Patterns in the Dark

by Lindsay Buroker

  “That where you’re going to work?” Zirkander pointed to the desk, then climbed onto a table between two cabinets, putting his back to the wall. It was a spot where he could see over the furnishings in the lab, but where he was protected from most sides.

  “Yeah. You actually going to watch my back?” Tolemek would rather have had Cas, but he hadn’t wanted to put her in the position of having to choose between him and her commander. Mostly because he was afraid the equation wouldn’t come out in his favor. Zirkander should want to make sure Tolemek survived, so that he could find a cure, but the way he had ordered Cas away had struck him as odd. “I wasn’t sure I believed your reasoning with Cas.”

  Zirkander frowned down at him. “I didn’t want her to be in a situation where she would have to shoot her own father. That was my reasoning.”

  “Oh.” Tolemek’s cheeks heated. Chagrined that he hadn’t thought of that himself, he struggled to focus on the words in the logbooks. He kept wanting to think of Zirkander as a villain, because he had always been one of the Cofah military’s arch enemies when Tolemek had been a soldier. It was disappointing that the man refused to live up to expectations of nefariousness.

  Zirkander sat now, his pistol resting in his lap, watching all of the doors to the lab. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and dark semicircles had formed under his eyes, but he didn’t look like he would let the virus keep him from his duty. “I, on the other hand,” he said, “wouldn’t be all that upset over shooting the man.”

  “Cas hasn’t talked much about him with me.” Tolemek couldn’t quite bring himself to ask if she had revealed more family details to Zirkander.

  He wasn’t finding much in the logs, which seemed more dedicated to reporting the check-ins of people on duty than scientific findings. He drummed his fingers on the desk and looked around the lab.

  “I assume he cares about her, but it’s not all that apparent. He doesn’t talk to her. I don’t know why parents are mystified when they raise a kid to be competent and independent, and then the kid ends up choosing her own career.” He was speaking loudly, perhaps to be heard over the gunshots down the corridor, or perhaps because he hoped Cas’s father would hear him.

  “If he hears you, he might shoot you instead of me.”

  “That would be better than turning into a crazy man who attacks his friends before dying,” Zirkander muttered so softly Tolemek almost didn’t hear it. “I haven’t had the opportunity to try parenting yet. I suppose it’s easier to judge from the outside. Those competent, independent women aren’t all that easy to handle.” He smiled faintly.

  “You seem to be doing all right.” Tolemek tried not to sound bitter. He loved Cas and appreciated all of their similarities, right down to the distant father figure who couldn’t quite understand his children. But he kept struggling to accept that Cas didn’t seem to feel as strongly about their relationship, or at least wasn’t ready to admit to as strong of an emotion as love. And then there was Zirkander and Sardelle, always sharing smiles and leaning against each other, flirting with each other. They hadn’t known each other much longer than Tolemek had known Cas, but they seemed much more comfortable with each other. Much more… in love.

  “Oh?” Zirkander used his sleeve to wipe sweat from his brow, then took a deep swig from his canteen. “Glad to know it comes across that way.”

  “You don’t think it’s going well?” Tolemek poked into the drawers of other desks and picked up notes left on tables, searching for something more useful than the logbooks.

  “It’s going well.” Zirkander put his canteen away, gave Tolemek a thoughtful look, then added, “But it’s a little hard to be with a woman who doesn’t need protecting, and is in fact far better at protecting people than you are. Far better at everything, really. I’m not complaining, mind you, and I wouldn’t change anything about her. I’m just admitting that my ego has been a little battered of late, and that I’m struggling to feel needed around her.”

  “She is the one with the bigger sword.”

  Zirkander snorted. “Yes. And that’s a good thing, that she’s here to protect us, and that, for some reason, she’s fond of me. The fact that sword size enters my mind and matters to me at all, it’s a failing, I suppose.”

  “I like hearing about your failings.”

  The faint smile returned. “I thought you might.”

