Song of Scarabaeus

by Sara Creasy

  “What if the Hoi’s gone? The skiff can’t make that jump.”

  “We can use the satellite to send a distress call through the node.”

  “But the nearest ship is probably that patrol vessel with Natesa on board.”

  Finn raised his shoulders in a small shrug as he chewed on a pro-bar. “Let’s hope not. First hurdle is Haller. If he’s seen even a fraction of what we’ve seen, I’m betting his mind’s still set on taking biocyph from that BRAT

  and using it to create something he can sell.” Something unique and dangerous and valuable—a tempting combination. “He’ll send you back in there, with or without me.”

  She knew what he meant. Haller would kill Finn if he had to. “So what’s the plan?”

  “Let’s veer off course a little, in case he’s digging through to meet us. We’ll exit a few hundred meters from where they expect us and make our own way back to the skiff. I’d rather deal with Cat than with him.”

  As he took another bite, a flash of purple and red crossed his knuckles. Edie stared at her own hand, where color streaked across the skin. She looked up and drew in her breath.

  All around them, the once colorless jungle lit up with glimmering rainbows. The translucent vines, glistening with moisture, refracted the sunlight, acting like an endless network of shifting glass prisms. Shafts of light vibrated through the mist creating ethereal curtains of jeweled lace. Everywhere the jungle wildlife shimmered with dappled flecks of every hue.

  Her catastrophic failure had transformed into an exquisite wonderland.

  “Look at what I made, Finn.”

  He watched her, a smile playing on his lips. “It’s just physics.”

  More than that: she’d have one good memory to take away from this place.

  As they continued on, the effect faded whenever the sun moved behind clouds, only to burst into a radiant kaleidoscope again minutes later. For a full hour they walked through the dazzling new world, and then the sun moved higher and the angle of light changed, and the jungle was again reduced to ghostly shades of gray.

  After another hour, the vegetation thinned out noticeably and they picked up the pace. Occasionally they caught glimpses through the undergrowth of open land and mountains. From the initial flyover, Edie knew the terrain out there was pretty rough, but it couldn’t possibly be harder to move through than the jungle itself.

  A glint caught her eye, several meters ahead. This wasn’t another trick of the light—it was a flash of metal. She pointed it out wordlessly for Finn, two paces behind her, and he signaled for her to get down. It could only mean one thing—they’d met up with Haller and his team. But that shouldn’t have happened. They’d deliberately gone off course.

  They crouched and waited, listening. The sounds of the jungle permeated the air—the chirps and calls of concealed creatures, the scuttling of tiny legs, the rustle of slithering vines overhead. But nothing human, other than their own breathing.

  Finn hesitated, and she knew he was uneasy about leaving her unprotected, but they had to know if Haller was nearby. As Finn moved off, Edie quickly lost track of where he was. For a big man, he moved with amazing stealth. Then came the click of the rifle engaging. She tensed. But there was no shot. Moments later he was back at her side.

  “One of the serfs. Must’ve decided to take his chances in the jungle instead of with Haller.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Stripped to the bone, like Zeke.” His tone was unemotional, but from the abrupt way he stuffed his things back into his pack, Edie could tell he’d been affected by what he’d seen.

  He started moving again. Edie jumped up to follow.

  “Maybe the slaters dragged him there.”

  “I don’t think so. All his stuff is still with him—belt, pack, shiv. That’s where he went down. It was—”

  He stopped, turned to her, changed his mind, and kept walking.

  “Finn?”

  “From what’s left of him, I think it was the guy from the engine room.”

  “The one you saved?”

  “Yeah.”

  He moved faster, perhaps still not entirely convinced they were safe from the slaters.

  Within half an hour, the layers of vines overhead became a loosely woven web, a matted roof that curved downward, so low Edie could reach up and touch it. They were meters from the perimeter, where the vegetation was both less varied and less vigorous. This was the growing edge, the boundary between the new world and the old. They pulled aside the drape of vines and stumbled into the open.

  “There she is.”

  Finn pointed to a plateau several kilometers away, the only flat land in sight. In the bright noon sunlight, the skiff glowed. Just one skiff. Cat had said that an engie was coming down in the other one, but there was no sign of it.

  They followed the perimeter of the megabiosis for a hundred meters, checking for further signs of Haller’s team, and then Finn turned sharply away and headed out across the uneven scrub.

  Edie looked back at the megabiosis, a tangled infestation spilling out from the central BRAT, latching on to and mutating the existing native wildlife, and sprouting up from the earth from the BRAT’s network of rootlets.

  Look at what you’ve done.

  The words of Bethany’s killer. She didn’t want to think of what she’d done. Her childish folly had recreated a world and it had tried to kill her. Let it fester now, or fail. Scarabaeus had given her its song, and she was determined to use it.

  She heard a sound behind them, from within the jungle. The strangled scream of something dying or half dead. Something human.

