Zenith

by Sasha Alsberg

  Dex leaped over the railing to the floor below, scooped up a whip from a fallen guard, and swung his way to Valen’s sprawled form.

  Andi was already there, wrestling a final living guard away. The guard swung with his gauntlets, electricity spitting blue. Andi ducked, then came up swiftly enough to knock his head backward against the wall.

  A final grunt, as she kicked him into silence.

  Then, nothing. The alarm cut off.

  Silence swept over them as a door creaked open behind Dex.

  On the other side was a sight for sore eyes. Soyina, holding a key and standing beside a rolling cart. Her mismatched eyes flashed as she looked at the aftermath of the fight.

  “Looky looky,” Soyina said. “The gang got out.”

  * * *

  “You threw him down the stairs?” Andi asked.

  Dex helped her lift Valen onto Soyina’s waiting cart. “I had to get creative.”

  Beside him, Andi’s breath came out in ragged huffs. “We need to go,” she said. “Finish the job, Soyina, and get us the hell out of here.”

  Soyina stared at them, a sickening, sideways smile on her lips. With a strange cackle, she said, “Alright then. This may hurt a bit.”

  She reached behind her, pulled out a gun and, with a single shot, sent Dex reeling into darkness.

  The last thing he saw was Andi’s head hitting the ground beside him, her pale eyes wide as moons. Then white light enveloped him, and all semblance of the world melted away.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  * * *

  NOR

  THE QUEEN’S LAB was a space born of desperation.

  A pathetic echo of the grandeur that was long ago destroyed in The Cataclysm. The remnants were mere scraps of her father’s once glorious dream—a place meant to heal the planet of Xen Ptera, to bring back abundant life before it was too late.

  That dream had died with her father. Now his old lab had morphed into the birthplace of death.

  Nor was a queen, bred from the purest of blood, and she couldn’t bear stepping foot inside the lab unless absolutely necessary. It had taken Darai ages to convince her to come down here herself, ages more for Nor to actually do it.

  Now, as she walked down the crumbling spiral staircase beneath the planet’s surface, she could almost feel the walls caving in on her, threatening to crush her once again.

  She froze as an image of her father ghosted into her mind. She could see his eyes bulging from their sockets, his skull caving in under the foot of a broken stone statue, blood staining the crumbling toes. It was as if Arcardius, and the rest of the Unified Systems, had stomped the life right out of her father when they dropped their final bombs.

  “Nhatyla?” Zahn asked, stopping beside Nor to place a warm hand on her elbow. “What is it?”

  She’d almost forgotten he was there beside her in the darkness. “I’m fine,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat as she shoved the memories away. She breathed deep, despite the tightness in her chest, and silently recited the words Darai had raised her on: Fear Is Only an Illusion. Nothing would crush her or stop her until the fates had had their way. And they’d decided, long ago, that Nor would be the one to bring about Xen Ptera’s revenge.

  “Should we turn back?” Zahn asked. His fingertips spun gentle circles across her skin.

  Nor looked over her shoulder, where the faint light of day waited, beckoning her to turn back. To give in to her weakness.

  The claustrophobia was one of her best-kept secrets. Only Darai and Zahn knew the truth about the trauma she’d faced the day of the attack, and the physical and mental scars it had tainted her with.

  There hadn’t been many places within the vicinity of Nivia where they could put the lab, so when Darai found the ancient bomb shelter, still holding strong despite the crippling quakes, they started fortifying its boundaries to last.

  “I am a queen who seeks to be a conqueror,” Nor said as the image of her father, and the sharp spike of fear, still begged entrance to her mind. She closed her eyes and focused on Zahn’s hand, soft and warm. “There will be battles far worse than this one.”

  “And rewards for winning them,” he whispered, “should my queen wish it.”

  Despite herself, Nor smiled. Silently, she walked past him, deeper into the torch-lit tunnel where Darai waited ahead.

  The structure was run-down, and it didn’t improve the farther one went below. Nor’s metal heels clacked on the crumbling stones. Dark, putrid water ran beneath her soles as she hurried to keep up with her uncle, Zahn trailing behind her like a moving wall.

  At the base of the steps, Darai turned right into a narrow hallway. The rafters creaked above them as subtle shockwaves shuddered their way through the ground. Nor pulled the hood of her cloak lower, shielding herself from the falling pebbles raining down from above, the edges of the hood like blinders to keep her at ease. One could easily get lost in these tunnels, so deeply carved that none would hear their call.

  A few more steps, and they turned left at the end of the hall.

  Straight ahead was a silver door, at such odds with the scenery around them it was almost laughable.

  “They are expecting you,” Darai said. “I think you will be pleased at what you find inside.”

  He held out a hand, ushering Nor toward the retinal scanner on the door. Faint green light illuminated the space as it beeped her in, and the door swung open with a heavy groan.

  As she stepped inside, the pungent fumes of preserved bodies and toxins immediately overloaded Nor’s senses. She quickly covered her nose and mouth with a scented handkerchief.

  It smelled like fire callas. They were her mother’s favorite flower, grown by gentle hands in the courtyard of the old palace. Now their scent brought a fresh wave of memories that only fueled Nor’s urge to seek revenge.

