Deus: The Eurynome Code, Book Six

by Gorman, K.

  She caught Karin’s eyes and held her stare, then very deliberately ticked her head to the side and made a gesture to the corridor, the glow of her netlink screen obvious in the hall.

  Karin straightened.

  Did she talk to the Centauri?

  She glanced around to find Nomiki watching her with a suspicious eye.

  Clearly, she’d noticed the exchange.

  Karin met her eyes and stepped away. “I’m just going to go…do something.”

  Her sister’s eyes turned toward the ceiling. “Good lord, you need to work on subterfuge.”

  “If ever I did around you, I’d question our relationship.”

  Nomiki made a dismissing motion with her hand. “Go on. Get. Fill me in later.”

  She found Soo-jin halfway down the next hall, leaning against the wall with a grim expression on her face. When Karin strode up, her tension only increased.

  She frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Read this.”

  With a flourish, she snapped the screen of her netlink up and blocked the back of it with the palm and fingers of her hand. Immediately, an offline notification buzzed across the top, along with an increasing number of notifications from apps, webplayers, and netfeeds that couldn’t find a connection.

  A simple message glowed on the screen, written in an unsaved text file with the editor still open.

  ‘Tillerman says that you are their new Grand Regent.’

  Chapter Twelve

  “You take me to the nicest places, Karin.” Soo-jin glanced around as they walked down the compound’s halls, her expression a mix of fear and dislike.

  “Oh, you know me,” she replied, her tone cool and acerbic. “Just your local genetically modified creation goddess, trying to hook up a friend.”

  As usual, the Shadow world had twisted the compound’s halls into hushed, desaturated variants of themselves. Perhaps it was the lack of people, but it felt quieter here. Not so much abandoned―nothing ever felt abandoned in the Shadow world, for some reason―but…filled with a tension she couldn’t quite place.

  As if there were hundreds of ghosts in the room, but she just couldn’t see them.

  Of course, there were still many random piles of decaying, half-mutilated corpses and putrefied stains of human blood puddles and splatter lying around.

  She decided to avoid the top floor for now. That’s where she’d left the worst of her massacre.

  When they came out of the bottom door, its hinges and pushbar squeaking loudly in the quiet, the forest below lay dark and dead silent. Above, a slow roil of cloud shifted, the bottoms of its edges blurred as if by rain. In between the two, the sky had a drained, sepia tint to it.

  It was always weird in the Shadow world. As if the very air leeched the color out of things.

  Who knew. Maybe it did. Ever since she’d stepped out of a genetic engineering tank with the ability to split people in half between dimensions, she’d stopped trying to apply modern logic to these things.

  And even Tia didn’t have answers to the Shadow world.

  I never came here, myself, she thought. I knew the logistics of it, but never experienced it. Does that mean that Sasha didn’t create it?

  Karin grunted. “Humans have had stories of a Shadow world for time untold. I sincerely doubt Sasha made this place.”

  “What?” Beside her, Soo-jin gave her a confused look.

  In response, she made a gesture at her head, the same as one might make when on an internal comms line.

  Perhaps. Or maybe this was created by the original Chaos, and she just happened to access it.

  It wasn’t possible to give Tia a flat stare inside of her head, but she tried anyway.

  “I’m shocked, Tia. I thought you were a woman of science. Gods and Goddesses aren’t real.”

  Their archetypes sure are―how else do you think your powers work? Without that subconscious belief, we’d be nothing. Besides, a scientist is also capable of subscribing to religion. I had plenty of religious colleagues.

  “Were the Corringhams religious?” she asked.

  Yes. Some sort of paganism. I didn’t ask, but both Bernard and Elliot kept statues in their offices.

  Huh. That could explain their interest in such a unique experiment as the Eurynome Project.

  “That answer was a yes, by the way,” she informed Soo-jin.

  “Thanks. I was actually wondering about that one.”

  Soo-jin came from a family who followed an ethno-purist cult. She got a little more attentive when religion was mentioned.

