“Da—!” Reno yelled over the comm, just seconds before a rumble shook the ground under my feet.
As I emerged onto the street, I could see the last bit of a domed building as it collapsed in on itself.
“Captain?” I yelled into the comm. “You good?”
Reno grunted. “Brought the damn thing down on top of me. Keep going. I’ll dig myself out.”
I was close now. Just a few more blocks to go. I coughed, the inside of my throat itchy from all the crap in the air. At some point doing this whole human-missile act, I must have inadvertently smashed my breathing apparatus. I ripped the thing off my face and tossed it aside.
I opted to hop through the window of my next building rather than Kool-Aid Man it. I didn’t want to make the same mistake the captain had. Not with such little distance to go.
Multiple plasma bursts cut through the air, lightning streaks flashing through the dust. The remaining Vulpin mercenaries, the ones still in hiding, must have caught on to what we were doing. Zara wasn’t the only one putting down cover fire now. We were all working together to keep the sniper pinned.
One open block between me and the tower. I sprinted as hard as I could.
Crack.
I rolled to the side, a spike piercing the street behind me, pebbles careening against my back. Just missed.
And then I was in the tower.
The building was skeletal, hardly any walls left standing inside. A spiral staircase led upward. I bounded up as fast as my legs could carry me, taking steps three at a time, sometimes leaping across gaps where the staircase had fallen in.
“Syd!” My uncle on the comm. “Hang back. Let Reno catch up with you.”
The hell with that. This was just like the tower I’d had to unlock in Dungeon, the one that had gotten me noticed by Tycius in the first place. I couldn’t slow down. I had to keeping going. I needed to reach the top.
Higher.
Higher.
Movement. A thin shadow on the landing above me. Pointing down at me—
A gun. A smaller one. The sniper had abandoned his massive weapon for something that he could use in close quarters.
Blam.
I pressed myself to the wall, but still felt the bullet caress my cheek. Rip it open. Warm blood trickled down my jaw. A graze, but it hurt like hell. That it hurt at all—that this guy was using weapons that could kill me or Hiram or Darcy or Reno—I didn’t have time to be terrified at the thought. Our invulnerability wasn’t the advantage we’d thought.
“Enough!” I yelled.
I bent down, scooped up a brick, and pitched it at the sniper before he could get another shot off. I heard the crack of brittle bones as the projectile hit him dead in the chest and knocked him off his feet, his weapon flying from his hand.
I raced the rest of the way up the steps. Stood over him.
I’d seen this man a thousand times in my dreams, although I knew his long-fingered hands better than I knew his face. High cheekbones, a tangle of aquamarine hair, a lithe Denzan body. He tried to roll toward his gun, but I kicked it away.
“Dad, stop,” I said, my voice shaky. “It’s me. It’s Syd . . .”
My dad looked up at me, and I stumbled back a step. There was something wrong.
His eyes were hollowed out, replaced by pockets of white mold. The stuff grew down his neck and torso, filling in gaps where his body had decomposed.
My dad spoke with the raspy voice of a Panalax.
“He asked me to do it,” the thing inhabiting my dad’s corpse said. “He made me promise.”
33
“Atrocity!” H’Jossu bellowed. “Atrocity!”
I’d never seen H’Jossu anything close to mad before. It was pretty scary. He drew his body up to full height like a bear, his claws slicing through the air. The patches of mold that covered his body seemed to grow as well, the fungal blooms pulsing like heartbeats. He stood over my dad, who I’d dragged down to the bottom floor of the tower and dumped against a wall.
Well, not exactly my dad.
Ool’Vinn, the lone Panalax on my dad’s crew. The only survivor of their mission to Ashfall.
The whole crew—except for Darcy and Melian, who were on the Eastwood with Hiram—had gathered in the tower. Captain Reno, Zara, and my uncle were upstairs, checking out the sniper’s nest. When Tycius first saw what was left of my dad, I think he almost threw up. His face went ashen, and he started to say something to me but couldn’t find the words. I didn’t blame him when he volunteered to go upstairs with Reno. He needed to get away from Ool’Vinn.
