Othermoon

by Nina Berry

  Beyond, a dozen objurers armed with tranquilizer guns were waiting. I had a second to take in a large underground parking garage before all ten fired at me.

  My cat-shifter reflexes had always been fast. I jerked the door shut as the tranq darts thudded into it.

  “They were waiting for us!” I said.

  “It’s like they want us to go through that door.” Lazar was right behind me, pointing to the door on the left. My heart sank. He was right. We were being funneled somewhere. Ximon must have started grouping his people as soon as I cut the lock on his door. He was out there somewhere nearby, directing all of this. But as long as wherever he led us was close to the accelerator, we still might be able to shut it down. Then we’d have to fight our way out.

  “I’m worried about this virus,” Arnaldo said, a few steps up from me. “What if we’re heading toward it and it somehow infects us?”

  Above, an arm clad in white opened the door to the computer room. Caleb whirled in a swirl of black, humming, and sent another ball of fire hissing at the door. It shut abruptly as flames exploded all around it.

  “Looks like it’s our only choice!” I said, slashing through the lock. “Go!”

  Gun ready, Lazar kicked the door open and went in, reaching along the wall to click on a light. It flickered, showing more stairs down.

  “Clear!” he said.

  Arnaldo and London visibly hesitated in the doorway. London’s hackles were up. She turned her icy blue eyes on me, lip curling to show a bit of fang.

  “If you smell someone else down there, bark now,” I said. “Otherwise, we don’t have a lot of choices.”

  Arnaldo said, “Come on, London,” and followed Lazar. She took a few sniffs, then went after him. I breathed in relief. At least she hadn’t sensed more objurers in the immediate area. I waited and let Siku, November, and Amaris go in before me. Caleb came last, his normally dark eyes flaring a gold so bright they were almost neon.

  “I don’t like this,” he said. But he went through the door. I followed and shut it behind us.

  The steps went down, back and forth, and farther down. The walls that rose around us were earth, plastered over and whitewashed, not unlike the walls of our school.

  As we descended, my skin prickled with something darker than static electricity. It was tugging at me, inside, wanting me to not just go farther down, but somehow to go farther in. I’d had a similar feeling out in the forest when the animals came to me—a sense of infinite possibility, of magic, if I just stepped through.

  A cement floor appeared below, but the stairs didn’t stop, heading down through a mesh trapdoor. Amaris shot the hinges off with two clean shots, as footsteps clattered above. More objurers giving chase.

  Arnaldo shoved the door aside, and down he went.

  As soon as he passed through the trapdoor, an earsplitting buzzer went off. Arnaldo hesitated, halfway through.

  “I was wondering when we’d hit an alarm!” I shouted over the claxon. Way up the stairs, flashlights swiped through the dark. Flashes of legs in white pants were running down after us.

  “We could fight them on the stairs here,” Amaris screamed.

  “No. We have to keep going!” Caleb could make his voice loud without shouting. “We have to find a way to disable the accelerator.”

  “There has to be a backup server,” Arnaldo yelled over the din. “If we can access that, we can hack in and set up some kind of self-destruct.”

  I caught everyone’s eye, and we were all agreed. Down we went.

  The space closed around us. The beam of Amaris’s flashlight showed we were in a tunnel of concrete. The steps ended on an asphalt walkway with the curved wall of the tunnel on one side and a thick metal tube about four feet in diameter on the other. As far as the light shone, the tunnel curved onward in both directions, the metal tube glinting.

  “Looks like we found the particle accelerator,” Arnaldo bellowed, catching his breath as we all paused at the bottom of the stairs. The alarm kept on with its dreadful clamor. “It probably goes on like that for miles.”

  “Just a mile and a half,” said Lazar, his voice also effortlessly loud. “According to the blueprints. It circles around and comes back here.”

  “Are there other exits?” Caleb’s voice was terse. I knew what he was thinking. Were we trapped hundreds of feet underground in a circular trap?

  “Not that I know of,” said Lazar. “But they never let me down here, and the blueprints I saw could have been purposely inaccurate.”