  “Finn—wait!” She ran around the perimeter and found a place where the vines had been hacked away to make a large hole. It had partially closed over, but this must be where Haller and the two serfs on his team had entered. Cautiously, Edie climbed inside.

  Haller had almost made it back out. He was only twenty meters from the entrance. His body hung from the overhanging vines, grotesquely distorted, bones sticking out through ripped flesh. This wasn’t the work of slaters. Every part of his exposed skin was pierced by tendrils that snaked into his body. His chest cavity, partially open, pulsed with blood and muscle, the organs almost unidentifiable because they were covered in a mosaic of glassy growths. And body parts were missing. From the hips down there wasn’t much left at all—the stumps of his legs blended into the undergrowth. Where his nose should be was a spongy nest harboring tiny crawling worms, and areas of his skull were cracked open.

  Yet he was alive. The jungle was digesting him but it was also feeding him. Haller’s eyes followed Edie, bright with fear.

  Finn drew a sharp breath as he pulled up behind her. Nearby, buried under debris and vines, lay the body of the second serf on Haller’s team. His flesh was shredded, his tunic riddled with the unmistakable signs of spur bullets.

  “That guy got the better deal,” Finn said.

  Edie glanced from the dead serf to Haller’s mangled body and could only guess at what had happened. Something had spooked them, perhaps, or an argument had started for some reason. With Haller, it seemed, such incidents seemed to escalate quickly. If his shield generator had been damaged in the fight, the serfs’

  shields, connected to his, would have failed as well. Haller had shot one of them, and the other had run off and fallen victim to the slaters.

  Haller gurgled blood and spittle as he dragged air into his lungs, his face twitching.

  “Did you see…” he rasped.

  Edie moved closer, sickened by the sight but drawn out of sympathy.

  “Did you see all the colors?” He must be talking about the light show earlier. He had been here much longer than that, though. His eyes refocused on Finn.

  “Wouldn’t say n-no to a bullet in the brain. Can the Saeth sh-shoot straight?”

  Finn turned on his heel and walked out.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Finn!” Edie ran after him, tripping on the debris littering the ground. �
��You have to finish it for him. Please!”

  He didn’t slow down. “Not worth wasting a bullet.”

  She grabbed his arm but he shook it loose, almost knocking her down. There was no point trying to wrestle the rifle from him. They were out in the open again, in the rocky foothills of a distant mountain range, and the skiff beckoned. She stopped and looked back at the jungle, her instincts telling her to stay near Finn, but she couldn’t leave Haller like that.

  And not so long ago she’d been thinking kindly of Finn for trying to save Kristos. He’d do that, but he wouldn’t end this man’s fear and agony.

  “Finn, get back here!” She remained resolutely at the jungle’s edge while he ignored her, striding on ahead.

  “You walk twenty minutes in that direction and you’ll be out of range. You’ll be dead!”

  He continued up the rocky incline. She tried a different tack.

  “I’ll jolt you,” she yelled after him, tears squeezing from her eyes. “I’ll zap your fucking brains!”

  He stopped, turned slowly, and came back. Stepping up close, he glared down at her.

  “What did you say?”

  “Give me the rifle or I’ll do it.”

  He cocked his head as if calculating the likelihood she was serious.

  “I’m serious,” she said, for good measure.

  He gave her a slow, cold smile, turned and started retracing his steps up the slope. He didn’t look back.

  Damn. She was furious, but it wasn’t enough to break her promise to him.

  She ran in the other direction, into the jungle, to confront Haller again. Finn wasn’t stupid enough to go out of range. He would wait for her.

  Suspended above her, Haller wept watery blood that made pink trails down his face. A white worm crawled over his skin, sucking up the tears, leaving puckered red marks in its wake.

  “You can do it, there’s a g-g-good girl.” His eyeballs rolled around in their sockets, as if he was having trouble controlling them.

  “No spur,” she said.

  “Ohhhh…” He sounded disappointed.

  Haller’s weapons were nowhere in sight. The rifle must be buried under the nest of vines that had formed around him, and as for his spur—if he’d been wearing it when this happened, she couldn’t tell now. Most of his right arm was gone, blending seamlessly into the vines in a medusa-like tangle. His left arm bubbled beneath the skin, oozing a yellowish fluid, and tiny stalks sprouted along a deep split down the length of his forearm.

  She had a blade, but she couldn’t physically reach his chest or head, the two places it seemed likely a stab wound would kill him. She couldn’t believe she was even considering doing such a thing.

  How to kill him mercifully with her bare hands? She could no longer tell where he ended and the jungle began. The vines rippled over and within his body, pulsing with life. With a shudder Edie realized the jungle was not going to kill him, not for a while. It was integrating him into the ecosystem. The men who died had been torn apart by the slaters for food. Kristos had died quickly, in the end. Zeke had avoided that fate for as long as his shield lasted, and then he too was devoured. But Haller had been taken alive, his body invaded by cyphviruses, and the biocyph was using his living cells as the machinery to create something new, as though he were a welcome part of the ecosystem.

