“Go.”
Her voice jerked me out of my haze. I pulled back to look at her. “What?”
She slid off the seat, pushing me a little to make room for herself. “We have an opening. Go!”
She grabbed my hand and we were dodging between arms and legs, heading for the back door. Our palms were slick and hot, but we held on. Sweat dripped down my lower back while my mind cycled around a series of thoughts, over and over again, like a mantra: Please let the shuttle be there. Please let Slip be safe. Please let us get out of here. Please let the Axon and Marre be okay. Anger writhed in my stomach at the thought of the enforcers boarding the Tangled Axon, violating her.
Nova, I thought, nudging her with my mind. The first time in my life I’d ever deigned to empathically pray to my sister. I sure could use some borrowed strength right about now.
A woman with antlers turned to me, laughing, bioluminescent moss glittering on the brachiating velvet bone. Red-flecked eyes gleamed as she grabbed at me, danced against me, breathed into my ear. I shrugged away easily, her limbs weak with intoxication.
Tev seized the woman’s arm and turned the stranger toward her. “Who do you think you are, grabbing people like that?”
I touched her shoulder. “Don’t call attention to us.” One of the enforcers was about five people to the left, scanning eyes and glancing around the room. I looked away before we could make eye contact.
Tev released the antlered woman with a shove. The stranger just rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“Touching my crew,” Tev mumbled, face sour. “Fucking othersider groupies.”
We maneuvered away from the nearby enforcer as inconspicuously as we could, dancing our way through the crowd and several songs. Tev turned to me to say something when she stopped, looking surprised and confused at something behind me.
“Why, Captain, I’d never have expected to see you in such a loathsome establishment,” my sister’s elegant voice drawled over my shoulder .
I turned around.
“Nova?” I couldn’t keep my voice down, enforcer amplifiers or no. Where had she come from? “What are you doing here?”
“Did you follow us?” Tev growled, sounding more like Ovie than herself and looking like she wanted to punch my sister. “Did you take my other shuttle? If Birke finds out you’re here—”
“Yes, I took your other shuttle and parked in another lot. It wasn’t that hard. Marre didn’t protest and your wolfman was too busy in the engine room to notice. You think I’m just going to let you drag Alana around without keeping an eye on her? When she prayed to me for strength, I could feel her fear. I’m not about to let my sister get arrested. Enough damage has been done to my family.” She pushed her gold sleeve back to the elbow. “We’re getting you two out of here in one piece.”
Before either of us could respond, Nova flicked a few fingers at me and Tev. A cold pocket of air formed around me; my blood felt frozen in an instant. A million pinpricks shot across my skin, but it was nothing compared to the chronic ache I was used to. Not to mention, I was more preoccupied with what was happening to Tev.
We looked at each other in dazed astonishment. Tev’s hair clumped together, darkened, and sprouted leaves, replacing the blond fall I’d spent so much time imagining draped over my body. She became a woman with ivy tresses, and the green of her eyes grew more vibrant—near-neon in the dark. My skin tingled all the while, my eyes aching as if sleep-deprived.
“Nova,” I said, struggling to speak. It was the only word I managed to get out. How was she doing this? What was this? Why was Tev’s body changing? Why did I feel so strange?
Suddenly, my veins seemed filled with light, I floated with such mindless happiness. I knew the cloud of content that had settled over me was artificial, but I didn’t care. Pain had receded from my limbs and my nerves felt perfectly at ease despite the unnatural process taking place right in front of me. Moment by moment, my captain was replaced by a plant-woman who blended seamlessly into the body-modified crowd.
I laughed a little, drunk on whatever fog had clotted up my mind. Bliss and pleasure muted my incredulity over the bizarre abilities I hadn’t realized my sister possessed. My skin was hypersensitive to every centimeter of fabric. I touched my stomach, reveling in the softness that sheathed me, then let my hands drift up to my face. Again, laughter drifted out of me, so distinct I could almost see the sound. A gold sound. Gold like my sister, gold like Adul. Gold sound that drifted up to mingle with the moving lights above . . .
