by T. M. Catron
Lincoln’s gaze fell on it, not twenty feet away. Would he have time to disconnect it before the Glyph caught him? He kept the rifle trained on the Glyph but edged for the rigging. Reaching it, he stopped to take a quick look.
Disconnecting it without electrocuting himself would take a miracle.
Frustrated, Lincoln took a deep breath. He would die before the Glyph got over there. No sense in doing the alien’s work for it. Then his gaze fell on the open computer program, showing the scrolling symbols with their translations. Doyle had spoken of the adarria wanting to be free. If given a chance, would they kill the Glyph?
A chair moved.
Lincoln’s gaze shot back to the Glyph. Sensing Lincoln’s powerlessness, it was easing toward him again. It still kept a clawed hand around its good eye. Lincoln would never get a good shot.
He made his decision. He dropped the weapon and sprang at the nearest keyboard. Since the program was still running, all he had to do was type in what he wanted to say.
Kill Condarri.
In this case, a complete sentence was impossible, but Lincoln doubted the adarria needed a full sentence to understand what he wanted.
Seeing Lincoln lose his weapon, the Glyph charged. This time, it smashed through tables, sending computers and chairs flying as it made a direct path toward its hunter-turned-prey.
The computer did nothing.
His plan had failed. For a moment, the world stood still. Lincoln, sweating and cold and terrified, watched the Glyph spring for him. He reached for the rifle, felt it in his hands, watched that one glowing eye as it hurtled through the dark like a demon from hell.
Lincoln didn’t have anywhere to run. He raised the gun, found his target, and fired. The crack echoed throughout the chamber. But he didn’t get to see if he’d hit the mark.
At the same moment, the walls of the room flashed a brilliant yellow. So bright that Lincoln cried out in pain. His eyeballs felt like they were on fire, and stars burst into his vision. He dropped the rifle in favor of shielding his eyes from the assault. But it shone even through his hands.
He dropped to his knees, tried to hide his face in his arms.
An unearthly, terrible shriek sounded. More tables crashed around him. Something heavy whizzed by Lincoln’s head and he scooted down under the nearest table.
The light turned away from him, and he looked up to see the Glyph not ten feet away, thrashing about as a bright, fiery flare connected it to the walls. Like a long burst of electricity, it undulated around the room, dragging the Glyph away from Lincoln, lighting it up like a torch.
It wasn’t on fire, but it acted like it was. The creature roared and writhed in pain. More computers and chairs flew past Lincoln’s hiding place. He crawled under the table, away from the violence.
More flares burst from the walls, causing Lincoln to bury his face in his arms and whimper with them pressed into his body.
Hot air whipped around him, buffeting his body as if in a gale. It increased, deafening him to the creature's cries. With the light and the air and the heat, Lincoln almost passed out. But he thought if he did, he would be blinded. So, he held on to the last shred of consciousness until he was at the end of his endurance.
Just as he was about to give in to the forces trying to kill him, everything disappeared. The room went dark again. The air stopped moving.
Cautiously, Lincoln raised his head. After the brilliant light of the flares, the room was completely black. Only ghosts of light still flashed across his retinas. All the monitors had gone out, too. Lincoln was in the dark, weaker than he had ever been in his life, and—as far as he knew—alone.
Then, he heard something that almost made his heart stop. Movement to his right. Certain that the Glyph had somehow survived to terrorize him further, Lincoln screamed at it.
“Come and get me!” He grabbed the nearest table and pulled himself to his feet, refusing to die sitting down. “I’m not afraid of you! Do you hear me? Not. Afraid!”
Something grabbed Lincoln’s arm in a powerful grip. Startled, he lashed out.
“Hey! Easy,” someone said.
A light clicked, momentarily blinding Lincoln again. When his eyes finally adjusted, he saw Li standing there, looking up at Lincoln with a mixture of respect and amazement.
“You’re a crazy human, you know that?” he asked, smiling.
Relieved to see a familiar face, Lincoln staggered back, grabbed an overturned table for support. “Where is it?” he choked out.
