Deus: The Eurynome Code, Book Six

by Gorman, K.

  It was over.

  Tylanus remained by her side as Layla approached. Vibrant blood covered the girl’s dress and skin, a small shield-like object in one hand and an equally bloody spear in the other.

  “Thank you, Karin,” she said. “We have waited a long time for this.”

  “What will you do now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Layla looked around, taking in the temple and its mountains. “This place isn’t half bad. And I suppose it is an underworld. Quite suitable for a lot of dead kids.”

  Karin’s lips twitched. “I suppose.”

  “You are welcome here as long as you wish.” Tylanus shifted, flowing smoothly into a standing position. “Although I do wonder―could you forgive my mother?”

  “Forgive?” Layla asked.

  “She killed us,” another child said. “She doesn’t deserve our forgiveness.”

  “She didn’t kill us. She is one of us.” Layla made a gesture with her spear to indicate Mount Olympus and the temple. “Besides, she built all of this.”

  “She was still complicit in our deaths,” the other child said. He was a tall, thin boy with fire-red hair and freckles speckling his skin. Karin didn’t recognize him, so he must have been before her time.

  “We’ll put it up for debate,” Layla concluded. “Tonight. Everyone will get a say.”

  Tylanus nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Do you mind if we bring outsiders here?” Karin asked. “I know Fallon and the Alliance will want to make sure that he is dead.”

  Layla glanced at the others.

  “Fallon, no. They insulted us when they allowed Seirlin back into their plunder. But the Alliance can come.” She fixed Karin with a look, tilting her head―more like a peacock than a predator, this time. “You, however, need medical help.”

  Karin couldn’t agree more.

  Tylanus helped her up. By now, Marc, Soo-jin, and the others had arrived.

  Marc got to her first. As Tylanus handed her over, he took her good arm and steadied her balance, careful of the newly bruised and broken fingers. She leaned against him as he looked around, his focus landing on the lumpy smear of blood on the ground several meters away.

  “Is it over?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s over.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  They got her back in the Med unit. They also brought her food. Tylanus took care of transporting people over. Reeve didn’t like that Fallon had been banned.

  “Well, I guess they’re going to have to live with the consequences of their decisions, aren’t they?” she told him. “It’s not just me and Nomiki they pissed off; it’s all of the undead children in the Cradle. All of them. Everyone that the Eurynome Project killed. If you want to argue, take it up with Layla. She’s the one holding the bloodied spear.”

  He didn’t stay long after that. But she suspected he would talk to Tylanus rather than Layla. He was less likely to put a spear through his gut.

  Sleep came for a while. It always did with nanos. The sensation hit her like a truck and knocked her out for a solid forty-five minutes. When she awoke, there were three Centauri cyborgs guarding the room, and the sounds of landing ships and walking people came from outside.

  She shifted, and Marc looked up from the side of the bed. “Karin? Are you all right?”

  She winced, feeling the beginning of one of her headaches. “Yeah. Pretty sure this is normal.”

  “Your arm is broken in seven places,” Takahashi said from the side of the room. “That is not considered normal.”

  “Yes, but it’s being fixed, so I’m pretending it doesn’t exist.”

  “Can I get you something?” Marc asked. “Food? Water? A massage?”

  “I think I’ll pass on the massage, but thanks for the offer.” With a cautious look, she examined her arm.

  It looked…better. Less mangled, anyway, though incredibly puffed up from the swelling. Dark splotches of bruising rose from beneath the skin, evidence of the damage.

  “You should lie back down,” Marc said. “You need your rest. I’ll keep watch.”

  As absurd as it was for him to keep watch when she literally had three of her own guards standing in the room with her, she appreciated the gesture.

  “No, I feel like sitting.” There was something happening in her mind, like an itching sensation. It felt like Tia was working on something.

  What are you doing in there?

  Tia didn’t respond.

  Whatever.

