by Azalea Ellis
Adam screamed in pain, then caught himself and arrested his movement with a bubble of ink that squished around him like it was made of foam, absorbing the impact.
Wraith sensed it as the fighter ship that Vaughn had taken down smashed into the destroyer, impossibly finding that same section of ragged hull, already heavily damaged, and crunching right through it.
The destroyer lurched to the side like a drunken man, then crashed sideways into the ground at the edge of the park, throwing up a fountain of dirt and screeching as it crumpled and broke under the force of impact. The sounds of the battle seemed to die down, for a moment, as if the city held its breath. The destroyer shuddered, then stilled. Hopefully, the people heading through the tunnels we’d created beneath the park had already made it out.
I rolled to my hands and knees, then picked myself up carefully, looking around in horror. We’d landed in some sort of office building and smashed through half the cubicles before stopping.
Gregor’s Shadow form stood, more easily than I had, and I let out a sigh of relief, able to focus on Zed instead. I put a hand on Zed’s stomach, pushing Wraith into his body as I searched for injuries. I found extensive bruising and a fractured clavicle, but nothing serious enough to kill him.
Birch let out a cough, then poked his head out of the wall he’d smashed into. He hopped out and gave himself a good shake to get rid of the insulation covering him, then turned to growl at Vaughn, who’d smashed his own indentation into the wall at the corner of the room.
Adam released the bubble of ink, white-faced with pain as he lay twisted on the floor. He looked up to me and shook his head. “I’m okay,” he grunted. “Just racked my back a bit. Nothing Sam can’t help with.”
I nodded, then turned to Vaughn.
The Player struggled to his feet, using the wall as support. He spat out a mouthful of blood. “This goddamn better be worth it,” he muttered to himself, before looking up and meeting my gaze. “We’ve got the order you requested.”
“We’ve got a secure meetup location,” Vaughn said. “The booster is there. Follow me. It’s not safe to stay here.”
Behind us, the park and surrounding city center were in absolute shambles. The whole fracas had taken only a couple minutes. Despite the surprising destruction NIX had dealt the Estreyan ships, I was certain the backup ships from the border of Mordsmouth would arrive momentarily. Nevertheless, I shook my head. “Just tell me where it is. I’ll link up with the rest of my team and we’ll meet you there.”
“I’ll take you there,” he insisted.
“Not without my team. Just tell me where to go.”
An ugly look spread across his face. “There’s no way I’m letting a traitor like you out of my sight. We’re trying to save the world. And since that alien ship was trying to kill you, I’d think you’d be a little more grateful.”
Zed grabbed Adam’s arm and slung it across his shoulder, helping the older boy upright.
“We don’t have time for this,” I snapped. I sent Wraith to search for the fastest path out of the building. Luckily, we’d smashed in on one of the lower floors. “There’s an elevator only a few doors down,” I said. “The lights are still on inside, maybe it still has power.”
I sent a Window to the members of the team who weren’t with me.
—Is everyone out safe?—
-Eve-
—We’re good. Almost to the sealed parking garage. Got a lot to heal.—
-Sam-
We started to move toward the elevator, and Vaughn pushed away from the wall, limping after us. “If you won’t come with me, I’ll come with you.”
Adam’s voice shook, and his ink legs shuddered, but held. “We can’t trust him. What if he leads the rest of them right to us, and they decide they don’t want a fair and square trade?”
“You owe me, Eve.” Vaughn’s voice was strained with urgency. “One small-to-medium favor, right? Or have you forgotten that you came to me when you needed help? Coming along to make sure you don’t play one of your tricks shouldn’t cost more than that. Besides,” he said, as we rode downward in the claustrophobia-inducing elevator, “it didn’t seem like those aliens were on your side. Maybe betraying the humans didn’t work out so well for you?”
He was right, in part. Back when I’d first been forced into the Game, I’d asked him for information about it. I’d promised him a favor in return, and all but forgotten about it, with everything that had happened since. I didn’t really feel like honor was worth risking my safety for, but we had to meet NIX anyway to get the nanite booster paste for Zed, so letting Vaughn come along didn’t change much.
“Fine, you can come,” I said. “But you do realize that everything NIX told us was a lie, right? The Estreyans aren’t attacking just because they’re evil.”
We moved from the ground floor of the building out into the street, running through side alleys till we reached a manhole. At the park, other fighter ships had arrived, and it looked like the mixed group of civilians, military, and Players might be at a disadvantage.
“If any of them want to live,” I said, “you better tell your people to get out of there, now. Players don’t stand a chance against Estreyan warriors.”
“We took out a destroyer,” Vaughn said, following along. “I think we can—”
“No,” I snapped, digging clawed fingers into the metal seal and heaving it upward. “My team deactivated the destroyer’s power channeling system. You, along with a quarter of the city, would have been killed when you first burst out and drew attention to yourselves, otherwise.” I dropped down into the tunnel beneath the street, then helped steady the others as they followed.
The four backup fighter ships unloaded beams of fire in every direction, preventing any follow-up attacks on the destroyer and protecting the single remaining original fighter, which was so damaged it barely managed to stay afloat.
