by Hanna, K. T.
Zach’s hands fly to his chest, and his eyes gape at Bastian. There’s sudden knowledge in those eyes, of how strong Bastian is, of how lethal. The immediate recognition that, out of everyone, Bastian has been playing the greatest part all along.
The terror in the man’s eyes makes Bastian want to explode his heart right then and there.
Zach is spluttering, drawing in great gulps of air, wincing in pain as he stumbles to the ground, one hand steadying himself while the other squeezes his chest.
“Bastian.”
He doesn’t listen. He exerts just a little bit more energy onto the heart, just a bit more of the darkness, more of the thirst. The core flares up and tickles the base of his power, fueling it, seeking it. Alarms sound in his mind, but none of them seem loud enough, just slightly distracting.
“Bastian.” This time it’s Harlow’s voice, and the moment her hand touches his own, there’s a spark of static electricity. It breaks the spell, and Zach’s heart tumbles from Bastian’s mind, leaving the former panting on the ground.
Harlow withdraws her hand and looks at him. “He’s not worth your guilt or your exhaustion.” Her words are soft, and Bastian blinks, wondering how on earth she got to know him so well. Even if she’s still under the illusion that it would cost him a lot of stamina to kill.
Deign watches them, her lips pulled into a frown. “I’ll deal with him later. Thank you for not killing him.”
Bastian isn’t sure why she sounds so disappointed.
“What would your suggestions be?” she asks, as if there isn’t a man still clawing to regain his composure at her feet.
“I don’t know, Deign. I’ve been here. I’ve always done everything I could to support you, to try and understand you. And I’m done now.” He takes a step and falls into his chair.
She watches him, like the other two aren’t there with them. “I’m not losing this, Bastian. I can’t be the reason the GNW gets overthrown.”
“You’re not the reason. You’re just a part of the inevitable.”
Her eyes flash again, and she stomps a foot. “My father left this to me. We will execute the plan as it’s always been, if I have to exert the control individually. It’s not over yet. I will not allow it to be over.”
Bastian sits up in surprise, and Zach finally moves into an upright position on the floor, his face still pale.
“Get up, Zach.” And this time, Deign places force behind her voice.
If Bastian hadn’t been sitting down, it would have knocked him flat. She rarely uses her tones on people, but evidently she has had enough. Zach squirms, but stands, smoothing down his suit and looking vaguely disoriented.
“You need to right this, Zach.” Deign moves closer to him, her voice low and silky. “I told you you’d regret trying to fool me.”
“Enough.” Harlow barks the word out. “Stop it, Deign. Do you want colleagues or puppets?”
Deign blinks at her. “I want our stability back.”
“Well, you can’t have it.” Bastian pushes himself up, wary of her now, slamming walls up over the ones he already has. “Change is a bitch, and it’s happening.”
She focuses on him for a moment and draws herself up to her considerable height. “It can happen all it wants, but it will be fixed.”
No one says anything, and Deign shoots Zach a scathing glare. “Don’t worry,” she says to him. “I’ll make you pay because I’m pretty sure trusting you was my biggest mistake.”
She walks toward the office doors, arrogance in her stride. Stopping just before she leaves, she speaks very softly, so they have to strain to hear her. “This ship is not going down.”
“You know you shouldn’t be using this, right?” Sai stands at the head of his bed looking down at him, frowning.
Bastian crinkles his nose at her. “Yes, I’m fully aware, thank you.”
“Then why are you using it?”
“Some of us don’t have the luxury of caring about ourselves anymore.” He turns on the cloud that is suddenly his bed and feels it bounce beneath him.
“Screw them. Let them know what you’ve been holding back.”
“I think I have,” he muses, wondering if that’s true.
Sai eggs him on. “Tear them down from within.”
“Isn’t that the plan?” Bastian smirks at her, noticing how much she’s grown in the months he’s not seen her.
“Definitely. Do what you have to, but try not to tap into it anymore, please.” Concern overshadows the rest of her message, and he begins to sever contact.