  She took a breath, blinking a few times to clear the sleep from her eyes, then drew her attention outside.

  The sun was still shining. There was that. It looked like late afternoon, from what she could see, with the shadows just starting to grow long around the temple. The smell had changed, too.

  “Is my sister around?”

  “Which one?”

  “The adult one.”

  “Yes. I saw them both wander off together about an hour ago.”

  Ah, yes. Definitely not up to trouble. Looking through the door, she watched Alliance troops unload cargo from the back of a scout class vessel. A few of the Eurynome kids mingled with them, following the techs and soldiers around.

  Good.

  She eyed the closest Centauri. He wasn’t Malouf, but he had a similar build.

  “Hey, you,” she said. “What’s your name?”

  He gave a small bow, his cybernetic muscles flexing. “I am Ensign Felix Vollardt, Regent.”

  Interesting. She hadn’t yet heard of a cyborg below the rank of Lieutenant.

  “Thank you, Ensign. Can you tell me if Lieutenant Seki and Specialist Malouf made it out of Japan?”

  He cringed. “I’m afraid they did not, Regent.”

  So, Bernard had killed them both. Like she’d thought.

  Probably, the two had charged in the second her comms device went offline. They had been her bodyguards, after all. And the Centauri were not cowards.

  “I am sorry to hear that. Thank you, Ensign. I―Ow!” She hissed, wincing as a sudden pain stabbed into her head.

  Marc tensed. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I just―hang on.” She rubbed at her temple with her good hand. “Tia, what the hell was that?”

  At first, she didn’t think the woman was going to respond, but after several seconds, she felt a flicker from her side of the brain.

  I don’t want to go back.

  “What do you mean, ‘you don’t want to go back’? You have to go back.”

  She gritted her teeth as the pain increased. At her side, Marc stiffened.

  “Doctor―”

  “On it.” Takahashi was already approaching, the diagnostics crown in his hand. “Hold still, Karin.”

  There was a syringe in his other hand.

  “No!”

  Pain ripped through her mind. Karin screamed, feeling herself shrink. Her vision blacked out in a fit of light, the scream echoing through her skull. The headache split through the bone, driving deep.

  Then, like catching a ball that someone had let drop, she felt Tia reach forward and take control.

  All awareness ceased. When she could see again, it was like taking a backseat to her brain.

  She was not the one in control.

  “Don’t you fucking touch me,” Tia snarled, already on her feet and prowling around the side of the bed. Her powers fluctuated in the room. She could feel them rising around her.

  Marc had taken Takahashi to the other side of the room, away from her.

  Her lip curled.

  Good instincts.

  “Karin?” he asked, his voice hesitant, full of doubt.

  “No. Not Karin.” She scanned the room, taking inventory. “Not anymore.”

  She had to get out of there.

  No, Karin said, pounding on the wall of glass that separated them. Don’t hurt anyone.

  “Then they better stay out of my way, Karin. I’m not going back into that tank,” Tia snarled. “I’ve changed
. I am a different person. I am sentient and self-aware of my changes. And I will not go back. God, I’d rather die than go back to that hellhole of corrupting software and cockroach-infested circuitry.”

  Tia turned to the door. Several of the kids were looking at her now.

  They knew what was happening.

  She had to get away.

  But―where?

  Her gaze jerked to the top. She could use Sasha’s Cradle. If she gained control of that…

  She strode out the door without another word, aiming for the building next to them. There was a set of stairs there. She remembered them from Karin’s memory.

  Someone shouted her name―no, not her name, Karin’s name. She ignored it, focused on the door.

  Program Athena met her on the inside.

  “You’re not supposed to be doing this,” she said. “You know better.”

  “I know that I want to live,” she replied, twisting her gaze down. “What are you going to do about it?”

  Athena dropped off, her dark eyes sharp and smart.

  Then, she faded away.

  Fuck.

  Tia started running.

