“You’re worthy.” The sound of the voice shocks me. It’s softer, feminine. I stare at the intruder and realize for the first time he is a she. “You will be my new beginning.”
I can’t tell if I’m exhausted or if the words just don’t make any sense. I’m heaving each breath, hands up and ready, when she flicks one wrist. The nyxian weapon retreats into a section of her belt. I’m watching the substance mist through the air, thinking that somehow I managed to scare her off, when she flicks her other wrist.
And for once, I’m too slow.
I see the glint too late, feel the prick before I can pull back, and now something’s crawling up my throat. I stare at the Imago’s satisfied face as it blurs, as the bridge spins beneath my feet. My arm goes numb first. Then my chest feels like it’s locked up, beating against the bars of a steel cage. The stranger shows me a ring on her off hand. There’s a hair-thin needle attached to the end of it. “Screwbone. An effective poison, is it not?”
My tongue’s too heavy to answer. I try to form a fist, to throw a punch. She just laughs. There’s a grunt as Jaime tries to rise but falls. The Imago knocks him aside before lifting me up. I can feel the pressure of her hold, but only distantly, like I’ve already half fallen out of my body. I can’t make my eyes close. I can’t move my neck.
Breathe. I have to tell myself to breathe.
“Be calm,” she warns. “Get too worked up and your lungs won’t be able to sustain it. It is not my intention to kill you, but I can’t keep you from killing yourself if you panic.”
She’s not going to kill me.
My brain lashes itself to that thought. Not going to kill me. Not going to kill me. But why? Why poison me? Light flashes across my vision. We’re moving.
Down a set of stairs. I can hear the river splashing. Everything feels dark and damp and dead. I’m set down on cold stones. Something splashes over my leg, and chills snake up my spine. The stranger cleans out my pockets of the only things that will make me dangerous.
Anything with nyxia: my gloves, my player, all of it. I have a blurry view of her shoving it into my abandoned knapsack before tossing it aside. I hear it land with a thunk before sliding out of reach.
I’m lowered into a boat.
There’s a muted grunt. The engine roars to life.
And then the lights of Myriad start to fade.
Chapter 20
Light in the Dark
Anton Stepanov
I move through the weightless dark.
It’s been two days roaming around Babel’s no-grav tunnels. I keep imagining them as the space station’s organs. They’re dark and vital and everyone forgets about them until they start to bleed. It took gutting an artery to lure in a friend.
A single beam of light dances in the distance. I dig my fingers into the nearest panel to keep myself from floating into sight. Babel’s techie has been fussing with the control panel for a few minutes. I was counting on them sending someone in to give me a good map back out. She’s middle-aged, with dark red hair and quick hands.
The task took her half the amount of time I thought it would.
Wires hang down from the back of a switchboard. The techie’s replaced the pieces I fried and is bunching them together neatly, preparing to close the whole thing up and start back. I’m hoping she’ll lead me to the nearest maintenance closet. I’d like to snag a few gadgets and make my life behind Babel’s curtain a little easier. I need eyes on the station. I need to make contact with Vandemeer and our informant—Melissa Aguilar. But it’s not as easy as pushing through an exit and hoping I land in the right room. If the wrong person sees me, this whole mission was for nothing.
A soft click announces the task completed.
Noiseless, I slip my fingers free of the wall panel. The slightest push sends me floating after the techie. She’s more careful than I am, pulling herself along the wall, keeping tight to the slotted panels. I land soft along one corner of the tunnel before pushing off again.
Down the rabbit hole we go.
Her light leads me through the dark. We skip two tunnels before taking a right. I count fifty panels before she fully turns her body toward a slightly indented section. I let my fingers trail quietly along the ceiling, pulling my body to a stop. If she glances the wrong way and her eyesight’s any good, she’ll see there are monsters in the dark with her.
She doesn’t look.
The panel slides up, and light forces its way into her section of the tunnel. I flatten my body to the wall just in case, but it takes her two seconds to slide into the light and close the panel behind her. I shove down the hallway and stop myself in front of her chosen exit. I press my ear to the door and listen. There’s the gasp of an air lock. Footsteps. Nothing.
I take about three minutes to listen until I’m sure she’s gone.
Carefully, I slide the panel up just enough to look out. There’s a bright room with enough space for two people. One of Babel’s air locks faces a perpendicular hallway.
I count off the minutes in my head. I’m about to slide the panel up when a door directly across from the air lock opens. The red-haired techie waves to someone inside before slipping a utility belt back around her waist. She thumbs one of the devices and disappears down the hallway.
Follow the leader, I think.
The door’s still open a sliver. My eyes trail the equipment hanging from the walls in neat stacks. My only hesitation is the techie’s parting wave. Clearly someone’s inside. Wait them out? Smoke them out? After a few restless seconds, I lift the panel and slide out into the light.
It’s now or never. A quick manipulation draws my nyxia into the shape of a mask. I pull the soft material overhead. If there are Babel cameras waiting for me in the supply room, I want them thinking it’s some on-ship vigilante. I’d like my identity to stay a question mark for as long as possible.
