by Jack Conner
Avery’s stomach dropped. Damn her. Everything depended on speed, on secrecy.
“Sheridan,” he said.
“May I ... ?” She gestured to his suite.
He glanced from her to the guards, mentally debating for a moment—did he really want to find out what she would do if he refused?—then sighed and said, “Come in.”
He pulled the door back for her as she entered. She smelled of musk.
The royal guards started to follow her in, but she spun and held them back. “I can’t go anywhere in here. I’m harmless. And the doctor and I need privacy.”
“Is that acceptable, sir?” one of the guards asked Avery.
He didn’t see that he had a choice. “We’ll be fine,” he said.
The guards took up positions to either side of the door. Reluctantly, he closed it and turned to Sheridan.
“What is this about?”
She had a strange look on her face. Stern but sort of ... sad. Saying nothing, she pushed past him and strolled deeper into the suite. “Have anything to drink?” she asked.
“Admiral, this is quite—”
“Ah! Here we go.” She found an expensive bottle, then a glass from the rack, and poured herself a healthy dose. “I’m going to need this. So are you.”
“Why are you here?”
She took a sip. “Mmm. Yes, I must say that’s not bad.”
“Admiral!”
“You’re not being very sociable, Doctor, are you? I would be friendlier if I were you.”
“Why?” His voice had an edge to it.
She set her glass down and handed him something. It looked like a photograph. “See for yourself. You ... you’ll want to sit down.”
With a sniff, he accepted the picture. “This had better be good.”
Her eyes betrayed nothing except pity. “Oh, it is. It is.”
Something about her voice made his hairs prickle again. His gaze traveled to the picture. It took him a moment to focus on it, to take it in, and when he did it seemed as if the world tilted sideways.
“Ani,” he choked. It was a picture of his daughter.
* * *
Nameless emotion rose in him. Pain flowered in his chest, and something burned his eyes. All at once, strength left him, and he fell to his knees. His vision blurred as he stared at the photograph in his hand.
The little girl was undeniably his daughter, Anissa. What was more, it was not an old picture. It was new. He could tell from the faint discolorations on her cheeks and neck caused by the disease that had killed her. And it had killed her—brutally, terribly, slowly. In the picture, however, her eyes glittered with life, and there was even a small smile on her face as she stared into the camera’s lens. Despite the smile and glitter, though, she looked somehow sad. Even afraid. She stood before a gray wall and held up an issue of a newspaper that was dated only weeks ago. She looked very skinny. Very frail.
“How?” he heard himself asking, his voice raw, strained. “How is this possible?” He wrenched his gaze loose from the photo with an almost violent effort. He glared up at Sheridan, who stood blurrily before him. “How?”
Even through the blurriness, she appeared sorrowful. “You worked with the scientists,” she said. “You must have heard rumors of what went on in the levels below. You must have even known some of the doctors that worked there—Wasnair, for example.”
“Wasnair ...”
“Surely you heard about the resurrection project he was overseeing. The attempt to bring battlefield dead back to life to fight for Ghenisa? No? The project has been going on for years, and only lately have they begun to enjoy some success. When you helped Layanna escape and vanished, I decided some leverage might be useful, something to hold over you. So—I emptied your wife and daughter’s grave.”
Pain flooded through him. Rage. Shaking, he forced himself to his feet. “What have you done?”
Her face hardened, as did her voice. Somehow he sensed this was not done in anger but to mask her feelings. “The bodies were preserved alchemically,” she said. “but the alchemical agent was very cheap. You must have been ... quite poor.” This was not said meanly, but almost regretfully. “It would have only preserved them for a short while, a few decades maybe. And the amount injected in your wife was simply inadequate. She’d already faded. Your daughter, however ...”
“No ...” Shaking his head, he staggered forward.