Li pointed the light to the mess further down.
There, lying sprawled across the remains of several workstations, the Glyph looked like a fallen stone statue.
Except its chest rose and fell.
“It’s still alive?” Lincoln couldn’t believe it.
“Yes, but I don’t think it’s going to bother anyone again for a long time.”
“What happened?”
“You were here. What did you do?”
“I—” Lincoln’s voice broke. He was so confused. “I spoke to the adarria with the program. Asked them to kill it.”
Li frowned. “And they listened to you?”
“I don’t know. Yes, I guess they did. Where’s Alvarez? Nelson? What happened to Grace?”
Li’s expression changed to a grimace. “Grace is dead, or so far gone she might as well be. Doyle won’t be happy about that. They were good friends. I don’t know where your friends are.”
A feeling of despair washed over Lincoln. He knew where one friend was. Or his body, at least, lying abandoned in a corridor somewhere on this level. But he couldn’t think about it now. “We have to find Alvarez and Nelson.”
Li nodded. “We’ll find them. How did you get down here?”
Lincoln nodded to the Glyph. “I went looking for it.”
“By yourself? It must have slaughtered a hundred hybrids. What made you think you could do anything?”
Lincoln shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe later, when I’ve had time to think about it.”
Later, when the horror sank in, he’d probably think he was crazy, too. Right now, they had to find Alvarez and Nelson.
When Mina opened her eyes, she lay on the floor of the Nomad, gazing up at a shadow leaning over her, a dark blotch against a blue background. She looked at it through a clear barrier.
Slowly, the blotch came into focus.
Alice was looking at Mina, concern etched into her young face. She held a mask on Mina’s face—her helmet. The air was turned on, forcing oxygen and life into Mina’s lungs. She sucked it in greedily, hoping that this time it wouldn’t go away. The inside of the helmet stank of salt and sweat.
A moment of dizziness came and went, and Mina had a quiet moment to gather her thoughts.
She didn’t remember what had happened. One minute, she’d been desperately clinging to Doyle. The next, she was here on the floor.
Where was Doyle?
As the thought coalesced in her mind, Mina panicked. What had happened? Why was Alice, not Doyle, leaning over her?
Doyle had been dying.
Suddenly, the mask was closing her in, suffocating her. Mina tugged at it, desperate to get it off her face. “No!” she yelled.
“Mina! It’s okay!” Alice said. She tried to keep the mask on Mina’s face. And she mostly succeeded. Mina was too weary to fight her.
A well of sadness and grief rose in Mina’s chest. She knew Doyle hadn’t made it. As realization sunk in, she grew short of breath again. Her limbs seized up, her brain stopped working. All she felt was the hole that had been punched in her heart. As if Calla had reached in and yanked the organ out.
The thought of Calla made Mina hot all over, so when she heard the hybrid’s voice through her fog of grief, she thought she was hallucinating.
“She’s hyperventilating,” Calla said. “Get her to the med bay.”
Mina tried to turn her head. Probably Morse was speaking, but she still heard Calla’s voice.
But then she
heard Morse’s voice too, laced with hatred and a savagery she’d never before heard in another being.
“If you touch either one of them, Calla, I swear I will rip off your hands.”
Morse’s tone was scary, and his words chilled Mina to the bone. She tilted her head, desperate for a glimpse of the room, praying Calla wasn’t really there. As far as Mina was concerned, Calla had killed Doyle.
All she saw was the place where the visor met the helmet. She reached around, trying to get her numb fingers over the latch that would free the visor.
Calla laughed a mirthless chuckle that was surprisingly free of malice. “That would be better than what would happen to me if I were down there with the Condarri.”
“Yes, I’m very much aware of what happens,” Morse said.
What special kind of hell had Mina landed in, with Doyle dead, another hybrid in his place, and Calla beside her?
“Doyle,” Mina choked out.
Morse appeared in Mina’s field of view. He removed the helmet, relieving Mina of its sweaty smell, allowing fresh air to cool her hot face.
