Vagabond Souls: The Ionia Chronicles: Book 2

by Pamela Stewart

  The idea came to her in a flash. She’d heard her aunt tell Chirag his percentage would change with her injection. There was only one way she could get to Den in time. Ionia lunged at her aunt, wrapped her hand around her throat and squeezed.

  “Let...me...go.” Sera croaked.

  “Do that to me,” she said. “I know you have more.”

  Sera’s eyes bulged, and she gasped for air. Ravi fought her, but she willed her hand into the same steel alloy as she had in the lab. Ionia was tempted to keep her hold longer for what her aunt had attempted, but some spark of pity made her relax her grip.

  “Do what?” her aunt asked.

  “Don’t play with me. You juiced him with nanobots. Do me.”

  Ravi stood back, eyes wide. No one in their vicinity seemed to care that she had a woman in a choke hold.

  “Ionia. I can’t.” Her aunt stumbled for words. “I’ve already done enough. If you die from this, your mother would never forgive me.”

  “Forgive you? You think there’s a chance she would forgive you for faking my death? For holding me hostage?”

  “I did that to save you. I don’t know what the nanobots are capable of. And I wanted to do more research.”

  “You bitch.” Ionia nearly forgot Den. The anger flood was so strong, her hand flexed against Sera’s throat, and for a moment she really thought she might squeeze the life out of her. But Ravi waving frantically and shaking pulled her back to anger level yellow. She found her voice again. “You wanted something to experiment on, and it didn’t matter who got hurt.”

  “I may have held you, but I’d never actually kill you.”

  The crowd surged toward the arena walls, meaning Den was getting his ass handed to him. Ionia’s heart squeezed in her chest. “I don’t have time. I have to get in there. Give me your bag.”

  “I don’t know how to reverse it. I don’t know what it will do to your body. They’re not acting as I thought they would. They have—”

  “Just stop. I’m already screwed.” She choked on the last part. She hadn’t thought about it too deeply. Not yet. And she might never have a chance. Right now, she may be able to help Den, and that was all that mattered. “If you don’t dose me now, I’ll tell everyone about your experiments.”

  That shut her up. Ravi had been a stunned witness the exchange, but now he stepped up and gripped her forearm gently. She met his soft, brown eyes. Real concern, real worry, and not about his mother. “There has to be another way.”

  “There isn’t. Not quickly enough,” Ionia said.

  “I misjudged you.” Ravi’s voice was low and concerned. “You do care about the droid. You don’t have to prove anything.”

  “He needs me. For the first time, he needs me. I love him, and I’m going to be there for him.”

  Aunt Sera rummaged inside her bag and pulled out a new syringe.

  “If this isn’t the nanobots, if it knocks me out, know I have a wave on standby, and if I don’t stop it, your whole crazy black market world will come crashing in on you and your family.”

  She didn’t. She would never hurt her cousins, but her evil aunt didn’t know that.

  Ionia offered her arm and looked away as she felt the injection site burn and then spread.

  Her neck and face felt like they’d been scorched. “Be gone by the time I get out of here.” If I get out of here.

  Her heart pumped pure lava under her skin and into her veins. It reached her head. Her brain.

  The feeling was wrong. Her aunt was going to kill her. Ionia’s body separated from her mind and seemed to be encased in a weird rubbery substance. She looked down and saw her hands, moved them, wiggled the fingers, but she couldn’t feel them anymore. Like she was connected but disconnected. The burning stopped, and she looked up at her aunt and cousin.

  Ravi’s brow knotted, mouth slightly open. Fear or worry? She could interpret it as either. Her gaze moved to her aunt. The older woman’s heart rate was rapid, her skin temperature had increased, and her eyes were dilated.

  Her aunt was excited.

  That should have made Ionia angry. She could feel the potential anger there, as if under a frozen pond, but she wasn’t able to touch it. The emotion would not be productive. The main goal was to get to Den.

  Den.

  Her emotions poked up through the ice. She pushed against the screen to gain entry.

