“Whimsy,” said Kevin, for the third and final time. “Now, then. Technically, I won that round, but would you like to take a turn?”
“No,” said Tyrra, jabbing at the button that moved her down a station.
“Very good. In that case, I guess it’s over to me again!” Kevin said. “Hmm. Now, what shall I be this time?”
“Be yourself,” said Tyrra.
“It’s an empowering message, miss, but not really conducive to a game of Charades,” Kevin said.
“I mean be nothing,” said Tyrra. “Stop the game. I can’t see what you’re doing, anyway.”
“Well, that’s hardly my fault,” said Kevin, a little snootily. “Maybe if you paid more attention.”
“Maybe if you had physical form…” Tyrra bit back.
Kevin gasped. “Oh, now that was unnecessary and unkind,” he said. “I’m afraid I simply cannot tolerate such abuse. Go to your room.”
“No,” said Tyrra.
“At once!”
“No.”
“Please?”
Tyrra ignored him and clicked through another few channels. Gameshow. Robot soap opera. Gameshow. Documentary. Unfunny comedy about nuns. Cal being shot at by Loren. Gameshow.
Wait.
Wait.
She backed up a channel.
“There. Look,” she said, thrusting herself forward in the chair. “See? I knew it!”
The screen went dark.
“I’m sorry to take such drastic action, miss, but no television for you until you’ve learned to do as your told.”
“Turn it back on!” Tyrra cried, jumping to her feet. “Voice! Turn it back on!”
“No. I shan’t. Not until you apologize or go to your room,” Kevin said. “It’s time you learned your lesson, young lady, and if I have to administer the metaphorical spanking, then so be it. Your television time is over.”
“Put it on! Put it on now!”
“Throwing a tantrum won’t help,” said Kevin. “The television is staying off, and that’s my final word on the matter.”
“It’s them, you formless cretin! It’s them!”
“It is they,” Kevin corrected. “Actually, no, wait. That doesn’t sound right.”
“It’s the idiot captain and the blue woman,” Tyrra barked.
“Where?” asked Kevin.
“On the screen! Switch it back on!”
Kevin let out a little snort. “I hardly thing they’re going to be on television.”
“They were. It was them!”
Kevin gave a sigh that was quite convincing for someone with no lungs. “Fine. I’ll put it back on, but only for a moment,” he said. “And you aren’t allowed to look.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’re banned from the television, I thought I’d made that quite clear,” Kevin said. “Now, do you want me to put it on, or not?”
“Gah!” Tyrra snapped. She spun around to face away from the screen. “There. Now, hurry.”
There was a faint whine as the screen fired back up.
“It’s nothing,” said Kevin. “It’s just some sort of… action show, I think. There’s someone shooting, and…”
His voice faded into silence. On screen, a plasma rocket obliterated a chunk of rock, forcing an all-too-familiar figure to come tearing out of cover.
“Oh,” said Kevin. He watched a moment longer. “Well, this is something of a pickle.”
Thirty-Seven
Cal landed awkwardly. Given what he had just escaped from, though, he was grateful to have landed at all.
A spray of hot rocks peppered the ground around him. He tried to stand, but the shale was loose beneath his feet, and he crashed down again immediately.
“Get clear,” he told Floora. Not that he gave her much of an option, throwing her ahead of him before he turned on his knees and raised both hands above his head.
“Don’t shoot!” he urged, as Loren levelled the bazooka-thing at him. “You don’t want to do this. You don’t. Whatever they’ve done to you, however they’re controlling you, it’s not you. It isn’t you.”
Loren squinted down the weapon’s scope.
“We had an argument!” Cal said. “We fell out. It was… I guess it was my fault. Mostly.”
Loren placed her finger on the trigger. “Wait, no! Wholly my fault. It was all me. I just…”
The effort of keeping his arms raised proved too much, the blood loss and exhaustion combining to rob him of his strength.