  Tolemek didn’t look back at Zirkander, but he wondered if the man knew of the argument he and Cas had engaged in. Or maybe he could simply tell that Tolemek had a problem with her divided loyalties, something he had already acknowledged as a failing in himself. Still, it did make him feel better to know that Zirkander and Sardelle might not have quite the perfect relationship that he had witnessed from the outside.

  “He’s falling deeper into unconsciousness,” Tylie said softly from her corner, a mournful note in her voice. “I think when he roused himself earlier, it stole the last of his reserves.”

  “Understood.” Tolemek forced himself back to the task. He could ponder his love life later. If he could only find something useful in this mess.

  Remembering the vials of blood he had seen by the centrifuge earlier, Tolemek jogged to that corner, checking on Tylie on his way past. She was watching him, her eyes large and hopeful, and he tried not to feel her expectations weighing on him like the yoke of a cart too heavy to pull. Since the dragon had fallen unconscious again, she had been less coherent, less able to grasp the situation around her. What would happen to her if that dragon died?

  Tolemek stopped in front of the centrifuge. There had been a binder over here, hadn’t there? Yes, there it was. He grabbed it and a vial, but paused, his hand hanging over the rack. There had been six or eight vials there before. There were only two now.

  “I think I know part of our sniper’s mission.” Tolemek waved at the rack.

  “He took some?”

  “Yes, but not all of them. Four or six vials maybe. I only saw this rack from the other side of the room before.”

  “Hm. We already sent back samples for the king,” Zirkander said. “But it’s possible—no, probable—that he was sent out before Kaika and Apex returned. So he could conceivably be working for the crown. But he could be working for someone else, too, some high bidder who heard about the dragon blood somehow. It was top secret, but that doesn’t mean information doesn’t slip out.”

  The binder absorbed Tolemek’s attention, and he forgot to respond. It held the information he had been hoping to find, a long list of tests, along with notes about filtering the blood. And how they had failed to filter the blood. He snorted. He could have guessed that. If the virus was too small to see under a microscope, it was much smaller than a cell. Unless something larger could attract and bind the smaller proteins somehow.

  He rubbed his face. As much as he appreciated his sister’s faith in him, this wasn’t his specialty. It sounded like the scientists had already tried means of filtering and had abandoned the strategy. Tolemek flipped the pages, hoping to get past the failed tests and to a spot where the researchers had found success.

  Halfway in, the tactics switched to attempts to kill the virus without killing the blood cells. “Ah, now we’ve got something,” he muttered, pacing back toward the desk.

  “A cure that doesn’t involve cutting into people’s skulls?” Zirkander asked.

  “Uh, a cure that’s not going to help you at all.”

  “That’s not heartening.”

  “Can it help the dragon?” Tylie asked, leaving her corner to stand beside Tolemek.

  “Maybe. If I can find a way to deliver a sun’s worth of radiation to the dragon without frying everyone else in the ziggurat.” Tolemek peered around the laboratory, searching for inspiration. What had worked in vitro wouldn’t necessarily work in a dragon.

  “Care to explain?” Zirkander asked.

  “It’s fairly simple. After trying countless ways to filter the blood or kill the virus without killing the cells, someone sterilized a vial o
n a whim. Maybe the scientist had noted the resilience, or pure magical power, you might call it, of the dragon’s blood. Sterilization would kill human blood cells, the same as it killed the virus, but the dragon cells survived. All they’ve been doing is irradiating the blood, then crating it up and shipping it out.”

  “So you can help the dragon, but you can’t help any of the people that have been afflicted with this already?” Zirkander didn’t tear up and mention the state this left him in, but it had to be on his mind.

  “You can help the dragon?” Tylie repeated, clasping her hands in front of her. She either did not realize that Zirkander was sick or could not grasp the ramifications of it in her current state.

  Tolemek wanted to heal the dragon if only so he could release Tylie from whatever bond he had formed with her, and so those glimpses of sanity he had received down in that tomb would return permanently.

  “I have to figure out—” he scratched his stubbled jaw and stared through the cracked glass at the dragon, “—how in all the cursed realms am I going to irradiate an entire dragon?”