  “Plus,” she said, swinging back to her conversation with Tia. “I’m not sure I fancy wandering into the literal Goddess Chaos. I think I’m a little too human to be able to survive that encounter.”

  Yes. I imagine so.

  “Sasha definitely does have a connection to this place, though,” Karin continued. “Her darkness power mimics this place’s…substance, and she can definitely control both the Shadows and the Lost.”

  Yes. Tia sighed. I never did get to try out my powers. They put me in the tank soon after.

  Karin’s jaw tightened. Tia may not have shared her specific memories of the transplantation, but her imagination could well imagine.

  “I’m sorry. What they did to you was horrible.”

  So was what they did to you. We’re both in this together. All of us. I’m just horrified that I contributed anything to it. Gods, I was stupid. We were experimenting on living people.

  “Then why did you?” Karin said aloud. “If you knew you were experimenting on living people, why did you do it?”

  It didn’t start off that way, believe me. They didn’t go straight into the deep end of evil, not at first. But, you know, I’ve often wondered―maybe they did know where they were going with it. Maybe they did know they were going to use living people in their experiments from the beginning. I don’t see how they couldn’t have―the entire Cradle was based on using individuals.

  “We can ask them before we kill them,” Karin said. “I’m sure we can find a way to get the answers from them.”

  Through torture, you mean? Yes, I am more than willing to do that, if you don’t want to.

  She chuckled. “It would be my hands you would bloody. That’s not much of a difference.”

  “You know…” Soo-jin cleared her throat. “I’m really glad I know who you’re talking to. Otherwise, this whole one-sided conversation would be bat-shit fucked.”

  “It’s even more fucked if you can hear the voice in my head,” Karin answered.

  “Yep.” Soo-jin deftly changed the topic and made a gesture to the parking lot ahead. “So, what do you think―head over to their ship?”

  “That’s the plan. I figure we port back over once inside. If Tillerman isn’t there, someone can get her for us.”

  “And if no one is there?”

  She shot Soo-jin a grin. “Then I guess they won’t mind us poking around their ship.”

  “Your ship, technically,” Soo-jin said. “If what she said is true.”

  “Yes. I suppose, technically, I have an entire fleet now.”

  It felt odd, saying it. It didn’t feel real.

  Soo-jin stopped with a swear. “Fuck―what if I’m wrong? Should you be doing this? I mean, Fallon seems like they’re good people. What if this is all just one huge, fucked up, paranoid misunderstanding?”

  “And what if it isn’t?” she pointed out. “Tillerman said I was the Grand Regent. How could that be misunderstood? If it’s true, then Fallon straight up lied and hid it from me.”

  “What if I totally misread her?”

  “What if you didn’t?” She glanced over. “We’re just going to talk to her. Nothing is going to happen.”

  “What if this is just an elaborate plan to get you close and try to kill you?”

  Ah, so that’s what she was worrying about.

  “Then I’ll just kill her. Easy.”

  Soo-jin was quiet for several seconds. The
Shadow they’d passed still hadn’t moved, but Karin could feel its gaze on her. Another one appeared up ahead, stepping out of one of the tech stations, its black surface rippling like a candle flame.

  “You really are like your sister now. I keep forgetting. Does it not bother you?”

  She shrugged. “It’s just how it is.”

  Soo-jin kept staring at her. “Gods, it’s really not going to work with you and Marc, is it?”

  She shook her head. “If I continue like this, no, it isn’t.”

  “Well, at least you’re honest.”

  “Yep.”

  Soo-jin let out a noisy breath, turning the end of it into a stressed groan. “She didn’t sound like she was bullshitting me.”

  “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter?” she asked. “Especially one who’s bullshitted with the best in the shit industry?”

  She was loosely quoting something Soo-jin had said to her once, when the woman had been calling her out on her bullshit.

  By the sudden flash of teeth, Soo-jin remembered.

  “Pre-fucking-cisely. Fuck―was that a Shadow?”

