Sylor

by Elin Wyn

  Her voice, when she finally spoke, was soft and almost sultry sounding. “I’m not going back to that cell. You need me to find the toxin.”

  “Are you so sure of that?” I asked. We did have Jeneva to ask about the toxin, despite her current condition. She had dealt in the trade of toxins, plant materials, and other things during her time living on her own before we had arrived with the Xathi. She may have an idea of where to look.

  Nesta nodded, which caused her body to shake against mine. The curves of her figure were certainly there. I could feel within my own blood a stirring of heat and pheromones.

  “I know where to look,” she said. “I can almost guarantee that you don’t have anyone with a clue.”

  “You would be surprised,” I countered. I enjoyed watching her eyes light up when she talked, subtly boosting her own value in order to persuade me to keep her around.

  Her face seemed closer to my own. I looked at the shape of her lips, the tiny creases in them as she licked them nervously. I experienced an almost primal urge to bring those lips against my own.

  She pushed herself away from me, settling herself tailor-fashion in the grass. “Fine, go without me. And when you fail, which you will, you’ll take me out and have me show you anyway. Why not save yourself the trouble and just take me with you now?”

  I sat up and found myself finding the feel of the grass very acceptable, though not as nice as Nesta’s body against my own. “You’re so sure of yourself,” I stated, ensuring that it didn’t come across as a question.

  “I am,” she nodded. “I promise you, you’ll never find that toxin without me, and you and your people will be stuck in this dome until whatever made it decides what to do with you.”

  As much as I did not wish to admit that she was correct, she was. While she had shown me a possible way out, I was also fairly confident that the people down there would not take kindly to an entire team, or teams, or even an entire city of people invading their area in a desperate attempt to escape.

  I laughed. There was nothing left to do but laugh. “Very well,” I managed through a few chuckles. “You show me the way,” then I put on a serious face. “But no running away. The creature that is responsible for these vines may very well decide that it is finished searching and it will then destroy the city, and that will include the people underground. We do this for everyone, not just ourselves.”

  She nodded.

  I got to my feet and held a hand out for her to take. “Then let us gather our gear and find a place to sleep…not in a cell.”

  Her smile at those last four words was beautiful. Skrell.

  Nesta

  I opened my eyes lazily, enjoying the way the soft sheets had wrapped themselves around my body during the night. The place I was in was nothing but a modest bunk room, but it beat the jail cell I had been in before. Besides, I had the whole place to myself, and I even had an extra blanket, one I had made sure to throw over the sheets before I tucked myself in last night.

  Sitting up on the bed, I finger-combed my hair as I yawned.

  I had slept through the night like a rock and, for the first time in weeks, hadn’t had any nightmares. I had never been prone to those, but after the Xathi had decided to pack their lunchboxes with some of my friends, a good night of sleep had suddenly become a commodity.

  “Let’s see,” I whispered, swinging my legs off the bed. Still in my underwear, I padded my way across the room toward the door. I laid my hand on the handle and, trying to be as sneaky as I possibly could, I turned it. I cracked the door open, just enough so I could peek outside, but closed it the moment I saw the back of the guard Sylor had stationed outside the room.

  That guy had trust issues, no doubt about it.

  I was halfway through getting dressed when the door swung open all of a sudden. I turned around fast, clutching my blouse against my bare chest. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I growled, shooting daggers at the confused Valorni standing by the doorway.

  “I came to see if you were ready,” Sylor said, and I couldn’t help but notice the way his eyes were drinking in the shape of my figure. My heart sped up a little, and I felt warm blood rush to my cheeks. “Apparently, you’re not.”

  “No shit, you genius,” I said. “Now turn around and let me finish getting dressed.”

  “Right,” he said, turning around but never leaving his place by the doorway. I was almost sure that he was feeling embarrassed he had caught me half-naked, but I couldn’t really tell when it came to Sylor. He wore honesty and justice on his lapel, but his emotions...those he kept tucked away.