I felt the opposite. I crouched, staring at the Panalax now living inside my dad’s corpse. I forced myself to take in the spreading white mold, the puckered and dehydrated gray skin. It wasn’t easy, but I refused to look away.
Occasionally, I dabbed the cut on my cheek with my sleeve, feeling the first real physical pain I had since leaving Earth.
Sure. Focus on that, Syd.
“Marcius begged me to do it,” Ool’Vinn said, as the fluffy tufts of mold that had spread across my dad’s eyes shifted between me and H’Jossu. “I was meant to protect this place. To make sure no one got into the temple. And now they have.”
Vanceval and Nyxie. They’d gone inside the obsidian temple, the door had sealed behind them, and no one had come out since.
“What’s in there?” H’Jossu snarled. “What’s in there that could be worth what you’ve done?”
I think Ool’Vinn would’ve tried to get up if the much larger H’Jossu hadn’t loomed threateningly over him. “The ones who entered the temple cannot be allowed to escape,” he said stubbornly. “You must help me destroy them and then leave this place.”
I’d traveled galaxies to make it here. I’d left my mother and Earth—and I could never go back without it killing me. All to find my father. But he’d been dead for a decade. His Panalax crewmate had taken root in his brain, kept it firing, and thus ensured the cosmological tether would remain active and inevitably lure me here. A stupid accident. That’s all this was. My dad had never meant for me to follow his signal. He was dead.
I would never know him. Sitting on the hood of that car, eating donuts—one hazy memory. That’s all I’d ever get.
I knuckled the corner of my eye. Aela, standing beside me, put a hand on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Syd,” they said at a low volume.
I nodded. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell my mom.”
H’Jossu jabbed a spiky paw in Ool’Vinn’s direction. “We don’t inhabit higher life-forms, even if they ask,” he rumbled. “It’s against our ways!”
“I know what I did, sapling,” Ool’Vinn replied. “Spare me your lecture.”
“And what about your original host?” H’Jossu continued, shuffling back and forth in an enraged dance. “You aren’t allowed to take a second body, only to cross-pollinate a new one! You violated every tenet.”
“My original host was destroyed by Alexander Abe,” Ool’Vinn said. “He killed all the others except for Marcius.”
“Why?” Batzian asked. He stood in the doorway to the tower. From there, he had a clear view across a rock-strewn plaza to the sealed entrance of the temple. Batzian’s face was smeared with dirt, his white hair tinged gray from the soot. “Why would he turn against you?”
Ool’Vinn shook his head. “Leave this place” was his only response.
“That’s not going to happen,” I told him.
“You’ll regret it,” he replied.
“Oh, shut up, demon,” H’Jossu said. Fed up with his Panalax counterpart, he shambled over to me and Aela, settling his bulk onto his knees in front of me. “Syd, on behalf of the Panalaxan Growth Mandate, I deeply apologize for—”
“Stop,” I said. “It’s okay. Not your fault.”
Footsteps crunched on the landing above us, and then a massive gun crashed to the floor, tossed there by Captain Reno. The weapon looked like a jackhammer equipped with a scope, with two leather s
traps so a shooter could wear the weapon across their shoulders. There was no doubt in my mind that it was the cannon Ool’Vinn had been firing at us with.
“He’s got a whole arsenal up there,” Reno said as she jumped down to join the rest of us. “Stuff I’ve never seen before.”
Tycius and Zara hopped down behind the captain. My uncle still couldn’t stand to look at my dad’s body. Even now, he avoided glancing in the Panalax’s direction. He crouched down next to me.
“I’m sorry I brought you here,” he said quietly.
“I wanted to come,” I replied. “I wanted to know.”
Zara marched over to the door, still holding the blaster she’d taken off one of the dead Vulpin. She shimmied her fur as she went, like she was trying to shake some of the excess dust loose. She patted Batzian on the arm.
“You make a good target, Denzan,” she said. “Go on inside. I’ll keep watch.”
Batzian eyed Zara’s blaster, not arguing. He stepped into the shelter of the tower, looking down at the humongous rifle Reno had dropped on the floor.