  “How the hell do we destroy it?” asked Arnaldo at top volume, walking over to run a hand over the metal surface of the tube. “I don’t see any computers. Wait. Look, there!” He pointed.

  “What?” Squinting in reaction to the blasts of sound, I followed his finger to see small holes in the ceiling that had tiny pipes jutting out of them. “What are those? They look like spray nozzles or something.”

  Caleb was looking too, eyebrows drawn together. “You said something about a virus?”

  The alarm beat down on us. I bowed my head, the racket banging against the inside of my skull. It was maddening. As a cat-shifter, my hearing was extremely sensitive, although the blare was enough to drive anyone insane. It has to stop. I can’t think. Make it stop . . .

  Arnaldo shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. Goddamn it! I can’t think with this noise!”

  Fury reached its black tentacles out along my every limb, extending out beyond my skin....

  “Enough!” I screamed.

  The alarm died in mid-honk.

  Blessed silence fell. I took a deep breath. Much better.

  I looked up to see Caleb eyeing me in surprise. Lazar looked wary. In fact, everyone was staring at me. Did I do that? Could my anti-tech-fu work without even touching the machine involved? It had never occurred to me to even try. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. . . .

  Arnaldo’s face cleared in the blessed quiet. Then a realization hit him. His eyes widened with dismay. “That’s got to be it. They said something about a virus. DNA plus strangelets from the accelerator. I could be wrong—but they could have altered our DNA and used it to genetically engineer a virus. A virus aimed at us.”

  “Welcome,” said a familiar voice, channeled through a speaker. Fluorescent lights winked on along both sides of the tunnel, illuminating our haggard, sweating faces, the metal tube, and a window ten feet wide and three feet high set into the side of the tunnel opposite us.

  Behind that window stood a handsome older man with a thick head of pure white hair and perfect blue-white teeth that flashed as he smiled at us through the thick glass. Ximon.

  Near him two men in lab coats were busy with some shiny equipment. One said, “The injectors are ready, Your Grace. We will go on your mark.”

  Ximon’s smile faded. He looked almost sad. “Welcome to my little experiment, shifters. Welcome, my children. Welcome to the end of the otherkin.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Caleb didn’t hesitate. Using his slingshot, he fired a red button at his father’s smug face, intoning a perilous note. The button flared into a sphere of burning lava and smacked into the glass. It hung there for a second, flames licking its surface. Then it slid like a fiery slug down the window, leaving the glass unharmed.

  Lazar was only a second behind. He pointed his pistol at Ximon’s face and fired. The gunshots echoed loudly through the narrow chamber, but the bullets bounced off the window. Bulletproof glass.

  Ximon let out a sorrowful laugh. Caleb’s lava fell heavily onto the asphalt on the other side of the tube from us and began to burn a hole down into it. “My only sons. And my beautiful daughter, Amaris. You look so much like your mother, my dear. I’ve been expecting you. But still. Seeing you here breaks my heart.”

  All the blood drained from my heart. I was hollow. I’ve been so wrong. “That’s why they only shot at us with tranquilizer darts. They wanted us alive. Ximon wanted us here.”

  Amaris made a small, sad noise in th
e back of her throat and reached out to put a hand on London’s furry back, as if to steady herself.

  Above, a metal hatch slid into place, cutting off our escape. Siku roared up at it, and then turned the roar on Lazar.

  “I didn’t know,” Lazar said, backing away from the bear. “I didn’t know!”

  “It’s true,” Ximon said, turning his melancholy gaze to me. “I saw how he looked at you that night you burned my compound down, Amba. I heard you offer to take him with you. I saw the hesitation in his eyes, and I knew then that one day he would betray me. Lazar”—Ximon’s voice caught slightly as he said his son’s name—“after your brother left us, I prayed you would carry our quest and the family name with honor. I loved you. I still do.”

  “Love is more than words,” said Lazar. “And your actions have not been those of a loving father.”