He flopped down into a sitting position. Words began to flow out of him as the same rate as his blood. “I just… Since the car accident... Since what happened to my…”
His jaw clenched. “Since what happened, I’ve never… I haven’t really let anyone get close, you know? Not close close. Until you. And I didn’t know how to deal with it. With you. Us. Any of it. I just didn’t know. And I may…” He raised a finger. “May have handled it less perfectly than I could have.”
There was a beep from the bazooka. Cal partly jumped and partly rolled out of the path of the missile, but the fiery shockwave slammed into his back, knocking what little fight was left out of him and depositing everything that was left over in a heap beside the cliff’s edge.
“Cal!” Floora cried.
He managed to raise an arm long enough to warn her to stay back, then heaved himself around to face Loren again. She had slung the bazooka back onto her shoulder, and was now peering down the barrel of a blaster rifle at him.
He nodded, accepting that this was how it was going to be. He had no more tricks up his sleeve, no last-minute escape plans. If she fired, he was dead, and it was over.
And he couldn’t let it end like this. Not without telling her. Not without her having any doubt.
“For the record,” he slurred, clutching his side where Miz had slashed him. Blood ebbed through his fingers and trickled down the back of his gloves. “You were never ‘fun.’ Never.”
Cal coughed. Something black came up. “That sounds bad. I mean, you were fun, but not just fun. I mean what we have, or had, or… It was real. It was so real. I need you to know that.”
He settled back on the shale. His blood pooled in the gaps between it, his life seeping down into the earth below.
“I love you, Teela Loren,” Cal told her. He motioned to one of the Hovercams. “I just wanted to put that on the record. Whatever happens, whatever you do next, I will always love you.”
Loren’s jaw tightened. Her finger trembled on the trigger as she fought against whatever psychic thrall she was under.
A tear broke loose and cut a track down her cheek. Her face was a picture of torment, all her pain writ large for the whole damn sector to see.
God, this was killing her. Cal couldn’t stand it. Wouldn’t stand it. He sipped in a shallow breath, closed his eyes for a moment, then made his peace with the world.
“And that’s why you have to shoot me,” he told her. “That’s why you have to pull the trigger and end it.”
Loren’s hands shook.
“I don’t care about winning this fonking show. I don’t even care about surviving,” Cal said. “I just… I can’t see you torn apart like this. I just can’t.”
He shivered and pulled his arms around himself. “By the way, is it getting cold up here, or is it just me?” he wondered, his breath coming in thin, rasping gasps.
His eyes became glassy and distant, staring through Loren rather than at her.
“Cal,” said Floora. Her voice was near and far at the same time. He blinked and looked around, but couldn’t see her anywhere.
Then again, he couldn’t see much of anything. The darkness was circling, creeping around him in watchful circles, waiting for its chance to strike.
“Just shoot me,” Cal said. “It’s not fair to make you fight it. It’s not fair. And I’m done for, anyway. Just do it.”
The gun trembled in Loren’s grip. She gritted her teeth, her forehead furrowed in concentration.
&nbs
p; Ignoring the pain, Cal raised himself up onto his knees. He swayed from side to side, finding his balance, then pressed his forehead against the end of the blaster.
“Just shoot me. Do it. It’s not your fault, OK?” he told her, staring deep into her eyes. “It’s not your fault.”
Loren’s finger tightened. She inhaled deeply through her nose, steadying her nerve.
“I mean, sure, would I have found a way to break it, if it was me? Yes. But it’s fine,” Cal said.
Loren’s eyelids fluttered.
“I’m not saying it’d be easy,” Cal continued. “Just, you know, if it was me, I’d have found a way to shrug it off. But it’s fine. It’s totally fine. Not your fault.”
The barrel of the gun dipped a fraction. Cal caught it and placed it back against his head.
“Seriously, just do it. Don’t feel bad about being hypno-brainwashed, or whatever,” Cal said. “We can’t all be as resilient as I am.”
He smiled at her. It was a smile he had carefully selected for its immensely patronizing qualities.
“I guess I’m just made of sterner stuff,” he concluded.
