Zenith

by Sasha Alsberg

  “I’m also a Revivalist,” Soyina said, drawing Dex’s attention back again. “With every death comes the chance for a second life. The opportunity for more information. I bring them back, as long as I’m within the three-minute window, of course.”

  “With what?” Andi asked. “How can you bring a dead man back to life?”

  Soyina chuckled arrogantly, clearly relishing Andi’s ignorance. “With science, dear girl!”

  This was the downside to working with someone like Soyina. She loved to talk and brag and talk some more. Dex’s head was beginning to spin, wondering how he’d ever taken an interest in a woman who was so clearly off her axis.

  He glanced sideways at Andi.

  Two women, then.

  “The map, Soyina,” Dex reminded her. “You have it with you?”

  She blinked, a crooked smile on her lips as she seemed to come back to the present. “Before we dive into the matter at hand, I hope you remembered the payment I requested?”

  Dex took another healthy gulp of his drink, relaxing as the fire swam into his bones. “Half of your payment has already been anonymously wired to your account. Untraceable. When the mission is complete, you’ll get the other portion. You’re sure you can’t go with us?”

  Soyina lifted her wrist and rolled her eyes. “The great queen tracks her prison workers. I’m afraid I’d ruin your mission if I were to join you. Although, imagine all the time we’d be able to share together, if I went. Which reminds me, Dextro, of the other portion of my payment.”

  “I haven’t forgotten...” Dex felt heat sliding into his cheeks as he glanced sideways at Andi, then back at Soyina. “The other part of your payment, you’ll receive...”

  “Now,” Soyina said, smiling like a predator. Her lips pressed together in a pout as she saw the look of horror on Dex’s face. “A deal’s a deal, bounty hunter. I’ll be waiting.” She stood up from the table, her chair scraping against the floor as she walked away.

  Dex watched her slip into the bathroom, waggling a finger at him as she disappeared behind the closed door.

  “You can’t be serious,” Andi said, her face aghast. “You’re actually paying her with...”

  “I’m not paying her. I’m simply offering her memories,” Dex said. He stood up, mussing his hair with a hand as he backed away from the table. “You should know, Androma, how much fun five minutes with me can be.”

  “Three minutes,” she said. “On a good day.”

  “Jealous, love?”

  “Hardly.”

  He watched her reach across the table and down the rest of his mug in one swig. Then she pulled her hood over her head and settled back into her chair. “Good luck, bounty hunter. And this time, try not to lose your pants when you’re done.”

  Dex froze midstep. “How did you...?”

  Andi laughed from beneath her hood. “I have a reputation to uphold, Dextro. I made it a priority to learn every hidden detail about my partner’s past.”

  With that, she dismissed him.

  Dex turned on his heel and stalked toward the bathroom, cursing to himself as he left one devil behind and went to greet the next.

  * * *

  Lunamere was almost impenetrable.

  They’d known it days ago, when not even Alfie’s advanced hacking systems could get any information on the prison moon, let alone an actual blueprint of the building. There weren’t any survivors to question—not because they couldn’t find any, but because they didn’t exist. Lunamere prisoners were there for life, or until death took them.

  The moon on which the prison stood was a cold, barren wasteland. The prison itself, a towering fortress with no windows and only two doors.

  One way in, for entering prisoners. “And one way out,” Soyina said, as she explained the map to Andi and Dex, leaning close so they could see her strange eyes light up when she spoke. “For the corpses.”

  Andi looked up. “That’s it? No other exits? Not even...”

  “It’s a prison, Dark Heart,” Soyina said with a wave of her hand. “Once you go in, you’re not meant to come back out. Fortunately for the two of you, I can take care of that part. You simply have to find your own ride inside, as we spoke of earlier, Dextro.”

  “Ten thousand Krevs for a one-way ticket,” Dex said from Andi’s left. His jaw clenched as he spoke, as if he were holding himself back from saying something he’d likely regret.

  Soyina smiled with all of her teeth. “Not nearly enough to make this worth my while. And yet here I am, helping you. I may as well offer myself up on a platter for Nor to slit my throat.”

  Money talks, Andi thought. She looked back down at the map on the dimly lit screen Soyina produced, at the twisting and turning halls of Lunamere. It was seventeen levels, a building made of black obsidinite, mined from the moon itself. Impossible to shatter, scratch or dent, except with tools specially crafted to work the stone. And it was the only building on all of Lunamere that hadn’t been completely annihilated during the Battle of Black Sky.

  “The cells,” Andi said. “What are they made of?”

  “The same as the rest of the building. Don’t think you’ll be able to break out once you’re in. Men have gone mad trying to dig themselves out of the darkness.”

  They went over the map for a while, Andi doing her best to memorize every inch of the layout. There were no elevators to reach the seventeen floors of the prison, and each stairwell would only allow them to descend one level. Andi and Dex would have to traverse the entirety of each hall—and dispatch any guards they encountered—in order to reach the next stairwell down.

  Countless men and women—and children, if the rumors were true—had lived the remainder of their lives inside those prison walls. Andi felt sick as she looked down at the map.