  Fifty-three percent augmented. Approved. Enter the arena at your own risk. We disavow any damages these fights might take upon your cybernetics or hydraulics.

  She pushed against the energy field and entered.

  The lights shone on her at twenty-two degrees Celsius. Five meters separated her and Den. Chirag stood between them. Toying with them. She sensed the amount of energy he held back from here. He could drive Den into the flooring and still have strength to twist Zee into a knot.

  But how? How did she know these things? It wasn’t as if she were in enclass receiving a DL. Line of information flashed in her head was as clean and clear as her own thoughts.

  A tidal wave of panic seeped through her oasis of calm logic. She was still human. She shouldn’t know these things. Couldn’t know them. But the fact remained, she did. And she would use whatever aid she could in saving Den.

  Face twisted in a manic glee, Chirag lifted Den above his head to slam him down again. Ionia could see a silver glow around Den, which gave her the information she needed.

  Another blow could cause him to lose functionality. What the actual crap? She didn’t use words like functionality. She felt two sides of her fight for control, and she allowed the cool logic to dominate because panic wouldn’t save him.

  She calculated the amount of force needed to damage Chirag. She didn’t actually see numbers or do calculations. The information appeared as if it were a memory like she’d always known it.

  She had to will herself into some kind of weapon and just pray she could undo it. She focused on being battering ram, something that would cause massive blunt force impact, and sprinted toward Chirag.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Den had downloaded information about human near death experiences. It had been reported that sometimes they would hear or see loved ones or imagine a beautiful landscape where there was peace and love. He didn’t believe that his creators had programmed in a death protocol, or else he would have experienced that in Feinstein’s cave. But before him appeared a singular image that he could not find any logical explanation for.

  The female form raced toward Chirag, silver-tinted, hair flowing behind. A droid with an unusual coating over her skin, as if she’d been dipped in liquid armor, all sleek and aerodynamic. He could not get a proper scan. Objectively beautiful, even celestial.

  An angel.

  The angel had Ionia’s face. Someone had modeled the droid’s face upon her, or the death protocol was running, allowing him to see what he desired most.

  Chirag didn’t register her presence, and Zee lay in a pool of oil and blood from her displaced appendages and loss of skin. If the angel were real, the impact would be enough to jostle him free of Chirag’s grasp. He prepared to tuck and roll to absorb the blow.

  He may still survive this encounter.

  She closed the distance and struck Chirag from behind in the lower back, which was one of the few areas that was still almost completely non-enhanced. Woofing out air, his face contorted in pain. Chirag released his grip on Den.

  Den leaped away with his good leg and rolled toward Zee. Together, they could at last escape the auditorium while Chirag was distracted.

  Struggling against his lagging left leg, Den stood. He scooped Zee up, who was offline and damaged but still salvageable and limped to the exit. A loud clash made him looked back.

  Who was this droid who had risked her existence to help him and Zee?

  The angel droid now noted his hesitation.

  “Den, get out of here. I’m taking care of Chirag.”

  The voice.

  It was her.

/>   He used his dampened scanners to get a better understanding. He could not determine what exactly she was.

  Some mechanical parts but not moving properly, like a human had been copied exactly down to the cells and coated in a layer of polyplastic. The droids veins teemed with blood-cell drones. He had no information about a hybrid, but that’s what this creature seemed to be.

  Chirag was recovering from his fall, and Den noted he also had some components like the new droid.

  “Well, well, back from the dead,” Chirag said. “Why are you attacking me? You need this as much as I do. We are alike now. No one out there will ever accept us. We have to—”

  The Ionia droid’s hand grew to double its size. Fascinating, microscopic mechanisms were borrowing from parts of the body to instantly build whatever was necessary. She didn’t hesitate as she slammed her enhanced fist into his face. The impact sent him reeling back.

  “Bullshit. You left me to die.”

  It sounded like Ionia. The real Ionia. He could not move toward the exit. Not without finding out the truth.

  It could not be her. No human could survive such an augmentation. It was unprecedented.

