by K. Gorman
The dream tripped, lost its grip. She felt herself slipping down, falling between—
Suddenly, Nomiki came in front of her. Her face filled Karin’s vision. Warm breath fell across her cheeks.
“You’re gonna have to stop hiding if you’re to survive.” She grabbed Karin’s arm hard, fingers like steel around her wrist. “You’re gonna have to use this.”
She sliced a small knife across Karin’s forearm. Light bled out, as cold and distant as the stars above.
Karin snatched her arm back. “What the hell?”
Her sister had always been stronger, more violent.
But she’d never hurt her before.
The dream was already moving, slipping. Like the shift of a camera lens in a movie, Nomiki was already half a field away. Karin’s white blood glowed on the knife she held, lighting part of her face as she stood beyond the stones. Part of it stretched, forming a blurred, indistinct trail overtop the grass.
Karin started after her, stumbling on the hard, rough-packed earth. Wind buffeted her face, her arms. Long strands of grass smacked into her legs.
“What do you mean?” she yelled. “What’s coming?”
In answer, all her sister did was look up.
Karin awoke with a jerk.
Darkness smothered her sight. For the first few, confused moments, remnants of the dream fought with her recent memories—the smell of summer grass, the hard-packed earth against her feet, the familiarity of the bed, the red, analog-styled numbers of the cycle-clock on the side table next to her bunk. Clammy sweat cooled on her skin and made the bedding stick to her like a trap, its pungent scent rising from the sheets, sour with panic. Her ankle throbbed, the sensation coming in dull waves. As she struggled to release herself, she noticed that her forearm hurt, too—in the exact same place that dream-Nomiki had cut her.
Must have hit it in my sleep, she thought. Then my brain tried to explain it logically in my dream. That’s why Nomiki attacked.
She slumped back on the bed as the logical part of her mind activated, the memories of the dream washing over her.
Not like she hadn’t had nightmares before. Gods knew there’d been plenty of those. Bad dreams were her brain’s rather inadequate way of dealing with all the trauma she’d been through. Today’s work must have hit some trigger-point or the like—maybe something she’d seen down below, or the disruption of her normal schedule. Perhaps even the chat she and Marc had, as innocuous as it had been.
The brain was a random-thought-generator, creativity its domain.
Nomiki wasn’t usually involved, though.
She shifted, rubbing the ache on her arm, then froze as her fingers touched something warm and wet. An electric zing ran through her skin.
“The hell?”
Karin jerked her head down, frowning into her quilt. As she detangled the sweat-coated sheets, light appeared, splattered across her arm like liquid star-shine.
Her eyes widened, taking it in.
At the same time, a form on the other side of the room moved.
She sucked in a breath, snapped her head up, and froze.
It was a person—or, at the very least, a very lifelike, person-shaped shadow. Tall, with edges that blended into the room’s already significant darkness, it stood against the wall with no depth or definition to its figure, only darkness. She couldn’t see any features, not eyes or the rumples where clothes might be, or—heck, were those arms?
The seconds ticked by as she stared, eyes locked on the form, body frozen in fear. Her heart thudded hard against her ribs, speeding up.
Gods, it must be a trick of her mind, a piece of clothing hung against the wall in an unfortunate way, personified by the part of her brain that looked for reasons to be afraid of the dark. Or sleep paralysis with the accompanying demon—everything she’d read indicated the hallucinations often took on this shadow type of form. Except, she’d already moved around, which negated the whole paralysis part of that condition.
Hells, was she still dreaming?
For several long seconds, she watched it, wondering exactly that.
Then it moved again.
Karin yelled out, jerking from her bed. The bedding lumped around her calves and she kicked it loose, throwing the top part of it at the thing when it lunged. Light flooded the room from her arm as she pulled herself out of bed. She half-crawled, half-flung herself over the side table and searched for a weapon, or anything, to defend herself with.
Her fingers bumped against the hard edge of her suit’s helmet. She reared back and swung it blindly behind her. It connected with something solid.
Then it jerked out of her hand… to land in the corner and roll against the wall.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the sheets she’d thrown earlier fall to the floor. The thing straightened, dwarfing the room as it came to his full height. As she got her first good look at it in the mercurial glow that still shone from her arm, her heart stopped.
It was black, head to toe—and not just dark-skinned like Marc, either—but black. As if someone had taken a piece of the darkest parts of space, put it into a person-shape, and left it in her room. It had no clothes, no features, not even a defined edge. In fact, the edges where hard to look at, as if someone had placed a blur filter on them.
Maybe it was a trick of her eyes, or a twinge from her subconscious, but she definitely got the sense of femaleness from it.
And familiarity. As if some part of her knew what the thing was, or had seen it before.
A flash of memory pulsed through her mind, heavy as static. In her mind’s eye, she saw the ruins again, and Nomiki, the knife in her hand glowing with Karin’s light.
Project Eos.
The thought floated into her head like a half-remembered voice. She shivered, feeling a length of cold coil through her bones. The smell of stomach acid rose to the back of her throat. Her shoulders began to shake.