  In her mind, she saw herself four years ago, seated on a marble bench while hundreds of Arcardian soldiers stared back at her. Classmates, who now hissed her name like a curse. Teachers and trainers, whose bodies were rigid with hatred for her failure.

  She saw a silver gavel gripped in an angry fist, the boom as it came down like a war hammer. The general’s twisted expression as he stared down at her, and Kalee’s mother with tears in her eyes, a sadness burning so deep that it scalded like the still-fresh lacerations on Andi’s wrist.

  Guilty, the judge had intoned. Guilty of treason.

  “Andi?” Dex asked.

  He waved his hand in front of her face, drawing her back to the present. She shook the memories away to find Dex and Soyina staring at her.

  “You have our plans,” Andi said. “Now I want to hear how you’re going to uphold your side of the bargain. Once we get ourselves inside, how do you intend to get us out?”

  “Once you’re inside, I’ll locate your cells. It’s likely they’ll have the two of you near each other, on one of the upper levels. We’re reaching overflow levels this time of year.” She spoke as if the prison were one of Mirabel’s finest hotels, full of visiting tourists from all across the galaxy. “I’ll have your cells unlocked by the time you wake.”

  “Wake?” Dex asked.

  Soyina lifted a finger to her lips and smiled. “You have one hour to find your prisoner and free him before I myself will sound the alarms that you’ve escaped. What?” she asked, seeing Dex’s clenched jaw and fists. “A girl has to save her own skin somehow.”

  “And how are we to track the time?” Dex asked.

  Soyina considered this. “The guards rotate every half hour. That will be your marker.” She focused back on the map, pointing to a large section of rooms on the second level that led to the only exit door.

  The one for the corpses.

  “This room here will be your goal.”

  “And that room is?” Andi asked.

  “That, my dear friends, is my playground. My palace of pain. The prisoners come in, and I
pick and choose the tools that will make them sing. And when they die? They go out that doorway on a transport ship. Up and away, out to float with the stars.”

  Dex nearly choked on his drink. Andi simply stared the strange woman down, wondering how much she could really trust a person who derived so much joy from others’ pain. She killed to stay safe, to keep her crew alive when all the other options ran out. Afterward, she meditated and mourned the deaths. In sleep, the faces of the dead haunted her. But Soyina smiled about stealing lives, as if each death only upped her pride.

  “What about weapons?” Andi asked. “Can you leave some in our cell?”

  “My weapon is my mind,” Soyina said with a crazed grin. “You would do well to learn to fight in the same way.”

  If only she knew the things I could do with my fists, Andi thought, remembering all the times she’d sparred with Lira in the storage bay of the Marauder. All the months she’d spent with Dex and his bounty-hunting guild, learning how to snap a man’s neck as easily as if she were snapping a thin tree branch in two.

  “My cuffs,” Andi said, glancing down at them, “cannot be removed. You’ll see to it that they stay intact.”

  Not a question. Rather, a demand.

  Soyina nodded. “There are two guards stationed on each level at all times. They are armed with electric gauntlets and whips, programmed to paralytic levels, should you be hit too many times.”

  Dex gave a curt nod. “We’ll take care of them. How will we get into Valen’s cell?”

  “I’ll leave the key.” She shrugged again. “Seems too simple, doesn’t it? Lucky for you, Lunamere is age-old. It’s worked for centuries without all that tech the Unified Systems are so prideful of.”

  “And what about Valen?” Andi asked. “Have you...?”

  She wasn’t sure how to ask the question, and yet Soyina seemed to read her thoughts.

  “The prisoner,” she said, leaning forward with her chin balanced on her hands, “is a strange one. Easily broken, and yet...” She trailed off, staring past Andi. For a moment, she almost looked haunted. “He’s never died on me.”

  Andi wondered what information Soyina had pulled from Valen. He had always been silent, a boy of few words. She’d lived just down the hall from him for several years, and she could scarcely remember a conversation with him that was longer than a passing hello in the hallways. Andi knew that pain had a way of making people, silent or not, spit out the truth. If there wasn’t any truth to be given, they made something up. People would do anything, say anything, to avoid pain.

  She wondered what Valen had said.

  She also wondered what he would say when he saw her.

  “Any questions?” Soyina asked.

  The silence hung between them, broken at times by the clink of glasses, the tap of heels, the barking laughter of nearby patrons.

  This was too easy. Too simple. Andi stared at the woman across from them, searching her face for some sign of a betrayal, some other plan in the works. But sometimes asking was easier than trying to divine another’s intentions. “Why are you helping us?”

  For the first time since meeting her, Soyina’s wild grin fell. In its place was a new expression, something deeper and darker. The woman beyond the mask.

  She unbuttoned the top two buttons of her black prison worker’s uniform. When the fabric fell away, Andi frowned.

  Soyina’s chest was a patchwork of scars and burn marks, just like the rest of the patrons scattered around them in the poorly lit pub. Her burns were similar to the ones on Andi’s wrists.

  Mistakes, they seemed to hiss, itching and squirming on her skin as the tattoos writhed around them, morphing as they passed over the scars.