“Doyle’s upstairs, Mina,” Morse said. “I got him up there as soon as the Nomad took off. We’re on our way back to the Factory.”
“Then…” Mina took a deep breath. “He’s still alive?”
Morse’s face looked grim. “Barely.”
He glared over Mina, fixing his cold, blue eyes on the far corner of the hold.
Mina turned her head.
Calla lay on the floor, sprawled there in a similar fashion to Mina. She returned Morse’s hateful glare with a dull gaze.
“Why is she here?” was all Mina could say.
“The aether brought her here. As soon as I get you upstairs, I’m tossing her out of the hold. She should be thankful that she’ll die a relatively quick death out in space.”
Calla smiled. “The aether knows that I saved Doyle.”
“After you tried to kill him!” Morse spat.
But Mina didn’t have the energy to feel anything other than relief. Doyle wasn’t dead. She didn’t understand why Calla was there, but she doubted it had anything to do with the aether and was more of her trickery. The female hybrid lay in the corner, twisted in pain like an injured monster. Mina got some satisfaction out of that as Morse picked her up.
With Alice’s help, he took her up the narrow, spiral staircase to the top level.
In the med bay, Doyle lay listening to the hum of the robotic arm and the laser sealing up his wounds. Already it had removed the bullets that had mushroomed inside his chest.
He barely clung to consciousness, but if he slept, he knew he’d never wake again. The cold air of the ship caressed his bare skin. He felt nothing else. Drained and completely wiped of all emotion and pain, Doyle lay on the table as a shell of the hybrid he’d been a week ago.
He didn’t remember why he had survived. How he’d got all the way up here. But he knew he couldn’t have done it alone, and Mina wouldn’t have been strong enough to do it.
What had happened to her?
The question began to gnaw at him. He heard the monitor beep as his heartbeat, erratic and faint, beat rapidly as his fear rose.
Where was Mina?
His fear was erased soon enough when he heard the door hiss open and felt a warm hand on his arm.
A quiet sob. “Oh, Doyle,” she said.
Doyle didn’t have the energy to even open his eyelids, but her presence soothed him. The warmth from the skin-to-skin contact spread from her hand up his arm, then to his chest.
“He’s in a coma,” Morse said.
No, he wasn’t. He was only hibernating, right? If he were in a coma, would he be able to hear them, to feel Mina’s hand?
“When will he wake?” Mina’s voice was far from fear. It was relaxed and tired. At least she had some sense. She knew he wasn’t in a coma.
“He may not,” Morse whispered.
Mina sniffed. “He will. Let him rest.”
To Doyle she said, I’m here.
Doyle silently thanked her. He tried to pass on his thoughts through his adarre, but he wasn’t sure Mina got the message because she didn’t respond.
Morse argued with her a bit, insisting she get checked out. She refused. Doyle inwardly smiled. Mina was still as stubborn as ever. Then, he relaxed, sinking into a warm, dark world. Their voices faded.
Stars came out. Doyle floated along, watching them grow brighter and then dim. They faded in and out like that for some time.
And then, fire.
Chapter Twenty
Calla lay by herself on the cold, cold floor of the Nomad. Despite Morse’s threat to throw her out the hold, they’d left her here. The lights went out, plunging Calla into darkness. Maybe Morse hoped she’d die like this. The coward. He always had looked for the easy way out.
She tried to summon the effort to sit up, to set her own legs. But her entire body was weary. She didn’t even have the energy to hate Morse, Mina, or Doyle.
Maybe it was time to die.
Calla closed her eyes, letting the darkness envelope her completely and the quiet hum of the ship lull her into a false sense of security. The shattered pieces of her core were being blown about by a whirlwind of emotions. Accustomed to feeling only rage, power, and control, Calla almost choked on the other, nameless emotions swirling around inside her.
Morse had said they were on the way to the Factory. Once they arrived, her life would be forfeit anyway. Most hybrids hated her as much as Morse did. It was only because of Doyle that she’d been able to command them. She saw that now.
Well, she’d done the right thing in the end. Funny, she’d never thought of anything being right or wrong before, only of duty and honor.