He hesitated, but then started moving his hands about in mid-air, obviously using his VR chip to send a Window to someone. Had he not learned how to control the Windows with his mind?
I kept my voice low as we ran, despite the noise above. “They weren’t even hostile to us, even after we kidnapped and tortured the son of their queen and farmed him for his blood. They had no intention of retaliating.”
“And they became hostile after you broke it out and sent it home to tell its alien friends all our secrets. All this, for what?”
“Is escaping from an organization that has trapped you in a crazy death game against your will not enough reason?” Adam muttered, panting from exertion.
Vaughn sneered at him.
“The Estreyans would never have attacked if NIX hadn’t started developing the super-plague to end all plagues,” I said, and Vaughn’s expression sharpened with interest. He knew about the Sickness, though what, exactly, I wasn’t sure. “They’re trying to protect themselves from us, because we made ourselves dangerous. They’re not trying to kill sick people, Vaughn. They’re trying to wipe out the plague which we brought over from their world and then started modifying to be even more deadly.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I’ve seen what the Sickness can do,” I said. “It drives people just insane enough that they try to destroy everything they ever cared about, and that’s before they turn into mindless cannibals. The Estreyans have reason to be afraid, and they don’t understand us. They believe there are people with the Sickness hiding somewhere in the city.”
He was silent as we splashed through the fetid tunnels. “But you evacuated the citizens. You know these ‘Estreyans’ are a danger to innocent people. They’re destroying the world, and they obviously hold no loyalty to you. It doesn’t matter who started things, we need to finish it. You could help us fight them.”
I shook my head, peering out towards the park. “We stopped to help these people because we could, and because we were trapped in Mordsmouth along with them. But we’ve got bigger goals than taking down a few ships.” I p
aused, then turned to examine him again. “I saw NIX’s base. It was razed right out of the mountainside. How did you escape?”
His lip curled upward in a sneer. “I guess I’m just full of surprises, huh? It wouldn’t be the first time I should have died because of you. At least being instantly incinerated is a better death than being eaten alive like the rest of my teammates.”
I didn’t respond. If I’d tried to save Vaughn from the God of Knowledge, I would be dead. He was there on a Trial, and must have been pulled back via the Shortcut before the god managed to kill him, but I hadn’t had that insurance. Still, I figured leaving someone to die a horrible death wasn’t something you could explain away and get them to just forgive.
I looked at him, taking in the Player uniform, letting it fan the spark of an idea I had ignored earlier. “You were at the military base they just attacked,” I said.
“They’ve been attacking all the obvious targets. We’ve been busy evacuating the most sensitive and valuable people and materials.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You were there because NIX had an interest in preserving something there. A weapon they’d been cultivating.” My muscles tensed as the anger rose, urging me to snap forward and attack. “You evacuated subjects who had the Sickness, didn’t you? And you brought them to hide, here in the city. That’s why they put the barrier up and started threatening everyone’s lives.”
Vaughn’s gaze didn’t waver, but I knew I was right. I let out a scoffing laugh, the rage forcing itself out of my throat with nowhere else to go. “So once again, this is all because of fucking NIX.”
“I warned them,” I said. “They knew about the Sickness, and this is their reaction? They just endangered every—” Anger choked off my words.
“This is bad,” Adam said. “The Estreyans have to think we were involved in the attack.”
Zed let out a humorless laugh. “We were.”
“But now we’ve made enemies of them,” I said. “Before, I’m pretty sure they were just trying to capture us. Now?”
Adam cursed.
We arrived at the abandoned underground parking garage within a few minutes. The others were already there, and had lit a few glow-sticks to bring some relief to the absolute darkness. Birch immediately noticed the infestation of rats and ran to slaughter them. The civilians that had identified themselves as more severely ill or in need of a hospital were set up in one of the corners, with Sam doing triage to see who was most in need of his help.
The rest of the team were spreading out what little food and water we could spare. They all turned to us as we exited the ragged tunnel we’d created earlier to connect the condemned and sealed off underground garage and the sewer line.
When they saw Vaughn, they bristled like angry cats.
Jacky squeezed her fists so hard the knuckles popped, and began to grow.
Kris stood beside Sam, her small wooden puppet in her arms, while her other marionettes moved into a protective formation around the civilians.
Sam’s eyes darkened a little, but not so much that the shadows swallowed his irises.
None of that seemed to bother Vaughn, until Torliam moved away from the wall beside us, where he’d been guarding the tunnel. He placed himself beside me, blocking Vaughn’s line of sight to the civilians and throwing off heat and enough anger to lift the hairs on my arm.
“You’re working with the alien?” Vaughn said, his lips curling back from his teeth in a snarl.
Blue mist wafted up from Torliam, and Vaughn started to vibrate, duplicating himself to create a defensive shield.
I snapped my hand out and grabbed Torliam’s arm. “We need him to lead us to the others,” I said. “They’ve got Zed’s boosters.”
Torliam didn’t respond for multiple tense heartbeats.
Vaughn was similarly frozen, though, rather than self-restraint, he was doing it out of self-preservation. As soon as Vaughn had started to use his Skill, Gregor had slipped back into his Shadow state and pressed both of his daggers into Vaughn’s stomach. With a thought from the boy, they would become corporeal again, and Vaughn would be impaled.