She stepped back. “We’ve brought her back, Doctor. Look, I’m sorry to tell you this in such a manner. I understand loss like you cannot believe. I had a daughter that was taken from me, too.” Her voice hitched, just barely, but she cleared her throat and plowed on: “I would give anything for the chance you have now. Listen to me, Francis.” It was one of but a few times when she had ever called him by name. “Listen. You can have her back.” She stared at him, letting that sink in. “And it’s really her. Not some brain-dead thing. Not some horror. It’s your daughter. She’s in the care of Dr. Wasnair at the moment. She was only the third lab subject for the process to work on. Sadly, she’ll be the last. I tried to retrieve the plans for the process for use by Octung, but they were too cumbersome to remove and too detailed to copy, so I had them destroyed. A shame to destroy the secret to immortality, but I could not let Ghenisa have an edge in the war, could I?”
For a moment, reason returned to Avery, but he could feel that it was shifting and elusive and would shortly be gone. “She’s ... in a lab? Where? Brunt? How is she? Tell me how she is.” This last part came out in a growl. He took a step forward, hands bunching and unbunching at his side.
“She’s fine, Francis.” Her voice deliberately hardened as she added the hook: “They’re taking good care of her, just as they would with any specimen during the observation period.”
Something triggered in him. Something berserk. He stalked forward and grabbed up a lantern.
Sheridan held her ground. “Don’t, Doctor. It only takes a word from me and the observation period ends. Then they start experimenting on her. In doing so, they might be able to recreate the process.”
He howled, and the lantern rose in his hands.
“Or I can simply have her destroyed,” Sheridan said.
He brought the lantern down.
She stepped out of the way. His elbows flared as it shattered into a thousand pieces on the floor. A small hard fist struck his belly, then a knee, and he found himself gasping on the floor, staring upwards. Sheridan seemed to revolve around him.
The guards outside started to force the door inward, he could hear it thumping in its frame.
“Just take me to Layanna, Doctor, and Ani will be yours again,” Sheridan said. She offered him a hand. “My agents lost her somehow, the Collossum. Please. Your daughter and you can be happy together. Just take me to—”
The doors burst in. The guards stormed toward Sheridan, guns drawn. Barking orders at her, they surrounded her and aimed at her chest. “Back away! Back off!”
Warily, she stepped back from Avery, and the guards followed her.
Wheezing, Avery climbed to his feet. The world spun, and he tasted sick at his stomach. Ani. Can it really be? His rage had somewhat drained away, replaced by exhaustion, replaced by the urgency to return to Layanna and the others. They would leave soon. It was already midnight.
In front of him the guards indicated for Sheridan to lie down and not move. Ignoring them, she said, “Well, Doctor, what will it be? Layanna or your daughter?”
He started to answer, then shook his head. His mind still wasn’t clear enough to form a reply. He honestly didn’t know himself in that moment what he wanted. He hefted his bags over his shoulder and lurched toward the door.
He heard the ring of metal behind him.
A gunshot shook the room, and Avery jumped. Somewhere a body thumped.
He spun to see Sheridan slitting the throat of one guard with a blade that she had produced from somewhere while the other guard flopped about on the ground, the artery of his gun-wris
t slashed. Sheridan wrestled the gun away from the standing guard and shoved him back.
Avery moved at greater speed toward the door. Behind him he could imagine Sheridan wiping blood from her eyes. Then she would be up, aiming—
The blast took him by surprise, even though he had half-expected it.
He had just cleared the door when he felt something whiz by his ankle. A puff of carpet shot up into the air.
He ran. A second round and then a third followed, but he was already bounding down the hall.
Ani, he thought, still bewildered, his mind fuddled. Sheridan’s brought her back!
He pushed the thought aside. He needed what wits he had left to flee.
He turned just in time to see Sheridan stagger from the room, raising her gun as she did. He ducked down a side-hall. The gun roared. Plaster from the opposite wall sprayed him. Coughing, he lurched away. Guards, he thought. Guards will be coming. I only need to last a moment.
Just then, he heard the sound of Octunggen bombers overhead.
* * *
It was an entire fleet from the sound of it. Just as Avery had suspected, the Octunggen had never meant to honor any negotiation. Sending the diplomatic team had only been a ruse designed to get a team in place to retrieve Layanna.