  Soo-jin’s head swiveled to the side.

  “There are about twenty of them, so far,” Karin informed her. “Ignore them. I don’t think they mean any harm.”

  After about a minute of walking, they had wound their way around the varying tents, ships, and temporary structures that now squished into the compound’s parking lot and were standing in front of the small shuttle the Centauri had been using. The group had been directed to set up a camp on a farm about twenty kilometers to the east, and had done so with zero problems from what she’d heard, with Tillerman commuting to and fro every day.

  It looked like one of Nova Earth’s Skim Birds, shuttles used mostly to ferry politicians and other important people around. Bulbous in design, and small, with wings that shot back from it like a starburst when it flew.

  And, like all things Centauri, it also looked armored and practical. Where Nova’s Skim Birds kept their armor hidden under an exterior of beauty and poise, this one didn’t hide its armament under pretty paint―it displayed it broadly.

  It looked like a shuttle that could turn around and end you if you even sneezed in its direction.

  “Shit,” Soo-jin said. “Door’s closed.”

  “And armored,” Karin mused.

  “Not for long. Come on, I’ve got my equipment on the Nemina.”

  Fifteen minutes, and a series of magnetic saw screams later, the back hatch of the Centauri ship was lying on the ground in front of them.

  Soo-jin lifted her faceplate, a huge grin eating up her face. “Gods, I’ve been wanting to do that for days. That’s not going to transfer to the real world, is it?”

  “No. We can break as much stuff in the Shadow world as we want to without consequences.” She nodded. “Come on, up we get. I’ll switch us back once we’re inside.”

  The inside of the ship was tiny, little more than four rear crash seats and a small hallway that led to a two-seater cockpit, but it teemed with instrumentation. Lights flickered from nearly every surface of wall, reminiscent of the shuttles of the Old Earth program, except a thousand years more advanced. Every nook and cranny was jampacked.

  This might be my ship, now, she realized. They all might be..

  “Fuuuck, man, this is sweet.” Soo-jin plunked herself down in the co-pilot’s chair and spread her fingers at all the screens and instrumentation on the dashboards. About five seconds in, her fingers hesitated.

  “Wait,” she continued, coming to a realization. “I can’t fly this. I can’t even read these.”

  Karin leaned against the wall just behind the cockpit, taking it all in with an amused smile.

  “Yes,” she drawled. “I hope my new fleet comes with some competent pilots, otherwise they’re screwed.”

  Sol. My new fleet.

  She still couldn’t believe it.

  “What if they shoot us?” Soo-jin grunted as Karin hauled her into the lip. “I mean―not that I think they will, but they did strike me as a trigger-happy people, and we’re just going to pop up in their ship.”

  “Then I’ll make the bullet go into the Shadow world and it will just destroy this Shadow ship a little bit more.” She glanced back at the now-broken exit door. “I don’t think we’re getting our deposit back on it, anyway.”

  Soo-jin blinked. “You just don’t get afraid anymore, do you?”

  “Nope.” She glanced around. “Ready for the switch?”

  She didn’t need skin on skin contact for the dimensional shift anymore. Tia had shown her that.

  Soo-jin gave her a nod. “Ready. Don’t let them kill me.”

  “Noted.” Karin focused inward and pulled on the dimensional boundaries. The world swirled around her, light and shadow ebbing together. The energy of the two worlds whispered over her skin.

  Then, the atmosphere shifted, the light brightened, and they were back.

  And the cyborg who was standing next to her in the narrow corridor gave a jump of surprise and lashed out.

  She caught his arm in a blur of motion, directed it into the wall next to her head, and stepped in.

  Half a second later, she had him slammed into the instrument panel opposite with his elbow locked between them and her arm to his throat.

  To her left, the woman in the pilot’s chair made a little squeak of surprise and a word in Centauri that might have been a swear.

  “Do you speak System?” she asked the cyborg.

  “Yes,” he said quickly, sputtering the words. “I’m sorry, Regent.”