“I know.”
“Good.” She reaches down and brushes his hair out of his eyes. “Thank you, Bastian, for being my guide.”
He smiles as she starts to fade, but solidifies almost immediately again.
“We’re almost there.”
Bastian sits bolt upright in bed and blinks against the bright light streaming through his window. They’re finally on their way. He steps out of bed and into his shower. A few minutes later, he’s dressed and beckoning to his lieutenant as he walks out the door, barely caring if it follows him. After all, as soon as he has a spare moment, he’s going to extract that damn chip anyway.
The morning meeting passes him in a blur. He barely pays attention to it. Instead, he focuses on building and rebuilding his own shielding and seeking out any type of weakness in the barriers. If there’s an enemy from within, as well as potential ones from without, he needs to be more prepared than ever. Harlow runs most of the meeting, detailing the results from the filtration hubs and how they’re planning on dealing with it. Bastian doesn’t pay attention until Owen finally interjects.
“The last of the new lieutenants has been manufactured and sent to its new patrol. All patrols should have one now, unless I miscalculated.”
Bastian smiles. Everyone else will think he’s smiling because of the potential devastation this will cause to the Exiled. A smile by any other name is still a smile, after all.
Markus is in the process of assisting Zach with manning patrols in the other PCs to try and control some of the damage. Central and PCs 2 and 3 don’t seem to be affected yet, and those are of little worry for now. The Exiled didn’t quite make it to the last few.
Deign’s tone is clipped. “We’ve deployed patrols in several different PCs. They’re split into multiple divisions to cover more ground more effectively. We’ll flush the bastards out.”
It’s the first time Bastian has heard her swear.
“Markus is going over the security here. We don’t want anyone creeping in while our eyes are focused elsewhere. Bastian, Owen needs your assistance with some of the modifications he’s been working on. May as well make our primary defense against the Exiled better while we can. There are orders to shoot you if you approach the device, understand?”
Bastian grins inwardly. “Perfectly.”
The origin of Owen’s laboratory fascinates Bastian. How many people died down here after being abandoned by their families for testing and trial purposes? For the sole purpose of powering the grid with their unwanted psionic strength? With their parasitic, spore-fed abilities.
Soon everything will be over. Decades of neglect and torture, of misplaced righteousness and incompetence. Silently he works with Owen, piecing together elements of a Damascus brain and tweaking the synthetic pathway to feed the directions.
The one thing about Damascus technology that never fails to amaze Bastian is the string of nerve-like cables that feed into the adrium skeleton and deliver the synthetic neural signals. But that’s the only thing. Coupling machines and adrium had been a bad idea fifty years ago and was a horrible idea now.
Thanks to Owen, though, it should prove to be their final standing ground as soon as Mathur flips the switch. He hopes the device is finished soon.
Pieces of Damascus hang here and there, all around the room. Connected and unconnected. Sort of like macabre works of art.
“You’re using the wrong one,” Owen says quietly, reaching acro
ss to hand Bastian a tool.
“Yeah, I do that sometimes. My head isn’t really in it today,” he replies, coughing and pretending to use the small electric probe as he does.
“What are we getting ready for?”
“I don’t think we’re actually getting ready for anything.” Bastian grins at him, his face turned away from all of the Damascus. He reaches into his pocket and presses the tiny device, despite the fact that he knows Owen’s is active as well. He doesn’t want to risk anything. “Tonight is the night to choose sides.”
“There was only ever one side to be on.” Owen’s tone is grim. “The side they’re not on.”
“I knew you’d say that.”
Owen pauses for a moment. “We’re going to have to remove it before anything else you know.”
Bastian nods, knowing he means the chip. “I know.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
Owen nods, and Bastian deactivates the tiny sliver of adrium. There’s not much power contained in them, so each use has to be vital. He’s going to need the rest of what’s in his to make this work.
He notices after a while that Owen is actually working on more of the adrium pebbles. He speaks on impulse, hoping that Owen’s device is still powered. “They know you’re a friend.”