Just as he rounded another corner, the first bombs struck.
The ground pitched beneath his feet. Flung him against a wall. His head rang. Gasping, he pushed himself off, tasting blood on his tongue.
Screams echoed up the hall. Air-raid sirens wailed both outside and inside, blaring in his ears.
Another bomb struck. Another.
The floors shook. The walls ahead buckled, and a plume of plaster dust engulfed him. Coughing, he pressed on. Agonized screams came from a room nearby.
A gunshot behind him. He felt something sting his neck. He put a hand to it, drew away blood. Just a surface wound. It burned like fire.
Another gunshot roared. A man stumbling from his bombed room took the round in the face. Brains exploded out the back of his skull. He reeled backward, hit the wall and slid down it, leaving a trail of blood and brain matter.
Avery ducked down another hall.
Sheridan coughed behind him as she entered the cloud of plaster. “Stop running!”
“Go to hell!” he screamed over his shoulder as he reached a stairway and started down it.
He passed a window and beheld the city of Maqarl laid out below him. Fire and smoke roiled up from the buildings descending the slopes, bright pyres and thick black columns that blocked out the stars. The great bridges that spanned the misty gaps smoked; one had collapsed. Fires dotted the mountain peaks on the other side, and huge bombers drove through the pall of smoke that hung over the city. Guns on rocky summits boomed, spitting fire. One of the bombers’ tails exploded, and the craft corkscrewed into the central mountain and erupted with a bright flash. Many bombs struck near the processing plants, the great buildings that protected Maqarl from Octung’s otherworldly weapons. If the Octunggen destroyed them ...
The balustrade beside Avery exploded, pelting him with shrapnel. He ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time.
More bombs rocked the palace. People took to the halls, stumbling and confused. Some pushed through the press, looking for escape. Soldiers rushed amongst them, on the way outside to help their comrades. Avery knew then that there must be a ground assault, too. Paratroopers.
He plunged into the crowd, elbowing his way through the thick of it. Someone tried to punch him in the ribs. He punched back. He heard shouts and cursing behind him. Sheridan followed. He craned his head to see a glimpse of her here and there. Bloody-faced, she had torn off her Octunggen tunic and had shrugged on the shirt of the man whose brains she’d splattered. Blood had dripped on it, but at least it was not Octunggen, otherwise the crowd might have torn her apart.
Avery plowed his way down a certain hallway, reached a stairwell going down. He had memorized the route but was still uncertain in the confusion. No, this was right. He recognized the statue of a six-armed jade goddess at the base of the stairwell. He hooked right at the statue and made his way down a richly appointed hall lined by prized artifacts in glass cases. There were fewer people down here, as there were no apartments and no access to the outside.
Sheridan yelled behind him. Her gun cracked. Beautifully stained wood splintered by his hip. She was not trying to kill him, only incapacitate him. Of course, one was as good as the other.
“You’re a fool!” she shouted as he threw himself down another hall. “It doesn’t have to be like this! There’s a section in the east wing, they won’t bomb there. It’s where the General and the others are. Waiting for us. Just help me bring Layanna to them.”
A lie, he thought. The General and his men would be out hunting for Layanna, too. Obviously the bombing was a diversion to draw the guards away so that they could abduct her, to create general confusion to make it easier. But they had not counted on Layanna being through the Soul Door.
And yet ... Avery believed her. There would be a safe area in the palace. There would be a place where they could take Layanna and ready her for transportation. But as for him ...
“You’ll kill me—as soon as—you have—her!” he panted.
“No,” she said. “I won’t.” Gasping, she called, “You’ll be—safe with us. And you’ll have—your daughter.”
He didn’t reply.
A gunshot cracked behind him. Splinters of woods sprayed his arm.
Almost there. He heard her reloading behind him. She had stolen the guards’ ammo. Clever.
He reached another stairway, darted down it. Stumbled. Righted himself. Bombs shook the palace above. Dust rained down. In the distance, people screamed.