I realized then my hands trailed over my scaled cheeks. Scaled—so textured! Nova had transformed me into something other, too. Something reptilian. A distant part of me kept thinking, How is this possible?
When I opened my mouth and tickled the air with my forked tongue, the cold sensation made me laugh yet again. All of existence was right here, right in this room with all these beautiful people, right here with me and Tev and Nova . . .
Something heavy pulled at my tailbone. A thick, muscular tail slammed into a nearby patron when I turned around to look at my new appendage, but he just laughed and tugged on it playfully before moving on.
Most incredible was the utter lack of pain. My fuzzy mind was incapable of processing this. No ache, no twinge, no sharp biting sensations. No exhaustion or weariness. Just endless beauty and a feeling like I was connected to everything that had ever existed, ever would exist . . .
“Your eyes,” Tev slurred. “They’re yellow slits now.”
I just laughed and touched her ivy-hair. “You’re leafy. Tev, you’re so beautiful.”
Nova took both of our hands, guiding us through the crowd as we stumbled along in our new, haze-filled bodies. I tried petting my sister and telling her how much I loved her, how beautiful she was too—all these beautiful women in my life, see how lucky I am?—but the gold-sound just fell out of my mouth in a slur. I wanted to find Marre and Ovie and Slip and the Tangled Axon and see how beautiful they looked through my new eyes.
Was this how Dr. Shrike had felt right after her mods? The thought made me laugh. Everything made me want to laugh.
We passed by two different enforcers, the second of whom seemed like she might scan us. The black-armored woman turned toward me and raised her hand to my eyes. My body slowed. Every muscle, every pulse, lasted a lifetime. I watched worlds live and die in those moments, in the palm of her outstretched hand.
Nova stepped between me and the enforcer, a gold sheen flashing over my sister’s eyes. Calm descended over the enforcer’s face. The woman slowly turned her palm toward her own face, staring at the glow emanating from her implant as if it were the most remarkable thing she had ever seen. Tendrils of light escaped from its center, similar to my sister’s knitting. Each thread of light split into several more, winding around her hand and detonating at her fingertips in little supernovae. A sleepy smile transformed her into a wonder-charmed child.
I want that, I thought, my whole consciousness having become a series of wants and sensations. I reached out in the hope of taking the enforcer’s hand so that I could take a closer look at the lights, but Nova guided me away.
“This way, little sister.” Her voice echoed.
I watched ivy-Tev as we bumped our way through the crowd, her vines swaying along her. A lock of ivy draped over her chest, where she stroked it over and over again, marveling at each patron she passed. I wondered what she was feeling, thinking. More than that, I wanted to touch her, to feel the vibrations of her voice along my skin, to smell the leaves in her hair.
Tev and I stepped through the back door, and as fresh air rushed toward me, the world hit me in the face.
There is an entire universe out here, a world that exists outside the building, I thought, and in my haze, nothing had ever seemed so incredible. I looked up to a darkened sky. The clouds above us were heavy with unshed rain; the smell of it was a living thing, crawling inside me. I touched Tev’s arm and pointed upward. Her gaze followed the line of my finger as I leaned over
and whispered, “Think about it. She’s up there. The Tangled Axon. She’s up there, alive, while we’re down here. Everything always exists, all at the same time. Isn’t that amazing?”
Tears welled in Tev’s eyes. She took my hand and pulled it away from the sky. “And we’re here,” she said. “That’s amazing too.”
“Okay, girls,” Nova said. “Let’s keep moving.”
Her voice brought me back just enough to make me wonder why my sister had never told me she could do this. Then my consciousness drifted away again, lost in wonder. When Tev and I started to wander away, Nova reoriented us, directed us, herded us. All was pure sensation—sounds and steps and sky and touch, infinite touch. Bass beat at our chests as we passed clubs. Buildings glittered along the street like a chain of jewels. My pulse throbbed in my head, neck, chest, feet, hands, but there was no pain. No pain! Mel’s Disorder no longer mattered. It was gone, long gone, replaced by sheer physical existence stripped of pretense and baggage and culture. I existed at the exact intersection of my body and the outside world. Why had my sister never given me this gift before?