  “I’m ready,” I finally announced, slinging my backpack over my shoulder. When Sylor started turning, I was already walking past him and outside. “C’mon, let’s not waste any time. Where do you have your tools?”

  “This way,” he said, leading the way through a maze of corridors. We ended up in what looked like an engineering shop, a few large tables lining the walls, dozens of soldering tools piled on their surfaces. There were at least two industrial presses in there, and small pieces of electronics littered the floor.

  “Is this where you work?” I asked him, watching as he headed straight toward one of the tables and start packing up. He grabbed a few weird gadgets and, even though I had no idea what they were, I didn’t ask. The only things I recognized were what seemed like a foldable drill and an old but reliable shovel.

  “Yes, this is where I work,” Sylor replied. He went down on one knee and then started making sure everything fit inside his large bag. “Not always, of course, but I do spend a lot of time in here. I like to build new things.”

  “Huh,” I whispered, now glancing more attentively at what was on top of the tables. There were a lot of unfinished gadgets there, a lot of them suspiciously similar to weapons systems. I picked up a few of them, just to feel their weight, and couldn’t stop myself from being amazed at Sylor’s creations. Sure, I didn’t know the purpose of most of them, but just the sheer quantity...he didn’t like to build new things, he freaking loved it.

  “Got your toys?” I asked him as he stood up.

  “Not toys,” he corrected me, “but yes, I do.”

  “Then let’s get going.”

  We left the building then, Sylor carrying all the tools we would need while I ensured the only thing I had to carry was a bright green apple I had managed to steal from the officer’s mess. I took a large bite out of it, moaning audibly as the apple’s juice ran down my chin.

  “What?” I asked Sylor as I noticed him looking, my mouth completely full.

  “Nothing,” he said. I wasn’t sure if I was going mad, but I was almost certain there was a hint of a smile on his lips just then. He liked pretending he was this hardcore badass who built weapons and bombs for fun, but deep down, he was a softie. In a way, that almost made him endearing. Almost.

  We made our way back to the underground unimpeded, and this time no one there questioned Sylor’s presence. Topan gave us one of his annoyed stares but, in the end, he cared more about the underground’s structural integrity than he cared about the fact my companion was a scary-looking green alien.

  “How are the tunnels looking, Nesta?” he asked me, following after me and Sylor. “Will the sewage ones cave?”

  “He can’t know where we’re going,” Sylor told me under his breath. “I don’t want any civilians following us. No one gets out before we know if it’s safe. I’ll post guards down here if I have to.”

  “No need for that,” I pushed past my gritted teeth, already annoyed at Sylor’s suggestion. Topan and the old gang would hate my guts if more Valorni started coming down here...especially Valorni that used such nefarious titles as guards. “Sylor just wants to check on a few more things,” I told Topan, lying through my teeth. “We’ll be out of your hair soon enough, don’t worry.”

  “You’re pretty good at lying,” Sylor told me as we left Topan behind and entered the tunnels that went past my old burrow and toward what I hop
ed to be our digging site. “I hope you’re not lying to me right now, Nesta. This city really needs that toxin.”

  “I might be a liar, but I’m not a dickhead like you,” I protested. “I know the city is screwed without that toxin. And these people…” I gestured toward the cavern we had just left. “They are my people. I want to protect them, too, believe it or not.”

  “That I believe.”

  “Good,” I said, fishing another apple from inside one of my pockets. I was so busy with digging my teeth into it that I didn’t even notice Sylor had stopped right in front of me, and so I just crashed against him. “What the hell, man?”

  “We’re here,” he said, awkwardly turning back to face me. The ceiling was so low he couldn’t stand up, and even I had to crouch slightly. He got to work almost immediately, unpacking his bag and laying all the tools on the floor right in front of him. He picked out a small, round, flat gadget, and pressed it against the wall in front of him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “This is a kind of sonar,” he explained. “It’ll allow me to see what lies ahead of us.” Pushing a button on the circular gadget, he closed his eyes. At the same time, the purple bands on his arm lit up. I took a step back, surprised, but quickly realized what was happening. The lights on his prosthetic sleeve were activating.