“What? Bullshizz you are!” Loren spat, lowering the gun. “I’m way more…”
He voice trailed off. She looked around them, as if only just seeing the world for the first time.
“What the fonk?” she demanded. “What is this? Where am I? How did—”
She caught sight of Cal and all other questions ceased to be important. “Kroysh, what happened?” she asked, her voice softening.
“Miz, Mech. You,” Cal grunted. He exhaled with relief. That had been a long shot, and he was amazed it had actually worked. “But it’s worse than it looks.”
He replayed this in his head.
“No, that should be the other way around,” he said.
He looked down at the puddle of blood beneath him, then reconsidered again.
“Actually, no. I was right the first time.”
“Why aren’t you healing?” Loren asked, dropping the gun. “Here, let me see.”
Before she could move to help him, there was a flurry of movement at her back.
A pterodactyl-thing screeched. Leathery wings flapped. Clawed feet raked up Loren’s back, then the momentum of the creature sent her stumbling toward the cliff-edge.
“No!” Cal cried. He threw himself after her just as she dropped to the ground, lowering her center of balance in an attempt to stay on the right side of the drop.
It was no use. The slippery shale carried her over the edge. Cal’s eyes met hers, and then she slid all the way out of sight.
“No, no, no,” Cal whimpered, dragging himself over to where the mountain fell away into nothing.
He had been bracing himself to find her gone. Instead, he found her clinging to a handhold just a couple of feet down.
“Hey,” she said.
Cal let out a strangled sob of relief. “Oh, thank God,” he said. “I thought you’d fallen.”
“I did,” said Loren.
Cal tutted. “Further, I meant. I thought you’d fallen further.” He offered her a hand. “Need some help?”
“I’ll be fine,” said Loren, stretching for a chunk of stone that jutted out from the vertical rock wall. “Besides, you don’t look like you could carry a tune, let alone—”
The piece of rock came away as she put her weight on it. Loren dropped suddenly, her other hand losing its grip.
For a moment, she was weightless, hundreds of feet in the air. And then, Cal’s hand was around her wrist, his blood-soaked fingers gripping her with every ounce of strength he had. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much.
“You… were saying?”
“You’ll never let me hear the end of this,” Loren groaned.
“Damn straight,” Cal said through gritted teeth. “Floora? Get over here. I need your help.”
King Floomf of the Floomfles paced back and forth across the Emergency Situation Room, his little robe swishing against the carpet every time he turned. It was not a particularly large room, and the constant swishing was really starting to get on everyone else’s tits.
The everyone else in question was the Head of Floomfle Security, Floomton Jehooso, and his second-in-command, Floojus Pom. Their eyes tick-tocked, following the king in his relentless back and forth across the room.
“It’s preposterous. Simply preposterous,” King Floomf said.
“Yes, sire,” agreed Floomton Jehooso.
“Indeed,” confirmed Floojus Pom.
“How has it happened?” demanded the king. He reached the far end of the room, then wheeled around in a half-circle and began marching again. His eyes went to the television. “We sent those Floomfles in good faith. You saw them, they couldn’t wait to get up there and get themselves eaten! Some of them had been waiting all their lives for just this very opportunity.”
“Yes, sire,” agreed Floomton Jehooso.
“They had,” confirmed Floojus Pom.
“And now this!” cried the king, gesturing at the screen.
The shot cut from the battle between Hunter and Prey to a close-up of a worried-looking Floora.
“I mean, look. Look at that!” King Floomf hollered. “How has this happened? How can this be?”
“We don’t know, sire,” said Floomton Jehooso.
“We are investigating,” added Floojus Pom.
“Forget investigating! It’s too late for investigating! We need to take action,” King Floomf shrieked. “Get on the comm-link. Get in contact with Viaview. Tell them that we did our part, exactly as agreed. This is not our fault. It can’t be. It’s nothing to do with us!”
He jabbed a pudgy finger at the screen, and at the diminutive figure watching the battle. “Because, I don’t know who or what that thing is,” he said. “But it is not a Floomfle.”