“Where did this come from?” Batzian asked.
“That’s what I want to know,” Reno said. She’d acquired a length of rope from upstairs and was in the process of tying a sturdy slipknot, looming over Ool’Vinn. “Who made your gear?”
He shook his head. “It was here. Waiting for us.”
“Bullshit. This gear is made for humanoids. No one’s been to this planet except your expedition.”
“They’re relics,” Ool’Vinn replied. “Better left buried, like the rest of this place.”
Batzian tentatively nudged the giant rifle. “If this is a relic, it doesn’t seem to have degraded at all.”
“They made their weapons well,” Ool’Vinn said simply.
“Who?” Reno barked.
The Panalax didn’t respond. Grunting in annoyance, Reno bent down, grabbed his arms, and thrust his wrists into the loop of rope. She secured his hands tightly, then tied a separate cinch around his ankles.
“What about this crap?” Reno held up a vial of the black goo that all of Ool’Vinn’s ammo had been coated in. “There’s a whole stockpile of it upstairs. What is it?”
“Kryptonite,” H’Jossu muttered.
“It looks like oil,” I said. “Kind of smells like it, too.”
Reno shook the tube in Ool’Vinn’s face. “Answer me. Who made this? Where does it come from?”
The Panalax looked past Reno, his eyeless face pointed in my direction.
“He worried you would come,” Ool’Vinn said to me. “He feared for you as he expired.”
“Don’t talk to him,” Ty snapped, stepping in front of me.
“Where’s the cure for the Wasting?” Reno pressed on. “That was supposed to be here. Not this—this poison.”
“That is the cure,” Ool’Vinn said. “The cure for you.”
Reno scowled and stood up, stretching out her back. Her uniform was torn and filthy from an entire building collapsing on her, but she looked perfectly healthy otherwise. She touched her comm.
“Melian? How’s Hiram?”
Melian came back a second later. “I think he’s going to live, Captain. I managed to stop the bleeding, but . . .” A faint moan in the background. “The bio-tape wasn’t adhering. I had to really scrub that . . . that stuff off him before the healing would begin.”
“Copy,” Reno said. “Darcy? What’s your status?”
“Here,” Darcy replied, not over the comm but from the doorway of the tower. She brushed by Zara and entered the room, her eyes cold as they landed on Ool’Vinn. The front of her uniform was stained dark red from Hiram’s blood. Ever since I’d first met her, Darcy had seemed coiled around a not-so-secret ball of rage. That was at the surface now, her jaw clenched, veins throbbing along the backs of her hands.
Reno must have read that too, because she put a stabilizing hand on Darcy’s shoulder. “You good?”
“He almost killed Hiram,” Darcy said.
“He’ll answer for that and everything else that’s happened here,” Reno replied. She gave a hard tug on the loose end of the rope and dragged Ool’Vinn to his feet. Then she held the improvised leash out to H’Jossu. “Cadet, I’m entrusting this prisoner to you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” H’Jossu said, tying the rope around his thick front paw. I didn’t flinch at the way they were manhandling what was left of my father. I didn’t feel anything.
“That’s your dad, huh?” Darcy said, making her way over to me.
“Not anymore,” I replied.
“Do you think, if we were full human, we’d have such fucked-up lives?” Darcy asked me.
Before I could respond, Zara whistled from her spot in the doorway.
“Movement!” she said, and then lunged into the street, blaster leveled, ahead of everyone else.
It was Nyxie.
The Vulpin woman stumbled out from the reopened entrance of the temple. Even at a distance, I could make out the dazed look on her face. She tossed her plasma rifle away as soon as she noticed us and put her hands in the air.
“I surrender,” Nyxie called out. “He’s not paying enough for this shit.”
Zara was the first to Nyxie, but Reno and Darcy were right behind her. I hung back with Aela and Batzian, while Tycius brought up the rear with H’Jossu and our slow-moving prisoner. Zara cocked back her blaster like she was going to hit Nyxie, but Reno caught Zara’s arm before she could make impact.
“Stop,” Reno said. “I want to talk to her.”
“She owes me,” Zara growled.
“You can knife-fight her later,” I told Zara.