  The temple was a maze of hallways. She raced through them, the boots Athena had loaned her earlier thumping hard under her feet. Pain was starting to spread through her arm, the nanos wearing off. And there was the echo of pain in her head from what she’d done to overthrow Karin.

  She gritted her teeth and kept moving.

  Come on, combat stims. Kick in.

  Then, about midway through her second staircase, she felt the world shift.

  As an experiment, she tried her Eurynome powers.

  She couldn’t find the dimensional boundaries.

  Someone must have told Tartarus what she’d done.

  Great. Now I’m a prisoner in Tartarus. How very fitting.

  You can still stop, Karin thought at her. We can fix this. The Centauri have the technology. Maybe they can even build you a body?

  “Why would I settle on cybernetics when I have a perfectly good body already?” she said. “Besides, my brain has rotted in that tank. And I’m not the same Tia that came out of there. I am something different. And, likely, the Tia that is in there has also changed.”

  That’s what people do. Change. That’s how you know that you’re alive.

  “I’m not alive. Not anymore. Just a ghost who should have died a long time ago, clinging to a life that isn’t hers―but I will cling to it. I will not go back in that tank!”

  “Karin!”

  The shout came from the side, echoing up the corridor. She increased her speed, wincing at the jostle on her arm as she headed into a limping run.

  Gods, this mountain was big. She passed Selene and Helios, along with Eos and the tank that had been destined for her. The trunk of a cord on the ceiling thickened in size, indicating that she was going in the right direction.

  Then, she turned a corner and ran into Karin’s sister.

  Nomiki stood at the end of the corridor, her stance closed and her expression blank. Beside her, the other Nomiki, Program Enyo, stood in a similar position, watching her.

  Tia halted. Her lips twisted. “You wouldn’t kill your own sister.”

  Nomiki didn’t answer, but there was a flicker in her expression.

  Program Enyo shifted. She lifted a spear like the one Athena had wielded, but thinner, sharper.

  “Really? You would?” She made a disgusted sound in her throat. “Karin would be so disappointed.”

  Actually, no I wouldn’t be. I’m not. Fuck you. Give me my body back.

  “If it was so easy to take, then do you really deserve it?” she asked. Then, she shifted her focus ahead.

  Nomiki had begun to move.

  Karin’s sister slid toward her in a slow, predatory glide, every step measured and exact. A shiver went through her, an involuntary reaction.

  Experimentally, she tried her Eurynome powers.

  Nothing. She was still blocked.

  Which meant she’d have to find Tylanus to get out.

  Or, connect herself with the Cradle and take control. Of this world and the next.

  She steeled herself. “Fine. Let’s do this.”

  The words drew barely a flicker from Nomiki. Nor from Enyo, who followed in her wake.

  When Nomiki did speak, her words hummed with unbridled rage. “You dare negate your bargain, Tia Sarayu?”

  “I will not go back,” she said. “I cannot.”

  “You will, or you will experience death again―and this time, I will make sure you feel it.”

  She tilted her head, snarl firmly in place, and planted her feet, ready. “Then come get me.”

  A smile touched Nomiki’s lips. A second later, a sharp pain hit her back. She turned around to see Baik standing there in his Alliance high command uniform, holding a blaster.

  He fired again, and everything went black.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  She awoke once, a loud rush of pain, panic, and emotion, her head and limbs drugged down and strapped in place, the cool water of the Cradle lapping at her skin. A thick haze clouded her vision, and everything blurred at the edges.

  Something stabbed into her skull, and a rip of static tore through her mind, along with the crisp, cold scent of snow.

  The last thing she remembered before it went dark again was the sound of Tia screaming inside her.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  It felt like she was in an ocean. Pressure surrounded her, pushed in on her, and she was steadily sinking into the deep. Light ebbed and flowed. Sounds came as through water―deep and lucid, echo-y. Her breath was a swell that made the entire tide surge.

  Slowly, the atmosphere became less heavy. The light grew stronger. Water turned into air.