“I mean it,” she shouted behind him. “You can have Ani.”
He turned down a hallway just as another bomb dropped. The ceiling caved in. He lunged forward, threw himself flat and slid, but too late. Debris buried him. The impact was so great it ruptured the floor beneath, and he fell into a crater. Plaster dust choked his lungs, and he coughed and wheezed, struggling up through the avalanche. Something hit his head. Glanced off his shoulder. Somewhere he heard Sheridan cursing.
At last the debris settled, and he found himself trapped among sections of flooring material. Frantically, he tore away a section of wood planking, then shoved away a stone. He labored for breath.
Fresh air. He smelled it somewhere ahead.
A blackened stone block shifted before him, and he came face to face with Sheridan. She was covered in soot, her cap lost, her hair in disarray, and blood oozed from a cut on her scalp. Her gun was nowhere in sight. She was just far enough away that he couldn’t reach her.
They stared at each other in the dimness, which was only brightened by vague shafts of light cutting through debris above. Avery felt a nail pressing into his side and shifted his weight. For some reason he couldn’t tear his gaze away from her. Had he ever really known her? Who was she, really?
“I wasn’t lying, Francis,” she said, and her voice was almost gentle. “We have your daughter, and we’ll give her to you. You can believe anything about me you like, but believe that.”
“No,” He shook his head. His skull ached, and he wondered if he had a concussion.
She let out a long breath. “Where are you going, Francis? Why isn’t Layanna in the Palace? Why are you down here ... ?” Realization entered her eyes. “It’s the Soul Door, isn’t? You’re going into the Halls!” She laughed, half madly. “Why? What could possibly be in there to interest you? Where are you going?”
“I can’t tell you, you know that.” He sniffed. Fresh air wafted in from his right ... He shifted sideways and shoved away the obstruction.
“Ani,” she said, and he stopped. “If you’re going into the Halls, I’ll meet you there. There’s a place, supposedly the jewel of the afterlife—Cuithril.”
He stiffened.
Her eyes gleamed. “So that’s it, is it? Well, don
’t worry. I can meet you there. No, don’t say no. You know you want to. Have Layanna subdued for me, and I’ll give you your daughter.”
“You’re insane.” He began kicking the obstruction away.
“No. But I’m a mother, or I was, and I know what lengths I would’ve gone to to save my little girl. And it’s for the best, it really is. Trust me. You’re on the wrong side of this thing.”
He kicked and kicked. Debris rained down on him, but he didn’t care. His leg throbbed. “I’m not listening to you!”
The obstruction gave way.
“Cuithril!” she shouted. “I’ll meet you there!”
He rolled down the mound of debris, dusted himself off, shook away his dizziness, and staggered down the hall. There was still time. There was still—
Shifting behind him. He spun to see Sheridan climbing out of the debris, wrenching her gun out of the mouth of a broken statue. Coughing even worse than he, she slid down the mound and picked herself up.
He fled.
A round punched out a hole in the doorway to one side of him.
“Gods damn you!” he shouted, feeling himself start to snap. His nerves were frayed to their breaking point. “Don’t you ever give up?”
It occurred to him that, for such a marksman, she was aiming awfully badly—
He went cold. She was herding him.
Well, the hell with it. She’d guessed his destination anyway. There was nothing for it now. Hopefully the guards at the Soul Door would drive her back or kill her. His heart smashed against his ribs as he ran for it. At last he rounded a final bend and came in sight of the purple-lacquered Door, rearing like the façade of a temple.
The guards were gone.
Shit.
The doors were open.
Panting, he stumbled through them and down the wide marble stairway below. The formal pathway ended and became a rocky pinnacle overlooking a black stone valley. A sort of dock structure clung to the pinnacle. Avery descended another set of stairs, these wooden and creaking under him. Darkness surrounded him. Bats chittered somewhere, the sound echoing across vast distances. The plink of water, the stink of minerals. Caves. The Hallowed Halls. He had made it.