  But what if it was? An unending stream of emotion and possibilities battered the cyber patterns in his mind.

  His processor screamed and moved slowly, giving him feedback on all of the damages to his system. He ignored them. He sat Zee on the ground near the exit and moved forward.

  Ionia was alive. Different but alive. And she had come to his aid. And he would do no less for her.

  No more banter from Chirag. The juggernaut rose, and his hand morphed again into what looked like rocket launchers.

  The desire to speak to Ionia battled with the desire to protect her. Zee was also in desperate need of assistance. Chirag needed to be stopped at any cost. Den moved to stand next to Ionia. She looked like a silver coated statue of herself, perfection, strange but still her.

  “I am here, Ionia.”

  She turned to him, and some of the silver melted. Her face took on the flesh colored tone again as she smiled at him. “Oh, Den. Den. You should go. I can hold him off… I think.”

  “You don’t have to do it alone.”

  Her eyes met his, now both matching, some amalgamation of machine and human, still beautiful. She gave him an imperfect smile. Her imperfect smile. And they turned back to Chirag.

  ***

  Den watched Ionia’s skin flashed back to an alloy he could not locate on any periodical chart. An impregnable shell. Somehow she had acquired the same skill that Chirag had to alter her form. It was fascinating. But he was uncertain as to the effect on Ionia’s health.

  “You’re ruining everything.” Chirag growled like a wild animal.

  She seemed to be in optimal condition as she leaped at Chirag. Den limped forward to engage and stop Chirag from pummeling Ionia. He grasped one of Chirag’s massive arms.

  Chirag morphed his hand into pile driving hammer with a two-meter circumference and slammed Den to the flooring.

  Ionia grappled with him, keeping the large cyborg off balance. Her strength was at least ten times what it had been in the past. She delivered a blow to his chin, which was still flesh but seemed to break and instantly fuse again. The impact confused him. He teetered.

  Den attempted to rise but slipped back down.

  The observers were shouting and cheering.

  “Hear that?” Chirag’s voice maintained its authoritarian air. “They only understand blood and pain. They don’t have empathy. The only way to convince them is with power and force. You have the same skill as me. Together we can make the politicians listen. We can force them to support us.”

  Ionia laughed. “There is no us.”

  “Your aunt deformed you. A criminal deformed me. We are the same. I know from experience, everyone will think you’re a freak.”

  “They kinda did before, so no worries.” She did not allow his words to distract her from her goal of beating Chirag into submission.

  Most impressive.

  “They will take you away. After this. They all know. I will never be accepted or free again. Neither will you.”

  She paused three seconds before she responded. “I’ll take my chances. At least I don’t make my so-called friends fight to the death. Let us leave, and I won’t kill you.”

  He laughed, a sound that made Den’s fear center buzz and stalked forward again.

  She stepped back and circled Chirag. Den tried to follow her, but her movement had become more fluid and poised and his awkward and ungainly. He stumbled.

  “Den. Trust me. I have this. Just stay out of the way,” Ionia said.

  Every decision-making circuit in his brain rejected this. He had just gotten her back. He did not want to lose her again.

  Yet when he requested strategy from his processor nothing returned. He had precious little he could do without losing functionality, and his chassis was too damaged to continue. He was free to choose, as was she. From her new assets, at the moment, she was better equipped than him to fight. He allowed her to defend him and stepped back to check on Zee.

  ***

  Without having to worry about Den, beating Chirag was an eighty-eight percent probability. Still weird how the knowledge just came to her. The amount of stuff she could access was dizzying. If only have time to examine the sanguineness of that fact, but Chirag was on the move.

  Her cybernetic eye scanners detected a weapon. The gun built up energy to blast her. He was cheating at his own game. But she expected nothing less from this butt-faced cyborg wannabe. She had to take him out and quick. None of the usual worry or heart clenching or second guessing plagued her. Her target loomed clearly before her.