I adjust the eye holes and manipulate my knife into something less Anton. The dagger widens out into blunted knuckles. I flex my fingers on the grip, feel the weight of it, and start forward. There’s an air lock separating the no-grav area of the station from the corridors that have been sealed off by nyxia to create a more Earthlike environment. There’s a hissing sound as the air lock gasps open and suctions. As the entrance opens, Babel’s imposed gravity comes slamming down on my shoulders.
A quick glance left, a quick glance right. No movement.
It takes about twenty seconds to get used to the restored gravity. I set my feet and take a deep breath. One, two, three …
My lowered shoulder opens the door. The room is stacked with goodies. Rows and rows of extra supplies. There’s a single desk to my right, occupied.
“Forget someth—”
The sight of me forces the rest of the sentence back down his throat. He’s too stunned to reach for an alarm or scream through a headset. He just blinks as I bring the weighted knuckles swinging across his temple. There’s a nasty smack, and he spins from his chair, slumping to the floor. I cock my head back, listening, but there’s no response from the hallway.
Hesitation is death. I glide through the rows, collecting conversion cables, live-feed monitors, a set of pliers, a proper flashlight. I shove them into my knapsack before turning back to his desk. I eye the documents stacked there. Just maintenance requests full of half-assed signatures. The first drawer is all standard desk supplies, but the second one’s a treasure chest.
A pair of manuals.
One turn of the pages shows me station schematics and maintenance procedures. I can’t help laughing to myself as I stuff them into the bag. I take a few seconds to tear random items from the shelves. I do my best to make chaos, just in case they try to inventory the room and use what I took as the first step in an investigation. I salute my fallen comrade and glance back into the hallway. Empty. I close the door and hope no one notices the unconscious body for a few more hours. That should be plenty of time to find my way to some other section of the station.
Air lock. Panel.
Darkness.
I smirk my way back through the tunnels. I keep moving until I find a comfortable nook to set things up. With the flashlight between my teeth, I locate Babel’s monitoring cables and get to work. It takes a little less than an hour to patch my way through. I tap the screen on and watch as the image resolves. The security feed loops through images at ten-second intervals.
A glimpse of half-empty docks.
The underbelly of the station’s exterior.
An empty hallway.
The fourth image hits me like lightning. It reaches down into my chest, takes my heart in both hands, and pumps it full of forgotten life. The image brings life to every chamber, every vessel. The screen shows slumped shoulders, a familiar face.
Bilal.
He’s alive.
Chapter 21
Sling
Emmett Atwater
I wake to the night, to wind, to two moons in a foreign sky.
There’s rope coiled around my body. I try to shift my weight, but there’s barely any return from still-dead muscles. We’re on a boat. It’s a smaller version of the ones we’ve always used. I can hear it in the engine, see it in the condensed deck. The river thunders around us. Moss hangs down from branches reaching out over the riverbank.
My kidnapper sits wisely out of reach.
The angles and lighting of the bridge were enough to confuse me. Now, though, the differences between her and the male Imago are plain. She’s taller than they are, her chin more angled, her hair unshaven on the sides. The slight curve of her eyes is intensified by a nyxian implant. It almost looks like a dark comet with a tail spiraling toward her temple. I think of all the reasons someone would kidnap me. My mind jumps to the most frightening possibility.
“Isadora sent you.”
She looks back. “No, though I have heard rumor of her offers.”
The answer leaves me more confused, more afraid. She adjusts her position and I finally see the tattoo on her exposed wrist. She wears it proudly.
Moons swinging around in orbit.
She’s a sling.
I force my voice through the rust. “Who are you?”
“Jerricho of—” She catches herself, though, before saying which ring.
“What? Get kicked out of your ring or something?”
“That is how they define me,” she answers. “I will make a new name in a new world.”
The confidence in her voice sends a shiver down my spine. She sounds like Isadora. She feels absolutely certain about what she’s doing. She’s pleased with herself.
“Especially now that I’ve captured a Genesis.”
“Genesis?”
She nods. “You are one of the Genesis. Our people are at an end. But your people? You are a beginning. With your help, I will walk through the doors that have been closed. You will take me where I could not have gone on my own. A new beginning. Genesis,” she repeats. “You are one of the Genesis.”
I stare at her and finally start to understand. Understanding leads to fear. Speaker used the word cult when he described the slings. I see it now. There’s something in the way she looks at me, the way her fingers drum restlessly. It has my heart rate rising.
I watched these shows with Moms before. Once you’re in the car or on the boat or locked in the basement, you’re dead. I want to shout for help, but who would hear? Even as I try to fill my lungs with air, it’s like someone’s parked a car on my chest. The effort shakes my body with violent tremors. Jerricho frowns.
“Do not strain,” she instructs. “The poison will fade. I need you strong again if you’re going to take me to the stars. It is not my intention to kill you.”
It takes a minute to catch my breath.
“You keep saying that. But your tattoo … You’re a sling, aren’t you?”
The word hits her like a thrown stone. She returns a dark look.
“They use that word against us. As if they aren’t exactly the same. It’s just their political propaganda, nothing more.”
Her answer doesn’t make any sense. Propaganda? “I thought … the tattoo on your wrist. It’s orbiting around, using the planet like a slingshot.”