  I could see Sylor’s eyes moving rapidly under his eyelids, matching the rhythm of his glowing bands. Somehow, the small gadget he was using was transmitting all the information into Sylor’s bionics.

  “Nice,” I nodded approvingly. “Didn’t know you were that handy.”

  “That’s because you weren’t paying attention,” he said, this time with a smile. That was witty of him. Taking into account that most times he seemed to talk as if he were reading a textbook out loud, I couldn’t help but be impressed. “Now, I’ve scanned the earth in front of us, and it seems you were right. We can push our way through the vines, since there are only a few of them here...then we’ll tunnel forward until we find bedrock, and only then will we start digging upward.”

  “Sounds like you have it all figured out.”

  Using his shovel, he then busied himself with loosening the layer of earth right in front of him. He uncovered the vines that crawled up toward the surface and, holding on to them, started pushing them apart. The muscles in his shoulders bulged from the effort, and I didn’t even pretend I wasn’t staring. Sylor’s body was more than just impressive...it was as if someone had designed it with perfection in mind.

  “Good enough,” he announced as he grabbed his drill. Going down on one knee, he unfolded it and then set it up, pushing the tip against the earth. It whirred loudly as it dug deep into the wall, and piles of dirt started accumulating at his feet. “You wait here,” he told me after he had carved up a nice burrow, one large enough for him to squeeze inside, although with a lot of difficulty. As far as I was concerned, that little tunnel looked uncomfortably tight. “I’ll call you if it’s safe.”

  With that, he continued pushing his way deep into the earth and, after half an hour, I could no longer see him. I just heard the perpetual sound of his drill and his occasional groan. I stared down the cramped little tunnel Sylor had managed to create, and I felt my heart starting to beat anxiously. I couldn’t help but anticipate the moment I would have to follow after Sylor, the walls closing in on me, the air becoming more and more rarefied…

  “Snap out of it, Nesta,” I told myself, but the darkness in front of me wasn’t helping matters. It was odd for an underground woman like me to be afraid of tight, cramped places, but I had never really managed to get those fears under control.

  Not after what Odeon, my mentor, had done to me.

  “You can come now, Nesta!” Sylor called me.

  I remained frozen in place, not moving an inch. I looked at the small tunnel in front of me, and then I looked back to the way we had come. I could run now and, in the tunnels, there was no way Sylor would ever find me. I didn’t need to crawl inside that dark tunnel, did I?

  I could just turn around, leave...

  I’d be free once more.

  “Nesta?” Sylor insisted. “Are you there?”

  “Coming!” I shouted back.

  Shutting down my rational mind, I bit the bullet and crawled into Sylor’s tunnel.

  Sylor

  The way in front of me was just rock. None of my tools would be capable of getting through that, not in the small space that we had to work with. I had made it a point to try to dig the tunnel out to at least one and a half times my size in order to allow myself a little bit of room to work with, as well as room to push the dirt out behind me as I dug it out.

  Now, it was time to dig upward and hope that my excavations resulted in an escape from the vines. As I lay on my back, I looked down towards my feet at Nesta, who looked to be sweating. “How are you doing?” I asked her.

  She looked up at me, swallowed, and nodded. “I’m okay. Not a fan of being in this tiny hole,” she said through a forced chuckle. “Are we going any further?”

  “In a fashion,” I said. “I can’t go any further forward, it’s all rock.” I tapped the rock wall behind my head in emphasis. “I’m going to have to start digging upwards.”

  “That should be fun,” she teased. Her humor sounded forced, but I attributed it to her just being cramped in this small tunnel. Perhaps ‘cramped’ was the wrong word. She was much smaller than me, so perhaps she was just not keen to be in a tunnel with tons of loose dirt hanging over her head. I had to admit that I was a bit apprehensive with the concept myself.

