by A. K. DuBoff
“That’s not true. You’re still here. That means there’s more than enough left to save.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Cynthia shuddered. “I wouldn’t even have a life to go back to.”
“You can always start over,” Kira tried to assure her.
“No. I’m just a remnant, an echo of what was. I died when it took me over.”
Kira recoiled from the woman’s bitterness. Never had she felt such darkness and defeat. “I… We can find a way to help you.”
“If you want to help me, then let me die,” Cynthia pleaded. “Please, kill me!”
Kira pulled back further as the woman clawed at her. “Make it end! Kill me! I can’t live in this prison any longer!”
Her moans filled Kira’s consciousness, begging for death to release her.
Memories of the time spent imprisoned in her own mind swirled around Kira, offering scattered glimpses into a lifetime of lies. She had been so young when Reya took her, no more than twenty years old. Ambitious and bright, she was the perfect host to manipulate toward gaining ultimate control.
Cynthia hadn’t wanted that life. She had always hoped for peace in her home system, and to unite. To have watched for decades as her alien possessor tried to tear the system apart had destroyed her every day.
All feeling, all sense of hope had been stripped away. This tiny nugget was all that remained of her former self—an ember reignited for one brief moment before it was to be extinguished forever. And she was begging for Kira’s help to finally do something on her own terms.
“I can’t kill you,” Kira told with a heavy heart. “I can’t give you what you ask.”
“No, please! You’ll never be able to get Reya out. Some of it will always be stuck here, eating away. I can’t go on like this. There’s nothing left for me.”
“I’m sworn to protect.”
“Then protect me from this monster.”
Even if Kira could stomach killing an innocent for their own long-term wellbeing, she couldn’t be responsible for the execution of a foreign head of state. Personal beliefs aside, that wasn’t a decision she could make on the Taran Empire’s behalf.
“We’re going to get you back to our Guard base, and they’ll—”
Cynthia sobbed in her mind. “No more prisons. Let it end.”
Kira was crippled by indecision. She felt the woman’s suffering as if it were her own, and she understood the wish for death. Were the roles reversed, she’d want it for herself.
As she assessed Cynthia’s state, Kira was astonished to see how far the alien had embedded in her. It wasn’t just one localized place in her brain, but a series of foreign structures integrated throughout her body. Her entire nervous system was affected. Even if it was possible for Doctor Elric and Leon to flush the alien presence from her body and make it so it couldn’t come back, Cynthia’s original organics had withered. The damage was done. They might be able to restore her mind, but the best prognosis would be to remain a prisoner in a useless body.
“I have nothing to live for,” Cynthia murmured. “No friends, no family that is my own. I want it to end.”
Kira wished she could make the woman’s suffering go away, to take back the decades of torture. She could rid them from her mind, but that would be no better than what Reya had done.
One thing was certain: Kira couldn’t do nothing. She made up her mind.
“I can’t kill you, but I can give you a few moments of yourself,” Kira said.
Cynthia nodded in her mind. “Thank you. When I’m gone, stop them.”
“I will.”
Kira kept a mental tether on Cynthia as she withdrew from her mind. Around her, the three members of her team stood with their weapons drawn, watching intently. Ellen was still crouched in the corner with an expression of terrified fascination. Kira looked at her hands and saw she had returned to her normal form.
“I need you to turn around,” Kira told her team.
“Ma’am—” Ari started to object.
“That’s an order,” she stated.
Reluctantly, the three soldiers turned their backs to her.
Kira stared into the chancellor’s eyes, tracing the tether back to Cynthia within. “Be free.”
The chancellor shuddered and then gasped. Her eyes went wide and wild, fighting through the sedative. “I’m—!” She rolled to her side and crawled toward a disabled soldier two meters from her. Hands shaking, she grabbed a utility knife from the soldier’s hip pouch. She looked toward Kira. “Thank you.” Cynthia drew the blade across her throat.
Kira squeezed her eyes shut and turned away.
“What the fok?” Kyle exclaimed.
“Holy shite.” Nia sucked in a deep breath.
Ari’s eyes searched hers. “What did you do?”
“I freed her,” she replied. “I gave her a few moments as herself. That’s what she wanted.”
Ari lowered his weapon. “We were supposed to bring her back for questioning!”
“She’d suffered enough.”
A pool of blood formed around Cynthia’s body as the life faded from her.
Kira swallowed. “We should—”
Choking moans sounded around the room, and half of the guards spasmed on the floor. Five seconds later, they became still, and their eyes slowly opened.
“What happened?” one murmured.
“Where am I?” another asked.
The one closest to Kira, whose knife Cynthia has taken, reached for his gun. “Who are you?” He spotted the chancellor’s corpse. “The fok?”
Kira’s soldiers hurriedly put on their helmets and reactivated their suits’ stealth mode.
She located her own helmet several paces away and made a run for it. She dove the last two paces as one of the guards fired. The blast barely missed striking her in the shoulder.
Kira hit the ground and rolled to the side, sliding her helmet over her head in one smooth motion. She activated the stealth tech.