  Ximon shook his head, his eyes bright. Were those unshed tears? After everything he’d done, he still loved his children. Somehow that made everything even more appalling.

  Nausea twisted my stomach. Ximon had been expecting us. So everything, from the first contact with Lazar onward, had been a trap. He’d used Lazar to get us here. I’d helped him get exactly what he wanted.

  A man in a lab coat leaned in toward Ximon. We could hear his voice faintly over the loudspeaker. “We’re ready on your mark, Your Grace.”

  “Then await my mark!” Ximon snapped. “Can a father not speak to his children one last time?”

  Siku and London exchanged desperate glances. November’s transparent ears trembled. Arnaldo’s throat convulsed as he swallowed down his fear. Caleb stood on the bottom step, his eyes still aglow, staring up at his father.

  “What are you dosing us with, Ximon?” he asked.

  Arnaldo shot Caleb a look, as if he’d been wanting to ask that same question.

  “My cleverest child.” Ximon shook his head. “There was a time you called me ‘father.’ ”

  “Does the virus cut us off from Othersphere, Father?” Caleb’s tone was biting. “Is that the real reason you built this monstrosity?”

  Ximon’s dark eyes surveyed Caleb regretfully. “Your mother was equally brilliant. It was my grievous fault when I failed to convert her. I might have reached this important point in my research earlier with her help. Then you never would have left my care or met the Amba. But your mother was stubborn, as you are. As Desdemona Grey has proven to be.”

  Arnaldo leaned in, lips close to my ear. “It’s got to be what Caleb said—Ximon’s going to infect us with a quantum virus he created by combining our DNA with the strangelets and O-particles. Once we’re infected, it will alter the DNA that connects us to Othersphere. We’ll be cut off. Then, when we go back to our homes and communities, the infection will spread . . . to everyone.”

  To everyone.

  All the shifters, everywhere, and any callers who came into contact with Caleb or Lazar. All of them would have their abilities, their identities wiped away

  I looked up at Ximon almost in admiration as my horror grew. He’d played it so smart, using Lazar’s compassion by telling him he’d have to kill extraneous Tribunal members when the experiment was over. Ximon had known that would send Lazar to me for help.

  And Ximon knew me too. It made me shiver to think how well. The last time he’d seen me, Ximon had said my compassion would be my undoing. I never expected it would be compassion he wanted me to feel—for Lazar. That, and that alone, had brought me here and doomed my friends. And everyone they knew and loved.

  “And my only daughter, my once-in-a-lifetime healer, Amaris.” Ximon had eyes only for his children, ignoring the rest of us to lean forward and look down on Amaris. “The praise and thanks we gave when your powers were discovered!”

  “That’s all I ever was to you, a healer. Not a daughter,” said Amaris.

  Ximon shook his head. “You don’t understand. You were a gift from God, until these servants of Satan spoiled you.”

  “God made shifters as they are, Father,” she said. “Who are you to unmake them?”

  “I’m God’s best servant,” he said. “I understand what he requires. And in his mercy, he has found a way for me to preserve your lives and to wash your ultimate sin away. You will return to the fold, Amaris, and rejoin your husband.”

  I looked over at Amaris in despair. We couldn’t let her fall back into the hands of that disgusting man.

  Amaris choked, fingers white on the grip of her gun. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill myself before I let him touch me.”

  London threw her head back and howled.

  The sound brought me out of my hopelessness. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I was missing something. There was a solution somewhere nearby, if I could only see it. I’d allowed Ximon to take the lead for precious minutes now. Think, think, Dez!

  “Once you are taken care of, we will use this accelerator to continue our work,” said Ximon, “Which is to cut this world off entirely from the devilish influence of Othersphere. We will thicken the veil around this world and keep it safe.”

  No more lightning tree.

  No more snowshoe hares grooming their ears at my feet.

  No more nights prowling as a tiger, hearing a snowflake touch the earth, tasting the breeze from the north, smelling the sap rise within the trees.

  No more contact with my biological mother. I would never know her now. Never understand the part of me that came from her.

