She managed to get to her feet, but her shield eluded her in her panic. She took one step, and then one of Weeble’s metal legs kicked out hard, striking her in the back. She flew several feet up the corridor, landing hard enough to lose her grip on the pain baton. Weeble rushed her just as she got to her knees and kicked again, hitting her so hard that it knocked the air from her lungs and sent her sliding another few feet up the corridor. She was on her stomach, both hands pressed to the floor, trying to focus so that she could raise her shield as the tap tap tapping sound of the metal legs came closer. Using every last ounce of strength in her already depleted body, she pushed herself up to a crouch, only to have Weeble kick her yet again. This time she smacked her head against the door leading into the room where Salene was being kept. Her vision grayed out again but she gritted her teeth, refusing to pass out. She raised her head high enough to see Weeble standing a couple of feet away from her, a grin on his face, his hateful black eyes fixed on her with cold malice. Remembering that the pain baton was attached to her wrist by a cord, she fumbled for it without taking her eyes off of Weeble.
And then she couldn’t see Weeble at all. Instead, she saw Landor, Con, and Ari standing with their backs to her, forming a wall of muscle that blocked the corridor between her and Weeble. Con turned around to face her, his eyes so filled with fury that she flinched involuntarily. He knelt down and lifted her as gently as he could, but the movement still caused a wave of nausea to roll through her.
She took a slow, cautious breath, then gasped in surprise when Landor shifted into his bearenca alter-form. He was so big that his sides pressed against the walls of the corridor, and he was forced to keep his head low so it didn’t crash through the ceiling. His roar shook the walls around them.
“I look forward to getting one of you to study,” Weeble said, causing her to shudder so hard Con had to tighten his hold to prevent her from tumbling out of his arms and onto the floor. Landor roared once more, then shifted back into his human form.
“Where’d he go?” Ari asked.
“I don’t know,” Landor replied. “He transported himself away.”
“How are you, Kisu?” he asked, brushing her cheek with his fingertips.
“Alive,” she gasped breathlessly.
“You will stay that way,” he ordered, then looked at Con. “We have little time before that creature brings help. I should not have allowed him to get away but the walls pressed too tightly against me for much movement.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Con said. “They would have tracked our transport signal in just a few moments anyway.”
Landor nodded, then looked back to Rayne. “Do you have a key for the door?”
“I think so,” she replied, reaching into her pocket for the card she’d taken from one of the guards. She noticed a bit of weakness in her arm and wondered if Weeble might have damaged it, then forgot about it as she handed the card to Landor. “Just slide it through the reader.”
Landor did as she said and much to her relief, the door opened. He looked inside, then gestured for them to follow. They entered the room just in time to see Weeble appear on the far side of the metal table that held an unconscious Salene. He was clearly surprised to see Landor, but didn’t let that stop him from trying to get one hand on Salene. He had something strapped to his hand that they all suspected was a transport device. If he touched Salene and activated the device, they would lose her.
Landor immediately leapt over Salene, his head and shoulders shifting at the same time. He growled furiously and snapped at the hand holding the transport device with his long, glistening fangs, forcing the Doftle to stumble backwards. Weeble hissed angrily, pressed the button on the device, and vanished from the room before Landor lunged again.
“Let’s get out of here before anyone else decides to visit,” Ari said, reaching out to touch Salene. Landor reversed his partial shift and placed one hand on Salene as well, then they all pressed the transport beacons on their wrist bands. A moment later they felt the nauseating sensation of being transported across space, and then they were all blinking their eyes in the transport room aboard the Armadura.
“We have to destroy the Facility right now, before Weeble escapes,” Rayne insisted as Con set her down. She was surprised to find that she felt wobbly and off balance, and wondered if those knocks on the head were responsible.
“Are you all right, Rayne?” Landor asked, interrupting her thoughts as he placed Salene on a waiting stretcher.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she replied, watching as the med techs ran out of the room with her sister.
“Do you know where your other body is on the Facility?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But it doesn’t matter, Landor. There’s no time. The Facility is preparing to move to a new location. We have to destroy it now, before it’s too late.”
“I know, Kisu,” Landor said, touching her crystal lightly. Then he sighed heavily. “Your word is our word.”
“Thank you,” she said so relieved she actually felt dizzy for a few moments.
“Con, give the order, then join us on the observation deck,” he said, swinging Rayne up into his arms. Con tapped his vox and Landor took off, too distracted by what they were about to do to notice how pale Rayne had gotten when he’d picked her up.
Moving as quickly as he could, they reached the observation deck in seconds with Ari behind them. Landor set her down in front of the viewport which presented them with a view of nothing but space and stars.
“The Facility is right there,” Ari said, pointing. “If we get any closer we’ll be able to see it, but then they’d be able to see us, too. We won’t have any trouble seeing the explosion though.”
Con entered the room and hurried to stand with them. “Sixty seconds,” he said, glancing at his wrist band.