The guards grunted with momentary confusion but then began tracing her likely path.
On her HUD, Kira saw the members of her team darting for Ellen’s position.
Ari was the first to reach her. He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet.
Ellen recoiled from the cold, invisible touch at first, then realization passed over her face. She followed his directions toward the door.
Kira fired a warning kinetic shot into the ceiling with her multi-handgun, then switched back to sonic mode. “Don’t follow us.” She shot off three sonic blasts around the room, hoping to hit as many guards as possible with the wide spread.
Kira’s soldiers were headed for the back door.
“No,” Ellen stopped them. “Out this way.” She pointed for the door through which the guards had entered.
“That’ll lead out to the landing above the main lobby,” Kyle objected.
“Which gives us the straightest shot to outside. Trust me.” Ellen jogged ahead.
Kira followed. “Come on!”
The adjacent room was empty, since all of the guards had entered the meeting room when the conflict began. Kira ran to the door on the right wall, which her HUD indicated led to the lobby. She tried the door handle. Locked.
There was no time to crack the security. Kira pulled her rifle from her back and started shooting. The lock exploded in a satisfying spray of melted shrapnel.
“That’s one way to open a door.” She kicked her armored boot against the pulverized surface and it flew open. She holstered the rifle.
Cries of surprise sounded from downstairs. Kira spotted the open stairwell to her left. At the top, two guards had their weapons leveled in her direction. Thanks to the stealth armor, her exact position was invisible.
Kira held up her hand to stop her team from coming through the opening. She fired a sonic blast with her multi-handgun at the guards, and they crumpled to the floor.
“All right, there are mostly civilians downstairs, but more guards are certainl
y on their way,” she said to her team. “Ellen, you’re an escaping worker—pretend we aren’t here. Move quickly.” She headed down the stairs.
“What just happened in there?” Nia asked over the suit’s interior comm, following Kira down.
“Those soldiers and head of MTech were linked to Hale,” Kira explained. “When she died, the alien no longer had a host to support its telepathic link.”
“But Nox jumped from Kaen into Jared.”
“Nox wasn’t embedded like Reya here—that was this one’s name. It was too large and complex to go into someone else. Nox was like an infant by comparison.”
“Foking fantastic,” Kyle muttered.
When they reached the switch-back landing on the stairway, Kira paused to make sure no one was about to try to blow their heads off. Fortunately, the lobby’s occupants appeared to have scattered when they heard gunfire upstairs.
“Okay, at the bottom, we head through those doors,” she pointed, following the indicators on her HUD, “and then it’s a relatively straight shot out the front door.”
“Should I have the shuttle meet us around this side of the building?” Kyle asked.
Kira nodded. “Do it.” She noticed a new proximity alert flash across her vision. “And bring it close. I imagine we’ll be under fire on our way out.”
The rest of her team noticed the alert on their own HUDs.
“I’m on it!” Kyle bolted down the stairs.
Nia positioned herself between Ellen and the incoming enemy, weapon raised. While Ellen would still be visible, Nia’s armor would at least protect her.
“Go for the door. I’ll hold them off,” Kira instructed.
They descended the final steps, and Kira crouched behind the base support column. Her team ran across the lobby, passing through the door a second before the first guards came into view.
“Target detected through—” The guard never got the chance to finish his statement.
Kira lobbed a flash grenade, followed by a burst of sonic blasts.
The soldiers stopped their advance for a moment, but as the scene cleared following the grenade, it was obvious they were still standing.
Shite, they must have muted their external comm mics. Kira judged the distance to the exit doorway. It wasn’t far; she could make it in a sprint.
“Someone is still here!” one guard shouted. He tossed a smoke grenade into the center of the room.
Kira bit back a curse as the fine smoke spread. Her suit was great at making her blend in with the surroundings, but having anything like smoke in the air would result in a big soldier-shaped hole.
She had a split second to act. With no other choice, she ran for the door. Though her suit did its best to mask her movement, the air was already too thick with debris, and she was running too hard for the sound canceling to have full effect.
The first volley of kinetic shots hit the back of her armor a meter from the doorway. She raced through and slammed the door closed behind her.
Her team was pressed against the side walls of the corridor.
Ari looked at his chest plate, which had been sticking out just enough to deflect a bullet and keep Ellen from taking a shot to her head.
The woman’s breath was ragged as she realized what had just happened. “Oh, shite.”
“Yeah. These friends of yours aren’t very nice,” Kira said. “This door won’t hold, come on!”
They took off at full speed. Ellen began to fall behind, so Ari scooped her into his arms.
Kira would have previously been winded by the sprint, but she found she was easily able to keep up with her team as they made the final push toward the exit.
A door smashed open somewhere behind them, but she didn’t bother to look. More guards were no doubt coming, and they’d keep coming so long as there was anyone left standing.
“Home stretch!” Nia cheered.
Kira could see the way to the exit on her HUD. Unfortunately, there was also a line of Mysaran guards blocking their path ahead.
“Fok!” Nia exclaimed. “Sonic blasts aren’t viable in that configuration.”