Each footstep hit the pavement like a small miracle. I bounced into every step just to feel the enormity of my own movements, to feel the realness of my weight as my tail lent me a new sense of balance. Were people all over the system experiencing things like this at the hands of the spirit guides? How had I missed out on something so transcendent? How had I never known about these abilities?
Nova’s hand clamped tight around mine as she moved us along the densely populated sidewalk. Time’s passage had no meaning while so much of me was tucked away inside a pocket of surreality, a wrinkle in my consciousness. I had no idea how far we’d moved from the previous club, or which building we’d entered when we finally peeled away from the outdoor crowd. I tucked my tail around my waist to prevent the door from slamming shut on it, and I laughed at the sight of the scaled, muscular thing that was somehow me and not-me at the same time. This seemed very funny, so I laughed, and the sensation of the laugh in my chest just amused me all the more.
Once inside, the music’s gut-wrenchingly loud bass rattled my bones, and it occurred to me that if Nova hadn’t transported my mind like this, I’d be in tremendous pain by now. More than half a day without Dexitek, with symptoms accelerated by the shuttle ride.
Eh, but who cared? Mel’s no longer existed for me in that moment, so it didn’t matter. Nothing existed or mattered except each step, each breath.
Nova paid our entry into the club, guided the two of us around a corner just inside the doorway, and ducked behind a stairwell partition. The longer I stayed in this consciousness-bubble, the more my perceptions were stirred into a froth. Meaningless, confusing. I couldn’t have cared less about where we were, or the fact that several people had spilled their drinks on me, or that the weight of my tail made me feel entirely too large, because the only things that mattered were touch and smell and light and . . .
Awareness came and went, each moment a mere dust mote passing me by.
Without warning, Nova touched my chest and Tev’s, dissolving our bodies back into their original shapes. Scales receded into my skin, prickling my nerves like a million tiny insects. My tail simply disappeared, tip-to-tailbone, and my eyes ached as I assumed their color shifted back to my usual dark brown. Meanwhile, the leaves fell from Tev’s hair as if autumn had come upon her, and the vines transformed back into the soft, blond hair I was so used to admiring on the ship. Her eyes returned to their normal vivid green in lieu of the false neon emerald.
A sense of time and space reasserted itself as Nova released her hold on our minds. Reality anchored me, snapping back into place like a rubber band.
My calm was short-lived. Instantly, a nerve-lacerating shock of pain snaked down my arms, crippling my hands. I think I might have cried out, but it was lost in the music. My neck felt as if it were made of solid stone instead of flesh. A stabbing migraine throbbed on both sides of my head. My body seemed fragile as spun glass.
Tev was suddenly there, hands on my arms, holding me up. Her voice came from behind a wall of liquid, muffled and distant; I couldn’t make out what she was saying.
Then, the sensation receded to a dull ache and I gathered my strength enough to stand up straight. “I’m okay,” I said, though the worry on Tev’s face told me she didn’t believe me. “Really. I think whatever she did to us just hit me pretty hard.”
“A side effect of the rapid transformation when you have a chronic pain disorder,” Nova said, glancing around the corner as if watching for someone.
“How dare you change our bodies without our permission?” Tev let go of me and raged at her, stabbing her chest with a finger. “Our minds! That’s assault!”
“I helped you get out of there, didn’t I, Captain?” Nova said. “I thought you said you wanted my help getting a treatment for Marre. We can’t do that if you can’t find Bell.”
I did my best to fight off the swells of vertigo and the stabbing sensation that cascaded through my limbs with each heartbeat. “Nova, what the hell was that?” I said.
“You wanted me to lend you strength.” Nova took my face into her hands and examined my eyes. “How are you feeling?”
“Awful!” I batted her away. “What did you do? How did you do that?”
“You should have asked before you changed us,” Tev added. “We didn’t consent to that.” In her distress, Tev kept running her hand through her hair, stopping at the top of her head, then letting the strands fall haphazardly. Every few sentences or so: hand, hair, mess. It made me want to kiss her, even while hurting, even while overwhelmed and confused by what my sister had done.