Her jaw clenched and she shoved the feeling aside. Adrenaline replaced it, heart pounding in her head rapid-fire.
It seemed to regard her for a moment, turning its head her way and pausing. She took a step back, bumping her heel into the corner of her storage crate. Blood roared in her ears as she groped her hand along the wall, looking for something else to fight with.
But this time, when the Shadow lunged, she had nothing. Not even the sheets.
She stumbled backwards, knees buckling as she smacked into the crate again. A strangled yell left her throat as she fell back, and she clawed at the air as the Shadow loomed above and overtook her. She slammed hard against the metal top. The air jumped from her lungs in a solid whumph.
Her yell turned into a whimper.
The Shadow loomed above her. Its hands pricked her body, an uneasy sensation neither cold nor hot. It felt like they were going inside her throat, the same way radiation or anesthesia might, trespassing her skin, pushing through her tendons and muscles, touching her blood. Blackness smothered her sight—its head, followed quickly by its body, blocking out the room’s light.
She struggled, tried to kick out, but an amorphous weight pinned her down.
A sob crumpled from her lungs. She gritted her teeth and kicked again and again, attempting to chamber and snap as her sister had taught her long ago, but it was useless—she might as well be kicking a pillow. Tears pricked her eyes as the thing’s hand moved up through her jaw, its long fingers pushing through her bone and toward her brain, touching the marrow on their way past. Its head hovered directly above hers, the place where its eyes should be boring a hole into her awareness. Fingers smothered her mouth and nose.
Then, in her struggle, something shifted.
Light pricked through the blackness. The white droplets on her arm still shone, dimmer than before, but persistent.
She brought her hand up. Muscles shaking, she pushed energy into the light. It shivered at her touch like water under a full moon, waxing, growing. The thing’s hand moved into her eyes. A fingertip brushed through her sku
ll like the touch of a feather. She cringed, pulled away. Then she pushed back.
Light exploded from her skin.
The black thing shrieked.
Suddenly, it was gone, off of her. Her sight returned.
She could breathe again.
She coughed, scrambled to her feet, squinting as her eyes adjusted. It seemed like she’d lit a tiny sun in the room. Light flooded every surface and corner, pure white and blinding. Most of it came from her arm—the cut on her wrist that dream-Nomiki had inflicted—but some of it had spread. Drops of it splattered across the walls. Others hung in the air, shivering, like motes of glowing dust.
The Shadow stood against the far wall, its humanoid form horribly delineated between light and dark, the edges of it still inexplicably blurred. As the glow ebbed, fading back toward the mercurial dimness it had when she’d awoken, the thing seemed to regard her again, its attention more serious this time.
Then the door hissed open. In shock, she watched as it slipped out and fled down the corridor. It made no sound, but it cast a shadow that shifted across the floor and up the walls.
The door stayed open for a few seconds, then shut again.
She was alone.
Chapter Four
Karin stared at the door, breathing staggered and shallow. The thing might have left, but that did nothing to lessen the adrenaline spinning through her body—or the mire of thoughts snapping through her brain.
What the hell had that been? Part of the dream? She glanced around, then dismissed the thought.
No. That had been real.
She shivered, remembering the feeling of the thing’s hands around her neck—through her neck—then forced herself to straighten. Her knees almost buckled under her as she dropped down from the crate she’d been on, and her bare feet hit the cold floor with a hard smack.
The light still glowed. She spared it a lingering glance, taking stock of where it had fallen. Then she picked the sheets up from the floor and wiped the inside of her wrist off on them, getting rid of the stuff still on her.
The light, she was familiar with, and could deal with later. So long as she kept the door shut, nobody would see it.
But that thing was still on the ship.
She didn’t know what bullshit had followed her from her past—or, hells, how it had even found her—but she could figure that out later.
For now, it needed to go.
Before anyone else saw it.
She strode to the end of the room and picked up the helmet she’d thrown, hefting it in her hand. Then she headed for the door.
The running lights made a soft glow in the hallway, dimmed and tinted red to coincide with the ship’s night cycle. Once out of her room, the sound of the engine grew louder to her ears, a heavy, subsonic hum that made almost everything vibrate. Without anyone’s body temperature to heat it, the air felt colder outside.
The difference pricked at her skin.
Forcing her breath to be slow and shallow, with eyes wide, fingers shaking where they gripped her helmet, she stepped into the corridor, expecting an attack.
Empty.
Suns. That thing was real, right?
Movement farther down the corridor made her jerk. She snapped her head toward it, then stopped dead.
Cold fear froze her lungs.
The Shadow stood in the darkness of the ship’s main junction, its body half-blended in with the cycle’s dim lighting. After a few seconds’ stare, it turned and moved down the path toward the leftward cargo hatch, vanishing beyond the corner.
Her nerves jumped. For a moment, she couldn’t move. She stood rooted to the floor, fear turning her muscles to lead.
Then she took a hard breath, straightened, and squared herself to the corridor. Her fingers tightened on the helmet.
Whatever this was—whatever bizarro bullshit from her past that had, somehow, managed to find her—it ended now.
Before the others found out.