  Zahn and Darai guided her deeper into the lit space, a cavernous bunker with heavy rock walls and ceilings that made her feel small.

  Lab techs in red Xen Pterran coats stood before stone tables, their hands deftly working, tapping away at dimly lit screens, stirring milky vials full of bubbling substances. Long ago, Nor had stood in this very room, watching her father move down the aisles. She’d marveled at the glowing substances, the cherished seeds that her father’s scientists had so carefully tended to in hopes of making food grow.

  The mission had changed, but the feeling in the room was the same. It was a place of order. A tangible bit of progress that set Nor at ease.

  “They have been working around the clock, Majesty,” Darai murmured as he led her down the aisle.

  The scientists bowed their heads as she passed, Zahn behind her like a living shadow.

  Another metal door stood at the back of the room. Zahn entered in the code to unlock the private lab of her lead scientist, Aclisia, and the door opened instantly.

  The two-headed scientist alone understood Nor’s passion for destruction, and her equal desire to make it a true work of art. Together they would give the galaxy a show, and every eye would be watching.

  Aclisia stood behind a lab table with her back to Nor. In front of her, rows and rows of glowing silver vials lined up like tiny soldiers awaiting their orders. Zahn didn’t follow as Darai and Nor stepped forward, remaining back to guard the door.

  Nor approached the table slowly, appraising the view. Half of her life had passed since the idea for Zenith had bloomed in her mind, and only now, after years of dreaming, was her weapon finally coming to life.

  “Ahh, my queen,” Aclisia’s two voices said at once.

  Nor looked up as her head scientist shuffled over.

  To anyone else, Aclisia was a shocking sight. But Nor had spent years in her presence, watching the two-headed woman work. Two brains should have meant two separate people, but Aclisia’s heads worked together, as if they were one. The ri
ght head held her rational side and could converse for hours without skipping a beat. The left head was more off-kilter, but it was the part of Aclisia that Nor perhaps admired the most. It allowed her to dream, endlessly, until even the most irrational ideas became possible.

  “Are you in the final stages of finishing the weapon yet?” Nor asked.

  Aclisia’s two heads swung around to look at the lab table, both hands grappling for a single silver vial. The glass clinked as the scientist produced one, lifting it out of its case and holding it up to the light.

  “Slowly, you dolt!” the right head screeched to the left.

  The left head huffed in annoyance. “I’m merely trying to give our queen a glimpse of her new toy.”

  “It’s a wonder I’ve been able to put up with you all these years,” the right head retorted.

  “You haven’t a choice, my dear,” the left said back.

  Both heads glared at each other, the right with short reddish brown hair sticking out like flames, the left with pale blond curls coiled tight against her skull.

  Nor cleared her throat. “My patience is running low.”

  Aclisia nodded her heads, then held out the vial. “Steady now, my queen,” the right head said.

  Nor cradled the vial in her hands like a newly polished gem. It sparkled in the dim light of the lab, and it was warm to the touch, rather than cool, like she’d assumed it would be.

  “Each vial holds thousands of doses,” the right head told Nor.

  “Now we just need someone to play with,” the left head added.

  “A test subject,” the right corrected.

  Aclisia looked expectantly at Nor.

  “That has been taken care of,” Nor said. She raised her gloved hand to signal Zahn’s attention. “Order the guards to bring forth the subject.”

  Behind her, Zahn pressed a button on his wrist com, then whispered a command into it. Less than a minute later, a knock sounded at the door, and he strode forward to open it.

  In the doorway stood a ragged-looking woman, struggling against her bonds as two guards hauled her inside.

  “Queen Nor! Please, grant me your mercy.” The warden of Lunamere fell to her knees before Nor, her bound wrists held out before her as if in prayer.

  Nor peered down her nose at the traitor. “You had one of the Unified System’s most wanted fugitives in my prison. And instead of keeping her there, where she could have been persuaded to join the right side of the galaxy...you lost her. Not only that, but an entire squadron of guards is dead, the prisoner from Arcardius is missing and my best Revivalist is mysteriously absent from her post. And you dare ask me for mercy?”

  The warden sobbed at Nor’s feet. “Please.”

  “Aclisia,” Nor said, not taking her eyes from the pathetic woman before her. The scientist hurried to stand by Nor’s side. “Here is your first living trial. And for the sake of this traitor here, let us all hope that it works.”

  The warden screamed as the guards hauled her to her feet. The sound intensified as they strapped her to a chair in the corner of the room.

  The screams turned to furious moans as they gagged her. Then a vial of silver liquid was produced, almost glowing beneath the overhead lamps. Aclisia looked to Nor with four bright, hungry eyes.

  “Would you like to do the honors, Majesty?”

  Nor looked upon the scene with a sudden warmth in her heart, as she listened to the warden’s unrelenting moans.

  “I came for a show,” Nor said. “Give me one to remember.”

  “With pleasure,” Aclisia’s two heads said at once.

  Darai and Zahn appeared at Nor’s sides, flanking her like soldiers.

  As Aclisia unstoppered the vial, Zahn took Nor’s hand in his.