  No more worrying about setting my cell phone on fire.

  The air around me seemed to contract and fracture.

  That’s it.

  I’d been so blind. The very thing I’d thought of as a curse, my tendency to destroy technology, was the answer to our problem. I’d turned off that head-splitting alarm with a thought. What else might I be able to do, down here where the underground nuclear tests had torn the veil to shreds? The thing that had felt so dark, threatening, and strange, was now the remedy.

  I’d been a fool.

  Othersphere is close.

  It lurked in the corner of my eye. I heard the deep hum of it in the earth. Its music stirred the churning black center of power that always lurked inside me.

  The metal of the accelerator tube, its wires and gears, the pipes ready to blow sickness over us, the filaments in the lights, the triggers on the guns, the hinges on the trapdoor above—I felt them all, saw them clearly in my mind, scratched their itch against my skin.

  They are nothing. Destroy them.

  Ximon was saying, head bowed, “I’m sorry I could not keep you safe, my children. I do believe that to be my own greatest sin.”

  “The lights are about to go out,” I said to my friends. “Head up the stairs.”

  Ximon stood up a little straighter, dropping his hands at his sides. “What did you say? No, they’re not.” Alarmed, he flapped a hand at the technician. “Ready the injectors!”

  London turned her laser-blue eyes on me, and I swear her wolf mouth smiled.

  “Mark!” Ximon shouted, pressing his hands against the bulletproof glass, staring down at me. “Spray them with the virus, now! Now!”

  His technicians scrambled to obey, their hands moving over the console in front of them.

  I laid my hand upon the metal tube of the accelerator. Reaching deep inside myself, I let the darkness out.

  Blackness flooded me, and I felt the wrongness of the metal in the tube, how it had been wrenched from the earth, melted, refined, and shaped by hands that did not love it and could never understand it. I heard its voice, sighing, a prisoner. But I sought out a different voice—bypassing the computers in Ximon’s room above, the tubes in the lights, the pipes, and coming to rest on the injectors forced into the concrete walls.

  I free you.

  The blackness inside me flowed into the tube, flew up into the lights, and followed the wires and pipes in the walls.

  The lights went out. The hum of machinery died.

  From behind the glass I heard a muffled, “No! Da
mn it!”

  “Nice.” Caleb’s voice came through clear in the darkness. It shouldn’t have warmed my heart, but it did.

  “Hold still, everyone,” I said. “We’re getting out of here.” I brushed past Amaris and London, moving around Lazar and Arnaldo by remembering where I’d seen them last and feeling for their shoulders. Even in human form, my senses were sharper than normal. I couldn’t see in total darkness, but I could hear breathing, feel how the air changed when people moved, smell the cotton in their clothes, or in Caleb’s case as I approached him on the stairs, the wool of his long black coat, damp now from the sprinklers.

  “Let me get up to the door and cut it open,” I said. I put a hand on Caleb’s back to move past him up the stairs. His heart was beating fast but evenly. I said, “I think the power’s out throughout most of the complex. Amaris, don’t turn on your flashlight unless you absolutely have to, and keep hold of London. Her nose and ears will get you out of here. Caleb and Lazar, do the same or hang onto Siku.”

  I unsheathed the Shadow Blade, feeling above my head for the metal door. “As soon as I cut it open, move out fast. Don’t wait for me.”

  I slid the knife into the cold metal above me. It sliced through it, growing colder and happier in my hand. Below me, my friends arranged themselves. The voices up behind Ximon’s window were still yelling at each other, muffled through the glass.

  Amaris said, “I’ve got London here. We’ll go first. If they’ve got a light source and see us, I’ll shoot them. Lazar, where are you?”

  “Back here with Siku,” Lazar said. “Dez, why shouldn’t we wait for you? You need to come too.”

  “No,” I said, cutting another right angle through the metal, making my own door. “I have to destroy the entire particle accelerator.”

  “What?” Lazar said. “No, you can’t stay down here alone. It’s too dangerous. I’ll stay with you.”