That actually seemed to pacify Zara. She settled back on her heels, her blaster still pointed in Nyxie’s direction.
“You should kill her,” Ool’Vinn rasped, referring to Nyxie. “She’s seen what’s inside.”
H’Jossu jerked the rope. “Be quiet.”
“No need for any killing,” Nyxie said. She crouched down low, assuming a deferential posture in front of Reno. “I’ll just take my ship and fly off to a quiet corner of the galaxy. Drink my way to amnesia. Fuck all this noise.”
“What’s in there?” Reno asked sharply.
“Where’s Vanceval?” Ty asked at the same time.
“He’s waiting for you in there,” Nyxie replied. Then she turned to Reno. The Vulpin’s eyes were wet, her tail drooping, all the confidence she’d had back at the spaceport stripped away. “I’m a loyal soldier, ma’am. I could be a good friend to you.”
Reno squinted. “What the hell does that mean?”
Nyxie dissolved into hysterical laughter. She crouched, hugging herself, and rocked back and forth. It was unnerving. Going into that temple had broken her. Whatever was inside had driven the members of my dad’s crew mad, too. I stared up at the smooth obsidian structure, untouched by the time and destruction that had ravaged the rest of Ashfall.
“Pathetic,” Zara said, lowering her blaster.
“Maybe . . . maybe we should listen to them,” Batzian said. “Maybe we should turn back.”
Reno addressed the rest of us, her face sternly resolute. “I’m going in after Vanceval. I want some damn answers about this place. I won’t hold it against any of you if you want to return to the Eastwood.”
“I’m with you, Captain,” Darcy said.
“Me too,” replied Zara, sneering at Nyxie. “Your den would be humiliated to see you like this.”
Tycius looked at me, then turned to stare at what was left of my father. I watched as he suppressed a shudder. “It can’t possibly be worth it,” he said quietly.
“I have to know,” I said to him. “I have to know why this happened.”
Ty swallowed, then nodded. “I’m with you.”
I glanced over at Aela. The magenta cloud swirled behind their faceplate as they gazed at the temple.
“I can’t explain it, exactly,” they said. “But I am drawn forward.”
“You will regret i
t, wisp,” Ool’Vinn intoned. “You maybe most of all.”
Aela cocked their head, considering his words. “Interesting,” Aela said. “Regret is something I have yet to experience.”
H’Jossu stepped forward, dragging Ool’Vinn with him. “I am down for an Indiana Jones dungeon crawl,” he said, although the quip felt half-hearted. He was anxious, like the rest of us. “My people will want to know why this one was driven to betray the faith.”
“Foolish,” Ool’Vinn grumbled, head hanging low.
That left only Batzian. He tightened his ponytail, gazing at the unblemished blackness of the temple. I half expected him to go back to the Eastwood to be with his sister and Hiram, but he squared his shoulders and nodded. “It is the duty of the Serpo Institute to explore and catalog,” he stated, as if falling back on the rules of the institute would give him courage.
Reno jerked Nyxie onto her feet by the scruff of her neck. “Are there traps inside? Is Vanceval armed?”
Nyxie shook her head. “No traps, no weapons,” she said. “Can I go now, ma’am?”
“No, honey,” Reno said as she shoved the Vulpin forward, “you’re leading the way.”
With Nyxie stumbling ahead of us, one by one we stepped through the doorway of the obsidian temple.
Inside, the air was chilly, at least twenty degrees colder than outside, probably below freezing. Zara shuddered and rubbed her arms, and H’Jossu’s mold covering receded a bit into the warmth of his furry body. My breath misted in front of me, and delicate crystals formed on the outside of Aela’s faceplate. The air wasn’t just cold, though. It felt processed and clean, like a giant air conditioner was still at work inside the temple, scrubbing the atmosphere of the dust and debris that covered the rest of the planet. There was an electric hum from the walls and floor, a power source buzzing beneath us. The narrow hallway was lit by dim orbs ensconced within the stone.
“Please,” Ool’Vinn moaned. “Spare yourselves. You can still turn back.”
Ashfall Legacy Page 30