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  She lay in a hospital bed in a room painted a pale green, with gleaming medical equipment surrounding her.

  Her breath slid out in a groan.

  Everything was heavy. It hurt to move, a dull ache that filled her joints and muscles―the kind of slow, heavy pain that felt like it echoed throughout her body.

  There was an I.V. in her wrist, and a med monitor over the same forearm. When she tried to move her other hand, she found that someone was holding it.

  “Kar?”

  At her other side, Marc lifted his head from where he’d bowed it over the edge of the hospital bed. Her eyes focused slowly, perceiving him first as a brown and black blob at the side of her vision, then with a keen but fluctuating detail. It was like her eyes couldn’t track properly, and they kept losing their anchor point and sliding away from where she wanted to look.

  He brought her hand up and pressed his lips to the back of it, engulfing it in his own. The sensation came to her loose and disjointed, but the movement helped her focus.

  Her gaze slipped up to his eyes and held them.

  Gods, he looked exhausted. There were dark bags under his eyes, and his normally-rich skin looked gray and washed out. A reddish tinge tinted his eyeballs a faint pink, and they looked wide and gaunt, as if he had been keeping them open for too long. An oily sheen coated his skin, and a roughness of dark stubble was creeping into his cheeks.

  He engulfed her hand in his and rubbed between her first and second knuckles. “How do you feel?”

  She felt like she’d been run over. Every muscle in her body felt thrashed, and it was like someone had poured a load of lead into her bones. Pain echoed through them every time she tried to move, a dull and incessant throb. The room swayed a little too much when she tilted her head, like a boat on a wave, and she winced, but it evened out soon after.

  “I feel like I need a really long vacation,” she said, her words slurring somewhat. Her mouth felt heavy. “Somewhere warm and beachy, preferably.”

  He kissed her hand again. “I can make that happen.”

  She sank her head back into the pillow. A drop ceiling hung above, tiled with that insulating foam that helped prevent sound
transfer. It was off-white and speckled like a bird’s egg.

  “Is it over?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She hesitated. “Is she…gone?”

  His hand tightened on hers. “Yes. They took her out. The original Tia, the one in the tank, honored your deal.”

  Relief flooded her like a tide, her breath sucking inward in a hoarse sob. She squeezed her eyes shut and gripped his hand hard, not caring about the bloom of pain from her tendons.

  Tia was gone, and she could feel again.

  It was like a glass wall had come crashing down.

  Her breath escaped her in another sob. She rolled over, tensing into a hunched ball around Marc’s arm, gripping tight to his hand. A mix of pain, sadness, grief, anguish―everything that she hadn’t felt during her time with Tia―smashed right through her.

  Her chest hollowed out into a deep well. Another sob clawed the air from her lungs.

  “Oh, Gods,” she said, her voice a raw croak. “I killed so many people.”

  “Shh, shh.” Marc’s chest rumbled with the sound of his voice. “You did what you had to. It wasn’t your fault.”

  He reached around, enveloped her in an awkward hug, and her nose filled with the scent of fabric softener and dried sweat. His arm was warm, comforting. Patient. She sobbed under the cloak of his chest, her whole body wracking with the effort, tears streaming down her face.

  “Yes, it was. I didn’t have to kill that many. Gods―I was strong, I had choices.” A great shudder went through her, this time followed by the acidic touch of vomit from the back of her throat. “I could have pushed them into the Shadow world, or disabled their weapons. I didn’t have to kill them.”

  “What’s done is done,” he said, rubbing her back. “You saved the universe, Karin.”

  “I know, but―”

  “You are only human. You are human now, and you were human then. Not a goddess―human, with all our faults and features. And you are not that person now, not anymore.” He gave her a squeeze. “Right?”

  Her breath stuttered, her jawline shivering with a line of cutting grief and horror.

  It felt like she’d been cut in half. Sliced right through her lungs.