“If you pass to the next plane, Rayne, wait for us,” Landor said, shocking her. “We’ll be along shortly.”
“No,” she said, suddenly more afraid than she’d been when Weeble was kicking her up the corridor. He placed a gentle finger to her lips as Ari and Con crowded close.
“We all must do what we must do,” Con said, then leaned down to kiss her gently.
“We waited three hundred years for you, Rayne,” Ari said. “Now that we’ve finally found you, we will not let you take the next journey without us.” Rayne wanted to argue with them, but there was no time. She lifted her chin and said, “It won’t matter because I’m not going anywhere. We’ll have long and happy lives together on this plane before we have to think about the next.”
“Then all of our prayers will be answered,” Landor said. “Perhaps you should let Wolef know that the time has come.”
“Thirty seconds,” Con said.
She nodded, then reached for the golden dragon. “The Facility will be destroyed in half a minute, Wolef,” she said. “I hope you’re ready.” She felt a wave of relief, and knew it was a deliberate effort on his part to convince her that he wanted this. “Thank you for helping me save Salene.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied. “I thank you, Rayne Dracon, and your bears, too. I know this is difficult for them, and I truly am sorry for that.”
“We are grateful for the time we had, Wolef,” she said. “Time we would never have had if not for you. There is nothing for you to apologize for.”
“I hope you don’t mind if I take a bit of your warmth and light with me as I travel to the next plane. Never in my existence have I encountered such, and I am loath to let it go.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” she said, struggling to speak around the lump in her throat. “I’ll miss you, Wolef, but I promise that I’ll never forget you.”
She felt Wolef brush her mind, and then the viewport lit up with white fire so bright she had to squeeze her eyes shut against it. In seconds the fire was gone, and there was nothing left of the Facility, the Doftle within it, the prisoners, or of her friend, a golden dragon named Wolef.
When she opened her ey
es again it was to see three sets of bright, glowing eyes staring down at her with a combination of hope, fear, and love that filled her heart with happiness. “I’m here, guys,” she whispered, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “I’m not going anywhere.” She blinked, and found herself in the center of a small circle with all three of them holding her at once. It felt so good that she laid her head against Con’s chest and closed her eyes, just soaking in the relief and the love coming from all of them.
“That was not an experience I wish to repeat,” Landor said when they released her.
“No, me neither,” she said, looking out through the viewport again. “I wonder if we got Weeble, too.”
She looked down, almost surprised at the sight of the pain baton still looped around her wrist. She removed it, turned it off, and crossed the room to place it on a table, then added the two card keys, and three of the four hand terminals she’d collected. “Those might come in handy,” she said, then held up the last one. “But this is the most important one.”
“Why is it important?” Landor asked. Each of the hand terminals looked the same except for a few scratches, rub marks, and other signs of use.
“Because this one contains data from an alternate timeline,” she said.
“That’s the one you took from the Doftle you killed when you escaped?” Con asked.
“Yes, it is,” she replied. “Wolef warned me not to turn it on at the last moment.”
“Why?” Ari asked. “What would have happened?”
“Whenever you turn one of these things on the first thing it does is search for the nearest Doftle mainframe and update itself, a process which includes deletion of unnecessary data.”
“Are you saying that everything the Doftle will do for the coming year is on that device?” Landor asked.
“Yes,” Rayne said. “We’ve changed some things, of course, so what happens for the coming year may not match the data on this thing exactly.”
“But, everything the Doftle did for that year is there,” Ari said with a wondering expression on his face. “Places they’ve gone, people they’ve abducted, spies they created with their Controllers and placed among our people, and on our ships.” He smiled. “How odd is it that I’m referring to things that haven’t happened yet in the past tense?”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Rayne said dryly. “The more I remember, the more confused I get about the right words to use to tell you about it.”
“It doesn’t matter what words you use, we understand you,” Landor said. “Will you try turning it on now that there’s no Doftle mainframe nearby?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m good with computers, but I think it would be safer to let Aunt Summer work her magic on this, just to be safe.”
“That’s probably wise,” Landor agreed with obvious disappointment.
“Cheer up,” Rayne smiled. “We’ll be able to prevent so many things from happening, and the Doftle will never know how we did it.”
“You did very well,” Landor said. “Even though you went over there against our wishes, I admit that I should not have pushed you into a corner the way I did, and we should have discussed the matter with you. My only excuse is that we were afraid to lose you.”
“I know, and I understand,” Rayne said. “I promise you, the last thing I ever wanted was to go into danger, but it really was the only way.”
“You certainly think well under pressure,” Ari said, glancing at the hand terminals she’d collected.
“I shouldn’t have gone after Weeble the way I did. That was a mistake.”
“You must have had a reason for doing it,” Con said, raising one brow in a silent question.
