiled at him sadly. “These are Xade’s and my children. They have to die. They will die anyway. He could never figure out how to make them last.”

  I stepped forward. “Then let them choose. Isn’t that what Xade did, take away your choices? Are you going to do the same thing?”

  “They all look like him.” She pulled on Finn’s restraining hand, but he held her easily.

  “It isn’t their fault. Let them live what time they have in peace.”

  “Peace,” they echoed.

  That hadn’t been creepy at all.

  Suddenly, red lights bathed the area.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  We all stared. A trio of ships filled the air. No noise, no cloaking. Slowly, they fell from the sky and hovered overhead.

  We couldn’t fight that many. Hell, those ships could hold thousands, who knew? That meant we needed to not be in an outside area to fight them.

  Shots peppered the ground around us. Puffs of dust rose in the air.

  I backed up and bumped into Marin.

  His hands came down on my shoulders. “We need to run.”

  Master of the obvious. “Where?”

  “Back to Center.” He pushed me southwest into the awning by the building. “They cleared the water out of town, and what is left of the survivors have returned there. It will offer some shelter.”

  But there were only two ways into that valley. If the E’mani boxed us in, we were screwed. As it was they already beat us in Center when Texxak released the water. I held back.

  “Wait.” I glanced around. Roger had fled during the fight sometime. Coward. “Roger said to go to the lab. He gave me a bag of some sort and told me he left us something to help.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “I’m not sure.” My shoulders fell. “I’m not, but I do believe he hated Xade and what they were doing even as he liked the science behind it. He never meant to hurt anyone, not really. I have to believe that.” Otherwise, I’d helped a monster just as bad as Xade.

  Finn offered. “Separate? One goes to Center and lets the survivors know. One goes to the labs.”

  I could tell the idea didn’t please Marin. His arms tightened around me.

  “No,” he gritted out slowly.

  “I don’t want to separate either but you have speed. You can make it to Center and back. Plus, I know where the room is. Finn and I will head to the labs. You warn the others, and then use your magic to get back to me.”

  Please get back to me.

  Marin turned me to face him. He kissed me. Deep, consuming, and full of love. “I will get back to you, always.”

  Finn stood beside me as Marin took off. The ships remained overhead. This was not good. I thought one of them might peel off and go after him, but they concentrated on Finn and me.

  That many ships weren’t a good sign. Damn it. Was this a double cross by Xade or did Texxak face us? And where was Selmay? She’d taken off as well. I hadn’t even noticed she’d left. What was going on? Did we have to fight? I figured it was inevitable, but now?

  Rustling next to us drew my attention.

  Hrahn walked into the clearing before the building, armed to the teeth with blades. When he saw me, a smile crossed his lips, and he emitted a shrill cry.

  The clones met him in the clearing. One of them shot him full in the face. His cheek disintegrated and green blood flew across the ground.

  “It is a double cross,” Finn said. “We need to use the virus.”

  “No, there has to be something else.”

  “That thing was coming after us. You saw that.”

  But…

  Finn shook my shoulders. “We have to.”

  Finn and I ran indoors. My skin crawled as we passed the threshold. The sound of the doors whooshing shut behind me took me back to my first day.

  White eyes stared at me through yellow glass. E’mani eyes.

  I shuddered and kept running. Finn hadn’t noticed. He beat me to the stairs leading to the third floor. We took the steps two at a time. When we reached the bottom, Finn pulled out the bag Roger had handed me that I passed off to him.

  He tugged the strings and emptied the contents into his hand. A key, or what I assumed was a key. It had a key-like shape but made of crystal with a red gleam going down the spine. There was a letter as well.

  “What does it say?”

  “I cannot read it.”

  Of course. That way if an E’mani got the note, they wouldn’t be able to read it. I didn’t even know if Xade knew English or not. I figured he did, but if Xade got his hands on this, Roger would have been dead anyway.

  “Gimme.”

  Finn handed me the paper with an exaggerated flourish.

  I unfolded the sheet. “Blue, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange. Red, Red.” The rainbow backward. That would be easy to remember. “There must be something on the computer we need to know. That is a computer key. Dela would be able to use that.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “This also has a map of this floor. He said go to his spot. The virus must be there.”

  “How do we get to the third floor?”

  This I knew. I pressed the wall where I’d seen Xade press at the base of the stairs. The walls opened with a hiss.

  I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or the alien on the other side.

  Some sort of lizard like Hrahn stood there holding a blade.

  Finn appeared to be the least surprised as before I could even move he’d reached the alien.

  His blade made quick work of the man, animal, bad guy. Whatever.

  “What does this mean? Is Texxak here?”

  “That is what it looks like.”

  “We did what he asked.”

  “He must want something more.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me down the corridor. “Come with me.”

  I pulled back. “No, not that way. Another hallway. I have a map,”

  Finn nodded. “You lead.”

  I stepped into the first room on the right. A clear desk stood in the middle of the room. Xade’s desk.

  No.

  Finn yanked me up from where I fell. “Stop. We have to fight. What is wrong with you?”

  It finally hit me. Xade was dead. I’d never have to worry about him again. I didn’t know ho
w to feel. I should be happy but I wasn’t. I mean I was, but also, what did this mean? It was all too much. I grabbed my head.

  Finn let me fall to the floor and ran to the walls. He touched the glass moving in a circle. “Help me,” he shouted after a minute of futile searching.

  Finn pulled me up. “Stop this. There is no time for grief. Think of the Remains. Think of the Fost. The people we left behind. The people in Center. Hana. Jace. Bob. They will all die.”

  Hana, my friend. Pregnant Hana. I had to pull it together. Control, wasn’t that what Zachary always said? I could do this. I wiped my nose on my shirt. “Okay, Okay. Behind the desk, against the wall.” I pushed open the door.

  Roger’s room was unlike anything I’d seen. He’d apparently been a hoarder to the extreme. His walls were covered with books and items. Thousands of knick-knacks, rocks, crystals, keys, bowls, doles. The surfaces bowed under the weight with rows of junk in stacks leading to one lone desk in the middle of the room. A single light hung from the ceiling. No wonder the dude had to wear glasses. It was dark in here.

  I sneezed. Finn glanced at me oddly. I pointed the air. “Dusty.” I hoped. Lands knew I didn’t want to catch anything that Roger made.

  Finn headed to the desk while I studied shelves. The books were from Earth. I recognized some of them. Netter’s anatomy. Tropical disease manuals. Emergency medicine manuals. Roger took being a doctor seriously.

  One picture stood out. Roger wore a natty zoot suit next to a pretty brunette. Her hair was curled like from the twenties, flapper dress and all. He appeared to be happy, near beaming with his arm around her shoulder.

  His wife. The reason he did all this. I guess it was going around.

  “Found it!” Finn said. He held up vials and another note.

  “What does the note say?”

  “Look.”

  I stepped behind him.

  Elizabeth,