  “My marks,” Soyina said, her voice low and steady, “prove that I am a survivor of The Cataclysm. One would assume that I was born and raised on Xen Ptera, suffering with the rest of them when the Unified Systems struck.” She sighed and began to button her uniform back up, concealing the scars. “I am not of this system. I was here visiting with my family when the war hit, and my own planet refused to allow us reentry for fear that we had become spies.”

  Andi had heard stories like this, about the hundreds of refugees who were forced to stay behind in the Olen System when the fighting began. It was a stain on the history of the Unified Systems that many rallied to change. They had tried and failed and failed again. Others tried to sweep it under the mat, as if it had never happened at all.

  “My parents and I were forced to fight. They died hating the Unified Systems for leaving us to this fate,” Soyina said with a snarl. Her eyes met Andi’s when she spoke again, flashing like a knife. “But I survived. Many would think my allegiance would still be to the Unified Systems, that I would hate the Olen System even more for forcing us to fight in a war against our own home planets. At first, I did hate Olen. But my allegiances changed when I saw what the Unified Systems put the people of Olen through for nearly a decade.” She sighed. “Ah, well. I guess I’m considering this job a chance to leave Olen behind, head back to what was once my home and rally for change in my own ways.”

  “You’ll have a hell of a time,” Dex said.

  Soyina smiled a soldier’s smile. Dark, and full of secrets. “I’m prepared to do what I have to. Now, back to work.”

  She tapped the map again, drawing Andi’s attention back to the rooms that held the exit door. “One hour to find and rescue the boy. I’ll meet you at that door, no sooner and no later. My partner has mysteriously fallen quite ill, so I will be the only one on body duty. But if you’re caught by any of the patrolling guards...” She laughed again, the mask returning. “Well, I guess we’ll be seeing each other in that room either way. It’s up to you what the circumstances will be.”

  Cold dread slithered its way up and down Andi’s spine.

  Dead or alive. Andi hoped for the latter.

  Soyina glanced between the two of them, laughter tugging at her lips.

  “Death is a simple thing. It’s pirates I’ll never understand.” She stood from her chair, turning only once to glance back at the two of them still seated at the table. “One hour. If your plan goes south, you keep your mouths shut about me and I will do the same for you.”

  She winked at Dex. Before she left, she leaned down and whispered into Andi’s ear.

  “We didn’t, by the way. Earlier, I mean. Your comrade wanted to whine like a baby about his feelings for you.”

  Andi’s mouth parted in shock as Soyina backed away and winked once more. Then she turned and left, fading into the crowd, and the two of them were alone.

  Dex stared at Andi for a moment. “What did she say?”

  “Nothing,” Andi said. Soyina must have been lying. Dex had about as many feelings as a hunk of varillium. “Nothing at all.” Sitting in this pub, alone with Dex, was making her feel slow. The smoke burned in her lungs, and the taste of stale liquor was heavy on her tongue. She sighed and stood up, stretching out her limbs, cracking her knuckles as she readied herself to make a move.

  Dex stood, as well, frowning for a moment as he looked at her.

  “Do you trust me, Androma?” he asked, taking a step closer.

  Long ago, she would have whispered, yes. Her pathetic, traitorous heart skipped a beat. Andi scolded it internally and barked out a laugh. “I’d never be so foolish again.”

  He stopped an arm’s length away, close enough that she could see the stubble on his chin. The sleepless lines beneath his eyes. “Then this should be fun,” he said with a sigh. “Play along with me.”

  He grinned like he was holding on to a secret.

  Then he lurched forward and, in one sweeping movement, mashed his lips up against hers.

  Chapter Eighteen

  * * *

  NOR

  NO MATTER HOW much air filled her lungs, she was still left gasping for breath.

&nb
sp; A stone was crushing her. A single solitary stone, no larger than the palm of her hand, was leeching the life from her very soul. It felt as if the weight of a thousand boulders were all forced into it, seeking to torment her endlessly by giving her air but never actually allowing her to breathe.

  A disembodied voice whispered sweet, terrible nothings in her ear.

  “Pathetic.”

  “Unworthy.”

  “Weak.”

  In these moments of complete helplessness, when she couldn’t move or think for herself, Nor felt like a pawn in someone else’s game.

  She needed control and power, but those were oceans away from the cracked ground she seemed to become.

  The weight of the stone increased to an unbearable pressure. No longer did it allow air into her quivering lungs. She was dying, being forced into a premature grave.

  No matter how much she willed her invisible tormentors to stop, she kept on sinking, until even the ground could not take the pressure any longer.

  A chasm opened up underneath her broken body and swallowed her whole.

  Falling.

  She was falling into the black abyss. She plummeted toward a fiery furnace that welcomed her with its jagged fangs.

  All the while, the stone never left her chest. Not until the fire devoured her.

  Even then, she still felt the pain of a thousand boulders.

  * * *

  Nor jolted awake, grappling for something, anything, to anchor her to reality.

  She was so cold. Her body, coated in sweat, was attracting the frigid recycled air that clung to her like a second skin.

  Darkness surrounded her, compressed her. She was back in the nightmare, must be. Then, no more than a heartbeat later, she was grounded in this world by a sturdy hand she knew all too well.