“The first and biggest reason was that he was on his way to get Salene and transport her to his private yacht,” she said. “In addition, he’s the one responsible for all of this. He ordered that Salene and I be kidnapped for his experiments. He created the altered embryos…or would have, in time, if allowed. And I recognized his voice. It took me a while to place it, though I don’t know why now that I remember so much. He performed many of the experiments on me himself. He’s the one who gave the order for my vocal cords to be cut. I have no memory of having seen him before, but Wolef confirmed that it was him.”
“I see,” Con said, his voice mild, but the tension in his body telling her that he wasn’t unaffected by what she’d said. She looked at Ari, then Landor, and saw that they were all furious.
“I wish we’d known that sooner,” Landor said. “I would have made a stronger effort to kill him.”
“Then he would have gotten exactly what he wanted,” Rayne said. Landor frowned down at her in confusion. “The moment you touched him with any part of your body, he would have transported himself, and you, away to his private yacht. He was waiting for it. Why else would someone of his size taunt an enraged bearenca?”
“He would have risked losing his life in hopes of capturing me?” Landor asked, surprised.
“Oh yes, absolutely,” Rayne said. “Never doubt it. That’s why I didn’t want you going there. I knew you’d underestimate him, and he knew it too. Wolef told me that Weeble was the most dangerous being he’d ever known, that he’s extremely intelligent, and completely insane. He advised me to never underestimate him, and I promised that I wouldn’t. I don’t think you should, either.”
“We won’t,” Landor said. “Do you remember everything now?”
“I think so, yes,” she said. “Did you watch the whole time?”
“Yes,” Ari replied. “We saw everything you saw, and we heard what you heard.”
“When we saw what they’d done to Wolef, we understood why it was so important for you to keep your word to him,” Landor said.
“Thank you,” she said. “I know it wasn’t easy to do what you did. I’m not sure I would’ve been able to do it were our positions reversed. But I’m grateful that you did.”
“All we ask in return is that you never make a promise like that again.”
“I think it’s fairly safe to agree to that,” she said, smiling up at him.
“Before I forget,” Con said, “what was the setting on that pain baton when you hit those Doftles with it?”
“I put it on Kill, but it didn’t kill them,” she said, turning to look at the pain baton as a wave of nausea and nearly overwhelming weakness rolled through her. She breathed silently for a few moments until it eased off.
“This’ll give us a good idea of their strength,” Con was saying. “I’m glad you brought it back with you.”
“How’s Salene?” she asked, unable to put it off any longer. “I didn’t get a chance to look at her.”
“She’ll be fine,” Landor said.
“You might as well tell me the truth because I’m going to go see her in a minute anyway.”
“I had only a moment to assess her condition, but I saw what appeared to be burns all over her body, some quite deep,” he said, his voice getting deeper and growlier as he spoke. “I can’t imagine for the life of me how they can possibly refer to torture as experimental, or what they hoped to accomplish by their actions.”
“They were trying to force her to shift, just like they did to me,” Rayne said. Three sets of eyes went immediately to her face. She returned their gazes calmly while wishing she’d thought before she’d spoken. “Forget all of that. I’m here with the three of you, and this is where I will remain. There’s no reason to get upset.”
“I do hope this isn’t a bad time,” Wolef’s familiar voice said. Only this time, she knew she wasn’t the only one who could hear his voice in her mind, since Landor, Con and Ari all turned around when she did.
“Wolef?” she asked in surprise when she saw a large, glittering gold dragon floating mid-way between the floor and the ceiling, taking up a large portion of the enormous room.
“Do you know more than one golden dragon?”
“Of course not,” she replied, speaking out loud so her men could hear he
r as well as Wolef. “I never imagined you looked like this. You’re beautiful.”
“Five hundred years in the hands of the little blue thugs doesn’t do much for one’s appearance,” he said dryly.
“No, it doesn’t,” she agreed, remembering her own reflection. “Are you…all right, Wolef?”
“Yes, Solin, I’m very much all right, thanks to you and your bears,” he replied. “That is one of the reasons I wished to speak with you now, while I have the chance. Firstly, I wanted you to know you did the right thing for me, and for the others who were kept there for so long. We are free to move on now, thanks to you.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” she said.
“I must say that I’m extremely relieved to find that the destruction of your soulless body had no effect on you,” he said. “I was somewhat worried about that, to be honest.”
“I’m relieved too,” she said. “But it was a chance worth taking.”
“I’m glad you still think so,” Wolef said. “You should know that the Doftle named Weeble escaped before the explosion, along with his samples. It is a shame. He lacks sanity of any sort, and has far too much power.”
“Wait a minute,” Rayne said, frowning. “What samples? You said my other body was destroyed, and we have Rayne here.”
“I don’t know who they were,” Wolef said. “They had a barrier in their minds that I could not break through. I felt their presence strongly enough that I sensed them leaving the Facility before it was destroyed, but that is all that I know.”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Rayne said.
“Why?” Landor asked.
“I don’t know, exactly. Just a bad feeling. Wolef, how many of them were there?”
Rayne's Return (Hearts of ICARUS Book 3) Page 25