Torliam looked to Zed, to Gregor, and then to me. He let his Skill’s power recede. “I find this abhorrent,” he said.
I nodded, squeezing his arm. “I know. I’m sorry, but I don’t have any other choice.”
He turned his glare back on Vaughn, who very slowly raised his hands and dismissed his vibrating copies. “If you do not fulfill your end of the bargain,” Torliam said, “I will remove your entrails while you still live. I know from experience, it is extremely unpleasant to look down and see your organs outside of your body, while someone pokes and prods at them.”
Vaughn swallowed, his teeth clenched together so hard they creaked. He gave a single, sharp nod.
Gregor reluctantly withdrew his knives from Vaughn’s stomach and moved a few feet away before releasing his Shadow state. “I’ll be watching you,” he said, the threat that much more disturbing coming from an eight-year-old.
The tension wasn’t truly diffused, but without the threat of immediate violence, we all turned our attention toward the civilians. Vaughn surprised me, using a Skill that caused him to glow as he walked among them, spreading the glow to them for a few seconds when he touched them. Vaughn’s wounds seemed to be healed, and the people he touched sighed in relief and wonder as the glow suffused them. It was a healing Skill, and, judging by the way the sight of the light made the rage slip out of me, it might be some sort of Charisma-based mood affecter, as well.
Sam had taken a couple of the sick people aside, around a wall, but their muffled screams still echoed off the cement walls.
“It’s okay,” a man said. “It definitely does hurt. But we don’t need our little toes anyway, and he said I’m cured. Forever. I feel better than I have in years. I think they’re angels.”
A woman snorted. “Are you kidding? Angels coming down from heaven while the world is ending?”
He looked pointedly at Vaughn, still letting off that healing glow.
The woman followed his gaze, and didn’t say anything else.
Adam rested and tried to recover his strength while Sam did what he could to help the injured and sick, offsetting a good portion of the damage back onto them in less debilitating ways. Then we took the civilians to the edge of the city, where a rent-a-pod shop had half a parking lot full of abandoned vehicles. We advised them to leave Mordsmouth if they could, and Adam helped charge up all of their links so they could contact family and keep updated on the news.
Torliam surprised me, laughing with a couple of the humans and even letting a now-healthy little girl, whose parents had been forced into the park along with her by their neighbors, ride on his shoulders.
Some of the pods in the lot were empty, but others held peoples’ belongings. Perhaps they’d been abandoned, or perhaps their owners just hadn’t been able to return for them yet. A chemistry book in one of the pod’s front seats caught my eye. Its cover showed a rock dissolving in acid. I stared at it for a moment, then used my right arm, which was armored, to smash through the window and grab it.
Jacky snickered at my “first step down the life of crime” as I tucked the book away in my pack.
Some of the people we’d helped thanked us, while others were still angry and wary.
We left, following a very impatient Vaughn to the place where his boss and, supposedly, the nanite booster were waiting. It seems they’d had the same idea as us about staying hidden underground, but instead of hastily created tunnels and a condemned parking garage, they had a nice bunker. In fact, it looked like a more refined version of the emergency shelters they’d built after the government first learned about the Estreyans, with actual rooms instead of big open levels for people to pack themselves into.
Walking down into the ground gave me flashbacks to NIX, the feeling of dirt pressing down above me making me tense. We passed a few Players along the way. Some of them recognized me, and some of them seeme
d to recognize Torliam, or at least understand that he was an alien. All of them were hostile.
Vaughn waved them off. “They’re here for a meeting with the boss. Play nice, now.”
When we walked into the room where most of the Players were gathered, I stiffened. The reaction rippled out to the rest of my team, as they realized who it was. "Of course it's you," I said to Kilburn.
He sat perched on a chair atop a raised platform in the corner of the room, like it was a throne.
Despite the weight of all the hostile stares in the room, my fingertips tingled, and my claws slowly slid out, the structure of my hands and feet shifting to accommodate them.
Kilburn rose to his feet without trouble and smiled, whatever damage I’d done to him when we last fought seemingly healed without issue. “I’m glad to see you again.”
I shuddered.
His eyes swept over my teammates, lingering on Torliam a little longer than most. “Please, be at ease. I wasn’t originally slated to negotiate with you, but, when the aliens attacked the base, necessity dictated a change of plans. Whatever our past differences, we have a mutually beneficial goal now, and I have what you requested.”
I threw Vaughn a glare.
Vaughn shrugged, leaning casually against a steel and cement support beam. "I thought you would have guessed."
Chapter 18
Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.
— John Milton
“Please, sit with me,” Kilburn offered, waving his arm flamboyantly and causing a second chair to flip off the ground and onto the platform next to him. “Let’s talk.”
I didn’t move right away. We were in a room full of Players, fairly deep underground. Adam was almost out of energy and wouldn’t be able to help in a fight. Quite a few of the Players were also injured or obviously exhausted, but they had military equipment that could make up for that. We didn’t have the advantage of surprise. And most importantly, I still needed the nanite booster for Zed.