by Loren Walker
PART TWO
I.
This was what Phaira could remember.
Under cover of woods, she and Cohen came upon the enemy freighter: no sign of activity, no sounds, cold and looming. She found the access panel between the ion engines. They forced it open and slipped inside.
Her XK-Calis firearm primed, Phaira did a basic sweep of the engine room. Deserted. Cohen mimicked her every move, wielding her other Calis. They crept into the adjoining compartment. Trash in piles everywhere. A corpse lay half-buried in the corner, surrounded by more junk and abandoned technology. Cohen covered his nose with the crook of his elbow. Phaira breathed through her mouth and kept moving.
Voices rippled from the next section. Phaira slid her back against the wall as she glided to the entryway. The sliding door was open just a crack, light and activity on the other side. Phaira nudged it with her foot. It would move easily when pushed.
She caught Cohen’s eye, and with her free hand she counted down from three. Then she kicked the door open.
Seven men and women knelt on the floor amidst debris and wreckage. They didn’t move at the loud bang.
Cohen ducked in behind Phaira, his Calis at eye level. Phaira’s laser target swept the room, searching. It found its mark in the older woman, who slowly stood up. The leader: mid-sixties, five-foot-six, olive skin, short silver hair, hands concealed under a white wool cape, swept over her right shoulder.
“Stay where you are,” Phaira ordered. “Hands up.”
The woman didn’t move. She didn’t blink either, observing Phaira and Cohen without expression. Phaira opened her mouth to issue another warning.
Then her vision blurred. She blinked to clear it, but her eyes refused to focus. And her heart was beating hard and fast.
Still aiming the Calis, Phaira groped with her free hand, trying to find the doorframe, something to hold onto for support. Inside her head, blurry images and distorted sounds flashed, whispers and accusations layering upon themselves.
The grey-haired woman raised her hand. The voices grew louder. Next to Phaira, Cohen dropped to his knees, clutching at his chest. All Phaira could see were red spots, bleeding together.
She put all her focus into squeezing the trigger of her Calis. Then everything went dark.
Did she dream? She wasn’t sure.
But suddenly, the blackness lifted. A single light bulb flickered, wedged into the corner of the ceiling. Stale, claustrophobic air. The sound of her brother breathing, his body at her feet. Her head pounding in pain.
Phaira ran her hands over her body, taking stock. Nanotube armor removed. Calis pistols gone. Lissome removed, and no boots either. She flexed her cold, bare feet. No major injuries, other than being naked under some ugly dress. Stripped while unconscious. Fantastic.
Phaira sat up and scanned the room. Six feet, squared. No visible exit. She let her fingers roam over the walls: there had to be some kind of panel, or vent…
Cohen groaned. Phaira laid a hand on her brother’s shoulder. His immediate wince told Phaira that he shared the same headache. “What happened?”
“I think they drugged us,” Phaira coughed, her throat dry. “Through the ventilation system. And then that leader did something to knock us out.”
“I heard things,” Cohen rasped. “In my head. When she looked at us.”
“I know,” Phaira confirmed, resisting the urge to shudder. “Me too.”
Cohen lifted his head, his eyes bulging. “Wait. Maybe we shouldn’t talk. Or think.”
“I don’t think it matters at this point, Co.” She resumed her search for an exit.
“Then why try to break out?” he bemoaned. “What’s the point?”
“Just because they can read our minds doesn’t mean we just sit around and wait to - ”
Phaira closed her mouth on the last word. She didn’t want to say it out loud. But she knew how much trouble they were in. Unarmed, no obvious means of exit, held captive by a powerful gang with untold abilities...
Suddenly, a crack broke through the wall. The room flooded with light. Three silhouettes stood in the threshold of the secret door. Cohen scrambled to his feet but they were fast; two of the men pushed him back into the cell. The other grabbed a hold of Phaira’s arm and yanked her out. The door slammed shut, reverberating from Cohen kicking at the door.
Phaira turned on her heel, grabbed hold of the guard’s arm and flipped him over her shoulder. Then her head exploded with pain. Her hands flew up by reflex, just long enough for the two remaining guards to restrain her.