  “How does one irradiate something small?” Zirkander asked. “As you’ll recall, I was folding paper fliers in my science classes, so you’ll have to explain it in little words.”

  Tolemek snorted. “Exposing something to energy that’s capable of stripping electrons from atoms. This destroys or slows down bacteria, microorganisms, and viruses, or at least renders them incapable of reproduction. You can deliver the radiation with a radioactive substance or generate it electrically.”

  “I’m not sure those words were little enough.” Zirkander raised his eyebrows at Tylie, as if to ask if she understood.

  She leaned against Tolemek’s arm. “My brother is smart.”

  “No, I just read books.” He hugged Tylie, but then returned to his walk around the lab, hunting for whatever equipment they had used. “They may have just done it with heat, honestly. Thermal radiation.”

  “Heat?” Zirkander asked. “You know Jaxi melted a hole in that twenty-foot wall up there earlier, right?”

  Tolemek paused. Was it possible the sword could emit enough heat to kill the virus in the blood? Or maybe all they would need was ultraviolet light? He thought he remembered reading about short wavelength light being used in Iskandia to sterilize drinking water down in some mines. He didn’t think it would be enough to simply strike the exterior of the dragon with intense ultraviolet though. They would have to find a way to remove the blood, irradiate it, and return it to the dragon. Probably. Maybe. He wished he knew more, that more science of this nature had successfully been done in the world. As resilient as a dragon might be, this one was nearly dead. He might kill it if he experimented. And where would that leave them then?

  Tylie was watching him pace, her eyes full of faith.

  He swallowed. Even if he could cure the dragon, where would that leave Zirkander and anyone else infected?

  Healing the dragon might make him feel favorably toward you, came Jaxi’s thoughts in his head. He might be able to then help with healing the humans.

  Tolemek would never admit it later, but hearing Jaxi’s voice in his head reassured him, reminding him that he didn’t necessarily have to do this with pure science and technology. Sardelle and the soulblade could bring other powers to bear. Still…

  If he had the power to kill the virus infesting its body, wouldn’t he have done that three thousand years ago? Tolemek asked.

  Not if he didn’t know how. I’ve been listening to you babble on about atoms and radiation and whatever else, so I could relay the information to Sardelle, and I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. She seems to get it, even if she doesn’t know the terms you’re using, but I doubt a healer three thousand years ago would have had even the faintest grasp.

  Would you be able to create ultraviolet light?

  Of course. What is it?

  Tolemek snorted, then tried to form an image in his mind, a table of the light spectrum produced by the sun. Maybe using a picture would be more helpful than a bunch of words that hadn’t existed when Jaxi had walked the world.

  Yes, thoughtful. Thank you. Let me think about it for a moment. We’ve got more trouble out here.

  Gunshots fired in the distance, followed by a far greater rumble, then a crash. Tolemek stared toward the corridor, afraid that had been a rockfall or some other devastating explosion. Cas, Duck, and Sardelle had gone that direction to keep the Cofah from returning to the lab. He wished he could see what was happening. He would have to trust that Jaxi would have warned him if anyone had been hurt.

  Zirkander stood up, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. He squinted toward the dragon, then climbed off the table and walked toward the shattered wall.

  “See something?” Tolemek asked.

  “The light level in there seemed to change. Maybe it was my imagination.”

  Tolemek had been looking in the other direction and hadn’t noticed a change, but he walked over with Zirkander. He didn’t know if there was much more that he could do without Jaxi’s help.

  The dragon hadn’t moved. The floor and walls hadn’t changed, and the panel was emitting the same steady glow it always had, its light responsible for much of the lab’s illumination, as well as the chamber’s. Zirkander leaned close to the glass, almost pressing his chin against it as he looked up.

  “Hm.”

  “Hm?” Tolemek leaned close, too, though he didn’t know what they were looking at. He didn’t see anyone crouching in the passage he had used earlier or in the big one that Jaxi had burned in the wall.

  “I think the barrier’s gone,” Zirkander said.