Cal braced himself against the clifftop and tried to heave Loren up, but pain lit-up his right side and tore along the length of his arm.
“Jesus, and you had the nerve to say that I’m getting heavy?” he said, straining from the effort.
“Yeah, yeah,” Loren said. “Funny guy.”
“You think… maybe you should lose… the fonking bazooka?”
“How? It’s hooked across me. I’d have to take my arm off,” Loren pointed out.
“Great! That’d… make you… even lighter still,” Cal said in a series of pained grunts.
He’d been cold a moment ago, but now the sweat was pouring out of him. It formed on his forehead, trickled down his nose, then dropped past Loren and continued down toward the ground below.
It plinked on the testicle-head of one of the Sloorgs. Fonk. He’d forgotten about them. They were dangerously close now. He had to get Loren up, and fast.
“Floora? Give me a hand here,” Cal said.
Floora didn’t answer. Or she might have, but the sound of Cal’s blood whooshing through his veins made it hard to hear anything else.
His arm vibrated with the strain of holding Loren up. Blood ran in meandering rivers along it, filling the inside of his glove.
“Don’t let me go,” Loren pleaded.
Cal shook his head. “Never,” he said. “I promise. It’s a Cal Carver—"
Something sharp and metallic plunged into his shoulder from behind, burying deep into his flesh. The arm holding Loren went limp. He saw the panic in her eyes, heard a high-pitched giggle at his back, and then his hand was empty, and Loren was tumbling down, down, down the mountainside.
She hit one of the climbing Sloorgs on the way past, dislodging it from its perch. They both tumbled end over end, facing each other like the participants of some deadly dance. And then, the clouds swallowed them both, and they were gone.
“Oh dear,” said Floora, her voice all child-like and innocent in Cal’s ear. “Looks like you broke your promise.”
Cal didn’t move. Not at first. He just lay there, his top half dangling over the cliff edge, his hand reaching out for someone who was no longer there.
He watched the swirl of the clouds where she had fallen, followed them as they resettled around the space where she now wasn’t.
Then, and only then, when all trace of her had vanished, Cal heaved himself up onto his knees and shuffled around to face the Floomfle.
Only to discover that she wasn’t there, either.
“What the fonk is this?” he demanded. Adrenaline and rage got him onto his feet. He spun, hunting for Floora, but finding no trace of her. He raged at one of the Hovercams. “What is this? What did you do? What did you do?”
“Aaaand she’s down,” boomed the voice of the host. “Blaster-Mama is no more, dead at the hands of the dreaded Reduk Topa!”
“That’s not what happened!” Cal slurred. “That’s not… It’s not…”
He tangled both hands in his hair and pulled, the pain a welcome distraction from the emotional turmoil currently churning what was left of his guts into lumpy butter.
“That’s not what happened!” he sobbed.
From over by the cliff edge there came a rush of movement. Cal’s heart, which had stopped at the precise moment Loren had tumbled through the clouds, fluttered into life again.
Then, it crashed down to around his toes when a head like a testicle appeared over the top of the cliff, followed by a mess of teeth.
Another Sloorg cleared the top a few feet away on the right. Despite their lack of eyes, Cal could feel the creatures staring hungrily at him, sizing him up.
Even in perfect health, with his healing abilities working as they should, he wouldn’t have stood a chance against these things. Now, half-dead, with no means of recovering, any attempt to fight them would be a prolonged suicide bid. Or possibly a very rapid suicide bid, depending on how much they liked to play with their food.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to fight them. Not directly, at least.
He pulled off the blood-filled gloves. Then, grimacing with the pain and wooziness it brought, Cal bent and retrieved Loren’s gun. It kicked in his hands as he opened fire.
His aim was even worse than usual, which was really saying something, and none of the shots found their targets. They did, however, drive the Sloorgs back a few paces and, unfortunately for them, the cliff edge was slightly less than a few paces behind them.
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