  They held on to each other, their heartbeats pulsing in time as they watched Nor’s greatest dream come to fruition.

  Chapter Thirty

  KLAREN

  Year Twenty-Four

  * * *

  THE GIRL WAS born to die.

  She’d always known it; had been preparing for it since the day she was created.

  Since her Yielding, and throughout all the years spent working to get to where she was, the girl had remembered the dream. For how could she ever forget? In her mind, she saw it now.

  A burning black-and-red palace.

  A crumbling planet, starved for life, nearly ready to explode in the midst of a battle. A king, trying desperately to save his people.

  A starship heading across the skies, delivering one chance at a change of fate.

  “Klaren? It’s time.”

  She opened her eyes. The king of Xen Ptera knelt before her, his eyes reddened and full of tears. His forehead creased with worry. He’d aged so much since the war began. But he was still handsome, still the man who had given her and Nor a wonderful life.

  “Time?” she asked.

  He nodded and held a hand out to her. “The threat to the palace was true. The soldiers are closing in, and half of my troops are off-planet.” He inhaled a trembling, defeated breath. “I fear that they will win, Klaren. The Unified Systems will destroy us soon.”

  “There’s still hope,” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “No, my heart. Hope is as dead as our planet. I’m going to continue this war, but...time is fleeting. We must hide, now, before they breach the palace gates.”

  She let her husband sweep the blankets back and help her from their bed.

  The queen had fallen ill over the past several months, her body worn from breathing the tainted, war-torn air on the planet. Even with the iron shutters closed, she could still make out the hint of greenish light slipping through the edges of the window. Could still feel the rattle in her lungs with each breath she took.

  Now she could hear the whine of ships outside. The shouts of soldiers, as yet another battle waged. How many more would there be? She could hear the screech of ammunition seeking out living targets. She could nearly taste the hot, metallic tang of all the blood that had been spilled already, all the lives lost in the endless fighting. Women. Men. Children. No one on Xen Ptera was safe.

  So many years the planet had held on to life.

  And today the queen had a choice.

  She already knew, as she’d dreamed years ago, which one she would make.

  Her body was racked with trembles as she lifted her hands to her husband’s face. She wasn’t supposed to feel this way for him, for the life they had made together. For the daughter they shared.

  Just thinking of Nor, so young, so unprepared for what was to come...

  Tears slipped down the queen’s cheeks.

  She wished she could go back. She wished she could change that passionate night they had shared, the careless days after and the tonic she’d forgotten to take...

  “Go to the bunker,” she whispered. She looked into his eyes, leveled her voice to a calm state of solid steel. “Take Nor with you. Go now.”

  He parted his lips to speak, but she kissed him with all the fierceness in her heart, all the fire of the battle raging beyond. Behind her, Darai slipped from the shadows, his ruined face grim as he watched the queen draw herself away from her king.

  “I will care for them as I have cared for you,” Darai said, placing a hand on the queen’s elbow to steady her. “Remember the mission, Klaren.”

  Together, they watched the king leave the room without looking back.

  She kept her eyes on him as she spoke.

  “I fear I am not strong enough. That all these years have made me weak. That...love...has made me weak.”

  “We do not have room for love, my queen. Just as we do not have room for you to remain here, wasting away where there is no hope.” Darai squeezed her elbow and forced her to pull her gaze from the retreating king. “You will go and create it for us. You will c
arry on toward our goal. You are the strongest Yielded I have ever known.”

  “And my child?” the queen asked. “What of her?”

  “Where you go, she cannot follow.”

  The queen’s heart twisted in her chest.

  Darai smiled sadly at her, even though she knew it pained him because of his scars. “The light will guide her. Just as it continues to guide you.”

  The queen placed a kiss on his cheek, committing his face to memory. Somewhere outside the palace, screams rang out. There was an explosion. A rattling that shook the walls.

  The soldiers were here.

  Klaren gripped Darai’s hands in hers.

  “You will train her in the truth. You will see to it that she is strong.”

  His eyes were like fire. “I swear it upon the Light. I swear it upon the Conduit.”

  The queen smiled, thinking of how fiercely her daughter always held on to things. How stubborn she was. How devilishly determined. “She will be a great queen, Darai. Teach her, just as I would have taught her, that she should always choose her duty over her heart.”

  Even now she could feel her own shattering in her chest.

  “Go. Into the next world, my Yielded,” Darai said, placing a finger beneath her chin. Lifting her gaze to his. “Do not look back.”

  The queen swept from the room.

  She did not pause, even as smoke began to curl through the hallways. Even as footsteps pounded up the spiral stairs and the dark forms of her soldiers swam into view, fighting back the intruders who dared enter her crumbling palace.

  No bullets touched her skin as she walked gracefully to the doors.

  No one stopped her as she unlocked them and slipped out into the battle raging beyond.

  Enemy soldiers swarmed her at once.

  Outside the palace walls sat a starship coated in deepest blue, the symbol of an exploding star on its side. The ramp was already open as a figure marched down it, guards flanking his sides.

  He marched slowly to greet her, that devil from her dreams with eyes like the sky.