  Tolemek stared upward, trying to tell. “It might just look different from below. Did you look before?”

  Zirkander picked up a shard of glass from the floor and walked toward the door.

  “Are you sure you want to go out there?” Tolemek glanced at the dragon, thinking of the way its cold, reptilian stare had been leveled at him.

  Zirkander didn’t answer. He pushed open the door, walked out a couple of feet, and tossed the piece of glass upward. Instead of being incinerated, the shard simply fell back to the stone floor with a soft tink a couple of meters from the dragon. His eye flicked beneath the lid, but he didn’t otherwise move. His breathing seemed labored, and Tolemek didn’t know how much longer he had to come up with something. He could feel his sister watching him.

  On his way back inside, Zirkander jerked to a halt so quickly that Tolemek reached for his pistol. He glanced around the lab and readied for an attack. But Zirkander wasn’t looking through the glass—he was staring at the panel next to the door, the one that presumably controlled the stasis chamber and the protective barrier. He pulled something out of the side, something that hadn’t been visible from Tolemek’s position in the lab. A dagger.

  Zirkander stuck it through his belt, held up a finger, then walked along the outside of the chamber. Following the wall, he turned a corner and disappeared behind the dragon.

  “What happened?” Tylie whispered, her eyes toward the open air where the barrier had been.

  “I don’t know,” Tolemek said. It was the truth, but he had a guess. He had been worried that he—or maybe Tylie—would be the assassin’s target. But maybe it was the dragon.

  Zirkander came into view again, shaking his head as he returned to the door. He paused to look up for a long moment before entering.

  “No sign of him?” Tolemek guessed.

  “No.” Zirkander leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. “I was watching the lab, but he must have come through without me noticing. Either that, or he came down from above and went back that same way. There aren’t any other ways out of this chamber.” He sighed, his shoulders sagging. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept in days. “It didn’t occur to me… I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me, that he might have been sent to deal with the dragon.”

  “What?” Tylie spun toward him, her long hair whippin
g about her face.

  Zirkander opened his eyes and spread his hand. “I’ll watch from here.” He pushed the door open so he could stand in the middle. He gave Tolemek a tired, wry smile. “Maybe I should have had Ahn stay in here, after all.”

  A boom sounded from somewhere down the corridor that held the others.

  “No,” Tolemek said. “You made the right decision. I need you to call Sardelle back, if you can.” He eyed the dragon again. “We’re going to need Jaxi.”

  Chapter 14

  Cas crouched, using the corner for cover. An invisible magical barrier stretched across the corridor, shimmering yellow every time a bullet was deflected, so she probably wouldn’t have needed to bother, but standing out in the open went against her instincts. Duck knelt behind her, looking over a crude map he had found in one of the dead soldier’s pockets.

  “I wish they would leave,” Sardelle said from the center of the corridor. Apparently, her instincts trusted her magic, because she didn’t feel the need to hide behind the wall.

  Sweat gleamed on her forehead. Cas didn’t know if it was an early symptom of the illness or a sign that the work taxed her. She hadn’t yet drawn her sword.

  “I don’t wish to kill them for doing their duty,” Sardelle added softly.

  Cas had fewer qualms about that and almost said so, but she doubted that was something she should be proud of. At times, it bothered her how much of her father there was in her. “The colonel just said to keep them out of the lab, right?”

  “Yes, but there would be more time for research and for attempting to communicate with the dragon if the Cofah were not here.” Sardelle sighed. “I can’t stand here, doing this indefinitely.”

  “We’ll take shifts if it comes to that. My bullets aren’t as flashy, but they’re good at convincing people to leave me alone.” Cas shifted her weight. Her thighs were starting to burn. “Duck, anything enlightening in that map? There’s no way they can get around us, is there?” Earlier, the soldiers had tried to attack en masse, sending a barrage of rifle fire at Sardelle’s barrier. There was even a cannon squatting in the corridor up there. But the firing had been less frequent during the last fifteen minutes, and Cas had glimpsed the same two men leaning out from behind cover and taking shots.