They couldn’t make a run for it, either, without getting too holey for Kira’s liking.
“The shuttle will be here in one minute. If it sets down out there, they’ll blow it up and we’ll be really stuck,” Kyle cautioned.
“Are you still patched into the security system?” Kira asked him.
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure they know we’re right foking here.”
“Can you feed sonic feedback through their comms?”
Kyle considered her suggestion. “I can try.” He made some rapid entries on his mobile tablet. “If this works, we’ll know right about—”
The soldiers in the lobby simultaneously raised their hands to their ears, trying to rip out their comms.
“Go!” Kira shouted.
Her team raced across the open lobby while the guards were temporarily distracted. Nia shot out the door lock and busted it open with her shoulder to clear a path for the others.
Twenty meters from the building’s exit, their shuttle was on final descent to the dusty ground.
They closed the remaining distance in a mad dash amid kinetic rounds, with Ari shielding Ellen against his chest.
The group piled into the shuttle, and Kira hit the back hatch controls. Kyle ran to the front of the craft with Nia. The shuttle lifted from the ground and rocketed toward space.
Kira collapsed into one of the passenger chairs and removed her helmet. “That was way too close.”
Ari lowered Ellen from his shoulder, and she slumped into a chair across from Kira.
“Thank you for getting me out of there,” Ellen murmured. “I’m so sorry. I was only trying to help.”
“Next time, leave it to the professionals.” Kira fluffed her red hair with her fingers.
The other woman paused. “What happened to you?”
“That’s a long, classified story,” Kira said. “But, given what you’ve seen, I suspect a debrief is in order. That approval will need to come from higher up the command chain.”
Ellen took a shaky breath, still clearly in shock. “Is the chancellor really dead?”
Kira gave a solemn nod. “Her body, anyway. As for the thing that was controlling her, I suspect it’s gone rather than dead—that its consciousness went back to… wherever it came from. The others it had its telepathic tendrils in are themselves again.”
Ellen nodded.
“Politics you can do, stick to that. No more action hero business,” Kira advised.
“Yeah.” Ellen cracked a smile. “I don’t think I’ll be leaving my office any time soon.”
“Approaching the Raven,” Kyle stated from the cockpit.
Kira took a slow breath. “This will be another fun mission brief to write.”
Ellen gave a sheepish look to the team. “I don’t suppose I could get a ride home?”
CHAPTER 23
Leon held Kira in a quiet embrace. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked her again.
“Yes, I’m fine.” She beamed at him. “I feel better than I have all week.”
He released a long breath. “Okay.”
Her account of the events on Mysar had been alarming, to say the least, but he knew that he’d better get used to her harrowing tales of near-death. In all fairness, he’d been shot at multiple times that week, too. The era of being a lab jockey is officially over.
Leon released Kira from the hug and looked her over again. “I still don’t know what to make of Hale—of one being controlling that many people.”
Kira leaned against the hallway wall in the Orion Station’s science wing. “It was in her, not just possessing her.” She looked down. “I wish we’d been able to recover her body for you to examine.”
“Part of me is relieved.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to do that autopsy, either.” Kira wiped her hands down her face. “Hey, has Jared been through the extraction yet?”
Kira got a glint in her eyes. “You know that world I told you about, the one Reya showed me?”
“Yeah.”
“What if we could find it?”
Leon frowned. “Somewhere in Gaelon, right?”
“But systems are huge, and we have no idea how many planets there are or how large those planets may be. What if we could locate the exact position of that forest that was sending the telepathic commands?”
“I don’t like where this is going.” Leon crossed his arms. If she knows that exact location, she’ll almost certainly try to go there.
“If we don’t take them out, then what happened to Mysar could happen somewhere else.”
“Yes, if your assumptions are correct, in theory it would be possible to locate the source of the signal,” Leon yielded.
“Then let’s find it.” Kira grinned.
“You should pull in Sandren and Kaen,” Leon suggested. “I’m not sure what kind of record we’ll be able to make of the location.” If they needed to authorize a mission later, it was best that they witness the mysterious intel firsthand.
“Yes, good call.”
“Not that I think you should be the one to go on said mission, considering the aliens’ fixation on you.”
She flashed a sweet smile. “I like knowing that you care.”
While walking back toward Leon’s lab, Kira sent the two commanding officers a message about what they had planned, and they replied with affirmation that they’d come to meet them.
Doctor Elric, Jack, Tess were working in the lab when Leon and Kira arrived. Jared was strapped to a mobile medical bed, in a drug-induced half-sleep. Two soldiers stood guard over him.
“Oh, Kira. Good, you’re back,” Doctor Elric stated. “I was hoping to get your help with some final testing.”
“Would this, by chance, have to do with measuring what happens to the TR in Jared’s brain while Nox is active?” she asked.
The doctor looked surprised. “How did you know?
“Because I had a similar thought. I’d like to see if we can isolate the specific telepathic frequency, or electromagnetic signature, or whatever that resonates with the TR in Jared’s brain so we can use it to search for the transmitter.”