  “I’ll do my best to move most of the dirt towards you as I’m drilling and digging, if you wouldn’t mind helping to keep me from burying myself,” I said with a grin. She looked so uncomfortable, I had hoped that a grin would help ease her troubles.

  It didn’t seem to work. She nodded and waved at me to continue. With a short moment spent contemplating her well-being, I maneuvered myself a bit to the side, grabbed my small portable drill, and began drilling upwards. It was short work drilling up, the ground was much softer and easier to get through. The portion of the work that slowed me down, however, was the dispersal of the dirt. Nesta did a magnificent job of moving the dirt away from me and out of the tunnel as I continued to dig and drill my way upwards.

  I reached a point where it was safer to use my shovel than my drill. The drill was too powerful for the loose dirt and rocks and I did not want to cause a cave in and bury myself under thousands of pounds of earth.

  Three minutes after switching to the shovel, dirt began falling faster and faster. Soon, I was being buried under a minor avalanche of soil, rock, and bone.

  Nesta let out a small shriek as I turned my head down and scrambled away. After nearly a minute of cave-in, it finally stopped. I spat dirt from my mouth and shook it from my face and hair. I looked up to see Nesta wide-eyed and shaking. “Hey,” I said, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “Just some loose dirt,” I coughed. “It’s…it’s okay.”

  I coughed up more dirt and had to shake my head to clear the dirt that had fallen into my eyes. I could imagine how I looked, and it must have been terribly funny for Nesta was slowly letting a smile creep on her face as she attempted to hide her mirth.

  “Dirt on my face?” I asked.

  She nodded and failed to hide her smile and laughter as she pointed at my hair. “There’s…there’s some bone in your hair…right there.”

  I felt along my head and found several pieces of bone along the left side. I picked it out and tossed it to the side. “Well, that was fun,” I laughed.

  The smile left her face and the almost wild-eyed look returned. “Are you okay?” she asked me.

  I nodded in answer.

  “Do we keep trying?” she whispered, a slight tremble to her voice.

  I nodded again. “I’m not sure how much further we have to go, but we need to finish. It’s important.”

  “Okay,” she mouthed. I repositioned myself so we could
move the dirt away. After a few minutes of clearing the dirt, I was able to stand up and begin digging again. I slowed myself down to make sure that every bit of dirt I brought down was only the dirt I wanted to fall.

  I got to a point where I was stretching to my limit, unable to get any higher. I tried to jump up and hold myself against the walls of the tunnel, but the soil was too loose. It didn’t hold me, and I dropped to the ground, more soil raining down on my head. I shook the dirt off and looked at Nesta. “Well, I think we have to do something different.” I took my drill and began drilling into the rock wall next to me.

  After nearly fifteen minutes of drilling different points, I had several foot-holds. I climbed up, using a small piece of protruding vine to hold myself in place. Pushing with my left arm while bracing with my legs, I held myself in place. I pulled up my shovel and started digging slowly.

  Within another half hour of digging, there was suddenly a stream of light coming through. I had reached the top. The elation I felt was…uplifting. I quickly opened the hole and peeked through the opening. We were out.

  I looked down. “Nesta?” There was no answer. “Nesta?” I bent myself down to the best of my ability considering the small space. I saw Nesta’s feet, but I was unable to see the rest of her. I carefully dropped down to the floor of the tunnel.

  Nesta was on the ground, curled up in the fetal position, shaking. I knelt down next to her. “Nesta? What’s the matter? What’s going on?” I continued to speak to her, trying to get her to answer me, to respond in some way, but she stayed there, curled up and shaking.

  I wasn’t sure what else to do. I couldn’t leave her there, but I was unsure of how to help her. I wasn’t even sure as to what was bothering her and caused her to be this way.