Tev continued ranting. “You couldn’t be bothered to ask, could you? ‘Hey, mind if I completely remake your body? Mind if I turn you into a shrub? Mind if I drug you and—’”
“There was no time,” Nova said. “There still isn’t. Bell is upstairs, on the roof, in captivity. We should go to her now if you want her help with the device. Or would you prefer to debate consent?”
Tev stiffened. “How do you know she’s there?”
“You’re the one who hired me. I’m a spirit guide; it’s my job to help my clients obtain what they desire.”
“Wait a minute.” Tev crossed her arms. “You mean to tell me you knew all this time exactly where Bell is? You let us run around this fucking sinkhole with the enforcers after us when you could have ‘helped your client obtain what they desire?’” She quoted Nova with a mocking tone. “I could throttle you.”
“I didn’t know where she was until I came in here and was close enough to pick up on it. I’ve had nearly a lifetime to learn the subtleties of Alana’s energetic signature. Bell is a stranger; it’s not as easy.”
“You lied to us.”
Tev advanced on Nova as if she really were going to hit her, but I grabbed her arm. “Captain. Not now.”
“I don’t get you,” Tev said to Nova, jerking her arm away from me. “I’m starting to regret bringing you on board.”
“Oh, really? I’d like to see you fix your strange little pilot without me.”
“Stop,” I said as I doubled-over under the pressure in my joints. Fatigue clouded my head, my coherence slipping away in wisps.
Tev placed her hand on my back, voice melting into me. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, doing my best to ignore the growing knot of pain twisting up my body. “Fine.”
“Then let’s go.” She gestured at Nova to lead the way. “The enforcers could find the ship any time now. When we get back, we’re having a talk about what else you haven’t told us.”
Nova sighed dramatically.
“Don’t ever change me like that again without asking first,” Tev added.
“Okay, cattlegirl.”
Tev turned toward her. “What did you call me? You’d better show respect—”
“Calm down, Captain.” A wry smile curled Nova’s lips. “It’s a pet name. Besides, shouldn’t you pri
de yourself on your heritage?”
“Just go,” I said, clenching my teeth against the ache. Tev was in the right here, but I couldn’t stand listening to them argue like children.
We wound our way up the stairs, careful not to slip on puddles of spilled luminescent drinks or shards of glass from dropped beer bottles. Just as we reached the top, Tev pulled out her biter and held it to the side, away from me, but I flinched at the sight of it. Nova paused, hand on the door, and whispered.
“Put that away.”
“You’ve lost your head if you think I’m going out there unarmed.”
“No, she’s right,” I said, rallying enough strength to speak clearly. “If they see us burst out there guns blazing, it’s over.”
I’d never seen her so eager, so vulnerable to her impulses. She seemed to fight against herself for a moment, working her jaw.
“Damn,” she said, then put the biter away.
“Act confused,” I said. “If we go out there and they see us, just act like a group of drunk patrons who got lost looking for a place to fool around.”
Tev tossed an irritated look at Nova, shook her head, and gestured at the door. “Let’s get this over with.”
Nova waved her wrist over the door and something snicked into place, unlocking it. She pushed it open and the night air billowed over us, below an expansive, cloud-filled sky.
We briefly scanned our surroundings: an empty roof with one stone structure near the far end, and no other people. Wind swept over the building, making it difficult to hear anything. We glanced each other and hurried quietly across. Tev pulled out her biter again, holding it at the ready. Our feet were feather-quiet, but my heart thundered as I struggled against the illness.
As we neared the structure, voices drifted toward us.
“—about our shipment.” Male. Older.
“I’m just interested. You can’t tell me you haven’t researched your competitors.” This voice was smooth and female, with the near-perfect enunciation common for system bureaucrats despite her obviously Heliodoran accent. Judging by the way Tev tensed when she heard that voice, I assumed it was Bell. I raised my eyebrows at her in question and she nodded.
Ascension: A Tangled Axon Novel Page 18