“The Nomad is returning,” Li said.
He and Lincoln stood in the dark training room, gazing upon the adarria. Once again, Lincoln envied Mina’s ability to communicate with them. He turned to Li, who was supervising moving the Glyph back to the detention center. They were using several floating gurneys to lift the Glyph and get it out of the room. The hybrids gave Lincoln a wide berth as they passed, but their eyes no longer held promises of hate.
“How do you know?”
Li touched his chest in a salute, even though Doyle wasn’t there. “I know.” He jerked his head toward the door.
They hadn’t found Alvarez or Nelson yet. Carter’s body was being moved back to the hospital wing. Lincoln vainly hoped that he wasn’t really dead, that they could use some trick of advanced medicine to bring him back. But Li had assured Lincoln that wasn’t possible.
With a heavy heart, Lincoln turned toward the door. At least, Mina was okay.
He hoped.
Mina stayed with Doyle on the short trip to the Factory. The Nomad obeyed Morse as well as it had Doyle, maybe better. Doors opened a fraction of a second faster when he asked them. The humming that Mina felt, rather than heard, was so faint it seemed to be Mina’s own body moving in a natural rhythm, rather than the hum of a ship in motion.
Doyle didn’t wake, and his vital signs hadn’t changed. Morse insisted he was in a coma. Mina was convinced that Doyle could hear her. She spoke to him some. When she couldn’t keep her eyes open, she dragged a blanket into the med bay and huddled in the corner, watching the table, the rise and fall of Doyle’s chest, the holographic display creating patterns and graphs from his life force.
It was comforting, this room. Mina had first learned of what Doyle was in a similar place underground. At first, she had been terrified. Then, she’d been in awe of him. Then, she’d truly learned to trust him.
And love him.
She wanted to tell him now, again. She stood and walked to the side of the table and looked at his drawn, bloodied face. Mina found some gauze and alcohol in a nearby drawer—simple, human tools amid a myriad of strange, wonderful things.
The blood had dried and stuck to Doyle’s face. It took several passes for Mina to clean it all off. His skin still looked red, though. And
it was hot to the touch, feverish. When she finished, she leaned down and kissed his forehead and then his mouth, letting her lips linger on his.
“I love you,” she whispered. She grasped Doyle's hand.
When Morse came to tell her they had docked at the Factory, Mina was barely standing.
“Doyle would shoot me for letting you stay in here,” Morse said.
“But he knows that short of locking me in the cabin, you couldn’t have kept me out.”
“And he would have shot me for that too.”
Mina looked down at Doyle. “I’m not so sure.”
“He didn’t have to tell me he cares about you. I knew it the moment I woke. But Mina, I’ve never seen anybody do what he did for you.”
Mina looked back at Morse. A pang of fear twisted through her chest. What had he done for her now? Would she ever be able to repay Doyle?
She swallowed her guilt and asked, “What?”
“He told me to get the ship ready. Then, when you fainted, he sacrificed his own protection so the aether could put you on board. He knew he would die.”
Not caring what Morse thought, Mina cried as she looked back at Doyle. “But he didn’t die.”
“No,” was all Morse said.
“What happened to the other hybrid who was with Calla?”
“He wasn’t dead when I left him. If he hasn’t died from his wounds, the Condarri will have found him. I would have finished him myself, but Doyle needed help.”
Mina looked at Morse’s face. It was twisted in anger laced with something else. Regret? Sorrow?
“What was he doing with her?”
“I don’t know. I’ll get Calla to tell us.”
Mina shuddered. As much as she hated Calla, she didn’t want to know how Morse planned to get that information.
Moments later, when they opened the door to the hold, Mina looked over at Calla lying inert on the floor. Calla wouldn’t meet her eyes. Instead, she stared lifelessly up at the ceiling, lost in her own world of pain and suffering.
Unable to think about how her worst enemy had endangered, and then saved, the man Mina loved, she tore her eyes away to look outside. Mina could not—would not—reconcile the Calla she had known with the Calla who now laid on the floor.