“And they said we would use you,” Jerricho answers, echoing Speaker’s words. “That we have betrayed our people in choosing this path. Choosing to take our lives into our own hands.”
“That’s what you call this? Taking your life into your own hands?”
She nods firmly. “You’re a light in the dark. A new way out of the labyrinth.”
I swallow again. “You’re not making any sense.”
She points up at the moons. “I do not accept my end. I will go to your planet. Our rulers would have us wait on their mercy, their choosing. A lottery run by politicians.” She laughs her disdain. “I’m saying no to all of that.”
“Bad news. I can’t get you there. As of today, I wasn’t even sure I could get myself out. You can call me the Genesis or whatever, but I’m as stuck down here as you are.”
The words push at her barriers, her dreams. I can see the war inside her head before she growls back, “Even beggars will not give up their secrets easily. You’ll resist, but eventually you’ll teach me the ways of your people. You’ll take me where I want to go, Genesis.”
She turns away, busying herself with the ship’s front console. I take deep breaths, test the movement of my toes and fingers. I’m feeling slight improvements, one minute at a time. For a while we don’t say anything. I watch the stars pass overhead. Both moons glare down at me. One as ghostly as a faded pearl, the other marred by those angry red scars.
After a few minutes, I finally piece together the other thing that’s digging under my skin.
“You’re a woman.”
She turns back. “How observant of you.”
“But we—I thought there were only a few left. Babel’s never seen a woman outside of Sevenset. And the whole no-kids thing, I just kind of figured—”
Her eyes darken again. “More lies.”
I lean back, unsure what to think about that. Who’s lying? Babel or the Imago? Babel told us that was the whole point of us coming. A society without children. We were a temporary relief from the pain of that reality. Longwei said it more clearly than Babel ever did. All the reports and the facts pointed to there being no women. It’s not like the other Imago have contradicted it, either. We know their people agreed to host Babel as long as they sent the young and the innocent. Those same currents ran through their negotiations over the bases too. Kit was one of the three youngest marines in space. Babel’s been clear about this from jump: the Imago wanted us to come here.
I can’t put the puzzle together. Someone’s removed a piece on purpose, trying to keep us from seeing the whole picture. Smart money’s on Babel. I’m thinking through the clues when a loud ping echoes out from Jerricho’s radar. She hunches back over the console, muttering. It takes all my effort, but I push myself up into a sitting position, my back pressed against the hull.
My hands and feet are both bound. There’s still a nauseating wave of terror working through my stomach. Calm down, I think. Be calm. There’s enough slack in the ropes that I can draw my knees up to my chest. Jerricho notices, eyes me for a second before seeing I’m harmless, and turns back to the console. There’s a blue dot hovering on the outer reaches of the radar.
Someone is coming.
All my nyxia is gone. The ship’s engine sits up front, I realize. Jerricho’s wisely placed me against the back railing, centered between a pair of nyxian defense stations. My mind runs back through all the ways Bilal and Azima used them aboard the ship. Nets and shields and canvas, but weapons, too. Bilal’s favorite was the pulse cannon. Thinking about the bright streaks it used to launch across the Waterway, I get another idea.
My uncle always kept a flare gun inside his boat, just in case. We never had to use it, but I’ve held it in my hands before, felt the weight of it. If I could get my hands on the console, maybe I could manipulate the station in
to something like it. Send up a flare and jump overboard.
But Jerricho has made sure I’m safely out of reach of both consoles. I glance left and right. On one side, moonlight paints the riverways bright as snow. On the other is an empty plain that looks just like everything else in Grimgarden.
I shift my weight to one side and keep watching Jerricho. She’s focused now, increasing our speed, sliding us down a new stretch of river. She’s not watching as I dig my right heel down, searching. Old habits never die. It came in handy when Isadora and Roathy attacked, and now it might be the only thing that can save me.
I finally feel it between my heel and boot. It’s the size and shape of a coin. Small, but it’s always been there, waiting for a moment like this. I just have to keep her talking, distracted.
“They’re chasing us.”
Jerricho makes a thoughtful noise. “I doubt it’s any friend of yours.”
I answer without hesitation. “That’s my family back there. The second you took me, you guaranteed they’d be coming for you.”
“Family.” Jerricho chews on the word. “You could be right. More likely, though, it’s a member of my family. And we’re not above murdering one another for the right price. Others will want you for themselves. As I said, the Genesis are valuable.”
I shift my weight again and let my eyes drag over the river. I crane my neck, hoping to draw Jerricho’s attention away from the work of my boots. I can feel the piece of nyxia moving now. It’s not easy work, but I manage to get it to the inside of my ankle.
I can’t remember when I replaced the piece I used against Roathy and Isadora, but I know why: because there’s always a threat. A sliver of nyxia for desperate times. The rhythmic ping doesn’t sound. The other ship is falling behind.
“Try and keep up with me now,” Jerricho whispers.
She pulls up a map of the riverways, examining it, plotting a new course. It’s the distracted moment I’ve been waiting for. I have seconds at the most.
Nyxia Unleashed_The Nyxia Triad Page 14