She took a step forward, vowing to find herself a better weapon before she fought the thing. A wrench, maybe. There were always some of those long-handled ones around. If she put it back after she used it, no one would know—
Metal thumped behind her, making her jump. As she whirled, a strangled cry came from behind the wall, muffled by the metal.
Karin’s gaze jumped to the next cabin door.
Soo-jin.
Her gut twisted as a new thought flashed across her mind.
Are there more of them?
She backed up. No. The woman was just having a nightmare. She’d had them before. Karin had heard her more than once during the night cycle, thrashing about.
A second yell came, raw and panicked. Vulnerable.
Something crashed inside.
Karin lunged forward and slapped at the door panel. She pushed past as it hissed open, shoving herself inside.
A Shadow being loomed over the bed, its back to her. Soo-jin lay half-pinned, kicking hard as Karin had done, trying to turn away. It had its fingers around her throat and another hand moving toward her face.
Karin cracked the lip of her helmet against the back of its head.
The Shadow recoiled with a shriek that ripped through her mind.
Part of it brushed her as it jumped away, a feathery touch of shadow that, like the other one had been, felt neither cold nor hot. It whispered across her skin like soft fur and shivered along the marrow of her bone.
She chased the thing with another swing of her helmet, narrowly missing its arm as it jerked out of reach.
In the corner of her eye, she caught Soo-jin righting herself on the bed. The woman jumped to her locker and opened the door, fumbling for something inside. Karin sidestepped to block the Shadow’s escape, then lunged with another helmet swing.
“Get down!” Soo-jin yelled.
Karin dropped. Something flew over her shoulder.
The knife struck square in the Shadow’s chest, its metal glinting in the cabin’s lighting.
For a second, the whole room held its breath. Nothing moved. Her muscles shook, blood roaring in her ears. The floor vibrated under her palms, part of the heavy drone of the engine, and she felt the gravity shift slightly as it sometimes did when it cycled through.
The knife trembled, dead center.
Then, with a small whoosh, it dropped.
By the time it clattered against the floor, the Shadow was gone.
Karin let out a breath. Behind her, the locker door clunked shut as Soo-jin slumped against it.
“Sol’s burned child. You saw that, right?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” Karin huffed out another breath and pushed herself to her feet. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I think so. Suns.” Soo-jin closed her eyes, taking a few deep, calming breaths. “Thank you.”
Her voice shook when she spoke. This close, Karin could see that the rest of her shook, too. Soo-jin rubbed the side of her thumb under her eyes, wiping away the panicked tears. Her dreadlocks jumbled in disarray. Pieces of frizzy hair stuck out, limned in the red and yellow glow of the stained glass nightlight that lay against the cabin’s back wall. Beads and colored string glinted as she shifted.
Karin looked away, letting her recover. After a minute, the locker door clunked again. Soo-jin’s bare foot came into view as she joined her in the middle of the room, staring hard at the spot where the Shadow had been.
“What was that thing?”
Karin shook her head. “I have no idea. It’s not alone, though.”
Soo-jin’s head jerked back, eyes wide. “What?”
“There was one in my room, too.”
“Clio’s fucking bounty. Are you serious?”
“We should check on Marc,” she said, turning toward the door. “If there were two...”
At once, they both heard a thunk from the cabin across the hall.
Cold fear swept through her. She lunged for the door, but Soo-jin grabbed her arm.
“Wait—he’s got
a gun.”
She whirled. “What?”
“From his army days. I’ve seen it. It’s loaded.”
“On a spaceship?” Despite herself, she felt her jaw drop.
“I know, I know. Just—”
She had heard guns go off before, but nothing quite prepared her for what happened next. A deafening crack sounded, followed quickly by a second. The blasts hit with such force that, although she was on the other side of almost two walls, she felt the air reverberate.
Her ears rang, reeling from the noise.
Marc’s door slid open. Gun drawn, all the muscles along his arms tense and rigid, he made to step through, but stopped as his attention snapped to them across the hall.
His brows knit together, jaw dropping open. Karin saw the sudden confusion in his eyes.
“Am I dreaming?” he asked.
“No,” Soo-Jin said. “Did you kill it?”
“I think so.” He shook his head, his frown deepening. “It just—vanished.”
“So did ours,” Soo-jin said.
A sudden silence filled the area as they all processed what had happened. The jitters of leftover adrenaline were still pumping through Karin’s system, and a growing ache in her shoulder was beginning to tell her just how hard she’d been swinging that helmet.
“What in the ten hells,” Marc muttered, blinking hard, voice rough from sleep. “Were they... human?”
For a second, none of them spoke. Karin’s heart still pounded, heavy in the quiet. Her breath came slow and shaky.
“They looked human,” Soo-jin answered, her tone careful. “If you ignore the obvious.”
The obvious fact that they were not?
Her head reeled as she tried to process it.
Gods, what in the ten hells was happening? Was it part of her past come back to haunt her? Given the incredibility of it, that had been her first assumption—Shadow people, after all, were not outside the scopes of the shit that had gone down in her old compound, and would be a fittingly poetic thing to send after her, given her abilities with light.