A small smile spreads on Owen’s face, along with something else that might relief. “Thanks.”
Bastian nods. Only his lieutenant is in the room. The usual patrol of Damascus Owen walks around with has disappeared. They were his new and improved versions and have all been shipped off to the other patrols.
Bastian goes through the motions in his mind. They’re not coming through the ventilation shafts this time. They’re entering through the passageway inside Bastian’s quarters. Whether or not they divert the cameras or not no longer really matters. Bastian won’t be using those quarters again unless they succeed.
With the psionic alarms set around that door, he will know the minute they enter the compound. He smiles to himself and hands Owen a set of fine pliers to finish the intricate wiring before the adrium gobbles it back up.
The alarm goes off in his head sooner than he’d anticipated. He coughs and glances at Owen and rests both hands on the bench as if to support his body while the coughing fit subsides. He pockets three more of the communication-canceling devices and watches as Owen does the same.
It’s going to take Dom and Sai a while to make it down to Bastian. They’ll do so in the most covert way—at least, he hopes they will. By the time they get down here, though, they need to have the lieutenant disabled, which, considering the implant in Bastian’s leg, is probably going to prove bloodier than they realized.
Timing is everything.
Owen presses the disruptor on the bench and bends his head as Bastian still pretends to cough. “Do we go now?”
Bastian shrugs. “As good as ever.” He glances down at the scalpel in his hand. “You any good with one of these?”
“I’m proficient.”
“Why does that sound bad coming from you?”
“I’m a scientist, not a doctor.” Owen takes the scalpel from Bastian. “You realize as soon as I do this, you’re going to have to act, right? Regardless of the pain in your leg, you’re going to have to disable that thing.”
“Just do it. I’ll take care of my end of things.”
“And afterward, you realize its patrol is out there, right?”
“Can you override the signal they get sent?”
Owen frowns and leans over to one of the terminals, carefully avoiding the line of sight of the lieutenant. “Yeah,” he whispers with a smile that makes Bastian glad he’s on the right side of this guy. “I can so do that.”
Not ten minutes later, Owen pretends to trip and falls right next to Bastian’s leg. With one fast movement, he fingers the tiny scar, inserts the scalpel, and yanks the chip out, scraping the bone in the process and causing Bastian far much more pain than he’d been expecting.
It’s hard to contain his reaction, but he manages and somehow muddles through the miasma of pain. The lieutenant’s eyes are alert, as blood-red as the blood Owen is staunching with gauze. Bastian reaches a hand forward and motions a yank, suffusing power into the gesture.
For a second, he’s not entirely sure it worked and he thinks they’re completely screwed. Owen fumbles with the scalpel, dropping it on the floor as he stands upright, his white coat splattered in blood. The lieutenant takes another step toward them, hand outstretched menacingly, before the joints at its neck pop and the head topples to the floor. Several components run free, including a strange gold ball of smelted metals that used to be the kernel.
Owen heaves a very obvious sigh of relief. “I thought we were dead for a minute.”
Bastian nods. “So did I.” And he looks down as Owen presses something into his hand. The smooth metal of a solid adrium walking stick.
“You’ll need to get that healed, but I figured after minor doctoring, you should be able to limp along. I tried to implant it just left of center so it didn’t actually insert in your bone. You should be fine.”
“Thank you.” Bastian means it wholeheartedly. It’ll make moving around much easier. He tests his leg with the stick and comes to the conclusion it’s a pain he can manage. With what little healing he has in him, learned over decades, he staunches the bleeding.
“What now?” Owen asks, his eyes bright as he changes coats.
“Now?” Bastian smiles grimly, hoping Owen’s override will continue to work. “Now we wait.”
Sai steps into Bastian’s office with a strange sense of déjà vu. Dom and Dael are in front of her, scouting out the room, making sure there’s nothing where it shouldn’t be. Aishke steps up to her side, still paler than usual but much better than she was.