Writhing, Phaira used everything from her teeth to her fingernails on them. The guards slammed her face-first against the wall, knocking the breath out of her, and bound her wrists beyond her back, followed by her ankles. Then one hoisted Phaira over his shoulder and carried her into a windowless cell that smelled of lilacs and sour body odor. Waves of fabric were tacked to three of the walls; bright sheaths of color drooped in places, exposing the dull, rusty decay underneath. Books were piled in every corner, along with crumpled papers, and pictures in organized stacks. The fourth wall held no decorations: just five metal strips, spaced two feet apart, running from floor to ceiling.
The guard set Phaira in front of one strip, while the other flicked a switch by the door. Phaira’s wrists jerked back, magnetized to the wall. Then her ankles followed. Surprised, Phaira leaned her body forward and wiggled. No give.
This was an old freighter, she remembered. Magnets were used to keep crates from sliding around.
I’m like a prow of a damn ship, Phaira thought suddenly, fighting the urge to laugh. Instead she just grinned, aware that her dark mouth, pale eyes and wild hair made her look like a maniac.
“Please leave, gentlemen.”
That gray-haired woman again. The guards bowed their heads at the command. The woman took a moment to touch each of them on the forehead before the two men shuffled out of sight.
All pretense, Phaira thought. Oh so magical and spiritual? You’re a stereotype, lady.
“I hear that, Phaira Byrne,” the leader said. “And rather than ‘lady,’ you may call me Huma.” There was a light gash across the woman’s cheekbone; Phaira’s Calis had made contact after all. She enjoyed a small twinge of satisfaction in that.
“So what now?” Phaira asked loudly. “You going to kill me, or take me back to the Macatias? I don’t think they care what condition I arrive in.”
Huma’s thin eyebrows knitted together.
“Well?” Phaira pressed.
Huma smirked. “We don’t want you at all. How arrogant you are.”
The truth struck Phaira like a slap across the face. They were after Sydel. She cursed herself for being so blind. Dammit. And she’d brought the girl right to the slaughter...
“No slaughtering, Phaira,” Huma corrected. “Nothing so barbaric.”
“You’re one to talk about barbarism, with all those people you blew up,” Phaira shot back.
“If you read the facts, Phaira, you would have seen that no one lost their lives,” Huma pointed out. “And true: not the noblest methods to use. But in the short-term, wonderfully effective in uncovering others like us. Like Sydel.”
She smiled then, flashing even white teeth. “Such an unexpected gift. I didn’t believe it when my students returned with the discovery. But tests proved they were correct, and all the pieces fit together.”
As she spoke, Huma’s jugular vein pulsed through her skin. Phaira fixated on that throbbing artery. It was taunting her: so exposed, so close. She moved her wrists, back and forth.
“Well, she’s a pacifist,” Phaira said, keeping her tone bored. “So good luck with convincing her to blow people up. I don’t envy you.”
“It’s so much more than that, Phaira,” Huma sighed in a way that made it clear she believed Phaira to be an idiot. “You have no idea what she is capable of, do you? For someone so young, she is - ”
“She’s not as young as she looks,” Phaira interrupted, e
choing Yann’s words back at the Communia.
It did its trick; a tiny pin of uncertainty showed in Huma’s face.
“You don’t know what you speak of,” Huma said finally.
“Says you.” This was fun, finding ways to irritate this woman.
Huma studied Phaira for several moments. “You’re an Eko,” she determined, surprise in her voice. “Not much of one, but you can receive, at least. How curious. But given that, I will be generous. I will let you go, and your brother too, for a simple exchange. Your brother and your life, for Sydel.”
Phaira shifted her position. “She doesn’t belong to me.”
“Sydel is used to following orders,” Huma said. “If you tell her to, she will. And she will be the key to stopping a great tragedy, I promise you that.”
Phaira stopped fidgeting. “What tragedy?”
Huma ignored the question. “That is my offer.”
“The answer is no.” Phaira shifted her body again, trying to slip one hand under the other. It was so close; the bone of her right wrist ground against the restraint, the only barrier left….
Huma’s left palm pressed into the top of Phaira’s chest, hot and dry.
Startled, Phaira tried to jerk away, but Huma held firm. Then the edge of the woman’s right thumbnail streaked down Phaira’s forehead, as if to peel her open.
The world went cold. Phaira’s brain ran over with faces, emotions, sped-up memories. An icy hand dragged its talons over the surface, over and over again, digging into the crevices of her mind. Phaira tried to twist her body away, but her brain wasn’t listening to her pleas, releasing all her thoughts into Huma’s waiting hand. Over the din of her exploding consciousness, she heard Huma’s murmur: “Oh, Phaira. What a catalogue of experiences.”