  Regent. He’d called her Regent.

  Well, that answers that question. I am the new Grand Regent.

  His gaze, a mix of panic and slowly dawning horror, dropped from hers. He relaxed beneath her hold.

  She waited a beat, then let him go. There were another two in the small ship, the woman in the pilot’s chair and a smaller cyborg near the exit.

  The ramp, she was relieved to see, was closed.

  The cyborg she’d fought backed away with a bow of his head.

  “I need to speak to Tillerman,” she told them. “Get her for me. Quietly.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I was wondering when you would show up.”

  In the small confines of the ship, Sarah Tillerman’s bulkier cybernetic frame seemed even more so. At around six-foot-two by Karin’s guess, she dwarfed the narrow corridor, an image of carefully moving power from the metal on her shoulder, her prosthetic hand and arm, and the strong, mechanical struts that made up her legs.

  Whenever she moved, a subtle noise of hydraulics and mechanization followed.

  We definitely need to get these guys examining your brain, she thought to Tia. They clearly know what they’re doing.

  Gods, she couldn’t believe she was really thinking this. Being Grand Regent still felt unreal. As if she was going to suddenly awaken and realize it had all been a dream.

  She was waiting for the floor to fall out from her.

  Let’s hear them out first. I’m picky about who gets to look at my parts. I don’t have many of them left, you know.

  She hadn’t asked what had happened to Tia’s body when the Corringhams had transplanted her brain and brain stem into a tank isolate. She wanted to think that they either had it on ice somewhere, or that they had given it a proper burial.

  However, considering they’d left Tia herself conscious and sentient in a tank, and then abandoned her…

  It was more likely that they’d thrown it out. Like trash.

  The mood in the shuttle was tense and still, with every Centauri’s attention on her. Soo-jin still sat in the co-pilot’s seat, but she hadn’t sprawled or scrunched like she normally did, instead keeping an air of professional efficiency, exchanging the occasional look between her and the pilot on the other side.

  Gods, I really am Grand Regent.

  Through the forward windows, a couple of Alliance soldiers were working on something at
the supply tent directly opposite.

  She eyed them. “That’s not shaded, is it?”

  Though she hadn’t detected any of the window’s obfuscating techniques while she’d waited, the Centauri likely had a different method than the tech she was used to.

  “Mirrored,” Tillerman corrected. “And no, it isn’t.”

  “Right. I’m taking us over to the Shadow world for privacy. If you see a Shadow, don’t attack it.” She glanced over. “Soo-jin, you good here?”

  “I’m excellent. I’m sure these lovely people have shitloads to ask me about you.”

  “Good. We might as well get this started.” She met Tillerman’s eyes and touched her power. “Switching…now.”

  The world twisted, the ship immediately going dark. A second later, the Shadow world’s cool air touched her skin, replacing the warmth of the other world.

  Tillerman glanced around, taking in the change in scenery with an elevated interest. “Huh. So this is where you go to.”

  “Yes. It’s where the Shadows originate, I think.”

  “How convenient. And you got this through genetic engineering?” Her wandering gaze found the door they’d broken, and her eyebrows lifted. “I see you redecorated.”

  “Changes here don’t manifest in the other world,” she explained. “Now tell me, how in the ten fucking hells did I end up as your Grand Regent? Did you guys just vote me in?”

  “You killed our last Grand,” Tillerman said, her tone flat. “You filled the job automatically.”

  Her jaw slackened.

  Really? That’s how she’d gotten the title?

  She’d thought that sort of thing was limited to wrestling and MMA matches.

  “That’s a pretty shitty system.”

  “Only for those who lack an understanding of our culture and way of life.” Tillerman’s lip curled back from her teeth. “For us, it works.”

  “Sol’s burned child, save me,” Karin muttered, then drew a heavy breath. “Whatever. I don’t care, let’s not argue politics. We all have bigger problems. I assume that Alpha Centauri is under attack by the Shadows. How have you dealt with that?”