Flashes of her fights with Bastian speed through Sai’s head. His speed is amazing, and his smile worth millions when it’s finally earned. They have to get to him in time.
She didn’t realize how much she’d missed him.
“Where is he, Sai?” Dom asks her quietly after motioning everyone that the office is clear. Evan stands in one of the corners, tapping into the security systems throughout the building. He’s hooked up to Kayde’s comms, following instructions.
“He’s downstairs in Owen’s laboratory. I’m not sure how much time we have. They’ll have to remove the chip from his leg and disable the patrol that follows Bastian. If they don’t get that done, they’re pretty much dead.” That word and her mentor together in one thought makes Sai cringe.
“It’s okay, Sai. We’ll get to him.” Dom puts his hand on Sai’s shoulder and squeezes it gently.
“Yeah, I know, it’s just…” Sai shakes her head and gathers her thoughts.
“Hope you’re all up for a ton of stairs.” Aishke grins at Darrien and Dael pointedly. “Think of it this way—at least these thirty flights are going down. Just wait until we come back up them.”
Darrien groans and Dael laughs. “You don’t give me enough credit for stamina.”
Sai watches the interaction, how Aishke comes out of her shell with people she knows. Now all she has to do is make sure the girl survives this, and everything will be fine.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Dael asks.
“Him.” Dom points at Evan, who’s just now finishing up with his taps into the system. “We good to go, Evan?”
The domino smiles grimly. “We are better than good.”
“Perfect.” Dom leads the way, double-checking for patrols as he opens the huge doors. Sai jogs along next to him, letting her legs absorb her footfalls. Dom looks down at her. “Pity not everyone can phase. We’d be there in no time.”
Sai nods. “Pity or not, someone might get overeager and end up in a wall. So it’s probably better not to anyway. I’m not sure if we can tap into Aishke’s fetching ability. She’s not at full strength yet, so I’m not sure how we’ll deal with the board.”
“I’m right her
e, you know,” Aishke grumbles, her breath catching slightly, and Sai frowns in her direction before continuing.
“Are we sure Mason will be okay with Tyrell? Despite his protestations, I don’t think he’s combat-ready yet.”
“They know our location, and they have others backing them. We have a few other divisions heading out to PCs 1, 2, and 3, just in case we need cover from troops they have stationed there.”
“Good.” There’s so much to try and keep track of, it’s overwhelming. Get down and retrieve Bastian and Owen is the first goal while Mathur puts the finishing touches on the device. “One step at a time, Dom. We take it one step at a time.”
“They’re going to know where the Shine is, right?”
Despite his strength and speed, Dom’s psionic abilities aren’t always reliably as strong. His thought-projected abilities are usually limited to sensing emotions. “They’re going to know.” They have to. There is no way Sai is doing all this and not destroying that piece-of-crap drug.
The stairwells are dark and musty. Sai stands at the top and looks over the railing as the others stream in behind her. It’s a long drop down. So far she can’t even see the bottom. With the lights flickering in and out, she’s reminded of one of those black-and-white horror flicks from the archives. Arms outstretched, awkward fangs and capes…
Dom nudges her shoulder. “Why the smile?”
“Just remembering something.” She grins up at him. “Remind me to show you some old horror movies one day.” Better to be positive about the outcome.
“It’s a date.” Dom grins back at her for a brief second before his expression becomes serious again. “We all ready?” he asks. Everyone nods in return. “Let’s go.”
They begin the descent. It’s long and arduous, and Sai is perfectly aware that if she still had her actual legs, this would be taking a hell of a lot out of her. The rest of them are not so lucky, and it’s strange to glance back and see Dael making sure that everyone keeps up.
“Watch out, Sai!” Dom grabs her arm just in time to stop her from stepping into a hole in the concrete steps. Two of them are missing. “Pay attention. It might be long and boring, but it’s not the safest down here. This part of the stairwell isn’t well-maintained. These aren’t used much, especially since Bastian’s little stunt.”