A memory swam to the surface: nineteen-year-old Phaira, her first overseas mission, firing a Vacarro sniper rifle; dragging an injured comrade into shelter. Fixed defenses. Slopes and sand dunes. Platoon scattered. Heroics are the best way to get killed. Just like that, a man is dead: his intestines blown, his eyes bulging and sinking. The assault seems like hours, but it’s only twenty seconds.
A more recent memory: Phaira huddled under a bridge, counting the rana coins left in her pocket. The smell of garbage and filth. Her skin crusted with dirt. No one would hire. No one would help. Was her only option to offer her body? The humiliation, the burning temptation to press her knife into her wrist, to press down and stop pretending.
Then: bright lights and roaring crowds. Her hair in braids to keep it from being pulled; too-tight, borrowed gloves; the taste of bitter plastic in her mouth. Keep to the center of the ring, get out of the fence. Wait for an opening, then cut an elbow across the face. Double leg pick-up and drop: an explosion of punches. The pulse, the sweat and breath. Blood on the mat, blood on her hands, speckled over her face. The satisfaction when the muscle tore from the bone, when the ligament finally snapped, her arm raised in victory. Backstage, in celebration, one of the other fighters gave her a roll of mekaline, so readily available in the roster: then that first hit of blissful, blood-pumping, ecstatic shame…
“Stop,” Phaira gasped.
“Do you concede?”
Phaira wrenched away from Huma’s hand, desperate to escape, to release a limb, to hit this woman as hard as she could.
“No. Not yet,” Huma concluded. “Let’s go deeper, then.”
The icy claw plunged through Phaira’s brain. The pressure made her body spasm as a deeper memory was hauled out.
Renzo. Ren. Barely breathing. Hooked up to machines, doctors scurrying around him. His leg destroyed, his skull caved in on one side. Her brilliant brother, older by just one year; her stubborn, bossy, prickly brother who barely saw the sunlight with all the work he did: the victim of a brutal assault for no good reason. Wrong place, wrong time. His genius gone, his life ruined forever.
Another silhouette came into her mind’s eye. Phaira shook her head, trying to push him back down, but that icy hand drew his face into the light. Black hair cut short. Perfect, pale skin. Brown eyes that barely blinked. Handsome, sneering, arrogant. Young, untouchable heir to a fortune.
And she was back on the bridge. Midnight. His hands around her throat. Blood oozing through his perfect smile. The satisfying crack of his head snapping back. A stumble and trip. His hands gripped the edge, and then were gone before she could take a breath. His mouth a perfect black circle as he fell. The sickening smack echoed through the concrete ravine. Her hand still outstretched to catch him. The surge of relief. The sickening drop of her stomach.
Then it was over. The walls and the smell of the freighter returned. Phaira could breathe again, could hear Huma’s smug, breathless voice: “So she defends you, even though you are a killer. How curious.”
Phaira lunged at Huma with teeth bared. Huma shrieked, jumping out of reach. Glaring, unseeing, Phaira tried to form a strategy on how she would make this woman suffer. But she couldn’t stop shaking.
Her hand to her throat, Huma settled her features again. “They are outside now,” she said finally. “Come. Let us negotiate.”
She swept out of the room. The magnets released suddenly. Phaira dropped to the floor; her muscles had given up. The guards returned and loosened her ankle bonds. Her legs were trembling, but the guards grasped her on either side and marched on.
Filtered light through trees, and sharp wind. The rusty metal platform dug into Phaira’s bare feet. Sydel and Renzo stood in the grass below, aiming one of her old Compact pistols at Huma, who waited on the ground with one of her followers. Standing next to her brother, Sydel’s brown skin was ashen, her long reddish-brown braids lifted by the gale. No sign of Cohen.
When prodded, Phaira made her way down the stairs, willing her body to remain upright. Despite her determination, her muscles gave out when she reached the ground. Her knees sank into the cold, wet mud.
Then one of the boy followers was behind her, his knee in her spine, yanking on her hair to expose her neck. She thrashed, trying to get away. But her throat caught on fire, and everything turned red and breathless. Voices wove in and out, warped and garbled.
And when she woke up, she was in the old Volante, bed sheets twisted around her legs, like it was all a dream.