  He aimed the blast directly toward her midriff. Three different complete options flashed before her eyes at a speed that she could never have processed pre-nanobots. The top option flashed red, and she exercised a complete front forward roll, better than anything she’d done even in the assisted gaming armor when playing Warrios of Mars. She avoided the projectile that exploded behind her.

  Her limbs moved with droid-like speed and agility. A feeling of crazy euphoria shot through her. This was literally freaking awesome. The total heat. She was a superhero. Was this how Den felt all the time? She dropped in low under Chirag’s massive robotic arms, using her droid eyes to find his weakest, most vulnerable, most human spots.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Chirag yelled.

  “Dream on you hunk of junk.”

  His power level wavered and dropped as his heart rate increased and blood pressure rose. She had the advantage. Everything in her body was flesh except her eye, and so she could morph, dodging his blow so his punches didn’t connect and hardening her fists into alloy before he could respond. She didn’t need to consciously think. She willed it, and it happened.

  Weakened, he teetered. She used Zee’s leg sweep. He tumbled to the ground.

  There! He had a power pack. Her scanner verified it. The massive energy it took to fight had drained his resources faster than he could recharge.

  She jumped to his side and yanked out the pack that powered his robotic parts. Everything from his midriff down, as well as his left arm and half of his face, stilled.

  He spoke, but this time his voice came out slurred. “I will kill you.”

  “Shut up.”

  She had three choices. Injure. Maim. Kill.

  The bloody, aching part of her wanted to pick the last. She was tired of being knocked around, of those she loved being taken and hurt. Before, she had never had the power to do anything about it. At this moment, his life was in her hands, and her fists trembled.

  All the emotion of the last two days flooded through her. All the people in this backward government that judged droids and enhanced human. All the people that now stared at her as if she was a thing instead of a person. Anger. Rage. The absolute fury at Chirag for trying to kill Zee, then Den, and now her.

  It was the same with Feinst
ein. Everyone had power. Everyone but her. But that was going to change. Her hand drew back for a killing blow. Den crawled into her line of vision. Sweet, ever loyal, ever protective Den. Her heart. The sight of him stayed her hand. The harsh emotion drained, and the love that made her feel wrapped in a cocoon of safe and happy pushed those feelings aside.

  She stood up from her position leaning over Chirag’s body. What remained active within him, the human parts, jerked as he moaned some other threat she didn’t want to hear.

  She felt something warm and wet on her face and reached up to rub her mouth. Her fingers were silver, as if she’d dipped them in a vat of metal, and now they were coated in red. Her head spun and filled with cotton, and the world fishbowled around her. Her vision flashed a red warning, and the message: Nearing Critical Energy Level. Her legs wobbled, reed weak under her. She swayed.

  Den appeared at her side. She didn’t even detect his movement. He was just there. His arms around her, cradling her against his chest, holding her as if she was made of porcelain.

  “Ionia.” He breathed her name and hugged her to him tighter.

  The waves of dizziness returned. Critical Power Levels Reached flashed across her vision, and she slipped away into a dark cloud.

  ***

  A hospital. No, a lab. She cracked her eye open, and her heart did a stutter drop as if she’d missed the last step on a flight of stairs. No. No. No.

  Trapped again. Was escaping and saving Den just some weird fever dream she’d had when Sera had dosed her? She sprung up in the bed.

  A short woman with dark hair sat at a workstation a few meters away. Ionia knew that ponytail. Her mother twisted around at the sound of Ionia moving. Her usual taciturn expression changed. Her eyes widened, mouth hung open, and moisture gathered in the corners of her eyes. She surged toward Ionia and wrapped her arms around her, burying her head on her shoulder and squeezing her tight.

  Ionia squeaked involuntarily. “Crap on a cracker. Ow! Ow! Ow!” she whispered from her choked larynx. Every fiber of every muscle in her body from her crown to her toes felt bruised. Her mom released her immediately.

  “Sorry. Sorry. I was just so happy to—” She looked away and seemed to gather herself before pinning her daughter with the dark-eyed glare Ionia knew so well. “How are you feeling?”