  “Do something.” His voice was thready and raw, his eyes stark with terror. “I can feel it inside me, thinking my thoughts. Nooo…I’m th-thinking its thoughts…We…I don’t like it.”

  “I can help you.” She hardly dared acknowledge to herself that she’d thought of a way. “But I need you to help me.”

  No way to tell if he was still listening. One of his eyeballs caved in, pulled through from the inside, and the remaining eye lolled about.

  “Someone on the Hoi planted that flash bomb,” she said, and a ragged eyelid blinked over his eye. “Someone wanted Zeke’s team dead. Who did it? The captain? One of the engies?”

  From what was left of his throat, Haller made a sound that might have been a snort of derision. “What’re you doing here, teckie? Lag said you were…d-d-dead.”

  Ignoring the non sequitur, she tried again, worrying that he would become delirious before she could get anything helpful out of him. “Listen to me, Haller. I can give you a quick death—that’s what you want, isn’t it?

  Tell me who betrayed us. Was it rads? Did someone give away our position? Was it you?”

  “I would never hurt you. It was…I didn’t think it could be. Didn’t think. But t-two ambushes, what’re the odds?

  It’s the baby…” Haller rambled on, making no sense. His voice was a hoarse whisper, and she moved closer to hear. “…a b-b-baby grandson. He wants out.”

  “The captain? Haller, are you talking about Rackham?”

  “Rackham…he’s no war hero, let me t-tell you that. Listen to the trees…” He drew a breath and cried out, but the sound was nothing more than a silent, coarse rush of breath. “Can you hear them? Why did you never do what you were told? J-jump when I tell you, teckie. Do what you have to. Make it all go away. Th-that’s an order.”

  Edie’s shiv swam before her eyes. She pushed up her sleeve and cut into her forearm, inside the elbow. Using the tip of the blade, she dug the implant out of her flesh. There was no pain—at least, the pain didn’t register.

  She focused on the shard of plaz from her arm, a centimeter-long sliver, slippery with blood. It contained several months’ worth of the drug that kept her alive. Even small doses were lethal to non-native Talasi—a few seconds in contact with Haller’s bloodstream would be enough. She just needed to deliver it.

  Edie grabbed the vines, finding footholds, climbing closer to the shreds of Haller’s body. His single eye watched her. Open wounds all over his torso leaked blood, some infested with worms.

  “Are you…are you going to do it?” Haller slurred the words through distorted lips.

  “Yes.” Her voice cracked on the word.

  “All over now. All over…”

  She could only get close enough to reach his arm. She pressed the implant against the torn flesh, taking care to keep a hold of one end between her fingertips. His muscle tissue twitched as the tiny device, sensing no neuroxin in Haller’s blood, pumped the drug into what remained of his body.

  Haller convulsed and the vegetation attached to him shook. The neuroxin was acting faster than she’d expected. Before she could jump away, the jungle began thrashing like a crazed beast with something distasteful caught in its jaws. Worried she would lose her grip on the implant, Edie withdrew and closed her fist around it. She slid down the vines, landing on her back, and rolled free of Haller’s nest. Above her, the vines snarled and writhed, ripping apart his flesh.

  The jungle thrummed with rage. Edie struggled to her feet, jamming the implant into the pocket of her jacket, and ran clear of the megabiosis. She scrambled up the incline, following the path she’d seen Finn take.

  She looked back only once. The jungle seethed around the gaping hole where Haller had been entombed and then collapsed in on itself, crumpling and compressing, sealing the wound.

  Edie climbed for only a few minutes before she came upon Finn, hunkered down against a rock. He faced away from the slope, not watching for her approach, though he must’ve heard her. He took a swig from a water tube. He didn’t ask what had delayed her, didn’t comment on the patch of blood soaking through the sleeve of her jacket, if he even saw it.

  Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he looked up at her, squinting against the high sun, and said flatly,

  “Don’t ever threaten me again.”

  Her mind still reeling from what she’d just seen and done, she gathered together every gram of willpower to fight back the anger and more tears. He’d refused to help a dying man with one merciful bullet.

  “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t help.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  The brutal honesty of his reply disarmed her.
Yes, she understood. His experiences meant he didn’t think like she did. She just hadn’t thought that would make him immune to human suffering.

  That was an unfair assessment. He’d tried to help Kristos and the serfs in the engine room. He’d already explained himself: he wasn’t going to fight for someone who considered him worthless.

  “Then you must understand why I threatened you,” she said.

  “I understand you were angry. I don’t understand why you’d make a threat you had no intention of carrying out.” He got to his feet and rubbed the back of his neck. “You had no intention of jolting me, right?”

  “Right,” she conceded grudgingly. “Please don’t tell me this was another test to see if I’d keep my promise.”